1888-Ellen White and the Church Leaders

[Hobie]

The controversial meeting took place in the year 1888 at the General Conference session held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This meeting marked the beginning of a heated theological debate that continued publicly for three years without resolution. By 1891, however, the three individuals most responsible for the doctrinal innovations introduced at the Conference found themselves separated by distant continents.

Ellen G. White played an active role in the Minneapolis meetings and the many events that followed. Ellen White witnessed the events of Minneapolis firsthand, and she spoke and wrote much during the 1888 period. Shortly after the Minneapolis meeting, Mrs. White wrote a 26-page manuscript entitled, "Looking Back at Minneapolis"[ Ellen White, Manuscript 24, 1888.] to ensure that the actions of the Denominational leaders would be preserved accurately.

From the onset of the 1888 Minneapolis Conference, Ellen White perceived that a battle over truth was erupting within the denomination. At first, Ellen White rejoiced that the spirit of God was at the meeting and commented that the leaders "heard as it were God speaking to them through his Son. They saw, they felt the divine influence of the Spirit of God and all witnessed to the gracious words that proceeded from His mouth [Ellen White, Manuscript 24, 1888.]." Ellen White soon discovered, however, that other forces were deliberately at work planning to disrupt and confuse the mission and message of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Ellen White was convinced that God had "raised up" two young ministers, E. J. Waggoner and A. T. Jones, to give a message to the delegates at the conference.

Ellen White initially saw the conflict as a diversionary topic that was counter-productive to the real issue of the fulfillment of Adventist prophecy and she tried valiantly to resolve the uncomfortable situation. Notwithstanding Ellen White's considerable influence to assist Waggoner and Jones, the debate over the law in Galatians soon became heated. Even Ellen White could not stay the negative tide that had enveloped the Conference, and she concluded, "it is evident that a delusion was upon our brethren." Although she supported and protected Waggoner and Jones as much as possible, Ellen White realized that their theological positions were being resisted by the church's leaders.

Ellen White felt that Satan had won a decided victory at Minneapolis as an unholy influence now controlled the church leadership--an influence that she had "never met in them before [Ibid., p. 20.]." Ellen White believed that the immediate significance of the 1888 meeting was that God had been "testing and proving His people who had great light, whether they would walk in it or turn from it under temptation...[Ibid., p. 23.]"

As a direct result of the Minneapolis meeting, Ellen White relationship with many of the denomination's leaders was strained. She lamented this fact by writing: "They had lost confidence in Sister White, not because Sister White had changed but because another spirit had taken possession and control of them [Ibid., p. 23.]." Ellen White's statements regarding the significance of the 1888 meeting continued in both her private and public communications. By the Spring of 1890, she was still actively supporting the "fresh light" that had been delivered at Minneapolis by Waggoner and Jones, and she even went so far as to publicly connect Waggoner's 1888 message with the loud cry of the fourth angel of Revelation 18 in an article in the Review [Ellen G. White, "Repentence, the Gift of God," Review & Herald (April 1890).]. In this article, Ellen White challenged the church to receive the new message that would empower the denomination to break out of their Laodician condition. But the church leaders were still resisting.

Because of Ellen White's support of Waggoner and Jones, church leaders at Battle Creek decided to send her and Waggoner out of the country in an attempt to cool down the divisive situation [George Knight, Angry Saints (Hagerstown, MD: Review & Herald Publishing Association, 1989), pp. 94-95.]. Thus, in 1891, Ellen White was transferred to Australia and Waggoner to Great Britain.

In spite of this, Ellen White would not be silenced and continued the dialoge. In a two-part article appearing in the Review entitled, "The Perils and Privileges of the Last Days," she earnestly warned the Denomination to beware of Satan's deceptions and to prepare for the time of trouble approaching. She linked the Minneapolis message of Christ's righteousness with the loud cry, and made the strong statement that the loud cry of the fourth angel had already begun with Waggoner's 1888 message. "The time of test is just upon us," she wrote, "for the loud cry of the third angel has already begun in the revelation of the righteousness of Christ, the sin pardoning redeemer. This is the beginning of the light of the angel whose glory shall fill the whole earth [Ellen G. White, Review & Herald, volume 69, No. 46, p. 615.] ."

