Grace on Trial—Robert J. Wieland
Grace on Trial

Chapter Three

CHRIST’S COMING: HOW SOON IS “SOON”?

The name “Adventist” means a person who believes that Christ’s second coming is near. More than that, the name means one who loves the thought that it is near.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church sprang from a phenomenal conviction in the hearts of humble Christians who discovered in the Bible a prophetic roadmap. To them the books of Daniel and Revelation pointed out that mankind’s weary journey in this world of sin was about at its end. This was great good news. Our unique Adventist roots go back to the time when many Christians of different denominations first saw these prophetic books as “unsealed.”

But Adventism burst upon the Christian world almost as a new revelation. A few individuals through the centuries had spoken of the second coming of Christ as near, but no significant movement had ever risen which clearly understood how a connected series of Bible prophecies proved that it was near.

It was as though the church had been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle for nearly eighteen hundred years and suddenly awoke to a new experience—anticipating the imminent return of Jesus. This phenomenal new life followed the end of the prophetic period of 1260 years when “the time of the end” began in 1798.25

Many rejoiced to trace these “waymarks” on the prophetic roadmap. The personal return of the beloved Saviour in their lifetime became a “blessed hope.” The thought of Christ’s return and the setting up of His kingdom was equivalent to the joy that winning the sweepstakes would be to us.

The news that a sinful world’s journey was almost over was thrilling to them, not because they longed for relief from physical toil and privation, but because their hearts were in union with Christ. They appreciated His character of love and worshiped Him.

For a remnant there was no self-centered concern to cloud the bright flame of that devotion.

A “First” Since Apostolic Times

The 1840s movement was the first time since the apostles that Jesus could find a community of believers on earth whose hearts were knit with His in joyful expectation of His soon return. They were among those of whom Jesus said, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”26

Devotion similar to that of the early Christians at Pentecost marked these pioneers. It leaped across the centuries like fire blown by the wind. Joseph Bates spent his life savings on spreading the message so that he came to face old age nearly penniless. Uriah Smith gave up a promising career for the toil and privations of Adventist editing. His sister Annie prematurely burned out the strength of her youth. Others sold farms and gave the proceeds to the cause. Young people such as the Loughboroughs and James and Ellen White threw themselves wholeheartedly into the movement. The taste of Adventism was in their “mouth sweet as honey.”27

The yellowed pages of their letters and journals testify to the joy they cherished in the “blessed hope.” A bride’s anticipation of union with her bridegroom depicts the thrill of the message that gave birth to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Cold theology and prosaic mathematics that unraveled Daniel’s 2300 or 1290 days could never stir human hearts and emotions like that. The church was about to welcome a Loved One who had been absent a long, long time. It was not superficial emotionalism, but a gripping experience that Ellen White called “heartwork.”28 It was the pure authentic joy of heart, the all-risking abandon that some youth seek vainly in a drug-induced “high” but never attain, because they find only its counterfeit.

All infatuation of illicit love, all idolatry even of valid human love, is a vain search for a reality that exists only in Christ. The mysterious charm that shines in an attractive human face is only a dim reflection of the light of His face. Romeo and Juliet die for a failure to see Him. Gilda sings her beautiful “Caro Nome” in Rigoletto to express her love for her Walter, not knowing that the only name that thrills forever is that of Jesus.

The youth who pioneered the Seventh-day Adventist Church needed no chemical dependency, no alcohol, no affaire de coeur, to relieve soul-boredom. They knew firsthand the thrill that inspired Charles Wesley to sing, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” They had rediscovered what the youthful Saul of Tarsus found on his way to Damascus when a glorious light blinded his eyes and illuminated his soul forever after. Paul was never disobedient to the heavenly vision even until that day when he glimpsed sunlight for the last time as the headsman’s axe fell. He bequeathed his joy “unto all them also that love His appearing.”29

This Love Affair with Christ Is True Adventism

The all-too-common motivation of fear of judgment and hope of personal reward in heaven is a pathetic distortion of Adventism.

Our youthful pioneers knew something of the phenomenal faith that gripped the hearts of apostolic Christians. Long before his day, the martyrs in the Roman Empire could have sung Isaac Watts’ hymn:

When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine

That were a tribute far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine

Demands my heart, my life, my all.

