Holding Fast in Solitude
By Alvarez Pierce
BRO. SMITH:—It is with pleasure that I now sit down to tell my brethren of my prospects, my hopes and my fears. I still profess to be a pilgrim and a stranger, but I as all our fathers have done before us, seek a heavenly country and a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. I am in a community of no-Sabbath-keepers, where there is no one save my own family but openly profanes the Sabbath of the Lord, and where we have not had the privilege of meeting with brethren of like precious faith since the first of last May; but we still hold on to the Third Angel's Message, and believe it to be the last, sealing truth to a fallen and a guilty world. I believe with most of the brethren that we have the Bible truth and that the Advent movement is that which is owned and approved of heaven. It is now about two years since I first came into the faith, and O how precious the truth looks! and since I embraced it I have spared no pains or expense that my limited means would admit of, to get the true principles of our faith, believing it to be the doctrine that the prophets and Jesus and his apostles all taught. Believing as we do, that we are living on the last crumbling sands of time, how necessary that we all come into the unity of the faith and that we believe and speak the same things; for such a people will God have before our Lord will come. O yes dear brethren let us be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.183 While the world and the nominal churches are crying peace and safety, let us live as though we soon expected the coming of our Lord. Let us take the whole armor of God and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, and where there is not a thus saith the Lord, let us be sure not to venture. In looking round and associating with what is called the christian community, even those who are making the highest profession, what do we find to be their daily walk and conversation? Is it not my farms, and my merchandise, my flocks, and my herds? I once attended for a few evenings a Methodist meeting where they thought they were having a great revival and where their preacher instead of going to the great store-house of eternal truth, undertook to prove his doctrine by magnetism and phrenology. Will God approve of such doctrine as this? We answer, No. Then let us take warning and let our hearts and conversation be in heaven, from whence we look for our Lord Jesus. I am determined, grace assisting me, to press my way onward that I may one day walk in the New Jerusalem and partake of the marriage supper of the Lamb. I also want that my daily walk and conversation may be such that should I be called to sleep a while in the dust, my brethren may know that I died at my post. We are still receiving the Review in its weekly arrivals, and do not know what we should do without it, as it is the only communication that we now have with the brethren. I still endorse the doctrines that it teaches, the commencement of the Sabbath in particular, and should there be other points of doctrine or practice that the Word teaches, I hope that brethren will investigate, that we soon may become an apostolic church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that we all may be presented faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Yours waiting for the coming kingdom. Hardin Co. Iowa, Feb. 17th., 1856.