A Warning Message or a Saving Gospel—Which?

What is our specified message?

L.E.F. is editor of the Ministry.

The concept still obtains with some that our primary business is to give a warn­ing message concerning the mark of the beast, and to declare the inevitability of the last plagues of divine wrath for those who flaunt the Sabbath command of God's change­less law. We are to confront the world with that warning, they aver, and shake the dust off our garments as a witness against their disbe­lief. "Is that not our specified message?" such ask. "Are not others to give the general gospel, and we the specific call out of apostasy?' This reasoning has an aspect of plausibility. But such a viewpoint harks back to the earliest ideas of our spiritual forefathers in their strange situa­tion following the great disappointment of 1844.

For nearly a decade thereafter our earliest ministers would go hundreds of miles to carry the Sabbath and sanctuary truths to one who had been in the great 'Second Advent Move­ment. At first our pioneers had no burden for the unconverted in the world about, and had never even thought of responsibility toward mission lands, with their teeming millions of godless heathen. Indeed they had no burden, at first, for the nominal churches about them, which had definitely turned, as organizations, against the judgment-hour message. So they devoted themselves exclusively to those who had come out into the great Advent Movement prior to 1844. That was the earliest vision of their task.

Gradually that restricted notion was broad= ened to include those in the nominal churches who had not willfully rejected God's judgment--hour message. But they still thought of their mission as proclaiming a special message to converted Christians, not to the unconverted worldlings. Then the world character of our mission and message began slowly to dawn upon their honest minds. The worldling, the scoffer, the infidel, the sinner, and the heathen were to be equally the subject of their responsi­bility, prayers, and labors.

In mission endeavors the imperative need of preaching a saving gospel was recognized from the time of our first mission work. In this we have rarely failed. The very heathenism of the native peoples ensured that. Men and women have been taught the gospel and led to Christ. Obedience to the Sabbath and kindred truths were but a natural aftermath of the revealed will of God. The correction of evil or apostate practices was but the negative part of our mission. Our primary, positive work was preach­ing the gospel and saving the soul. But we do not have two commissions: one for Christian lands and one for pagan countries. We are re­sponsible for carrying the whole gospel in the present-day setting and application to the whole world.

During the passage of the last hundred years a revolutionary change has come over the membership in the popular Protestant churches. Worldliness, nominalism, formalism, rational­ism, and many other isms have made devastat­ing inroads. True godliness and a living Chris­tian experience are increasingly rare. A large percentage of church members are unconverted, and have merely a name to live. They are dead spiritually. As far as the Advent faith is con­cerned, they need vastly more than a change of mind concerning the Sabbath. They need a change of heart regarding sin and salvation.

Christianize as Well as Doctrinize

We can no longer find among the bulk of church people the strong Christian characters that used to be, to whom doctrinal reforms were quickly carried. Instead, we must start at the bottom and begin with the foundations of the Christian life. We must Christianize as well as doctrinize. We must convert as well as convince. The vast majority of nominal church members are really worldlings, and must be converted and brought into fellowship with Christ, and into complete subservience to His will as verily as the out-and-out worldling. Then the following of His will on the Sabbath, immersion, and the kindred distinctive points of present truth will become almost axiomatic and inevitable.

The specific Scriptural authorization for our mission on earth is twofold, and both of the Scripture commissions expressly declare our task to be the preaching of the everlasting gos­pel of God to men— a gospel unchanged and changeless. The first is Matthew 24:14, where we are explicitly instructed to proclaim the "gospel of the kingdom" to all mankind. That is a mandate to preach the pure, full gospel, as it applies to the impending establishment of God's kingdom through divine intervention at the Second Advent of our Saviour. This is to be preached to all men in contradistinction to the perverted teaching of a kingdom of earthly equity and peace, and gradual world betterment wrought out by man's hands.

This involves the preaching of the full plan of redemption, the nature and cause of sin, the way of salvation, the preparation of the soul to meet God, citizenship in the coming king­dom, and how to stand without an Intercessor at the end of the latter days. Our whole mis­sion is enfolded in the one expression, "The gospel of the kingdom." So it is a gospel mis­sion, a preaching mission, a saving mission. That is our bounden obligation as preachers.

