When one begins to realize that the 1888 message was the beginning of the latter rain and the loud cry, a perplexing question comes up immediately: What happened to the messengers themselves?
Both developed serious problems in their later years. And many today have superficially assumed that this demonstrates that their message itself could not be true. Although he never gave up the Seventh-day Adventist message, Jones was disfellowshipped, largely due to personal problems with his brethren. Waggoner remained "a Christian gentleman" to the end, but he suffered a tragic domestic failure and for a time fell prey to what appeared to be pantheistic error.
Those who have opposed the 1888 message have justified themselves by trying to apply Jesus' words to the 1888 messengers: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit" (Matthew 7:16, 17). On the surface, applying these words to the Jones-Waggoner history has caused many people for decades to reject their message. And such reasoning has on the surface seemed plausible.
However, with prophetic insight, Ellen White has declared emphatically that such reasoning in the case of Jones and Waggoner is not correct. It is in fact "a fatal delusion."
There is a unique factor in this case that many have overlooked.
To reject the message on the grounds of Jones's and Waggoner's later problems is like someone rejecting the Seventh-day Adventist message because he has happened to meet an unworthy member of that church. Many people do indeed reject a true message for such subjective reasons, but in the process they lose a great blessing. Jesus says to us, "Judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24). And for us to reject the 1888 message for such a subjective reason is to postpone indefinitely the renewed blessings of recovering the latter rain and the loud cry message.
One wishes that Jones and Waggoner could have finished their life course in honor. If they had done so, no one could today find any "hooks" on which to hang his doubts about their message. After all the history of the past century, we would be compelled to believe! But the Lord seems determined not to force us to believe.
Their later personal failures are the great disappointment of the 1888 history, as October 22, 1844 was in the beginning of our history as a movement. Both are embarrassing, and both require understanding, or we shall make serious mistakes. It seems that the Lord Himself has permitted both as an almost overmastering point of confusion and a stumbling block for anyone who is looking for an excuse to reject truth.
The following are some reasons why it is a "fatal delusion" to reject or even to lightly regard the 1888 message because of the weaknesses later of the messengers themselves:
1. Jones's and Waggoner's later errors and mistakes were not due to a fault or weakness inherent in their message itself. As early as 1892 Ellen White painfully sensed the impact of the persecution they were enduring, and predicted the possibility of their later defection. But she made it clear that if this sad development should take place, it would in no way affect the validity of their message:
It is quite possible that Elder Jones or Waggoner may be overthrown by the temptations of the enemy, but if they should be, this would not prove that they had had no message from God, or that the work that they had done was all a mistake.
Should the Lord's messengers, after standing manfully for the truth for a time, fall under temptation, and dishonor Him who has given them their work, will that be proof that the message is not true? No... Sin on the part of the messenger of God would cause Satan to rejoice, and those who have rejected the message and the messenger would triumph; but it would not at all clear the men who are guilty of rejecting the message of God.
But what could possibly cause Jones and Waggoner to lose their way? If no fault in the message led them astray, and if they were indeed entrusted by the Lord with a "most precious message," could any temptation be strong enough to overthrow them? The next exhibit will throw light on this reasonable question.
2. They were forced to endure "unchristlike persecution” from their brethren that subjected them to pressures that no others have been called to endure in quite the same way:
I wish that all would see that the very same spirit which refused to accept Christ, the light that would dispel the moral darkness, is far from being extinct in this age of the world...
Some may say, "I do not hate my brother; I am not so bad as that." But how little they understand their own hearts. They may think they have a zeal for God in their feelings against their brother if his ideas seem in any way to conflict with theirs; feelings are brought to the surface that have no kinship with love... They would as leave be at sword's point with their brother as not, and yet he may be bearing a message from God to the people, just the light we need for this time...
They take step after step in the false way, until there seems to be no other course for them than to go on, believing they are right in their bitterness of feeling against their brethren. Will the Lord's messenger bear the pressure brought against him? If so, it is because the Lord bids him stand in His strength, and vindicate the truth that he is sent of God...
I have deep sorrow of heart because I have seen how readily a word or action of Elder Jones or Elder Waggoner is criticized. How readily many minds overlook all the good that has been done by them in the few years past, and see no evidence that God is working through these instrumentalities. They hunt for something to condemn, and their attitude toward these brethren who are zealously engaged in doing a good work, shows that feelings of enmity and bitterness are in the heart... Cease watching your brethren with suspicion.
Consider the situation that Jones and Waggoner were in. It was unique, something difficult to duplicate in sacred history:
a. They knew their message had come from the Lord.
b. They knew it was the beginning of the latter rain.
c. They knew they had followed the leading of the Lord in proclaiming it under the circumstances that had developed.
d. They keenly felt what Ellen White said was "condemnation," "hatred," "bitterness," and "rejection" on the part of their brethren. And the date of Ellen White's letters indicates that these painful negative feelings of the brethren continued after their confessions and tearful repentances expressed from 1890 to 1891. Ellen White says they continued their opposition right on. They just couldn't get out of the rut that they fell into initially at the 1888 Conference. Reject the message once, and you never recover it.
e. In comparison with Jones and Waggoner, Luther had an easy problem in meeting the opposition of the Papacy and Catholic hierarchy toward his message. True, the hatred he had to endure was open, and physically and verbally violent. But what helped Luther "bear the pressure brought against him" (to borrow Ellen White's phrase regarding Jones and Waggoner) was the clear prophetic messages of Daniel and Revelation. He saw Rome as the "beast," the "little horn," the "harlot." Thus the mysterious opposition he had to endure was explainable by the prophecies of God's Word.
