Fourth and Last Letter

Jennie C. Rutty - October 1

Pomona, California

R. L. Berry

Dear Brother:

May the Lord bless you and help you to acknowledge the truth. Yours received duly, but I have been slow in answering. I have a few more thoughts to express. In closing our correspondence, I have no fear of future troubles regarding the position that I am holding, for I have not changed since I was saved and sanctified, either on the dress question or regarding the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The responsibility of taking one unnecessary article from the list of worldly conformity and placing it with the necessary articles, and renouncing those who hold it as worldly conformity, as they always have—by this act, whether you will admit it or not, you have legislated and made yourselves a sect, and are compromising with the world.

Your mention of Bro. Duncan’s letter, regarding the high vest, recalls to me his expression regarding feathers and flowers. After his change of position, someone asked him how he reconciled classing the necktie as a custom, and feathers and flowers as worldly conformity or ornament. He said that troubled him much for a while, but he had finally decided to leave that for the other party. Now what kind of a gospel preacher is that: get in such a position that he can give no sound reason for his position?

You have not answered the different questions that I have asked you. Bro. Heinley has not answered those given him, and Bro. Duncan could not answer the question given to him, so it settles on this: you have taken the necktie from the list of articles considered as worldly conformity and adornment by the saints for thirty years and have placed it in the list of articles of custom, and now everyone else must do the same thing and not question the wisdom of the act. But we cannot do that, and so we are “swept out,” as you say, “as factious spirits.” I am confident that after God had saved and sanctified my soul, and had delivered me from sectism and revealed the man of sin to me, that I would never have come in among a people holding the position that you now hold. The people that I have believed were true saints have lived up to the Word of God, had sound speech and action, and were led by the Holy Spirit instead of the conscience.

Praying God to bless you, I am,
Yours in Christ,
Jennie C. Rutty