Chapter 12 — What Our Denominational History Tells Us

The Bad News: We have lost some battles; the Good News: the war is not over.

Does our denominational history give meaning to Christ’s call for last-day repentance? There are several possible ways of looking at our history:

  1. We can view our past with pride like a sports team that almost never loses a game. This attitude is thought to be loyalty, for it assumes that God’s blessings on the church are His approval of our spiritual condition. The result is apathy and pervasive lukewarmness. This is by far the most popular view of our history, but its spiritual pride is the opposite of New Testament faith which always includes the element of contrition.
  2. In contrast, others view our history with despair. There are real failures in our history that some interpret as evidence that the Lord has cast off this church. This view has produced various offshoots, and continually spawns new movements of fruitless, destructive criticism. Often these movements are initiated as a legitimate protest against spiritual pride or apostasy, although they seldom offer a practical solution to the problem.

But there is something that both groups hold in common: Both strenuously oppose denominational repentance. The first group oppose it on the grounds that it is unnecessary. Even the suggestion is regarded as impertinent, disloyal, as the ancient priests regarded Jeremiah’s appeals for national repentance. The second group reject it on the grounds that it is impossible, since they assume that the Lord has withdrawn from the church both the privilege and the possibility of such repentance.

There is a third view possible:

  1. We can view our history with a confidence born of contrition. This is the realistic approach. This church is the true “remnant” of prophecy which God has raised up. The world has not yet truly heard the message, and His people have not as yet been prepared for the return of Christ. This view “rejoices in the truth.” It does not seek to evade or suppress the obvious facts of denominational history that call for repentance and reformation. Our failure to honor our Lord requires simply that we fall to our knees. Nevertheless, realism highlights the future with hope. The joy of the Lord always accompanies repentance.

Attempts to Explain the Long Delay

Truth always gives ground for hope. Denying or suppressing the truth produces frustrated despair. The reason is that the human conscience recognizes the reality of the passage of time, the pervading spiritual inertia, and the distressing world outlook. A disregard of Christ’s call to repent will inevitably destroy the morale of thoughtful, informed church members all over the world. The loss to the church is incalculable.

We are forced to recognize that the long delay must be explained in some way. Something somewhere has to “give.” Four possible solutions are usually suggested:

  1. Some say that the integrity of the church itself must “give.” That is, its hopes have been disappointed because its very existence, they say, has become illegitimate. It has forfeited the favor of God, they add, and no longer represents a valid movement of His leading. Ultimately, this view logically assumes a holier-than-thou stance.
  2. Some theologians say that fundamental doctrines of the church must “give.” The pioneers were theologically naive. In particular, the sanctuary doctrine that built the Advent Movement into a unique denomination, they say, is not scriptural. Again, this proposed solution is a fatal consequence of decades-long famine for the “third angel’s message in verity,” the 1888 relationship of righteousness by faith to the cleansing of the sanctuary.
  3. Some propagandists suggest that our understanding of “the Spirit of Prophecy” must “give.” Ellen White did not enjoy, they say, the extent of divine inspiration that we have thought was the case. She was inspired only in the sense that other nineteenth century religious writers were inspired. Something must “give,” and the carnal heart, having long resented Ellen White’s high, Christlike standards, would like to destroy her prophetic credibility. “We will not have this man to reign over us” was the cry of rebellious Israel concerning Jesus. Now we face the same revolt against “the testimony of Jesus.” It is denigrated as a nineteenth-century hangover.
  4. Some suggest that the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the real second Advent, and it has been going on ever since. The longer the Great Delay continues, the stronger will be the temptation to restructure the doctrine of the second coming and abandon belief in a personal, literal, imminent return of Jesus.

Implicit in all the above lurks a virtual charge against God Himself. “My Lord delays His coming” is the reechoing theme. From the days of the pioneers, it is assumed, He has mocked the prayers of a sincere people who have stood loyal to His commandments and the faith of Jesus, against the ridicule of other Christian churches and the world. This view requires us to believe that He has disappointed His people, not only on October 22, 1844, but continually ever since. The question at issue is the faithfulness of God!

