On a wintry day in 1868, John G. Matteson knocked at the cabin door of a fellow Danish immigrant named C. Nelson, a Baptist preacher. Young Matteson asked if he could come in for a visit, but the Reverend Nelson said, "No."
Thereupon, Matteson tells us, "I felt sorry for him. Quietly taking out my Bible and standing in the snow, I began to read from the Scriptures concerning the love of God and sweet communion in Christ. The preacher was deeply touched! and finally invited me to enter. We wept and prayed, and then we studied the Bible." That same evening Nelson accepted the Adventist message, in due course becoming a Seventh-day Adventist minister. [1]
The love of Jesus presented by Ellen White as she portrayed the "glories of the kingdom of God and the matchless love of a crucified Redeemer" melted the heart of teen-ager Elbert Lane in 1853, leading him into a lifetime of service for His Lord. [2] Her presentation of the same wonderful theme in 1858 following her "great controversy" vision, moved the Battle Creek congregation as they had never been moved before.
None of this should be a surprise. The advent movement was born with its eyes on Jesus. "Jesus is coming soon" was the watch-word of the Millerites. "What is Jesus doing now?" was the question that followed the disappointment. "He has a work to do in the most holy place" was the answer Edson and others discovered and which Sabbath-keeping Adventists set out to tell the world. Seventh-day Adventism is basically a message about Christ and what He has done and is doing to save sinners.
What is surprising, then, is that by the 1880s Seventh-day Adventists were to a large extent losing sight of their Lord. O. A. Olsen, soon to become General Conference president, urged a camp meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1885 to regard their present Sabbath keeping as too legalistic and to embrace anew the righteousness of Christ; [3] but Olsen was an exception. Many other ministers--not all--were emphasizing the obligation of the Sabbath until they had almost excluded a personal relationship with the Lord of the Sabbath. Ellen White spoke often of the charms of Jesus, but her now familiar words, so effective in the 1850s, fell on numb ears. When writers in the Review talked about how men are saved, they were careful to say the right things: We are saved by Christ alone; no man can keep the law in his own strength. But something was missing. Or rather, Someone was missing. Christ was a doctrine, but He was no longer a personal friend to many Adventists as He had once been.
The church was painfully in need of a new depiction of Christ, delineated by dedicated new draftsmen. The artists destined for the job unveiled their new protrait at the General Conference session held in Minneapolis in 1888.
"Minneapolis."
"1888."
The terms go together in Adventist history like husband and wife. [4] They designate one of the most important General Conference sessions, ranking along with 1863 and 1901. Unlike these other sessions, however, Minneapolis 1888 is not famous for either organization or reorganization, but for its proclamation of righteousness by faith.
The twenty-seventh General Conference session convened from October 17 to November 4, 1888, in the brand-new Seventh-day Adventist church at the corner of Lake and Fourth in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was not a large General Conference by modern standards. World membership at the time was only 27,000. The number of delegates present was around ninety.
The progress of new mission fields, the "distribution of labor," city evangelism, a ship to serve the South Sea Islands, and many other such items were taken up; but all the ordinary business of this conference is largely forgotten today. What is still remembered is that "the Lord in His great mercy sent a most precious message to His people through Elders Waggoner and Jones. ... It presented justification through faith in the Surety. It invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God." [5]
Unfortunately, however, this is not quite all that is remembered about Minneapolis 1888. Ellen White also wrote, "I have been instructed [by God] that the terrible experience at the Minneapolis Conference is one of the saddest chapters in the history of the believers in present truth." [6]
Minneapolis 1888 stands in Adventist history as another great opportunity, like the Laodicean appeal of the 1850s, when believers accepted God's offer only in part and rejected it in part. An expectant Father was once more left to wait patiently for His hesitant children. The promise of 1888 is, however, still available to-day.
