Lessons from 1888 for 1988 leaders

What does 1888 have to say to us about relationship and obedience, the cognitive and the affective, conflicts between the young and the old, reformers and the church?

Floyd Bresee, Ph.D., is a former secretary of the General Conference Ministerial Association, and continues to pastor and preach in Oregon, where he and his wife, Ellen, live in retirement.

Church leaders of 100 years ago have often been accused of failing to lead the church as it should have been led in 1888. There is a far more important question, however. Will 1988 church leaders learn the lessons from a century ago and lead the church now as God wanted it led then?

And whom do we mean when we speak of leaders? We must go beyond administrators and include pastors, local elders, and church board members. If the local congregation is the heart of the church, then surely the pastor and local leaders are the principal leaders in the church. Here are some suggested lessons from 1888 for 1988 church leaders. Most are based on articles in this issue of Ministry.

Lessons about theology

Righteousness by faith is basic to Adventism. Any modern Adventist leader who has given righteousness by faith only cursory attention, thinking it dealt just with our past or was merely something for the more cerebral to split hairs over, misunderstands Adventism. Ellen White has said Justification by faith "is the third angel's message in verity."1 She surely did not consider it peripheral.

When theological waters get too deep or too tempestuous, we do well to go to her succinct definition of what righteousness by faith is all about: "Righteousness is obedience to the law. The law demands righteousness, and this the sinner owes to the law; but he is incapable of rendering it. The only way in which he can attain to righteousness is through faith. By faith he can bring to God the merits of Christ, and the Lord places the obedience of His Son to the sinner's account. Christ's righteousness is accepted in place of man's failure, and God receives, pardons, justifies, the repentant, believing soul, treats him as though he were righteous, and loves him as He loves His Son. This is how faith is accounted righteousness."2

True Adventism balances the cognitive and affective, knowledge and feeling, theory and experience. Prior to 1888 the Re view was devoted almost exclusively to proving doctrine. Many church leaders considered Bible study as merely the means of making certain they had the doctrines right and could prove them forcefully.

We had become a denomination of debaters. Nobody could prove his doctrines better than the Adventists. Yet our debaters were winning their debates and losing their Christian experience. For them, proof had replaced prayer. Argument had overshadowed experience.

Some today seem to teach that an understanding of righteousness by faith will guarantee revival in the church. Not necessarily. It takes more than an argument to revive a church. The real issue of 1888 was whether or not the church could move beyond argument to experience. The church of 1988 must succeed where the church of 1888 failed—in striking a balance between those two.

True Adventism balances relationship and obedience. In 1888 Adventism was part of a society where, on the whole, law was respected and obedience was expect ed. No wonder law and obedience were emphasized in the church. In 1988 Adventism is part of a society emphasizing loving relationships and individual freedom, a society that tends to wink at per missive behavior. No wonder relation ships have become more important and permissiveness more acceptable in the church.

It is terribly dangerous to concentrate on obedience to Christ and neglect relationship with Him. It is equally dangerous to concentrate on relationship and neglect obedience. The devil doesn't care one bit whether the Advent movement goes into the ditch on the right side of the road or the left. But he is bound and determined to get us off the center. Ellen White pulls us toward that center by insisting, "We do not earn salvation by our obedience; for salvation is the free gift of God, to be received by faith. But obedience is the fruit of faith." 3

Righteousness by faith will always be difficult to teach, because society programs people against it. Righteousness by faith teaches that when we accept Christ, He saves us before we've done anything to deserve it—reward precedes work. Adventists aren't the only ones who find this sequence difficult to comprehend. All of society operates on the completely opposite assumption that work precedes reward. At home, mother gave us the cookie after we had been good. In school, we got the grade after we finished the course. On the job, we get paid after we do our work.

Like it or not, our theology tends to grow out of our sociology. Most Christians will tend to revert back to believing that work precedes reward. It's the way just about everything else in life operates. Others, reacting against life and their "works" background or reflecting their permissive upbringing, will always want to presume that righteousness by faith teaches that reward eliminates work.

Lessons about group relationships

Our effectiveness as leaders depends less on what we say than on how we say it. Teaching the right message with the wrong methods gets wrong results. The two young proponents of righteousness by faith in 1888 illustrate this lesson.

E. J. Waggoner was a physician turned preacher. He was short in stature, scholarly, and refined. But he was seldom accused of being humble. A. T. Jones was a former Army sergeant. He was tall and Lincolnesque in build, self-educated, and highly opinionated. He tended to be a bit abrupt and even harsh with people.

Some who opposed their message later admitted they had felt they were being "clubbed," especially by Jones. How different might the story of 1888 be if the methods and personalities of Jones and Waggoner had not interfered with their presentations or if their listeners had been more successful in looking beyond the messengers to their message.

