There is need to define what this book means by "the 1888 message", and some readers will doubtless need a thumbnail sketch of the events that have come to be known by Seventh-day Adventists as "1888."
At the General Conference session held that year in Minneapolis, two young men (A. T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner) providentially conveyed to the delegates a beautiful message of justification by faith that became controversial because some opposed it. Many of the delegates, especially the older ministers and leaders, made the message (and the messengers) unwelcome.
A few rejoiced and truly accepted the message. Foremost among them was a little lady sitting on the front row, Ellen G. White. But no official person seems to have thought the message important enough to take it down in shorthand and transcribe it so that posterity could know firsthand what they said at that meeting.
Hence, we really do not have the "1888 message" itself in the exact words of the two young messengers at Minneapolis. Some will run with this and say this book therefore is a waste of time.
But this does not mean that we must despair of understanding what the message was or that the title of this book is a misnomer. Certain facts make it possible for us to reconstruct a fair and accurate concept of what they taught:
1. We know from his writings what Waggoner taught in the months immediately before the 1888 Conference.
2. We likewise know what he taught in the weeks immediately after.
3. We have Waggoner's book which he presented to the delegates at the Minneapolis Conference itself, which articulates the message which he believed regarding the gospel of justification by faith and particularly the nature of Christ and the two covenants (The Gospel in Galatians). His rejection of the contemporary Adventist legalism is clearly evident.
4. We know that Waggoner and Jones were in perfect agreement in their understanding of righteousness by faith both at Minneapolis and for about a decade after 1888. There were two messengers, but Ellen White spoke repeatedly of what they brought us as being one "message".
5. Ellen White's endorsements of their message are not confined to the so-called lost utterances at Minneapolis. She continues to endorse their ongoing presentations for years after the 1888 Conference, through 1896 and even later.
6. We can find help in reconstructing their message in seeing how their contemporaries caught its essential ideas, both in opposition and acceptance. For example, W. W. Prescott and S. N. Haskell were among those who responded favorably and began to echo their concepts, as they appreciated the Biblical and Ellen White support for them.
7. L. E. Froom tells us that Waggoner's widow wrote her husband's Minneapolis presentations in shorthand and transcribed the notes to be the basis of his book Christ and His Righteousness (Pacific Press, 1890).
Naturally we do not understand that there was perfection or any degree of infallibility in what Jones and Waggoner said. But Ellen White repeatedly spoke of them in terms like these: "the Lord's messengers", "Christ's delegated messengers", "men divinely appointed", "servants of God... with a heaven-sent message", "men he has chosen", "young men [whom God sent] to bear a special message", "his chosen servants", "whom God is using", "the Lord [is] working through brethren Jones and Waggoner", "He has given them precious light", "if you accept the message, you accept Jesus", "messengers I [the Lord] sent to my people with light, with grace and power", "a message from God, it bears the divine credentials", etc. Endorsements such as these continue through 1896 and occasionally even later. "Messengers" is an authentic Bible word. When ancient Israel sinned themselves into captivity in Babylon, their fault was not only "misusing" the Lord's "prophets", but "mocking the messengers of God" (see 2 Chronicles 36:16).
Our definition is clear: the 1888 message is understood in this book to be the essential and prominent ideas that were taught by Jones and Waggoner at the 1888 Conference and in the decade following. Our method will be:
(1) to keep as close to the 1888 date as possible;
(2) to present what Jones and Waggoner taught with repetition or with strong emphasis;
(3) to present what they were manifestly in perfect agreement on;
(4) to limit our presentation to their teachings where we find clear Ellen G. White (and of course Bible) ongoing support; and
(5) to take into account as well how at least "some" of their contemporaries understood the essentials of their message.
When we sometimes quote from Jones and Waggoner in later years (of necessity), it will be with careful scrutiny and selectivity to be certain that the ideas presented are in harmony with their earlier teachings, and with the five guidelines mentioned above.
If anyone should object that quotations after 1888 are not the 1888 message, the answer is that Ellen White's continuing support for years thereafter and her emphasis on the importance of the ongoing message are very significant. In fact, her most impressive endorsements come in 1896. And the complete, balanced picture of what they taught in the decade after Minneapolis must be a fair understanding of what was implicit in the message given in 1888. Like all human beings, Jones and Waggoner grew in their understanding (so did Ellen White!). Reasonable common sense cannot fail to give us a clear picture.
It is impossible that Ellen White could have continued her repeated and enthusiastic endorsements so long if she had suspected even an inkling that either one or both of the "messengers" had departed from the true faith at that time. She was an inspired prophet with sanctified, penetrating insight; her credibility as such is intertwined with that message of Jones and Waggoner. Never in her long career did she endorse anyone's contemporary message so heartily or persistently. We're skating on thin ice if we say that she was misinformed, naive, or mistaken.
Further, there is something even more important than Ellen White's crucial support in evaluating their message: the ultimate test of truth is the Bible itself. It is this author's conviction that they derived their concepts from their own firsthand study of the Scriptures in the light of the "great controversy" motif of Seventh-day Adventists, and from the unique idea of the cleansing of the sanctuary.
Some say that we don't need the message which they brought us because we have the same Bible they had, so we can find the message there as they did. But logic forces us to see this as false reasoning. We could just as fairly say that Paul and the apostles got their message from the Old Testament, so we don't need the New. And the Jews didn't need Isaiah or Jeremiah because they had the same Pentateuch the prophets used. The truth is that they needed and we need every ray of light that the Lord sees fit to send. Jones and Waggoner were "the Lord's special messengers", "delegated" to bring us "a special message." "God has sent men to bring us the truth that we should not have had unless God had sent somebody to bring it to us." None of us can be so arrogant as to claim the unique status of those 1888 "messengers.
"As with all of us, they were indebted to those who went before them, including Luther, Calvin, and Wesley; but they validated their message from Scripture alone. They saw the truth of justification by faith from a new and fresh perspective, that of the unique eschatological understanding inherent in the Advent movement. In recent years it is becoming increasingly evident that there is solid Biblical support for their essential concepts.
Further, confirmation of their fresh interpretation of Scripture is found in various competent theological studies of our day. For example, a doctoral dissertation for the University of London presents evidence that their view of the nature of Christ was held by a significant number of reformers throughout the Christian era (Harry Johnson, The Humanity of the Saviour, London: The Epworth Press, 1962). Some modern theologians such as C. E. B. Cranfield also understand the nature of Christ virtually as did Jones and Waggoner (see the International Critical Commentary on Romans 8:3, 4).
It is my prayer that your heart response to the message will be what Ellen White's was when she heard it personally for the first time at the conference in Minneapolis: "Every fiber of my heart said Amen" (Manuscript 5, 1889). That has been my response, ever since I first began to understand it, even before I knew of Ellen White's endorsements.
Robert J. Wieland