Clearly, Ellen White connected the new message of Waggoner and Jones with the fourth angel of Revelation 18 and she linked the 1888 message directly to the prophetic events of the last days. Notwithstanding, the denomination's leadership stubbornly rejected Ellen White's plea to openly embrace the new 1888 theology.

By the mid 1890s, Ellen White, who was still in Australia, directed sharp remarks about the Minneapolis conflict to the church leadership in Battle Creek. She warned the leaders that grave consequences would ensue if they continued to reject the 1888 message. Ellen White wrote "The Lord in his great mercy sent a most precious message to His people through Elders Waggoner and Jones. This message was to bring more prominently before the world the uplifted Savior, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. It presented justification through faith in the surety; it invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God. Many had lost sight of Jesus. They needed to have their eyes directed to His divine person, His merits, and His changeless love for the human family.... This is the message that God commanded to be given to the world. It is the third angel's message, which is to be proclaimed with a loud voice, and attended with the outpouring of his Spirit in a large measure [Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 91,92]."

Ellen White warned the church leaders that those who had stood their ground ever since 1888 and had "for years" resisted the light of the Minneapolis theology were in grave danger. She had "no smooth message" for those who had confused the theological issues in an attempt to protect their previous positions, refusing to admit error [Ibid., p. 97].

In 1896, Ellen White wrote another communication to Battle Creek entitled, "The Danger of Rejecting Truth." She was very concerned about the denomination for she knew they were in great "peril." "The church needs to be converted," she wrote, again making reference to the denomination's refusal to accept the 1888 message. She reminded them about the history of the Jewish nation and compared their rejection of Christ with the denomination's recent rejection of the new light from Minneapolis [Ibid., p. 64.]. In a reference to the Galatian controversy, she scolded the church by saying, Seventh-day Adventists "are in danger" of rejecting truth "because it contradicts something which they have taken for granted" but which is not really truth at all. Ellen White also wrote of the danger the institution face for its rejection and its publication the Review which had been influential against the Minneapolis message, "That men should keep alive the spirit which ran riot at Minneapolis is an offense to God. All heaven is indignant at the spirit that for years has been revealed in our publishing institution at Battle Creek. Unrighteousness is practiced that God will not tolerate. He will visit for these things [Ibid., pp. 76-77.]."

Because the vast majority of the Battle Creek hierarchy continued to reject the 1888 message, the results of their rejection began to surface. This in turn lead to the fulfillment of Ellen White's predictions that the judgments of God would be poured out upon the denomination's institutions.

By February, 1902, the world-famous sanitarium burned to the ground and ten months later, the Review and Herald building was also completely destroyed. Within one hour, the flames had reduced the Review's four-story, 80,000-square foot building to a heap of smoldering ruins [SDA Bible Commentary, p. 213.], never again to be rebuilt in Battle Creek.

Ellen White was not surprised by these events. It was Ellen White's position that the denomination's 14-year history from 1888 through 1902 culminated in tragic loss as a direct result of not accepting the original 1888 message delivered by Waggoner and Jones. Her statement in 1902 summarizes her viewpoint of this episode quite succinctly: "I have been instructed," she wrote, "that the terrible experience at the Minneapolis conference is one of the saddest chapters in the history of the believers in present truth [EGW letter 179, 1902]."

Following the "fiery indignation," as Ellen White called it, the church leadership, under her direction, left Battle Creek chastised and rebuked, but she was again to face another challenge later, this time led by A. G Daniels and W. W. Prescott.

[Hobie]

Here is excerpt from another sermon on 1888 and what could have been if the Adventist leaders had not rejected the message being given or the Adventist movement had listened......

