The loud cry has already begun in the revelation of the righteousness of Christ, the sin-pardoning Redeemer. —Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, Nov. 22, 1892
The two belong together and will forever be united in our thinking. “1888” was this prominent Bible prophecy in its actual “beginning” fulfillment. Wonderful time to be alive!
“After these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. … And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Rev. 18:1-4).
The ancient prophets dreamed of that glory. And here it was, at last played out before the eyes of assembled delegates to a Seventh-day Adventist world conference in 1888 (not just a tiny little group somewhere).
One’s most natural question comes up: how could it be this cataclysmic event? It happened in a humble little wooden church in Minneapolis with less than a hundred delegates present! Everybody who has a Bible can read about the prophecy—a “mighty angel,” “great power,” “earth … lightened with glory,” “strong voice from heaven,” “big ideas” penetrating every honest heart in Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism—“the world.”
True, what happened in Minneapolis was a mere whimper in the world of that day (and even ours now). Remember, however, the long-awaited Messiah Himself was born in a humble cowshed with some animals, and we are told not to “despise the day of small things” (Zech. 4:10).
A keen listener and perceptive observer was present. She saw something that apparently none of her contemporaries recognized: “1888” was the beginning of that eschatological wonder. (It took Ellen White about four years of contemplation to come to that conclusion with enough courage to say so publicly.)
Furthermore, she seems to declare as a positive statement, through use of a double negative, that it was also “showers from heaven of the latter rain.” Her closest contemporaries in Australia said they had evidence that this was her open conviction.
And it makes sense, for there’s no way the “loud cry” of Revelation 18 can make its long-awaited world debut unless that latter rain is “sent” first and received. It must always come first or God’s people can’t give “the loud cry.”
And the evidence that “1888” is Revelation 18 fulfilled is more than merely Ellen White’s subjective evaluation; the internal objective evidence in the message itself is clear. Its unique elements of built-in biblical truth demonstrate a comprehensive evangel that meets the details of a world-enlightening message (and the last one at that). If Ellen White was wrong in her perception here, her life testimony gets pretty well discredited en toto, because never was she so enthusiastic about anything in her long career than she was about this pinpointing of “1888” significance.
This brings us to serious thinking
What was the initial, rock-bottom, foundation idea that permeates “1888”? What makes the message so unique in its claim for our attention (and the world’s) today?Simply put, it’s something that never crossed the minds of Luther, Calvin, or the Wesleys, or the Sunday-keeping Evangelicals of the 1888 era, or the consciousness of our Sunday-keeping brethren and sisters of today.
Maybe we haven’t told it in a way that grips their interest: it’s the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, the work of the world’s great High Priest in its Second or Most Holy Apartment. The context of “1888” is the cosmic Day of Atonement which we’ve been living in since 1844—often not realizing it. At last the truth of justification by faith is to be seen as its very essence.
The problem in 1888 was that although the cosmic Day of Atonement had begun 44 years earlier (Dan. 8:14), our own people had not embraced the idea of following Christ in that closing work of His.
1. What brought the Seventh-day Adventist Church into being was what explained the mystery of the Great Disappointment of 1844. At the conclusion of the 2300-year prophecy (“then shall the sanctuary be cleansed”), Christ left the First Apartment, closed its “door” (figuratively speaking), and opened the door into a new phase of ministry—His final work of atonement in the Second or Most Holy Apartment. This is not reconciling the Father to us but reconciling us to the Father.
2. His sacrifice on the cross had been ample and complete; but now its full fruitage must be demonstrated in a people. The world and the universe deserve to see that what has been theory has become visible fact. Christ must lead His people into a complete heart-reconciliation with Himself. The Holy Spirit must speak creatively to a corporate body of the church, “Be ye reconciled to God.” Every buried root of alienation must and will be “cleansed.”
