Loading...
Larger font
Smaller font
Copy
Print
Contents

Heavenly Visions

 - Contents
  • Results
  • Related
  • Featured
No results found for: "".
  • Weighted Relevancy
  • Content Sequence
  • Relevancy
  • Earliest First
  • Latest First
    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents

    POWER IN THE MESSAGES

    In the story of the very first days we see clearly that the power was not in the person, but in the message that was given her to bear. Mrs. White would stand by the side of the older workers, bearing her message from God,-you read the story in “Life Sketches” and elsewhere,-and how often she was called to safeguard the flock from workers of evil seeking to get in. It might be she would point out somebody in the meeting and describe the evil of his life-some one she had never seen before. Those were days of confusion; wild and eccentric movements were spreading after the disappointment of 1844. Evidently Satan was trying to throw things into the coming advent movement, things fanatical, wicked, cloaked in pious pretense to righteousness. And there was a young girl, pointing out this one and that one. This one was leading a double life. The person perhaps would rise up and rush from the meeting. Some corrected would confess and seek God. Others would rise in opposition, seeking to draw away sympathizers with them. That was not a work one would naturally assign to a young girl, was it? Suppose you choose some girl, of seventeen or eighteen, and say, “Come now and help us; we are in trouble. There is fanaticism at work. We would not give such a youth the power to give the help required. But when God called, there was power in the messages He gave. Old leaders in the beginning of our work, knew that there was something at work in that gift that never could have pertained to Mrs. White herself personally. And that kind of thing continued through all her life to build up, to strengthen the work of God.HEVI 90.8

    That gift has built us up spiritually. Over in a general meeting in Northern Europe, Elder G. A. Lindsay, of the East Nordic Union, told us of a Lutheran clergyman in Sweden who was writing a thesis for his doctor’s degree at the university. The topic was, “The Advent Idea in History.” He came to our Stockholm office to get books. Elder Lindsay said they gave him some of our leading books. They did not give him “Early Writings,” but the clergyman got hold of that little book in an old Swedish edition, and he evidently made good use of it. In his thesis he said: “The secret of the piety and spirituality and consecration of the Adventists will be found in these writings and messages of Mrs. E.G. White.”HEVI 91.1

    Sometimes we may have felt as though that is such a peculiar gift that people of the world would not look favorably upon it. No, to men of the world who see clearly and understand spiritual things, that gift often appeals as one of the strong features of this advent movement. And we know that this is the gift that has drawn us most insistently and continually back to God as we have been in danger of neglecting spiritual essentials. All over the earth people recognize that gift as a great spiritual power appealing to us.HEVI 91.2

    I was in Northwest China, just below where they are fighting today. It was a Chinese meeting altogether, and the only foreign feature about it was the presence of a few visitors. The superintendent was a Chinese, everything was Chinese. Between the meetings one day, I saw a little group of villagers chatting, talking animatedly. I said to Elder A. A. Esteb: “What do these village women talk about so earnestly when they are alone?” He listened a minute, and said: “I declare! Did you hear what that little village woman said? She said, ‘What a wonderful treasure of spiritual food has been given to us in the writings of the Spirit of prophecy.’”HEVI 91.3

    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents