Grace On Trial - Robert J. Wieland
Grace on Trial

Chapter Eleven

WHY THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH WILL NEVER BECOME BABYLON

This is perhaps the most serious of all the topics we have studied in this book.

Millions of people say that they like Jesus and they like the Bible, but they have no use for “organized religion.” We now face a “vegetarian” version of this idea within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Some members say that they like the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy writings, but they are very doubtful about the “organized church.”

We hear some openly declare the church to be Babylon in defiance of Ellen White’s clear testimony to the contrary.298 To them church membership is unimportant. They lean toward the idea that because of its problems the Lord has forsaken the organized church. Such usually gravitate into offshoots, withdrawing their support from the denomination.

Those who are willing to “abandon ship” frequently quote a brief statement from Ellen White’s Acts of the Apostles, page 11, but they wrest it from its context. We will use italics for the much-quoted excerpt:

The church is God’s fortress, His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world. Any betrayal of the church is treachery to Him who has bought mankind with the blood of His only-begotten Son. From the beginning, faithful souls have constituted the church on earth.

This statement is understood by separationists to say, “From the beginning, the true church has been constituted of unorganized, disjointed, uncoordinated, ‘faithful souls.’ Denominational organization will fail.” But it does not say that!

What is the church? Is the organized church a vessel that is doomed to sink? Should “faithful souls” abandon ship and jump into the cold water on their own? Will there be no “ship” in the last days? What is the true church? Is it merely a non-cohesive, unorganized scattering of “faithful souls”?

Note that the context of this statement reveals the church to be a cohesive, organized body—a “fortress” and a “city of refuge.” And to forsake that organized church and withdraw support from it is so serious that it is called “treachery to Christ.”

How can we know the truth for sure? The answer comes by asking one very significant question:

What is the mind of Christ toward the organized Seventh-day Adventist Church? If we can determine the answer to that question, we can immediately know what our mind toward it should be.

The Lord’s Church Has Always Been an Organized Body

The beginnings of the true church can be traced to the everlasting or new covenant that the Lord made with Abraham long ago:

“Get out of your country,

From your kindred

And from your father’s house,

To a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation …

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”299

Thus the Lord began to organize His people on earth to be a denominated, visible family, a “nation.” His purpose was that they might be His evangelistic witnesses in the world. Abraham’s descendants were elected to be the ancient equivalent of today’s organized church, to share and exemplify his faith publicly. Their nationhood was to demonstrate that it is possible for human beings to function in an organized unity, perfectly devoted to the Lord’s guidance.

That nation came to be known as Israel. Her history records a series of ups and downs, with some dark episodes of corporate failure. But did her terrible backslidings, such as in the days of Elijah and Jeremiah, cancel the original election of God? The answer is no.

Although they were severely punished for their apostasies (especially Baal-worship), neither Israel nor Judah ever became Babylon. Even while they were captives in Babylon they remained Israel. Baal-worship was a disease that afflicted the body but did not transform it into Babylon.

Even in Israel’s darkest hours, she was still the brightest spot in a darker world. For example, Daniel and his companions accomplished in Babylonian captivity what the kings and priests of Judah had failed to do in their national security and prosperity. At the nadir of Judah’s terrible unfaithfulness to God, when the prospects for reformation seemed darkest, Jeremiah bought land at Anathoth, demonstrating his faith in the future healing of the apostasy.300 The Lord repeated His promises of faithfulness in His original covenant, despite Israel’s unfaithfulness. In all His wrath with His faithless people He remembered mercy and loyalty to them.301

God’s faithfulness to His divine election does not excuse the infidelity of His people today, nor does it minimize His displeasure. But it points to His divine solution to the problems of apostasy and worldliness in His church, a solution that gives hope when all else seems hopeless. We will consider later what is this solution.

It is generally agreed among us that the modern Seventh-day Adventist Church has to a great extent repeated the history of ancient Israel. As we saw in our last chapter, Ellen White often said that our “in-a-great-measure” rejection of the 1888 message a century ago was a replay of the Jews’ rejection of Christ.302

When the Jews finally crucified Him and rejected His apostles in 34 A.D., while the Lord did not abandon His original covenant. He permitted a terrible “shaking” to test His professed people so that the two groups within them could be distinguished and separated. The believing ones among them remained as His true church, and the unbelievers were shaken out. To the unbelieving Jews the Lord said, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.”303

From the beginning, Abraham’s true “seed” were never to be considered merely his fleshly descendants. Only those who exercised his faith were qualified. Not in Ishmael but “in Isaac shall thy seed be called.”304 Righteousness by faith was as true in Abraham’s day as in Paul’s. Isaiah had predicted what would happen in Israel’s final test:

