2T 307, 459, 552
(Testimonies for the Church Volume 2 307, 459, 552)
Chapter 43—Letter to an Orphan Boy VC
Dear Friend (2T 307) MC VC
In the last vision given me, I saw that you had faults to correct. It is necessary for you to see these before you will make the required effort to correct them. You have much to learn before you can form a good, Christian character which God can approve. From your childhood you have been a wayward boy, disposed to have your own way and to follow your own mind. You have not loved to yield your wishes and will to those who have had the care of you. This is the experience you must obtain. (2T 307.1) MC VC
Your danger is increased by the spirit of independence and self-confidence—connected, as of course it must be, with inexperience—which young men of your age are apt to assume when they have not their own dear parents to watch over them and stir the tender chords of affection in the soul. You feel that it is time for you to think and act for yourself. “I am a young man, and no longer a child. I am capable of discriminating between right and wrong. I have rights, and I will stand for them. I am capable of forming my own plans of action. Who has authority to interfere with me?” These have been some of your thoughts, and you are encouraged in them by youth who are about your age. (2T 307.2) MC VC
As I have been shown the dangers of those who profess better things, and the sins that exist among them,—a class who are not suspected of being in any danger from these polluting sins,—I have been led to inquire: Who, O Lord, shall stand when Thou appearest? Only those who have clean hands and pure hearts shall abide the day of His coming. (2T 459.1) MC VC
I feel impelled by the Spirit of the Lord to urge my sisters who profess godliness to cherish modesty of deportment and a becoming reserve, with shamefacedness and sobriety. The liberties taken in this age of corruption should be no criterion for Christ’s followers. These fashionable exhibitions of familiarity should not exist among Christians fitting for immortality. If lasciviousness, pollution, adultery, crime, and murder are the order of the day among those who know not the truth, and who refuse to be controlled by the principles of God’s word, how important that the class professing to be followers of Christ, closely allied to God and angels, should show them a better and nobler way. How important that by their chastity and virtue they stand in marked contrast to that class who are controlled by brute passions. (2T 459.2) MC VC
I have inquired: When will the youthful sisters act with propriety? I know there will be no decided change for the better until parents feel the importance of greater carefulness in educating their children correctly. Teach them to act with reserve and modesty. Educate them for usefulness, to be helps, to minister to others rather than to be waited upon and be ministered unto. (2T 459.3) MC VC
God’s ministers must have the truth in their hearts in order to successfully present it to others. They must be sanctified by the truths they preach or they will be only stumbling blocks to sinners. Those who are called of God to minister in holy things are called to be pure in heart and holy in life. “Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.” Isaiah 52:11. If God pronounces a woe upon those who are called to preach the truth and refuse to obey, a heavier woe rests upon those who take upon them this sacred work without clean hands and pure hearts. As there are woes for those who preach the truth while they are unsanctified in heart and life, so there are woes for those who receive and maintain the unsanctified in the position which they cannot fill. If the Spirit of God has not sanctified and made pure and clean the hands and heart of those who minister in sacred things, they will speak according to their own imperfect, deficient experience, and their counsels will lead astray from God those who look to them and trust in their judgment and experience. May God help ministers to heed the exhortation of Paul to the Corinthians: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” 2 Corinthians 13:5. There is a work for you to do, my brother, if you gain eternal life. May God help you to do this work thoroughly, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. (2T 552.1) MC VC