The two men (our "artists" of a moment ago) who made a most outstanding contribution to this General Conference were Alonzo T. jones and Ellet J. Waggoner. Elder A. T. jones had been born in Ohio in 1850. At twenty he enlisted in the army, where he served for three years, some of the time at a camp near Walla Walla. To make use of his spare hours he studied history, the Bible, and Seventh-day Adventist literature that came his way. After his discharge he was baptized by I.D. Van Horn, married the minister's sister-in-law, and, in course of time, was called to unite with E. J. Waggoner as coeditor of Signs of the Times. In 1886 he and Waggoner became coeditors as well of American Sentinel, the predecessor of Liberty. Jones was especially interested in church-state relations and in the fulfillment of prophecy.
Elder E. J. Waggoner was born in 1855, took a medical degree from Bellevue Medical College in New York (the same school where Dr. J. H. Kellogg earned his degree), and served as a physician at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. After a number of years he left medicine for the gospel ministry and in 1884 joined the staff of Signs of the Times.
In the meantime, on an overcast day in 1882, at a camp meeting near Healdsburg, California, Elder Waggoner enjoyed a noteworthy experience. He was seated at the edge of the congregation. "Suddenly," he wrote later, "a light shone around me, and the tent was, for me, far more brilliantly lighted than if the noon-day sun had been shining, and I saw Christ hanging on the cross, crucified for me. In that moment I had my first positive knowledge, which came like an overwhelming flood, that God loved me, and that Christ died for me." [7] This wonderful assurance was to have an effect, of course, on all his future career.
Waggoner and Jones were different men in rather conspicuous ways. Jones was tall and angular, Waggoner, short and slight. Both became highly effective speakers. The two also became such close friends that they thought alike. On one occasion, when they were scheduled to preach in the same church on two successive Sabbaths, they were surprised later to learn that they had both preached the same sermon. [8]
In a moment we shall look at the message they presented at Minneapolis; first, however, let us ask why it was not accepted by the delegates as it should have been.
For one thing it was, as we indicated in beginning, a new emphasis on Christ, or at least a renewed one. And it wasn't altogether clear to everyone that the message was indeed the truth about Jesus. Waggoner's sermons (he was the principal speaker in this area) were formulated as an interpretation of the "law" in the books of Romans and Galatians. His object was to show that men are saved by the righteousness of Christ, not by obedience to the law. With this basic concept everyone agreed.
But in developing his theme, Waggoner interpreted some verses as referring to the moral law which many Adventists had supposed referred to the ceremonial law. Galatians 3:24, 25, for example, refers to a "schoolmaster" law that brought us to Christ but which "we are no longer under" now that faith has come. For years Adventist evangelists had interpreted this as the ceremonial law, but now Waggoner said it was the moral law, the Ten Commandments.
It is perhaps understandable that some in the audience, not knowing at first what he had in mind, suspected Waggoner of undermining the Sabbath. But this scarcely excuses their hostility. "Many had lost sight of Jesus," Ellen White wrote later. "For years the church has been looking to man ... but not looking to Jesus." [9] Waggoner, however, in connection with what he said about the law had a great deal to say about Jesus. Many in the audience felt he said too much about Him. The world did need to hear about Christ, they conceded, but present truth was the fourth commandment, and if we don't emphasize that, they said, people will think they can go to heaven without it.
So Waggoner's emphasis on Jesus (in relation to the law) was unfamiliar, arousing suspicion. Something else, however, was all too familiar, and it aroused quarrels. This was a debating spirit. Theological debates are rare today, but a century ago they were popular. The position of Adventist evangelists on the Sabbath and the state of the dead was so soundly biblical that they could beat almost anyone; and debates stirred interest in a community, drawing out crowds and leading to baptisms.
But they also nourished an instinct for combat. At the 1888 General Conference some of the delegates, instead of discussing Dr. Waggoner's sermons with him quietly, challenged him to debate. Both he and Jones refused. They had not come to debate, they said, but to study the Bible and to talk about Jesus. A minister, nonetheless, was appointed to take a service and to preach against their position.
At the following service Waggoner and Jones "replied" in a manner that many delegates remembered ever after.
They did not argue. Instead Waggoner stepped into the pulpit, opened the Bible, and read an extensive passage that revealed the truth and soundness of his emphasis on Jesus. The brethren assumed that he was reading the text for his sermon and waited impatiently for him to get through. But when he finished the passage he simply sat down without adding a word of his own. Then A. T. jones got up, read another passage, and sat down. The two of them kept this up alternately until they had read sixteen passages. The meeting was closed with prayer. That was all. The impression was profound.
