Before “1888” “we” had “preached the law, the law, until we [were] as dry as the hills of Gilboa, that had neither dew nor rain.” No one overtly denied the “Good Shepherd” idea—that Christ actively seeks and saves the lost rather than waiting for us to seek and find Him; but during those pre-1888 years we lacked what later came as “a most precious message.” The gospel was far better Good News than “we” had thought it could be.
No one among us today will deny the parable of the Good Shepherd. But the idea seldom gets through clearly.
For example, consider the basic theme that permeates so much of what we hear in pulpits, and at camp meetings: in order to be saved there are three things we must do: (1) read the Bible, (2) pray, and (3) witness. The theme is played almost endlessly. “Maintain your relationship with the Lord,” which means get up in the morning, read something devotional, and pray. And the cure for spiritual maladies is “work for others.”
True, 100%. Can’t be said too often. But a few weeks after camp meeting, we get busy again, and we’re back in the same old problem of lukewarmness.
“Maintaining that relationship” with the Lord is the problem
Once we get far enough along that we have what we think is a “relationship,” it’s commonly understood that maintaining it is the believer’s job. And that seems to make good sense, for hasn’t the Lord done His part of the job, so now it’s only fair that we do ours. There have to be some “good works.” We must make our contribution, is the idea.And here’s where we often fall down. We forget or we get too busy, and then it seems the Lord is far away. And of course it’s all our fault, isn’t it? So, … enter Old Covenant guilt.
The pre-1888 Church was a working church. “Our” activity was almost frenetic. The Review and Herald and the Pacific Press were churning out literature, our evangelists were pitching tents and holding evangelistic “efforts,” stirring up the Sunday-church pastors and frequently raising up a little new church at the close of the campaign. We almost invariably won each debate that we got into over “the law and the Sabbath.” A great spirit of triumphalism seemed to indicate that the Lord was pleased with our progress.
The Review was one of the finest, if not the finest of religious publishing houses in the nation. The Battle Creek Sanitarium was world-famous; kings came across the Atlantic to go to it. We were finding a place on the map and our people rejoiced in “the blessed hope” of Christ coming soon.
But still our message was “dry,” confessed Ellen White. Ever since Early Writings was written (1850) we had been praying for the Lord to send the “latter rain.” And now at last in 1888 He did so with refreshing advance “showers” in a message that startled and even alarmed “us.” It was surprising because it majored in revealing Christ as a Savior who does not wait for us either to initiate or to maintain a “relationship” with Him. The spotlight shone on a divine love that takes both initiatives. And there is where we became scared: this is going to upset our devotion to the Sabbath.
What is Christ doing?
God is not hiding in a celestial office where we must seek Him out. He’s not like a doctor in his sanctum sanctorum where the nurse keeps you out until you have an appointment. Rather, the message is shocking, even to us today: your salvation does not depend on your perseverance or hard work in seeking the Lord. The Savior takes the initiative in seeking you. This has been hard for us to humble ourselves and grasp. Paul quoted Moses:“The man who does those things shall live by them.” But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who wil ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or “‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach).
Christ in His earthly life was human as we are, dependant on His Father, and it’s amazing but true that the Father took the initiative in seeking His Son day by day to maintain a closeness with Himself.
Jesus speaks of Himself in Isaiah: “The Lord God … awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God has opened My ear” (50:4, 5). Jesus didn’t need an alarm clock. Does the Father love us as much as He loved His Son?
The Holy Spirit does for us all that the Father did for Jesus. Shocking as it seems to many, He seeks to maintain our closeness with Christ. He prompts us continually. Our problem is revealed in the next part of Isaiah’s verse: “And I was not rebellious, nor did I turn away.” In contrast, that is what we often do. We repulse the initiative that the Holy Spirit takes in our behalf. (Peterson represents Jesus as saying, “The Master, God, opened My ears, and I didn’t go back to sleep, didn’t pull the covers over My head,” vs. 5.)
As we look back, something special seems to have been developing when “1888” came along. Jesus Christ the Savior was progressing in His closeness with His church. He was wanting to pursue His church as a lover pursues a bride-to-be. Seldom in society does the man wait for the woman he loves to take the initiative. Probably unknown to the corporate body or to the church, something was moving down the verses of Revelation 19 and had come as far as the time for verses 7 and 8. It was now time to “rejoice,” for something must happen that had never before happened in history: “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready.”
After centuries and millennia of human history we had come to Daniel’s “time of the end;” but something was involved we weren’t prepared for. Living in “the time of the end” meant that verses 7 and 8 of Revelation 19 had to be fulfilled in the progressive Christian experience of the church as a body. We can’t continue static in “the time of the end” forever; Revelation 19 has to move on to fulfillment. We can’t stall the progress of sacred history. “The marriage of the Lamb is come and His wife has made herself ready.” But she hadn’t done it, yet.
What can happen that will effect this grand paradigm development?
In all past ages “the Lamb’s wife” has never “made herself ready.” She has always been the flower girl at the wedding, never the bride. But she has to grow up; you can’t stay a child forever.How can the heavenly Bridegroom get His church’s attention? By burning down the Review offices and the grand Battle Creek Sanitarium? (This all happened after the 1901 General Conference Session.) Can He bring His people to attention by an unprecedented fear-motivated demand for holy living? The answer has to be in the text: “To her [His bride-to-be] was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (vs. 8).
