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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
and purifies the soul. God calls upon you in California to come into
close relationship with Him.
One point will have to be guarded, and that is individual inde-
pendence. As soldiers in Christ’s army, there should be concert of
action in the various departments of the work. No one has the right to
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start out on his own responsibility and advance ideas in our papers on
Bible doctrines when it is known that others among us hold different
opinions on the subject and that it will create controversy. The first-day
Adventists have done this. Each has followed his own independent
judgment and sought to present original ideas, until there is no con-
certed action among them, except, perhaps, in opposing Seventh-day
Adventists. We should not follow their example. Each laborer should
act with reference to the others. Followers of Jesus Christ will not act
independently one of another. Our strength must be in God, and it
must be husbanded, to be put forth in noble, concentrated action. It
must not be wasted in meaningless movements.
In union there is strength. There should be union between our
publishing houses and our other institutions. If this unity existed,
they would be a power. No strife or variance should exist among the
workers. The work is one, superintended by one Leader. Occasional
and spasmodic efforts have done harm. However energetic they may
be, they are of little value; for the reaction will surely come. We must
cultivate a steady perseverance, continually searching to know and do
God’s will.
We should know what we must do to be saved. We should not, my
brethren and sisters, float along with the popular current. Our present
work is to come out from the world and be separate. This is the only
way we can walk with God, as did Enoch. Divine influences were
constantly working with his human efforts. Like him, we are called
upon to have a strong, living, working faith, and this is the only way
we can be laborers together with God. We must meet the conditions
laid down in the word of God or die in our sins. We must know what
moral changes are essential to be made in our characters, through the
grace of Christ, in order to be fitted for the mansions above. I tell you
in the fear of God: We are in danger of living like the Jews—destitute
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of the love of God and ignorant of His power, while the blazing light
of truth is shining all around us.