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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Revival and the 1888 Message

Norman McNulty

True Revival

It's great to be back here at Advent Hope.

And as Angie said, I was here for a number of years.

And it was about a year ago that I had my last Sabbath before going to the mission field.

And I've been in Trinidad working as a neurologist at the Adventist Hospital on that great island nation.

I guess Loma Linda is nearly as good as far as the weather goes.

So I'm very glad to be in Loma Linda this weekend for a number of reasons.

And my wife, Joelle, is sorry that she can't be here this weekend with me.

I wish our daughter, Sarah Lynn, was here with us, too.

She was born just a little less than 4 weeks ago.

It's been a wonderful experience to be a father for the first time.

We dedicated her 2 weeks ago today, and that was a very special experience also.

It's great to be back and I feel like I'm among, I am among family and friends.

So thank you for allowing me to be with you today.

And I wanted to just briefly outline where we are headed today.

If you look in the bulletin this afternoon, The messages for this afternoon are entitled 1888 and its continued rejection, and 1888 and the Laodicean message.

And the title for the sermon this morning is True Revival.

What we are going to see is that the Lord sent a message to this church back in 1888 to bring revival and reformation.

And this morning is part 1 of a three-part message.

In the afternoon, the first part is really the history of the 1888 era, and then the second part in the afternoon will be the theology of the 1888 era.

So I hope if you're interested in knowing what the message is that the Lord has for us to prepare us for his coming.

I hope to see you this afternoon and it's great to see you here this morning.

Before we go any farther I would like to have a word of prayer.

Father in heaven we thank you for this Sabbath day, and I want to thank you personally that I can be back with my friends here at Advent Hope.

But more than that, I pray in a special way that you would speak through me this morning and throughout today, and that Christ would be lifted up.

Well, You know, just this past October, the annual council of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists voted on an appeal, an urgent appeal, for Revival, Reformation, Discipleship, and Evangelism.

Now the question is, why would the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church be making an appeal for revival and reformation.

Now, I'm going to read you a survey, or a sample from a survey that was done, actually, probably over 20 years ago now, and it was talked about in the Adventist Review and it talked about a survey that was done among Seventh-day Adventists.

It was about one's personal relationship with Christ.

Now do you think that's an important question to be asking people?

So how is our personal relationship with Christ?

First of all, an average of 63% said that they have an intimate relationship with Christ.

I'd like to see it higher, but 63% of Seventh-day Adventists said they had an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

And better yet, 73% reported that they have assurance of eternal life, assurance of salvation.

Only 34% study the Bible daily and 33% have family worship.

And, you know, I praise God for the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

You know, my wife and I were in Trinidad when Ted Wilson gave his sermon in Atlanta.

And we stayed home from church to have church with a world church.

And to be honest with you, that is probably the most excited I've ever been to be a Seventh-day Adventist when I saw that sermon because we really need revival and Reformation in our midst.

You know we can say, oh yes I have assurance of eternal life but I only have, I only study my Bible once or twice a week.

Oh, yes, I have an intimate relationship with Jesus, but I never talk to him in prayer except for maybe twice a day for mealtime.

We as a people need to come up higher and the leadership of our church recognizes.

Notice what they say, I'm just going to read a few excerpts.

They said, and this is voted by the leadership of our world church.

God has uniquely called the Seventh-day Adventist church both to live and to proclaim his last day message of love and truth to the world as found in the 3 angels' messages of Revelation 14.

The challenge of reaching the more than 6000000000 people on planet Earth with his end time message seems impossible.

From a human perspective, the rapid fulfillment of Christ's Great Commission anytime soon appears unlikely." Now that is a sobering assessment from the leadership of our church, that from a human perspective, the rapid fulfillment of the Great Commission being fulfilled anytime soon appears unlikely.

The church's growth rate is simply not keeping pace with the world's burgeoning population.

An honest evaluation of our current evangelistic impact on the world leads to the conclusion that unless there is a dramatic change, we will not complete heaven's assignment in this generation.

You know, every generation of Seventh-day Adventists has always said our commission is to take the gospel to the world in this generation and yet the leadership of our church is saying look unless there's a dramatic change in our evangelistic efforts we don't have hope of fulfilling that commission in our generation.

Now they go on to say when Pentecost was poured out on the disciples, they were able to accomplish that.

Now, here's what they say, the church will experience a spiritual revival and Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

And then LMY adds this, And this is a quote that has challenged me for a long time, because I have to ask myself, do I have this experience?