A third problem at this meeting, in addition to the spirit of debate and the newness of emphasis, was the difference in age between the two men from California and the leaders from Battle Creek who opposed them. Whereas the General Conference president was fifty-four and Uriah Smith was fifty-six, Jones was thirty-eight and Waggoner, only thirty-three.
But we need not make much of this generation gap. Mrs. White, who took her stand firmly beside Waggoner and Jones, was one of the oldest people at the session. She was sixty!
But another cause of misunderstanding, one we must not pass over lightly, was a mistake made by Waggoner and Jones themselves.
Their understanding of righteousness by faith seemed so wonderful to them that they could not wait to write a book about it and to publish articles on it in Signs of the Times during the years before the Minneapolis conference. They knew very well that they were in disagreement with the General Conference president and with Editor Uriah Smith, but they had the truth, the truth about Jesus, and they felt that they must proclaim it to the public no matter what the "old guard" in Battle Creek made of it.
If they had shown more tact, they might have saved much trouble for themselves and for the church. As it was, they caused the older leaders to look on them with deep concern--and this explains to a large extent why the older men could not "hear" the beautiful things they said at Minneapolis 1888.
Mrs. White was in Europe when Waggoner and Jones published their new views. "I have no hesitancy in saying you have made a mistake here," she wrote. "You have now set the example for others to do as you have done, to feel at liberty to put in their various ideas and theories and bring them before the public, because you have done this. This will bring in a state of things that you have not dreamed of." She concluded: "We must keep before the world a united front. Satan will triumph to see differences among Seventh-day Adventists. [10]
But not everyone at the Minneapolis General Conference rejected the message. Not by any means. For some it was the beginning of a thrilling new experience. One delegate, for instance, returned to his church in Wisconsin so excited about righteousness by faith that a farmer in his congregation caught his enthusiasm, sold his farm at once, gave a large donation to the denomination, and was accepted into the ministry. A young pastor who arrived in Minneapolis "full of prejudice" (to use his own words) was totally surprised at the beauty of the presentations, went out into the woods near the church, spent an afternoon with God and his Bible, and then and there found Christ as His personal Saviour. Elder S. N. Haskell, the chairman, Elder Louis Johnson, Elder. J. O. Corliss, and others were also greatly blessed. One minister, and possibly others, recognized that their new relationship with Jesus was so different from the old that they actually asked to be rebaptized.
Furthermore, during the early 1890s some of the delegates who had taken the wrong stand in 1888 made heartfelt confessions. Elder Uriah Smith was one of these. Shortly before Ellen White left for Australia in 1891, he not only apologized to her and to others in private, but he also stood in front of the great Tabernacle congregation to confess the wrong he had committed at Minneapolis. That took courage!
And many of the rank and file responded to the new message with hungry eagerness. Elder Waggoner, Elder Jones, and Mrs. White spent much of the year following Minneapolis 1888 conducting revival services in local churches, ministerial institutes, and camp meetings. In that one year between General Conference sessions, Ellen White, often in the company of one or both of the two men, visited Battle Creek (seven times), Potterville, Des Moines, South Lancaster, Brooklyn, Washington, Williamsport (twice), New York (twice), Chicago, Ottawa, Wexford, Kalamazoo, Saginaw, the state of Colorado, Healdsburg, and Oakland. These were not casual contacts but occasions of herculean labor, preaching, appealing, counseling, exhorting, praying, until opposition melted, tears flowed, sins were confessed, hands were reclasped in friendship, and radiant faces attested victory and new birth. On a Friday night at the end of a series in South Lancaster, Massachusetts, a testimony service started on its own accord and went on for several hours. Ellen White commented: "I have never seen a revival work go forward with such thoroughness, and yet remain so free from all undue excitement." [11] In July 1889 she could say, "In every meeting since the General Conference souls have eagerly accepted the precious message of the righteousness of Christ." [12] And a few months later: "They [people attending the 1889 General Conference] say that the past year has been the best of their life." [13]
Elder Jones was soon looked up to as the leading theologian in the denomination. Elder Waggoner, sent as a missionary to England, was also highly regarded.
