Purpose of the Straight Testimony

Jesus has a marvelous purpose for sending us the Straight Testimony. It is for our ultimate best good! When we first hear it, we may think He is trying to hurt us. But if we stop to listen to His heart, we will feel the love that prompts this amazing message from heaven.

We need the straight testimony! It is a pointed, cutting message, which alerts God's people to our danger and of our need of repentance.

The testimony, so cutting and severe, cannot be a mistake, for it is the True Witness who speaks, and His testimony must be correct. {3T 252.4}

In order to be brought to repentance, we need to see our true condition.

The people of God are represented in the message to the Laodiceans as in a position of carnal security. They are at ease, believing themselves to be in an exalted condition of spiritual attainments. "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." {3T 252.3}

Only those who are earnestly pleading and agonizing in prayer will respond to this message.

I was shown the people of God, and saw them mightily shaken. Some, with strong faith and agonizing cries, were pleading with God. Some, I saw, did not participate in this work of agonizing and pleading. They seemed indifferent and careless. They were not resisting the darkness around them, and it shut them in like a thick cloud. {CCh 338.3}

The straight testimony is designed to arouse us from the spiritual lethargy in the church and cure our spiritual blindness. We are in desperate need of this message.

The people are asleep in their sins, and need to be alarmed before they can shake off this lethargy. {2SG 300.1}

The straight testimony points out our dangerous deception.

But the message of the True Witness reveals the fact that a terrible deception is upon our people, which makes it necessary to come to them with warnings, to break their spiritual slumber, and arouse them to decided action. {3T 254.1}

This spiritual blindness keeps many from realizing our need of revival.

What greater deception can come upon human minds than a confidence that they are right when they are all wrong! The message of the True Witness finds the people of God in a sad deception, yet honest in that deception. They know not that their condition is deplorable in the sight of God. While those addressed are flattering themselves that they are in an exalted spiritual condition, the message of the True Witness breaks their security by the startling denunciation of their true condition of spiritual blindness, poverty, and wretchedness. {3T 252.4}

The majority of God's professed people want to have smooth things preached to them. They are comfortable in their lukewarm condition.

Tempted souls, whose hearts have ever been at war with the faithful reproving of sin, would cry, Speak unto us smooth things. What disposition will these make of the message of the True Witness to the Laodiceans? There can be no deception here. This message must be borne to a lukewarm church by God's servants. This message must arouse the people of God from their security and dangerous deception in regard to their real standing before God. {RH, September 16, 1873 par. 23}

Many in the church today feel that they don't need the testimonies to point out their sins. They believe they have a close relationship with Jesus, and that they are prospering spiritually. But they are oblivious to areas in their lives that reveal grievous sins.

In my last vision I was shown that even this decided message of the True Witness had not accomplished the design of God. The people slumber on in their sins. They continue to declare themselves rich and having need of nothing. Many inquire: Why are all these reproofs given? Why do the Testimonies continually charge us with backsliding and with grievous sins? We love the truth; we are prospering; we are in no need of these testimonies of warning and reproof. But let these murmurers see their hearts and compare their lives with the practical teachings of the Bible, let them humble their souls before God, let the grace of God illuminate the darkness, and the scales will fall from their eyes, and they will realize their true spiritual poverty and wretchedness . They will feel the necessity of buying gold, which is pure faith and love; white raiment, which is a spotless character made pure in the blood of their dear Redeemer; and eyesalve, which is the grace of God and which will give clear discernment of spiritual things and detect sin. These attainments are more precious than the gold of Ophir. {3T 254.2}

Some will even think that those who give the straight testimony are the ones who are deceived!

Some will not receive the testimony that God has given us to bear, flattering themselves that we may be deceived and that they may be right. They think that the people of God are not in need of plain dealing and of reproof, but that God is with them. {3T 259.1}

How can we be assurred that the testimonies are from God?

The testimonies of His Spirit call your attention to the Scriptures, point out your defects of character, and rebuke your sins; therefore you do not heed them. And to justify your carnal, ease-loving course you begin to doubt whether the testimonies are from God. If you would obey their teachings you would be assured of their divine origin. {5T 234.3}

Go to The Last Deception