This is from Great Controversy, page 464.

Before the final visitation of God's judgments upon the earth, there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times.

The Spirit and power of God will be poured out upon his children." Has that happened yet?

No, because we are still here and the fulfillment of a gospel commission is still struggling to the point that the leadership of our world church is making a urgent appeal for revival and reformation.

Continuing on, they say, too often, petty jealousies, ambitions, and fractured personal relationships have crowded out our longing for revival and reformation.

You know, it goes something like this, well, God, I will do your work if you allow me to be the first elder.

God, I will do your work if you allow me to be the main Sabbath school teacher.

God, I will do your work if you allow me to get recognition for the things that I do, rather than are we doing this to bring glory to God?

We acknowledge that the coming of Jesus has been delayed and that our Lord longed to come decades ago.

That is an extraordinary acknowledgement by the leadership of our church.

We repent of our lukewarmness, our worldliness, and our limited passion for Christ and His mission.

And if you haven't read the whole document, you can go to revivalandreformation.org and read it, and I encourage you to do that.

You know, it's interesting for me, when I picked the sermon title for today, True Revival, and I got it from this book that we got at GYC for those of us who were there.

You know, I didn't know that Advent Hope was gonna be having a prayer session last night, praying for revival and reformation.

And this tells me that the Holy Spirit is moving on his church again, hoping that we will respond to this appeal to have revival and Reformation so that the latter rain can be poured out, so that the Gospel Commission really can be finished in our generation.

And you know the famous quote from Ellen White, Selected Messages Volume 1, a revival of true godliness among us is the greatest and most urgent of all our needs.

Okay, now here's where things get more personal.

So if we acknowledge that we need revival, we have to acknowledge that we are dead spiritually.

You know, a lot of times when we talk about revival and Reformation, we'll say, oh yeah, we need revival.

I could use some modification on my life.

1888 and its Continued Rejection

And thank you for coming out this afternoon.

I was at Advent Hope for 8 years, and this is the first series of meetings I've ever done at Advent Hope.

So I guess that's the advantage of coming back as a visitor.

But I still feel very much part of Advent Hope, so it's great to be here.

Carlos already gave a good opening prayer, so I will forego that.

You know, what I was talking about this morning about revival and being crucified with Christ definitely challenges me personally And I think the thing that really struck me is when I came to the realization that if I need to be revived, and if by definition Revival means to bring back to life that I therefore need to admit that I am dead spiritually before I can experience revival.

Which tells you something about, unfortunately, our condition largely as a people, because if we're doing evangelism and we haven't experienced revival, we are dead spiritually, so to speak, and we will bring people into the church at the level we are at.

And if we are setting a standard for them that is not according to the standard of Scripture, then that's how the standard eventually gets lowered over time in the church.

You know, if you look at the early Christian church, The early Christian church, their command was to go and make disciples of all nations.

In many cases now, we are making members of our churches who are not really disciples because we are not, because we are dead spiritually, and we feel an obligation to at least go out and do some evangelism, but we need revival, so what we have to offer is our own spiritually dead experience, and so people come in, and they only go as far as what we share with them.

So that's why the appeal from the general conference for revival and reformation is so timely.

That's why their statement that if the trend continues, we have no reasonable hope of Jesus coming in our lifetime is such a poignant statement.

Because our current evangelistic trends, I mean, let's be real here.

I mean, you go to certain evangelistic meetings and basically we try to water down the message as much as we can to make it as palatable as possible so that people will want to join the Seventh-day Adventist club.

And you're not advancing God's kingdom by taking that mentality.

I mean, I went to a series of meetings where the spirit of prophecy was never talked about.

People came into the message or were baptized who didn't even know who Ellen White was.

Now, in reality, what you're doing then is you are deceiving people, and then they find out later, what, you have a prophet?

So when we have true revival, we will be unashamed of our message and it will be a message that has power because the life of Christ is shining forth through us and people will want what we have and they will have no problem accepting Ellen White because what she says corresponds with what the Bible says and it corresponds with how we live our lives.

The reason why we have trouble with Ellen White so many times is because we do not follow her counsel.

And so then we go out and do evangelism and then people are like, oh, you mean I would have to do this or that?

So, revival and reformation, with revival comes reformation, and that is the greatest need of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

So the 2 parts this afternoon, the first part is the title is 1888 and its continued rejection.

