If the “medicine” one takes for forty years obviously fails to cure the “disease,” is it not wisdom to at least take a second look to enquire if it is potent medicine? This the authors appealed for twenty-two years ago!
2. Some say “As a church we understand righteousness by faith and we preach it clearly; our problem is simply that we don’t live it as we should.”
Think this through carefully. We all agree that “righteousness” is by “faith.” Obviously then, if one has “faith,” he will certainly have “righteousness” manifest in his life. He will live it. If this is not true, then the term is nothing but semantic nonsense. To Seventh-day Adventists “righteousness by faith” is clearly a preparation of character for the coming of the Lord. Otherwise, “what do we more than others?“
The Lord’s servant has recognized this clearly. Speaking of the 1888 message, she said, “The enemy of man and God is not willing that this truth should be fully presented: for he knows that if the people receive it fully, his power will be broken.”—R&H, September 3, 1889.
Is the enemy’s power “broken” in our lives as a church? When his power is truly “broken,” will not the Lord’s people be ready for His coming? And if we are not ready, and have not been for eighty years, either we do not fully understand and therefore do not receive the truth of righteousness by faith, or else the Lord is to blame for the long delay in His return. If we understand it but do not “receive it fully,” then we are most truly rejecting it This is a very dangerous thing to do. If to some extent we truly understand and receive “this truth,” which is not a doctrine, but rather “light,” to that extent Satan’s power over us is broken. But above all, as Seventh-day Adventists we are not merely to get a people ready to die; we are to prepare a people to live, ready for translation! If this is not true, no one knows how many more decades must elapse before the world’s burden of sorrow and pain can be lifted.
We “confess” that “righteousness by faith” is what it says—right living by faith. Therefore it is impossible truly to understand it and preach it dearly without living it truly!
True New Testament “faith” is very dose to repentance and contrition. It is what the early church experienced. When we call for denominational repentance, we are really calling for a true experience of “faith” in contrast to the counterfeit so popular today. The “final atonement” is in this call.
3. What to do? (a) Check what were the essential and unique truths of the inspired 1888 message for they are clearly on record, says Movement of Destiny, pages 189, 200, 201; (b) Compare these essentials with “righteousness by faith” as generally taught by me popular churches of today; (c) Then contrast me 1888 message with our contemporary presentations of “righteousness by faith.” The authors have maintained for two decades that the difference between (a) and (c) is so striking as to be astonishing. We have been asleep as a people! In truth, we need the message today as much as our brethren needed it in 1888.
4. The fact that Movement of Destiny has been published now is proof positive of the all-important place that the 1888 General Conference Session holds in the history of this denomination, no matter what one believes regarding the acceptance or rejection of the message by “few,” “some,” or “many.” Parallel with this must be the recognition that 1888 Re-examined after twenty years of official censure has by its very content come to a place of supplying at least partial answers to current problems the church faces. The wide acceptance of this latter document and the weight of the evidence it presents must surely account for the heavy thrust and indictment made against it by Movement of Destiny. It is self- evident that the basic idea of one or the other of these treatises is wrong. Factually the matter could be settled once and for all by the publication, in chronological order without comment, of all that the Lord had told His people about this era as found in the Spirit of Prophecy. Spiritually the matter can be settled only at such time as God’s people and in particular the leadership, choose to accept all that He has said irrespective of any rationalization man may offer or how much his pride may be humbled.
The solemn call to denominational repentance is firmly rejected by Movement of Destiny in the following words:
Recurrent harpers [and] … echoers still persist, maintaining that the leadership of the Movement, at that time [1888 and post-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. That is surely a most sobering thought—if true. On this point let us seek out the facts and find the truth concerning such retrospective repentance.
… If not true, it constitutes an unjustifiable woe uttered against the Church as a whole today, affirmed some eight decades after the acts of 1888.—Pages 357, 358.
Is there such a thing as present-day denomination-wide guilt, because of the wrong attitude of the “some” who rejected the Righteousness by Faith message at and following 1888, which must be atoned for by some all-inclusive “corporate” confession of the denomination as a whole before we can receive the unstinted blessing of God? .. .
... God will not hold guiltless those who seek to impugn the men in leadership who personally accepted the message and sought to lead His people forward in harmony therewith.
Away then, with such charges.—Pages 445, 451.
The authors are sure that the author of Movement of Destiny did not intend to distort their position on “corporate” and “denominational repentance.” It seems obvious that he did not understand it. But it is very clear that once and for all he firmly rejects and even spurns the idea of denominational repentance for the sin of rejecting the beginning of the Latter Rain and Loud Cry. He insists that the post-1888 leadership accepted it. This rejection of the call to denominational repentance is intrinsically endorsed by “some sixty of our ablest scholars— specialists in denominational history and Adventist theology … experts in the Spirit of Prophecy, … key Bible teachers, editors, mass communications men, scientists, physicians … and veteran leaders … verifiers and copy editors. … Doubtless no volume in our history has ever had such magnificent prepublication support.”— Movement of Destiny, page 8.
It follows that the demand on the authors to make “an explicit confession … due the Church” is likewise endorsed by the “magnificent prepublication support” of this volume. We dare not refuse to “confess.” All that the authors have ever said regarding the need for denominational repentance as necessary to the honor and vindication of Christ has been said in love for our brethren and in loyalty to church organization. We are a part of that organization and therefore cannot in any way disassociate ourselves from such needs and weaknesses as may be in the “body.”
We therefore stand before the Church with the firm conviction that the Spirit of Prophecy counsel and writings clearly portray the facts of our history, and we are conscience-bound to accept this as a “Thus saith the Lord! “ and so, we accordingly make—