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Appeals for Truth and Loyalty
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special convocations, teach them, for Christ’s sake and for their own
soul’s sake, not to make flesh their arm. There is no power in men
to read the hearts of their fellowmen. The Lord is the only one upon
whom we can with safety depend, and He is accessible in every
place and to every church in the Union. To place men where God
should be placed does not honor or glorify God. Is the president of
the General Conference to be the God of the people? Are the men at
Battle Creek to be regarded as infinite in wisdom? When the Lord
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shall work upon human hearts and human intellects, principles and
practices different from this will be set before the people. “Cease ye
from man.”
The Lord has a controversy with His people over this matter.
Why have they left the Lord their God, who so loved them “that He
gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life”? His love is not uncertain
and fluctuating, but is as far above all other love as the heavens are
above the earth. Ever He watches over His children with a love
that is measureless and everlasting. “O the depth of the riches both
of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His
judgments, and His ways past finding out!”
“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all
men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Mercy
and love and wisdom are to be found in God; but many who profess
to know Him have turned from the One in whom our hope of eternal
life is centered, and have educated themselves to depend upon their
erring and fallible fellowmen. They are crippled spiritually when
they do this; for no man is infallible, and his influence may be
misleading. He who trusts in man not only leans upon a broken
reed, and gives Satan an opportunity to introduce himself, but he
hurts the one in whom the trust is placed; he becomes lifted up in his
estimation of himself, and loses the sense of his dependence upon
God. Just as soon as man is placed where God should be, he loses
his purity, his vigor, his confidence in God’s power. Moral confusion
results, because his powers become unsanctified and perverted. He
feels competent to judge his fellowmen, and he strives unlawfully to
be a God over them.
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