At this point the third actor in the drama enters the stage. The third actor, however, emerges as the protagonist of the play, the stinging voice of conscience, the focused object of the combined action of the other actors. But eventually the third actor steps out as the triumphant spectacle which God will use forever as exhibit A of love under fire. Of course, I refer to the role of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
But it is exactly at this point where the drama has its problems. The producer has been holding back the curtains and whispering the cue lines for more than eighty years, but the actor has never made his full entrance. This is a long time for the plot to dangle before the unseen audience of the universe as they have watched one prospective player after another fail the lines of this third actor.
The unseen controller of this drama, which some have named the great controversy, has had to try out at least four or five perfectly suitable potential actors representing the potential last generation—but they all have muffed their lines or withdrawn to the shadows, hoping against hope that something mysterious would happen to them outside their own neglected preparation which would make them fulfill their part.
The question before us today is the same as it has been for the past one hundred years. Will the final act again have to be postponed until another generation yet unborn can be ready to perform the part that could be done by the generation now living?
The faithful performance of the church is the chief concern of all heaven, and it is precisely at this point where we need to do some hard thinking and careful preaching about the lines this church must present before the galleries of the world in most unmistakable terms. The role of the true church, and not the role to be played by the powers already mentioned or socialized America, constitutes the key to the development of the last-day events in which we are well versed.
The timetable of last-day events does not depend upon an inexorable march of Sunday laws but on the readiness of the church of God to enter the stage with the right lines in its mouth. God will not send the "latter rain" on the basis of what the Pope, or some national leader or the Supreme Court, does, but on the basis of what the church finally does.
Is it possible that at times we have had our attention directed to the wrong actors as we have looked for the star performer? Hitler poised large troop concentrations on the Balkans as a decoy and then sent his panzers into Holland, where we didn't expect him. The church has had its decoys in the past one hundred years and we have spent the time of the saints discussing the decoys when we could have more profitably singled out that one subject which will one day unlock the log jam of overdue last-day events.
For many years it was Turkey that we were supposed to watch, and then it was the oil of the Middle East; then one Berlin crisis after another, or a Catholic President in the United States, and on they go.
But one of these days the third actor will become completely obsessed with the picture that God and the world are most concerned about:
The world is watching to see what fruit is borne by professed Christians. It has a right to look for self-denial and self-sacrifice from those who believe advanced truth. It is watching, ready to criticize with keenness and severity our words and acts. . . .
And God and the angels are watching. God desires His people to show by their lives the advantage of Christianity over worldliness; to show that they are working on a high, holy plane. He longs to see them showing that the truth they have received has made them children of the heavenly King. He longs to make them channels through which He can pour His boundless love and mercy.
Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of the Saviour shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim His own. It is the privilege of every Christian, not only to look for, but to hasten, the coming of our Lord. Were all who profess His name bearing fruit to His glory, how quickly the whole world would be sown with the seed of the gospel!—Counsels to Parents and Teachers, p. 324. (See Selected Messages, book 1, p. 117; Christ's Object Lessons, p. 69.)
The world and God and the angels and our Lord Jesus have been waiting a long time—longer than it ever had to be. It is not the will of God that His coming should be thus delayed (Evangelism, p. 696). As far as God is concerned the generation that preached the glorious message in the 1840's would have been the last generation, and all the predicted reaction of the Papacy, and of its image in the United States, would have completely fulfilled, before now, the prophetical pictures in Daniel and Revelation.
The question of supreme importance today as we assess the tempo of last-day events is this: What are we teaching and doing today as leaders of the church that is any different from what has been done in the past four or five generations, any one of which could have been the last? The answer to this question determines the tempo of the last-day events.
Do we console ourselves that the outreach of gospel preaching has advanced rapidly into almost all the countries of the world, thus fulfilling Matthew 24:14? In fact, we even say that 98 per cent or 99 per cent of the world has had the opportunity to hear the gospel preached. But intellectual honesty compels us to take another look at the facts, as H. W. Lowe suggests in the December, 1961, MINISTRY. He notes that "1,800 of the world's 3,000 languages are still awaiting the translation of even a part of the Holy Scripture," and "1,500 millions of the world's population of 2,900 millions have never heard the message of the Gospel."
Then we remember that the world's population increase, that is, the net gain after deaths are canceled out, is increasing at the rate of more than 5,000 every hour, 120,000 every day, and over 44 million every year. When we compare the exploding gap between the Christians and the non-Christians we discover that there has been an increase of 800 million non-Christians in the past twenty-five years and this gap is still accelerating at even a faster clip. In the countries Adventists are in, who would say that Egypt has been warned, or India, or Arabia, or France, or the United States? If the work is to be finished in this generation, it will be done with plans that we have not drawn up yet—with methods that have not yet been dreamed of in denominational resolutions, and plans that will never be dreamed by man, for they will be plans engineered by the God of the latter rain of the Holy Spirit.
