Another question will occur to the thoughtful reader: “Granted that the post-1888 leadership never recovered what they lost by rejecting the beginning of the Latter Rain, and granted that they all had to go into their graves rather than enjoy the privilege of translation—did not the 1901 General Conference Re-organization cancel out the 1888 failure and undo the damage done in the previous thirteen years? Did not the 1901 Conference reverse the trend and bring in victory?” If the answer to this question is “yes,” there is indeed no need for denominational repentance, and we owe the Church an apology as Movement of Destiny says.
The General Conference have recognized how important this question is. In 1966 the Review and Herald published a volume dedicated to the idea that the 1901 Conference did indeed reverse the trend and brought in “victory.” The book was significantly titled, Through Crisis to Victory 1888-1901. The Foreword says:
“The thirteen years between Minneapolis, 1888, and the General Conference session of 1901 were … a period over which Providence could spell out the word victory.”— Page 7.
The main purpose of writing the book was to counteract the influence which the circulation of 1888 Re-examined had had throughout the world field. The author of Through Crisis to Victory, through interviews and correspondence, became acutely aware of the misleading conclusions that some Seventh-day Adventists had reached relative to the General Conference held in Minneapolis in the autumn of 1888, and the aftermath of that historic session. It was apparent that not a few had formed opinions based on fragmentary bits of information, and also that at times other major issues of the thirteen years following 1888 were mistakenly confused with the problems of that meeting.—Page 7.
It is abundantly clear that 1888 was the time of the “crisis” so far as finishing the work of God in that generation is concerned. That was the issue—receiving the Latter Rain and proclaiming the Loud Cry. To be perfectly honest, one must say that in that respect, 1888 was not only a “crisis,” but defeat. We ask, as 1888 was in this respect “crisis,” was 1901 really and truly “victory”?
Again we must turn to the actual testimony of the Spirit of Prophecy. A retired Conference president placed in our hands the following unpublished Ellen G. White correspondence which sets forth her retrospective views of the actual results of that 1901 Conference Session. What Ellen G. White says is distinctly different from the picture given in Through Crisis to Victory. She writes a year and a half later:
Had thorough work been done during the last General Conference [1901] at Battle Creek; had there been as God designed there should be, a breaking up of the fallow ground of the heart, by the men who had been bearing responsibilities; had they, in humility of soul, led out in the work of confession and consecration; had they given evidence that they received the counsels and warnings sent by the Lord to correct their mistakes, there would have been one of the greatest revivals that there has been since the day of Pentecost.
What a wonderful work could have been done for the vast company gathered in Battle Creek at the General Conference of 1901, if the leaders of our work had taken themselves in hand. But the work that all heaven was waiting to do as soon as men prepared the way, was not done; for the leaders closed and bolted the door against the Spirit’s entrance. There was a stopping short of entire surrender to God. And hearts that might have been purified from all error were strengthened in wrong doing. The doors were barred against the heavenly current that would have swept away all evil. Men left their sins unconfessed. They built themselves up in wrong doing, and said to the Spirit of God, “Go Thy way for this time; when I have a more convenient season, I will call for Thee.”—Letter to Dr. J. H. Kellogg, “Elmshaven,” Sanitarium, Calif., August 5, 1902; italics supplied.
Again it must be asked: What do these words mean, do they actually mean what they say? Some may say, “They refer to Dr. Kellogg and his party.” Surely they do; but it is very obvious that they mean much more than that. The exact phrases used are: “the men who had been bearing responsibilities,” “the leaders of our work,” “the leaders,” “men.” Humbly we would inquire of the Church: did the Latter Rain and the Loud Cry proceed satisfactorily after the 1901 Session?
This message was repeated almost word for word in a letter addressed to the General Conference Committee dated six days later. We all know that the profoundly tragic loss of Dr. Kellogg was to occur within a very few years. When he saw in the ministerial leadership of the church “a stopping short of entire surrender to God,” surely his own heart, which “might have been purified from all error,” was “strengthened in wrong doing. The doors were barred against the heavenly current that would have swept away all evil.” This terribly serious letter clearly traces the cause that led to the effect. A failure to enter into denominational repentance by “the vast company gathered in Battle Creek at the General Conference of 1901” bore tragic fruit:
The Lord calls for the close self-examination to be made now that was not made at the last General Conference, when He was waiting to be gracious. The present is our sowing time for eternity. We must reap the fruit of the evil seed we sow, unless we repent the sowing, and ask forgiveness for the mistakes we have made. Those who, given opportunity to repent and reform, pass over the ground without humbling the heart before God, without putting away that which He reproves, will become hardened against the counsel of the Lord Jesus—”To the General Conference Committee and the Medical Missionary Board,” Elmshaven, Sanitarium, Calif., August 11, 1902.
