The position we expressed so frankly in 1950 is what the authors are now urged to “confess,” apologize for, and retract before the Church. Movement of Destiny requires from the authors this “confession” thus:
… Echoers still persist, maintaining that the leadership of the Movement, at that time, [1888] “rejected” the message of Righteousness by Faith, and thereby incurred the continuing disfavor of God.
And along with that assumption and assertion goes a contention that until and unless the Movement as a whole today—nearly eighty years later—repents as a body in sackcloth and ashes for the sins of the “some” who, back at that fateful time, did definitely reject the Minneapolis Message at and following 1888, the smile and benediction of God will never rest upon the Advent people and Movement, and its message will never be consummated under present conditions.
In other words, such maintain that the Loud Cry and Latter Rain will never be visited upon us until that retroactive penitence requirement is met through some official acknowledgement and action. …
Such a contention is a grave charge for anyone to bandy about. …
… If the charge be not true, an explicit confession is due the Church today by promulgators of a misleading charge, first of all against the names of the post-1888 leadership, now all sleeping. Moreover, it is likewise due those in the Church today who have been confused and misled by such an allegation. In the ultimate, then, it actually constitutes an impeachment of the dead. That is a gravely serious matter.—Pages 357, 358.
The entire issue is indeed “a gravely serious matter” and one that needs to be settled before the Church can come into the unity of the faith necessary for its final victory.