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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dave Fiedler Weekend 2004

Dave Fiedler

The Mystery of Minneapolis, Part 1

Hopefully you already know something about it.

I wondered whether this was this would be a new enough or interesting enough or if this would just be like ancient history to everybody here.

But we'll take a stab at it and see what we can do.

And so if you'll pardon me, I'll just basically stand here and tell stories.

2 Young men, young in the relative sense of the term.

They were, in fact, very young men in the estimation of some.

They really hit their stride in Adventist history in the mid-1880s when they became the co-editors of the Science of the Times out in California here.

He'd been a sergeant in the army before he became an Adventist.

He was stationed at Fort Walla Walla up in Washington State.

And a traveling Adventist evangelist came through and held a series of meetings.

Jones was your archetypical 1800s self-made man type of guy.

He didn't take a lot of nonsense off of anybody.

And he had the blessing of the Lord that fitted him for that position.

I suppose all the med students could, too.

He, once, just after 1888, and it was either December of 88 or January, say, of 89, I don't remember which, he was testifying before Congress because they'd actually come up with what they called the Blair Bill, and it was the Sunday law type of thing.

And he was up there at the podium waxing eloquent, and Somebody interrupted him and said, that's not right.

Something, I don't remember what the point was.

And Jones just stood there and thought for a second.

He said, I believe, Senator, or Congressman, whoever it was, he said, I believe if you will turn to Millman's History of the Church Since the Fifth Century, page 52, on the second paragraph, it says, and then you read this thing off, it's just not fair.

He could do that with vast amounts of material.

Wagner, on the other hand, was shorter, not as tall, not as skinny.

Graduated from Bellevue Medical College which was top flight back in those days, still ranks fairly high from what I understand, but he really didn't practice.

He'd found other interests and had become a minister and an editor by 1885.

During their time out in California, these 2 young men developed an affinity for 1 another, which continued for years.

It's kind of a, it's almost 1 of those spooky things.

They were constantly thinking alike and finishing each other's sentences and this sort of thing, you know.

They did not all that much in their actual day-to-day work at the signs of the times.

They didn't actually work together all that much.

But they worked together, and they would also teach at Healdsburg College, and then they would preach at these different churches around and whatnot.

And there are a number of stories of how Jones recounts some of these stories.

I think it's a letter in 1921, if I remember right.

He wrote a letter long after he'd left the church.

He wrote this letter to an Adventist minister, I forget who.

But he tells how he came in 1 morning, you know, and he says, well who spoke at whatever church he hadn't been at, you know, that's that.

Well, what line of thought did he develop?

Jones, so I don't see how many years later would have been not that many years later.

I guess being on that in the 19 1890s When Wagner was in Europe?

I think it was GB Star if I remember right, was in Battle Creek and listened to Jones preaching in the Tabernacle and then hopped on the train on Sunday morning and went to the East Coast or wherever, caught the ship across however long it took and landed in London And on a Friday afternoon, the Sabbath, he went to church and heard Wagner giving virtually the exact same message.

And they said, when they came out and they shook his hand, he says, very nice sermon, brother.

It would have been fresher to us if we hadn't heard the whole thing last week in Battle Creek from A.T.

So these guys had this kind of, you know, you read those quantum physics things, you know, where you mess with a particle here and it does the same thing over there.

Well, in the course of their studies and their teaching and their preaching, they came up with slightly variant ideas.

And this is what forms the crux of the beginning part of our story.

And he decided to take on the task of researching the 10 horns in Daniel.

The resident author in the church on the issue was Uriah Smith, who had written Thoughts on Daniel and Thoughts on Revelation, of course.

And Uriah Smith said, yeah, that's a great idea.

We've just kind of carried the list down from William Miller.

Well, Jones went after it and fairly quickly, I guess, and fairly conclusively realized that 1 item, 1 member, 1 tribe on the list of 10 didn't really fit in the time period.

The Huns just historically speaking they weren't where they were supposed to be at the right time in order to be 1 of the 10 horns.

So he says, that's no good, now we've only got 9 horns.

He said, well that would be a problem, wouldn't it?

But he looked around and voila, there, unnoticed, hiding in the woodwork was another tribe, the Alamanai.

And so he said, well let's check this out, checked it all out, they fit, They were in the right time period the right place etc.

The Foolishest Nonsense

Entitled the foolishest nonsense which all the English teachers amongst you will recognize as terrible grammar But that's okay.

It's a direct quote from a gentleman by the name of George Butler general conference president So I feel fully authorized to use bad grammar in this case.

George was talking, well, I'll just give you his quote.

He said, we as a people have in many ways gotten into some of the foolishest nonsense in religious things and in fanatical ideas that I ever heard of among any people.