The amount of truth a group discovers depends less on the arguments presented than on the climate in which they are presented. The climate of 1888 was one of disunity and argument. The institute opened with an argument over whether it was the Alemanni or the Huns that were represented by the tenth horn in Daniel. The righteousness by faith doctrine grew out of studies from Galatians, but there was strong disagreement over whether the law referred to in Galatians 3 was the ceremonial law, as the old guard claimed, or the moral law, as Wag goner argued. In addition, Waggoner insisted that Christ was "all the fulness of the Godhead," while many of the pioneers believed Christ's life was actually a "derived life."

Like a fog, an argumentative spirit settled over the beautiful doctrine of righteousness by faith, obscuring it to such an extent that many simply could not see it. Members of a group must learn to like each other before they can learn much of anything from each other.

Young and old workers need each other. At the 1888 conference the most powerful opposition to Jones and Waggoner came from Uriah Smith, editor of the Review, and G. I. Butler, president of the General Conference, who was absent but let his stand be known via telegraph. It wouldn't have been easy for Smith and Butler, who were 56 and 53, respectively, to take instruction from the 38- and 33-year-old Jones and Waggoner. But the fact remains that the proud, opinionated, younger men were basically right.

It is still hard for older workers to take instruction from the younger. But it is important. Young ministers are usually in pastoral positions. Older leaders may not have been as close to the local church and its needs for many years, and the wisest ones know that the younger men are worth listening to.

Youth needs the wisdom of age, but age needs the vitality and idealism of youth. A young man can grasp a new truth with excitement and enthusiasm. If an older man is to espouse new truth, he must first reject the old error he's taught for years—and that's hard to do. Butler and Smith testify to that.

O. A. Olsen, who was elected at the 1888 conference to replace Butler as General Conference president, later quoted Ellen White as saying that it was the younger workers who should "plan, devise, and execute" while looking to the older workers as "counselors and guides."

The higher we rise and the older we grow, the more defensive we become of the status quo. Of course, not all leaders are guilty. The temptation and tendency, however, are very real. Those who successfully resist are especially to be admired and respected.

G. I. Butler, as president of the General Conference, and Uriah Smith, as editor of the Review for nearly 25 years, instantly and instinctively defended the status quo. They were both honest and astute men dedicated to the church. Both later accepted righteousness by faith. At first, however, both were so busy defending orthodoxy that they failed to grasp new truth.

This is the temptation for all leaders, whether in 1888 or 1988, whether in a conference/mission office or in the local church. The present state of things has brought us our position and a certain degree of power. Change threatens these. And so, although we tend to deny these reasons, those of us who are leaders often find it hardest to accept new ideas. There is a time to defend. But our church does take a firm stand in favor of progressive truth. Leaders now, like leaders in 1888, will actually hurt the church if they spend so much effort defending what is that they cannot hear what ought to be.

Lessons about the nature of reform

Reformers are seldom completely right— or wrong. Reformers need to remember they are seldom completely right. It is a mistake to insist that the 1888 teaching of Jones and Waggoner on righteousness by faith contains all the 1988 church needs on the subject. While they made a distinct contribution, theirs was only a beginning, and not without problems. Ellen White agreed with their overall emphasis, but not with all their theology or every scriptural interpretation. They tended to emphasize righteousness as subjective and infused within the individual. This paved the way for their later acceptance of pantheism.

Leaders need to remember, however, that reformers are seldom completely wrong. Anyone able to gain the attention and support of sizable groups over a considerable period of time, whether or not he has the truth, has something people want. Leaders who feel the reformer is wrong must find a right way to meet the need the reformer is meeting.

Reformers tend to have tunnel vision. Fundamental and all-encompassing as righteousness by faith is, those who look on it as everything and the only thing should be warned by the eventual apostasy of Waggoner and Jones. It is possible to concentrate on even the most beautiful doctrine and emphasize it so exclusively that our Christianity becomes unbalanced. This kind of singular emphasis led Martin Luther to reject the book of James.

Waggoner eventually developed a per missive theology that excused his roman tic relationship with a woman other than his wife, the dissolution of his marriage, and his wedding the other woman. Both Jones and Waggoner sided with Kellogg in the Battle Creek schism of 1903.

Being a reformer is terribly dangerous. The natural thing is to become engrossed in the one area you're reforming to the neglect of everything else. Overemphasizing even the very best can be very bad. It's like the one-eyed deer who, because of her handicap, was frightfully nervous about being surprised by an enemy. She found a large meadow protected by a river and two high cliffs. She was sure that if she kept her good eye turned toward the opening between the cliffs, she would be watching the only place danger could come from. One day a hunter drifted down the river in his canoe and shot her. She had been so certain that she knew where the danger lay, and had concentrated so exclusively on that one area, that the enemy easily slipped up on her blind side.

Trust Ellen White. Years of time and countless researchers have proved that hers was the most perfect balance be tween argument and experience, be tween defending the old landmarks and stepping out for new light. Only she seems to have had a full understanding of what was happening in 1888.

Where did she gain such exceptional insight? Not from counseling with other leaders, for at first most were wrong. Not from reading a book, for the book hadn't been written. God was at work.