What was the “reaping” that came by and by?
We all know: the loss of Dr. Kellogg; the burning of the old and eventual separation from us of the new Battle Creek Sanitarium; the burning of the Review and Herald offices; and the removal of leadership headquarters from old Battle Creek. It was an overturning similar to the tragedy that befell Jerusalem and the Temple in the days of Jeremiah. This, we are told, was “victory.”
Who knows the future before us now? No one. But if the history of the past is worth anything, we should tremble lest persistent denominational impenitence today become a “seedsowing” that will trigger a further sad series of events to include eventual separation of our chief medical institutions from our control, and another overturning of “Jerusalem.”
If we insist on calling 1901 “victory” when the Lord’s servant called it the “greatest sorrow” of her life, how can the Lord’s call to repent ever get through to us? How can we understand “today” if we deny the facts of “yesterday” ?
One is deeply impressed in reading Ellen G. White’s testimonies that she carried a heart burden that few of her contemporaries understood or appreciated. Constantly she was aware of an ultimate spiritual preparation of heart that would make a people ready to finish the gospel work in all the world in that generation long ago, so the Lord could come. To confess that good sincere men failed to share that heart burden is not to disparage their memory in the least. If recognizing the truth can help us today to learn to share that heart burden, stating the facts can in no way be “an impeachment of the dead.”
For example, consider the experience of the new General Conference President of 1901, as related frankly in Movement of Destiny:
He [A. G. Daniells] told me with regret of his strange unawareness of the far-reaching principles and mighty potentials of Righteousness by Faith back in the earlier years of his ministry. … He confided that in the long, intensive administration period of his general leadership—pressed by seemingly endless problems, and faced by beckoning challenges, as well as a succession of crises—these pressures came more and more to absorb his thoughts and energy. …
As a result he neglected, he said, to keep up that essential intimacy of fellowship with God that he later sensed was so imperative for highest service. Absorption in dedicated activity for God has been allowed to crowd out that imperative personal spiritual advance that comes only through constant study of the deep things of God—along with much prayer and intercession. Such essentials came to be abbreviated in order to “keep the wheels turning,” as he phrased it, in our “organizational machinery,” for which he had the “leading responsibility.” His Christian life had become a routine. …
He told me that more and more he became absorbed in keeping the efficiency of the structural machinery of the Church at high level. … As a result, Daniells came to rate men chiefly by their efficiency, their ability to get things done, their skill in the pulpit, and the leadership in the affairs of the Church—the human side. … He had been much like the busy conductor of a transcontinental train, the captain of a great ship, or the manager of a giant business concern.—Movement of Destiny, pages 406, 407.
These were precisely the problems that wrung from Ellen G. White her appraisals of the true spiritual state of the post-1901 General Conference leadership.
The following is from a candid personal letter to a friend in whom she felt she could confide:
I do not now expect to attend the General Conference [of 1903]. I should not dare to go; for I am very much worn with the responsibilities that I have been carrying since the Fresno campmeeting. It is like this: when I stand before congregations of our people, I feel very intensely, because I understand the peril of those who as blind men have followed their own counsel. Were I to go to the Conference, I should be compelled to take positions that would cut some to the quick. It greatly hurts me to do this, and it is a long time before I recover from the strain that such an experience brings on me. …
His [the Lord’s] power was with me all the way through the last General Conference [1901], and had the men in responsibility felt one quarter of the burden that rested on me, there would have been heartfelt confession and repentance. A work would have been done by the Holy Spirit such as has never yet been seen in Battle Creek. Those who at that time heard my message, and refused to humble their hearts before God, are without excuse. …
I know that matters in Battle Creek are in a most precarious condition. …
The result of the last General Conference has been the greatest, the most terrible sorrow of my life. No change was made. The spirit that should have been brought into the whole work as the result of that meeting, was not brought in because men did not receive the testimonies of the Spirit of God. As they went to their several fields of labor, they did not walk in the light that the Lord had flashed upon their pathway, but carried into their work the wrong principles that had been prevailing in the work at Battle Creek.
The Lord has marked every movement made by the leading men in our institutions and conferences. It is a perilous thing to reject the light that God sends. …
So today upon those who have had light and evidence, but who have refused to heed the Lord’s warnings and entreaties, heaven’s woe is pronounced. —Letter to Judge Jesse Arthur, “Elmshaven,” Sanitarium, Calif., January 15, 1903.