Chapter 4 — The Disappointed Christ

We sing, we pray, we say we love Him. But He says He is persona non grata among us.

Our sinful, despairing modern world desperately needs a Spirit-filled Seventh-day Adventist Church. We cherish a deep conviction: this church is the prophetic remnant of Revelation 12:17, a unique people with whom the dragon is “enraged” and makes “war.” They are called to “keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” The same group tells the world the true good news of “the everlasting gospel” (chapter 14:6-12). They are a vital ingredient in world stability.

Although this sense of destiny has kept the Seventh-day Adventist Church on course for over a century, it leaves us little room for pride because our Lord rebukes us severely in His Laodicean message. Countless sermons have been preached and articles published about that rebuke, but we today generally recognize that the problems it details still exist.

If we have successfully overcome these spiritual weaknesses, there should by now be some clear evidence to show how and when the overcoming took place. Reason dictates that when the church truly overcomes, Christ’s coming can no longer be delayed. This is confirmed by His parable about the farmer (Jesus Himself): “When the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:29). The “harvest” is “the end of the world” (Matthew 13:39, KJV); Revelation 14:14-16).

Why hasn’t Christ’s appeal to His people already done its work? When will He have a remnant church that has bought His “gold refined in the fire,” His “white garments,” and applied His “eye salve”? Must we assume that Christ’s message will fail in the end? Some conclude that because ancient Israel failed repeatedly, modern Israel must also fail. Surely there must be better news than this!

We are living in the time for a victory that never before has taken place in history. We have been assured:

The Holy Spirit is to animate and pervade the whole church, purifying and cementing hearts. … It is the purpose of God to glorify Himself in His people before the world (Testimonies, vol. 9, pages 20, 21).

As surely as the Seventh-day Adventist Church is that “remnant” in Revelation, so surely must this message from Jesus succeed at last.

How Can We Make Sense of the Long Delay?

Is the long delay in the coming of Christ His responsibility? It is a common understanding among us that the delay is His responsibility. But to believe this creates a terrible problem. With no hope for the future except to continue repeating the history of our past, the hope of the soon return of Christ must then fade further into uncertainty.

A special 1992 issue of the Adventist Review on the Second Coming reported on the well-known uncertainty of many of our youth. Cheryl R. Merritt reports the frightening reality, “We are a generation of nonconviction when it comes to Jesus’ second coming.” “I really don’t think we can have any idea of when He’ll come” (Daniel Potter, 21, Union College). “I can’t imagine it happening in my lifetime” (Shawn Sugars, 22, Andrews University).

This reveals a terrible problem. If we lose our faith in the nearness of the second coming, we lose the reason for our existence as a special church. Our forefathers built into our denominational name our confidence in the soon return of Christ, for the dictionary defines the word “Adventist” not as some dim hope in a “far-off divine event,” but confidence in the soon coming of the Lord. There is a close relationship between understanding Christ’s Laodicean call to repent and our confidence in the nearness of His coming. This will be clear as we go on.

The Spiritual Crisis Of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

Roland Hegstad, for many years editor of Liberty, said that Adventism is “not attracting our own youth because all we’re doing is asking them to come play church with us” {Adventist Review, February 27, 1986). Christ’s Laodicean message presents to them no spiritual challenge, for if we have already repented, we must by now be “rich and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” except to carry on business as usual and work harder.

Can we have a reasonable hope that we will see the Lord’s return? Did He deceive our pioneers by telling them it was “near” when all along He knew it would be delayed at least 140 years and no one knows how many more? Is the Calvinist idea true, that the sovereign Lord has predetermined the time of Jesus’ second coming with no special preparation on the part of His people?

If so, this raises serious problems that involve the Lord Himself in an ethical difficulty. He has often told us through the Spirit of Prophecy that the end is “near.” His messenger frequently said: “I saw … that time can last but a very little longer” (Early Writings, page 58; 1850). “Only a moment of time, as it were, yet remains.” “The battle of Armageddon is soon to be fought” (Testimonies, vol. 6, pages 14, 406; 1900). If such warnings were merely a cry of “wolf, wolf,” then the Lord has not been fair with us. For Him repeatedly to say “near” when He didn’t mean it or intended to define the word so we couldn’t understand it, this would be unethical. Surely He doesn’t treat His people this way! Further, if we say or feel that “the Lord is delaying His coming,” we put ourselves in the company of the “evil servant” in the parable who says that very thing (Matthew 24:48).

Any meaningful Adventism cannot survive this doubt, because no people can be reconciled to God in a “final atonement” if they feel that He has deceived them. Even if He has only allowed their comprehension of His truth to be patently false from their very beginning, they can’t trust Him.¹ This could be the basic problem that underlies much present apostasy and backsliding. There is a deep Adventist spiritual alienation because it appears that inspired messages have been crying “wolf, wolf.”

But Scripture makes clear that there is an answer to this perplexity. While God is indeed sovereign, He has chosen to make the actual timing of Christ’s second coming dependent on the spiritual preparation of His living people. This is the genius of the Seventh-day Adventist idea of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary. The dead remain hopeless prisoners in their grave, awaiting release at the first resurrection, whenever that may come. But the living may delay or “hasten on” that resurrection because it is dependent on the second coming of Christ which in turn is dependent on their getting ready for it (2 Peter 3:12, NEB, NAS, NIV, NKJV etc. Most translations recognize the meaning of speudo as “hasten”).

