Chapter 1—Warnings Against Sensational Teachings
and Emotional Religion
The Danger of Speculative Ideas
There is a time of trouble coming to the people of God, but we are
not to keep that constantly before the people, and rein them up to have
a time of trouble beforehand. There is to be a shaking among God’s
people; but this is not the present truth to carry to the churches. It will
be the result of refusing the truth presented.
The ministers should not feel that they have some wonderful ad-
vanced ideas, and unless all receive these, they will be shaken out, and
a people will arise to go forward and upward to the victory. Satan’s
object is accomplished just as surely when men run ahead of Christ
and do the work He has never entrusted to their hands, as when they re-
main in the Laodicean state, lukewarm, feeling rich and increased with
goods, and in need of nothing. The two classes are equally stumbling
blocks.
Some zealous ones who are aiming and straining every energy
for originality have made a grave mistake in trying to get something
startling, wonderful, entrancing, before the people, something that
they think others do not comprehend; but often they do not themselves
know what they are talking about. They speculate upon God’s Word,
advancing ideas that are not a whit of help to themselves or to the
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churches. For the time being, they may excite the imagination; but
there is a reaction, and these very ideas become a hindrance. Faith
is confounded with fancy, and their views may bias the mind in the
wrong direction. Let the plain, simple statements of the Word of God
be food for the mind; this speculating upon ideas that are not clearly
presented there, is dangerous business.—
Undated Manuscript 111
.
The danger that threatens our churches is that new and strange
things will be brought in, things that confuse the minds of the people,
and give them no strength, at the very time when they most need
strength in spiritual things. Clear discernment is needed that things
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