Now, as General Conference President, this is not what we would generally classify as a faith-affirming statement.

Usually, we like to be a little more upbeat than that.

George was reflecting on 2 items at that point.

He was in immediate context speaking about the drift at the time of Dr.

John Harvey Kellogg and the pantheism, but his comments were, shall I say, colored by the events which had transpired just a couple of years earlier in indiana which resulted in the unfortunate departure of the entire conference staff of the conference in 1 fell swoop look up fell sometime you ever wonder what that means?

Fell swoop I looked it up, I don't remember but I did look it up once this is what happened The story starts off with a gentleman named S.S.

He'd become an Adventist a few years earlier.

He did a variety of Adventist-y type of things.

He started off as just your average Joe church member so to speak he became a call porter which is an excellent thing if anybody has the opportunity to spend some time call portering don't miss it, okay, summer programs, can everybody understand summer programs around here?

Okay big fan of summer call porter programs And from there he moved into doing some lay preaching.

And eventually he was invited to Indiana to serve as a revivalist.

That always makes me pause just a little bit.

That's a crying shame, you need to have a revivalist.

Some positions just seem like an admission of defeat or something.

Somewhere along the line we've got to get beyond the point where we have revivalists and just get around to doing things again but you know whatever so he was called to Indiana as a revivalist and when he came there he hit the ground with all 4 feet and was running and he was a dynamic individual let's put that way okay and he made from the very first notice, let's see, here's the first thing, it showed up in the review, he said, make sure I've got the right page here, yes, okay, he wrote this.

Head makes an effort to do that yes okay heroes evansville elmora sale and linton farmers bird terror hot day and bogs down the first of december in company with the brother joseph curry and his wife and Brother John Hickey and his wife, I started on my work among the churches.

As a rule, we found the churches in a cold, backslidden condition, and in many places, much divided and torn and scattered by the enemy.

But generally, they were dissatisfied with their condition and desired a better experience.

Well that's good, you know, you paint the picture bad enough and everybody would like to have something better I suppose.

And in many places, nope I'm sorry, wrong spot in here, and they desired a better experience, the Lord laid it on my heart to preach the laity see a message he gave power to the word and I never before saw such manifestations the power of god in repentance as I've been permitted to witness in places mentioned above in all these places shouts of victory made the church's ring perfect union and love prevail 67 persons were added to the believers praise the Lord for his goodness to the children of men.

Just a short news blip that showed up in the review.

There was a gentleman at the time by the name of R.S.

Donnell is the second guy we're going to try to keep track of here Donnell was the Indiana Conference President and he was a bit concerned in fact he's quoted by 1 individual.

Now 1 of the weaknesses we have with this is a lot of historical accounts are being written up like 20, 30, 40 years later.

So you're going to have to make some allowances for people's memories.

But 1 of the accounts we have written, I think it was written in 1923 if I remember, so this is like twenty-some years after the event.

1 gentleman remembered Donnell as saying, I'm not going to have any such gang as Davises, Hickies, and Crurries running around stirring up brush fires in my conference.

Okay, well we've got a little bit of a conflict here so donald called them into the red carpet so to speak and so davis went down to donald's office or whatever that happened to be, I don't know and they spent about 2 hours together and Davis in his own account of it surprised Donnell because Donnell said, what in the world are you doing?

This is, there's, I'm hearing rumors of weirdness involved here What are you doing?

And Davis says that he told Donal why I'm simply trying to put into practice The principles that I found outlined in your series of articles that appeared in the Indiana conference paper last year I've never read the articles.

I really should there I was a series of articles on tithing and I have absolutely no idea what the connection might have been, but this was Davis' defense.

Well, everyone who knew anything about it said that when Davis walked in, Donnell was adamantly opposed.

When Davis walked out, Donnell was now on board.

Don't have a real good account of all the details, but Donnell became the biggest supporter and promoter of Davis' work and program.

It proves 1 thing and that is that people can change and that's a good thing.

So Donald is now supporting the operation.

Davis reports, well let's put it this way, they got going in December of 1899 and then on through the spring of 1900 and for the summer of 1900 they appointed 4 camp meetings let's see if I can find you where the anybody from Indiana might recognize these names, most of these names don't mean anything to me, Sullivan, Muncie, Kendallville and Lafayette.

Davis in his write-up at the end of the summer season mentioned that the manifestation of the Spirit of God was marked in all these meetings, but was not so fully felt at Muncie as at the others.

Now that's important to bear in mind because the only good accounts that we have that give us any details whatsoever of anything are about the Muncie camp meeting.

So, you know, for whatever it's worth, Muncie was not so, fully developed, shall we say, or wasn't as marked as the other meetings.