For these early Adventists, to be with Jesus was heaven enough because their hearts appreciated the love that led Him to His cross. Sabbath-keeping in difficult economic conditions was not too much sacrifice to make for truth. No missionary service, no exile of ministry in lonely “dark” foreign land, was too arduous a deprivation. Calls to service elicited no questions about the pay, the perks, or terms of service. Medical or retirement “benefits” never crossed their minds. Jesus said “Go ye!” and fellowship with Him was remuneration enough. Their faith was expressed by one of them:

May 14, 1851, I saw the beauty and loveliness of Jesus. As I beheld His glory, the thought did not occur to me that I should ever be separated from His presence.30

The thought of “the blessed hope” sustained them through trials that we find more difficult to endure as its nearness recedes from our modern vision.

For example, as early as 1850 Ellen White was saying:

Some are looking too far off for the coming of the Lord. Time has continued a few years longer than they expected … I saw that the time for Jesus to be in the most holy place was nearly finished, and that time can last but a very little longer.31

One of her last appeals is unusually fervent:

The coming of Christ is near, and hasteth greatly. The time in which to labor is short, and men and women are perishing. Said the angel, “Should not the men who have had great light co-operate with Him who sent His Son to the world to give light and salvation to men?”32

How Soon is “Soon”?

Can we continue forever saying that the return of Christ is “soon”? Why has time continued for so many decades after the Lord’s servant said that it “is near,” and “the time … is short”?

She said something at a conference of believers in Battle Creek in May, 1856 that has now become perplexing:

I was shown the company present at the Conference. Said the angel, “Some food for worms, some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus.”33

This statement is a stumblingblock to some because of the obvious fact that all who were “present at the Conference” in 1856 have become “food for worms,” and none are “alive and remain.” The question is often asked, Was Ellen White a false prophet?

In seeking to defend her credibility, it is common to say that such a prophecy is “conditional,” that is, its fulfillment depends on the faithfulness of God’s people. But this explanation can also widen still further the gap of Ellen White’s credibility. If the prophecies that declare the end to be near are “conditional” on the faithfulness of God’s people, what will happen if God’s people forever prove to be unfaithful? This explanation can convey terribly bad news. So far, God’s people have indeed been unfaithful. Because of our unbelief, time has continued far beyond what it should have. Will the end therefore never be truly near? How near is “near”?

This 1856 statement must be understood in its proper context. Ellen White’s credibility is not at issue. She was merely reporting what she heard the “angel” say. She herself never offered her own personal prediction that people alive in 1856 would see the Lord come without tasting death. “The angelsaid so.

Someone may object that this makes matters worse: now it appears that we cannot trust the angels. Not so. The angel was sincere and in his perfect right to make this statement in 1856 when the Laodicean message was first understood and accepted by God’s remnant people. It was the influence of holy angels who brought to the hearts of those early Adventists the conviction that the loud cry would begin within the lifetime of people at the conference in 1856. And Jesus tells us that no “angels which are in heaven” know the actual time of His second coming.34

But even though he is not omniscient, the angel used good angelic judgment. From his knowledge of the holy prophecies and of the repentant faith of the believers in 1856, he had every reason to expect the good news that in those “days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.”35 The angel knew that the final cosmic Day of Atonement had begun, when the heavenly sanctuary should at last be cleansed. Something was to happen that had never happened in previous history.

Heaven Did Not Let the Angel Down

In precise fulfillment of the 1856 vision, the Lord sent the “beginning” of the latter rain and the loud cry 32 years later, well within the lifetime of people who attended the 1856 Battle Creek conference. A marvelous event occurred at that humble gathering of Adventist leaders in the Minneapolis Seventh-day Adventist Church:

The time of test is just upon us, for the loud cry of the third angel has already begun in the revelation of the righteousness of Christ, the sin-pardoning Redeemer. This is the beginning of the light of the angel whose glory shall fill the whole earth.36

This had never happened before. Thoughtful church members were thrilled by a statement sent from Australia at the 1893 General Conference Session: “Sister White says that we have been in the time of the latter rain since the Minneapolis meeting.”37

Although Ellen White said several times that the end could have come at various times between 1844 and 1888 if God’s people had been faithful, she never said that it could have come without the latter rain falling first. No grain can get ripe for a harvest without it. Therefore any statements that say the end could have come before 1888 must be understood as requiring that the latter rain and the proclamation of the loud cry message would have come first. Never at any time did Ellen White declare that such had begun in any message or revival prior to 1888.

