THREE R&H ARTICLES ON ABOUT THE "MOST PRECIOUS MESSAGE

IN THE REVIEW OCT 13 2013

BY GEORGE R. KNIGHT Dear Brethren Who Shall Assemble in General Conference: We are impressed that this gathering will be the most important meeting you have ever attended. This should be a period of earnestly seeking the Lord, and humbling your hearts before Him.1

Such were the words of Ellen White on August 5, 1888, in a letter circulated to the delegates who would be attending the forthcoming session of the General Conference in October at Minneapolis, Minnesota. She not only highlighted the importance of the meetings but also hinted at tensions among the delegates and their need for serious and faithful Bible study.

TENSION IN THE CAMP The tension didn’t take long to surface. “Elder Smith,” A. T. Jones blurted out early in the meetings, “has told you he does not know anything about this matter. I do, and I don’t want you to blame me for what he does not know.” Ellen White responded with “Not so sharp, brother Jones, not so sharp.”2 Unfortunately, such harsh words and pompous attitudes provided part of the backdrop for the conflict that characterized the 1888 General Conference session.

Jones had no monopoly on the harsh-words front. Ellen White repeatedly faulted General Conference president George I. Butler and Review and Herald editor Uriah Smith for what she labeled as the spirit of the Pharisees. Those leaders and their friends repeatedly expressed an attitude that “burdened” her, being “so unlike the spirit of Jesus.” Its sarcastic, critical, self-righteous aspects, she noted, stirred up “human passions” and “bitterness of spirit, because some of their brethren had ventured to entertain some ideas contrary to the ideas that some others . . . had entertained, which were thought . . . to be inroads upon ancient doctrines.”3

THE “MEN” OF MINNEAPOLIS The battle lines of the 1888 session had arisen earlier in the decade over two theological points, and involved certain major participants. On one side were the two young editors of the California-based Signs of the Times—Ellet J. Waggoner and Alonzo T. Jones [see fuller biographies on pages 20, 21]. A trained physician who preferred the work of gospel ministry, Waggoner was probably the most gentle and sophisticated of the major male leaders in the struggle. His colleague, A. T. Jones, had been a sergeant in the United States Army and had all the attributes of his first profession. Jones never ran away from a battle, whether it be a frontier confrontation or one in the halls of Congress over church/state issues or with his fellow church leaders.

Of somewhat the same mold were George I. Butler and Uriah Smith, president and secretary, respectively, of the General Conference. Smith was also editor of the Michigan-based Review and Herald and the denomination’s authority on the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. Butler and Smith viewed themselves as defenders of traditional , especially in the face of the new ideas being set forth by Jones and Waggoner.

A fifth major participant in the Minneapolis meetings was Ellen G. White, Adventism’s prophetic voice. At first it appears that she sought to remain neutral in the developing struggle. But by April 1887 she had come out openly in support of the younger men from the West. She not only realized that they had something to say that the denomination desperately needed to hear, but she also had concluded that they were being wrongly treated in a very unequal struggle. She would dedicate herself to making sure that Jones and Waggoner and their ideas would get a fair hearing at the forthcoming General Conference session.

CONTROVERSY OVER THE HORNS IN DANIEL The rumbles of disharmony had begun in the early 1880s along two lines that would build in intensity as the denomination rolled toward the Minneapolis meetings. The first point of contention formed up around the seemingly minor topic of the identity of the 10 horns of Daniel 7. The 1884 General Conference session had commissioned Jones to “write a series of articles gathered from history on points that showed the fulfillment of prophecy,”4 a task that led him to study the book of Daniel.

