Individuality
Workers Allowed Individuality—If it is possible, I would free
your mind from the deceptions that have taken hold of you. In your
work, you have embraced too much responsibility. I must say to you
that you should not fill the office of president of a conference, so long
as you feel that you must mold and fashion the experience of others
to conform to your own ideas. Your course has revealed that you lack
wise perception. The fashioning of your character is such as needs
reforming.
I now charge you before God to make thorough work of repentance
and reformation. You may now so humble yourself before God that
you may be trusted to represent the sacred character of His work. But
your peculiarity of disposition is such that if you are in office, you will
always be in danger of ruling arbitrarily. God forbids that one man
shall have arbitrary jurisdiction over the minds of his brethren.—
Letter
380, 1907
(November 11, 1907 to a Local Conference President).
The Danger of Looking to Men—A great crisis is coming upon
us. If men still yield to men, as they have been doing for the last
fifteen years, they will lose their own souls, and their example will
lead others astray. God’s soldiers must put on the whole armor of
God. We are not required to put on human armor, but to gird ourselves
with God’s strength. If we keep God’s glory ever in view, our eyes
will be anointed with the heavenly eye salve; we will be able to look
deeper, and see afar off what the world is. As we discern its dishonesty,
its craftiness, its selfish eye service, its pretense, and its boasting, its
want of fair honest dealing in the ordinary intercourse of life, and its
grasping covetousness, we can take our stand, by precept and example,
to represent Christ, and convert souls from the world by our sound
principles, our firm integrity, our hatred of all dissembling, and our
holy boldness in acknowledging Christ.—
Letter 4, 1896
, pp. 13, 15,
16 (July 1, 1896 to Men in Responsible Positions).
[25]
Individual Methods of Labor—The leaders among God’s peo-
ple are to guard against the danger of condemning the methods of
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