Brother D, for some time in the past your labors have not been as wisely and successfully directed as formerly. Your course of action has not borne the impress of God. Your wife has managed your temporal matters and borne burdens which were too heavy for her to bear, while you have been absent. This has excited your sympathy, and had a tendency to pervert your judgment, so that you have placed too high an estimate upon her qualifications because of her capability in managing your temporal matters. Satan has been watching his opportunity to make as much as possible to his own advantage of your confidence in your wife. He has purposed to trammel you and destroy you both. You have to a great degree thrown off your stewardship upon your wife. This is wrong; she will have all she can do to bear her share of the responsibility, without bearing that which comes upon you and for which God will hold you accountable. (1T 708.1) MC VC

Sister D has been deceived in some things. She has thought that God instructed her in a special sense, and you both have believed and acted accordingly. The discernment which she has thought she possessed in a special sense, is a deception of the enemy. She is naturally quick to see, quick to understand, quick to anticipate, and is of an extremely sensitive nature. Satan has taken advantage of these traits of character and has led you both astray. Brother D, you have been a bondman for quite a length of time. Much of that which Sister D has thought was discernment has been jealousy. She has been disposed to regard everything with a jealous eye, to be suspicious, surmising evil, distrustful of almost everything. This causes unhappiness of mind, despondency, and doubt, where faith and confidence should exist. These unhappy traits of character turn her thoughts into a gloomy channel, where she indulges a foreboding of evil, while a highly sensitive temperament leads her to imagine neglect, slight, and injury, when it does not exist. All these things stand in the way of the spiritual advancement of you both, and affect others to just that extent that you are connected with the cause and work of God. There is a work for you to do: Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that you may be exalted in due time. These unhappy traits of character, with a strong, set will, must be corrected and reformed, or they will eventually cause you both to make shipwreck of your faith. (1T 708.2) MC VC