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The Results of False Visions, May 30
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast
into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Matthew 7:19, 20
.
Several now living [1890] are skeptics, have no belief in the gifts of the
church, no faith in the truth, no religion at all. Such, I have been shown, is
the sure result of spurious visions....
Satan is ... constantly pressing in the spurious—to lead away from the
truth.
The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the
testimony of the Spirit of God. “Where there is no vision, the people
perish” (
Proverbs 29:18
). Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways
and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God’s remnant
people in the true testimony. He will bring in spurious visions to mislead,
and will mingle the false with the true, and so disgust people that they will
regard everything that bears the name of visions as a species of fanaticism;
but honest souls, by contrasting false and true, will be enabled to distinguish
between them....
There is nothing more detrimental to the soul’s interest, its purity, its
true and holy conceptions of God, and of sacred and eternal things, than
constantly giving heed to and exalting that which is not from God. It poisons
the heart, and degrades the understanding. Pure truth can be traced to its
divine Source, by its elevating, refining, sanctifying influence upon the
character of the receiver. The Author of all truth prayed to His Father,
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me
through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and
I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that
thou hast sent me” (
John 17:20, 21
).
Things will be constantly arising to cause disunion, to draw away from
the truth. This questioning, criticizing, denouncing, passing judgment
on others, is not an evidence of the grace of Christ in the heart. It does
not produce unity. Such work has been carried on in the past by persons
claiming to have wonderful light, when they were deep in sin.
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