Smith initially expressed joy over the idea of Jones having the time to undertake a more complete examination of the 10 kingdoms, but suggested that it would be a difficult task—somewhat like “hunting the pieces of a building” after it had been “struck by a hundred pounds of dynamite.”5

The cordial relationship between the newcomer to the study of Daniel and the established author of Daniel and Revelation rapidly deteriorated after Jones concluded that Smith’s published list was incorrect on the identity of the tenth kingdom, with Jones asserting it was the Alemanni rather than the Huns. The difference of opinion mattered, because getting prophecy right mattered to Adventists anticipating the world’s imminent end. Throughout the 1880s Adventists were being arrested in such states as California, Tennessee, and Arkansas for the “crime” of working on Sunday. Some Adventist ministers in the American South were even serving on chain gangs with hardened criminals. The tension would build on the Sunday front until the spring of 1888, when H. W. Blair introduced a bill into the United States Senate to promote the observance of “the Lord’s day” “as a day of religious worship.”6 Blair’s national Sunday bill was the first such legislation to go before Congress since the establishment of the Adventist movement in the 1840s. The denomination connected that move with the forming of the image to of Revelation 13 and the giving of the mark of the beast. The end was clearly near, and accurate prophetic interpretation was clearly crucial.

Smith argued aggressively that if Adventists began to change their understanding on points of prophetic interpretation that had stood for 40 years, “thousands would instantly notice the change. . . . ‘If we give you time enough,’ they would then say, ‘you will probably come to acknowledge finally that you are mistaken on everything.’ ” Jones shot back that it was more important to be right than to maintain a faulty position that would be exposed publicly by the denomination’s enemies.7

CRISIS OVER THE LAW IN GALATIANS But if the crisis over the 10 horns was intense, the issue of the identity of the law referred to in the book of Galatians was literally explosive. With the Sunday crisis right upon them it was bad enough to be tinkering with the validity of Adventist prophetic interpretation, but to be making major changes in the denomination’s theology of the law could spell total disaster.

An important text that Adventists had to deal with was the “added” law of Galatians 3:19-25. For three decades the denomination had interpreted that law as the ceremonial law. Such an interpretation, Adventist leaders held, was important in guarding the perpetuity of the Ten Commandments. After all, did not Galatians 3:25 plainly teach that once an individual had faith, he or she was “no longer under a schoolmaster”?

The law in Galatians had become a controversial issue between 1884 and 1886, when Waggoner began to teach that Galatians had the Ten Commandments in mind rather than the ceremonial law. That understanding was met head on by Butler and Smith, who held that the new interpretation undermined Adventism’s traditional position on the end-time importance of the law of God. As might be expected, the national Sunday crisis heightened the importance of the topic.

Butler sought to solve the problem at the 1886 General Conference session, but failed. His next move was to block Jones and Waggoner from presenting their views at the 1888 session. But Ellen White outmaneuvered him by publicly coming to the support of the younger men. The stage at that point was set for the controversial Minneapolis meetings.

THE MINNEAPOLIS MEETINGS The 1888 General Conference session convened in the newly constructed Adventist church from October 17 through November 4. A ministerial institute lasting from October 10 to 16 preceded the formal conference session. The agenda contained two categories of items: business matters and theological concerns. While official action on the business items was restricted to the official session, action and reaction on the theological issues flowed from the institute into the regular session as if they were one meeting.

As expected, the major issues of substance in the conference centered on three issues—two controversial and one agreed upon. In the latter category were Jones’ lectures on church and state in relation to the Sunday law crisis. The conference voted to publish his presentations. They came off the press, with some editing, in 1889 as Civil Government and Religion, or and the American Constitution.

In the controverted realm, Jones and Smith each spoke several times on the 10 horns and related prophetic topics. But the major subject of contention and importance was the lectures of E. J. Waggoner on righteousness by faith. Interestingly enough, his focal point was not on the law in Galatians (although he did not neglect that topic) but on issues related to salvation. For him the connection between the law in Galatians and righteousness by faith is the fact that experientially the 10 commandments point out sin and lead individuals to Christ as Savior.

Contrary to Waggoner’s approach, J. H. Morrison (who stood in for the emotionally exhausted Butler who was too ill to attend the meetings) presented at least eight lectures focused on the nature of the law in Galatians.

