Davis, N. A.
“Sunnyside,” Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
August 16, 1897, Monday 3 a.m.
This letter is published in entirety in 13MR 1-5. +NoteOne or more typed copies of this document contain additional Ellen White handwritten interlineations which may be viewed at the main office of the Ellen G. White Estate.
Brother Davis:
As we were bowed before God in prayer before you left on Sunday night, the only petition, you remember, that I offered was that you might be delivered from the power of satanic agencies that were determined to hold control over you until they should bring you down to their own lowest depths. I advised you to open everything to Elder Daniells and our leading brethren, and solicit their prayers in your behalf that Satan might be rebuked. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 1
You answered me that you had not been troubled with the temptations you had when canvassing, that since you had been circulating the petitions you had been free from these horrible temptations. But when we were bowed before God I could see you surrounded with demons, all ready to take you under their control and lead you wherever they chose. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 2
There is danger in having the least connection with theosophy or spiritualism. It is spiritualism in essence, and will always lead in the same path as spiritualism. These are the doctrines that seduce the people whom Christ has purchased with His own blood. You cannot break this spell. You have not yet broken it. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 3
August 17, 2:30 a.m.
There have been some matters opened to me during the past night. Your case is one that no one can help you. To trust in human help will be to fail. You are not free from Satan’s power to do even the things you purpose to do. You have vile thoughts, and have corrupted your ways before God. The sentiments which you have once accepted are ever present with you. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 4
August 19
I was called away from this letter, but will add, Your case is a very perilous one. You are under the control of an unclean spirit. Will you look, and see the course you have pursued in borrowing money of others, and spending money that has come into your hands from any source? Your ideas, and plans, and thoughts, and actions, are all demoralized. You should never again attempt canvassing. You have had a chance, as others have had, but you have appropriated the money in many ways. Will you tell how? You have evidenced that a man may have advantages in education, in pleasing abilities, and this gives him opportunity to be received, to be trusted, and yet disappoint most cruelly, as you have disappointed those, both men and women, who have been deceived by an apparent honesty. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 5
I was on the point of saying that I would help you with money to tide over your difficulties, but the Spirit of the Lord teaches me that as you now are this would be using the Lord’s money to hurt yourself and other souls. From the light given me of God, there is entrusted to you talent for which you are responsible; but to trust you with money would be to put it into a bag with holes, and you would be no more relieved than before you received it. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 6
But not only is upon you the sin of wasting your Lord’s goods in the money line, of robbing the treasury of God by wasting the means which should be used at this time in getting the truth before other souls that would receive the truth had they a chance, but your course is immoral. You are bringing disgrace upon the cause of truth. Whatever may have been your past course of action, you have not been converted to the mind and character of purity and cleanness and truthfulness before God. You have not only brought misery and distress and shame upon those who have trusted you with money, but you have brought moral corruption upon souls. You are a dangerous man to be left to yourself anywhere. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 7
The Lord has given you a clear insight into His Word. He has blessed you with powers to communicate that Word in an acceptable manner. But through your polluted ideas and impulses you seem to have no moral power to resist. Until you are converted from your evil course of action unto the Lord, you cannot be trusted to handle books or to have any money from the treasury to be used to flow into channels that will help you to multiply evil. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 8
There is only one hope for you. You must come to Christ as a poor sinner ready to perish, humble your soul before God, exercise that repentance that needeth not to be repented of, and God will receive you. You are constantly under remorse when you are communicating from the Word light and truth to others. If that truth sanctified your own life, you would be a blessing and not a curse. Your only hope is to seek the Lord while He may be found, to call upon Him while He is near. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto me, and I will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” [Isaiah 55:6, 7.] 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 9
Why do you not make thorough work? Why do you remain an agent through whom Satan will work to decoy others to lend you money which you have no prospect of repaying? Why do you transgress the law of God while professing to keep it? If you determine to break the power of satanic agencies that is upon you, present your case before the servants of God, humble your heart before God, and ask them to pray for you that God will have mercy upon you. Unless you are transformed day by day by the grace of Christ, your connection with the sacred work of God must end. In pursuing the course you have, your influence is a reproach to the Seventh-day Adventists as a body. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 10
In your letter you complain of the yoke of debt. But there is no excuse for your being in debt. If you would be led by the Lord, you would not incur debt, but led by the devil you will draw money from the treasury which is needed to forward the work in its various branches. You should not trust yourself in managing business which will place money in your power to handle. Why? Because you distress others. Your freedom in borrowing, with no reason to suppose that you will be in a position to repay it, is doing great injustice to others, robbing them of their little all, and bringing reproach upon the cause of God. If you realized what you were doing at the time of your action, you would stop. You would see the sinfulness of robbing men, believers or unbelievers, and bringing them into strait places in order to relieve your present necessities. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 11
This case of yours, Brother Davis, is not a small affair. In the course you have pursued you will leave upon the track of other canvassers a blighting influence, difficult for you to efface. You will have closed the door to other persons who would canvass and do the work honestly, but who will be regarded as untrustworthy. To those who really need to have some indulgence and favors in the line of trust, because of the wrong course some canvassers have pursued, they dare not venture. And with the experience they have had, in the loss from the treasury of hundreds of pounds, why should they not be afraid to repose confidence in men who so manage as to draw from the treasury and leave them minus the means they so greatly need to sustain the work of God for this time? 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 12
I am sorry, so sorry, for you, but I dare not draw from the Lord’s entrusted money to help you out of your present difficulty. Those whom the Lord has made stewards of His means must be faithful to their trust, for God holds them responsible. They are to be faithful stewards. 12LtMs, Lt 36, 1897, par. 13