The other text is, of course, Revelation 14: 6-12. But that, too, is vastly more than the dec­laration of a mere warning message. It is a specially applied preaching of the full, "ever­lasting gospel." As we know, these three an­gelic messages are not consecutive but cumula­tive. The second joins the first, and the two continue uninterruptedly together. Then the third joins the first two, and the three con­tinue inseparably, as a threefold message, until the end of our gospel mission. These messages are but timely applications of the "everlasting gospel," which we are to preach "to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." That was never done, or even attempted, under the preaching of William Miller and his asso­ciates in the first angel's message. Their work was virtually confined to the eastern half of North America. It was but partial, not com­plete.

Final Phase to Be World Wide

This final threefold phase is to be world wide and complete, and it is to be pre-eminently a saving gospel. It was definitely proclaimed as a saving gospel prior to 1844. Multiplied thou­sands of men and women were soundly converted. They experienced the distinct saving grace of Christ, and prepared to meet Him face to face in peace. Thousands of infidels, skeptics, and deists were converted.

The burden of the Millerite preachers was twofold—for the worldling as well as the churchling. The noted Charles Fitch preached twice a day—in the morning to convert sin­ners; in the evening to herald the Second Advent, to proclaim the judgment hour, to expound the prophecies, and to stress the prep­aration necessary to meet God. The two were never separated in the first angel's message. That we should never forget. Those men were not merely lecturers but effective preachers and mighty soul winners. They had infinitely more than a message; they preached a saving gos­pel. It was this blessed combination that called tens of thousands of people out of apostasy and apostate organizations, and sought to prepare them to meet God.

Warnings May Be Hollow Mockery

He who merely gives an inescapable mes­sage on the binding obligation of the Sabbath and the law, who presents the unassailable facts on the sanctuary truth, and who dis­courses on the full claims of the doctrines and the irrefutable evidence of the prophecies.—beautiful and harmonious as they are, and es­sential for our understanding and acceptance—is failing to perform the main part of his mis­sion. His is merely an instructional effort, not a saving mission. But intellectual assent to doc­trine and outward- conformity of life will never save the soul. To bring people to active mem­bership in the remnant church is not sufficient. That is no synonym or substitute for the trans­forming work of grace that is imperative to salvation. Strange and startling as it may seem, one can be an Adventist intellectually and doc­trinally, and not even be a Christian—never having been born again or transformed by the power of God.

A fearful responsibility therefore rests upon us to preach a saving gospel, "the everlasting gospel." This gospel has been perverted by heresy, departure, rationalism, ritualism, and unsound emotional emphasis. These are all de­partures from saving faith. We must tenderly, tactfully, winsomely, push all these aside, press­ing upon the heart and conscience of mankind the provisions of the everlasting, changeless gospel of the apostolic church, which was partly restored but never completed under the Refor­mation. Now it is to be given to all men in its fullness before the Second Advent, and in pre­paration therefore.

What will be our responsibility, then, if we give merely a warning without the saving pro­visions of the gospel? That would be like shout­ing to a person standing in a second-floor win­dow of a burning house, and telling him that his house is on fire, and urging him to escape for his life—but without providing a ladder by which to escape, or net into which to jump to safety. It would be like warning a man who had fallen overboard into the ocean that a shark was trailing him, that he was in peril of violent death and must get away from the shark—but without throwing him a lifeline, or launching a lifeboat to rescue him. It would be like shout­ing to a child, frozen with fright on the rail­road track, that the train was bearing down upon him, and that he would be crushed to death if he does not jump—without extending a strong hand to help.

Inaction over the saving provisions of the gospel makes such warning messages hollow mockeries. There is a definite added responsi­bility to the one who sees the danger, but fails to rescue. Such people need vastly more than lectures on fire prevention, or the nature and proclivities of sharks, or statistics on the in­crease of fatal railway accidents.

—To be concluded in August


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L.E.F. is editor of the Ministry.

July 1948

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