Some may be reticent to concur that the church has a problem as serious as this. They are impressed by 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." "Lord, forgive us all our sins", they pray, assuming that each oft-repeated routine prayer "scrubs the tape". The idea that there is still something on the tape that we haven’t heard yet is too shocking to believe.
If we think of the forgiveness of sins as only a preparation for death and the resurrection, we need not be concerned about unconscious sin still lurking beneath the surface. But we live in the time of the cleansing of the sanctuary. Since 1844 a new and different work has been in progress - a cleansing work, a restoration, a purification, a vindication. We are not concerned merely about getting ready to die. We are concerned about getting ready for translation. Deeper, more thorough work must be done than has been accomplished for any previous generation. The Latter Rain ripens the grain for the harvest, and "the harvest is the end of the world’. Therefore, receiving the Latter Rain must lead on to a preparation for translation. In order to understand the Laodicean message correctly, therefore, we must search in our Bibles to see that unconscious sin has been a constant problem to Gods people in past ages.
1. Many Bible statements are meaningless apart from understanding that they refer to this unknown sin. Jeremiah says, "Deep is a man’s mind, deeper than all else, on evil bent; who can fathom it?" (Jer. 17:9, Moffatt). It would seem that Paul had this statement in mind when he said, "The carnal mind is enmity against God". And this "enmity" is the depth which cannot be "fathomed’. The mind conceals its true motivations from our awareness. The KJV adds, "I the Lord search the heart I try the reins" (verse 10). "Reins" is a Hebrew figure of speech that is difficult to understand apart from recognizing the unconscious motivations of the heart.*
"The righteous God trieth the hearts and reins" (Ps. 7:9). "Thou hast possessed my reins. . . Search me, 0 God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me (Ps. 139: 13,23,24). "Examine me, 0 Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart" (Ps. 26:2).
Jeremiah appeals to the Lord to vindicate his true motives: "0 Lord of hosts, that judges righteously, that triest the reins and the heart … unto thee have I revealed my cause" (Jer. 11:20).
* The "reins" is an idiom of both Hebrew and New Testament Greek de-noting the kidneys. As the ancients were relatively unacquainted with the functions of physiology. the kidneys symbolized for them the unknown depths of one’s feelings and emotions. Note the following from The Expository Greek New Testament:
"I know the abysses." and "discerner of hearts and searcher of the reins" were old Egyptian titles for divine beings. This intimate knowledge of man pierces below superficial appearances. The divine acquaintance with man’s real secret life forms the basis of unerring and impartial judgment. (Vol. 5. pp. 361. 362).
This thought of disclosing the hidden motivations of the heart is carried over into the New Testament. Because the Lord alone "searcheth the reins and hearts", He will "give unto every one of you according to your works" (Rev. 2:23). Thus when the Lord later says to Laodicea, "I know thy works", it is clear that the Laodicean message is also a "searching of the reins and hearts", a disclosing of the "things before buried in darkness", to borrow Ellen G. White’s phrase quoted previously.
We have already considered how Christ did not have the same problem of an unconscious mind as we do. Isaiah says of Him:
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears. … And righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins. (Isa. 11:2-5).
Christ knew no repression of guilt at all. He stood before God by "faithfulness" and was thus "righteous." His motivations were pure and transparent.
"This is but a foreshadowing of the kind of people that the third angel’s message will gather out for they too are to have "the faith of Jesus"— not merely faith in Jesus, but the very kind of faith which He had, the faith of Jesus. This is the deep experience offered to the Laodicean church, faith, spiritual discernment and the righteousness of Christ when the door shall have been opened." (Donald K. Short. A Study of the Cleansing of the Sanctuary in Relation to Current Denominational History, Potomac University Masters Thesis. unpublished, 1958, p. 46).
2. David prays, "Who can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults" (Ps. 19: 12). Obviously David is not talking about faults known to the sinner and kept secret from others. If that were the case, he would pray, "We understand our errors". He is talking about faults that the sinner himself has not yet understood. This is unconscious sin.
3. Moses prays, "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance" (Ps. 90:8) What are these "secret sins’? Are they sins that we know about, things we cover up from others’ gaze? Or are they unconscious sins? They cannot be known sins that we have confessed, for such sins are not "set … before Thee.. .in the light of Thy countenance". All such sins "Thou hast cast … behind Thy back", "in the depths of the sea" (Isa 38:17; Micah 7:19). These must be unconfessed sins; and, in the context of Moses’ prayer, they are unconscious sins.
Moses vividly describes the unconscious work of repression that operates in all sinners since the Fall: "We are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy wrath we are troubled . . . All our days are passed away in Thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten" (Ps. 90:7-10). Our years are a constant conflict with unrealized guilt. The Holy Spirit is constantly deepening our awareness of it. If we gladly welcome each new and deeper disclosure of our unconscious sin and readily confess it, the work of cleansing hastens on. But the work for the great body of the church has been resisted and delayed for many decades. "Thou knowest not" is still the message of the True Witness.
Our human problem of unconscious motivations was understood by Ellen G. White. In 1906 she wrote an article for the Review on the subject. She recognized that the subject is taught all through the Bible. She discerned how Saul of Tarsus in utter sincerity did not know his own heart, which he confessed was unknown to him. Notice in the gist of the article how she recognized that this is the great problem that man faces, and how only the ministry of Christ in the sanctuary provides the solution:
My brethren. day and night, and especially in the night season, this matter is presented to me. "Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting" How do we stand before God at this time? We may be sincere, and yet greatly deceived. Saul of Tarsus was sincere when he was persecuting the church of Christ. "I verily thought", he declared, "that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus." He was sincere in his ignorance. …We know that there is no one, however earnestly he may be striving to do his best who can say, "I have no sin."… How then are we to escape the charge. "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting"? We are to look to Christ. At infinite cost He has convenanted to be our representative in the heavenly courts, our advocate before God.
