Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 6 (1889-1890)

Lt 87, 1889

Smith, Uriah

Denver, Colorado

[September 1889]

This letter is published in entirety in 1888 437-438.

Dear Brother Smith:

I have had your case forced upon my mind by the Spirit of God. Your position, your dangers, your peril, have frequently been presented at different points in your experience. Again the matter has been presented to me in the night season. 6LtMs, Lt 87, 1889, par. 1

I was shown that you have been setting yourself in opposition to the Spirit and work of God. You have been placing yourself in a position where the light that God sends to you will not be recognized or accepted by you as light. A most solemn sense of your true state now, as never before, rests upon me, and I cannot keep silent; for you are in peril as surely as were the unbelieving leaders of the people in the days of Christ. Darkness to your own soul is the result. 6LtMs, Lt 87, 1889, par. 2

Light and truth, which I know to be thus, you declare to be darkness and error. You have had opportunity; you have had the privilege of accepting the light, which has been light and precious truth and meat in due season to the hungry, starving flock of God; but you would not acknowledge it as light, as truth, as food. If you could prevent it from coming to the people of God, you would do so; but this you cannot do. God will have His light come to the people, and you cannot prevent it. 6LtMs, Lt 87, 1889, par. 3

You may misrepresent it, you may misinterpret it, you may interpose yourself as you have done between God’s working and the people; but your efforts, every one that you have made to resist light and the impressions of the Spirit of God, have been as an extra step farther and farther from the light and from the Lord. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” 6LtMs, Lt 87, 1889, par. 4

Prejudice is prejudice whether indulged by those who claim to believe that the Lord is soon coming, or by those who refused the light in the days of Christ. You are passing over the very same ground as the rejectors of Jesus Christ passed over; you use the same arguments and excuses that they used; you exert the same influence which they exerted, and it may be that souls will hang on you, as in the days of Christ souls hung upon their leaders. Poor, deluded souls will be led to think that because Elder Smith does not accept the light and the message which has come to his people, light which is the very message for this time, that it must be error and delusion. But can you bear this responsibility? 6LtMs, Lt 87, 1889, par. 5