And what I hope that you will see in this presentation is not just the detail of the history that I'm going to talk about, you will see yourself and ask yourself, where do I fit in the spirit of this history?

So I'm going to start off with a very famous quote from Ellen White.

It's found in Testimonies to Ministers, page 91.

If you're going to talk about 1888, you have to read this quote.

This is a letter that was written to the General Conference President O.A.

And probably many of you have heard this quote.

The Lord in his great mercy sent a most precious message to his people through elders Wagner and Jones.

This message was to bring more prominently before the world the uplifted Savior, the sacrifice for the sins of the world.

It presented justification through faith and the surety.

It invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God." Did you notice that statement?

The righteousness of Christ is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God." Did you notice that statement?

The righteousness of Christ is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God.

That's why we need to see Christ on the cross every day.

Otherwise we will never be crucified with him.

They needed to have their eyes directed to his divine person, his merits, and his changeless love for the human family.

All power is given into his hands that he may dispense rich gifts unto men, imparting the priceless gift of his own righteousness to the helpless human agent.

This is the message that God commanded to be given to the world.

It is the third angel's message, which is to be proclaimed with a loud voice and attended with the outpouring of his spirit in a large measure." Now, if you've studied prophecy, what happens when the loud of rain and loud cry are given?

Yeah, persecution, and right after that, Jesus comes.

So, if this message was to be proclaimed with a loud voice and attended with the outpouring of his spirit in a large measure, the obvious question is, in 2011, has that happened?

Do we see the outpouring of the louder rain under the loud cry with a proclamation that Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen?

We're still giving the message, but it's not being demonstrated as seen in Revelation 18, which leads to the obvious conclusion that something went wrong with 1888 in the history.

Ellen White makes it very clear that the message was a most precious message.

She talks about how it demonstrated the righteousness of Christ, affirming obedience to all the commandments.

It affirmed learning to look to Jesus, his matchless charms, his changeless love, and that this is the loud cry message of the third angel.

And so as Seventh-day Adventists, we believe in the proclamation of the third angel's message.

That's what we've been trying to do for many years and yet we still have yet to see the latter rain poured out.

Here the general conference is making an appeal for revival and reformation.

And The question is, will we heed the call of the Holy Spirit to receive the latter rain this time?

You know, the General Conference in 1973 and 1974, the Annual Council made appeals 2 years in a row saying nearly exactly the same thing as the 2010 Annual Council Appeal.

So how many cycles in the wilderness do Seventh-day Adventists need?

The children of Israel had 1 generation of 40 years.

Seventh Adventists, we are working on our fourth cycle now.

You know, it all kind of got started because of the law in Galatians, the added law in Galatians 3, verse 19 and verse 24.

And what's interesting is the brethren in the early days of Adventism, James White, J.N.

Andrews, Joseph Bates, Uriah Smith, they all taught that the law in Galatians was the moral law or the 10 Commandments.

Now, before I go any further, how many of you have never heard about the issue, about the dispute in Galatians about the law?

So what happens is Seventh-day Adventists initially believe that the law that Paul's talking about in the book of Galatians is the moral law of the 10 Commandments, the schoolmaster that brings us to Christ.

And they ran into a problem when Protestant dispensationalists came along and said, yeah, we agree that the law in Galatians is the moral law.

And according to Colossians, that law got nailed to the cross and we're under grace now.

So Seventh-day Adventists took a look at that and they said, wait a minute, how do we protect our understanding of the Sabbath, which is the fourth commandment, so that we will protect ourselves against a teaching that is going to lead people to receive the mark of the beast?

I mean, that's a reasonable question, right?

If people are teaching that the moral law in Galatians was nailed to the cross and according to the book of Colossians and that it's no longer binding, you would have to come up with a good answer.

Well, their answer was to say that the law in Galatians was not the 10 Commandments at all.

It was the law that was added, which was the ceremonial law, which were the feasts and all their burnt offerings, sacrifices, and all that kind of stuff.

And when Jesus died on the cross, that was done away with and the 10 Commandments is still binding.

Now notice, most of what they said is true.

It is true that the ceremonial law was done away with at the cross and that the 10 Commandments are still binding afterwards.

But by twisting what Paul was getting at in the book of Galatians, they set themselves up for problems many years later.

Now, it's interesting, In 1856, the father of E.J.

Wagner, now, again, I realize there may be some varying levels of understanding about this history.

The 2 key preachers of the 1888 messages I read from the quote were E.J.

