Some ministers were
so deeply moved
that they asked
to be rebaptized.
White had “changed” and that the Cali-
fornia fellows had duped her.
Waggoner is the speaker we are most
concerned about when we speak of the
1888 Message in Minneapolis, for it was
in connection with his interpretation of
the schoolmaster law that he made the
major presentations on righteousness by
faith on that occasion. Jones made his
principal contributions to the Adventist
understanding of righteousness by faith
after the 1888 General Conference ses-
sion was completed. Incidentally, E. J.
Waggoner was a physician as well as a
minister, so he was referred to at Minne-
apolis as Dr. Waggoner.
Like many of her brethren, Ellen
White didn’t like everything she heard
Dr. Waggoner say. A year earlier she had
written to him expressing God’s displea-
sure over his having published his con-
troversial views on the schoolmaster law
in Signs of the Times. Early on at the
Minneapolis meetings she said she didn’t
see that he was presenting any new
light— though she added that she hadn’t
made up her mind on the matter, that she
wasn’t prepared to take a position yet.®
Even at the close of the meetings she
said, “Some interpretations of Scripture
given by Dr. Waggoner I do not regard as
correct.” 7 As for the debate between
Waggoner and the brethren about the
schoolmaster law, she saw both sides as
partly wrong.® In fact, she considered
the whole schoolmaster issue as a “mere
mote.”
Nonetheless, it is highly important in
our quest to realize that in between the
things she didn’t like, Ellen White heard
something else that she liked very well.
As the days went by, her heart beat ever
faster to hear this glorious other some-
thing. “I see the beauty of truth in the
presentation of the righteousness of
Christ in relation to the law as the doctor
has placed it before us.” © This part of
his message, she added “harmonizes per-
fectly with the light which God has been
pleased to give me during all the years of
my experience.” '! She appealed to the
16  MINISTRY/FEBRUARY/1988
ministers on the final Thursday of the
session to accept this message — which,
she said, they needed to accept—of “the
righteousness of Christ in connection
with the law.” '% Shortly after the Min-
neapolis meetings, she said it was not
new light, but rather was “old light
placed where it should be in the third
angel’s message.” '? As she heard it joy-
fully and gratefully, she said, “Every fiber
of my heart said amen.”
Some other people present also dis-
cerned this 1888 Message in spite of the
controversy over the schoolmaster law.
Some ministers were so deeply moved to
repentance and to new faith in Jesus that
they actually asked to be rebaptized.
So what was this underlying some-
thing that Ellen White perceived to be so
grand, the presentation that we some-
times call the 1888 Message? We'd like to
preach it too.
In From 1888 to Apostasy, George
Knight has done some fine thinking and
made some helpful comments. He distin-
guishes between a doctrine and an expe-
rience and suggests that what Ellen
White desired above all was that we ex-
perience righteousness by faith rather
than define it minutely.
Taking off from there, can we remind
ourselves that many doctrines need to be
experienced? Sabbathkeeping and tithe
paying obviously have dimensions that
have to be experienced as well as defined.
Even the doctrine of the Second Coming
ought to affect all our daily decisions, or
believing it isn’t worth much.
The fact that a doctrine should be ex-
perienced implies of course that we must
arrive at an adequate definition of it, or
the experience is not likely to be ade-
quate. For example, people who think
that Sabbath is Sunday or that it’s a hol-
iday rather than a holy day aren’t likely to
experience the day in the way God
intends.
It Adventists today are to have a gen-
uine experience in the 1888 Message
kind of righteousness by faith, we need to
know the genuine doctrine. We've seen
that at its core it was righteousness of
Christ in connection with the law. And
that it was righteousness of Christ in the
setting of the third angel’s message.
Both a legalistic belief that we must
earn salvation, and a superficial belief
that our sins are forgiven without true
repentance and without our offering for-
giveness to our neighbors, will result in
an inadequate experience. When Jesus
made His “gospel presentation,” He
promised immediate acceptance to all
who came to Him (John 6). And He
promised forgiveness full and free; He
didn’t promise it, as some people believe,
in return for a momentary happy belief in
God's kindness. In connection with the
Lord’s Prayer, He said, “If you forgive
men their trespasses, your heavenly Fa-
ther also will forgive you.” Praise His
name! Then He added, “but if you do not
forgive men their trespasses, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses”
(Matt. 6:14, 15, RSV). No legalism
here, nor flippant grace.
So we must experience the 1888 Mes-
sage; and in order to do so, we need to
know its content. But not necessarily in
itsprecise Waggoner-and-Jones details-
,God not having seen fit to preserve that
for us.
So what shall we do? I think we should
do what Knight suggests in his book. (As
a matter of fact, we talked it over while
he was writing. )
Inasmuch as the 1888 Message is
something that Ellen White perceived
through a process of filtering out what
wasn’t good and recognizing what har-
monized with God’s revelation to her;
and inasmuch as we really have to de-
pend on her perception to know what it
really was, | think we should saturate our-
selves in the Bible (of course) and also in
the writings of Ellen White —especially
in the gloriously Christ-centered, practi-
cal books and articles that she wrote im-
mediately before and during the 1890s.
For our purposes just now we’ll omit
unpublished testimonies and concen-
trate instead on the books most of us have
in our libraries, Steps to Christ, The Desire
of Ages, Christ's Object Lessons, and Tes-
timonies to Ministers, and on another
book I think we would all find very help-
ful, Through Crisis to Victory, by A. V.
Olson, recently republished as Thirteen
Crisis Years. The extant talks Ellen
: Discussion questions: :
“1. Do you agree with the aithor >
that our best understanding of the
© 1888 Message should come. from El
i len White's perception of it? ~~
2. What is the meaning of the &
statement that “many doctrines
need to be experienced”? ©
3. How is the 1888 Message. dis-
tinetly. Adventist? %
4. What part does ‘repentance
play in our aceepiance of the 1888 :
Message? SE = i