Spalding and Magan Collection

Hearing and Doing

By eating to excess the stomach is made to do double work, and the mind is affected and unfit to take in and comprehend eternal realities. Those who indulge the appetite to the expense of the brain and nerve power will not, and can not, take the messages the Lord gives, the spiritual bread from heaven, which is the word of God. There are thousands upon thousands who are intemperate in eating, and the result is that the lust of the flesh is warring against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. SpM 80.1

These are persons who have had great privileges and great light, and they have supposed that they would in time enter the ministry. I told them that we would just as soon send wolves among the sheep; for their consciences were seared as with a hot iron. The process that has been made thus, has been a disregard in little things, a deviation in character from right principles in little things. These dealings with these two human agents has greatly alarmed me. They fail to hear and retain the words I speak to them. And the words which they do not hear, are the words which require a reformation in life practice, to do these things which they consider will humiliate self, and they will deny that these words were spoken to them. SpM 80.2

I have been shown that all who love indulgence in sin, are the ones who do not hear, do not perceive the words spoken. Why? Because evil angels have so long led them and controlled their powers, that the words, spoken to awaken conviction, are changed by Satan to mean something else. This is evidencing the power of Satan over human ears to hear things all crooked and strange; and the very things which the Lord would have them hear, they do not understand. They say that you never spoke to them the words that you know you did speak. But Satan interrupted the words so that they did not hear them. SpM 80.3