"...God's Will for Adventism
Having said that we have no guarantee that Jesus is coming soon, may I hasten to add that I believe that the possibility is that Jesus may come very, very soon. it seems that there are certain periods when God moves events in the world and the church toward an impending climax, and then waits to see if His people are ready to move with Him.

In 1844 He moved mightily through the Millerite movement, and if His people would have hung together in faith after the great disappointment, the sealing work could have been finished rather quickly. But the great Millerite movement fractured apart after the disappointment, and God could not finish His sealing work.

Then things went into a sort of plateau for forty years until God began to move things in the world and the church toward another climax point in 1888. Once again God watched hopefully to see if His people would catch the vision and get serious about going home. Gut once again God's desires were thwarted, this time by selfish, fault-finding, power seeking Seventh-day Adventist men and women.

So we went into another plateau of ninety years. It is my considered judgment that we are moving toward another of those rare climax points in history, when God is moving events once again into a final countdown. And once again He is hoping that His people will catch the vision of eternity and join with Him in bringing an end to the sin problem. Will they do it this time? Will we do it this time? If we decide that we are ready to get serious about our chosen name--Seventh-day Adventists--then the history of sin could be over in a very short time. On the other hand, if we keep sleeping along, and congratulating ourselves about our beautiful churches and our fine organs and the surging number of baptisms in parts of the world other than North America, then this climax point will pass just like others have done, and this tired old world will go on struggling for survival, while you and I will go to our graves in disappointment.

God's Chosen People
Back in the time of Christ, the Jews had some treasured statements which they loved to quote when things looked dark for them. One was Jeremiah 31:35-37. "Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord." Speaking of Jerusalem in verse 40, the Lord said, "It shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more for ever."

God told the Jews that as long as the sun and moon and stars remained in the sky, Israel would remain as His chosen nation. He promised that, just as surely as no one could ever measure the heavens or the depth of the earth, He would never cast off Israel as His chosen people. Ellen White comments, "These words the Jews applied to themselves; and because God had shown them so great favor and mercy, they flattered themselves that, notwithstanding their sins and iniquity, He would still retain them as His favored people. and shower especial blessings upon them. This has been the danger of the people of God in all ages; and especially is this the danger of those living near the close of time . . . If they shut their eyes, as did the Jews, to their own corruption, and choose their own ways, the Lord will give them up to the blindness of mind and hardness of heart, that they cannot discern the things of the Spirit of God." (Redemption, vol. 1, pp. 38-39)

But doesn't the promise we just read sound absolute, and weren't the Jews justified in believing that Israel would stand forever as God's chosen people? Are we not likewise justified in believing that our church will go through when we read that, though it appears to fall, it will not fall? Or have they and we both forgotten another crucial principle found in the same book? "And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them." (Jeremiah 18:9,10)

Any promise which God ever makes to an individual or a people concerning their relationship to Him and their future is always conditional on their response to His declared will. Moses laid it all out in Deuteronomy 28. "And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessing shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." (vs. 1,2) "The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways." (vs. 9) "And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not he beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them." (vs. 13)

"But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee." (vs. 15) "The Lord shall sent upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me." (vs. 20) "Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and h-is statutes which He commanded thee." (vs. 45)

Moses clearly warned Israel that they faced the possibility of total destruction if they proved to he intransigently disobedient to God's commandments. Ellen White says very succinctly, "It should be remembered that the promises and the threatenings of God are alike conditional." (Ev 695) Do you know that we are in danger of forgetting this principle just as the Jews were in the time of Christ?

