There is no way to read the counsels of Ellen White without knowing that she has stated hundreds of times that the Lord intended the second advent to be very near. But the last words from her pen were written more than three-quarters of a century ago. We must honestly confess that there has been a delay.
With this acknowledged delay, we must also confess that the latter rain is a pending blessing which we have only talked about so far but have not yet received. The "former rain" in the days of the apostles became a fact only after there was a blessed fusion between prophecy and understanding. This accounts for the piercing words of Christ as He talked with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. They had seen the events that startled all Jerusalem, but they did not understand the issues. Very frankly Jesus told them:
"O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke 24:25-27)
It was after this basic teaching that discernment anointed their eyes. The account makes clear that "then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures" (verse 45).
Understanding came before the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the disciples' experience is to be found the destiny of Seventh-day Adventists. What they passed through may be accepted as merely a shadow of the real blessing that awaits an end-time fulfillment in the outpouring of the latter rain. Christ's diagnosis of the apostles' need demanded the death of pre-conceptions and misconceptions, and such a demand is infinitely was raised up by God to burst the old wine skins of tradition by revolutionary insight that would lighten the earth with glory. But until the truth of our situation is fully realized, the delay will be a continuing sorrow, and the continued knowledge that the latter rain has not come will confirm our plight.