This is perhaps the most serious of all the topics we have looked at in this essay.
Many say they like Jesus and they like the Bible, but they have no use for "organized religion."We now face a "vegetarian" version of this within the Seventh-day Adventist Church—people who like the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, but are doubtful about the "organized church."
Some darkly hint that the church has become "Babylon" in defiance of Ellen White's testimony to the contrary.1 To them church membership seems passé. Because of its problems the Lord has probably forsaken the organized church or will do so, they say. Such usually gravitate into off-shoots, withdrawing support from the denomination.
Those so willing frequently quote a statement from Ellen White's Acts of the Apostles, page 11, that seems to encourage them. We will use italics for the much-quoted excerpt:
The church is God's fortress, His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world. Any betrayal of the church is treachery to Him who has bought mankind with the blood of His only-begotten Son. From the beginning ,faithful souls have constituted the church on earth.
This is understood to say, "From the beginning, the true church has been constituted of unorganized, disjointed, uncoordinated, 'faithful souls.' Denominational organization must fail."But does it say that?
What is the church? Is the organized church a Titanic doomed to sink? Should "faithful souls" abandon it and get a life raft on their own? Will there be no "ship" in the last days? Is the true church merely a non-cohesive, unorganized scattering of "faithful souls"?
The context of this statement seems to make that difficult to believe. It says the church is a cohesive, organized body—a "fortress" and a "city of refuge." In the Bible, a "city" is always an organized, corporate body of people. To forsake that organized church and withdraw support from it is so serious that it is called "treachery to Christ." If the church is to become the Bride of Christ, He must be rather jealous for her.
How can we know the truth? The answer comes by asking one significant question: What is the mind of Christ toward the organized Seventh-day Adventist Church? That is what we seek to know.
Has the Lord's Church Always Been an Organized Body?
The beginnings of the true church can be traced to the everlasting (or new) covenant that the Lord made with Abraham long ago:
"Get out of your country,
From your kindred
And from your father's house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation....
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."2
Thus the Lord began to organize His people to be a denominated, visible family, a "nation." His purpose: that they witness in the world.
Abraham's descendants were elected to be the ancient equivalent of today's organized church. They were publicly to share and exemplify his faith. Their nationhood was to demonstrate that it is possible for human beings to function in an organized unity, perfectly devoted to the Lord's guidance.
That nation came to be known as Israel. Her history records a series of ups and downs, with many dark episodes of corporate failure. (The "downs" were the direct result of the old covenant idea they had embraced on their own.) But did her terrible backslidings, such as in the days of Elijah and Jeremiah, cancel the original election of God? The answer has to be no.
Although they were severely punished for their apostasies (especially Baal-worship), neither Israel nor Judah ever became Babylon. Even while they were captives in Babylon they remained Israel. Baal-worship was a disease that afflicted the body but did not transform it into Babylon.
Even in Israel's darkest hours, she was still the brightest spot in a darker world. For example, Daniel and his companions accomplished in Babylonian exile what the kings and priests of Judah had failed to do in their national prosperity. At the nadir of Judah's terrible unfaithfulness to God, when the prospects for reformation seemed darkest, Jeremiah bought land at Anathoth, demonstrating his faith in the future healing of the apostasy.3 In all His wrath with His faithless people God remembered mercy and loyalty to them.4
His faithfulness to His promise does not excuse the faith-lessness of His people today, but it points to His divine solution to the problems of apostasy and worldliness in His church, a solution that gives hope when all else seems hopeless. (We will consider later what is this solution.)
Who Is "Israel" Today?
It is generally agreed among us that the modern Seventh-day Adventist Church has seriously repeated the history of ancient Israel. As we saw in our last chapter, Ellen White often said that our “in-a-great-measure" rejection of the 1888 message over a century ago was a replay of the Jews’ rejection of Christ.5
When they finally crucified Him and rejected His apostles in 34 A.D., while the Lord did not abandon His original covenant, He permitted a "shaking" to test His professed people. Two groups became distinguished and separated. The believing ones among them remained as His true church, and the unbelievers were shaken out. To the unbelieving Jews the Lord had to say, "The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it."6 The "nation" was the church continuing as the true Israel.
From the beginning, Abraham's true "seed" were never merely natural descendants. Not in Ishmael but "in Isaac shall thy seed be called."7 Righteousness by faith was as true in Abraham's day as in Paul's. Isaiah saw ahead of time what would happen in Israel's final test:
"It shall come to pass
That the glory of Jacob will wane,
And the fatness of his flesh grow lean....
