22
Selected Messages Book 1
“When I went to Colorado I was so burdened for you that, in
my weakness, I wrote many pages to be read at your camp meeting.
Weak and trembling, I arose at three o’clock in the morning to write
to you. God was speaking through clay. You might say that this
communication was only a letter. Yes, it was a letter, but prompted
by the Spirit of God, to bring before your minds things that had been
shown me. In these letters which I write, in the testimonies I bear, I
am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do
not write one article in the paper, expressing merely my own ideas.
They are what God has opened before me in vision—the precious rays
of light shining from the throne....
“What voice will you acknowledge as the voice of God? What
power has the Lord in reserve to correct your errors and show you your
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course as it is? What power to work in the church? If you refuse to
believe until every shadow of uncertainty and every possibility of doubt
is removed, you will never believe. The doubt that demands perfect
knowledge will never yield to faith. Faith rests upon evidence, not
demonstration. The Lord requires us to obey the voice of duty, when
there are other voices all around us urging us to pursue an opposite
course. It requires earnest attention from us to distinguish the voice
which speaks from God. We must resist and conquer inclination, and
obey the voice of conscience without parleying or compromise, lest
its promptings cease, and will and impulse control.
“The word of the Lord comes to us all who have not resisted His
Spirit by determining not to hear and obey. This voice is heard in
warnings, in counsels, in reproof. It is the Lord’s message of light to
His people. If we wait for louder calls or better opportunities, the light
may be withdrawn, and we left in darkness
“It pains me to say, my brethren, that your sinful neglect to walk in
the light has enshrouded you in darkness. You may now be honest in
not recognizing and obeying the light; the doubts you have entertained,
your neglect to heed the requirements of God, have blinded your
perception so that darkness is now to you light, and light is darkness.
God has bidden you to go forward to perfection. Christianity is a
religion of progress. Light from God is full and ample, waiting our
demand upon it. Whatever blessings the Lord may give, He has an
infinite supply beyond, an inexhaustible store from which we may
draw. Skepticism may treat the sacred claims of the gospel with jests,