Wagner, in 1856, writes an article where He says that the law in Galatians is actually the moral law.

And Uriah Smith and James White got very upset.

And James, or actually Ellen White then, has a vision.

And she writes a testimony reproving Wagner.

And in this testimony, it's very interesting.

It was clear at the time to everyone, she sends this testimony, but 30 years later, when the issue in 1888 comes up, she nor anyone else could find this testimony.

1888 and the Laodicean Message

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer and we'll get into our study.

Father in heaven, we thank you for being with us today.

May we come to an understanding of what the message is to Laodicea.

May we accept that message and may we move forward in faith to receive the latter rain and the loud cry.

So just as a point of clarification, it sounds like I made a statement at 1 point where I said that Jones and Wagner were teaching that the law was the ceremonial law and it confused a couple of people.

Let me be clear, Jones and Wagner taught all the way through that the law in Galatians was the 10 Commandments.

And so that, I'm sorry that I misspoke there.

And the other point in history that I didn't mention is that Ellen White in the 1890s received light from the Lord, that the law in Galatians was both the ceremonial and the moral law.

So they were both right and they were both wrong.

So Wagner and Jones helped to bring out more clearly the element of justification by faith from Galatians, but they didn't take into consideration how the ceremonial law was part of the added law that helped people in the Old Testament to come to Christ.

Okay, so this is 1888 and the Laodicean message.

Wagner is the message of God to the Laodicean church and woe be unto anyone who professes to believe the truth and yet does not reflect to others the God-given rays." And then she goes on to say, Review in Herald, April 1, 1890, several have written to me inquiring if the message of justification by faith is the third angel's message.

And I have answered, it is the third angel's message in verity.

And then she says, faith I live by page 111.

It is the work of God in laying the glory of man in the dust and doing for man that which it is not in his power to do for himself.

When men see their own nothingness, they are prepared to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ." So look, we must see our own nothingness.

We have nothing to bring to the table when it comes to righteousness.

We must see that we are the Laodicean people and when we see our nothingness then we can receive the righteousness of Christ and we will heed the counsel of the true witness to the Laodicean church.

Notice also what Jones and Wagner said, just a few snippets of what they said in their teachings.

Jones says, When Jesus comes it is to take his people unto himself, it is to present to himself his glorious church, not having spot or rankle or any such thing, but that it is holy and without blemish.

It is to see himself perfectly reflected in all his saints, and before he comes thus, his people must be in that condition, and this state of perfection, this developing in each believer, the complete image of Jesus.

This is the finishing of the mystery of God, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

This consummation is accomplished in the cleansing of the sanctuary." So that's pretty clear.

Jones is saying we'll have a people just like Jesus when he comes.

He also says, "...this special message of justification which God has been sending us is to prepare us for glorification at the coming of the Lord.

In this, God is giving to us the strongest sign that it is possible for him to give, that the next thing is the coming of the Lord." And there's other things, there's other quotes that I could make, but let me just quote 1 other statement from Jones.

And this relates to the work of revival and reformation that is going on right now.

The church is calling for revival and reformation.

And Jones makes reference to what Ellen White said.

He says, he's quoting her where he says, the Laodicean message was first given to the church in the 1850s by James White.

And he says, but when it was first presented, because it didn't do the work in a short time, they said, and he's quoting Ellen White, the time hasn't come, and so they gave up and missed it.

And then he reads from Testimonies, Volume 1, page 186, and this is Ellen White now.

She says, I saw that this message, the Laodicean message, would not accomplish its work in a few short months." Notice what it's supposed to do.

It is designed to arouse the people of God, to discover to them their backslidings, and to lead them to zealous repentance, that they may be favored with the presence of Jesus and be fitted for the loud cry of the third angel as this message affected the heart it led to deep humility of God.

Angels were sent in every direction to prepare unbelieving hearts for the truth.

So Jones comes to the inescapable conclusion.

If the Laodicean message is supposed to help people to be fitted for the loud cry of the third angel's message, then we need to study Revelation 3, verses 14 to 22 to understand What is the message that will fit us for translation in our generation?

And notice, it's not going to be done in a few short months.

A lot of times we think, you know what, if I just pray long enough and hard enough, the latter rain will come upon me and I hope you're praying for the latter rain.

But it's not gonna be just a few short months.

What we need is to repent from our backsliding, to have not only revival, but reformation.

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Revival and the 1888 Message

1888 and its Continued Rejection

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