What 1s the 1888
Message!
C. Mervyn Maxwell
While we do not
have transcripts of
Jones’s and
Waggoner’s talks at
that fateful session,
we have an
impeccable source
for the message of
righteousness by
faith they were to
deliver.
C. Mervyn Maxwell,
Ph.D., is chairman of
the Church History
Department of the
Theological Seminary
at Andrews University.
t the editor’s friendly
insistence, you and I
have been assigned
to talk about the
“1888 Message,” a
topic that a lot of
people are talking
about this year. We're going to take for
granted that we all use the term to refer to
the special righteousness by faith mes-
sage, whatever it was, that was presented
at the 1888 Minneapolis General Con-
ference session. We're also assuming that
it refers to the form of that message that
we ought to be preaching today. This is
why the title asks what is rather than
what was the 1888 Message.
Trying to determine the precise histor-
ical content of the 1888 Message is a
challenge. We have books and articles
that E. J. Waggoner and A. T. Jones
wrote just before and after the 1888 Min-
neapolis meeting, three brief items in the
General Conference Daily Bulletin report-
ing on Waggoner’s presentations, nu-
merous comments by Ellen White, and
some reminiscences written yeats after by
persons who were there. But when all is
said and done, the simple truth is that no
one knows precisely what Waggoner and
Jones actually said in Minneapolis in
1888. Attempts to discover transcripts
of their messages have not yet been suc-
cessful, and claims that such transcripts
have been located have not been
validated.
The most recent attempt to discover
such documentation was made by my
colleague, Dr. George Knight, an inde-
fatigable researcher, for his book From
1888 to Apostasy.
The custom of transcribing every ad-
dress at General Conference sessions was
not instituted until 1891. But we do have
transcripts of many of the talks Ellen
White delivered at Minneapolis. Inas-
much as Providence could have over-
ruled to supply transcripts for Waggoner
and Jones too, perhaps we really don’t
need to know precisely what they said.
Ellen White’s understanding
One reason we don’t need to know
precisely what they said is that we have a
copious recording of Ellen White's per-
ception of it.
It was Ellen White who told us that
1888 was important. It was she who said
that at Minneapolis God gave “a most
precious message” through His servants,
“Elders Waggoner and Jones.” ! It was
she who characterized the 1888 message
as the “matchless charms of Christ,” * as
“the third angel's message,” > and even
as “the third angel’s message in verity.” *
[t was she who spoke of it as marking the
beginning of the loud cry.’
In contrast to Ellen White, many of
the leading brethren who heard the ser-
mons delivered by Waggoner and Jones
in Minneapolis were irritated by them.
They were alarmed by Waggoner’s inter-
pretation of the “schoolmaster law” in
Galatians 3:24, 25 as the moral law. Dur-
ing the presession they had been equally
alarmed by Jones's substitution of the
Alemanni for the Huns in the generally
accepted list of the 10 horns of Daniel
7:24. As for the righteousness by faith
emphasis, they couldn’t see how it dif-
fered from what they all had been preach-
ing for years. When they heard their
prophetess repeatedly endorse Waggoner
and Jones, they wrote home that Sister
MINISTRY/FEBRUARY/1988 15