A Deception Exposed by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 18, 1908

A Deception Exposed

By Editor

ONE of our conference presidents, writing under date of June 9, gives the following information:—

We are in receipt at our office of literature printed by J. M. Garmire, which is being sent out to workers and people throughout our State, enclosed in envelopes bearing the return address of various Seventh-day Adventist conference presidents,—all addressed in the same handwriting, and mailed at the same office.

A note enclosed with this literature says that “these papers are being sent out by instruction of the Lord through the spirit of prophecy.”

So long as printed matter from this source was sent out on its own merits, we have not felt it necessary to refer to it in the REVIEW; but in view of the facts disclosed in this correspondence, we deem it advisable to warn our people against this latest effort to deceive and to mislead them. The use of such methods in behalf of any cause is sufficient to discredit it in the minds of thinking people, and the wonder is that professed champions of a reform movement which, it is assumed, is the one thing necessary to make the advent message triumph gloriously, do not perceive that fraud and deception employed to advance the interests of a so-called religious propaganda form a combination which repels every well-balanced mind, and from the most charitable standpoint possible stamps the whole effort as the mere ebullition of a crazy fanaticism.

There is no law to prevent any one from claiming to have the gift of prophecy, although it is quite another thing to establish the claim by convincing proof; but to state to Seventh-day Adventists that a certain course is being pursued “by instruction of the Lord through the spirit of prophecy” is a falsehood, so far as the intent of the statement is concerned, and is conduct unworthy of those making extraordinary professions of having advanced light and of seeking special purification from everything which defiles. The Saviour's instruction concerning the mote and the beam seems to be not inappropriate in this connection.

Our people may rest assured that neither our conference presidents nor the spirit of prophecy (as the expression is understood by them) will urge the dissemination of the literature prepared by J. M. Garmire, or vouch for its soundness. This advent movement is built upon a different foundation.