Counsel to the Brother and His Wife

Dear Brother and Sister L,

Recently, in visions of the night, there were opened before me some matters that I must communicate to you. I have been shown that you are making some sad mistakes. In your study of the Scriptures and of the Testimonies you have come to wrong conclusions. The Lord's work would be greatly misunderstood if you should continue to labor as you have begun. You place a false interpretation upon the word of God and upon the printed Testimonies; and then you seek to carry on a strange work in accordance with your conception of their meaning. You have even supposed that power is given you to cast out devils. Through your influence over the human mind men and women are led to believe that they are possessed of devils, and that the Lord has appointed you as His agents for casting out these evil spirits.2SM 44.5

Your wife, in speech, in song, and in strange exhibitions that are not in accordance with the genuine work of the Holy Spirit, is helping to bring in a phase of fanaticism that would do great injury to the cause of God, if allowed any place in our churches.2SM 45.1

My brother and sister, I have a message for you: you are starting on a false supposition. There is much of self woven into your exhibitions. Satan will come in with bewitching power through these exhibitions. It is high time that you call a halt. If God had given you a special message for His people, you would walk and work in all humility—not as if you were on the stage of a theater, but in the meekness of a follower of the lowly Jesus of Nazareth. You would carry an influence altogether different from that which you have been carrying....2SM 45.2

The sincere desire to do others good will lead the Christian worker to put away all thought of bringing into the message of present truth any strange teachings leading men and women into fanaticism. At this period of the world's history we must exercise the greatest of care in this respect.2SM 45.3

Some of the phases of experience through which you are passing endanger not only your own souls but the souls of many others, because you appeal to the precious words of Christ as recorded in the Scriptures, and to the Testimonies, to vouch for the genuineness of your message. In supposing that the precious Word, which is verity and truth, and the Testimonies that the Lord has given for His people, are your authority, you are deceived. You are moved by wrong impulses, and are bracing up yourselves with declarations that mislead. You attempt to make the truth of God sustain false sentiments and incorrect actions that are inconsistent and fanatical. This makes tenfold, yes, twentyfold harder the work of the church in acquainting the people with the truths of the third angel's message.—Letter 358a, 1908.2SM 45.4