Appeal to Ministers
201
taking advantage of women or men who are tempted, like themselves,
to break down all barriers and debase their bodies and pollute their
souls? How can they do this thing? How can they have any fear of
God before them? How can they have any love for God in their souls?
Of what value is their faith in the truth?
Cleanse the camp of this moral corruption, if it takes the highest
men in the highest positions. God will not be trifled with. Fornication
is in our ranks. I know it, for it has been shown me to be strengthening
and extending its pollutions. There is much we will never know, but
that which is revealed makes the church responsible and guilty unless
they show a determined effort to eradicate the evil. Cleanse the camp,
for there is an accursed thing in it.
The words of God to Joshua are: “Neither will I be with you
anymore, except ye destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify
the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow: for thus
saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of
thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take
away the accursed thing from among you” [
Joshua 7:12, 13
]. These
things are written for our benefit, upon whom the ends of the world
are come.
No Real Ground of Hope—I have no real ground of hope for
those who have stood as shepherds to the flock, and have for years
been borne with by the merciful God, following them with reproof,
with warnings, with entreaties, but who have hid their evil ways, and
continued in them, thus defying the laws of the God of heaven by
practicing fornication. We may leave them to work out their own
salvation with fear and trembling, after all has been done to reform
them, but in no case entrust to them the guardianship of souls. False
shepherds! Oh, can it be that the men who have been engaged in this
[238]
work for a long time will corrupt their ways before the Lord after great
experience and special light?—
Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel
Workers, 426-428
.
Adulterous Ministers More Guilty than Belshazzar—It is a
truth which should make every one of us weep that those living in
these last days, upon whom the ends of the world are come, are far
more guilty than was Belshazzar. This is possible in many ways.
When men have taken upon themselves the vows of consecration,
to devote all their powers to the sacred service of God; when they