ow long will the Lord suffer oppression of the poor, that rich men may hoard wealth? These men are heaping together treasures for the last days. Their money is placed where it does no one any good. To add to their millions, they rob the poor, and the cries of the starving are no more to them than the barking of a dog. But the Lord marks every act of oppression. No cry of suffering is unheard by Him. Those who today are scheming to obtain more and more money, putting in operation plans that mean to the poor starvation, will in the last great day stand face to face with their deeds of oppression and injustice.

Those who claim to be the children of God are in no case to bind up with the labor unions that are formed or that shall be formed. This the Lord forbids. Cannot those who study the prophecies see and understand what is before us? The transgressors of the law of God have taken sides with their leader, the general of rebellion. He understands how to devise his satanic schemes and through whom to work for the carrying out of them. He is striving to lead every soul to take sides with him, and under the influence of his temptations, thousands are binding themselves up in bundles, ready to be consumed by the fires of the last day. Those who yield to his temptation become in their turn tempters, standing among the ablest of his helpers.

In the time of the harvest the Lord will say to His reapers, "Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into My barn." God has a people on the earth who will see the evil of every phase of oppression, and will refuse to unite with the enemy in carrying out his plans.¹

These unions are one of the signs of the last days. Men are binding up in bundles ready to be burned. They may be church members, but while they belong to these unions they cannot possibly keep the commandments of God, for to belong to these unions means to disregard the entire Decalogue.

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke 10:27). These words sum up the whole duty of man. They mean the consecration of the whole being-body, soul, and spirit-to God's service. How can men obey these words and at the same time pledge themselves to support that which deprives their neighbors of freedom of action? And how can men obey these words and form combinations that rob the poorer classes of the advantages which justly belong to them, preventing them from buying or selling, except under certain conditions? How plainly the words of God have predicted this condition of things. John writes, "I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. . . . And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name" (Rev. 13:11-17).²

_________________________
¹ Letter 201, 1902, to Elder and Mrs. J. A. Burden, Dec. 15, 1902, in Manuscript Releases, vol. 7, pp. 57, 58.
² Letter 26, 1903, to Elder and Mrs. J. A. Burden, Dec. 10, 1902, in Manuscript Releases, vol. 2, p. 179.

_________________________
The above selections, drawn from letters to an Adventist minister and his wife, illustrate the concerns of Ellen G. White about the oppression of working people by the rich and the oppression of the same group by labor unions that purported to speak in their name. Seventh-day Adventists believe that Ellen G. White exercised the biblical gift of prophecy during more than 70 years of public ministry.