“It shall come to pass

That the glory of Jacob will wane,

And the fatness of his flesh grow lean. …

Yet gleaning grapes will be left in it,

Like the shaking of an olive tree,

Two or three olives at the top of the uppermost bough,

Four or five in its most fruitful branches,”

Says the Lord God of Israel.305

In 34 A. D. the physical nation and race of Israel were rejected, but the true descendants of Abraham repented at Pentecost and had faith in Christ, for “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”306

These contrite believers were the church, the true “nation bearing the fruits.” The church was not an appendage or offshoot from Israel; it was the true Israel.307

It was not persecution that created the test of their “shaking.” The test was brought about by the clear revelation of the gospel. What brought Israel to her final crisis was the life and death of Christ and the apostles’ clear testimony at Pentecost of what it all means. Likewise, it will be a revelation of the truth of righteousness by faith that precipitates the final shaking among God’s professed people today, not persecution. The Lord will do the work, not Satan. He does not need Satan’s cooperation in His final work.

At the beginning of His ministry Christ selected His disciples and ordained them, disciplining them to be a body trained to proclaim the gospel to the world. ‘“He ordained twelve.’ … The first step was now to be taken in the organization of the church that after Christ’s departure was to be His representative on earth.”308 “On this rock [their expressed faith in Him] I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”309 He commissioned them to be a disciplined, unified body: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”310 The apostles were not a disjointed, quadriplegic scattering of “faithful souls.”

The Holy Spirit continued to organize the church and to lead the members toward perfect unity and cohesion. We read an example of how He did this:

The Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.311

We find good news there: the apostles and church elders were responsive to His leading. Our 1888 history is different than that of the apostles. The time has come when we must respond as promptly to His leading today as the apostles did. For the Lord to drag us into His kingdom kicking and resisting every step of the way can bring Him no honor and glory.

In various congregations of the early church there were organization and discipline under the manifest leading of the Holy Spirit. We read that Paul left Titus “in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you.”312 This was the pattern.

When problems of division and heresy threatened, “it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church” to convene the first general council to discuss the issues openly, and unitedly to seek the Holy Spirit’s solution. There was no hierarchical judgment-ruling with “kingly power” to dictate what should be done. The “Jerusalem decree” was the work of lay members and apostles praying together, “the whole church” studying and discussing.313

Even during the Dark Ages period of persecution, evidence indicates that the true church was visible and organized. The messages to the angels of “the seven churches” of Revelation 2 and 3 indicate that the apostolic pattern of organization continued. Many of the records of those churches were destroyed by their enemies, but sufficient have survived to show us that the “faithful souls” of the Dark Ages were coordinated. Inspiration likens the true church of medieval times to a “woman” in “the wilderness,” a symbol of an organized body.314 “There existed for many centuries bodies of Christians who remained almost wholly free from papal corruption. … The Vaudois churches, in their purity and simplicity, resembled the church of apostolic times.”315 In fact, Christ makes a complaint against “the church of Thyatira,” the church in the wilderness, because they were not intradisciplined enough—they permitted “Jezebel” to teach in their midst.316 This implies the presence of order and corporate responsibility.

The Underlying Principle of Church Organization

Christ’s organization of His church is different than that of any business or political entity. Paul’s brilliant idea in 1 Corinthians 12 is inspired: “As the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many are one body, so also is Christ. … You are the body of Christ, and members individually.”317

A “body” is not an uncoordinated, scattered melange of dismembered organs, an eye here and a nose over there, and a stomach somewhere else. Each “member” is joined to the other and to the head. When the early church functioned as a body in disciplined coordination under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Lord respected its organization. For example, when Saul of Tarsus was converted, the Lord brought him into immediate fellowship with His organized church.318

The idea is beautiful good news. Christ being the head, each believer is automatically an important and functioning member of the body. No political or other human organization can possibly enjoy such perfect unity where each member realizes that he or she is especially created to fill a need. Talk about self-esteem! Nothing nurtures it like living membership in the “body of Christ.” Every believing person discovers to his everlasting joy his true sense of self-identity and fulfillment.

