A comparison between ancient Israel and Adventism

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done." (Ecc. 1:9).

Adapted from The Desire of Ages, chapter two, The Chosen People.

For five hundred years the Protestant people had awaited the Saviour's coming. Upon this event they had rested their brightest hopes. In song and prophecy, in temple rite and household prayer, they had enshrined His name. And yet at His Latter Rain they knew Him not. The Beloved of heaven was to them “as a root out of a dry ground.” His Spirit offered nothing palatable or praiseworthy that they should desire Him, and they saw in Him no beauty that they should desire Him. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” Isaiah 53:2; John 1:11. 

Yet God had chosen the Reformation Protestants. He had called them to preserve among men the knowledge of His law, and of the symbols and prophecies that pointed to the Saviour. He desired them to be as wells of salvation to the world. What the Waldensians were in the land of their missionary work, what Jan Hus was in his damp river dungeon, and Luther in the courts of the Papal Rome, the Protestant people were to be among the nations. They were to reveal God to men. 

In the call of Paul the Lord had said, “He is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will shew him how great things he must suffer for My name's sake.” “Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting.” Acts 9:15,16; 1Tim. 1:16.

The same teaching was repeated through the Reformers. Even after the church in the wilderness had been wasted by war and captivity, the promise was theirs, “The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Revelation 12:7. 

Concerning the temple in heaven, the Lord declared through Paul, “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Hebrews 8:1,2.

And, “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: 

That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;

Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an High Priest for ever.” Hebrews 6:17-20.

But the Protestants of the United States fixed their hopes upon worldly greatness. From the time of their entrance to their American refuge from European persecution, they departed from the commandments of God, and followed the ways of the Roman Catholics. It was in vain that God sent them warning by His colonial Reformers John and Charles Wesley, and later His post-colonial American Reformer William Miller. But every revival and reformation were followed by deeper apostasy. And in vain they suffered the chastisement of a growing papal usurpation.

Had Seventh-day Adventists and Sunday Protestant Americans been true to God, He could have accomplished His purpose through their honor and exaltation. If they had walked in the ways of obedience, He would have made them “high above all nations which He hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honor.” “All people of the earth,” said their Moses, Ellen White, “shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee.” “The nations which shall hear all these statutes” shall say, “Surely this great [American republic] is a wise and understanding people.” Prophets and Kings, p. 16-24. But because of their unfaithfulness, God's purpose could be wrought out only through continued adversity and humiliation. 

They were brought into subjection to the Vatican, and their power scattered throughout secular America. In affliction many renewed their faithfulness to His covenant. While they hung their harps upon the willows, and mourned for the holy Reformation and 1888 message that were laid waste, the light of truth shone out through them, and a knowledge of God was spread among the nations. The heathen Masses were a perversion of the system that God had appointed; and many a sincere observer of dogmas and corrupt doctrines learned from the prophet of Protestant America the meaning of the truth divinely ordained, and in faith grasped the promise of a complete Redeemer from sin's guilt and shame.

Many of the consecrated Protestants and Adventists suffered persecution. Not a few lost their lives because of their refusal to disregard God's commandments and to observe the Jesuit festivals. As Jesuit idolaters were roused to crush out the truth through desolating wars, the Lord brought His servants face to face with dictators and leaders, that they and their people might receive the light.

By the Vatican control through WWI, the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the ensuing Great Depression, and WWII, the Adventists were effectually cured of the worship of man-made possessions. During the decades that followed, they suffered from the oppression of covert Jesuit wickedness in high places, until the conviction became fixed that their prosperity depended upon their obedience to the Spirit of Prophecy. But with too many of the people obedience was not prompted by love. The motive was selfish. They rendered outward service to God as the means of attaining to denominational greatness. They did not become the light of the world, but shut themselves away from the world in order to escape temptation to idolatry. In the instruction given through the Testimony of Jesus, He had placed restrictions upon their association with idolaters; but this teaching had been misinterpreted. It was intended to prevent them from conforming to the practices of the world. But it was used to build up a wall of separation between Adventists and all other religions, including the atheistic religion of secularists. The Adventists looked upon their denomination as their heaven, and they were actually jealous lest the Lord should show mercy to non-Adventists and adherents of other denominations and world religions.