Ellen White joined Waggoner in his focus on Christ and issues in salvation. “My burden during the meeting,” she wrote, “was to present Jesus and His love before my brethren, for I saw marked evidences that many had not the spirit of Christ.”8 On October 24 she cried out: “We want the truth as it is in Jesus. . . . I have seen that precious souls who would have embraced the truth have been turned away from it because of the manner in which the truth has been handled, because Jesus was not in it. And this is what I have been pleading with you for all the time—we want Jesus.”9

Three days before she noted that “the Lord desires us all to be learners in the school of Christ. . . . God is presenting to the minds of men divinely appointed precious gems of truth, appropriate for our time. God has rescued these truths from the companionship of error, and has placed them in their proper framework.”10 That proper framework, she would note in other connections, was the third angel’s message, which united both the law of God and righteousness by faith.11

CONCLUSION At Minneapolis in 1888, Seventh-day Adventists locked horns over biblical interpretation in a way that threatened to lock out the spirit of graciousness that gives evidence of the presence and control of Christ. But truth has prevailed and grace continues to conquer. The most important teaching to flow out to posterity from those sessions was the emphasis on Christ and faith in Him as Savior and Lord. That teaching and its implications for the end-time message of the third angel is what gives the Minneapolis meetings their ongoing significance.

______1 Ellen G. White to Dear Brethren, Aug. 5, 1888, in Ellen G. White, The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials (Washington, D.C.: Ellen G. White Estate, 1987), p. 38. 2 A. T. Robinson, “Did the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination Reject the Doctrine of Righteousness by Faith?” (unpublished manuscript, Jan. 30, 1931); R. J. Wieland and D. K. Short, “An Interview With J. S. Washburn,” June 4, 1950. 3 For more on the spirit of Minneapolis, see George R. Knight, A. T. Jones (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 2011), pp. 46, 47, 75-77. 4 Alonzo T. Jones to Uriah Smith, Dec. 3, 1886. 5 Alonzo T. Jones to Uriah Smith, June 3, 1885. 6 See my treatment of the Sunday law issue in George R. Knight, A User-friendly Guide to the 1888 Message (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1998), pp. 30-33. 7 Uriah Smith to Alonzo T. Jones, Nov. 8, 1886; Alonzo T. Jones to Uriah Smith, Dec. 3, 1886. 8 Ellen G. White manuscript 24, c. November or December, 1888, in 1888 Materials, p. 216. 9 Ellen G. White manuscript 9, Oct. 24, 1888, in 1888 Materials, p. 153. 10 Ellen G. White manuscript 8a, Oct. 21, 1888, in 1888 Materials, p. 139. 11 For a fuller discussion of Ellen White on the place of law and gospel in the third angel’s message, see George R. Knight, Angry Saints (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1989; Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 2013), pp. 52-60.

______An expert on 1888 issues, church historian George Knight has written three historical books on the topic (A. T. Jones; Angry Saints; and A User-friendly Guide to the 1888 Message). This article was published October 10, 2013.

THE FAITH OF JESUS BY MERLIN BURT Seventh-day Adventist doctrine and theology today is directly influenced by the teaching and experience that grew out of 1888 and the 1890s. Those years have yielded three significant and foundational developments: A new clarity on the role of the Ten Commandments in relation to salvation, reframing the third angel’s message of Revelation 14 in terms of righteousness by faith in Jesus, and a shift toward a biblical Trinitarian understanding.

The Role of the Law in Salvation “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Gal. 3:24, 25, KJV). This text launched the new emphasis on righteousness by faith for the Seventh-day Adventist Church leading up to the 1888 Minneapolis, Minnesota, General Conference session. It had been controversial through much of the history of the church. The fundamental question was whether the law referred to was the Ten Commandments or was it the system of sacrifices and ceremonies connected to the earthly sanctuary service?

An important point for this discussion is that righteousness by faith was not a new idea in 1888. During the early 1850s Adventist leaders such as James White and J. N. Andrews had taught that the moral law pointed us to Jesus. In an 1851 tract Andrews wrote: “How is the law a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ? Answer. The law shows our guilt and just condemnation, and that we are lost without a Savior.”1 A year later James White wrote: “Those who represent Sabbathkeepers as going away from Jesus, the only source of justification, and rejecting His atoning blood, and seeking justification by the law, do it either ignorantly or wickedly.”2

But J. H. Waggoner’s 1854 tract shows that the matter continued to require address. He admonished readers that “if it were even possible for them to keep [the law], it would lead them to trust in themselves, and seek for justification by personal obedience, instead of seeking to the Savior for it.”3

Waggoner unfortunately took an additional step and excluded the ceremonial law from Galatians. “Respecting [the] letter to the Galatians,” he wrote, “not a single declaration has been found therein which can be referred to the ceremonial or Levitical law.”4 This was awkward for Seventh-day Adventist ministers who, in debate with other Protestant ministers, had argued that the ceremonial, and not the moral law, was a shadow that pointed us to Christ.