Davis, a couple of quick things about Davis that were kind of intriguing.

Davis was Davis had a daughter who had married a Salvation Army captain by the name of Fuller now the Salvation Army in those days rang more than little bells at Christmas time, evidently.

I don't have any personal recollection of this, but you go back in the history of it and maybe they still do this, I don't know, but the Salvation Army band was like a big thing.

Have you ever seen a Salvation Army band?

Okay they've gone extinct, there's no such thing as a Salvation Army band anymore but a hundred years ago there was, that's all I can assume from this, it was a well-known thing and this was how the Salvation Army did their evangelism, you know Salvation Army is a church it's an interesting operation, They do a lot of good things.

I've got nothing bad to say about them particularly.

But this is how they did their evangelism, was with their band.

Davis's daughter had married this gentleman Fuller, and he was a Salvation Army captain and she played in the band and she had just a little bit more musical ability than I do so she played the tambourine that's about as far as I would go with my I can go like that too that's about it trust me, this will become interesting and important because you have to depend on me that I really have no musical expertise whatsoever that will become important later on Davis got to know this Salvation Army group and he made an interesting comment 1 time, really fascinating, to another gentleman, I won't even bother you with his name, but he was on the periphery of the story, and twenty-some years later he recalled the account And he said, Davis told me once, he said, we have the truth.

If we could have the spirit with the truth, we would do great things.

I have some reservations about creating a dichotomy there and I'm just splitting this out that way that would concern me a little bit Davis was no slouch, you read his writings and he was a pretty sharp guy, actually.

Now I, you may or may not have picked up already, but I'll spoil the suspense.

I end up disagreeing with several key points of Davis's work and teachings, that's okay.

But he was a bright guy, he was intellectually astute.

And 1 of the things that I do appreciate about Davis is that having been a fairly recent convert to Adventism he quickly identified what is in fact a very very core issue which Adventism because of its unique message and nature and eschatological structures has got to deal with.

And we've been struggling with it ever since.

Davis said, the big question that we've got to deal with, the thing that Adventism in particular, because of what we say on other issues that we are going to have to wrestle with is what happens at the close of probation no other church has to fight that issue because of other things that we have said, other positions that we have taken, our interpretation, our revelation, etc.

Is what happens at the close of probation?

In 1888, some of you were here last night, we talked a bit about that, Jones and Wagner, you know, kind of stirred things up just a bit in the adventist church 18 92 04/04/1892 no, 04/01/1892 emil white writing said that the loud cry of the third angel's message has already begun in the proclamation of the righteousness of Christ as presented by Jones the Lightner this was an eschological time and Davis had taken hold of that idea and so he was saying, whoa, if we think we're at the end of time we're going to have to get serious about this.

What's going to happen at the close of probation?

It's an important issue especially if you're planning on being alive at that point.

And he came up with an interesting conclusion and there have been quite a few different conclusions and they're all worth looking at because they're all dealing with a pertinent issue Davis came up with an interesting conclusion, he said We can learn from Jesus how to live without sinning.

We must understand how Jesus lived without sinning.

Because he said at the close of probation, when the mediator steps out of the sanctuary, we must live without sinning.

Now there are other people who have taken, you know, every step of the way here, it's kind of interesting if you're into open-mindedness, you know, every step of the way you've got numerous options.

And there are lots of people who have said when the mediator steps out of the sanctuary, it really doesn't make any difference.

Davis said when Christ steps out of the sanctuary, it's a big issue.

You can't sin at that point, or you have no meaning.

The Mystery of Minneapolis, Part 2

We pray that you'll be with us in this time that we spend this afternoon.

Looking back at events over a long span, we pray that you would help us to somehow sort them out, make sense out of different things here and there see the threads of truth and of providence that you have woven through our history, help us to know how to build on that which you have erected we have so blessedly received by the mere coincidence of the time of our birth and life.

I pray that you would guide our thoughts now and grant that beyond thinking we'll find a way to put it into action.

Okay, the first quick challenge I need to address is how much of a recap do I need from last night?

Do I have people that I know I have some, but were not here last night.

Very quickly speaking, last night we talked about 1888.

Jones and Wagner, 2 young ministers, 33 and 38 years old, presenting positions that contrasted in some ways with Brother Butler, George Butler, General Conference President, and Uriah Smith, General Conference Secretary and Editor of the Review and Herald.

The Brethren in Battle Creek were concerned For good and valid reasons, sort of, in that they did not think that, you know, they had their opinions.

They thought this was what was truth and these guys were saying something that was variant from that, and so that was a source of concern to them.

