The Falling Mantle
Just beyond Jericho, two men cross the Jordan River and there they stand for a moment alone in the wilderness. In my mind’s eye, I can see the hand of the elder resting gently on the shoulder of the younger. A request is made—a conditional promise is given, and then they move on. They are Elijah & Elisha.
Suddenly, the Lord of Heaven shows His hand, and the emblem of a fulfilled promise falls to the Earth. Left alone suddenly, the most important thing on earth to Elisha is that old…piece of cloth. Is your mantle from heaven, or from earth, friend?
That the mantle is old and worn, may symbolize how some folks who are born into a message eventually regard it. They wear it because their parents did. It’s all they know.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. The Adventist Message has fallen from heaven, not from our parents. This message also has great power in it—it can and will divide the waters of humanity.
IT MUST BE PICKED UP ! It cannot be placed upon your shoulders by parents or tradition. You have to make it yours by choice.
I remember being surprised in the 1990’s when multi-generational Adventists would say to me ‘I wish I had your experience.’ Many of them felt no excitement for the Adventist Message, they made no painful choice to be here, they gave up nothing and gained little.
The wonderful truth is, you don’t need my experience and I don’t need yours. We both need the same thing—the experience of Jesus wrestling alone in the Garden. That’s what we need.
The Early Days
I was raised in an Old German Baptist Brethren home— as were 7 generations of my family before me.
Who are the German Baptist Brethren? They are sons of the Reformation. Martin Luther threw a bombshell into the Roman Catholic Church in 1517. Out of that came the Reformation and then the Radical Reformation, where Christians reunited with the Scriptures and read them carefully and sought to live by them.
Old German Baptist Brethren
In 1708, a group of believers in Schwarzenau Germany formed the Schwarzeneau Brethren (Brüder). They were a conservative plain church that grew out of the Radical Reformation. They were a mixture of Anabaptism and Radical Pietism. They believed that the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed churches were taking extreme liberties with the true message of Christianity revealed in the New Testament, so they rejected church-state unions, the use of force and violence, and unbiblical practices including infant baptism. These founding Brethren were influenced by Radical Pietist and Anabaptist understandings of a church of awakened Christians who would fellowship together in purity and love, following Jesus while awaiting Christ's return. They have a great love for the Bible. When asked for a creed, most of my former people claim that the New Testament is their creed.
Religious persecution drove them to leave Germany in 1719. By 1740, nearly all of them had relocated to America, settling in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and eventually California. There are sizable settlements in California, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania.
My maternal Grandfather, Henry Miller was Old Order Amish, and his wife Martha was German Baptist. My paternal grandparents were both German Baptist Brethren. I have two older sisters and one younger brother, Eric. My parents were both Old German Baptist Brethren children, they married in 1954. In their third month of marriage, my father contracted polio while working in a Michigan hospital to fulfill his Conscientious Objector 1-W service. It changed his life physically, and spiritually as well. After recovering his health and a small fraction of his physical strength, he devoted the rest of his life to helping others who were less fortunate than he.
Over the next 46 years, Dad wrote hundreds of letters to people who were hurting or going through a difficult time. When I was a boy, he would hand these letters to me to carry them to the mailbox with my good legs. And he always said the same thing “Put the flag up, son.”
He was also one of five founders of the first private school for German Baptist children. He was also the chairman of a charity organization designed to help those who were less fortunate. He served in that capacity for 41-years. There were times in my youthful ignorance when I might have traded those accomplishments for someone to play ball with; I learned as I grew older what a treasure my father was.
My childhood was marked with the security and fellowship of a close community of believers. I attended public school for 10 grades and vocational school to learn carpentry for one year. Deep down, I always felt that school was holding me back . . .
Interestingly, I grew up with the Arthur Maxwell Bible Story books, and developed a love for the Scriptures as a young boy. With no radio or television in the home, I read extensively during my youth. During the Great Blizzard of 1978, I read the dictionary, having read almost everything else in the house. I still like big words.
Most of my Uncles and the men I looked up to owned their own business. Even though my father was crippled by polio, I was brought up in an environ of hard work, self sufficiency and ambition.
Being the firstborn male I became the man of the family at a young age, splitting wood for us to use in winter, shoveling manure out of the barn from our horses, and hunting and occasionally shooting wild dogs that threatened our sheep.
