Warnings Against Deceptive Claims of the Spirit’s Guidance
43
We cannot allow excitable elements among us to display them-
selves in a way that would destroy our influence with those whom
we wish to reach with the truth. It took us years to outlive the un-
favorable impression that unbelievers gained of Adventists through
their knowledge of the strange and wicked workings of fanatical ele-
ments among us during the early years of our existence as a separate
people.—
Manuscript 115, 1908
.
Counsel to the Brother and His Wife
Dear Brother and Sister L,
Recently, in visions of the night, there were opened before me
some matters that I must communicate to you. I have been shown that
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you are making some sad mistakes. In your study of the Scriptures
and of the Testimonies you have come to wrong conclusions. The
Lord’s work would be greatly misunderstood if you should continue
to labor as you have begun. You place a false interpretation upon the
word of God and upon the printed Testimonies; and then you seek to
carry on a strange work in accordance with your conception of their
meaning. You have even supposed that power is given you to cast out
devils. Through your influence over the human mind men and women
are led to believe that they are possessed of devils, and that the Lord
has appointed you as His agents for casting out these evil spirits.
Your wife, in speech, in song, and in strange exhibitions that are
not in accordance with the genuine work of the Holy Spirit, is helping
to bring in a phase of fanaticism that would do great injury to the cause
of God, if allowed any place in our churches.
My brother and sister, I have a message for you: you are starting on
a false supposition. There is much of self woven into your exhibitions.
Satan will come in with bewitching power through these exhibitions.
It is high time that you call a halt. If God had given you a special
message for His people, you would walk and work in all humility—
not as if you were on the stage of a theater, but in the meekness of a
follower of the lowly Jesus of Nazareth. You would carry an influence
altogether different from that which you have been carrying....
The sincere desire to do others good will lead the Christian worker
to put away all thought of bringing into the message of present truth
any strange teachings leading men and women into fanaticism. At this