"While seeking [the baptism of the Holy Spirit] during this period I became greatly humiliated. As others of shorter experience and presumably less acquainted with the deeper things of God swept into blessing, I was made to feel my unworthiness in the sight of God. God so permitted this to grow upon me that presently I was right down in the Slough of Despond. I felt that I had had such blessings and so slipped back from and misused them that I had grieved the Holy Spirit away. Satan began to tell me my opportunity was passed by, that I would never get the blessing. One day in the midst of the darkness of this experience I shut myself into a dark closet and waited alone on God. While I was praying, I seemed to have a vision of the omnipotence of God. I did not see Him - but His majesty, His glory, His power. Far, far up in the heavens, millions upon millions of miles away, it seemed, He dwelt enthroned in awful, majestic power, eternally calm, eternally distant. Glory and light were around His throne. Peace and purity enveloped Him. No words or pen can ever express even that glimpse of God’s matchless, supreme, majestic authority. And then I saw something else. Far, far down, away from the glory of His presence, in the cold and dark of a terrible, impassable distance, was an atom - a tiny, useless atom, tossed hither and thither. And that atom was myself, and the truth that impressed me in the sight was that the atom was not needed, was useless, cast away, and that its immediate annihilation would be no loss to God’s great universe. Just as I was sinking under the terrible reality of this picture and the humiliation and hopelessness of the revelation, a change took place. A shadowy light like a path began to show itself between the atom and the great God. Down toward the atom it was dim and indefinite but grew brighter and brighter until it was lost in the glory of that great God. And as I gazed, I was conscious that the Good Shepherd was leaving the glory and coming, all alone away from the Father, down to the darkness that surrounded that atom, my lost self. O such an illumination as God gave me of Jesus leaving His throne in Heaven and coming all the way to Calvary for me. A new meaning came to me that has never left - the personal application of the blood of Jesus for my sins - what it had meant in my life that Jesus died for me, and yea, where I would be today if Jesus had not died for me. It shows me still where every sinner out of Christ is, and that only as the Good Shepherd leads them up to God can they find the way. For this is what seemed done to me - Jesus came closer, closer, and finally gently led me up the path for a little way. And then the vision passed, and I saw that that was where I was - just a little way, not yet out of the twilight, up the path of the just that ‘shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day;’ but I was in the Good Shepherd’s care, and the love as well as the power of God was impressed upon my soul.”
- Martha Wing Robinson
_________________ SI Moderator - Brandy Gordon
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