I knew what it was like to be somewhat of an oddball in public school, growing up without television or radio. My friends would ask me “Did you see Red Skeleton last night?” I didn’t, of course. I thought that was odd, skeletons were white, not red, and weren’t supposed to be able to talk. “These people are weird.”
When we reached driving age, most of us German Baptists kids got nice cars in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I guess we were making up for not having TV and radio, and other things. That was in the days of the big block engine, and going to a young folks gathering was almost like going to a car show in the mid 1970’s.
As you might expect of a group with direct ties to the Anabaptist Reformers, believer’s baptism is a choice you must make when you are ready. For me, this choice came 2-years after we were married. My wife had already been baptized a year before we were married.
Marriage
Nancy & I were married in 1982, and started a family in 1984. We have two fine sons, Dylan and Nathan Wagoner. We met at church and our first date was attending a baptizing. I thought she was prettier than the maple trees outside the church that October evening. She still is.
I joined the church of my fathers in 1984, baptized in the chilly spring that flowed through my Uncle’s farm. There was no heavenly phenomenon as I walked up out of the cold water, just the quiet realization that I was carrying the torch for yet another (8th) generation. This was my destiny. This was fully expected of me, and I began to fulfill my twentieth century Anabaptist role as best I could, relaxing in the approval of my peers. It felt right.
That same year I started my own business, commercial roofing and spray foam insulation. I was 24 years old–a kid with a lot of ambition and not much business knowledge. A couple years went by and we had our first child.
Daniel & Revelation Seminar
In late 1986, a colorful brochure advertising a local Daniel & Revelation seminar showed up in the mailbox of a business partner. As we shared a meal with them that evening, Eric and I discussed the brochure. Without knowing a lot about it, we committed ourselves to the opening night, along with the resolution that if it wasn’t good, we would not go back. We did this kind of quietly, knowing the suspicion our church had for anything outside its echelon.
We walked into that meeting hall that night and placed our black hats on the coat rack and found a seat. And while I can’t speak for the rest of the audience that opening night, there were two German Baptist men riveted to their seats because of something powerful. Jesus Christ had been lifted up in Scripture and I found myself irresistibly drawn to him just as He had said it would be.
Is your mantle from God, or from men?
On the following Monday night we went back. Early. Got a good seat.
Night after night, I sat in that hall, while the Bible opened itself to me under the supervision of the Holy Spirit. And like the unnamed disciples on the Emmaues road, we said to each other “Did not our hearts burn within us...as he opened the Scriptures to us?” The fire burned on...
I attended all twenty-one of the remaining meetings even after circumstance prevented my partner from returning. By the close of the seminar I had learned three serious truths: The Bible is held together by extraordinary power. That power is a Person. That Person is Jesus the Christ.
This was enough to occupy my mind for years. However, I had also been brought face to face with certain truths of Jesus, like the conditional immortality of the soul, the Judgment confronting everyone, the Everlasting Gospel, the Sabbath rest, and the panoramic view of redemptive history. Before I could slam the Book, Dr. Pieter Barkhuizen had directed my attention clearly to these eternal truths, and like water from the well, all of them pointed to Jesus and His unbelievable love. Now I had a problem. Where had these truths been for eight generations? “Where were you, Jesus? I’ve never seen You this clearly before.”
I was shaken. To the core. Revelation Seminar indeed. There had been a “revelation.”
So I did the only thing I could think of. I got my Bible out and began to study it carefully. I went to Odd Lots and bought a wide margin cheap Bible for $9.88. I asked God to help me understand it—to rightly divide it. I read it through in 90-days and took lots of notes. Maybe I’d missed something. Eight generations can’t be wrong, so I resolved to disprove this new Advent message that had shaken my foundation. I would learn in the next two years of intensive study that if a pillar of faith topples in Bible study, it is a false pillar. Jesus doesn’t fail—His mantle is connected to heaven.
At the end of two years of research I had earned the suspicion of my wife who silently watched her well- respected husband confirm a message he had set out to disprove. I didn’t know it but, the day was approaching when I would go from well-respected to complete idiot in the eyes of my erstwhile friends, and family. But now I had to admit that I was prisoner of the very message I was researching, and no prisoner was held tighter than I by the chains of conviction that had settled around my neck. The best was yet to come. Intellectual determination alone was not enough!