A hundred years after Minneapolis and 1888, the time has surely come for us to fulfill Paul’s vision of a perfectly coordinated church where every member feels needed. For nearly two thousand years Paul’s picture of genuine, lasting “church growth” has been awaiting its full realization:

We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, … but speaking the truth in love [agapé], may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying [building up] of itself in love [agapé].319

There are those who fear that the church and its institutions are now too big and complicated for such a beautiful metamorphosis ever to be successful. But the Bible gives no hint anywhere that the growth of the body makes it difficult or impossible for the Holy Spirit to work. What will unify the church is pure, unadulterated truth accepted and promulgated wholeheartedly and unreservedly by its leadership. What happened in 1888 must be replayed, but this time in sanctified reverse.

The Organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

The Holy Spirit led our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers to organize this church:

We sought the Lord with earnest prayer. … Light was given by His Spirit that there must be order and thorough discipline in the church—that organization was essential. … Notwithstanding that the Lord gave testimony after testimony upon this point, the opposition was strong, and it had to be met again and again. … We engaged in the work of organization, and marked prosperity attended this advance movement.320

What is the mind of Christ today toward the organized denomination known as Seventh-day Adventists?

The last book of the Bible is the “revelation of Jesus Christ.” It is there that we can trace His mind toward His church and its destiny from the time of the apostles down to the end of the world. In Revelation 12 He pictures the church as “a woman” opposed by Satan through all the ages of the Christian era. Finally the church in the last days emerges in the final act of the drama as “the remnant of her seed” (KJV) which “keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”321 She is to become the bride of Christ because the time must come when “the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.”322

Thus the outstanding demonstration of this two thousand years of history is the public display of a world church that is as completely loyal to Christ as a loving, faithful bride is loyal to her husband.

Seventh-day Adventists have always believed that their destiny is pictured in these eschatalogical symbols in the Book of Revelation. There is no need now to abandon that conviction held by our forebears for over a century. The true Head of this church is Christ Himself, and His honor and vindication are involved in the victory of this “woman” over her archenemy. He knows a way to bring healing and unity to His “body.”

Ellen White identifies the organized Seventh-day Adventist Church as this “remnant”:

In a special sense Seventh-day Adventists have been set in the world as watchmen and light-bearers. To them has been entrusted the last warning for a perishing world, … [the] proclamation of the first, second, and third angels’ messages. … The most solemn truths ever entrusted to mortals have been given us to proclaim to the world.323

Let us have faith that God is going to carry the noble ship which bears the people of God safely into port.324

I had an impressive dream last night. I thought that you were on a strong vessel, sailing on very rough waters. Sometimes the waves beat over the top, and you were drenched with water. You said, “I shall get off; this vessel is going down.” “No,” said one who appeared to be the captain, “this vessel sails into the harbor. She will never go down.”325

The church may appear as about to fall, but it does not fall. It remains, while the sinners in Zion will be sifted out—the chaff separated from the precious wheat. This is a terrible ordeal, but nevertheless it must take place.326

I am instructed to say to Seventh-day Adventists the world over, God has called us as a people to be a peculiar treasure unto Himself. He has appointed that His church on earth shall stand perfectly united in the Spirit and counsel of the Lord of hosts to the end of time.327

Some of these and other similar statements were made decades after the 1888 experience, indicating that Ellen White still regarded the organized church as the body of Christ, enfeebled and defective as it was. But it must experience repentance and spiritual reformation.

How has Christ regarded this organized church? As He called Abraham and his descendants to witness to His truth in a world of paganism, so He has called Seventh-day Adventists to witness to the apostate Christian churches and to the entire world, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and paganism.

Who Is the Leadership of This Church?

The fundamental issue to be settled is the identity of the true leadership of this church: (a) if it is a fallible hierarchy of men and women, there is no hope for its future, and there is likewise no hope for any offshoot from it to succeed any better; (b) but if we have a firm faith that the Lord Jesus is the true Leader of this church, then we can have confidence that He will cleanse and purify it as He has promised to do. If it was the Lord Jesus who initiated this church’s calling, we can be sure that He knows how to see it through.

The mind of Christ toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church is found in His message in Revelation 3:14-21. No way does He reveal Himself as being indulgent and lackadaisical toward its backslidings and failures. He is a “Faithful and True Witness,” straightforward and direct in correcting His people. He says He is so nauseated with their lukewarmness that He feels on the point of throwing up (this is what the Greek of verse 16 actually says).

