A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White

The Blind leading the Blind

I have seen how the blind guides were laboring to make souls as blind as themselves, and they little realize what is coming upon them. They are exalting themselves against the truth, and as the truth triumphs, many who have looked on those teachers as men of God, and have looked to them for light, are troubled. They inquire of these leaders relative to the Sabbath, who, with the object of getting rid of the fourth commandment, will answer them thereto. I saw that real honesty was not regarded in taking the many positions that were taken against the Sabbath. The main object is to get around the Sabbath of the Lord, and observe another day than that sanctified and hallowed by Jehovah. And if they were driven off from one position they would taken an opposite one, even a position that they had but just before condemned as unsound. ExV 55.2

But God's people are coming into the unity of the faith, and those who observe the Sabbath of the Bible are united in their views of Bible truth. But those who oppose the Sabbath among the Advent people are disunited, and strangely divided. One comes forward in opposition to the Sabbath, and declares it to be thus and so, and at the conclusion calls it settled. But as his effort does not put the question to rest, and as the Sabbath cause progresses, and the children of the Lord embrace it still, another comes forward to overthrow it. But in presenting his views to get round the Sabbath, he entirely tears down the arguments of him who made the first effort against the truth, and presents a theory as opposite to his, as to ours. So with the third and the fourth; but none of them will have it as it stands in the word of God. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” ExV 56.1

Such, I saw, have the carnal mind, therefore, are not subject to the holy law of God. They are not agreed among themselves, yet labor hard with their inferences, to wrest the scriptures to make a breach in God's law, to change, abolish, or do anything with the fourth commandment rather than to observe it. They wish to silence the flock upon this question, therefore they get up something with the hope that it will quiet them, and many of their followers search their Bibles so little, that their leaders can easily make error appear like truth, and they receive it as such, not looking higher than their leaders. ExV 56.2