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Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers
who is mighty in counsel? and cannot He restore? Cannot He work
in your behalf? Will He not do it if you go to Him as little children
go to their parents? There is altogether too much lofty sufficiency in
the human agent. God cannot work with such an element of pride.
If this is not laid down, if self is not humbled, God cannot work.
Those who send all their perplexities from the different parts of the
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world to Battle Creek show the wisdom of men, and not the wisdom
of God.
* * * * *
Conference Presidents
[Special Testimonies, Series A 8:11-15 (1897).]
August 2, 1896.
My attention has been called to the instruction the Lord has been
pleased to give in
Gospel Workers
. I have arisen at three o’clock
a.m., and have read the matter in the little book entitled
Conference
Presidents
, page 232. The same things have been presented to me
again and again. Will our brethren take heed to these things? Or
will they turn aside from the light? The president of the General
Conference should act upon the light given, not contrary to this light.
If men close their eyes to the testimonies God has been pleased to
give, and think it wisdom to walk in the light of the sparks of their
own kindling, it will spoil the church. Such men are not qualified to
become either ministers or presidents of conferences; they have not
taken counsel from the Source of all wisdom.
He who is placed as a president of a conference must learn that
the human heart is wayward, and that it needs to be strictly sentineled
by watchfulness and prayer. As he seeks the Lord conscientiously
and constantly, he is taught of God to grow into a representative man,
and can be trusted as God trusted Abraham. He needs the whole
armor of God; for he has to fight the good fight of faith, and having
done all that the Spirit of God has taught him to do, to stand. His
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enemies may be those of his own household, his wife and children,
or they may be his own hereditary and cultivated tendencies, which
continually seek for the mastery. Man is human and defective in