So wonderful, indeed, was the response that membership grew at an average rate of nearly 10 percent a year, almost tripling the 1888 total by 1901 despite the problems we shall have to take up in our next chapter.
Many looked for the latter rain to fall and for the work to end in a short while. In fact, Ellen White wrote, "The dispensation in which we are now living is ... the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. ... It is the time of the latter rain." [14]
So much for the setting. Now for a look at the 1888 message itself.
As we have said, Waggoner's sermons in Minneapolis focused on Jesus Christ. Ellen White enthusiastically and gratefully summarized them as "the matchless charms of Christ." [15]
We do not possess today the actual message that Waggoner delivered. We may, however, arrive close to it if we examine the books he published before and after the conference. One of these is appropriately titled, Christ and His Righteousness.
The entire book talks about Jesus. Christ is our Saviour in the fullest sense of the word. There is no other name than His whereby men can be saved. Jesus is filled with all the fullness of the Godhead, and He desires to fill us too with divine power. Colossians 2:9; Ephesians 3:19.
This wonderful Jesus offers freely to forgive all our sins and to clothe us with His righteousness. And the righteousness He wants to give us is not something make-believe. God does not forgive us while leaving us the same as we were before. God "does not furnish a cloak for sin, but takes the sin away. ... The forgiveness of sin is something more than a mere form, something more than a mere entry in the books of record in heaven. ... The forgiveness of sins is a reality; it is something tangible, something that vitally affects the individual." When he is forgiven, a sinner becomes a new creature. [16]
But, Waggoner suggested, it may be that you feel so unworthy that you cannot believe God can accept you as His child.
To settle this problem he asked a question: "Will a man receive that which he has bought?"
If a man goes to a store, Waggoner inquired, asks for something and then pays for it, will he suddenly change his mind and leave the place without taking it with him? Of course he won't. If he pays for it, he will take it. And the more he pays for it, the more certain he is to take it. Now, Jesus has paid for us. He has paid the highest price possible, "the precious blood of Christ." (1 Peter 1:19) Indeed, He "gave himself for us." (Titus 2:14) Thus, Waggoner concluded, you can be certain that He will accept you!
But why would He pay so much for someone who is so very unworthy? He bought you because you are unworthy, Waggoner replied--so that when He has transformed you and is able to present you faultless before the universe, He can rejoice over the marvelous change He has made in you. [17]
But righteousness by faith is much more than forgiveness; it is also victory over sin. In His humanity Christ lived a righteous life, and "you may have the same power that He had if you want it," Waggoner continued. "What wonderful possibilities there are for the Christian! ... No matter how much Satan may war against him, assaulting him where the flesh is weakest, he may abide under the shadow of the Almighty, and be filled with the fullness of God's strength." Christ, who is far stronger than Satan, may dwell continually in the Christian's heart; "and so, looking at Satan's assaults as from a strong fortress, he [the Christian] may say, 'I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.' " [18]
Strange as it seems, many Christians find that praying for help to overcome their sins only leaves them more inclined to do wrong than if they didn't pray. Why? What do they do wrong?
They make the mistake, Waggoner explained, of telling God their problems before reminding Him of His promises. Praying about problems directs our attention to our weakness, and thus makes us weaker. To get real help we should direct our attention to God's power and to His promises. At the very least, Waggoner said, a tempted Christian can remember the promise, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." (1 Timothy 1:15) He can therefore begin His prayer by quoting this promise and fastening his attention on it; and as he does so, he will have faith.
"Then," Waggoner continued, "we remember that ... if God gives a promise, it is as good as fulfilled already. And so ... we count the victory as already ours, and begin to thank God for His 'exceeding great and precious promises.' As our faith grasps these promises and makes them real, we cannot help praising God for His wonderful love; and while we are doing this, our minds are wholly taken from doing evil, and the victory is ours." [19]
So much for Waggoner's presentations. Ellen White also spoke frequently at Minneapolis 1888. The sermon she preached on Sabbath afternoon, October 13, was especially helpful. [20] Her text was, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us," and her message was that we should do just that; we should train our minds to "behold," or think about, God's love for us. It was the same point Waggoner made--about thinking of God's promises instead of our own troubles.