Warnings For Us
Perhaps we need to look at some inspired statements which are not read very often in Seventh-day Adventist circles. "I am filled with sadness when I think of our condition as a people... our own course of continual backsliding has separated us from God. And yet the general opinion is that the church is flourishing, and that peace and spiritual prosperity are in all her borders. The church has turned back from following Christ her Leader, and is steadily retreating toward Egypt." (5T 217) "The whole body is sick because of mismanagement and miscalculation." (TM 397) "Some power has cut the cable . . . and (we) are drifting away to sea without chart or compass." (RH July 24, 1888) "You are following the same path as did ancient Israel. Your neglect to follow the light will place you in a more unfavorable position than the Jews upon whom Christ pronounced a woe." (5T 75-76)

"Unless the church, which is now being leavened with her own backsliding, shall repent and be converted, she will eat of the fruit of her own doing, until she shall abhor herself." (8T 250) "It pains me to say, my brethren, that your sinful neglect to walk in the light, has enshrouded you in darkness. You may now be honest in not recognizing and obeying the light; the doubt you have entertained, your neglect to heed the requirements of God, have blinded your perceptions so that darkness -is now to you light, and light is darkness." (5T 71)

"Oh, what privileges are granted to us as a people! And if God spared not His people that He loved because they refused to walk in the light, how can He spare the people whom He has blessed with the light of heaven in having opened to them the most exalted truth ever intrusted to mortal man to give to the world?
 Internal corruption will bring the denunciations of God upon this people as it did upon Jerusalem... My brethren, we know not what is before us... God will work with us and for us if the sins which brought His wrath upon the old world, upon Sodom and Gomorrah and upon ancient Jerusalem, do not become our crime." (Letter to Butler and Haskell, Dec. 8, 1886)

"What would the Saviour do if He should come to us now as He did to the Jews? He would have to do a similar work." (RH, vol. 2, p. 308) "Jerusalem is a representation of what the church will be if it refuses to receive and walk in the light that God has given . . . These are no idle tales, but truth." (8T 67, 68) "If we imitate their (Israel's) example of transgression, and depart from God, we shall fall as surely as did they." (1T 608, 609) "Let a church become proud and boastful, not depending on God, not exalting His power, and that church will surely be left by the Lord, to be brought down to the ground. Let a people glory in wealth, intellect, knowledge, or in anything but Christ, and they will soon he brought to confusion." (8T 127)

These are extremely sobering statements from inspiration. They should make us aware that the principle of conditional prophecy applies to us just as much as it did to Israel of old. We are also on trial, to see what we will do with the commandments of God. Will we obey and receive all the blessings of the covenant, or will we by disobedience place ourselves outside the boundaries of God's covenant promises?

The ship that will go through is you and I, not some entity outside of us which will carry us through if we just hang on to it. And the ship of Adventism will go through only if you and I dedicate our entire energies to learning and living God's will for this crisis time. In other words, it is our decisions that will determine what happens to this church.

A word of caution may be in order here. I am not suggesting that we can best do God's will by separating ourselves from the organized church. In fact, I am afraid that if all God's faithful ones would separate from the church, then the church would surely be doomed to destruction, and we might indeed miss the magnificent opportunity we have to usher in the second coming quickly. We might even face the unpleasant prospect of going to our graves in disappointment. What I am saying is that we dare not be too complacent in our belief that the church is going through automatically, and we will make it too if we just hang on. Hanging on is just not good enough. Our only hope lies in study and prayer such as none of us has ever experienced before.

What is the Remedy?
How can we be sure that we will not make the mistakes of the Jews and lose our position as God's remnant? How can we go through ourselves and make it possible for Jesus to end this planet's suffering in the very near future? May I suggest that we are never so blind as when we ignore the past and assume that past failures can never happen to us. We have had a dramatic demonstration of God's will and man's ability to thwart that will within our church. If we have the slightest chance to be God's final remnant today, we must understand as completely as is humanly possible what happened between 1888 and 1900. That was our most recent opportunity to go home, and we must know why it never happened. May I urge you to make that subject a top priority on your list of topics for study and prayer.

What is the divine analysis of the 1888 message? The Lord in His great mercy sent a most precious message to His people through Elders Waggoner and Jones." (TM 91) This message, understood in its true character, and proclaimed in the Spirit, will lighten the earth with its glory. (Ms. 15, 1888) That is the language of the loud cry of the third angel's message. We can conclude that God was intending to prepare His people and to give a final warning to the world through the 1888 message. But what happened?