Waggoner’s book was withdrawn, and the position in print over the next 30 years presented the ceremonial law as the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The conflict grew during the mid-1880s when Waggoner’s son E. J. Waggoner presented in the Signs of the Times that the law in Galatians 3:24, 25 was the moral law. Church leaders G. I. Butler and Uriah Smith saw this as an attempt to revive an old argument that had been debunked.

Tragically, many in the church were legalistic in their approach to the Ten Commandments. Ellen White would write in 1890: “As a people, we have preached the law until we are as dry as the hills of Gilboa that had neither dew nor rain.”5 Waggoner, like his father, presented the gospel in relation to the Ten Commandments. The law condemns us, and drives us to Jesus as the only Savior who can forgive our sins.

The surface issue in 1888 was the law in Galatians. But the real problem was indifference to righteousness by faith. Butler and Waggoner both published tracts with their respective positions on the law in Galatians.6 In his conclusion Waggoner lamented Butler’s reference to “the much vaunted doctrine of justification by faith,” and continued: “[your] theory leads inevitably to the conclusion that men are justified by the law. . . . I conclude that it is impossible to overestimate the doctrine of justification by faith.”7

Ellen White’s response on the law in Galatians eventually bridged the two views: “ ‘What law is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ?’ I answer: Both the ceremonial and the moral code of the Ten Commandments. Christ was the foundation of the whole Jewish economy.”8

In the end, Adventists accepted that the law represented in Galatians was both the moral and ceremonial law, with a particular relevance for the moral law.

The “Faith of Jesus” and the Third Angel’s Message The new emphasis on Jesus and salvation was soon linked to a core theological foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—the third angel’s message. “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12, KJV).

Early Adventists understood the “faith of Jesus” as something that needed to be kept. It was descriptive of Jesus’ faith that we emulate. It included “the requirements, such as repentance, faith, baptism, Lord’s Supper, washing the saints’ feet, etc.” that Jesus practiced.9 This position countered those in the Protestant world who considered those requirements to be the “commandments of God.” By identifying them as the “faith of Jesus,” Adventists distinguished and preserved the perennial imperatives of the Ten Commandments and the Sabbath. Waggoner and Jones’ interpretation seemed to some to be supporting the anti-Sabbatarian Protestant position.

Ellen White recognized that Adventists’ original interpretation had weakened the living power of the gospel when she wrote: “The commandments of God have been proclaimed, but the faith of Jesus has not been proclaimed by Seventh-day Adventists as of equal importance, the law and the gospel going hand in hand.”10

Waggoner and Jones constantly emphasized the “faith of Jesus” in the third angel’s message. A. T. Jones titled his lengthy series of sermons in the General Conference Bulletin of 1893 and 1895, “The Third Angel’s Message.” A careful reading reveals that much of the presentation was focused on the “faith of Jesus” in Revelation 14:12. He interpreted it as an active and living experience with Jesus. Just before a praise meeting he said, “ ‘Justified by faith’ . . . we shall see the whole law of God written in the heart and shining in the life, and the words: ‘Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.’ All . . . is reflected and shines in Jesus Christ.”11 Ellen White emphatically supported the gospel connection to the “faith of Jesus,” writing, “It is the third angel’s message in verity.”12

This critical development made the gospel the heart of the third angel’s message. It placed the law of God in a correct relationship to a living faith in Jesus. The three angels of Revelation 14 are framed with the gospel. They begin with the “everlasting gospel” to the entire world and end with the “faith of Jesus.”

The Divinity of Jesus and the Godhead Up to the 1890s most Seventh-day Adventists were anti-Trinitarian. They viewed God the Father as God in every way, the Son as divine but begotten and having a beginning, and the Holy Spirit reduced to merely a manifestation of either the Father or the Son. Today we have a biblical doctrine of the Godhead in part because of the emphasis on Jesus and the plan of salvation as presented after 1888.

