The Trial of God's Patience
If God could be tempted to doubt, He would wonder (as we do) if it’s just too good to be true: how can those thrilling prophecies in the Bible ever be fulfilled?
He has said in His word that the whole earth is to be “lightened with … glory” (Revelation 18:1-4). That must include the entire Third World, Moslem lands, Communist nations, and the sensuous, materialistic West. This “light” is the message of “the everlasting gospel” which is to be given “mightily with a strong voice.”
If the prophecy means what it says, it follows that everyone must hear the “voice” clearly. The results? They will be phenomenal, multitudes, far more than we think, will accept the “light.” God’s people will be astonished at the magnitude of the worldwide response (see Isaiah chapters 49-62).
The three angels of Revelation 14 and the fourth of chapter 18 are a symbol of the “remnant” church which is to be the agent in accomplishing this world-shaking mission. “The saints … that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” are to glorify Him amidst a world that disregards His holy law (Rev. 14:12). Naturally, the Lord wants very much to honor them before the world and the watching universe.
The Lord’s Problem
But so long as His people continue to enjoy the material and social comforts of luxurious modern life, they may not feel the frustration that a century of delay in His schedule has brought to the heart of Christ. He is pained by this long drawn out wait. Can He be the unfeeling, impassive “thousand-years-as-a-day” Buddha that many have imagined Him to be? It is true that He is patient, and He wants all to be saved; but His patience can easily be misinterpreted as unconcern.
In reality, Revelation pictures our Lord as an eager Bridegroom who loves His church so much that he actually longs for the “marriage of the Lamb” to come soon (Rev. 19:7-9). He Himself deeply feels the ongoing suffering of so many millions on this planet. An inspired glimpse of Him shows His true feelings about the long delay:
Leaving the first love is represented as a spiritual fall. Many have fallen thus. In every church in our land, there is needed confession, repentance, and reconversion. The disappointment of Christ is beyond description. (Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, Dec. 15, 1904).
We all recognize that we still await the coming of that mighty angel of Revelation 18 who is to join his voice in a loud cry with the third angel. The reason for the delay is simply that our Lord awaits our willingness to welcome this fourth angel, to sense our need for him. We may imagine we are doing fine without him; our Lord knows better. His people need a gift of heavenly efficiency if their message is to penetrate deeply into the heart-consciousness of the world.
Love is the Only Way
This grand finale of the work of the Holy Spirit will be a work of extraordinary beauty and simplicity:
Those who wait for the Bridegroom’s coming are to say to the people, “Behold your God.” The last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation of His character of love. The children of God are to manifest His glory. (Christ’s Object Lessons, pp. 415, 416).
Once this Christlike love can permeate the church as a body, the message will indeed enlighten the earth in an incredibly short time. Human nature is the same the world over. Scratch the surface among all nations, races, or tribes, and one finds underneath the same human hunger for reality. The love of Christ manifested in human flesh is the universal language that will evoke a response everywhere.
How to achieve the active and powerful love as a body, so that the full resources and cohesion of the church can be perfectly used to demonstrate it to the world—this is our problem of surpassing importance. Can formal committee actions or high pressure promotion provide the needed motivation? No, These have all been tried repeatedly without real success. Truth must be the vehicle, because only truth can penetrate to the secret recesses of the human heart. The Lord has in reserve a means of motivation that will be truly effective. There will be no need to harangue God’s people to respond, no need to provide artificial stimulation to induce them to put forth effort, any more than the apostles needed to in the beginning. Something happened at Pentecost that provided the early church with a truly phenomenal motivation.
That motivation was provided by an experience of full repentance, a doctrine that we shall see pervades both the Old and New Testaments. A hazy, indistinct concept of repentance can result only in a state of lukewarmness. Like medicine that must be taken in a quantity sufficient to provide a proper concentration in the blood stream, Bible repentance must be full and thorough or a truly Christlike love can never operate effectively in the church. This is the kind of repentance Christ demands of Laodicea.
This full spectrum of repentance is a truth that is included in “the everlasting gospel,” but its clearest definition has been impossible until history reaches the time of the last of the “seven churches” of Revelation. This is because repentance can never be complete until the end of history. Repentance in the Greek is metanoia, from meta (“after”) and nous (“mind”).
That “end” could have come many decades ago if the “angel of the church of the Laodiceans” had been willing to receive the Lord’s message when He says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous, therefore, and repent.” (Rev. 3:19). We are still in this world of confusion and rebellion, battling still with evil spirits and wrestling with constantly worsening problems, for one simple reason: we have never truly done what our Lord has told us to do.
Repentance as a Motivational Force
Gadgets and inventions will never reveal God’s love to the world. The only way possible to do it is to fill human hearts with it and let them personally be so full of it that it spills over naturally onto all whom we meet. “The children of God are to manifest His glory,” that is, demonstrate His love. Waiting around for some new technological communication gimmick such as universal television “just around the corner” is vain. Our best method remains personal witnessing. Every new technological wonder (even satellites) can be expected to suffer exploitation by Satan. Christ must be manifested in the flesh; and that is why He has raised up a church worldwide.
But “personal witnessing” is idle talk unless we gain a heart experience parallel to that of Christ so that we have something urgent to witness about. And this becomes possible only by means of repentance.
Repentance is sorrow for sin and turning away from it. But if our view of sin is superficial, our repentance will likewise be superficial. Unless we truly appreciate the depth of our sin, only a veneer repentance becomes possible; and it is this that produces ever new generations of lukewarm church members. Sins that we are aware of can be the veneer, while there remains a deep subterranean stratum of sin which is unrealized, unconfessed, and therefore unforgiven. The repentance that our Lord calls for in these last days must be deep and thorough.
Repentance, rightly understood, will bring genuine unity in the church. “The mind of Christ” is a bridge between discordant elements within God’s people. Our Saviour has often appealed to us, “Press together!” But this is impossible unless we press close to the cross in repentance. Without understanding our full guilt, repeated calls to the church to repent are virtually meaningless.
In the chapters to follow we shall search for an understanding of full and complete repentance, and see it illustrated in our Lord’s own experience “in the flesh.” We shall also see at least one historical precedent for a national repentance, a model which Christ set before the ancient Jewish nation for them to emulate. They decidedly and firmly rejected the “national” repentance He called for. We dare not repeat their history.
If our Lord is a personal Being who can feel a “disappointment … beyond description,” is it possible that our continued impenitence can at last change His frustration into anger?
If so, that would not be something pleasant to meet!