Yet gleaning grapes will be left in it,
Like the shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives at the top of the uppermost bough,
Four or five in its most fruitful branches,"
Says the Lord God of Israel.8
In 34 A. D. the physical nation of Israel was rejected, but the true Israel repented at Pentecost because of faith in Christ, for "if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."9 That's how these contrite believers became the new Israel, the church, the true "nation bearing the fruits.” The church was not an appendage or off-shoot from Israel; it was the true descendants of Abraham.10
What Created The "Shaking"?
We have frequently heard a popular saying that the church will never experience repentance and reformation until persecution hits us. But the test for ancient Israel was not brought about by external force from the Roman Empire but by the gospel. What brought the nation to her final crisis was the life and death of Christ and the apostles' clear testimony at Pentecost of what it all means.
Likewise, it will be a revelation of the truth of righteousness by faith that precipitates the final shaking today, not persecution from the world. The Lord will do the work, not Satan. Persecution will come, but it's impossible that a lukewarm church can be persecuted by Satan. He wants to keep that church lukewarm! Only those “who live godly in Christ Jesus" can be persecuted.
At the beginning of His ministry Christ selected disciples and ordained them, disciplining them to proclaim the gospel to the world. "'He ordained twelve.'... The first step was now to be taken in the organization of the church that after Christ's departure was to be His representative on earth."11 "On this rock [their expressed faith in Him] I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."12 He commissioned them to be a disciplined, unified "body":"As the Father has sent Me, I also send you."13 They were not a disjointed, quadriplegic scattering of "faithful souls."
The Holy Spirit continued to organize and to lead the members toward perfect unity and cohesion. Here's an example of how He did it:
The Holy Spirit said, "Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.14
There's good news here: the apostles and church elders were responsive to the Holy Spirit's leading. But our 1888 history is different from that of the apostles. What "the Holy Spirit said" to us we didn't do! But now the time has come when we must respond as promptly to His leading as the apostles did. If the Lord has to coerce us into His kingdom dragging our feet, kicking and holding back every step of the way, how can this bring Him honor and glory?
The same Holy Spirit who organized the apostles is still alive today. We read that Paul left Titus "in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you."15 This was the pattern.
When problems threatened, “it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church” to convene the first general council to discuss the issues openly, and unitedly to seek the Holy Spirit's solution. There was no "kingly power" to dictate what should be done. The "Jerusalem decree" was the work of lay members and apostles praying together, "the whole church” studying and discussing.16
Even during the persecution of the Dark Ages evidence shows that the true church was visible and organized. The messages to the angels of "the seven churches" of Revelation 2 and 3 indicate that the apostles' pattern continued. Many of the records of those churches were destroyed by their enemies, but sufficient have survived to show that the “faithful souls" of the Dark Ages were coordinated as a “body."
Inspiration likens the true church of medieval times to a “woman" in "the wilderness," a symbol of an organized body.17 "There existed for many centuries bodies of Christians who remained almost wholly free from papal corruption.... The Vaudois churches, in their purity and simplicity, resembled the church of apostolic times."18 In fact, Christ makes a complaint against "the church of Thyatira," the church in the wilderness, because they were not intradisciplined enough—they permitted "Jezebel" to teach in their midst.19 This implies the normal presence of order and corporate responsibility.
What Keeps the Church Together
Christ's organization of His church is different from any business or political entity. Paul's idea in 1 Corinthians 12 is brilliant: "As the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many are one body, so also is Christ.... You are the body of Christ, and members individually."20 A "body" is not an uncoordinated, scattered mélange of dismembered organs, an eye here and a nose there, and a stomach somewhere else. Each "member" is joined to the other and to the head.
When the early church functioned as a body in disciplined coordination under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Lord respected its organization. For example, when Saul of Tarsus was converted, the Lord brought him into immediate fellowship with His organized church.21
The idea is beautiful Good News. Christ being the "head," each believer is automatically an important and functioning member of the body. No political or other human organization can enjoy such perfect unity where each member sees himself as especially created to fill a need. Talk about self-esteem! Nothing nurtures it like living membership in the "body of Christ." Every believing person discovers therein to his everlasting joy his true sense of self-identity and fulfillment.
Over a hundred years after Minneapolis and 1888, the time has come for us to fulfill Paul's vision of a perfectly coordinated church where every member feels needed. For nearly two thousand years Paul's picture of genuine, lasting "church growth" has been awaiting its full realization:
We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine,... but speaking the truth in love [agape], may grow up in all things into Him who is the head— Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying [building up] of itself in love [agape].22
It's natural for some to fear that the church and its institutions are now too big and complicated ever to be successful. But the Bible gives no hint that the growth of the body makes difficult or impossible the Holy Spirit's work. Overall, the idea is that what will unify the church is pure, unadulterated truth promulgated wholeheartedly and unreservedly by its leadership. What happened in 1888 must be replayed, but this time in sanctified reverse.
The Organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Holy Spirit led our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers to organize:
We sought the Lord with earnest prayer... Light was given by
His Spirit that there must be order and thorough discipline in the church—that organization was essential.... Notwithstanding that the Lord gave testimony after testimony upon this point, the opposition was strong, and it had to be met again and again.... We engaged in the work of organization, and marked prosperity attended this advance movement.23
Now we ask, What is the mind of Christ today toward the organized denomination known as Seventh-day Adventists? Can we know for sure?
In the last book of the Bible we can trace His mind toward His church and its destiny from the apostles down to the end of the world. In Revelation 12 He pictures the church as “a woman” opposed by Satan through all the Christian era. The church in the last days emerges in the final act as "the remnant of her seed" (KJV) which "keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."24 Her magnificent destiny is to become the Bride of Christ. The time must come when “the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready."25 It was God's intention that 1888 be that time of betrothal.
Thus the outstanding demonstration of this two thousand years of history is the public display of a world church that is as completely loyal to Christ as a loving, faithful bride is loyal to her husband.
Since the true Head of this church is Christ Himself, His honor and vindication are involved. Let's not give up hope; He knows a way to bring healing and unity to His "body."
Ellen White is clear. She identifies the organized Seventh-day Adventist Church as this "remnant":
In a special sense Seventh-day Adventists have been set in the world as watchmen and light-bearers. To them has been entrusted the last warning for a perishing world,... [the] proclamation of the first, second, and third angels' messages.... The most solemn truths ever entrusted to mortals have been given us to proclaim to the world.26
Let us have faith that God is going to carry the noble ship which bears the people of God safely into port.27
I had an impressive dream last night. I thought that you were on a strong vessel, sailing on very rough waters. Sometimes the waves beat over the top, and you were drenched with water. You said, "I shall get off; this vessel is going down." "No,"said one who appeared to be the captain, "this vessel sails into the harbor. She will never go down."28
The church may appear as about to fall, but it does not fall. It remains, while the sinners in Zion will be sifted out—the chaff separated from the precious wheat. This is a terrible ordeal, but nevertheless it must take place.29
I am instructed to say to Seventh-day Adventists the world over, God has called us as a people to be a peculiar treasure unto Himself. He has appointed that His church on earth shall stand perfectly united in the Spirit and counsel of the Lord of hosts to the end of time.30
Some of these and other similar statements were made decades after the 1888 experience, indicating that Ellen White still regarded the organized church as the body of Christ, enfeebled and defective as it was. But it must experience repentance and spiritual reformation.
How has Christ regarded this organized church? As He called Abraham and his descendants to witness to His truth in a world of paganism, so He has called Seventh-day Adventists to witness to the apostate Christian churches and to the entire world, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and paganism.
Who Is the True Leadership of This Church?
(1) If it is a fallible hierarchy of men and women, there is no hope for its future, and likewise no hope for any off-shoot from it to succeed any better.
(2) But if we have a firm faith that the Lord Jesus is the true Leader of this church, then we can have confidence that He will cleanse and purify it as He has promised to do. If it was the Lord Jesus who initiated this church's calling, we can be sure that He knows how to see it through.
(3) The mind of Christ toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church is not impossible to know. It's in His message in Revelation 3:14-21. No way does He reveal Himself as being indulgent and lackadaisical toward our backslidings and failures. He is a “Faithful and True Witness,“ straight-forward, direct in correcting His people. He says He is so nauseated with their lukewarmness that He feels like throwing up (this is what the Greek of verse 16 actually says).
He tells them that they are "wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked," with the little Greek word ho meaning that of all the seven churches of history they are the one outstandingly so.
(4) But His loyalty is revealed in intimate family-love, the kind that cannot be misunderstood even when family members severely chasten each other: "As many as I love {phileo), I rebuke and chasten." His solution to our denominational problems: "Be zealous and repent."31
(5) The prophecy calls for a people to be raised up in the last days who fulfill the will of God and bring honor and glory to the Lamb. They will provide a convincing answer to the long-delayed Lord's prayer, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.“ They share executive authority with Christ in the conclusion of the great controversy, "Cabinet members," if you please.32 Their loyalty to Christ in no way merits salvation; but it gives convincing evidence that the gospel has the power Christ claims for it.
