Instruction For Real People And Real Needs

Early in the experience of the exercise of this gift, an angel messenger explained to the human agent in vision:SPIAM 61.2

“Your success is in your simplicity. As soon as you depart from this and fashion your testimony to meet the minds of any, your power is gone. Almost everything in this age is glossed and unreal. The world abounds in testimonies given to please and charm for the moment, and to exalt self. Your testimony is of a different character. It is to come down to the minutiae of life, keeping the feeble faith from dying, and pressing home upon believers the necessity of shining as lights in the world.”—Testimonies for the Church 5:667.SPIAM 61.3

The uniqueness of this instruction is that it does come down to real life, to the minute details of home and church and human relationships. The nine volumes of the “Testimonies for the Church” are largely composed of personal messages sent to this one and that one in need of help, or to workers in service, and to boards and committees dealing with administrative problems. The counsels are therefore not so generally an exposition of abstract principles, but came as messages to actual men and women, needing help in personal problems and experiences. Thus they speak in a very personal way to all; for people and families and groups are much alike.SPIAM 61.4

In this same way Mrs. White had a way of dealing in person with problems, wherever she was called to go in those seventy years and more of service on three continents.SPIAM 62.1