The Historical Solution to Our Impasse

If we understand Christ’s call to “the angel of the church of the Laodiceans” as a call to denominational repentance, then we can see the four proposed solutions above in a different light:

  1. The integrity of the church remains intact as the true “remnant” of the Bible prophecies.
  2. Our foundational doctrines remain valid, being thoroughly scriptural.
  3. Ellen White endures criticism and attacks as a true, honest agent who exercised the prophetic gift of “the testimony of Jesus.”
  4. The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is not confused with the future personal, literal second coming of Christ. The Lord has not delayed His coming nor has He mocked the sincere prayers of His people since 1844. The pioneers were truly led of the Holy Spirit in their understanding of the prophecies, the second advent, and the sanctuary. What must “give,” then, is only our corporate, sinful, Laodicean unbelief that has thwarted all of our Lord’s attempts to bring healing, unity, and reformation.

On the other hand, the alternative is frightening. If our Lord has indeed delayed His coming, He has deceived us and we cannot trust Him in the future. But if we have delayed His return, then there is hope. Something can be done. Our unbelieving impenitence can be healed. Insisting that our Lord has delayed His coming virtually destroys the Advent hope, but recognizing that we have delayed it can validate and confirm our hope.

“Just Like the Jews”

Our historical parallel with the ancient Jewish nation is striking. They were God’s true denominated people, enjoying as much evidence of His favor as we have enjoyed. Their pride in their denominational structure and organization was shown by their attitude, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these” (Jeremiah 7:4). The “temple” to us is our worldwide organization, which is as much a source of pride to us as was the temple to the ancient Jews. The Lord did indeed establish and bless the ancient temple, but the Jews’ refusal of national repentance nullified its meaning:

The same disobedience and failure that were seen in the Jewish church have characterized in a greater degree the people who have had this great light from Heaven in the last messages of warning. [Shall we let the history of Israel be repeated in our experience?] Shall we, like them, squander our opportunities and privileges until God shall permit oppression and persecution to come upon us? Will the work that might be performed in peace and comparative prosperity be left undone until it must be performed in days of darkness, under the pressure of trial and persecution?

There is a terrible amount of guilt for which the church is responsible (Testimonies, vol. 5, pages 456, 457).

Without the atonement of Christ, it is devastating to any individual’s self-respect to face the reality of his or her guilt. It is the same with the church body. To face this “terrible amount of guilt” without discouragement, we also must see how God’s love for the church is unchanging. Whatever that “guilt” may be, she is still the one object of the Lord’s supreme regard. Again, this involves recognizing the creative aspect of God’s agapé love.

Critics who are ready to abandon hope for the church are unwittingly at war with that fundamental truth of God’s character. The “final atonement” that we have long talked about must include a final reconciliation with the reality of His divine character in the setting of the antitypical Day of Atonement.

Many inspired statements liken our denominational failure to that of the Jews. A very few examples must suffice:

Since the time of the Minneapolis [1888] meeting, I have seen the state of the Laodicean church as never before. I have heard the rebuke of God spoken to those who feel so well satisfied, who know not their spiritual destitution. … Like the Jews, many have closed their eyes lest they should see (Review and Herald, August 26, 1890).

There is less excuse in our day for stubbornness and unbelief than there was for the Jews in the days of Christ. … Many say, “If I had only lived in the days of Christ, … I would not have rejected and crucified Him, as did the Jews;” but that will be proved by the way in which you deal with His message and His messengers today. The Lord is testing the people of today as much as He tested the Jews in their day.

If … we travel over the same ground, cherish the same spirit, refuse to receive reproof and warning, then our guilt will be greatly augmented, and the condemnation that fell upon them will fall upon us (Ibid., April 11, 1893).

All the universe of Heaven witnessed the disgraceful treatment of Jesus Christ, represented by the Holy Spirit [at the 1888 Session]. Had Christ been before them, they [“our own brethren”] would have treated Him in a manner similar to that in which the Jews treated Christ (Special Testimonies Series A, No. 6, page 20).

Men professing godliness have despised Christ in the person of His messengers [1888]. Like the Jews, they reject God’s message (Fundamentals of Christian Education, page 472).

As surely as the Jews’ history illustrates their need for a national repentance, so does our 1888 history illustrate our need for repentance and a final atonement. The inspired messenger of the Lord was quick to see it. According to Ellen White, the 1888 Conference was a miniature Calvary, a demonstration of the same spirit of unbelief and opposition to God’s righteousness that inspired the ancient Jews. The spirit that actuated the opposers of the message was not a minor misunderstanding, a temporary underestimate of a debatable doctrine. It was inward rebellion against the Lord. If the Lord’s messenger means what she says over and over, it was a reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ—in principle. This reality is our great stone of stumbling and our rock of offense.