No, the means the Lord will employ will not be a thunderclap from heaven or an earthquake, but a tender, quiet, heart-warming message of “the righteousness of saints.” A message that woos the heart—“righteousness by faith,” the Bridegroom coming close in an appeal, a gentle touch of truth.
The Jews in Christ’s day expected the Messiah to come with a thunderclap and earthquake, for many Old Testament prophecies seemed to say so. The Jews were not prepared that He came gently, a Babe born in Bethlehem, a questioning Lad in the temple when He was only 12, a modest healing ministry in Galilee, a message of Good News beatitudes preached on a grassy hillside. Many leaders were so shocked, they never recovered their spiritual equilibrium until they rejected and crucified Him. Ellen White often said (over 100 times) that our reaction to “1888” was “just like the Jews.” It was Jesus taking us by the hand and saying, Come, let’s go to the wedding!
As a divine Bridegroom, His initiating love was so strong that Ellen White for the first time in her writing career said that He would lead us all the way to consummation of the wedding if we didn’t “resist” Him. Listening herself to the 1888 message prompted her to formulate this astounding thought.
It was the essence of the message of Jones and Waggoner regarding righteousness by faith. In brief:
1. The motivation was the cross and the love revealed there—not a theological exercise, but a wooing message. When it was allowed to get through to the youth and the church members, the results were spectacular. Ellen White had seen nothing like it since the Midnight Cry of 1844. For example, the messengers didn’t harp on tithe-paying, but huge tithe flowed in, unasked for. Human hearts were beginning to respond in a phenomenal way.
2. “1888” presented what Christ has already accomplished for us. Again, it was a wooing message: emphasis was on the Good Shepherd’s infinite dangers He went through “where He found His sheep that was lost.” As Christ was lifted up as the Lamb of God, true to His promise He was “drawing all persons” to Himself. His death for us was the equivalent of the second death. He had “poured out His soul unto death,” even the second.
In the meetings held after Minneapolis, there was something different from many of our Weeks of Prayer or evangelistic meetings today: “There was no urging or inviting. The people were not called forward, but there was a solemn realization that Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” It was something new in Adventism— yes, in modern Christianity.
3. Christ was presented as carrying the world on His heart. The message said nothing about Arminianism or Calvinism, yet it transcended and solved the anomalies in both. It was designed by Heaven to grip the attention of sincere people in the popular churches who sensed that the time had come for something new. Startling as it might be, the atonement was effected for the world; Christ had died the second death for every man’s sin, had “tasted death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). The Savior had become the “last Adam.” He had reversed what the first Adam did in bringing a “judicial verdict of condemnation” on “all men,” and had effected for the same “all men” a judicial verdict of “acquittal” (Rom. 5:15-18, NEB). Now was revealed the way to grip hearts and bring conviction of the Sabbath truth. Now the predictions of Early Writings and The Great Controversy regarding the final inflow of souls were to meet fulfillment. It was exciting to be alive, and Ellen White was overjoyed.
4. The message revealed that the Savior had answered thousands of questions when He declared that His “yoke is easy and [His] burden is light,” and that it’s “hard” to resist and oppose such love. Can you imagine the shock that ideas like this could have had on ministers and people who heard these things but had assumed that this little sect of Seventh-day Adventists were legalists? Here was forming in minds and hearts a deep conviction that Jesus is a Shepherd seeking us, striding past all the barriers that human prejudice has erected. Here is a Divine Suitor who is taking bold steps to His Beloved’s heart.
5. The message portrayed Jesus as intimately near, “Emmanuel, God with us.” Never since Paul had anyone presented so forcefully the reality of a Savior who “took” on His sinless nature our fallen, sinful nature, and had therein “condemned sin in the flesh.” The Bridegroom has come fresh from the battle where He has been proclaimed Victor! The gargantuan Conflict of the Ages has been won! In human flesh! Now the Bride can enter into His feelings, can share with Him His triumph, as a bride enters into her husband’s heroic career. In the promised intimacy, all fear is “cast out” (agape does that! 1 John 4:18). Hearts would be won to want to “overcome even as [He] overcame” (Rev. 3:20). The stage was re-set.
6. Now at last, after years of being as “dry as the hills of Gilboa,” Adventism was thrilled with the New Covenant succeeding the Old. No other identification is so apt for describing the impact of “1888.” It was like a black and white photo suddenly shining in radiant color. At last here is a message of Christ’s righteousness that’s big time, one with stature that can lighten the earth with glory. The millions immersed in the darkness of “Babylon” will “see a great light” (cf. Matt. 4:16).
Ellen White sat over on one side in front at the Minneapolis Church as she listened, her face beaming. Never had she heard such truth come publicly from human lips, for 45 years.
The lost lamb is wedged in the thorn bush on a dangerous cliff that wild stormy night
Will it rejoice when it is rescued by the selfsacrificing Good Shepherd? Or will it squirm and resist and fight its Rescuer? The parable didn’t say. It’s for us to complete the story, for the lost little lamb has resisted its Shepherd now for many, many years.