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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
have followed their own understanding.” [
Testimonies for the Church
5:65, 66
(1882).]
When this position is taken by our people, then the special warn-
ings and counsels of God through the Spirit of prophecy can have no
influence with them to work a reformation in life and character. The
Lord does not give a vision to meet each emergency which may arise
in the different attitudes of His people in the development of His work.
But He has shown me that it has been His way of dealing with His
church in past ages, to impress the minds of His chosen servants with
the needs and dangers of His cause and of individuals, and to lay upon
them the burden of counsel and warning.
So in many cases God has given me light in regard to peculiar
defects of character in members of the church and the dangers to
the individual and the cause if these defects are not removed. Under
certain circumstances wrong tendencies are liable to become strongly
developed and confirmed, and to work injury to the cause of God and
ruin to the individual. Sometimes, when special dangers threaten the
cause of God or particular individuals, a communication comes to me
from the Lord, either in a dream or a vision of the night, and these
cases are brought vividly to my mind. I hear a voice saying to me:
“Arise and write; these souls are in peril.” I obey the movings of the
Spirit of God, and my pen traces their true condition. As I travel, and
stand before the people in different places, the Spirit of the Lord brings
before me clearly the cases I have been shown, reviving the matter
previously given me.
For the last forty-five years the Lord has been revealing to me the
needs of His cause and the cases of individuals in every phase of expe-
rience, showing where and how they have failed to perfect Christian
character. The history of hundreds of cases has been presented to
me, and that which God approves, and that which He condemns, has
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been plainly set before me. God has shown me that a certain course,
if followed, or certain traits of character, if indulged, would produce
certain results. He has thus been training and disciplining me in order
that I might see the dangers which threaten souls, and instruct and
warn His people, line upon line, precept upon precept, that they might
not be ignorant of Satan’s devices, and might escape his snares.
The work which the Lord has laid out before me especially is to
urge young and old, learned and unlearned, to search the Scriptures