By exciting that opposition Satan succeeded in shutting away from our people, in a great measure, the special power of the Holy Spirit that God longed to impart to them . . . The light that is to lighten the whole earth with its glory was resisted, and by the action of our brethren has been in a great degree kept away from the world. (1SM 234, 235) In other words, by quibbling and jealousy and open opposition, men succeeded in delaying the second coming of Christ for one hundred years.

"God has given Brother Jones and Brother Waggoner a message for the people . . . When you reject the message borne by these men, you reject Christ, the giver of the message." (Letter 51-A. 1895) During the presentations at Minneapolis in 1888 Ellen White sat on the front row and was heard to say over and over, "Amen, there is much light here." On one occasion she said that Dr. Waggoner was able to present righteousness by faith in a way that she could not.

In recent years there has been a major attempt to prove that, while some of the leading brethren rejected the message in 1888, most accepted it, and even the opposers later repented and came into line. As a result, we have been told, our church eventually accepted the 1888 message of righteousness by faith, and we have been teaching it ever since. This attempt is seriously flawed. First, if we had accepted the message, we would have been in the kingdom long before now. Our presence on this earth shows that there is still a problem. Second, the historical evidence shows continued rejection of the message well after 1888. I will go one step farther. I don't believe that we, as a church, have understood, taught, or lived the 1888 message from that time to this. We have either been trapped in legalism or the gospel of unrighteousness by presumption.

In 1926 Elder A. G. Daniells, former General Conference President, wrote, "The message has never been received, nor proclaimed, nor given free course as it should have been in order to convey to the church the measureless blessings that were wrapped within it.' (Christ Our Righteousness, p. 47) In 1898 Ellen White was still speaking of stubborn defiance, disunion, and rejection of light. In 1902 she said, "I have been instructed that the terrible experience at the Minneapolis Conference is one of the saddest chapters in the history of the believers in present truth." (Letter 179, 1902) W. C. White, her son, wrote, "But the most serious feature of the disaffection was the fact that, because Sister White urged the importance of the message of righteousness by faith, and because thereby she seemed to be upholding these brethren (Waggoner and Jones), contrary to their judgment, it grew into a spirit of rejection of the testimonies of Sister White." (A. V. Olson, Thirteen Crisis Years, p. 332) Could our present plague of attacking or ignoring her writings have its roots in the years following 1888?

Perhaps the heart of the whole problem is found in these comments by Ellen White in 1901. "Enough has been said over and over and over again, but it does not make any difference; they go right on just the same, professedly accepting it; but they do not make any change." (Talk in Battle Creek College library, April 1, 1901) Professedly accepting but making no changes will never finish God's work, even in a thousand years. Could this be what has confused certain historians into assuming that lip service meant heart acceptance? Could the same thing be our problem today?

Inspiration tells us that the leaders of the 1901 General Conference "closed and bolted the door' against the Spirit's entrance . . . The doors were barred against the heavenly current that would have swept away all evil." (Letter from Elmshaven, Aug. 5, 1902) "The result of the last General Conference has been the greatest, the most terrible sorrow of my life. No change was made." (Letter from Elmshaven, Jan. 15, 1903)

What is the 1888 Message?
Now, if it is really true that God was going to finish His work on earth through the 1888 message, and if it is true that we have never really heard the message since that time, with isolated exceptions; what is the message that could have produced the latter rain and the loud cry then, and will produce it today if we will accept it? The message can be summed up in one Bible verse--Christ in you, the hope of glory. The 1888 message was focused on preparing God's people for translation; thus it had much to say about how to be perfect in Christ and thus ready for the close of probation. The message was not about personal assurance of salvation, but about vindicating and glorifying God's name.