The biggest problem, the biggest challenge of the whole thing was that the issues, the identification of the law in Galatians chapter 3 and chapter 4, and the identification of the 10 horns of Daniel 7 or 8.

The problem, of course, is that these were not big issues.

They just couldn't seem to find a way to treat these as minor issues.

Why does a little issue become a big issue?

Probably the simplest little thought that I can toss out for your consideration on that 1 and I'm sorry I don't have a, it's a quote but I don't know what the reference is.

No, it says simply that when we are presenting the truth, we can present truth, but we can present even the gospel truth, right?

It can be presented as God's truth, or it can be presented as our truth.

And 1 easy test that she mentioned is if someone disagrees with your presentation of truth, do you take offense?

If you take offense, you're not really representing God.

Jesus watched 5, 000 people, 5, 000 men plus women and children walk away 1 day and it didn't upset him.

He was saddened, but he didn't take offense.

I don't know if you can Sort that out in your mind.

It's a thought that might be of some value.

Ellen White, however, went to Minneapolis.

Said that she disagreed with Wagner on some points, but she felt that he was a Christian gentleman and that he did not receive a fair hearing because others were not acting as Christian gentlemen.

And this was an issue, this was a problem.

She said there is something here, and she became very enthusiastic about it.

She spoke of it as the matchless charms of Christ, she said this was very important, she said that if the ministers would not receive it she would bypass them and take it directly to the people, which is, you know, from any organizational point of view, that's stuff.

And she did, because There were men in positions of influence in Battle Creek who weren't interested in what was being presented.

And certain individuals would have said all along, We're fighting over the important truth of the law in Galatians.

Even though it was not that important of a truth.

And I tossed out a hypothesis and I gave a number of quotations last night that I'm not going to take the time to repeat right now.

And so for those of you who are fresh to this discussion, this may seem a little bit weird, But the basic idea was that much of Ellen White's writings on the subject, they've compiled that 4 volume set, the 1888 material set.

If you read through that, time after time, you'll find Ellen White associating the conflict with Minneapolis with a question of individuals placing men where God should be.

And I suggested that perhaps as useful a way to look at the issue was not in terms of salvation and doctrine as it would be as an administrative issue, as an organizational authority issue.

Now, I probably will be a little confused today, because after the meeting last night, I stayed here and talked to some people, and I don't remember for sure what I said then and what I said before.

But anyhow, the 1 element that I want to bring this back to, because to me it's important, and for the rest of the presentation it'll be important.

Ellen White said repeatedly that the message of righteousness by faith was the third angel's message in verity.

In our normal, routine, everyday understanding of righteousness by faith.

Now, of course, you can get into big, long drawn arguments, which has been proven in our history, as to whether or not righteousness by faith includes or excludes sanctification.

And this has been argued at length, ad nauseum.

But In any case, what we normally think of as righteousness by faith, I challenge you, how is that the third angel's message in verity?

Because the third angel's message is the warning against the mark of the beast.

It has nothing to do with all the soft, the nice, fuzzy, pleasant, happy thoughts of Jesus forgives me because I you know I those are good thoughts, I'm not knocking those but if that's where we stop and we say this was Jones and Wagner's message it had to do with the personal salvation of the soul through this you know Discrete process of theological truth and doctrinal presentation.

I think we do a severe injustice their message their message went beyond that and included what For once of probably a more appropriate term.

I will this I will describe as radical faith.

There were evidently a good number of Adventists who frankly didn't know whether or not they could feel like they could claim salvation, that God had really forgiven them.

Don't take this in any sense derogatorily, I don't mean it that way, but the soft fuzzy side, it's not that I'm opposed to that side of justification.

It's not all there was to it by any stretch and Jones and Wagner Were the kind of people who went a went forward?

And We're willing to go forward and in at least 1 occasion which we talked last night did so Inappropriately right With their initial publication of some of these things, that was a mistake on their part, and they were reproved for that.

But they were willing to go forward on nothing more than God's say-so.

And that really, really, really antagonized some people who were wanting to say, No, don't.

It's sort of frustrating, anybody who's been in an administrative position with people underneath them, you know, when you tell them what to do and they don't do it.

That can be frustrating, you know, I don't know if you've ever noticed that.

And This really became the core issue that developed out of Minneapolis, was that Jones and Wagner, they did not want them, there were certain individuals, they're all dead, bless them, they're all good men.

That's 1 of the scariest things about this.

There's the 4 volume set of Ellen White's comments.

There's this set, Manuscripts and Memories.

This is all the non-Ellen white materials.

So you get all the letters from George Butler and Stephen Haskell and Uriah Smith and all that sort of stuff.

Series

Dave Fiedler Weekend 2004

The Foolishest Nonsense

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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