In His parable Jesus represents Himself as already eager to return, waiting only until “the grain ripens,” whereupon “immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:29). In the Revelation preview of the second coming, an angel tells Him, “The time is come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe” (Revelation 14:15). The long-delayed “marriage of the Lamb” comes quickly once “His wife has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7). The repentance Christ calls for from Laodicea is related to the Bride making herself “ready” If she doesn’t, He is disappointed.

It is the privilege of every Christian not only to look for but to hasten the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Were all who profess His name bearing fruit to His glory, how quickly the whole world would be sown with the seed of the gospel. Quickly the last great harvest would be ripened, and Christ would come to gather the precious grain (Christ’s Object Lessons, page 69).

To go on being lukewarm and dying, generation after generation, cannot be a proper response of a Bride to Christ’s last-church appeal.

A Deeper Meaning in Christ’s Call to Repent

Yet if the Laodicean repentance Christ calls for has never yet taken place, this very fact gives us hope, for there is something that our repentance can rectify. Zechariah tells of a repentance that will grip the hearts of “the house of David” and “the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” making possible in them a cleansing work so Christ can return (Zechariah 12:10-13:1). “The angel of the church of the Laodiceans” is equivalent to Zechariah’s phrase, “the house of David,” obviously the corporate body of church leadership.

Christ’s final promise is directed to the same personified body not merely to individuals: “To him who overcomes [the angel of the church of the Laodiceans] I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Revelation 3:21). This ultimate honor will be accorded to a generation, a body of God’s people who will respond to His appeal, “Repent!”²

A probe into the meaning of repentance is not “negative.” Rather, feeling satisfied with the status quo is the really negative attitude, because such spiritual laissez faire indefinitely postpones the finishing of the gospel commission. And it is a totally false idea to assume that a church that repents will not attract youth. That is the only atmosphere in our church that can attract and hold youth.

Many thousands in the church hunger and thirst for a clearer grasp of vital truth for these last days. They sense that the coming of the Lord has been long delayed and that we, not Heaven, are responsible. They realize that pinpointing the reason for repentance and exploring how to experience it is the most “positive” course we can pursue.

Repentance by “the body” does not deny or displace personal, individual repentance. Rather, it makes it effective. The daily ministry in the first apartment of the Levitical sanctuary took care of individuals’ needs, but the annual Day of Atonement was concerned for a corporate cleansing for Israel as a congregation. All repentance is personal and individual. But no individual can ever be the “bride” of Christ, for as individuals God’s people are all merely “guests” at the wedding. The corporate body of the last-day overcoming church will be the bride.

Something has delayed her getting “ready.” It is a deeper layer of sin which, He says, “you … do not know” (Revelation 3:17). It makes sense to realize that the repentance which that deeper sin requires must itself also go deeper. However disturbing, the Lord’s call must be faced honestly.

Repentance is indeed both sorrow for sin and turning away from it. But repentance can be only superficial if our understanding of the sin itself is superficial. While we readily quote the text that says, “If we confess our sins, He [Christ] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), we must remember the context of this promise. It does not encourage a superficial assurance that the tape recording of our sins is scrubbed by pressing a magic button. When we thoughtlessly assume that the Lord can forgive sins while we don’t realize what our sins are, John is telling us how easily “we deceive ourselves” so that, “the truth is not in us.” So long as Jesus’ pathetic diagnosis, “you … do not know,” remains valid, so long do “we deceive ourselves.” We cannot be truly cleansed from deep sin that we do not understandably “confess” (1 John 1:8, 10).

If a sin is unknown to us, does it cease to be a sin? One may smoke cigarettes for a lifetime not knowing they are harmful. Nevertheless, the damage is done. “Sin pays its wages—death,” whether we know what our sins are or not. There is a larger issue than our own personal security—the honor and vindication of Christ. The Lord may not hold against us a sin that we do not know of, but that sin brings shame upon Him nonetheless, and hinders His work of final atonement.

The message to Laodicea is not child’s play. “One like the Son of man” with “eyes like a flame of fire” and “His voice as the sound of many waters” is calling His people to the most profound experience of the ages. Failure to recognize His call creates confusion and apostasy, and is an eventual time-bomb of denominational self-destruction. He has sent word to us:

In every church in our land, there is needed confession, repentance, and reconversion. The disappointment of Christ is beyond description (Review and Herald, December 15, 1904).

His appeal to repent is the clearest evidence we have of His love, and it is our best hope!

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” especially the last one!

Notes for Chapter 4:

1. New Testament evidence indicates that Christ and His apostles did not teach the early church to expect the second coming in their generation. Second Thessalonians 2:1-10 makes clear that the apostles had at least a rudimentary comprehension of the time sweep of Daniel’s prophecies. Likewise, the statement, “Behold, I come quickly” in Revelation has always been understood as applying in a proleptic sense to those living in the end of time. Surely, God has not deceived His people for 2000 years, nor have they thought so!
2. Confusion on this point has fueled the fanatical idea that individuals must leave Laodicea and return to Philadelphia. But this would set the clock back more than a century and put the final events into reverse gear. Nowhere does Christ call individuals to leave Laodicea; He calls on “the angel of the church” to repent. See APPENDIX B regarding the Philadelphia-Laodicea relationship.