The author is a Seventh-day Adventist
minister whose career includes 20 years as a pastor in the United States
and 24 years in African Mission work where he served as Field
administrator, founder of the East African Voice of Prophecy, and author
and editor for the Africa Herald Publishing House. His latest appointment
has been that of Adventist All Africa Editorial Consultant. His
evangelistic writings have been widely published all over Africa.
No cache of buried treasure could have
thrilled Robert J. Wieland more than his youthful discovery that the
message of Christ's righteousness constitutes "the third angel's
message in verity." This idea has lent a distinctive touch to his
ministry. For over 34 years he has sensed a compulsion to dig into buried
facts of the 1888 message and history, discovering that for nearly a
decade Ellen White endorsed that message nearly 300 times as "most
precious," "just what the people needed," "a draught
from the well of Bethlehem," the surprising "beginning" of
the long-awaited latter rain and loud cry of Revelation 18.
Yet the author has been puzzled that a
work which inspiration said must go "as fire in the stubble"
should smolder for nearly a century. His conclusion: some enemy has tried
to put out the fire that the Lord Himself lit.
The Knocking at the Door (written
1974) seeks to relate Christ's special message to the Laodicean
Seventh-day Adventist Church to a strange reluctance to respond to His
loving invitation in the 1888 message. The basic idea turns out to be
disturbing, even shocking. The author traces our current denominational
problems to a single prime source: our failure to let that loving One in
who has kept knocking at our "door" for over a century. He
believes that the Lord is still knocking, and that there is a solution of
hope: denominational repentance.
The idea of publishing this book in this
form is not the author's initiative. It has been conceived by a group of
concerned pastors and laymen.
