Testimony for the Church — No. 15

Epistle Number Three

Dear Bro. and Sister ——: I have been designing to write you for some time. As the light, which the Lord has given me came distinctly before me, some things pressed themselves forcibly upon my mind while standing before the people at Adams Center. I had hoped you would stay to another meeting, and the labor there commenced could have been continued. But I am sorry to see that our brethren generally do not feel the importance, when they attend a Conference, of first preparing for the meeting before they come, by consecrating themselves to God, instead of waiting till they get to the meeting to have the work done for them there. They take home along with them, and the things that they have left behind are considered of more importance and value than a preparation of heart for His coming. Therefore nearly all leave without being any better than when they came. Such meetings are attended with great expense, and if those who come are not profited, there is a loss to them, and they make the labor exceedingly hard for those who feel the burden of the work upon them. T15 43.1

Our people left that Conference too soon. We might have seen a more special work from God, had all remained and engaged in the work. T15 43.2

Sister ——, I have a message to you. You are far from the kingdom. You love this world, and this love has made you cold, selfish, exacting, and penurious. With you it is the powerful, mighty dollar. How little you know how God looks upon one in your condition. You are in a terrible deception. You are conformed to the world instead of being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Selfishness and self-love are exemplified in your life to a great degree. You have not overcome this unhappy defect in your character. If this is not remedied, you will lose Heaven, and your happiness here will be greatly marred. This has been the case already. The dark cloud which has followed you, overshadowing your life, will grow larger and blacker, until your whole sky is clouded. You may turn to the right, and there will be no light, and to the left, and you can not discover a ray. T15 43.3

You make trouble for yourself where there was no trouble, because you are not right. You are unconsecrated. Your unhappy, complaining, poverty spirit, makes you unhappy, and displeases God. You have been, during your life, looking out for yourself, seeking to make yourself happy. It is poor work, unprofitable business. The more you invest here, the heavier will be the loss. The less stock you take in this business, in serving yourself, the greater saving will it be on your part. Disinterested, unselfish love, you are a stranger to, and while you see no special sin in the absence of this precious trait, you will not be diligent to cultivate it. T15 44.1

You loved your husband, and married him. You knew that when you married him you covenanted to become a mother to his children. I saw a lack in you in this matter. You are sadly deficient. You do not love the children of your husband, and unless there is an entire change, a thorough reformation in you, and in your manner of government, these precious jewels are ruined. Love, manifestation of affection, is not a part of your discipline. Shall I tell you the truth and become your enemy by so doing? You are too thoroughly selfish to love another's children than your own. I was shown that God would not prosper and bless the fruit of your union, with strength, life and health, until you had been thoroughly proved and tested, and righted up in regard to these things where you are so deficient, or his Spirit leaves you to yourself. As your selfishness withers and blights the young hearts around you, so will the curse of God wither and blight the pledges of your selfish love and union. And if you still continue your selfish course, God will come still closer to you, and remove your idols one after another from before your face, until you shall humble your proud, selfish, unsubdued heart before God. T15 44.2

I saw that you would have a fearful account to render in the day of God, because of your unfulfilled trust. You, I saw, were making the lives of those dear children very bitter, especially the daughter's. Where is the affection, the loving caress, the patient forbearance. Hatred lives in your unsanctified heart more than love. Censure leaps from your lips more than praise and encouragement. Your manners, your harsh ways, your unsympathizing nature, are to that sensitive daughter like a desolating hail upon a tender plant; to every blast it bends until its life is crushed out, and it lays bruised and broken. T15 45.1

Your administration is drying up the channel of love, hopefulness and joy in your children. A settled sadness is expressed in the countenance of the girl, which, instead of awakening sympathy and tenderness in you, arouses impatience, and positive dislike. You can change this expression to animation and cheerfulness if you choose. “Does not God see? Does he take no knowledge?” were the words of the angel. He will visit for these things. You voluntarily took upon you the responsibility you have, and Satan has taken advantage of your unhappy, unlovable and unloving disposition, your self-love, your closeness, your selfishness, and it now appears in all its deformity, uncorrected, unsubdued, girding you about as with iron hands. Children read, they understand whether there is love expressed in the countenance of the mother, or dislike. You know not the work you are doing. Does not the little, sad face, the sad, heaving sigh welling up from a pressed heart, awaken pity in its yearning call for love? No, not in yours. It places the child at a still greater distance from you, and increases your dislike. T15 45.2

I saw that the father had not taken the course that a father should. God is not pleased with his position. Another has stolen the father's heart away from blood of his blood, and bone of his bone. Bro. ——, you have been very deficient in discernment. You, as the head of the house, should have taken your position, and not permitted things to go as they have. You have seen things were not right, and sometimes have felt anxious, but fear of displeasing your present wife and making unhappy discord in your family, has led you to remain silent when you should have spoken. You are not clear in the matter. Your children have no mother to plead for them, to shelter them from censure by her judicious words. T15 46.1

Your children, and all other children who have lost their mothers, in whose breasts maternal love has flowed, have met with a loss that can never be supplied. But when one ventures to stand in the place of mother to the little stricken flock, a double care and burden rests upon her, to be even more loving if possible, more forbearing of censure and threatening than their own mother could have been, and in this way supply the loss the little flock have sustained. You, Bro. ——, have been like a man asleep. Take your children to your heart, encircle them with your sheltering arms, love them tenderly, affectionately. If you fail to do this, “found wanting” will be written against you. T15 46.2

There is a work for you both to do. Cease forever your murmurings. Suffer not the close, penurious, selfish spirit of your wife to control your actions. You have been drinking in the same spirit and you have both robbed God. Poverty is upon your lips, but Heaven knows it is false, yet your words will be all true, you will be poor indeed if you continue to cherish the love of the spirit of the world as you have done. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me, and yet ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse.” Wipe of this curse as fast as possible. T15 47.1

Bro. ——, as God's steward, look to God. It is he to whom you are to give account of your stewardship, not to your wife. It is God's means you are handling. He has only lent it you a little while to prove you, to try you, to see if you would be “rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that ye may lay hold on everlasting life.” God will require his own with usury. May God help you to prepare for the Judgment. Let self be crucified. Let the precious graces of the Spirit live in your hearts. Turn out the world with its corrupting lust. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” If your profession is as high as heaven, and yet you are selfish and world-loving, you can have no part in the kingdom with the sanctified, pure and holy. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If your treasure is in Heaven, your heart will be on your treasure. You will talk of Heaven, eternal life, the immortal crown. If you lay up your treasure on earth, you will be talking of earthly things, worrying about losses and gains.” “What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what will a man give in exchange for his soul.” T15 47.2

There is light for you, salvation for you if you will only feel that you must have it or perish. Jesus can save to the utmost. But sister ——, if God has ever spoken by me, you are terribly deceived in regard to yourself, and must have a thorough conversion, or you will never, compose one of that number who have come up through great tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. T15 48.1

In love,
E. G. W.