He tells them severely that they are “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.” This is a terrible picture! But His loyalty is revealed in intimate family-love, the kind that cannot be misunderstood even when family members are severely chastened: “As many as I love (phileo), I rebuke and chasten.” His solution to our denominational problems is: “Be zealous and repent.”328

The prophecy calls for a people to be raised up in the last days who fulfill the will of God and bring honor and glory to the Lamb. They will provide a convincing answer to the long-delayed Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” They are to share executive authority with Christ in the conclusion of the issues of the great controversy.329

It is the Lord Himself who has denominated that people as Seventh-day Adventists. The dragon’s “rage” has developed into a highly refined, massive “inside job” of inducing discouragement and consequent disloyalty in the hearts of conscientious church members. Some wounded ones believe themselves to have suffered persecution by the church, not realizing that the true source is the “dragon” who is trying to usurp the proper place of Christ in his final “war” with the remnant. The ancient patriarch Job had difficulty knowing who it was who was tormenting him. He thought it was the Lord when in fact it was Satan. It is possible for us also to be confused in these last days.

Our failures and backslidings have indeed been grievous, so much so that Satan points to these to claim them as evidence that Christ has abandoned the church. Yet the Lord can heal our backslidings.330 To human judgment the church may appear to be a vast graveyard of dry bones without life. But the Lord can resurrect them. “Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”331 The Lord has not forgotten this world and its needs. He “is at the head of the work, and He will set everything in order. If matters need adjusting at the head of the work, God will attend to that, and work to right every wrong.”332

The Critical Issue Just Now

However, the Lord needs human agents through whom He can work to “set everything in order.” It is not His plan to work independently of human agents. It is not fair for us to pray, “Lord, will You please do something,” and then to sit back and do nothing. Through union with Christ and close fellowship with Him those who are “crucified with Christ” will “sit” with Him in His throne and thus share with Him the executive authority of working “to right every wrong.”333 The cowardly or proud love of self has been taken to the cross, and the overcomers know the reality of what John means when he says, “Perfect love (agapé) casts out fear.”334 They are not made of sterner or better stuff than others; they have simply seen something that others have not seen—the reality of the cross of Christ. This is true faith, and it has nerved them to stand for the right wherever they are, even though the heavens fall. They are the true Israel who exercise the faith of Abraham.

In a word, it is genuine righteousness by faith that has transformed these naturally timid, shy people into brave Christlike servants of truth. “The one who is feeble among them in that day shall be as David.”335 It has also transformed those whose natural love of self makes them arrogant, abrasive, and pushy, so that “the love (agapé) of Christ constrains” them to demonstrate His meekness and gentleness:

From the light I have, I know that Satan is trying to bring in that which will make people think they have a wonderful work to do. But when God gives a man a message, that man, by his meekness and lowliness, will give evidence that God is working through him. God lives and reigns, and He desires us to walk before Him in humility. He does not wish this man N to force himself before a congregation …

We are not going to be interrupted in meeting after meeting by those who claim they have a message to deliver. He who presses himself forward into a place where he is not wanted is not doing the work of God. We are to work like soldiers in an army. We are not to step out of the ranks, and begin to work on our own account.336

The Holy Spirit has not gone to sleep. He will manifest Himself in a message of truth that is so clear and powerful and so self-humbling that fanaticism and arrogance on the one hand and timidity on the other will vanish:

Amid the confusing cries, “Lo, here is Christ! Lo, there is Christ!” will be borne a special testimony, a special message of truth appropriate for this time, which message is to be received, believed, and acted upon. It is the truth, not fanciful ideas, that is efficacious. The eternal truth of the Word will stand forth free from all seductive errors and spiritualistic interpretations, free from all fancifully drawn, alluring pictures. Falsehoods will be urged upon the attention of God’s people, but the truth is to stand clothed in its beautiful, pure garments, … uncontaminated by the fallacies by which Satan seeks to deceive, if possible, the very elect.337

Abraham, “the father of the faithful,” had to learn to have the faith the Lord has—a faith that “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.”338 So must we. Where we see only dry bones, we must exercise the faith to call “those things which do not exist [apparently] as though they did,” and thus make possible the Lord’s miracle of a new creation, a resurrection from death to spiritual life.

Even if there were not even one faithful Seventh-day Adventist in all the world, he who has the faith of Abraham will believe that the prophecies of Revelation concerning the remnant church must be fulfilled. He will cooperate with the Lord’s work of resurrecting dry bones so that that which does not exist will be.

But in actual fact, it does already exist, for as in Elijah’s day, there are “seven thousand” who do not bow the knee to Baal. They may appear to be hidden, and they may seem to be silent in the crisis; but they await only the revelation of the full truth of righteousness by faith to support fully and fearlessly its regenerating, life-giving work.

No one can follow Christ without taking up his own cross on which the love of self is crucified with Him. The Lord needs every agent through whom He can work to bring revival, repentance, and reformation “to right every wrong.” He needs millions of “Elijahs” who will lovingly yet firmly stand for the right within the church, who have received and appreciated that agapé which casts out fear. Each will bloom where providence has planted him or her, in committees, on church boards, in conference administration, in the classroom, or in the church pew.

