Divine Rebuke for Ignoring Counsel
149
Further Revelations of God’s Displeasure?—I am well aware
of the conditions existing in both the Review and Herald Publishing
Company and the Sanitarium. I have received instruction as to why
these large buildings were destroyed by fire. I am sure that unless the
management of these institutions is conducted more after God’s order,
there will be further revelations of God’s displeasure.—
Letter 182,
1903
.
Heartsearching and Self-examination—The destruction of the
Review and Herald building should not be passed over as something
in which there is no meaning. Everyone connected with the office
should ask himself: “Wherein do I deserve this lesson? Wherein have
I walked contrary to a ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ that He should send this
lesson to me? Have I heeded the warnings and reproofs that He has
sent, or have I followed my own way?”
Let the heart-searching God reprove the erring, and let each one
bow before Him in humility and contrition, casting aside all self-
righteousness and self-importance, confessing and forsaking every
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sin, and asking God, in the name of the Redeemer, for pardon. God
declares, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (
John
6:37
); and those who in sincerity present themselves before Him will
be pardoned and justified, and will receive power to become the sons
of God.
I pray that those who have resisted light and evidence, refusing to
listen to God’s warnings, will see in the destruction of the Review and
Herald office an appeal to them to turn to God with full purpose of
heart. Will they not realize that God is in earnest with them? He is not
seeking to destroy life, but to save life. In the recent destruction the
lives of the workers were graciously preserved, that all might have an
opportunity to see that God was correcting them by a message coming
not from a human source, but from above. God’s people have departed
from Him; they have not followed His instruction, and He has come
near them in correction; but He has not brought extinction of life. Not
one soul has been taken by death. All have been left alive to recognize
the Power that no man can gainsay.
Let us praise the Lord that the lives of His children have been
so precious in His sight. He might have cut off the workers in their
heedlessness and self-sufficiency. But, no! He says: “They shall
have another chance. I will let the fire speak to them and will see if