The Divinely Appointed Remedies: "Gold"
Chapter 7 (continued — part 6)
"The popular ministry" are ever
so sincere, we know, and ever so earnest and devoted. But as a body they
have no just appreciation of "the breadth, and length, and depth, and
height" of the "agape of Christ, which passes
knowledge" (Eph. 3:18, 19). Their false doctrines hide true love from
them. Their concept of Christian love is much closer to the Catholic idea
than to New Testament love. In its very highest forms, it cannot shed its
egocentric motif. All this we can easily recognize.
Now, the crucial question is: Do
Seventh-day Adventists in general have the same basic idea of love as do
the popular churches? More specifically, do they have the same idea of
"righteousness by faith" that the popular churches have in
consequence of their belief in the natural immortality of the soul?
According to the True Witness of Revelation 3, "the angel of the
church of the Laodiceans" has a problem in this respect, but honestly
and sincerely "knows not" his true condition. Have the hands on the clock of time
turned far enough for us to look at the past objectively?
If "the angel of the Church"
were not "poor" in genuine New Testament faith and love, how
could he repeatedly have borrowed "righteousness by faith" from
these same popular churches who hold "the poisonous drafts of
Babylon"? We can look at only a few revealing examples. The full
story cannot yet be told:
- Because of a failure to appreciate
the 1888 message, far back in the 1890’s there was a tendency to confuse
Quaker author Hannah Whitall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a
Happy Life with true righteousness by faith, (cf. General
Conference Bulletin, 1893,. pp. 358, 359). Author Smith borrowed her
ideas in turn from Fenelon, a Roman Catholic mystic at the court of Louis
XIV, who spent his life energies trying to convert Protestants to Rome.
(cf. Great Controversy, p. 272; Britannica, 1968, vol. 9, p.
169). To this day Smith’s (and therefore Fenelon’s) ideas are endorsed
by many as genuine righteousness by faith. This is the natural result of a
sincere ignorance of the true contrast between Romanist and New Testament
concepts of faith.
Through the decades there have been
prominent examples of this confusion over Roman Catholic concepts of piety
and the "interior life". It is considered popular and a mark of
sophistication to be warmly appreciative of the teachings of Pascal and
Fenelon. And indeed, there are scintillating gems of philosophical beauty
in their works. The study of Fenelon’s "self-renunciation" has
been urged as virtually the same concept as taught in the writings of
Ellen G. White, due to an unawareness of the import of agape.
There seems to be a warmth of spiritual
fervor that charms. It is not surprising that many youth have been
innocently confused and misled.
This mixing of the true and the false is
essentially the same process that led to Augustine’s mixture of agape
and Hellenistic love which was the foundation of medieval Romanism.
The lack of discernment was and is the problem. How could such confusion
have existed had there been a clear understanding of the message the Lord
gave this people in 1888? It is fallacy to assume that false concepts are
purified when mixed with Spirit of Prophecy quotations as though arsenic
could be nullified if mixed with flour.
In the same era of the 1890’s, there
was a tendency to confuse Rome’s concepts of "righteousness by
faith" with the 1888 message. This was also due to a failure to
appreciate the message the Lord sent us. Thus the uncertainty regarding
the 1888 message prepared the stage for a succession of Seventh-day
Adventist pilgrimages to non-Adventist theologians to find help in
understanding and proclaiming "righteousness by faith".
Some of the brethren. since the
Minneapolis meeting, I have heard myself say "amen" to
preaching. to statements that were utterly heathen. and did not know but
that it was the righteousness of Christ. Some of those who stood so openly
against that at that time, and voted with uplifted hand against it, …
since that time I have heard say "amen" to statements that were
as openly and decidedly papal as the papal church itself can state them. (General
Conference Bulletin. 1893, p. 244; A.T. Jones).
That you may have the two things — the
truth of justification by faith, and the falsity of it — side by side, I
will read what this [Catholic belief] says, and then what God says in Steps
to Christ … I want you to see what the Roman Catholic idea of
justification by faith is, because I have had to meet it among professed
Seventh-day Adventists the past four years right straight through. These
very things, these very expressions that are in this Catholic book as to
what justification by faith is and how to obtain it, are just such
expressions as professed Seventh-day Adventists have made to me as to what
justification by faith is.
I want to know how you and I can carry a
message to this world, warning them against the worship of the beast when
we hold in our very profession the doctrines of the beast. … It is high
time that Seventh-day Adventists understood it (Ibid., p. 261, 262. See
also pages 265, 266).
Many today sincerely believe that the
Lord honored the Sunday-keeping churches who hold to the natural
immortality of the soul by vouchsafing to them the "same light"
of righteousness by faith that He gave to us in 1888. According to this
view, those who hold these "two great errors", these
"poisonous drafts of Babylon", understand and are heralding to
the world the true "everlasting gospel". This confused
conviction actually strikes at the very heart of Seventh-day Adventist
existence by questioning the uniqueness of "the everlasting
gospel" as the Lord entrusted true concepts of righteousness by faith
to us:
Others, not of our faith, were being
moved to restudy the same truth of Righteousness by Faith, at about
the same time [1888], which is historically true, as noted elsewhere. (Movement
of Destiny, p. 255, footnote, emphasis added.)
We have not been too well aware of these
paralleling spiritual movements — of organizations outside the Advent
Movement — having the same genera1 burden and emphasis, and arising at
about the same time. … The impulse manifestly came from the same
Source. And in timing, Righteousness by Faith centered in the year
1888. For example. the renowned Keswick Conferences … the Northfield
Bible Conferences, founded by Dwight L. Moody, … men like Murray,
Simpson, Gordon, Holden, Meyer, McNeil, Moody, Waugh, McConkey,
Scroggie, Howden, Smith, McKensie, McIntosh, Brooks, Dixon, Kyle, Morgan,
Needham, [A.T.] Pierson, Seiss, Thomas, West and a score of others — all
giving this [1888] general emphasis. Untold numbers have known and been
blessed by their writings. And this includes many of our own men.
(Ibid., pp. 319-321, emphasis added).
It is only fair that we recognize
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