Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 18 (1903)

Lt 300, 1903

Kellogg, J. H.

“Elmshaven,” St. Helena, California

March 16, 1903

Portions of this letter are published in 5Bio 292.

Dr. Kellogg,—

I have read your letter. It makes my heart very sad to consider the way you are placed before me, and this is the reason I have not for a time felt that I could write to you. My heart is very sad over your case. I cannot possibly answer your letter. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 1

I hoped very much for you after the General Conference. I tried in every way to encourage the brethren to do all in their power to remove everything possible from your path and to co-operate with you; but I am very sorry now that I labored so unremittingly to place your case as one who would place your feet on the right platform and would yet see where you have made your mistakes in the past. As long as you sustain yourself in your actions, you are only planning more extensively to set your food business in operation in every place. You will work by wrong methods, and commercial things will be your ambition. You will carry your own way, when your way is not God’s way. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 2

I have been instructed that when you shall be worked by the Holy Spirit will be when you have a new heart and are born again. I supposed that the conference meeting in Battle Creek would be the time of your entire conversion, but your heart is not right with God. The Spirit of God is not working you. You need now not to rush and drive, but to be converted. You are not sound in the faith. The work which is essential to be done for our people, our youth, is to educate them to believe the truth that has made our people what they are in numbers and in strength. This is the work for this time and is to be acknowledged and not denied as you have and are denying the faith. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 3

You are not sound in the truth. Your statements made to believers and unbelievers misrepresent us as a people who have not changed the truth for error. They detract from the influence God would have us possess before the world in revealing in plain, unmistakable language that we are true to the principles of our faith and that we hold the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end. We are strictly denominational. We believe in 1903 the same truths we did believe when we established the Sanitarium and the College in Battle Creek, and we know that we had no ifs or ands about this matter. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 4

While you have told the things that you have and made the statements you have before unbelievers, my heart has been sad indeed. You have evidenced that you have departed from the faith. The very statements you have made before worldly men of influence, as the papers have reported your words, have been presented to me distinctly from your lips as you have spoken them. We cannot labor to give you influence as one whom we can trust with the sacred work connected with our institutions, for you need first to be converted and led. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 5

You are not sound in the faith. I have stated this in my diary months ago. You have certainly placed the people of God, whom the Lord has led step by step in the ways of truth and placed upon a solid foundation, in a false showing before unbelievers. Some have departed from the faith and will continue to misrepresent the work God has given me. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 6

The sanctuary question is a clear and definite doctrine as we have held it as a people. You are not definitely clear on the personality of God, which is everything to us as a people. You have virtually destroyed the Lord God Himself. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 7

Why should you take the liberty to make the statements which you have made, as though you had authority for thus stating, when they are falsehoods? You have made the facts of our faith of none effect before unbelievers, and the truth which should ever be kept prominent and exalted with this people you have virtually denied and ignored in your many statements. How dared you to do this? It necessitates us now to present our true position which constitutes us Seventh-day Adventists. Whatever influence God has given you in the past has been in mercy to you, letting the light shine upon you. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 8

We cannot for a moment have any misrepresentation upon these solemn and important subjects of truth which have been the faith of our people since 1844. This means much to us. The Lord would have me say to you that the enemy has, through his specious deceptions, placed his unbelief in your mind, and you have been working it out. All who receive your presentations will enter upon strange paths if they connect with you. You are bringing in strange, common fire, but not the fire of God’s own kindling; and now I must speak plainly to our people that the Lord has led us step by step and shown us clear light upon the heavenly sanctuary in the most holy of holies where God revealed Himself to His appointed ones. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 9

*****

Now I cannot state half that I wish, but we must have no controversy with you. God has brought out a people, and His Holy Spirit has opened to them His Word, clear and conclusive. We are to be lightbearers to the world. All are to be a unit and follow step by step as led by the Lord. We are not to go back, denying our past experience, but to press forward and upward and make straight paths for our feet lest the lame—the weak in faith—be turned out of the way. 18LtMs, Lt 300, 1903, par. 10