The situation before God's church today is no less staggering, and no less impossible in the eyes of man, than was the challenge before the disciples prior to Pentecost. Yet, we have no reason to flinch or to raise a flag of despair. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been commissioned to consummate a task, the success of which is already a foregone conclusion. Some generation will at last fulfill the conditions of the last generation, conditions that will make it possible for the Holy Spirit to do His work of bringing the world to decision.
The generation that decides to be the last, will be the one that has its eyes open to the cause of Christ's pathetic delay and will see what God is yet waiting for. This will be its all-consuming concern. A new pattern of looking at our denominational task will emerge—perhaps along the following lines:
After all, the supreme mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is to make clear to honest hearts the meaning of "righteousness by faith"—not only in theory, although this comes first, but in a living demonstration of Christlike people who wear the imparted wedding garment. This is the work of the third angel, and when the message is fully received by God's people, a great light of glory, the glory of the character of God, will sweep the world and bring it to its final decision. Only then will honest men have a fair opportunity to judge the claims of the commandment-keeping way of life, for only then will it have been proved to be more than just another theory, and more than legalism.
3. The third development that will hasten the Advent will be a healthy concern for the clarification of the theological language of the church. A more systematic approach will be utilized by preacher and layman alike.For example, we will think seriously about how we use terms such as "the sealing work" and the "latter rain," "the innumerable multitude," and even "righteousness by faith." For instance, we will clarify once and for all the close relationship between the sealing work and the latter rain, that the sealing work precedes the latter rain and then through this full commitment of sealed church members, God will do a work that will stagger our fondest dreams. God will finish the work on the earth, but He has committed Himself to wait for the right kind of people through whom He will be proud to work.
4. The fourth area that affects the hastening of last-day events is concerned with the public image the Seventh-day Adventist Church projects during this time of religious crisis. There are at least three aspects of this public image that will attract honest men to the commandment-keeping church.a. The church will emerge in the end of time as the fearless voice of freedom in a world tied in organizational bundles. At the heart of the Adventist message is the restoration of human freedom—the reconstruction of the long-marred image of God. Human dignity and the unfettering of individuality is the purpose of Christian education, the purpose of all our effort toward healthy living and the purpose of our emphasis on integrity in all social intercourse. We believe that no man should be cowed by another, that no man should be coerced by a majority where his spiritual commitments are concerned. To this end, we will appeal to the great charters of human freedom that have been the basis of freedom in the Western world for the centuries past. It will be an appeal wrapped in intellectual responsibility and noted for its logic and diplomacy. But it will be a lonely platform, for freedom in the days ahead will not be a popular cause.
Yet, because of our unflinching defense of freedom, skillfully, winsomely, thoughtfully presented, men who probably never gave religion a serious thought in the past will be forced to recognize in the Adventists their spiritual brethren. Liberal theologians who detest the fettering and cramping spirit of evangelical, fundamentalist Christians will suddenly see that the Seventh-day Adventist way of life is a living demonstration of that genuine manhood—an all-consuming compassion toward which they had been working the past one hundred years. Judges, lawyers, statesmen, legislators, and thoughtful leaders of the religious world will be convinced that they will have to join the church or compromise their lifetime concern for integrity and sell their soul for convenience.
b. The second aspect of our public image will be our winsome, tactful, yet positive concern for the welfare of the human race. The world will see that Adventists are not primarily concerned with winning doctrinal arguments. In the neighborhood, as well as in institutional centers, they will see them as the embodiment of compassion and intelligent service. No longer are they known for what they do not eat and where they do not go, for now they are equated with the angels of mercy who actually love to relieve the hurts of broken bodies and aching hearts.
c. The third aspect of our public image will be somewhat a composite of what we have said already. The world will see for the first time, without any if's, or and's, or but's, the exhibit A of God's way of life—a church with the healthiest, happiest, safest people in any town, in any State, in any country the world around.
If it has been the lack of a fair demonstration of the principles of God's way of life in the lives of professed people, which has delayed the Advent, it follows that only a virile, vigorous, and glorious reproduction of the character or righteousness of Christ will rightly represent the truth that every living person will have to either accept or reject. To take this concept out of the Spirit of Prophecy would be to carve out its very heart, as well as many pages.
God will not close probation on any man who has not had a fair chance to see the evidence of the superiority of His way of life, but the evidence will be there when the church finally fulfills its mission on earth. Only then will God's way of life through the commandment-keeping church be vindicated in the eyes of the unfallen worlds.
Sunday laws and the "little time of trouble," the latter rain, and the loud cry —all these great moments in the last act of this world's drama are poised, waiting for their cue. The other actors are ready with their lines. I want to be part of that generation which steps to the center of the stage with the hero's lines well learned, thus making it possible for all the other actors to finally get into the act—thus hastening the day when our Lord can return to set up His kingdom.