How is the water lily able to float so pure and white above the scum and dirt of the lake? She asked. Because it selects out of its environment only that which will make it a pure white lily! In the same way, she counseled the delegates, "do not talk of the iniquity and wickedness that are in the world, but elevate your minds and talk of your Saviour. ... Talk of those things that will leave a good impression on the mind."
If you are down in a basement of discouragement, she said, do not complain about the darkness. Grumbling won't make the lights come on. Step up out of the basement! "Come out of the dark into the upper chamber where the light of God's countenance shines brightly."
Don't complain, either, about the thorns and brambles of life. Gather the flowers! "We want to have our minds on the encouraging things."
"Let the sound be heard of what Christ has done for me,"
Elder Waggoner showed that righteousness by faith happens when Christians claim God's promises. Similarly, Ellen White said, "I want you to take the rich promises of God and hang memory's halls with them. ... Oh, I want the promises of God to be the living pictures on memory's walls, that you can look at them. Then your heart can be filled with His grace and you may exalt Jesus."
The congregation listened with hushed rapture as she closed her sermon: "Oh, I love Him. I love Him, for He is my love. I see in Him matchless charms, and oh, how I want that we shall enter in through the gates into the city. ... I wish you would educate your hearts and lips to praise Him, to talk of His power and glory. ... God help us to praise Him more and to be found faultless."
In another major sermon, [21] Ellen White spoke of Christ at work in the heavenly sanctuary, making atonement for us. While He is cleansing the heavenly sanctuary, she said, we should cleanse our own "soul sanctuaries" by entering into the heavenly sanctuary with Him, confessing our sins, and grasping His arm by faith.
In this relationship with Jesus there is not only forgiveness but also power to overcome. "We hear many excuses," she observed in this sermon. People say, "I cannot live up to this or that. What do you mean by this or that?" she asked. "Do you mean that it was an imperfect sacrifice that was made for the fallen race upon Calvary, that there is not sufficient grace and power granted us that we may work away from our own natural defects and tendencies?"
(It was hard for many Adventists to believe this wonderful promise. Sixteen years later, in 1904, Ellen White lamented: "In the lives of many of those whose names are on the church books there has been no genuine change. ... They profess to accept Christ as their Saviour, but they do not believe that He will give them power to overcome their sins." [22])
Shortly after 1888 (if we may leave Minneapolis) Ellen White published Steps to Christ. In it she continued to explain righteousness by faith and how it works.
For instance, speaking of how fully and wonderfully God forgives sin, she said, "If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous. Christ's character stands in place of your character, and you are accepted before God just as if you had not sinned." [23]
This is marvelous; but it isn't all. We can go on from day to day, knowing that He loves us and not worrying about our salvation. (The way to salvation is righteousness by faith, not righteousness by worry!) "We should not make self the center and indulge anxiety and fear as to whether we shall be saved," she wrote. [24]
Does this mean there is nothing that we should do? No, there is something we must do. It is, again, the same thing Elder Waggoner and Ellen White emphasized in 1888. We must choose to think and talk of His promises. "Commit the keeping of your soul to God, and trust in Him. Talk and think of Jesus. ... Put away all doubt; dismiss your fears. ... Rest in God. ... If you will leave yourself in His hands, He will bring you off more than conqueror through Him that has loved you." [25]
But doesn't the Bible say that Christians should watch and strive and pray? Yes it does, as in Matthew 26:41 and Luke 13:24. But Ellen White told Adventists in 1892 that they were not so much to strive against sin as to strive to think about Jesus. "Here is where we need to watch, to strive, to pray, that nothing may entice us to choose another master; for we are always free to do this. But let us keep our eyes fixed upon Christ, and He will preserve us. Looking unto Jesus, we are safe. ... In constantly beholding Him, we 'are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.' (2 Corinthians 3:18)" [26]
It was a fresh breeze blowing in the church, this emphasis on the matchless charms of Christ.
Notes: