Adventism has arrived at the point where we’re not quite so sure about ourselves anymore. The evidences of it have become increasingly apparent and continue to grow. Why are we experiencing this kind of change and why now?
The Advent Movement began with a special emphasis on something in which we believed strongly. Our movement was informal; highly person oriented, and convinced that the prevailing religion around us was missing special biblical truths. At first we were despised and ridiculed. We attracted a following and acquired a sense of identity and moved on to formal organization. We then developed an institutional form and grew in the surrounding society. In time, some of our emphases became accepted by the secular community and we achieved a measure of respectability. Well into our second century, we began to fear losing that respectability.
The Advent movement is confronted now by a situation unknown to its past. We are reminded of the notable statement published in 1909, “great changes are soon to take place in our world and the final movements will be rapid ones.” I submit to you, this prophecy is fulfilled. Not until this century have we been required to cope with change so rapid, leading to ends so alien to Christian values, yet marketed in such alluring format. While this racing change appears especially threatening to our movement that treasures what God has given us in the past, we face a particularly difficult problem created by assigning to eschatology the central place of our message. Remember, our faith is radically Christocentric.
The Christ who is Creator is also the Savior as well as the coming King. Nothing could be more Christocentric than that. The three great pillars of biblical teaching: creation, salvation, and redemption all rest upon the person of Christ. You can’t improve on that. That’s the way the Scripture has laid it out.
What is an Adventist? It is someone who gets up each morning with an eye on the eastern sky. We live with the conviction that Jesus is coming again (Acts 1:11). We sense the distance between us and heaven and long to fall at the feet of Him who loved us before we first loved Him (Revelation 4:10; Luke 5:8). We are prisoners of hope.
Adventism took shape around the central proposition that the same Jesus who made us and saved us is coming back soon. Sociologists of religion would see this doctrine as an asset near its beginning, but increasingly as an albatross—for the passage of time makes it ever less defensible.
The Delay
If Jesus’ return holds so central a position among us how do we deal with the non-fulfillment this expectation embedded in our very name?
We watch Ellen White face this growing challenge. Her ministry stretched from 1844 to 1915, a full seventy-one years. And we track her statements, first in immediate anticipation that seemed unable to grasp the meaning of every nation, kindred tongue and people. With the message not yet extended as far as Augusta, GA, early Adventists were speaking triumphantly of the work being almost done.
In His providence, God opened (as they could conceive of it) the truth that all nations include Sweden, Uruguay, Botswana, and Korea, and a hundred others. A global vision, a mission emerges. Time went on.
We began to hear from Ellen White—statements that acknowledge there is a delay. If all the early Adventists had remained faithful she tells us “ere this Christ would have come” (Manuscript 4, 1883 (see Selected Messages, book 1, pp. 59-73, especially pp. 66-69). Later she tells us that we may have to remain in this world many more years because of insubordination (Letter 184, 1901. EV 696). Such well known statements, even the most recent of them, are now over 120 years old.
How do we deal with this kind of delay? In all honesty we must acknowledge that this issue is creating substantial strains within our church.
Among liberals, radical ecumenism and the adoption of popular culture is widespread. They seek to love their neighbor without first loving the Almighty Ruler of the universe with all their heart, soul, and mind (Mark 12:29-31). It doesn’t work that way. It results in false sympathy for sin and the sinner.
Among certain conservatives, we find the distractions of Anti-trinitarianism, the 2520 notion, and a compulsive desire to figure out the exact timeline of our Lord’s return.
Among certain administrators there is a fear of being disliked by the world and a willingness to acquiesce to autocratic government coercions.
Early Adventist generations saw our task as preparing a people to meet Jesus who shortly would appear. Their hymnals featured selections like “Are you ready for Jesus to come?” (You’ll notice it’s not in our current hymnal.) This focus stimulated overriding concern about an almost inquisitorial & looming judgment. One’s behavior, and personal inadequacies assumed high priority. It also spawned speculation about an exact sequence of final events. When will probation close? What will be the last sign and signal for me to quick slip in the door? Sunday laws and death decrees assumed high priority.
For some Adventists, salvation seemed to hang on a tenuous thread, always in peril. Into the resulting vacuum came a renewed stress on salvation as the gift of grace through faith alone. Some of these new emphases coupled with a downplaying of certain doctrines found their way into the book Questions on Doctrine, a book soundly rejected in some quarters under the label new theology. Such serious charges are reinforced by the virtual absence from our pulpits and church-sponsored publications (such as the Adventist Review, Ministry, Insight, and others) of materials that urge obedience to God’s Law in preparation for Jesus’ return. I would challenge you to find material like that in the last twenty-five years in any of those magazines.
Marginalized in their efforts to get their message before the church, many these people turn to alternative publications, camp meetings, and institutions to carry out what to them is the original Advent message.
So how do we deal with the delay? There are several options. Let’s consider them briefly.
1. Make no adaptation at all. Simply ignore the passage of time while continuing to teach an immediate advent. This is the tactic of the Jehovah’s witnesses, for whom the delay is far more serious than for us.
