He promises that if there is an ounce of honesty in our souls “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Telling it is His specialty: “I will pour out My spirit on you; I will make My words known to you” (Prov. 1:23). Especially true in this Day of Atonement is this: “When He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).
Good news!
He will put His feeding trough down so low that lambs can reach it. If He “sent a most precious message” that was the start of the latter rain, wouldn’t He make it possible for any sincere person to understand?“1844” tells what God is doing in this cosmic Day of Atonement. An angel told Daniel, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed” (8:14, KJV). That was 2300 literal years which ended in 1844 when Christ began His final Day of Atonement work. While this happens in heaven, on earth three angels preach (Rev. 14:6-12).
But after all these years spanning three centuries, “every nation, kindred, tongue, and people” still wait to be gripped by the message. These three “fly in the midst of heaven” like a helicopter over the treetops. But they’re not the end: “Another angel,” a fourth, “comes down from heaven, having great power” like a spaceship so “the earth [can be] lightened with his glory” (Rev. 18:1-4). That’s where “1888” comes into its own.
It figures with “1844” in this scenario because it marked the “beginning” of that fourth angel’s message, as William Miller’s preaching in 1831 marked the beginning of that first angel’s message.
Common sense would say that there must be some special spiritual nutriments in the fourth message.
1. The gospel has built-in truth that prepares a believer for Christ’s coming as it is understood in Day of Atonement context.
Not one soul has been “translated” (going to heaven without dying, like Enoch and Elijah) under Christ’s ministry in the First Apartment of the heavenly sanctuary. Spiritual nutriments or “medicine” from the tree of life in the final ministry of Christ are needed. They accomplish what has never yet been done in the last 2000 years. That’s what Ellen White claimed was God’s intention in sending “1888.” It had to be “new light,” which had never been clearly perceived in the past.
2. “1888” was a break-through that all the world, including Protestants and Catholics, would have been amazed to see if “we” had let it get to them.
Just as the Jews of Christ’s day (yes, even His disciples) could not foresee the grand dimensions of their calling, so we Seventh-day Adventists have been slow to see the burst of light to come with that “other angel” of Revelation 18. It was “sent” to us but “we” blocked it.
3. In imagination let’s join a congregation gathered in 1893 to listen to a sobering sermon on the living message:
“Some of the brethren … came here free; but the Spirit of God brought up something they never saw before, … and revealed things they never saw before; and then, instead of thanking the Lord that that was so, and letting the whole wicked business go, and thanking the Lord that they had ever so much more of Him than they ever had before, they began to get discouraged. They said, ‘Oh what am I going to do? My sins are so great.’ There they let Satan cast a cloud over them, and throw them into discouragement, and they get no good out of the meetings day after day. …
“If the Lord has brought up sins to us that we never thought of before, that only shows that He is going down to the depths, and He will reach the bottom at last; and when He finds the last thing that is unclean or impure that is out of harmony with His will, and brings that up, and shows that to us, and we say, ‘I would rather have the Lord than that’—then the work is complete, and the seal of the living God can be fixed upon that character. [Congregation: ‘Amen.’]. …
“Which would you rather, have the completeness, the perfect fullness, of Jesus Christ, or have less than that, with some of your sins covered up that you never know of? … And so He has got to dig down to the deep places we never dreamed of, because we cannot understand our own hearts. … He will cleanse the heart, and bring up the last vestige of wickedness. Let Him go on, brethren; let Him keep on His searching work. …
“If the Lord should take away our sins without our knowing it, what good would it do us? That would simply be making machines of us. He does not propose to do that; consequently, He wants you and me to know when our sins go, that we may know when His righteousness comes.”
Do you get the point?
Cleansing the sanctuary is the work the High Priest does, it’s not what we do. We let Him do it. And He will do it if we don’t “resist Him.”The only reason it has not been done long before this is that we have been “resisting” Him all this long while.
And didn’t know what we were doing.
Now all the angels in heaven are crying out to us, it’s time that “1888” be understood.