The church has not completely failed. Critics of the church are right in saying that it has not done all it should do or been all it should be since 1888. But shame on them for implying that it has known only failure since then.

The church has surely grown in size. There were fewer than 100 delegates to that General Conference session. Today delegations are so large we can no longer meet in a little church, but seek out the world's largest arenas for our General Conference sessions. In 1890 there were fewer than 30,000 Seventh-day Adventists in the world. Today there are more than 5 million. The church is praying that God will lead us into baptizing 2 million precious souls between 1985 and 1990, and I invite those who say the church is failing to become a part of that success.

Now, size isn't everything, but surely no one would say God has not been blessing His church. And would we not agree that Adventist theology and Adventist preaching are much more Christ-centered today than before 1888? The church has not succeeded as it should in awakening from its Laodiceanism, and that is not to be taken lightly. The church has not completely succeeded, but neither has it completely failed.

Lessons about personal renewal

What the church needs most is not more proofs or plans, but more power. With all its admirable organization and institutions, the church today is tempted to rely on its own plans for doing God's business. It does need plans, programs, and an expanded understanding of truth. The Holy Spirit does not replace plans. But we must never allow a reliance on plans to replace our reliance on the Holy Spirit. Depending more on our own plans than on Holy Spirit power for fulfilling the gospel commission violates the very principle on which salvation by faith is based. It leaves the church engrossed in works.

Leaders must not merely understand righteousness by faith. They must experience it. Those who say that the church rejected righteousness by faith 100 years ago and that what the church needs now is to accept it are only partially right. Some church leaders did accept it in 1888. And among those who remained as leaders, nearly all accepted it in the years just following. Most of those who did not, gradually faded out of the leadership picture.

The movement toward support began with such leaders as S. N. Haskell, G. B. Starr, A. T. Robinson, M. C. Wilcox, W. W. Prescott, and W. C. White. It eventually broadened to include those who had at first been so vocal in opposition J. H. Morrison, Smith, and Butler.

Jones, Waggoner, and Ellen White were invited by the church to travel far and wide sharing the message, especially between 1888 and 1891. Both men were given considerable responsibility in the church. Jones eventually became editor of the Review, with Uriah Smith as his assistant. A. V. Olsen, elected General Conference president in 1888, served until 1897 and enthusiastically fostered ministerial institutes emphasizing righteousness by faith.

The problem following the 1888 meeting was not so much those who refused to accept righteousness by faith, but those who accepted it without experiencing it or who experienced it but failed to continue in that experience. The question for leaders today is not so much whether or not we have accepted righteousness by faith, but whether or not we are experiencing it. It must become, for each of us, not a theory to ponder, but a closeness with Christ to experience.

Ministers must lead the way to revival. How is it with you, my fellow minister? As you lead out in the 1988 commemoration of 1888, are you experiencing what you're teaching? Are you practicing what you're preaching? Are you coming closer to Christ?

Our relationship with Him grows in the same way as does a relationship with anyone else through time spent together. We must stop pretending we don't have time. Of course we're busy. A minister never gets everything done. But remember, we nearly always find time for things most important to us and almost never find time for things least important. Our first priority must be a closer love relationship with Christ, and love takes time.

1. Review and Herald, April 1, 1890. Footnotes in this article refer to the writings of Ellen G. White.

2. Ibid., Nov. 4, 1890.

3. Steps to Christ, p. 61.


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Floyd Bresee, Ph.D., is a former secretary of the General Conference Ministerial Association, and continues to pastor and preach in Oregon, where he and his wife, Ellen, live in retirement.

February 1988

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More Articles In This Issue

1888--issues, outcomes, lessons

Did the 1888 session yield good for the church or bad? How can we benefit from Ellen White's reaction and counsel?

The men of Minneapolis

How much of the conflict at Minneapolis in 1888 could be attributed to theological differences and how much to personality clashes?

What is the 1888 Message?

While we do not have transcripts of Jones's and Waggoner's talks at that fateful session, we have an impeccable source for the message of righteousness by faith they were to deliver.

Elder Hottel goes to General Conference

R. DeWitt Hottel's diary gives a participant's perspective on the 1888 General Conference session.

The dynamics of salvation

The text of a study document produced in 1980 provides background on the church's current understanding of righteousness by faith.

The biblical gospel of salvation

What is righteousness by faith? Is it only forgiveness, or does it demand moral rectitude?

Corporate repentance

Do church leaders today need to repent for the sins of their predecessors? Does the church as a whole need to repent for what happened in 1888?

Damnation or deliverance?

How does righteousness by faith relate to the messages of the three angels of Revelation 14-God's last warning to the world, the special commission of the Adventist Church?

Have we delayed the Advent?

While Ellen G. White wrote that we can hasten or delay the Lord's return, she also wrote that Jesus would come "at the appointed time." What did she mean?

Judgment or justification?

Many have rejected the idea of an investigative judgment. Why? Is this Adventist doctrine biblical?

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