2. Develop rationales for the delay. The first one maintains that Christ awaits a final generation that has overcome all and becomes safe to save. They will now be trustworthy in the kingdom of God. When this approach stresses perfect behavior rather than full commitment to Christ, with its focus on inward motives, it reduces salvation to an auto-developed construct. Properly understood, this approach stresses the panoramic view of redemptive history found in the Great Controversy, affirming that a final generation of people on the earth will have a complete trust in the Lord—one tried in the fire. While this is a biblical concept–a final cosmic answer to the lies of the enemy regarding obedience and God’s Law (Psalm 23:3; Matthew 5:16)–it is scornfully derided by SDA elites as Last Generation Theology.
3. A second example is one group’s contention that the delay results from the church’s rejection of righteousness by faith in 1888 with its subsequent withholding of the latter rain. When righteousness by faith (as they understand it) is accepted, the work will be quickly finished and Jesus will come.
4. Reinterpret the passages dealing with the whole world. What does it mean that the whole world needs to hear a message? Christ as Savior, or is there more? By limiting what is needed to fulfill Christ’s expectations perhaps the task is nearly completed. Even Islam teaches the return of Jesus to judge the world, although giving short shrift to His intercessory atonement.
5. Consign the Second Coming doctrine to an inert creedal position such as it holds in mainline churches. We would retain the advent as a statement of faith while transferring it away from the front line of immediate concern. We would retain the name Adventist for its heritage connection with early Adventists, or possibly its idealized vision as an ultimate goal. This is the work of radical theological reinterpretation among us.
6. Another approach is that the idea of an approaching advent would be respected, but little said about it publicly. Sequestered in a theological closet, it would be treated as something of an embarrassment, like the family idiot. This is already the approach of liberals in the church, such as Advent Health and others.
7. Open abandonment. Like the worldwide Church of God and its observance of the Sabbath, we could acknowledge that we were wrong. We would say we are honest in admitting our wrongness, and then focus on social justice and cultural issues like Rick Warren, Beth Moore, Nicholas Miller, and Jim Wallis et al.
8. Some Adventists demonstrate a compulsive desire to figure out the exact timeline of our Lord’s return, as if that might hasten the Second Coming. They construct elaborate predictions and theories about Popes, Jubilees, and the 144,000 etc. The irony of ‘conservative’ individuals applying progressive methods of interpretation to Scripture or SOP is lost on them. Recently, I received a phone call from an individual who was convinced that Jesus would return in 2027, and he can ‘prove it’ because Ellen White talked about the Jubilee year in Early Writings etc. I told him setting dates for the Second Coming has a really bad track record, and it weakens the faith of the saints. We shouldn’t do it. His reply to me “Your smartness will turn into dumbness in 2027. Wake up!”
9. Some Adventists deal with the delay by seeking to agitate Sunday law awareness through billboards etc. Others try to incorporate a politically-left worldview into Adventist Eschatology, criticizing conservatism as the archetypal enemy of righteousness, and rewriting Adventist eschatology with a critical-woke ideology. They see Christian nationalism under every rock and around every corner.
10. Still others place their hope in conservative politics, seeing Donald Trump as a secular savior who will restore the good things that America was founded upon, if he can prevail over an evil deep state swamp who is frantic to destroy him. Some of these individuals are invested in a modern version of McCarthyism, seeing Marxism around every corner and under every bush.
Conclusion
While all ten of these tactics are in use here and there in our church, none totally satisfies me. Notice how often when Jesus speaks of His return; He factors into his message an element of unexpected delay, followed by an abrupt unannounced return. Look at the pattern, friends, if we’re going to learn something about His return.
The virgins must wait (Matthew 25). It was the wise virgins who prepared for a long delay.
The evil stewards experience such a delay while waiting for the return of the master that they abandon the very idea that the owner will ever return and begin to mistreat the other employees (Matthew 24:48-51). And suddenly what happens? He appears. Unannounced. After a looong time has passed by.
After all it was a long time not in the Master’s mind, but rather in the mind of the people who waited. And time is a measurable thing depending on our experience isn’t it? I have had some experiences in which 60-seconds seemed like an eternity. And others in which something bordering an eternity seemed like 60-seconds. So, time is a variable that we can deal with.
The custodians of the talents in the gospels are in charge while the Master is away (Matthew 25). What happens? He returns unannounced and says “Bring me your talents and what you have done with them” (v. 19). You know the rest of the story.
Peter foresees a generation laden with disbelief in Christ’s coming and saying “Much time has passed, so why continue to believe?” (2 Peter 3:4).
It seems clear that Jesus intended us to occupy busily at His work, but ever living in the prospect of His soon return (Luke 19:13). This pattern builds maturity and it sets the pace for the final generations who are commissioned for the task of bearing the Three Angel’s Messages.
It is also a time for resolving pride by humbling ourselves. We must ask God to love others through us. You say, sometimes people aren’t real loveable. It’s true and there are times when I’m not either. But Jesus is coming again for an humble people who love Him supremely. When we do that, He pours divine love into our lives. That is time well spent.
“And hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us” (Romans 5:5).
If this church distances itself from the sense of immediacy of both the continuing presence of Christ and the coming end of the world; it will lose the core of its message and mission.
We cannot quietly sideline a teaching so central to both our message and mission. Jesus is coming again, friends. And it will be at just the right time.
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“Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).