There is a great difference between the early rain outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the latter rain. Jesus likens His church to a garden crop to be harvested:

“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”38

Does “the harvest” come when people die, or at the second coming of Christ? We find the answer in Revelation:

And I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, ‘Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.39

What a beautifully expressive symbol! The One who went to the cross for us, who poured out His soul unto death, who suffered unspeakable agonies for our redemption, looks upon that ripened “grain” as the hard-won fruit of all His sacrifice.

All of earth’s thousands of years of history have been the growing season preparatory to this moment of “harvest” when He personally returns. Out of earth’s billions of inhabitants of all ages there comes at last a remnant of precious souls who gladly receive the showers of the latter rain. Their mature faith has at last produced in a community of believers a reflection of the beauty of Christ’s character. Without fail, “the great, grand work of bringing out a people who will have Christlike characters, and who will be able to stand in the day of the Lord, is to be accomplished.”40

This is the “practical godliness” fruitage of the cleansing of the sanctuary. “Just as soon as the people of God are sealed in their foreheads—it is not any seal or mark that can be seen, but a settling into the truth, both intellectually and spiritually, so they cannot be moved—just as soon as God’s people are sealed and prepared for the shaking, it will come.”41 Tons of ore have at last yielded an ounce of purest gold. Heaven rejoices that the sacrifice of Christ is fully rewarded in a people whose mature faith has produced mature righteousness. At last, righteousness by faith has come into its own:

Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own.42

Note that no one prepares himself or herself for “the harvest.” The latter rain causes the grain to ripen. Our part is to welcome that blessing, and not to fight it off and resist it.

Ever since early days, Adventists have looked forward to the miracle-working effects of the latter rain. As she saw it in vision Ellen White’s description of it quickens the pulse:

I heard those clothed with the armor speak forth the truth with great power. It had effect. Many had been bound; some wives by their husbands, and some children by their parents. The honest who had been prevented from hearing the truth now eagerly laid hold upon it. All fear of their relatives was gone, and the truth alone was exalted to them. It was dearer and more precious than life. I asked what had made this great change. An angel answered, “It is the latter rain, the refreshing from the presence of the Lord, the loud cry of the third angel.”43

The early rain fell at Pentecost, and has been received ever since through the past two thousand years as untold multitudes of human souls have prepared for death.

But there must come a change before Christ’s second coming. A people must be prepared, not for death, but for translation without seeing death. Another great outpouring of the Holy Spirit will accomplish a work that makes ready a church, a community of believers, for the coming of the Lord. It also empowers them to complete the great unfinished commission of proclaiming the everlasting gospel to all the world. This final outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the latter rain.

Praying for Something While We Resist It

The truth of our history indicates that all the while we have been praying for the gift to come during this past century, we have unwittingly been resisting it. Our brethren who prayed for it between 1856 and 1888 resisted it when it finally came, and the Jews who prayed for the coming of their Messiah for two thousand years rejected Him when He came.

Some feel discouraged because they think that this syndrome of rejecting Heaven’s blessing must continue on and on. But this is not, cannot be, true. Grace must not be forever on trial.

Because the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were unfaithful in ancient times, and the Jews rejected Christ and the Christian church has done little better, they mournfully conclude that the organized remnant church today has doomed itself to ultimate failure as well. But there is a truth that these discouraged ones have overlooked. The Lord has staked His eternal honor on His word: “Unto two thousand three hundred days [years ending in 1844] then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”44

This Bible truth is unique to Seventh-day Adventists, the foundation of their denominational existence. Something is to happen in this cosmic Day of Atonement that has never happened before. And here we come to the mysterious parting of the ways between faith and unbelief. Faith believes that prophecy of Daniel and cooperates with the great High Priest in His closing work of atonement.

Such faith will cease resisting the latter rain blessing. It will surrender to the cross whereon self is crucified “with Christ.” God has chosen to exercise faith in His people that they will not let Him down,45 and the previously unending syndrome of unbelief and unfaithfulness is at last broken.

Getting ready while still alive to meet the Judge of all the earth face to face when He returns personally the second time—this strikes terror to many stout hearts. Those who blithely dismiss this experience as nothing serious just haven’t given thought to it. But the 1888 message was sent to assuage this fear and to prepare a people for the end.

