There is clear evidence that this was the “burden” that the Lord’s servant bore on her heart in a special way from 1888 onwards to her death. Had her brethren “felt one quarter of the burden that rested on me, ... a work would have been done by the Holy Spirit such as has never yet been seen in Battle Creek,” she declared.
There is a little-known statement that discloses how the Lord Jesus Himself felt about the post-1901 spiritual state of the ministry and the church:
God says to His people, “I have somewhat against thee, because thou has left thy first love …“
Leaving the first love is represented as a spiritual fall. Many have fallen thus. In every church in our land, there is needed confessions, repentance, and reconversion. The disappointment of Christ is beyond description. … Christ is humiliated in His people. …
My brethren and sisters, humble your hearts before the Lord. … I cannot fail to see that the light which God has given to me is not favorable to our ministers or our churches. … The message to the Laodicean church reveals our condition as a people.—Review and Herald, December 15, 1904.
Sixteen years after 1888, can the condition portrayed here by the servant of the Lord be considered in any way as an “awakening from Laodicean self- satisfaction and self-reliance, a renewal brought about through the growing acceptance of the message of Righteousness by Faith”? With love and deep respect the question must be asked, Is “the light” of the full truth “favorable” to us today?
She never forgot the deep meaning of the “message of Christ’s righteousness.” As late as 1906 she still yearned to witness its triumph:
Dear Brethren Washburn, Prescott, Daniells, and Concord:
… Christ came, and in the likeness of man wrought out before the world a perfect character, that the world may be without excuse.. . .
Had our churches heeded the words of the Lord’s messenger, given them by pen and voice, had they taken their position as true believers, we should have seen a most wonderful ingathering, which would have convinced the world that we have the truth. The law of God would have been magnified. And the Sunday law, that leading men are trying to bring in, could have had but little influence. But hindrances in the very midst of us have worked counter to the purpose of God. My heart is almost broken as I think of what the Lord has opened to me in regard to what might have been, but is not.—Letter W-58, 1906, Sanitarium, Calif.
In bringing to a close this presentation of Ellen G. White testimony, we want to make clear that we have never doubted the Lord’s special watchcare and blessing over His true Church, which we believe is the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He will keep step with us in all our wanderings. We have never believed that He has cast off His Church! We understand that the original Greek of the message to the “angel of the church of the Laodiceans” does not say that Christ has actually spewed His people out of His “mouth” but only that He is “about to” do so because of the terrible nausea He feels on account of our “lukewarm” condition. The point of our manuscript of twenty-two years ago was that it is not fair to Him for us to perpetuate the condition that occasioned the Lord’s servant to write: “Christ is humiliated in His people.”
That is the point of this present “Confession.” When will we permit Him to work that glorious “what might have been” in the finishing of His work in our own hearts?
What can possibly arouse us to see this in the light in which the heavenly universe view it? The authors firmly take their stand with the following statement made at the 1893 Session by A. T. Jones:
We stand pledged to the Lord and before the world: that we depend upon God; that He loves His people; that He manifests Himself in behalf of those whose hearts are toward Him. Brethren, there is that fearful word also that touches that very thought, that came to us from Australia [by Ellen G. White]. It is in the testimony entitled, “The Crisis Imminent.” What does that say? —”Something great and decisive is to take place, and that right early. If any delay, the character of God and His throne will be compromised.” Brethren, by our careless, indifferent attitude, we are putting God’s throne into jeopardy. Why cannot He work? God is ready. Are not God’s workmen ready? But if there is any delay, “the character of God and His throne is jeopardized.” Is it possible that we are about to risk the honor of God’s throne? Brethren, for the Lord’s sake, and for His throne’s sake, let us get out of the way.—General Conference Bulletin, 1893, pages 73, 74.