Concerning:

• (a) The publication of the current revised edition of The Glad Tidings by Waggoner; and
• (b) The alleged Ellen White condemnation of the doctrine of Christ's legal justification of "every man;" and
• (c) The allegation that neither Jones nor Waggoner ever taught the view that Christ effected a legal justification for the entire human race.

I. WHAT JEFF REICH IS SAYING:

(1) His main points are that the 1888 Message Study Committee has produced a deceptive edition of Waggoner's The Glad Tidings (hereafter GT-II) which has excised some "75-100 pages" of the original 1900 edition of The Glad Tidings (hereafter GT-I; if that were true, it would be a serious charge indeed); and

(2) Because Ellen White firmly condemned A. F. Ballenger's theology in 1905 she at the same time firmly condemned the doctrine that on His cross Christ pronounced a legal verdict of acquittal, or a legal justification, upon "all men." Reich takes this position because in 1915 Ballenger published a book entitled The Proclamation of Liberty and the Unpardonable Sin in which he teaches that doctrine, using Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation as an illustration of what Christ accomplished by His sacrifice. Reich maintains that Ballenger taught this evil doctrine prior to or in 1905, and thus merited Ellen White's condemnation of it.

(3) By inference therefore the 1888 Message Study Committee (1888MSC) have brought on themselves the condemnation of Ellen White. The teaching that for "all men" Christ reversed the legal condemnation that came upon the human race "in Adam," and gave them instead a legal verdict of "justification," is evil, says Jeff Reich. He implies to his reader that this is deadly error which leads to an abandonment of the Seventh-day Adventist truth of the sanctuary and the Day of Atonement that began in 1844. To Reich's readers who may not have access to background information, this appears to be a terrible yet plausible charge.

II. THE GLAD TIDINGS - I COMPARED WITH THE GLAD TIDINGS - II.

The history of the two books. The Pacific Press published Waggoner's The Glad Tidings- I in 1900, the same year that the Stanborough Press published his The Everlasting Covenant in England.

This writer was introduced to The Glad Tidings -I around 1938-39 by his Bible teacher at Columbia Union College, Elder Lindsay A. Semmens, who informed the class that Waggoner correctly understood the two covenants. He warned the class to watch out for occasional "pantheism" that had crept into the author's writing, saying that if we were on guard, it would not detract from the blessing in understanding the truth of the two covenants. I easily saw the pan-entheism and dismissed it as not essential to Waggoner's main thesis in understanding Galatians. The two covenants truth was "most precious" to my soul.

Ever since 1950 and again in the late 1960's and early 1970's I had been pleading with the General Conference to publish an anthology of Jones and Waggoner, so that the church could know what Ellen White said was "a most precious message." But they were afraid to do so. So I proposed that they publish an edited version of The Glad Tidings with the commonly supposed "pantheism" deleted, but with his teaching of righteousness by faith and the two covenants intact. With great reluctance, the General Conference president agreed for me to experiment with producing a manuscript, which the Pacific Press editors should inspect very critically.

Not only must the "pantheism" be excised; Waggoner had used as his Bible text the now extinct 1881 English Revised Version. Therefore all Bible texts and phraseology had to be changed to Revised Standard Version.

Furthermore, in order to reach modern readers and produce a volume that would be easily understandable to young people, the PPPA editors and I agreed that occasional diction that was Victorian or archaic should be modernized, and that some wordy passages needed to be condensed somewhat, so long as no theological concept was in any way changed. Because publication of the book was considered to be an experiment, PPPA did not want to produce a large book.

Unless these editorial goals were realized, I was told the book would simply not be published. At that time there was no other way to get it out (the 1888 Message Study Committee did not exist, nor was it dreamed of). Neither the PPPA editors nor I would agree to reprinting a verbatim edition of the 1900 book with its alleged "pantheism" accretions left in. Nevertheless, the world and especially SDA youth needed the "most precious message" in this book.

A comparison of the two books. In GT-I there are approximately 290 words on each full page, with 264 pages, making a total of approximately 76,800 words in the entire book. Jeff Reich charges that the edition of the book which the 1888MSC publishes has deleted "from 75 to 100 pages" of Waggoner's original text, leaving Jeff's reader with a sensation of horror. How terrible, to withhold from the innocent reader the message of righteousness by faith!

In GT-II there are approximately 500 words to a full page. With 144 pages, that is approximately 72,000 words, or about 4800 words less than in the original text. This is about 5% less, or a total of about 13 pages less, rather than "75 to 100." And the condensing has produced a book more readable to modern readers, with no change in righteousness by faith doctrine. The new edition, GT-II, has had to be reprinted some eight times since PPPA did it in 1972. We are not aware that anyone has ever said that any pantheism or pan-entheism is in it, nor has anyone said that an essential doctrinal idea is omitted.

Has the 1888MSC produced their own version of The Glad Tidings? The answer is No. What we produce is photostatically identical to the edition produced by PPPA in 1972 (we obtained the negatives from them). The actual text of GT-II is therefore the responsibility of the PPPA editors of the late 1960's who worked on it under close General Conference direction.

III. THE CHARGE OF TEACHING BALLENGER'S HERESY.

Jeff Reich informs his readers that prior to 1905 A. F. Ballenger taught the heresy of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 as illustrating what Christ accomplished for "all men" when Ellen White strongly condemned his sanctuary theology.

What did Ballenger teach prior to or in 1905 that Ellen White condemned? Several sources of information are available:

(a) In the original transcript of the meeting the General Conference brethren had with Ballenger on May 22, 1905 (W. W. Prescott, W. A. Colcord), there is no mention either by the brethren or Ballenger himself of the doctrine of the Lincoln "proclamation of liberty" that permeates his later 1915 book.

