"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another."
From Bro. Butler.
BRO. SMITH: I wish to say to you that the saints here are trying to struggle out into the clear sunlight of the present truth, and I am happy to say that I believe they are making some progress; and though some have gone back like the dog to his vomit, or the sow to her wallowing in the mire, yet most of those who took a stand on the Commandments of God and the Faith of Jesus, appear to be stripping for the race, and are not inclined to draw back unto perdition, but rather to believe to the saving of the soul.
The little band of believers in Gilboa is still occasionally reinforced by a fresh recruit of honest, watchful ones, who see prophecy fulfilling, and whose spiritual vision is clear enough to see that the lowering clouds of retributive vengeance are gathering thick and portentous over the fated city, (Babylon,) and who are anxious to flee to the ark of refuge (Commandments of God and Faith of Jesus) for safety, before that cloud shall burst, hurling its thunderbolts of divine wrath at the great city and its guilty inhabitants, and pouring out the seven awful plagues. Rev. xvi.
O, who so blind as not to see the great and fearful corruption of Babylon? Who so blind as not to see her deeds of fraud and extortion? She has through her priests defrauded many innocent and unsuspecting souls out of the Lord's Sabbath, by substituting a counterfeit. She has defrauded many by supplanting the Commandments of God by those of men. Not only so, but she has even condescended to defraud those who have dealt with her in temporal matters. In Lev. xix, 13; Mark x, 19, we are told not to defraud; but notwithstanding these scriptures and the injunction of the golden rule, also Matt. vii, 12, yet she has with the brazen effrontery of her father, closed the doors of the three temples in this place against us, while at the same time we have some hundreds of dollars of property in said temples. Such a circumstance in the common transactions of social life would be considered a brutish, unprincipled outrage, but when done by the tyrannizing priests and people of Babylon, under the garb of sectarian holiness, it makes all the difference imaginable, and sugar-coats the pill so as to make it palatable. But what book, chapter and verse, in God's holy Bible gives the followers of the meek and holy Lamb authority to defraud any sooner than men of the world. What! one part of community close the church doors against another part, who have an investment of $200,00, in the same? and has such tyranny, such usurpation, become a matter to be tolerated in the professed church of Jesus Christ? Which one of the apostles or primitive churches do we have for an example in such things? And shut us out? for what reason? O, can it be possible? is it so? One professed child of God shut doors and defraud another, and that, too, for keeping God's holy Sabbath? If the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the sinner and ungodly appear?
But while we view the deformity of Babylon, God forbid that we should lose sight of ourselves. May we be vigilant, active, watchful, and sober. Jesus is soon coming; fulfilling signs portend it, and shall we arise now and get ready to meet him? O may God enable us all to be found standing at our posts, faithfully discharging every duty devolving on us in the various relations which we sustain to God, his holy cause and each other.