The Lord Himself has denominated that people to be Seventh-day Adventists. The dragon has developed a special "rage," highly refined, a massive "inside job” of inducing discouragement and disloyalty in the hearts of conscientious church members. Some wounded ones believe themselves to have been persecuted by the church, not realizing that the true source is the "dragon" trying to usurp the place of Christ in his final "war" with the remnant. The ancient patriarch Job had difficulty knowing who was tormenting him. He thought it was the Lord when in fact it was Satan. It is possible for us also to be confused.
Our failures and backslidings have indeed been grievous, so much so that Satan claims them as evidence that Christ has abandoned the church, and some have bought the idea. Yet the Lord can heal our backslidings.33 To human judgment the church may appear to be a vast graveyard of dry bones without life. But the Lord can and will resurrect them."Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."34 The Lord has not forgotten this world and its needs. He "is at the head of the work, and He will set everything in order. If matters need adjusting at the head of the work, God will attend to that, and work to right every wrong."35 That's a truth for us to believe!
But Can God Do All That on His Own?
The Lord needs human agents through whom He can work to "set everything in order." It is not His plan to work independently of them. It is not fair for us to pray, "Lord, will You please do something," and then sit back ourselves and do nothing.
Through close fellowship with Him, those who are "crucified with Christ" will "sit" with Him in His throne and share with Him the executive authority of working "to right every wrong."36 The cowardly, proud love of self has been taken to the cross, and the overcomers know the reality of what John means when he says, “Perfect love {agape) casts out fear."37
They are not made of sterner or better stuff than others; they have simply seen something that others have not seen—the reality of the cross of Christ. This is true faith, and it has nerved them to stand for the right wherever they are, even though the heavens fall. They are the true Israel who exercise the faith of Abraham.
In a word, it is genuine righteousness by faith that has transformed these naturally timid, shy people into brave Christlike servants of truth. "The one who is feeble among them in that day shall be as David."38 It has also transformed those whose natural love of self makes them arrogant, abrasive, and pushy, so that "the love (agape) of Christ con-strains” them to demonstrate His meekness and gentleness:
From the light I have, I know that Satan is trying to bring in that which will make people think they have a wonderful work to do. But when God gives a man a message, that man, by his meekness and lowliness, will give evidence that God is working through him. God lives and reigns, and He desires us to walk before Him in humility. He does not wish this man N to force himself before a congregation....
We are not going to be interrupted in meeting after meeting by those who claim they have a message to deliver. He who presses himself forward into a place where he is not wanted is not doing the work of God. We are to work like soldiers in an army. We are not to step out of the ranks, and begin to work on our own account.39
The Holy Spirit has not gone to sleep. He will manifest Himself in a message of truth that is so clear and powerful and so self-humbling that fanaticism and arrogance on the one hand and timidity on the other will vanish before it:
Amid the confusing cries, "Lo, here is Christ! Lo, there is Christ!" will be borne a special testimony, a special message of truth appropriate for this time, which message is to be received, believed, and acted upon. It is the truth, not fanciful ideas, that is efficacious. The eternal truth of the Word will stand forth free from all seductive errors and spiritualistic interpretations, free from all fancifully drawn, alluring pictures. Falsehoods will be urged upon the attention of God's people, but the truth is to stand clothed in its beautiful, pure garments,... uncontaminated by the fallacies by which Satan seeks to deceive, if possible, the very elect.40
Abraham, “the father of the faithful," had to learn to have the faith the Lord has—a faith that "gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did."41 So must we. Where we see only dry bones, we must exercise the faith to call "those things which do not exist [apparently] as though they did,” and thus make possible the Lord's miracle of a new creation, a resurrection from death to spiritual life.
Even if there were not even one faithful Seventh-day Adventist in all the world, he who has the faith of Abraham will believe that the prophecies of Revelation concerning the remnant church must be fulfilled. He will cooperate with the Lord's work of resurrecting dry bones so that that which does not exist will be.
But in actual fact, it does already exist, for as in Elijah's day, there are "seven thousand" who do not bow the knee to Baal. They may appear to be hidden, and they may seem cowardly silent in the crisis; but they await only the revelation of the full truth of righteousness by faith to support fully and fearlessly its regenerating, life-giving work. The problem is self; and self will be crucified with Christ when righteousness by faith is finally understood.
The Lord needs millions of "Elijahs" who will lovingly yet firmly stand for the right, who have received and appreciated that agape which casts out fear. Each will bloom where providence has planted him, in committees, on church boards, in conference administration, in the classroom, or in the church pew.
Will the Past History Of Apostasy and Failure Always Repeat Itself?
If the answer is yes, we face nothing but hopeless despair for the future.
