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drop, but which have tenfold more power to strengthen those who are
wrong, and to lessen our influence and weaken the confidence of God’s
people in our work, than if they came out more frankly. These poor
souls, I saw, were deceived by Satan. They flatter themselves that they
are all right, that they are in favor with God and are rich in spiritual
discernment, when they are poor, blind, and wretched. They are doing
the work of Satan, but think they have a zeal for God.
Some will not receive the testimony that God has given us to bear,
flattering themselves that we may be deceived and that they may be
right. They think that the people of God are not in need of plain dealing
and of reproof, but that God is with them. These tempted ones, whose
souls have ever been at war with the faithful reproving of sin, would
cry: Speak unto us smooth things. What disposition will these make
of the message of the True Witness to the Laodiceans? There can be
no deception here. This message must be borne to a lukewarm church
by God’s servants. It must arouse His people from their security and
dangerous deception in regard to their real standing before God. This
testimony, if received, will arouse to action and lead to self-abasement
and confession of sins. The True Witness says: “I know thy works,
that thou art neither cold nor hot.” And again, “As many as I love, I
rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” Then comes
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the promise: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear
My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with
him, and he with Me.” “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with
Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My
Father in His throne.”
The people of God must see their wrongs and arouse to zealous
repentance and a putting away of those sins which have brought them
into such a deplorable condition of poverty, blindness, wretchedness,
and fearful deception. I was shown that the pointed testimony must live
in the church. This alone will answer to the message to the Laodiceans.
Wrongs must be reproved, sin must be called sin, and iniquity must be
met promptly and decidedly, and put away from us as a people.
Fighting the Spirit of God
Those who have a spirit of opposition to the work that for twenty-
six years we have been pressed by the Spirit of God to do, and who