Warnings Against Deceptive Claims of the Spirit’s Guidance
41
to discern whether this was of the Lord or not. To this I could not
consent, because I have been instructed that when one offers to exhibit
these peculiar manifestations, this is a decided evidence that it is not
the work of God.
We must not permit these experiences to lead us to feel discouraged.
Such experiences will come to us from time to time. Let us give no
place to strange exercisings, which really take the mind away from
the deep movings of the Holy Spirit. God’s work is ever characterized
by calmness and dignity. We cannot afford to sanction anything that
would bring in confusion and weaken our zeal in regard to the great
work that God has given us to do in the world to prepare for the second
coming of Christ.—
Letter 338, 1908
.
Statements by Mrs. White in the Interview
I am telling you these experiences, in order that you may know
what we have passed through.... Some [fanatics after 1844] would
dance up and down, singing, “Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory.”
Sometimes I would sit still until they got through, and then I would
rise and say, “This is not the way the Lord works. He does not make
impressions in this way. We must direct the minds of the people to the
Word as the foundation of our faith.”
I was but a mere child at that time, and yet I had to bear my
[43]
testimony repeatedly against these strange workings. And ever since
that time I have sought to be very, very careful lest something of this
sort should come in again among our people. Any manifestation of
fanaticism takes the mind away from the evidence of truth—the Word
itself.
You might take a consistent course, but those who would be influ-
enced by you might take a very inconsistent course, and, as a result,
we should very soon have our hands full of something that would make
it almost impossible to give unbelievers the right impression of our
message and work. We must go to the people with the solid Word of
God; and when they receive that Word, the Holy Spirit may come, but
it always comes, as I have stated before, in a way that commends itself
to the judgment of the people. In our speaking, our singing, and in all
our spiritual exercises, we are to reveal that calmness and dignity and
godly fear that actuates every true child of God.