As the old saying goes those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. We might add that this also applies who do not know their own history in the first place. How might this apply to us as Seventh-day Adventists? The month of April brings to remembrance at least two significant events in Adventist history, events that the church is a bit hesitant to make much press about for reasons that will become apparent.
Over the past 150 years, Seventh-day Adventists have built one of Christianity’s most inventive and prosperous churches — while praying for the world to end as soon as possible.
A small band of believers has mushroomed to more than 17 million baptized members, including 1.2 million in the U.S. Nearly 8,000 Adventists schools dot dozens of countries. Hundreds of church-owned hospitals and clinics mend minds and bodies around the world.
You might expect Adventists to celebrate their success while marking their church’s 150th anniversary this May. There’s just one problem: the church wasn’t supposed to last this long.
The church leaders and historians are incapable to providing a completely satisfactory answer to this dilemma because they have lost sight of our role in Bible prophecy by failing to advance with the progressive unrolling of the prophetic scroll. This is coupled in another confused period of church history and that is the infamous 1888 General Conference Session in which the message of Christ and His righteousness was introduced by Elders Jones and Waggoner and, had it been accepted, would have closed the gospel in a matter of a few years. If this were the case none of us should be here. Despite the contemporary historical revisionism on this portion of our church history, the fact remains that the only answer to this paradox has to come from the Holy Bible. This has been highlighted in an earlier post on this website; the answer is plainly laid out in a study of the Temples: Type and Antitype. We encourage all sincere Seventh-day Adventists and students of history the hear out this prophecy and weight the evidence before deciding for or against. You might just be amazed how our history has been foretold in great detail in the prophecies of the prophets of old and brought to light through the Shepherd’s Rod message and the interpretative voice of the last day antitypical Elijah the prophet. Come and see for all the blessings are yours and a gift straight from the heavenly throne to not only know a correct view of our history, but the certainly of where God is leading His faithful saints today.
