(Six months ago I received an inquiry from an old friend in regard to the Testimonies, to which I made a somewhat extended reply. Recently I have become impressed that the Lord would be pleased to have me publish the essential portions of this letter. I do this with an earnest prayer that God may use it to his glory and the establishment of his truth.-David Paulson.)
Dear Brother:-
I have recently reread the stirring article you wrote nearly twenty years ago entitled, "Believe His Prophets, So Shall Ye Prosper." God at that time evidently gave you a new glimpse off this whole question of the spirit of prophecy.
If the principles you stated in that article were sound then, (and I find no flow in them), they are just as true today, even though you may shrink now from accepting them. If you are questioning the spirtuality and inspiration of the Testimonies, under which of these classes of doubters do you belong that you pointed out in that article?
Nearly twelve years ago, after years of most blessed experiences in studying the Testimonies in connection with the Bible, and teaching them to hundreds of our workers, and seeing definite results in their lives, I myself, from something I found in the Testimonies, began to get into a fog over this human side of Sister White's work.
Up till that time the prophets has "hewed me."--Hosea 6:5. After that I began to hew the prophets. Up till that time the Testimonies had judged me; then I began to judge the Testimonies. Mind you, I never for a moment doubted that Sister White was a genuine prophet. No doubt the devil would ultimately have brought me to that if it had not been for God's grace; but I simply began to do what you pointed out in your article,-- discard what I needed the most. It may be a surprise to you to learn what means God used to get me back on the right track.
Ten years ago this fall I was in Washington attending the first council after the headquarters were moved from Battle Creek.
The first testimony regarding the "Living Temple" was received and read while we were there in session. In spite of the "new light" that I had received regarding the Testimonies, I had enough spiritual sense to appreciate that there was something in it that would have to be reckoned with either in time or eternity. A day or two later one of my intimate friends and myself spent a good share of one night earnestly seeking God for wisdom and for light, and it was during this experience that he was led to say in substance, "Doctor, this talk of the 'human side' of the Testimonies has been a snare to us. No doubt there is a human side to the Testimonies, but with all that there is so much more divinity in them there is in us that God will never permit us feeble mortals to show up or point out this human side. A weaker thing can never destroy a stronger thing. We must treat whatever comes from that source with the highest respect, and seek God for wisdom how to apply it to our lives and our course.
I saw in an instant that he had enunciated sound principles as to how to relate ourselves to the Testimonies, and I told him gratefully, "You have given me light, light that I needed."
I went back to Chicago, where I was then at work, took up my Bible and my Testimonies, and on my bended knees began again to study them as before. I am free to say that it took me several years before I had entirely lost the blighting influence of the previous year of two of experience. I presume the Lord permitted that so that I might have much sympathy and forbearance with others who have yet that experience to go through before any latter rain can descend upon their parched souls.
You bring out a truthful observation in this article. "I have observed that whoever partially rejects the Testimonies discards what he needs most, and that every person who wholly rejects them eventually doubts the Scriptures also, and loses his spiritual life and his hold on God, though he may still hold on to the church." A friend of mine who has wholly rejected the Testimonies told me only recently he did not take any stock in some of the Bible stories. It is more important to love the Testimonies then it is merely to believe them. A man who only believes his wife, but does not love, will soon cease to believe in her.
As far as I know, everyone off the workers in the Hinsdale Sanitarium loves the Testimonies and is studying them in connection with the Bible. I have promulgated no theory about the Testimonies to those workers, simply because I know that truth carries its own credentials and convictions to the genuine truth-loving heart. I have tried with the help of God, in season and out of season, to have these workers yield their hearts to the demands of spiritual truths, and any men who will receive into his own heart God's spirit will have no difficulty in detecting that same spirit in the Testimonies. He who can not smell the spirit of God in them is a total stranger to its blessed influence in his own life.
I have recently been reading the old "Spiritual Gifts" printed in '55, I have read again the early struggles of Brother and Sister White, the trials and sacrifices and privations, the fierce buffeting of Satan which they had to meet to establish this message. To a less degree Sister White has faced that sort of thing down to this day. The "visions" were opposed by self-seeking, professed Christians who had an abundance of foliage and little or no fruit in those days, just as Sister White's writings and experiences are opposed by the same classes today.
When I was in perplexity over this question, I wrote Sister White frankly and honestly regarding this human side question. Among other things, she referred me back to Testimonies, Vol. 5, page 67, the very chapter that you quoted from in your article years ago, where she says, "when I went to Colorado, I was so burdened for you that, in my weakness, I. wrote many pages to be read at your camp meeting. Weak and trembling, I arose at three o'clock in the morning to write to you. God was speaking through clay. You might say that this communication was only a letter, Yes, it was a letter, but prompted by the Spirit of God, to bring before your minds things that had been shown me. In these letters which I write, in the Testimonies I hear, I am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do not write one article in the paper expressing merely my own ideas, They are what. God has opened before me in vision, the precious rays of light shining from the throne."
Dear brother, you can not build even a successful worldly career on a lie. The things that come from Sister White's pen, even down to Volume 9, her latest book stir my soul, bring me to my knees a humble wretch before God; they illuminate the Bible to me afresh just as much as what I read from her pen written years before I was born. And yet sensible, sane people who know that the business faker and crook can not last only a few short years, even in worldly business, will try to convince me that Sister White has been able to live a successful pretense and still continue for more than sixty years to have a spiritual message that cuts one to the very bone.
The real difficulty with the Testimonies is the same difficulty that the whole Christian world around us are having with the Bible. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Practically every up-to-date preacher in the outside churches believe the higher criticism of the Bible. With us the higher critic begins with the Testimonies, and one is just as sincere in his belief as the other, for we are living in a time when the professing people of God are to "believe a lie." 2 Thess. till. The same devil that is destroying faith in the Bible in the outside churches is as busily engaged in destroying faith in the Testimonies among us.
You have filled an important place among us, but don't forget a similar experience did not save David from a terrible backsliding in his later years. But when he heeded God's prophet in those days, God forgave his sin, while his son, who later on ignored prophets, plunged the nation into deepest darkness. The hour has struck for you to return to your first love, and then it will not be long before you will be found doing your "first works." The trouble with so many people today is that they are trying to do their works without having first love, and that is why they are making such a wretched failure out of it.