Perhaps some brief excerpts from the messages of Jones and Waggoner might be helpful. "Christ took upon Himself the flesh, not of a sinless being, hut of sinful man, that is, that the flesh which He assumed had all the weaknesses and sinful tendencies to which fallen human nature is subject." (Waggoner, Christ and His Righteousness, pp. 26, 27) "In all of our Christian experience we have left little loopholes along here and there for sin. We have never dared to come to that place where we would believe that the Christian life should be a sinless life. We have not dared to believe it or preach it. But in that case we cannot preach the law of God fully. Why not? Because we do not understand the power of justification by faith." (Waggoner, G. C. Bulletin, 1891, pp. 156, 159) Right here is the difference between justification as taught by Evangelicals and justification in the 1888 message. Only in the 1888 message do we hear about power to keep from sinning, and this victory over sin is always linked with the fallen nature of Christ.

"Christ is to be in us, just as God was in Him, and His character is to be in us, just as God was in Him . . . It is the cooperation of the divine and the human--the mystery of God in you and me-- . . . that is the third angel's message." (Jones, G. C. Bulletin, 1893, p. 207) "In Jesus Christ as He was in sinful flesh, God has demonstrated before the universe that He can so take possession of sinful flesh as to manifest His own presence, His power, and His glory, instead of sin manifesting itself... Then God will so take us, and so use us, that our sinful selves shall not appear to influence or affect anybody; but God will manifest His righteous self, His glory, before men, in spite of all ourselves and our sinfulness... And that is the mystery of God, 'Christ in you, the hope of glory,'--God manifest in sinful flesh." (Jones, G. C. Bulletin, 1895, p. 303)

"Now the flesh of Jesus Christ was our flesh, and in it was all 'that is in our flesh,--all the tendencies to sin that are in our flesh were in His flesh, drawing upon Him to get Him to consent to sin." (Jones, G. C. Bulletin, 1895, p. 328) "Perfection, perfection of character, is the Christian goal--perfection attained in human flesh in this world. Christ attained it in human flesh in this world, and thus made and consecrated a way by which, in Him, every believer can attain it." (Jones, The Consecrated Way to Christian Perfection, p. 84) "But before probation ends, there will be a people so complete in Him that in spite of their sinful flesh, they will live sinless lives. They will live sinless lives in mortal flesh, because He who has demonstrated that He has power over all flesh lives in them--lives a sinless life in sinful flesh." (Waggoner, G. C. Bulletin, 1901, p. 146)

Don't you agree that this is a rare message today? Instead of studying this message and learning how to live this message, we are very divided on whether Christ took our fallen or Adam's unfallen nature. We are even advising our people not to discuss it at all. We are pretty sure that perfection is a bad word, and that sinless living is a fanatical extreme. Satan has done a masterful job of closing our minds to the only message which can prepare us for the second coming. But Satan hasn't done his job well enough. In spite of his best efforts to destroy this message, it is alive and well, and more and more people are waking up to its importance.

I believe that God's people will not let this golden opportunity pass them by again. I see an awakening among church members, and I don't think that Satan will he able to put them all to sleep again. But mark one thing. This awakening is happening among a small minority of church members. The majority continue to sleep on in a death sleep, assuming that, as long as they keep coming to church, they are safe. What a tragic awakening it will he when, too late, most Seventh-day Adventists will realize that they have the mark of the beast. If you want to avoid this tragedy, and if you want to see Christ return to this earth very soon, then I plead with you to reorder your lives if necessary. Make the study of the 1888 message your top priority, and spend more time in study and prayer than ever before in your lives.

Listen to God's appeal to us through His inspired messenger. "Light is flashing from the throne of God. And what is this for--It is that a people may he prepared to stand in the day of God. You who have devoted time and money to the adornment of your apparel and to the decoration of your homes, I would ask you, 'Is Christ formed within you the hope of glory?' It's too late in the day to he taken up with the frivolous things of the world too late for any superficial work to be done. It is too late in the day to cry out against men for manifesting too much earnestness in the service of God; to say, 'You are excited; you are too intense, too positive.'" (RH March 4, 1890)....."

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