Our History Discloses Enmity Against God

Bear in mind that these facts in no way diminish the truth that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was then and is now the “remnant church.” The brethren who opposed the 1888 message were the true “angel of the church of the Laodiceans,” and God did not cast off the church. Our history makes Christ’s call to repent come alive, and the only reason it has not come alive sooner is that it has not been understood. The church is basically honest at heart, and the long delay in repentance is solely due to the truth having been misconstrued and distorted.

Whereas the ancient Jews rejected their long-awaited Messiah, we rejected our long-awaited outpouring of the latter rain. Note some points of comparison:

  1. The Jews’ Messiah was born in a stable. The beginning of the latter rain in 1888 was manifested in surprisingly humble circumstances. Both events caught the respective leaders by surprise.
  2. The Jews failed to discern the Messiah in His lowly guise. We failed to discern in the humble and sometimes faulty message of 1888 the beginning of the eschatological opportunity of the ages.
  3. The Jews were afraid Jesus would destroy their denominational structure. “We” feared that the 1888 message would damage the effectiveness of the church through uplifting faith rather than obedience to the law as the way of salvation.
  4. The opposition of Jewish leaders influenced many to reject Jesus. The persistent opposition of leading brethren in the years that followed 1888 influenced younger workers and laity to disregard the message. The church at large would have accepted the message had it come to them unopposed by leadership.
  5. The Jewish nation never repented of their sin, to this day. Thus they never recovered the blessings that Jesus’ lordship would have brought to them. Likewise, we have never as a denomination faced our corporate guilt. We have not repented of our rejection of the beginning of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and recovered the message. For this reason we have never yet enjoyed the full blessings of its renewal. The very obvious reality of a century of history demonstrates this truth.

Note how the gospel commission could have been finished nearly a century ago:

The influence that grew out of the resistance of light and truth at Minneapolis tended to make of no effect the light God had given to His people through the Testimonies. …

If every soldier of Christ had done his duty, if every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. What account will be rendered to God for thus retarding the work? (General Conference Bulletin, 1893, page 419).

The light that is to lighten the whole earth with its glory was resisted, and by the action of our own brethren has been in a great degree kept away from the world (Selected Messages, Book One, page 235).

That humble messenger believed to her end that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the true “remnant” of Bible prophecy, entrusted with God’s last gospel message of mercy. She was loyal to the church to the end, believing that humbling of heart before God is the only response we can make that will enable Heaven to renew the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Full Truth is Uplifting, Not Depressing

The full truth is always upbeat, positive, encouraging. Someone might try to distort Peter’s sermon at Pentecost and label it as “negative” because it clearly pinpointed the guilt of the nation and called for repentance. But Pentecostal power for witnessing followed Pentecostal repentance. A repeat of this glorious phenomenon awaits our repentance and reconciliation with the Lord.

God’s love for the world demands that His message of Good News go everywhere with power. We know that it is not unfair of the Lord to withhold from us further showers of the latter rain until we repent in the same way that the Lord required ancient Israel to repent. It can be said of us in truth, “Great is the wrath of the Lord that is aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us” (2 Kings 22:13). We can pray as did Ezra, “From the days of our fathers down to this present day our guilt has been very great” (Ezra 9:7, NEB).

The reason is that the sins of spiritual fathers get ingrained into us, except for specific knowledge and repentance. Even though we were very few in number in 1888, the character of that unbelieving impenitence has been propagated throughout the worldwide body like a spreading virus. The disease must run its course until repentance can eradicate it. Until then, each new generation absorbs the same lukewarmness. This is not the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. There is no genetic transmission of guilt. We simply recognize the reality of how sin has been propagated ever since Eden “through the medium of influence, taking advantage of the action of mind on mind, … reaching from mind to mind” (Review and Herald, April 16, 1901).

Daniel’s Corporate Repentance

Our position parallels that of Judah in the days of Daniel. He could have argued before the Lord, “Some of us and some of our fathers were true, Lord; look how faithful I have been, also Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! We have practiced health reform. Remember how some of our ‘fathers’ such as Jeremiah, Baruch, and others, stood nobly for the truth in times of apostasy. We are not all guilty, Lord!”