During the 1890s Jones played an important role in presenting the eternal deity of Jesus. During his 1895 series on the third angel’s message, he returned repeatedly to Colossians 2:9. Christ was the “fullness of the Godhead bodily.” “The eternal Word consented to be made flesh. God became man.”13 Two days later, speaking of Christ, Jones said: “In view of eternity before and eternity after, thirty-three years is not such an infinite sacrifice after all. But when we consider that he sank his nature in our human nature to all eternity—that is a sacrifice.”14

In 1899, as editor of the Review and Herald, he wrote of the Godhead in a Trinitarian way: “God is one. Jesus Christ is one. The Holy Sprit is one. And these three are one: there is no dissent nor division among them.”15 Though Jones gave particular emphasis to the eternity of Jesus, Ellen White is probably the first to point to Jesus’ eternity. During the 1870s she described Jesus as the “eternal Son of God.”16 During the 1890s she would write some of the clearest statements on the Godhead and divine nature of Jesus. In 1898 she wrote, “In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived.”17 She also affirmed the personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit who was “the Third Person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power.”18

Conclusion We can be grateful for each of these important doctrinal developments that are now part of Seventh-day Adventist faith. As a result of careful Bible study, through the leadership of Waggoner, Jones, and White, we rediscovered the emphasis on righteousness by faith during the 1890s. As God’s commandment-keeping remnant we cherish the role of the law in both showing us our sin and pointing us to Jesus as our only Savior. As bearers to the whole world of God’s truth for these last days, we commit to sharing the three angels’ messages as a proclamation of the gospel in light of the Sabbath, sanctuary, and soon coming of Jesus. And as we worship Him who made heaven and earth, and the sea and the fountains of waters, I pray that this adoration may be representative of the God whose love and character are revealed in a biblical understanding of the Trinity.

______1 John N. Andrews, Thoughts on the Sabbath, and the Perpetuity of the Law of God (Paris, Maine: James White, 1851), p. 22. 2 [James White], “Justified by the Law,” Review and Herald, June 10, 1852. 3 Joseph H. Waggoner, The Law of God: An Examination of the Testimony of Both Testaments (Rochester, N.Y.: Advent Review, 1854), pp. 93, 94. 4 Ibid., p. 74; see also pp. 80, 81, 98, 108. 5 Ellen G. White, “Christ Prayed for Unity Among His Disciples,” Review and Herald, Mar. 11, 1890. 6 George I. Butler, The Law in the Book of Galatians: Is It the Moral Law, or Does It Refer to That System of Laws Peculiarly Jewish? (Battle Creek, Mich.: Review and Herald Pub. House, 1886); Ellet J. Waggoner, The Gospel in the Book of Galatians: A Review (Oakland: n. p., 1888). 7 E. J. Waggoner, The Gospel in the Book of Galatians, pp. 70, 71. 8 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, vol. 6, p. 1109. 9 [James White], “The Third Angel’s Message, Rev. xiv 9-12,” Present Truth, April 1850; see also Uriah Smith, Thoughts, Critical and Practical, on the Book of Revelation (Battle Creek, Mich.: Seventh-day Adventist Pub. Assn., 1881), p. 301. 10 Ellen G. White manuscript 24, 1888, in Ellen G. White, Ellen G. White Manuscript Releases (Silver Spring, Md.: Ellen G. White Estate, 1990-1993), vol. 12, p. 193. 11 Alonzo T. Jones, “The Third Angel’s Message—No. 19,” General Conference Bulletin, Feb. 27, 1895; see also E. J. Waggoner, The Gospel in the Book of Galatians, p. 70. 12 Ellen G. White, “Repentance the Gift of God,” Review and Herald, Apr. 1, 1890. 13 Alonzo T. Jones, “The Third Angel’s Message—No. 17,” General Conference Bulletin, Feb. 25, 1895. 14 Alonzo T. Jones, “The Third Angel’s Message—No. 20,” General Conference Bulletin, Feb. 27, 1895. 15 Alonzo T. Jones, “Editorial,” Review and Herald, Jan. 10, 1899. 16 Ellen G. White, “An Appeal to the Ministers,” Review and Herald, Aug. 8, 1878. 17 Ellen G. White, (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), p. 530. 18 Ibid., p. 671.

