Nature and Influence of the “Testimonies”
591
In a vision given me June 12, 1868, I was shown that which fully
justified my course in publishing personal testimonies. “When the Lord
singles out individual cases and specifies their wrongs, others, who
have not been shown in vision, frequently take it for granted that they
are right, or nearly so. If one is reproved for a special wrong, brethren
and sisters should carefully examine themselves to see wherein they
have failed and wherein they have been guilty of the same sin. They
should possess the spirit of humble confession. If others think them
right, it does not make them so. God looks at the heart. He is proving
and testing souls in this manner. In rebuking the wrongs of one,
He designs to correct many. But if they fail to take the reproof to
themselves, and flatter themselves that God passes over their errors
because He does not especially single them out, they deceive their own
souls and will be shut up in darkness and be left to their own ways to
follow the imagination of their own hearts.
“Many are dealing falsely with their own souls and are in a great
deception in regard to their true condition before God. He employs
ways and means to best serve His purpose and to prove what is in the
hearts of His professed followers. He makes plain the wrongs of some
that others may thus be warned and fear and shun those errors. By
self-examination they may find that they are doing the same things
which God condemns in others. If they really desire to serve God,
and fear to offend Him, they will not wait for their sins to be specified
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before they make confession and with humble repentance return unto
the Lord. They will forsake the things which have displeased God,
according to the light given to others. If, on the contrary, those who
are not right see that they are guilty of the very sins that have been
reproved in others, yet continue in the same unconsecrated course
because they have not been specially named, they endanger their own
souls, and will be led captive by Satan at his will.” [
Testimonies for
the Church 2:112, 113
(1868).]
“I was shown that in the wisdom of God the sins and errors of all
would not be revealed.... All who are guilty are addressed in these
individual testimonies, although their names may not be attached to
the special testimony borne; and if individuals pass over and cover
up their own sins because their names are not especially called, they
will not be prospered of God. They cannot advance in the divine life,