3. Significant numbers of thoughtful and loyal Seventh-day Adventists worldwide are now constrained by conscience to acknowledge that the immense world suffering that has had to go on for many decades (centuries) has been unnecessary for the completion of the great controversy between Christ and Satan—for example, World Wars I and II, the current wars in Iraq, Darfur, etc.
4. In the early years after 1844, the little group that had gone through the Great Disappointment and wouldn’t give up, eagerly accepted every ray of truth-light that God sent them:
By 1856, a finite angel (whose knowledge incidentally could not be omniscient) was happy with the obvious progress of developing faith in the hearts of this little corporate body of people. Christ was happy, too, for here was that little “body” of believers at last bent on “following the Lamb wherever He goes.” The first such corporate group in history since Pentecost!
This special angel predicted with angelic (but finite!) judgment that some believers then living would be translated without seeing death at the coming of Jesus. The promise of the Lord descending “from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God … [when] the dead in Christ shall rise first” and “we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air,”—this was to be fulfilled in their lifetime!
Momentous
The 1856 angel must have been excited. Now if only this people will continue the eager “at-onement” reception of truth that characterized the early Adventists, they will receive the gift of the latter rain, and the angel’s prophecy can be fulfilled and the “great controversy” can end in victory, now.But the “leading brethren” said no; no way. “In a great degree” they “shut it away” from the people and from the world.
Ellen White’s appeals in the Review
Nearly two years after the beginning of this “most precious message” she recognized that something had gone wrong. Speaking in the capacity of “the testimony of Jesus” she wrote a series of appeals in the Review (1890) pleading with our people to realize what era of world history they were living in. She declared the message of Jones and Waggoner to be the essence of Christ’s Most Holy Apartment ministry:We are in the day of atonement, and we are to work in harmony with Christ’s work of cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. Let no man [or woman] who desires to be found with the wedding garment on, resist our Lord in His office work (January 21).
Next week she is at it again:
Christ is in the heavenly sanctuary, and He is there to make an atonement for the people. … He is cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. What is our work?—It is our work to be in harmony with the work of Christ. By faith we are to work with Him, to be in union with Him. … A people is to be prepared for the great day of God (January 28).
Next week, she has to come back again:
The mediatorial work of Christ, the grand and holy mysteries of redemption, are not studied or comprehended by the people who claim to have light in advance of every other people on the face of the earth (February 4).
Next week, she is impressed again:
Christ is cleansing the temple in heaven from the sins of the people, and we must work in harmony with Him upon the earth, cleansing the soul temple from its moral defilement (February 11).
Her intensity increases week by week:
The people have not entered into the holy place [most holy], where Jesus has gone to make an atonement for His children. … But there is spiritual drought in the churches (February 25).
Something keeps her from dropping it:
Light is flashing from the throne of God, and what is this for?—It is that a people may be prepared to stand in the day of God (March 4).
Finally, after twelve weeks of constant emphasis, she lays bare what’s on her heart:
We have been hearing His voice more distinctly in the message that has been going for the last two years. … We have only just begun to get a little glimmering of what faith is (March 11).
You have been having light from heaven for the past year and a half, that the Lord would have you bring into your character and weave into your experience. … If our brethren were all laborers together with God they would not doubt but that the message He has sent us during these last two years is from heaven, … special light for the people (March 18).
Could it be, Heaven is trying to tell us something?
How is this 1888 idea of justification by faith related to the Day of Atonement work of Christ? How does it go beyond the justification by faith of the 16th century Reformers and of our own Sundaykeeping Evangelicals (and yes, the view popular even among us today)?Or does it?
1. The 1888 idea lifted the cross of Christ higher than it had been displayed since Pentecost. It was a partial fulfillment of a later prophecy Ellen White made: “Great truths that have lain unheeded and unseen since the day of Pentecost, are to shine from God’s word in their native purity.” The Sabbath and the cross finally came together. By accepting the Bible truth of the nature of man (mortal, not immortal), our people became ready to grasp a deeper truth about the cross of Christ: the death He died on His cross was the world’s “second death.” The dimensions of His love (agape) were far greater than modern Christianity had comprehended.
