I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran - Not to save souls, but to profit themselves.
I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied - They never received the word at my mouth; yet they went, publishing their own deceits, and pretending them to be revelations from God. The churches which have legal emoluments are ever in danger of being overrun and ruined by worldly and self-interested priests.
Ran - i. e., hurried to take upon them the responsibilites of the prophetic office.
The leadings of the Lord were marked, and most wonderful were His revelations of what is truth. Point after point was established by the Lord God of heaven. That which was truth then, is truth today. But the voices do not cease to be heard—“This is truth. I have new light.” But these new lights in prophetic lines are manifest in misapplying the Word and setting the people of God adrift without an anchor to hold them. If the student of the Word would take the truths which God has revealed in the leadings of His people, and appropriate these truths, digest them, and bring them into their practical life, they would then be living channels of light. But those who have set themselves to study out new theories, have a mixture of truth and error combined, and after trying to make these things prominent, have demonstrated that they have not kindled their taper from the divine altar, and it has gone out in darkness.—Manuscript 31, 1896. 2SM 104.1
The proclamation of the first, second, and third angels’ messages has been located by the Word of Inspiration. Not a peg or pin is to be removed. No human authority has any more right to change the location of these messages than to substitute the New Testament for the Old. The Old Testament is the gospel in figures and symbols. The New Testament is the substance. One is as essential as the other. The Old Testament presents lessons from the lips of Christ, and these lessons have not lost their force in any particular. 2SM 104.2
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