Even if a pure and holy off-shoot should develop, for God to be fair He must give it time also to grow big and wealthy and succumb to temptation and fail as have all "righteous" movements in the past. If the cycle of failure and apostasy in the organized church is endless, all "reformers" and their organized institutions are likewise doomed to ultimate failure, given enough time. But "present truth" is better news than that.
The foundation text of the Seventh-day Adventist Church declares that for once in history, history will not be repeated: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days [years]; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed."42 That cleansing or making right has never yet in history taken place for the body of the church. In order for the heavenly sanctuary to be cleansed, the Lord's sanctuary on earth must first be cleansed. The books of heaven can never record the "blotting out of sins" until this work is first accomplished in the hearts of His people on earth. Those heavenly records will never tell a lie. Speaking in context of the 1888 message, Ellen White emphasizes some wonderfully Good News:
Christ is in the heavenly sanctuary, and he is there to make an atonement for the people. He is there to present his wounded side and pierced hands to his Father. He is there to plead for his Church that is upon the earth. He is cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. What is our work?—It is our work to be in harmony with the work of Christ. By faith we are to work with him, to be in union with him.43
While Christ is cleansing the sanctuary, the worshippers on earth should carefully review their life, and compare their character with the standard of righteousness. As they see their defects they should seek the aid of the Spirit of God to enable them to have moral strength to resist the temptations of Satan, and to reach the perfection of the standard. They may be victors over the very temptations which seemed too strong for humanity to bear; for the divine power will be combined with their human effort, and Satan cannot overcome them.44
The One who will accomplish that amazing task is the High Priest. His business is that of being a Savior from sin. It's His job to cleanse the sanctuary, not ours; but it's our job to cooperate with Him, to let Him do it, to stop hindering Him "in His office work":
We are in the day of atonement, and we are to work in harmony with Christ's work of cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people. Let no man who desires to be found with the wedding garment on, resist our Lord in his office work.45
No material or sensual delight the world can offer can compare with the thrill of cooperating with that heavenly High Priest!
Let us spend our lifetime energies and all that we have in working with Him. God grant that never under any circumstances or under any pressure may we let ourselves work at cross purposes with Him.
To put the "1888" story into a simple nutshell:
In 1888 the Bridegroom-to-be approached the "woman" whom He loved, His intended Bride-to-be, to pledge to Him her tryst. The Song of Solomon chapter 5:1-7 describes what happened in dramatic symbolism. We read of His plight. Lonely, hungry, drenched with the rain, He knocks patiently at her door (epi ten thuran, Greek, LXX; Jesus quotes it in His message to "the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, the leadership of His last-days' church). But she is thinking only of herself, her own comfort. But as He continues knocking, century after century, finally she comes to her senses; finally she stops thinking of herself and thinks of Him still outside "the door," lonely, and hurt, the only One who truly loves her. And at last she gets up and goes to let Him in.
Notes:
- Cf. Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 32-62.
- Genesis 12:1-3.
- Cf. Jeremiah 32.
- See Jeremiah 16:14,15; 23:3-8; 30:18-31:37.
- Cf. Special Testimonies, Series A, No. 6, p. 20; January 16,1896. Stated over a hundred times!
- Matthew 21:43.
- Romans 9:7.
- Isaiah 17:4-6.
- Galatians 3:29.
- Daniel 9:24; Matthew 21:42-45; Luke 20:16; Acts 13:46; Romans 9:7,8; 11:17,25- 27.
- The Desire of Ages, p. 291.
- Matthew 16:18.
- John 20:21-23.
- Acts 13:1-4.
- Titus 1:5-11.
- See Acts 15:1-29. "Revelation 12:6.
- The Great Controversy, pp. 63,69.
- Revelation 2:18-20.
- Vss. 12,27.
- Acts 9:10-19; see also Acts of the Apostles, pp. 122,163.
- Ephesians 4:8-16.
- Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 26-29.
- Ephesians 4:17.
- Revelation 19:7.
- Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 9, p. 19.
- Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 390.
- Letter to D.M. Canright, Testemonies for the Church, Vol.5,p.571.
- Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 380. 30 Ibid. , p.397.
- Revelation 3:19.
- Vs. 21.
- Jeremiah 3:22.
- Psalm 121:4.
- Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 390.
- Revelation 3:21.
- 1 John 4:18.
- Zechariah 12:8.
- Selected Messages, Book Two, p. 71.
- Review and Herald, October 13,1904.
- Romans 4:17.
- Daniel 8:14; cf. Revelation 11:15; 19:7,8.
- Review and Herald, January 28,1890.
- Ibid., April 8,1890.
- Ibid. ,January 21,1890.