Night clouds at dawn

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!" said Wordsworth of one of the great beginnings of modern history.

When great movements begin there is a vigor and an elation that juggernauts through obstacles and shakes the world. This was true of the post-Pentecost Christian church. G. K. Chesterton said that the early church was "a winged thunderbolt of everlasting enthusiasm." The Lord was risen indeed, and had ascended to sit at the right hand of the Majesty on High.

With that knowledge burning within them the apostles—who had run from Gethsemane to bolt-holes and were, at first, unwilling to believe the Resurrection—could outface magistrates, councils, judges, even Caesar himself. From an intensely heated center of burning zeal, a vast field of lava was thrown out to the limits of the Roman world. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!"

In the midst of it all some were untouched. The Sadducees pursued power and, in matters of faith, adhered to the "higher criticism." The Pharisees were legalistic perfectionists and, as always, split hairs. The Zealots were inward-looking, unable to see beyond their mind-shuttered cult. Vespasian and Titus waited with their legions.

But the unlikely heroes redeemed the time, preached Christ and Him crucified. And the world was changed.

Peril from within

In the age after Vespasian and Titus had done their work, it was the church that began to undergo a change. As the witnesses of the first dawn died at their posts their successors prepared earnestly to "contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." John wrote his three letters when the bliss of the first great dawning had all but died out. He wanted the church to know that the real peril she faced was not persecution from without, but seduction from within.

The church had grown its own Sadducees, pursuers of power with a cynical disregard for faith. It had grown its own Pharisees, legalistic perfectionists trying to make it to the kingdom on all fours, unwilling to accept the white garment of righteousness "which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3:9). It had grown its own Zealots, closed-minded, exclusivistic exponents of a cult.

In addition, for good measure, the church had also thrown up the Gnostics, who wanted to make Christianity "intellectually respectable." They broke into two wings: one expounding celibacy and perfectionism; the second, libertinage—the flouting of the law of God! the taking of God's grace for granted!

The dawning was long past. Night clouds were lowering.

But "the winged thunderbolt of ever lasting enthusiasm," the spiritual dynamic of Pentecost, lived on in the minds of some. God had His pure spirits in every age. Within this tradition the Advent awakening exploded in the early nineteenth century and threw out the "winged thunderbolt" of the church we hold dear.

Elatedly, our pioneers searched the Scriptures. Old truths were rediscovered. New truths—truths preserved to be discovered in the end-time—came to light. They found that the great prophecies of Scripture fitted into a beautiful mosaic; an intricate, syntactic whole. They found that the theology of salvation—grace, law, justification, sanctification, glorification—was another beautiful whole and all symbolized by the mes sages of three angels. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!"

The fading of the dream

Approximately 130 years later Gordon Bietz wrote that the dream of Adventism "has faded as too many days have come and gone. . . . [It] has waned as genera tion after generation is born into a church without experiencing its mes sage. . . . [It] has been dissipated by argument over doctrinal nuance."*

Have we spawned our Sadducees of power hunger, our Pharisees of legalism and perfectionism, our Zealots of nostalgic, closed-minded cultism, and our Gnostics of libertinage ? Are they bringing night clouds to our dawning, their arguments destroying our dream of a finished work—shading in the nuances of theology when the vast majority of the millions seething in our cities have not so much as accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour? Nor even been called upon by us to consider doing so?

In the first great dawning at Pentecost, as in the Advent dawning of the past century, the great "this above all" was communicating the good news, bringing souls to their Saviour. The stale crusts of obscure theological chatter are no substitute for the Bread of Life that a man may eat and never die. Why, the very vocabulary, the language used by the combat ants in theological debate, is entirely unintelligible to the vast majority of our neighbors who have yet to accept Christ.

The gospel does not belong to theologians. It is not an academic discipline. It is the power of God unto salvation. But it is in danger of being lost under a mountain of very long words. In the hands of Jesus the gospel was sublimely simple, simply sublime. We could do worse than keep it that way.

In the early church—of the first or nineteenth centuries—no one fulfilled the function of witchfinder general. No one was commissioned to creep around the church placing upon all those whose views disagreed with his own the stigma of "heretic." Peter didn't always agree with Paul, and the Jewish Christians didn't always see eye to eye with the gen tile Christians. For all that there was unity: a unity of purpose, of mission, in the face of which any differences of view, any clash of personalities, was of no relevance whatever.

Likewise, in the excitement of the early Advent movement there were differences of view, even clashes of personality. But it mattered naught. They had a unity of mission and purpose, an all important message that overrode all else. And they went forward mightily!

Renewing the vigor

This is not the time to withdraw into defensive isolationism. It is not the time to withdraw into a cocoon of comfort able, but unintelligible, theological language and debate. It is not the time for the church to look inward upon itself—its problems, its differences, its divisions. It is the time for it to look outward and once again to glimpse the challenge of an unfinished work, a mighty message that has yet to reach the ends of the earth! The greatest want of the church is not the want of power-pursuing, higher critical Sadducees; not that of legalistic, perfectionistic, nit-picking, minds-at-ground-level Pharisees; not of inward-looking, chauvinistic zealots who would make of the cause of Jesus Christ no more than another mind-shuttered cult.

The greatest want of the church is the want of men and women who will say, "Lord, take my mind, my voice, my hands, my feet, my will, my heart, my life, myself—and I will be ever only all for Thee."

When there is that kind of commitment, the Spirit will work, and work mightily. Bliss were it in that dawn to be alive—for the day that it ushers in will know no nightfall.