After the return from the early Deism that surrounded the church during the 18th and 19th centuries, much attention was given to religious instruction. All over the country, churches were erected, where Adventist fundamental beliefs were expounded by the pastors and conference leaders. And schools were established for Christian education, which, together with the arts and sciences, professed to teach the principles of righteousness. But these agencies became corrupted. During the 20th century Jesuit captivity, many of the people had received lawless Jesuit spirituality and apostate Protestant customs, and these were brought into Adventist religious service. In many things Adventists conformed to the practices of idolaters.

As they departed from God, the remnant church in a great degree lost sight of the self-abnegating teaching of the heavenly Most Holy Place, "The people were not yet ready to meet their Lord. There was still a work of preparation to be accomplished for them. Light was to be given, directing their minds to the temple of God in heaven; and as they should by faith follow their High Priest in His ministration there." The Great Controversy, p. 424. 

That Most Holy science of salvation shining forth from the Spirit of Prophecy had been instituted by Christ Himself. In every part it was a representation of Him; and it had been full of vitality and spiritual beauty. But the Adventists refused to look into the perfect law that liberates and allow the Spirit of truth to create in their hearts a great need for a Saviour from their sins. They would not heed the straight testimony of the true Witness to the church of the Laodiceans, the reception of which their eternal destiny hung. 

Thus they lost the quickening Spirit in their instructions, and clung to dead forms. They trusted to the works and doctrines required for atonement with the Father's Most Holy Place, or they suffered the chastisement of atheist oppression for arrogantly dismissing those sealing requirements. In either case, they would not rest upon Him to whom those behaviors and doctrines pointed. In order to hedge against the lack of the disallowed, sealing Spirit of truth, their shepherds and authors and televangelists used human interventions to produce the sealing righteousness. They multiplied requirements of their own; and the more rigid they grew, the less of the love of God was manifested. They measured their holiness by the multitude of their faithless religious practices, while their hearts were filled with pride and hypocrisy.

With all their minute and burdensome injunctions, it was an impossibility to keep the straight testimony from the faithful and true Witness. Those who desired to serve God, and who tried to observe the new theology, toiled under a heavy burden. They could find no rest from the accusings of a troubled conscience. Thus Satan worked to discourage the people, to lower their conception of the character of God, and to bring the faith of the Advent movement into contempt. He hoped to establish the claim put forth when he rebelled in heaven,—that the requirements of God were unjust, and could not be obeyed. Even the remnant church, he declared, did not keep the law. 

While the Adventists desired the Latter Rain and second advent of their Saviour, they had no true conception of His mission. They did not seek redemption from sin, but deliverance from the Jesuits of Rome. They looked for the King of kings and Lord of lords to come as a conqueror, to break the oppressor's power, and exalt the 144,000 to "power over the nations." Revation 2:26. Thus the way was prepared for them to reject the Saviour, who would first come as the Holy Spirit in the Latter Rain. 

At the time of the Latter Rain of Christ the North American Division was chafing under the rule of her foreign masters, and racked with internal strife. The Remnant had been permitted to maintain the form of a separate religion; but nothing could disguise the fact that they were under the Roman yoke, or reconcile them to the restriction of their religious liberties. The Romans claimed the right of appointing and removing the president of the General Conference. Hence, Roman depravity infiltrating the thinking of the religious leadership top to bottom, the offices were often secured by fraud, bribery, and even murder. Thus the ministry became more and more corrupt. Yet the pastors still possessed great power, and they employed it for selfish and mercenary tithes and offerings. The people were subjected to their merciless demands, and were also heavily taxed by the Romans. This state of affairs caused widespread discontent. A condition came to exist as occurred in late 18th century France. Popular outbreaks were frequent. Greed and violence, distrust and spiritual apathy, were eating out the very heart of the denomination. 

Hatred of the Romans, and denominational and spiritual pride, led the Adventists still to adhere rigorously to their forms of worship. Their spiritual overseers tried to maintain a reputation for sanctity by scrupulous attention to the sanctimony of religion. In their ignorance of the Spirit of Prophecy and oppression of conscience, and the conference leaders' thirsting for power, the people longed for the coming of One who would vanquish their enemies and restore the autonomy to the old Seventh-day Adventist Church. They had studied the prophecies, but without spiritual insight. Thus they overlooked those scriptures that point to the humiliation of Christ's Early and Latter Rain, and misapplied those promises that speak of the glory of His second coming. Pride obscured their vision. They interpreted prophecy in accordance with their selfish desires.