… Weighed and found wanting is our inscription by nature. … Let each one, old or young be faithful in dealing with himself, lest he shall stumble along in darkness, making grievous mistakes, and thus helping others to make mistakes. (Review and Herald March 8, 1906).
The first part of the article is practically a Bible study on the subject of the unconscious mind. She quotes Hannah, the mother of Samuel: "… the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed’ (1 Sam.. 2:3). Solomon understood how self-deceived we are: "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits" (Prov. 16:2). David discerned the problem: "Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity" (Ps. 62:9). Then Ellen G. White adds:
It is for the eternal interest of everyone to search his own heart and to improve every God-given faculty. Let all remember that there is not a motive in the heart of any man that the Lord does not clearly see. … We need a connection with divine power, that we may have an increase of clear light and understanding of how to reason from cause to effect. We need to have the powers of the understanding cultivated by our being partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. … There is not a design, however intricate, nor a motive, however carefully hidden, that He does not clearly understand. (Ibid).
4. A striking example of hidden, buried sin is Hazael. He could not bring himself to believe that he was capable of doing the unspeakable things the prophet Elisha had discerned he was capable of: "I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child. And Hazael said, But what is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?" (2 Kings 8:12, 13). Hazael was sincerely unconscious of what lay buried in his own heart. In the same way, we are sincerely unconscious of our true motivations, apart from the Holy Spirit’s conviction. Note the following:
Had anyone told them [the faultfinders] that notwithstanding their zeal and labor to set others right. they would at length be found in a similar position of darkness, they would have said, as did Hazael to the prophet "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? (4T 89, 90).
If when Achan yielded to temptation he had been asked if he wished to bring defeat and death into the camp of Israel, he would have answered. "No, no! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great wickedness?" But … he went farther than he had purposed in his heart. It is exactly in this way that individual members of the church are imperceptibly led on to … bring the frown of God upon the church. (Ibid., p. 492, 493).
Remember, as in the crucifixion of Christ, it is the motivation that is unrealized, not necessarily the outward act When we ponder how often the Lords servant likens the unconscious sin of our brethren who rejected the beginning of the Latter Rain at and following the 1888 Conference to the sin of those who rejected Christ, we begin to sense how dreadful are the consequences of the unknown sin that the True Witness would have us see. For how many decades have we been responsible for delaying the coming of the Loud Cry? All the while we have thought we were motivated by a desire to hasten His coming when in reality we have been delaying it!
5. Another classic example of the result of unknown sin is Hezekiah’s experience (2 Kings 20 and 21). He had been a good king, so good that if he had said "Amen" to the Lords directive, "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live", he would probably have gone down in sacred history as the finest king Gods people ever had. He was not aware of the hidden, buried roots of evil latent in his unconscious heart He prayed: "I beseech thee, 0 Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore." (2 Kings 20:3). But his heart was not perfect!, When fifteen years were added to his life, he became the victim of unconscious selfish motivations and undid all the good he had achieved in his former period of health. He begat and trained wicked Manasseh.
Jeremiah passes a retrospective judgment on the last era of his reign: Judah’s national downfall came "because of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah king of Judah. for that which he did in Jerusalem" (Jer. 15:4). All the evil that Hezekiah did in those last fifteen years was already latent in his heart before his illness. "The books of heaven record the sins that would have been committed had there been opportunity" (5 BC 1085).
Like good King Hezekiah, we appear to ourselves (and we try to appear to others) as if we serve the Lord "with a perfect heart". We have so long misunderstood 1 John 1:9 that we hesitate to think of the possibility of an unconscious reservoir of sin after we are "converted". "We have confessed our sins", we insist, "therefore the Lord has been faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There is no sin left from which we are not cleansed." What we have failed to understand is that the Lord cannot cleanse us from any unrighteousness that we have not as yet understandably confessed.
In Hezekiah’s case, the Lord "left him, to try him, that he [Hezekiah] might know all that was in his heart" (2 Chron. 32:31). Inspiration says that it will be the same for the saints in the last days. They will be left to "stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator" (GC 425 and 614). The parallel with Hezekiah is exact. But the saints dare not repeat Hezekiah’s folly, for if they "should prove themselves unworthy, and lose their lives because of their own defects of character, then Gods holy name would be reproached" (GC 619).
The vindication of God, and in consequence the successful conclusion of the "great controversy between Christ and Satan", depends on their succeeding where Hezekiah failed. Would God dare to permit such a test to come before they were ready?
Hezekiah, sleeping in his grave, is a type of millions of "good’ people who have died. They consciously and sincerely served the Lord as best they knew or understood. But, like Hezekiah, no generation ever understood fully the potential of their own hearts, the unconscious alienation from God that lay beneath the surface. None were required to endure the unprecedented test of living "in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor". This is because none had received "the final atonement" which alone can heal the problem of unrealized enmity against God. (The expression "final atonement" should not be relegated to the Adventist attic as a mistaken notion of naive pioneers. The expression appears rather frequently as a meaningful phrase in Ellen White’s writings. There is also good evidence that Scripture upholds the idea as implicit in the magnificent concept of the cleansing of the sanctuary.)
Note, no generation of God’s people have ever received "the final atonement". The fact that there have been a few individuals translated such as Enoch and Elijah can indicate that this experience may have been known by a scattered few in every generation.