Testimony Treasures, vol. 1

A Violated Conscience^*

Dear Brother N,

I feel compelled by a sense of duty to address you a few lines. I have been shown some things in regard to your case which I dare not withhold. I was shown that Satan took advantage of you because your wife did not embrace the truth. You were thrown into the society of a corrupt woman, one whose steps take hold on hell. She professed great sympathy for you because of the opposition you received from your wife. Like the serpent in Eden, she made her manners fascinating. She cast the impression on your mind that you were an abused man; that your wife did not appreciate your feelings and reciprocate your affections; that a mistake had been made in your marriage relation; until you imagined the marriage vows of lifelong constancy to her whom you had taken as your wife, to be as galling chains. You went for sympathy to this apparent angel in speech. You poured into her ears that which should have been entrusted alone to your wife whom you had vowed to love, honor, and cherish as long as you both should live. You forgot to watch and pray always lest you should enter into temptation. Your soul was marred by a crime. You stamped your life record in heaven with a fearful blot. Yet deep humiliation and repentance before God will be acceptable to Him. The blood of Christ can avail to wash these sins away. 1TT 198.1

You have fallen, terribly fallen. Satan lured you on into his net, and then left you to disentangle yourself as best you could. You have been harassed and perplexed, and fearfully tempted. A guilty conscience troubles you. You distrust yourself and imagine that everyone else distrusts you. You are jealous of yourself and imagine that jealousy exists in other hearts toward you. You have not confidence in yourself and imagine that your brethren have not confidence in you. Satan often presents the past before you and tells you that it is of no use for you to try to live out the truth, the way is too strait for you. You have been overcome; now Satan takes advantage of your sinful course to make you believe that you are past redemption. 1TT 198.2

You are on Satan's battlefield engaged in a severe conflict. The barrier which is thrown around every family circle, and which makes it sacred, you have broken down. And now Satan harasses you almost constantly. You are not at rest. You are not at peace, and you seek to make your brethren responsible for your conflicting feelings and doubts and jealousies; you feel that they are at fault, that they do not give you attention. The trouble is with yourself. You want your own way, and do not rend your heart before God, and with brokenness and contrition cast yourself all broken, sinful, and polluted, upon His mercy. Your efforts to save yourself, if persisted in, will result in your certain ruin. 1TT 199.1

Cease your jealousies and your faultfinding. Turn your attention to your own case and by humble repentance, relying alone upon the blood of Christ, save your own soul. Make thorough work for eternity. If you turn from the truth you are a ruined man, your family is ruined. After the fortifications preserving sacred the privacy and privileges of the family relation have been once broken down, it is difficult to build them up; but in the strength of God, and in His strength alone, you can do this. Truth, sacred truth, is your anchor, which will save you from drifting in the downward current to crime and destruction. 1TT 199.2

A conscience once violated is greatly weakened. It needs the strength of constant watchfulness and unceasing prayer. You are standing in a slippery place. You need all the strength that the truth can give to fortify you and save you from making entire shipwreck. Life and death are before you; which will you choose? Had you seen the necessity of being firmly settled upon principle, not moving from impulse, and not being easily discouraged, but prepared to endure hardness, you would not have been overcome as you have been. You have moved from impulse. You have not, like our faultless Pattern, been willing to endure the contradiction of sinners against yourself. We are exhorted to remember Him who endured this, lest we become weary and faint in our minds. You have been weak as a child, having no power of endurance. You have not felt the necessity of being established, strengthened, settled, grounded, and built up in the faith. 1TT 199.3