2. The message proclaimed that Christ had successfully accomplished the mission the Father had sent Him to do—He had actually redeemed the world, saved the world, won for “all men” an adoption into the family of His Father, granted to them all “a judicial verdict of acquittal.” By virtue of the cross the world now stood differently before God. Christ had become the “last” or second Adam who had reversed the judicial condemnation that had come on the world because of the first Adam’s sin.
3. In other words, because of the cross the Father could “make His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and send rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). He was now free to treat “every man” as though he had not sinned! Now the truth of the Lord’s Supper could make heartfelt sense: Christ Himself is “the bread of God … which … gives life to the world.” “The bread that I will give,” says Jesus, “is My flesh which I will give for the life of the world. … Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you”—equally true of “all men,” believers and unbelievers alike. But “the life of the world” that Jesus speaks of is far more than the physical life of animals! Christ gave the gift of “more abundant” life to the human race; if only “all men” would receive the gift (which is already given them) with heart-felt thankfulness (which is faith), it would be to them the beginning of eternal life.
4. But this truth articulated in the 1888 message does not mean everyone will go to heaven. It’s not the heresy of Universalism. By His sacrifice, Christ has given every one of us the freedom to resist and reject what He has given us. And sadly, many do. The lost want their own final end; at the judgment at the end of the thousand years of Revelation 20, they will ask for destruction. Those who are saved at last are simply those who gladly received the gift. That simple.
5. God’s plan was, that once Seventh-day Adventists could learn to proclaim this truth—what Christ has accomplished for the human race—then honest hearts would respond in faith and experience what the Bible calls “justification by faith.” That’s what the gospel accomplishes in hearts and lives changed forever.
6. Salvation is more than an “offer” made to the world. It’s the “gift” Christ has “given” to the world. At last John 12:32, 33 comes into its own: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. This He said, signifying by what death He would die.” The Lord has given this unworthy people a unique grasp of the significance of Christ’s cross—yet to lighten the earth with glory.
Christ’s death proves God’s great love for man. It is our pledge of salvation. To remove the cross from the Christian would be like blotting the sun from the sky. The cross brings us near to God, reconciling us to Him. With the relenting compassion of a father’s love, Jehovah looks upon the suffering that His Son endured in order to save the race from eternal death, and accepts us in the Beloved.
By revealing the extent of what Christ accomplished on His cross, people are brought to where they can recognize themselves as the famous “Esau.” They have been given the birthright, given “in Christ.” In startling reality, the sinner sees that Christ has personally, individually died his second death. It’s far more than a stirring of the emotions. Hearts are confronted with a meaningful alternative—either “despise” and “sell” what was placed in their hands (as did Esau), or treasure the gift by the same life-changing faith that Abraham exercised. No middle ground.
As one example, the self-sacrifice needed to receive the Sabbath truth now becomes a joy. It’s an encouragement to see how the Holy Spirit will do a “quick work” in all the world.
7. Justification by faith therefore in this Day of Atonement is infinitely more than a legal declaration (as is commonly supposed); it accomplishes within itself all the heart-changing miracles that we commonly assign to the word “sanctification.”
Obedience becomes a New Covenant joy
In summarizing the 1888 message of justification by faith, Ellen White declared that it makes the believer “obedient to all the commandments of God,” which of course includes the Sabbath commandment, and the seventh one, too. (People learn to regard their body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.)And in this New Covenant joy is revealed the truth that prepares a people for translation. It’s a more mature glimpse of the grace of God that effectively “teaches” that self-denial is a joy. The Sabbath “proclaimed more fully” is what must come with the Loud Cry.
No one can know justification by faith in its end-time setting who does not render heart-felt obedience to all the commandments of God. There can be no continued subservience to the “man of sin” (who created the spurious sabbath) when justification by faith is seen in the light of the cleansing of the sanctuary.
When received and proclaimed by the corporate body of God’s people, it will be like blowing trumpets with the heavenly news, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.”