History at Issue
Like the Jews we must face our past. Unlike the Jews, we have before us an “open door, and no man can shut it.”This is a documentary record of numerous attempts beginning in 1950 to persuade the General Conference to give to the world church the authentic 1888 message as “the Lord in His great mercy sent” it, to let the agents themselves speak whom the Lord employed.
The record includes the General Conference response over these four decades.
In making this correspondence available the two authors who compile it are exposing themselves to the critical judgment of their contemporaries. Have these two authors been wrong in making their appeal? Or have they made it in a wrong spirit? And have General Conference leadership been right in rejecting their appeal? Surely thoughtful readers can readily discern where the problem lies.
Each passing decade has added further details of serious importance to this on-going history. All the participants who were originally concerned in 1950 have gone to their graves—save these two. Shall they also go to their graves—leaving the record buried? What is their duty?
We have been urged to make this record public before we go to our rest, unless soon the church is prepared “as a bride adorned for her husband” and we with her have the high privilege to witness the Lord’s second advent. In either case, this is a record vitally concerned with Seventh-day Adventist mission. And these two authors would rather face judgment before they close their life record than afterwards. Perhaps their current readers can view these four decades more objectively than they can, and thus help them discern where they went astray in conceiving or expressing their convictions.
Again, this documentation may be especially relevant today as some “independent ministries” and separationists challenge loyal church members to withdraw their support and even membership from the organized church. Because the authors of this essay are loyal to the organization of the church they have no sympathy with such a suggestion. But they believe that the documentation of this issue of 1888 may illuminate some of the original sources of our present disunity and may strengthen ties of loyalty which are now being severely strained.