Finally, it came to a head in 1988. Amidst the confusion I felt over the pull of my heritage against the power of the Advent message, I fell to my knees one night and prayed perhaps as I never had before...
“Father, please help me. You alone know the struggle within me. Take it out of my hands and lead me by Your will...”
That did it. When morning broke, my life began to reveal a series of events as if guided by a giant hand. God had heard. He had been listening. Now He was guiding. Gethsemane was close behind me.
I took step after step in the direction of the Advent Movement. Unable to hide it longer, word broke out among my childhood peers. Rumors about me went from Ohio to California. In two weeks time I went from well respected to complete idiot in the opinions of my fellow church members. Through it all I clung to the Scriptures as I now understood them and the One to whom they pointed. Vaguely, I remember thinking in late 1988 “This should really bother me: to walk away from the kind of heritage that is mine. I’m here to tell you -- it didn’t. Nothing mattered - except doing the will of my heavenly Father. Nothing.
This mantle has fallen from Heaven.
Walking away from tradition of that depth is neither easy nor casually done, but for me it was the only road to peace. I surrendered to God in late 1988 and the peace He brought still warms my heart. Without the support of my wife I was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church on 1-7-1989. Once again, there was no divine appearance, however the Scriptures that I loved as a boy are permanently fixed in my heart as the great guide to Jesus. And that kind of treasure is indeed a heavenly phenomenon.
My wife joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church eight months later. She couldn’t do it when I did, and that’s all right. Had she been baptized just because I was, it would have been me placing the mantle around her shoulders. It would not have been hers. Eight months later she picked it up and made it her own. That was an exciting time for us.
Three questions
1. What can we learn from the Anabaptists?
We can learn to keep life simpler, be self-sufficient, and be a good neighbor. We can learn the value of working with our hands, and leading a quiet life (1 Thessalonians 4:11).
We can learn not to be political. Anabaptists are conservative by nature, but not political.
We can learn that the family is a special container for God’s blessings, and that marriage is for life. We can learn the value of Christian modesty and hard work. We can learn to whisper love to our children instead of shouting it. We can learn that God values the creational distinctions that He set up, including the special complementary roles for men and women. Anabaptists are not arguing over women’s ordination, they discovered the truth of male leadership in the Bible long ago, and they each accept their roles gratefully. From them we can also learn that divorce and remarriage is not an option. Marriage is for life. Choose wisely and treat kindly. When a woman demonstrates a gentle and quiet spirit, her life is a precious testimony of the beauty and goodness of God. Our world, wracked by second and third wave feminism, has long abandoned God’s counsel in this area. We can learn not to be too enamored with academics and degrees. There are many types of education and our world is currently using academics in a way that damages the hearts of our children. Instead, encourage and cultivate the value of reading in your life and that of your children. This will help you to become learned.
2. What can they learn from us?
They can learn that the Bible is held together by a special power, and it offers us a panoramic view of redemptive history. They can learn that truths that were lost sight of during the dark Ages and the counter-reformation are still alive and they matter. They can learn not to follow tradition for the sake of tradition, and to accept the Bible as a wholistic chain of (28) special truths. They can learn the benefits of healthy living, and that eating well (vegetarian) can both taste great and make you feel better.
3. What did this experience teach me?
Don’t ever give up.
Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by people who call into question your integrity because you stand for something.
My wife joined the Church 8- months later. Be patient with people. Demonstrate God’s truth in your life to others and they will want to know more. When it comes to your spouse, men, love them and lead on softly.
If you lose friends over biblical truth, God will give you five better ones for every one that you lose. This principle alone could turn our lives (and Church) upside-down. It confronts people who don’t want to make waves, or be too different.
Many of our Church leaders live with the belief that if people like us they will accept our Message. Not so. People are much more apt to consider or accept truth because they respect you, not because they ‘like’ you. People who accept something just because they like you have not been made stronger by struggling with convicting truth and letting go of lies.
The Bible is held together by extraordinary power, the power of God. He cares for us, that’s why He gave it to mankind.
We have a job to do, we have a world to warn, and a message of hope to share. The Everlasting Gospel is massive good news friend, and it invades our world with these words “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Revelation 14:6).
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). Those who exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve creation have no future and no hope (v. 25). But we have this hope, that burns within our soul.
If you seek God with all your heart, you will find Him.
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“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11-13).