Dear Brethren and Sisters: The Lord has
again manifested Himself to me. June 12, 1868, while speaking
to the brethren in the house of worship at Battle Creek, Michigan,
the Spirit of God came upon me, and in an instant I was in vision.
The view was extensive. I had commenced to write the fifth volume
of Spiritual Gifts; but as I had testimonies of a practical nature
which you should have immediately, I left that work to prepare
this little pamphlet.
In this last vision I was shown that which
fully justifies my course in publishing personal testimonies.
When the Lord singles out individual cases and specifies their
wrongs, others, who have not been shown in vision, frequently
take it for granted that they are right, or nearly so. If one
is reproved for a special wrong, brethren and sisters should
carefully examine themselves to see wherein they have failed
and wherein they have been guilty of the same sin. They should
possess the spirit of humble confession. If others think them
right, it does not make them so. God looks at the heart. He is
proving and testing souls in this manner. In rebuking the wrongs
of one, He designs to correct many. But if they fail to take
the reproof to themselves, and flatter themselves that
God passes over their errors because He does
not especially single them out, they deceive their own souls
and will be shut up in darkness and be left to their own ways
to follow the imagination of their own hearts.
Many are dealing falsely with their own
souls and are in a great deception in regard to their true condition
before God. He employs ways and means to best serve His purpose
and to prove what is in the hearts of His professed followers.
He makes plain the wrongs of some that others may thus be warned,
and fear, and shun those errors. By self-examination they may
find that they are doing the same things which God condemns in
others. If they really desire to serve God, and fear to offend
Him, they will not wait for their sins to be specified before
they make confession and with humble repentance return unto the
Lord. They will forsake the things which have displeased God,
according to the light given to others. If, on the contrary,
those who are not right see that they are guilty of the very
sins that have been reproved in others, yet continue in the same
unconsecrated course because they have not been specially named,
they endanger their own souls, and will be led captive by Satan
at his will.