But how did Daniel pray? Notice his use of the corporate “we”:

All Israel has transgressed Your law, and has departed so as not to obey Your voice. … For our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are become a reproach to all that are around us. … I was … confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel (Daniel 9:11, 16, 20).

The fact that Daniel was not personally present in the days of King Manasseh did not keep him from confessing Manasseh’s sins as though they were his own. The fact that we were not personally present in 1888 makes no more difference than that Daniel was not living in the days of his fathers. Christ in His own flesh has shown us how to experience a repentance for sins in which we have not thought we were personally involved. If He, the sinless One, could repent “in behalf of” the sins of the whole world, surely we can repent in behalf of the sins of our fathers, whose spiritual children we are today. The essential truth that cries for recognition is that their sin is ours, because of the reality of the Biblical principle of corporate guilt.

Did the 1901 General Conference Cancel the 1888 Unbelief?

We must take a brief look at an argument that has been assumed to contradict the need for denominational repentance. Some have assumed that the 1901 General Conference Session was an about-face, a reformation that undid the rejection of the 1888 message and cancelled its consequences. This view implies the parallel assumption that the latter rain and the loud cry have been progressing ever since. Large baptisms and financial and institutional growth are often cited as evidence, even though the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses can also cite phenomenal statistical growth.

It is true that the 1901 session did bring great organizational blessings that could keep our machinery running smoothly for centuries. It is also clear that no deep spiritual reformation occurred. The lady with keen discernment wrote to a friend a few months after the 1901 Session:

The result of the last General Conference [1901] has been the greatest, the most terrible sorrow of my life. No change was made. The spirit that should have been brought into the whole work as the result of the meeting, was not brought in because men did not receive the testimonies of the Spirit of God. As they went to their several fields of labor, they did not walk in the light that the Lord had flashed upon their pathway, but carried into their work the wrong principles that have been prevailing in the work at Battle Creek (Ellen White letter to Judge Jesse Arthur, Elmshaven, January 14, 1903).

In consequence of this impenitence, the finishing of God’s work was delayed an indefinite time:

We may have to remain here in this world because of insubordination many more years, as did the children of Israel; but for Christ’s sake His people should not add sin to sin by charging God with the consequence of their own wrong course of action (Letter, December 7, 1901; M-184, 1901).

Even so, it was not too late then to engage in an experience of repentance. The Lord’s messenger did not write the phrase “denominational repentance,” but she expressed the principle. “All” needed to participate:

But if all would only see and confess and repent of their own course of action in departing from the truth of God, and following human devisings, then the Lord would pardon (Idem).1

John the Baptist could have spent several lifetimes trying to encompass all the needs for reformation in his day. So we could spend decades addressing each departure from the Lord’s plan for us. But John preferred to lay “the ax … to the root of the trees” (Matthew 3:10).2

Would repenting of “our” rejection of the latter rain lay the ax to the root of our present spiritual problem? Yes, for that is indeed its root.

But roots have a way of lying beneath the visible surface.


Notes for Chapter 12:

  1. See “It Didn’t Happen in 1901! Will It Happen Now?” a chapter in The Power of the Spirit by George E. Rice and Neal C. Wilson (Review and Herald, 1991), pages 100-105. It is encouraging to note that the position taken in this book is a complete reversal of the “rich and increased with goods” stance on the 1901 Conference that the White Estate had taken in previous decades. This is very encouraging evidence that the Holy Spirit is beginning to give the gift of fidelity to truth. The long-awaited blessing may not be far away.
  2. If we could list all current manifold departures from God’s plan, we would weary the reader and the angels, too. It would take a shelf of books bigger than the Encyclopedia Britannica for critics to detail all of our departures from the “blueprint” in our educational, medical, health reform, evangelistic, and administrative functions of church organization and practice. These have been talked about and written about for generations. The sighing and crying and hand-wringing are endless. It’s easy to say that “conversion” will take care of the problem—we’ve said that also for generations. The “ax” wielded by the true Christ is different from that of the false and counterfeit “Christ.” The “dragon,” who is “enraged with the woman,” seldom puts on his dragon costume. He can even dress up to look like a “reformer” and slash away at all kinds of branches with great zeal, taking care to leave the actual “root” intact—self-love.
Read Chapter 13 — Corporate Repentance: Path to Christlike Love
Home | Articles Index | Robert J. Wieland Articles Index