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Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery, and Divorce
with, and when wholly unfit for the sacred work, in order to save your
soul you have been permitted to continue your labors while hearts have
groaned and ached under the burden of your foolish, sinful course.
Had you been left to yourself long ago, till you gave the evidence
that God was indeed with you and that you were a thoroughly reformed
man, you might now be of some use in this solemn work. But I saw
that we were risking altogether too much in encouraging you to go out
to labor to convert sinners to Christ when your way has been polluted
before God, your heart all stained with sins. The true servants of God
are judged to be like yourself. No longer should you mar the work of
God with your corrupt, your carnal, heart, and thus miserably represent
the cause of present truth.
Some Success No Evidence of God’s Acceptance—In order for
you to do good you must live a new life that is in harmony with God.
Your perverse nature has not been transformed. You are not at peace
with God or with yourself. You are in bondage to the great adversary
[171]
of souls, in subjection to the old man of sin. You are not a free man in
Christ. There is needed a spiritual change in you before God can work
with you. You may argue that you have success as you labor. So do
many who are at war with God have a measure of success. If some do
embrace the truth while the arguments you use are so convincing, it is
no evidence you are in a state of even acceptance with God....
A Life of Known Mental Sin—If it had only stopped there—but
it did not. You felt for a little time the evil of your course, but not as
fully as you should, how you had been deceived by Satan, infatuated;
and your eyes never did have the mist fully removed from them. You
humbled your heart before God, and He accepted your humiliation.
You soon became careless again, and allowed your mind to become
filled again with vain and impure imaginings. You were a little more
cautious, but full of deception. Your mind was active to invent means
to gain your object....
The power of great passion has been your apology for vice. Your
life has been a shame—nothing in it of which you might glory. You
have had great depression if you were not strained up to some excite-
ment and not had some girl or woman to attract you and to listen to
your troubles in regard to your wife. Shame, shame should cover you
for your course.—
Letter 52, 1876
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