The Lord’s Solution to Our Backsliding and Failures

Will the past history of apostasy and failure in Israel always repeat itself?

If the answer is yes, we face nothing but hopeless despair in the future. Even if a pure and holy off-shoot should develop, for God to be fair He must give it time also to grow big and wealthy and succumb to temptation and fail as have all “righteous” movements in the past. If the cycle of failure and apostasy in the organized church is endless, all “reformers” and their organized institutions are likewise doomed to ultimate failure, given enough time. But “present truth” is better news than that.339

The foundation text of the Seventh-day Adventist Church declares that for once in history, history will not be repeated: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days [years]; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”339 That cleansing or making right has never yet in history taken place for the body of the church. In order for the heavenly sanctuary to be cleansed, the Lord’s sanctuary on earth must also be cleansed. The books of heaven can never record the “blotting out of sins” until this work is first accomplished in the hearts of His people on earth, for those heavenly records will never tell a lie. Speaking in context of the 1888 message, Ellen White emphasizes some wonderfully good news:

Christ is in the heavenly sanctuary, and he is there to make an atonement for the people. He is there to present his wounded side and pierced hands to his Father. He is there to plead for his Church that is upon the earth. He is cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. What is our work?—It is our work to be in harmony with the work of Christ. By faith we are to work with him, to be in union with him.340

While Christ is cleansing the sanctuary, the worshippers on earth should carefully review their life, and compare their character with the standard of righteousness. As they see their defects they should seek the aid of the Spirit of God to enable them to have moral strength to resist the temptations of Satan, and to reach the perfection of the standard. They may be victors over the very temptations which seemed too strong for humanity to bear; for the divine power will be combined with their human effort, and Satan cannot overcome them.341

The One who will accomplish that amazing task is the High Priest of the heavenly sanctuary. His business is that of being a Saviour from sin. It is His job to cleanse the sanctuary, not ours; but it is our job to cooperate with Him, to let Him do it, to stop hindering Him “in His office work”:

We are in the day of atonement, and we are to work in harmony with Christ’s work of cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. Let no man who desires to be found with the wedding garment on, resist our Lord in his office work.342

This is the most exciting, glorious hour in which to live. No material or sensual delight the world can offer can compare with the thrill of cooperating with that heavenly High Priest! Let us make sure that we spend our lifetime energies and all that we have in working with Him. Never under any circumstances or under any pressure let yourself work at cross purposes with Him.

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NOTES:

  1. Cf. Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 32-62.
  2. Genesis 12:1-3.
  3. Cf. Jeremiah 32.
  4. See Jeremiah 16:14, 15; 23:3-8; 30:18-31:37.
  5. Cf. Special Testimonies, Series A, No. 6, p. 20; January 16, 1896.
  6. Matthew 21:43.
  7. Romans 9:7.
  8. Isaiah 17:4-6.
  9. Galatians 3:29.
  10. Daniel 9:24; Matthew 21:42-45; Luke 20:16; Acts 13:46; Romans 9:7, 8; 11:17, 25-27.
  11. The Desire of Ages, p. 291.
  12. Matthew 16:18.
  13. John 20:21-23.
  14. Acts 13:1-4.
  15. Titus 1:5-11.
  16. See Acts 15:1-29.
  17. Revelation 12:6.
  18. The Great Controversy, pp. 63,69.
  19. Revelation 2:18-20.
  20. Vss. 12, 27.
  21. Acts 9:10-19; see also Acts of the Apostles, pp. 122, 163.
  22. Ephesians 4:8-16.
  23. Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 26-29.
  24. Vs. 17.
  25. Revelation 19:7.
  26. Testimonies, Vol. 9, p. 19.
  27. Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 390.
  28. Letter to D. M. Canright, Testimonies, Vol. 5, p. 571.
  29. Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 380.
  30. Ibid., p. 397.
  31. Vs. 19.
  32. Vs. 21.
  33. Jeremiah 3:22.
  34. Psalm 121:4.
  35. Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 390.
  36. Revelation 3:21.
  37. 1 John 4:18.
  38. Zechariah 12:8.
  39. Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 71.
  40. Review and Herald, October 13, 1904.
  41. Romans 4:17.
  42. Daniel 8:14; cf. Revelation 11:15; 19:7, 8.
  43. Review and Herald, January 28, 1890.
  44. Ibid., April 8, 1890.
  45. Ibid., January 21, 1890.

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