______Merlin Burt is director of the Center for Adventist Research, . This article was published October 10, 2013.

BY BILL AND SHAWN BRACE Nearly 125 years ago Ellen White offered a courageously orienting declaration of Adventism’s true calling. Writing in 1890, she boldly proclaimed, “One interest will prevail, one subject will swallow up every other— Christ our righteousness.”1

This was Ellen White’s singular focus.

For much of her ministry, however, both before and after the 1888 General Conference session, sadness overwhelmed her heart as she realized that this subject was scarcely acknowledged. This is why, when she heard that same message proclaimed by two young upstart preachers, Alonzo T. Jones and Ellet J. Waggoner, she recounted that “every fiber of my heart said, Amen.”2 What they heralded she called a “most precious message.” It was to go to every church and “given to the world.”3 In fact, she proposed, it was the “loud cry” of Revelation 18 that was to “lighten the whole earth with its glory.”4

But what made it “most precious”—to the point that Ellen White eagerly traveled with the two young men, heralding its beauty?

Perhaps the most succinct explanation is her summary from 1895: “This message,” she wrote, “was to bring more prominently before the world the uplifted Savior, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. It presented justification through faith in the Surety; it invited people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God. Many had lost sight of Jesus. They needed to have their eyes directed to His divine person, His merits, and His changeless love for the human family.”5

An Uplifted Savior Jones’ and Waggoner’s “most precious message” flowed from their emphasis on the centrality of Jesus. Prior to this, Adventists were guilty of preaching “the law until we are as dry as the hills of Gilboa.”6

But the two lifted up Jesus—both His divinity and humanity. Concerning the former, they sought to herald His full divinity, maintaining, contrary to the prevailing Adventist sentiment, that Christ was not created but was eternal. For, Waggoner proposed, “no one who holds this view [that Christ was created] can possibly have any just conception of the exalted position which Christ really occupies.”7

This was held in tension with Christ’s humanity. One could be appreciated only in light of the other. Thus, Waggoner declared that one of the “most encouraging things in the Bible” was to realize that “Christ took on Him the nature of man” in its sinful condition, and that “His ancestors according to the flesh were sinners.”8 This remained a central part of their proclamation throughout their ministries.

A Universal Savior In Ellen White’s 1895 summary she mentioned that a core component of the message was Christ dying as “the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.”

This teaching stemmed from a unique understanding of Christ’s attitude toward humanity; an attitude of faith and confidence in what His grace could accomplish in the lives of sinners. “His practiced eye saw in you great possibilities,” Waggoner wrote in 1890, “and He bought you, not for what you were then or are now worth, but for what He could make of you.”9

Waggoner’s logical conclusion of this idea was that Christ must have therefore justified the existence of all humankind at Calvary. “As the condemnation came upon all, so the justification comes upon all,” he wrote.10 Indeed, “the judgment will reveal the fact that full and complete salvation was given to every man, and that the lost have deliberately thrown away their birthright possession.”11 Thus, Christ’s death actually accomplished something for everyone—even if that accomplishment does not end in every person enjoying eternity.

Ellen White echoes this concept in affirming that “for every human being, Christ has paid the election price. No one need be lost. All have been redeemed.”12

An Effective Savior Writing in 1890, Ellen White passionately highlighted a critical component of this message: “There is not a point that needs to be dwelt upon more earnestly, repeated more frequently, or established more firmly in the minds of all, than the impossibility of fallen man meriting anything by his own best good works.”13

This was the crux of the problem. Many were trying to save themselves by their own good works. These feeble attempts, however, were not only manifested in trying to earn God’s forgiveness through obedience, but also by trying to produce obedience in one’s life after conversion. Both were futile.

