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Selected Messages Book 2
true and living God will know Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of
God, and will preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified....
Does anyone suppose that the messages of warning will not come
to those whom God reproves? The ones reproved may rise up in
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indignation and seek to bring the law to bear upon God’s messenger,
but in doing this, they are not bringing the law upon the messenger,
but upon Christ, who gave the reproof and the warning. When men
endanger the work and cause of God by their own wrong course of
action, shall they hear no voice of reproof? If the wrongdoer only
were concerned, and the work reached no farther than him, he alone
should have the words of warning; but when his course of action is
doing positive harm to the cause of truth, and souls are imperiled,
God requires that the warning be as broad as the injury done. The
testimonies will not be hindered. The words of rebuke and warning, the
plain “Thus saith the Lord,” will come from God’s appointed agencies;
for the words do not originate with the human instrument; they are
from God, who appointed them their work. If a suit is instituted in
earthly tribunals, and God suffers it to come to trial, it is that His own
name may be glorified. But a woe will be upon the man who gives
himself to do this work. God reads the motives, whatever they may be.
I pray that the Lord will teach our brethren to be straightforward, and
make no compromise in the matter. The cause of God has been bruised
and wounded by any such men connecting with it, and the sooner they
are separated from it, the better....
God calls for men of decided fidelity. He has no use in an emer-
gency for two-sided men. He wants men who will lay their hand
upon a wrong work and say, “This is not according to the will of
God.”—
Letter 19 1/2, 1897
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