“1844” is our classic icon. It marked the beginning of the special faith of Seventh-day Adventists, as Pentecost marked the beginning of the gospel going to the world. Yet another date keeps popping up, another “icon” for us, which has perplexed us.
“1888” is clothed in an aura of mystery. Why does it keep popping up, and why is it discussed almost with hushed tones as though a skeleton lurked somewhere in our closet?
There’s tremendous meaning buried in it. And the One who keeps bringing it up is the Holy Spirit: He will not let it die, even century after century (parts now of three centuries have gone by). It will take the stage more and more as time goes on.
The reason: “1888” marks the “beginning” of the world’s second Pentecost, and people everywhere are at last beginning to ferret out the story. There is a skeleton in our closet.
The mystery unfolds
Pentecost also marked the gift of the Holy Spirit. The world didn’t know what was happening except as the apostles could tell them, but what was going on behind the scenes was the Son of God being inaugurated as the world’s High Priest. It was in the “Holy” or First Apartment of the heavenly sanctuary. He had not only died for the sin of the world and been resurrected, He was now busy working through the Holy Spirit to reconcile human hearts everywhere (including Gentiles) who would respond, and bring them into oneness with God the Father. A great work.Not only was the High Priest changing hearts, He was preparing those who chose to believe to be “accounted worthy” to come up in the first resurrection that will come when He returns to earth personally, visibly, literally (cf. Luke 21:35; Rev. 20:5, 6). This “work” had been going forward steadily from Pentecost until the end of the 2300- year prophecy of Daniel 8:14, which came in 1844, our “icon.” That’s the setting for that first unique Adventist icon-date.
With it began what we know as the Seventhday Adventist Church; something was happening in human hearts. No big display; a few believers had gone through the “Great Disappointment” of 1844 and had “survived” spiritually; that is, this little group had not given up their conviction that the true Holy Spirit had been present in that “Midnight Cry” movement, and they were not about to deny Him.
With that Great Disappointment came Jesus leaving His ministry in the First Apartment and closing its door, and then opening the door into the Second Apartment. Now He faced a new task: not prepare people to die and come up in the resurrection but prepare people to be translated without seeing death at His second coming.
That has been the point of His ministry since 1844 and also the burden of Ellen White’s writing her 25 million words of testimony.
Things on earth have seemed to happen slowly, but year by year the convictions of truth have deepened among thoughtful people. The church was organized in 1863. Shortly after, its mission work began around the world, and we have all been regaled with fantastic stories of “progress.”
But the conviction has also deepened that even if we were to “baptize” billions, the number would mean nothing so far as finishing the gospel work is concerned; character transformation prepares for the coming of the Lord.
The time for the “harvest” may come, but He can’t come until the “harvest of the earth is ripe” (144,000 character transformations, literal or symbolic number is not the point). Not until then can the mighty one designated as “another angel” proclaim to the long-waiting Savior, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe” (Rev. 14:15). After that Christ can’t wait a day; He must come to earth as King of kings and Lord of lords immediately, when the harvest is “ripe.”
“1888” thus marks the time for “the beginning” of getting the harvest “ripe”
The message that came in that year was a revelation in itself; it had “heavenly credentials.” It came straight from the throne of God. “The Lord in His great mercy” sent it, but it came in the most humble appearance as the Jews’ Messiah came from the throne of God but was born as a peasant in Bethlehem’s manger, with lowly animals. “1888” was a new “Bethlehem,” but the grand event threw some wonderful saints into a tizzy just as the original “Bethlehem” threw the Temple priests off guard in Jerusalem.Precious few who attended the Minneapolis 1888 meeting had an inkling of what was going on. One little woman 62 years old was also caught by surprise, for she heard and saw things that astonished her. Not in 45 years, she later said, had she heard anything like this in our church, or in fact, anywhere.
She didn’t say so at the time right then, but later she said that what she had been hearing and watching in the “1888” affair was “the beginning” of that grand prophecy of Revelation 18 that tells of the whole earth being lightened with the glory of a final message. It will be the complementary gift of the same Holy Spirit who first came with power at Pentecost.
“1888” For Almost Dummies tells in a simple way, and in as few words as possible, what happened, and what the message still is today. But before we go into our thought-provoking study, let’s look at a brief summary of how good is the Good News of “1888.”