From 1844 to 1888 many honest, sincere hearts rejoiced to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, but it was always that of the early rain. During that time, there was no latter rain. A distinct line of demarcation exists between the early rain and the latter rain, and 1888 is that dividing line.

These facts help tremendously to understand the mystery of the long delay in the return of Christ. Our early pioneers’ faith in His soon coming was not rustic naïveté. Holy Scripture did indeed support their convictions. The early apostles of the Lord would have welcomed the latter rain if they had been alive. The delay is not God’s fault. True faith in Christ’s closing work of atonement will resolve the confusion and make “soon” surely become soon.

What Adventism Should Have Been

Adventism is the movement that should have brought fruition to two thousand years of Christianity. It was to complete the arrested Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and recover the truths that even John and Charles Wesley in the eighteenth century could not quite touch with their finger-tips.

The world stage in the nineteenth century was set for the end of the reign of sin and suffering. Events in the political world, the juxtaposition of Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, and paganism, were a perfect line-up of the scenario of Daniel and Revelation. It is astounding but true that before the inventions of radio, TV, jet travel, and computers, it would have been easier and quicker to take the message to the whole world of that day than is our task today.

The proclamation of the gospel of Christ requires effective communication of one human heart to another, not merely visual or audio exposure to electronic stimuli. The avenues of that effective communication were open in the 1888 era; it was easier to grip the attention of people then than it is now. Our most effective electronic presentations today are quickly drowned out by the never-ending flood of sophisticated entertainment often inspired by Satan.

By neglecting our 1888 opportunity we have made our task more difficult today, so much so that for many Seventh-day Adventists, especially youth, the entire prophetic picture has slipped out of focus. So vast and complex are the needs of world population for social betterment that many can now see only many years of “social gospel” work. For example, millions caught in chemical and alcohol dependency and poor diet need physical deliverance before they can even begin to comprehend the gospel. Hundreds of millions, even billions, are so ground down by the economic struggle to survive in crowded urban and village existence that they can hardly “hear” our message.

A Century of Delay Intensifies Our Problem

A major segment of the world is held in such an iron-fisted grip that for many Adventists the third angel’s message which warns against “the mark of the beast” now appears archaic and irrelevant. The weary passage of a century of mysterious delay has antiquated Adventism for them.

To many of this generation the Papacy no longer appears to be the “beast.” Now, they think, it must be some other world power. Prophetic certainties we have held in the past no longer make sense. Both “liberals” and “conservatives” in the church try to reinterpret Daniel and Revelation, none agreeing with each other, and all succeeding only in deepening the confusion.

Can we get the picture back into focus again?

Yes, but not by trying to re-interpret the prophecies. The first step is to recover what we lost in 1888. There we will find solid truth confirmed by the Spirit of Prophecy. Once that picture comes back into focus, a unified conviction will also once again make sense of the prophecies.

Fortunately, the “beginning” of the latter rain and the loud cry was not a subjective experience of elusive revival in the church. The good news is that it was the objective truth of the 1888 message of Christ’s righteousness. That is something that we can recover.
Could anything be more important than rediscovering that “loud cry” message which was so indited by the Holy Spirit?

Read Chapter 4 — If It Isn’t Interesting, Maybe It Isn’t True


NOTES:

  1. Daniel 7:25; 11:33-35; 12:4; Revelation 12:6,14; 13:5.John 20:29.
  2. See Revelation 10:9.
  3. See Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 1, p. 663; Vol. 4, p. 601; Vol. 5, p. 306.
  4. 2 Timothy 4:8.
  5. Early Writings, p. 70.
  6. Ibid., p. 58.
  7. Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 9, p. 105; 1909.
  8. Ibid., Vol.1, pp. 131,132.
  9. Mark 13:32.
  10. Revelation 10:7.
  11. Review and Herald, November 22,1892; Selected Messages, Book One, p. 363; A. G. Daniells, Christ Our Righteousnes, p. 56; see also Selected Messages, Book One, pp. 234, 235.
  12. General Conference Bulletin, 1893, p. 377.
  13. Mark 4:26-29, NKJV.
  14. Revelation 14:14-16, NKJV.
  15. Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, p. 129.
  16. Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Vol. 4, p. 1161.
  17. Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 69.
  18. Early Writings, p. 271.
  19. Daniel 8:14.
  20. See Galatians 2:20; Romans 3:3, 4.

Read Chapter 4 — If It Isn’t Interesting, Maybe It Isn’t True


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