(b) The typed record of Ballenger's "Nine Theses" that he presented to the brethren on May 21, 1905 contains no mention or even hint of that doctrine.

(c) Ellen White's 1905 extensive remarks to Ballenger and to others about his teaching make no mention of that doctrine.

(d) Ballenger's 1900 book, Power for Witnessing, makes no mention of it.

(e) Elder E. E. Andross's extensive and "official" refutation of Ballenger's theology published in 1912 by Pacific Press, A More Excellent Ministry, makes no mention of it. Andross's sole concern is Ballenger's faulty sanctuary teaching.

(f) In Arthur L. White's EGW Biography, Vol. 5, pp. 398-413, he describes in considerable detail the crisis of dealing with Ballenger in 1905 at the General Conference Session. But not a word mentions the Abraham Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation analogy.

(g) While, as Jeff Reich asserts, Ellen White was allegedly absorbed in rebuking that theology in Ballenger, it seems strange that she would publish in her book, The Ministry of Healing, that identical theology in that same year (1905). She used Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation legally freeing the slaves in the Confederate Territories as an illustration of what Christ accomplished on His cross: "With His own blood He [Christ] has signed the emancipation papers of the race" (p. 90). Do we have an Ellen White who rebukes another for teaching what she herself believes?

What is the basis for Reich's charge? He has something that sounds superficially convincing. An unknown person writing in Ballenger's The Gathering Call magazine for September-October 1921 is describing Ballenger's recent funeral. In the life sketch, this writer says that Ballenger wrote his 1915 book, The Proclamation of Liberty and the Unpardonable Sin, years before 1915, around 1900 in fact, developing the Lincoln Emancipation analogy. Was this anonymous writer accurate in his/her memory?

All the first-hand witnesses to Ballenger's heresy (Ellen White, W. W. Prescott, W. A. Colcord, E. W. Farnsworth, and E. E. Andross) are unanimous in describing his heresy as the position that Christ began His ministry in the Most Holy Apartment at His ascension, thus denying the vary basis of the Seventh-day Adventist sanctuary message. Not one offers even a hint that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation analogy was at that time involved.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the anonymous writer in 1921 was confused in recounting this detail. Knowing what we know of Ballenger's impulsive, highly independent nature, it is contrary to his nature to have written the 1915 book before the 1905 sanctuary trials, and then say nothing about it to anyone. Ellen White said much to Ballenger and about him; it is unreasonable to assume that she would not have mentioned this aspect of his teaching. Repeatedly she identifies his sanctuary heresy as denying the sanctuary truth.

IV. DID JONES AND WAGGONER TEACH THE LINCOLN EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AS ILLUSTRATING WHAT HAPPENED ON THE CROSS?

Apparently Ellen White in Ministry of Healing (1905) was the first Seventh-day Adventist to use it. Implicit in the idea is the recognition that Christ's "judicial verdict of acquittal" was a legal justification of "all men" just as Lincoln's Proclamation legally affected "all slaves" in the Confederacy.

Opponents cite the fact that in his 1891 General Conference sermons on Romans Waggoner did not clearly articulate that idea. However, they overlook the fact that by 1895-96 he did grasp it:

"There is no exception here. As the condemnation came upon all, so the justification comes upon all. Christ has tasted death for every man. He has given Himself for all. Nay, He has given Himself to every man. The free gift has come upon all. The fact that it is a free gift is evidence that there is no exception. If it came upon only those who have some special qualification, then it would not be a free gift.

"It is a fact, therefore, plainly stated in the Bible, that the gift of righteousness and life in Christ has come to every man on earth. There is not the slightest reason why every man that has ever lived should not be saved unto eternal life, except that they would not have it. So many spurn the gift offered so freely" (The Signs of the Times, March 12, 1896; now in Waggoner on Romans, p. 101).

An earlier statement in the series says: "Christ gave Himself to every man. Do you ask what then can prevent every man from being saved? The answer is, Nothing, except the fact that all men will not keep the faith. If all would keep all that God gives them, all would be saved" (p. 69). "Christ is given without reserve to every man. Heb. 2:9" (p. 89).

Jones was in total agreement: "All that were in the world were included in Adam, and all that are in the world are included in Christ. In other words, Adam in his sin reached all the world. Jesus Christ the second Adam in His righteousness touches all humanity. That is where Adam is the figure of Him that was to come. . . . It is certainly true that what the second Adam did, embraces all that were embraced in what the first Adam did. . . Does the second Adam's righteousness embrace as many as does the first Adam's sin? Look closely. Without our consent at all, without our having anything to do with it, we were all included in the first Adam; we were there. . . . Jesus Christ, the second man, took our sinful nature. He touched us 'in all points.' He became we and died the death. And so in Him and by that, every man that has ever lived upon the earth, and was involved in the first Adam, is involved in this, and will live again. . . . And when Jesus Christ has set us all free from the sin and the death which came upon us from the first Adam, that freedom is for every man; and every man can have it for the choosing" (A. T. Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, pp. 268, 269).

Other statements by Waggoner in GT-I are clear: "'What! Do you mean to teach universal salvation?' We mean to teach just what the word of God teaches, that 'the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men.' Titus 2:11, R. V. God has wrought out salvation for every man, and has given it to him; but the majority spurn it, and throw it away. The judgment will reveal the fact that full and complete salvation was given to every man, and that the lost have deliberately thrown away their birthright possession." GT-I, pp. 22, 23; GT-2, pp. 13, 14).