f. But the Lord's messengers in the 1888 era enjoyed no such encouragement to help them bear the pressure brought against them. They believed the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be the true remnant church of Bible prophecy. They had confidence in the principles of organization that recognized the General Conference as the highest authority under God. They recognized their brethren as Heaven's appointed leaders of His work. They knew that heavenly intelligences were watching with deep interest the unfolding of the drama. But never had they seen such mysterious rejection of truth. It unnerved them.
g. Jones and Waggoner were both involved in the defense of the national cause of religious liberty as the United States Congress came close to the enactment of a Sunday law, closer than at any other time in American history—a powerful and compelling evidence that the world had reached the time for the loud cry to go forth with unprecedented power. And they knew that their generation was living in the time of the cleansing of the sanctuary, the investigative judgment, when the blindness and unbelief of former generations must not be repeated.
h. And yet, to their astonishment, never had history recorded a more shameful failure on the part of God's people to enter in to the realization of immense eschatological opportunity! It seemed to be an unprecedented unbelief and rejection on the part of modern Israel. When the messengers' own hearts were thrilled with a keener Heaven-inspired love than they had ever known, they met an icy "hatred" from brethren whom the Lord called to unite with them in their mission. It seemed to Jones and Waggoner to be the final, complete failure of God's program. What could possibly lie beyond? It was a deranging experience.
i. The date of the Ellen White letters cited above is significant in that during 1892 Waggoner was sent to England under circumstances of extreme privation. The year previous Ellen White was "exiled" to Australia, with "no light from the Lord" that it was His will for her to go other than that the General Conference wanted her out of the way. Thus the team that was proclaiming the message of Christ's righteousness in camp meetings, churches, colleges, workers' meetings, and by personal work, was broken up. Waggoner and Jones would be more than human if they did not feel this as a rejection of their unique message and work, and as a slap in the face.
3. Ellen White said the total impact of this reaction was virtual "persecution":
We should be the last people on the earth to indulge in the slightest degree the spirit of persecution against those who are bearing the message of God to the world. This is the most terrible feature of unchristlikeness that has manifested itself among us since the Minneapolis meeting. Sometime it will be seen in its true bearing, with all the burden of woe that has resulted from it.
It is very easy for us to say that the messengers should have borne the pressure against them. We quoted this above:
Will the Lord's messenger bear the pressure brought against him? If so, it is because God bids him stand in his strength, and vindicate the truth that he is sent of God.
But God's infinite wisdom decreed apparently that they were not to vindicate the truth that they were sent of God, at least not by any subjective evidences. It has apparently been His will that this present generation now evaluate their message strictly on the objective evidence inherent in the message itself, aside from all factors that would superficially constitute compelling subjective evidence.
This generation must evaluate the message as it appeared to the 1888 generation—the stumbling block of faulty human personalities present again to provide a hook on which those who secretly want to resist may hang their doubts. In His infinitely righteous "jealousy" the Lord wants to be sure that not one soul shall ever receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the latter rain unless there is a sincere and honest purpose of heart. Faith, it seems, cannot be perfected without some divinely appointed "hooks" on which we are free to hang doubts of sinful unbelief. It is our task now to overcome fully where that previous generation failed.
4. Ellen White assigns a completely different reason "to a great degree” for the failure of Jones and Waggoner than usually applies to apostates:
It is not the inspiration from heaven that leads one to be suspicious, watching for a chance and greedily seizing upon it to prove that those brethren who differ from us in some interpretation of Scripture are not sound in the faith. There is danger that this course of action will produce the very result assumed; and to a great degree the guilt will rest upon those who are watching for evil....
The opposition in our own ranks has imposed upon the Lord's messengers [Jones and Waggoner] a laborious and soul trying task; for they have had to meet difficulties and obstacles which need not have existed....
Love and confidence constitute a moral force that would have united our churches, and insured harmony of action: but coldness and distrust have brought disunion that has shorn us of our strength.
When apostates leave the fellowship of God's people, abandoning doctrines they once held, our usual judgment is that "they went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us" (1 John 2:19). But the evidence in the case of Jones and Waggoner is not so. They were of us, for the Lord Himself entrusted them with a most precious message. But to a great degree "we" are responsible, for "our" uncharitable judgment ended to produce the very result assumed.
5. To permit ourselves to entertain prejudice toward the 1888 message because of the failures of the messengers is to "enter into a fatal delusion:"
It is quite possible that Elder Jones or Waggoner may be overthrown by the temptations of the enemy; but if they should be, this would not prove that they had no message from God, or that the work that they had done was all a mistake. But should this happen, how many would take this position, and enter into a fatal delusion because they were not under the control of the Spirit of God... I know that this is the very position many would take if either of these men were to fall, and I pray that these men upon whom God has laid the burden of a solemn work, may be able to give the trumpet a certain sound, and honor God at every step and that their path at every step may grow brighter and brighter until the close of time.
Unfortunately, Ellen White's prayer was not answered as she had hoped. Satan rejoiced, and those who rejected the message and the messenger "triumphed." Many have "entered into that fatal delusion" for decades, feeling justified to neglect or oppose those elements of truth that in God's design constitute the beginning of the latter rain and the loud cry.
Now the hour has struck for an honest evaluation of evidence, that "there should be no more delay.... The mystery of God should be finished" in this our generation.