At the root of Jones’ and Waggoner’s understanding was their unique insight into the covenants. The old and new covenants didn’t necessarily speak of time periods, they proposed, but the experiences of those living in any age. “The first [old] covenant,” Jones submitted, “rested upon the promises of the people, and depended solely upon the efforts of the people. The second [new] covenant consists solely of the promise of God, and depends upon the power and work of God.”14

It was within this context that souls were invited to receive by faith Christ’s righteousness—both its imputed and imparted aspects.

A Complete Savior Perhaps the greatest achievement of their message was its balance between the law and gospel—which, according to Ellen White, must always go “hand in hand.”15 It avoided the ditch of legalism by giving the assurance of forgiveness; and it avoided the ditch of “cheap grace” by showing that a faith-filled life results in complete obedience. As Ellen White wrote in 1895, receiving Christ’s righteousness is “made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God.”

This is because White, Jones, and Waggoner appreciated the ability of the gospel, when fully understood and embraced, to change one’s heart and save him or her from sin—not in sin. This is all accomplished through “an appreciation of the cost of salvation.”16

This was, after all, the goal of the gospel and the ultimate goal of Jones’ and Waggoner’s ministry. “The Lord has raised up Brother Jones and Brother Waggoner,” Ellen White declared in 1893, “to proclaim a message to the world to prepare a people to stand in the day of God.”17 This was in the context of the cleansing of the sanctuary and the third angel’s message.

Waggoner and Jones both grasped this, with the former writing in 1890, “And so we find when Christ covers us with the robe of His own righteousness, He does not furnish a cloak for sin but takes the sin away. And this shows that the forgiveness of sins is something more than a mere form, something more than a mere entry in the books of record in heaven. . . . And if [a person] is cleared from guilt, is justified, made righteous, he has certainly undergone a radical change.” Indeed, “the new heart is a heart that loves righteousness and hates sin.”18

He was simply echoing what he had written after the 1888 General Conference session: “When the Lord comes there will be a company who will be found ‘complete in him.’. . . To perfect this work in the hearts of individuals . . . is the work of the third angel’s message.”19

Conclusion Like Ellen White and her contemporaries, we have had our hearts strangely warmed by this message. We recognize there is a beautiful uniqueness to what Jones and Waggoner—along with Ellen White—proclaimed. Their message—explaining the depth of Christ and His sacrifice, and showing what God will accomplish in the lives of those who embrace His love—was a much fuller explanation of the gospel than existed both within and without Adventism.

This message has still not been given the fullest expression it deserves. Recognizing our own need, we appeal to all to proclaim this powerful message that has been ordained to “lighten the whole earth with its glory.”20

______1 Ellen G. White, in Review and Herald, Dec. 23, 1890. 2 Ellen G. White, The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials (Washington, D.C.: Ellen G. White Estate, 1987), p. 349. 3 Ibid., pp. 1336, 1337. 4 Ibid., p. 1575. 5 Ibid., p. 1336. 6 Ellen G. White, in Review and Herald, Mar. 11, 1890. 7 Ellet J. Waggoner, Christ and His Righteousness (Oakland: Pacific Press Pub. Co., 1890), p. 20. 8 Ibid., p. 61. 9 Ibid., p. 72. Compare with Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1900), p. 118. 10 Ellet J. Waggoner, in Present Truth, Oct. 18, 1894. 11 Ellet J. Waggoner, The Glad Tidings (Oakland: Pacific Press Pub. Co., 1900), pp. 22, 23. They saw their growing views on what some label as “universal justification” as the logical outworking of their understanding of Christ’s faith in humanity. 12 The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, vol. 7, p. 944. 13 E. G. White, 1888 Materials, p. 811. 14 Alonzo T. Jones, in Review and Herald, July 24, 1900. 15 Ellen G. White, in Review and Herald, Sept. 3, 1889. 16 Ibid., July 24, 1888. 17 E. G. White, 1888 Materials, p. 1814. 18 E. J. Waggoner, Christ and His Righteousness, pp. 65, 66. 19 Ellet J. Waggoner, in Signs of the Times, Dec. 28, 1888. 20 E. G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 228.

______Bill and Shawn Brace are Seventh-day Adventist ministers in the Southern and Northern New England conferences, respectively. Together they edit the magazine New England Pastor. This article was published October 10, 2013.