A Friend of the Poor

“Any one, the poorest and the humblest, can go to her freely for advice and comfort without being repulsed. She is ever looking after the needy, the destitute, and the suffering, providing for them, and pleading their cause.GSAM 470.2

“I have never formed an acquaintance with any person who so constantly has the fear of God before him. Nothing is undertaken without earnest prayer to God. She studies God’s word carefully and constantly. I have heard Sister White speak hundreds of times, have read all her testimonies through and through, most of them many times, and I have never been able to find one immoral sentence in the whole of them, or anything that is not strictly pure and Christian; nothing that leads away from the Bible and from Christ; but there I find the most earnest appeals to obey God, to love Jesus, to believe the Scriptures, and to search them constantly. I have received great spiritual benefit, times without number, from the testimonies. Indeed, I have never read them without feeling reproved for my lack of faith in God, lack of devotion, and lack of earnestness in saving souls. If I have any judgement, and spiritual discernment, I pronounce the testimonies to be of the same spirit and of the same tenor as the Scriptures.GSAM 470.3

“For thirty years [we may now say sixty years] these testimonies have been believed and read among our people. How has it affected them? Has it led them away from the law of God? Has it led them to give up faith in Christ? Has it led them to throw aside the Bible? Has it led them to be a corrupt, immoral people? I know that they will compare favorably with any other Christian denomination.GSAM 470.4

“One thing I have remarked, and that is, that the most bitter opponents of the visions of Sister White admit that she is a Christian. How they can make this admission is more than I know. They try to fix it up by saying that she is deceived. They are not able to put their finger upon a single stain in all her life, nor an immoral sentence in all her writings. They have to admit that much of her writings are excellent, and that whoever would live out all she says would be a good Christian, sure of heaven. This is passing strange, if she is a tool of the devil, inspired by Satan, or if her writings are immoral or the vagaries of her own mind.”GSAM 471.1