Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 2 (1869 - 1875)

Ms 3, 1875

Testimony Concerning Brother Littlejohn

Battle Creek, Michigan

January 15, 1875

Previously unpublished.

I was shown, January 3, that our dear Brother Littlejohn was going into darkness. He has been a great sufferer. Our heavenly Father saw that His servant was [not] as humble and distrustful of himself as was needful for him to be to receive instruction from instrumentalities that he employs to counsel, guide, and reprove that he might perfect Christian character. He permitted in His providence His servant to pass through the furnace to purify him and to save him. 2LtMs, Ms 3, 1875, par. 1

Brother Littlejohn has a very independent mind, which will lead him, unless he is subdued by the Spirit of God, to refuse to receive instruction or counsel which will cross his ideas. He thinks he would sacrifice his right of private judgment if he should yield his ideas and plans to accept the judgment and views of any other man. 2LtMs, Ms 3, 1875, par. 2

We are all subject to error and mistakes. Bro. Littlejohn is an erring, fallible mortal man, needing instruction, correction, and counsel of his brethren as any other man whom God loves. Brother Littlejohn is a man of determined will. He seldom ever gives up that his way is not perfect and right. He takes the position not in words, but [in] actions of infallibility. He will carry out what he has undertaken at any cost, for it is next to an impossibility for Brother Littlejohn to yield or give up his opinion. Plain facts and reason seem alike powerless to convince him he is not right, and he will maintain his opinion against the clearest proof and will stand in opposition to the body. This bears not the marks of God’s hand. The Word of God will not justify this extreme independence. This is one-man power indeed which would claim that everything must bend to this one mind, this one will. 2LtMs, Ms 3, 1875, par. 3

Brother Littlejohn concentrates his mind on one point and keeps it upon one point, giving it the strength of his thoughts until he feels that there can be nothing which will move the arguments which he has prepared to fortify his position. Here is his danger of refusing to be taught, refusing to allow that the light that others see and cherish is of any special weight because it does not coincide with his ideas. 2LtMs, Ms 3, 1875, par. 4

Brother Littlejohn is a man beloved of God, but he is going beyond the reach of God’s ordained means to reach men, to correct them, and keep them from error and apostasy. God saw that there was gold in Brother Littlejohn, but there was also dross that needed to be consumed by the fiery furnace. He has permitted affliction to come upon His loved son, the most severe, the most trying, which He has borne with patience, but yet has failed to see the design of God, that he had a work to do to die to self, to submit to God, to yield his will to search and see what course he was taking that God could not approve. 2LtMs, Ms 3, 1875, par. 5

I was shown that from about the time of the Oneida camp meeting, Elder Littlejohn's mind has been disturbed and perplexed upon some points and exercised in a direction that has not been productive of good to himself or to other souls. Brother Andrews is responsible, too, for the result of sowing seed of doubt, of perplexity and unbelief in a blind man's mind, which has there been taking root until it has sprung up and has been producing its fruit—the [lack of] confidence and certainty and assurance that God was in the work and rise of this cause and in its successful accomplishment. A train of thought was started which has been helped on by others until Elder Littlejohn stands in a perilous position. He is not only in great danger of resisting the means which God has employed to correct the wrongs and errors of His people, but he is endangering other souls who have confidence in him to despise reproof, despise discipline and unity. He has entered upon a work that every step he advances, he gathers about his soul darkness and evil angels. God ever has had a voice of reproof among His people. There will ever be those who will wish to follow the bent of their own unconsecrated hearts and [remainder missing]. 2LtMs, Ms 3, 1875, par. 6