There is an intriguing expression employed in the New Testament, especially by Paul the apostle, that is deep with meaning. It comprises just the two words—"more excellent." It is thrice used in Hebrews. In chapter 1 it is applied to a "more excellent name" (verse 4) ; in chapter 8 to a "more excellent ministry" (verse 6) ; and in chapter ii to a "more excellent sacrifice" (verse 4). In Romans 2 :18 Paul admonishes us to prove the things that are "more excellent." And here in I Corinthians 12 :31 the great apostle stresses the superiority of the "more excellent way." It is this "more excellent way" that pertains to the capitalizing of the full force and appeal of the application and exposition of prophecy to which we would here direct attention.
Reverent research has brought into our possession archaeological facts and evidences to sustain the verities of the Christian faith that were unknown to our forefathers. With these in our possession, the very stones cry out in testimony to the foundational truths of Scripture. In a similar way reverent historical research covering the writings of the godliest and most learned expositors of past centuries discloses a whole new world of historical evidence in support of the basic historical school principles of the interpretation of Bible prophecy which we, as Seventh-day Adventists, hold and present to the world today.
Instead of having to defend unpopular and heretofore unknown positions, unshared and unsupported by past Christian scholarship, we are now able to reverse our approach. We can stand forth as the present-day champions of positions once almost universally believed and held by the founding fathers of the Protestant Reformation in all lands. But now these are virtually abandoned and forgotten under the impact, first of the clever and effective Counter Reformation interpretations projected by the Roman Church back in the sixteenth century; and, second, through the departures from the foundational platform of the Protestant faith by the Protestant church leadership of modern times.
RESTORING, RECOVERING, REBUILDING.—These are the lost prophetic writings that have now been found again. These are the abandoned prophetic positions which we have simply reinstated. Ours is primarily a work of restoring the lost prophetic truths of the true church of the past, and of carrying them on to their inevitable consummation today. Ours is essentially the task of recovering these abandoned and repudiated positions, and putting them back into their fundamental place, just as with the Sabbath. Ours is basically a mission of rebuilding the dismantled foundations of many generations, then crowning and completing the structure with the special prophetic truths now due, but which were not perceived or applicable to past generations. All this was predicted in the peerless pages of prophecy. We find it in Isaiah 58 :8-14:
"Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer ; thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here I am. . . • Then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day ; and the Lord shall guide thee continually. . . . And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places : thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day ; . . . then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord ; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father : for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."
We are here described, by inspiration, as "repairers" of the walls of truth that have been broken down, not original builders of what had never been before. We are called the raisers up of the foundations, not of one, but of many generations—generations that go back to the very beginning of the Christian Era. We are not, therefore, inventors, originators, or creators of something that is new, strange, and peculiar. Our expositions appear new to many only because they have been abandoned, forgotten, and forsaken by the popular religionists about us today.
We are described as rebuilders of old waste places, long unused and cluttered with rubble, despised and forsaken by the majority. We are not, therefore, interpretative heretics, but are the perpetuators of the most orthodox Protestant positions of all past time.
OTHERS HAVE DEPARTED FROM FAITH.—It is not we who have departed from the faith, but modern Protestantism that has, as predicted in
Timothy 4;1. Those departures we repudiate and disown and now seek to counteract. And the positions they have left we have simply revived and reinstated in their rightful place. It is they who have turned their ears away from the prophetic truths held by their spiritual forefathers. This, too, was all foretold:
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things." 2 Tim. 4:3-5.
Nevertheless, the "foundation of God standeth sure," is the strong assurance of the apostle. (2 Tim. 2:19.) The departers from the faith have the form of godliness without the power, ever learning and never able. (2 Tim. 3:5-7.) Whatever other departures from the Christian fundamentals are implied, departure from the established Protestant Reformation positions on prophecy is assuredly included. Protestantism once universally held what we now hold on the basic outlines of Daniel 2 and 7—the little horn as the Papacy, and the 1260 year-days as the time of its spiritual dominance, as well as scores of other prophetic fundamentals in Daniel, and in Revelation, chapters 12, 13, and 17. These are now our cherished heritage. These are the glorious, neglected foundations we are commissioned to restore, rebuild, and complete. That is our divine mandate. That is the prophetic picture of our task.
We Hold What They Once Held
Because of recovering the lost prophetic witness of the centuries, we can now cite as our own the once-held expositions of prophecy taught by Luther, Osiander, and Melanchthon in Germany; by Zwingli and Bullinger in Switzerland; by Tyndale, Ridley, and Latimer in England; by Knox and Napier in Scotland; by John Cotton, Roger Williams, and Increase Mather in Colonial New England, and literally hundreds of other lights that flamed forth both in the Old World and the New. They developed the positions we now hold. And these past leaders constitute an exceptionally good and creditable company with which to fellowship.
But more than that, this very fact of the common belief of the former spiritual leadership of the Protestant church now begins to stand out in disquieting contrast to the undeniably fundamental change in position taken by their present-day spiritual successors. Something has happened to the prophetic teachings of the popular Christian church. They are now the very antithesis of what they used to be. This undeniable fact we can point out in kindly but in no uncertain tones to our definite advantage.
It then becomes the difficult and embarrassing task of modern religious leaders to explain and to justify why they no longer hold with their forefathers in those clear positions of the Protestant Reformation. Thus they are thrust into the unenviable position of defenders of fundamental departures from the faith, whereas we take the aggressive and advantageous position of affirming the soundness and verity of those old established positions which they have repudiated.
We have therefore become the champions, the restorers, and the continuators of those now-abandoned truths. So our position is happily changed over from the negative to the positive, from the defensive to the offensive, and from being the introducers of modern interpretative "heresy" to comprising the constituted champions of historical "orthodoxy" in prophetic exposition. The full force of this advantage should not be lost upon us. We should capitalize upon it to the full. We should step resolutely into this happier role of championship of acknowledged and established historical interpretations of prophecy. This is the more excellent way.
L. E. F.
