The
Results of False Visions
Every
tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Matt. 7:19, 20.
Several now living [1890] are skeptics, have no belief in the gifts of the
church, no faith in the truth, no religion at all. Such, I have been shown,
is the sure result of spurious visions. . . .
Satan is
. . . constantly pressing in the spurious--to lead away from the truth.
The very
last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the
Spirit of God. "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Prov.
29:18). Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different
agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God's remnant people in the true testimony.
He will bring in spurious visions to mislead, and will mingle the false with
the true, and so disgust people that they will regard everything that bears
the name of visions as a species of fanaticism; but honest souls, by contrasting
false and true, will be enabled to distinguish between them. . . .
There is
nothing more detrimental to the soul's interest, its purity, its true and
holy conceptions of God, and of sacred and eternal things, than constantly
giving heed to and exalting that which is not from God. It poisons the heart,
and degrades the understanding. Pure truth can be traced to its divine Source,
by its elevating, refining, sanctifying influence upon the character of the
receiver. The Author of all truth prayed to His Father, "Neither pray
I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their
word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast
sent me" (John 17:20, 21).
Things
will be constantly arising to cause disunion, to draw away from the truth.
This questioning, criticizing, denouncing, passing judgment on others, is
not an evidence of the grace of Christ in the heart. It does not produce unity.
Such work has been carried on in the past by persons claiming to have wonderful
light, when they were deep in sin.
