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Four Seventh-day Adventist Sins That Prevent the Advent, Pt. 4: Unconsecration
Larry Kirkpatrick, Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, May 7, 2005
Review
Today we continue an anticipated six part series. So far, we have considered the experience of the Hebrews in the wilderness as they left Egypt for Canaan. But at the very borders of the promised land, they were turned back. Four sins kept them out of Canaan. God could not fulfill His covenant with them, not because of any issue on His side, but because they themselves refused. There were conditions that kept God waiting. His people had to go round for another lap.
Inspiration reveals four specific sins that kept them out and that made it so that that virtually that whole generation died in the wilderness. Not only that. We also learned that the same sins have kept modern Israel out of Canaan. Let us again begin by reviewing the inspired data:
God had committed to His people a work to be accomplished on earth. The third angel’s message was to be given, the minds of believers were to be directed to the heavenly sanctuary, where Christ had entered to make atonement of His people. The Sabbath reform was to be carried forward. The breach in the law of God must be made up. The message must be proclaimed with a loud voice, that all the inhabitants of earth might receive the warning. The people of God must purify their souls through obedience to the truth, and be prepared to stand without fault before Him at His coming.
Had Adventists, after the great disappointment in 1844, held fast their faith and followed on unitedly in the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world, they would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and Christ would have come ere this to receive His people to their reward. But in the period of doubt and uncertainty that followed the disappointment, many of the advent believers yielded their faith…. Thus the work was hindered, and the world was left in darkness. Had the whole Adventist body united upon the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, how widely different would have been our history!
It was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be thus delayed. God did not design that His people, Israel, should wander forty years in the wilderness. He promised to lead them directly to the land of Canaan, and establish them there a holy, healthy, happy people. But those to whom it was first preached, went not in ‘because of unbelief.’ Their hearts were filled with murmuring, rebellion, and hatred, and He could not fulfill His covenant with them.
For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the promises of God at fault. It is the unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord’s professed people that have kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years (Evangelism, pp. 695, 696).
So there we have those four paragraphs again. They speak loud and clear. We are delaying the return of Jesus. We’ve already given some consideration to unbelief, and worldliness. Today, we face the third item in the list: unconsecration.
Unconsecration
What is the meaning of unconsecration? Well, consecration generally takes two meanings. One is basically sanctification. To consecrate is to sanctify, to set apart. The other meaning is to make a solemn commitment. So, to be unconsecrated is to refuse to set yourself apart for God, or to refuse to be true to a solemn commitment to God.
So far we have explored unbelief and worldliness. We are going to find that all four of these points overlap in certain respects. Here were a dozen church leaders, set apart for their mission. Now let’s review their mission. Was their mission to make a careful report about the land and then engage in a discussion over whether the Hebrews should or should not proceed with the invasion? Let’s look again and listen again.
Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel (Numbers 13:2).
And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said unto them, Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain: And see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many; And what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strong holds; And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land (Numbers 13:17-20).
Ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come (Deuteronomy 1:22).
We may summarize their mission then as the following:
- General mapping.
- Investigate and report the nature of the land.
- Investigate and report military and political situation.
- Return samples.
Did you notice that there is nothing in the instructions about weighing whether or not to conduct the military campaign? Rather, God said He had already given the land to them. God already had said they would “go up.” The only matters to be determined were “by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.”
But they came back and made their report and then proceeded to disagree with God. He had already given the land to them, but they left Him out of the equation. The apparent obstacles consumed their thinking. They were walking by sight and not by faith. They forgot God and did the people and their God a dishonor.
Imagine how it would have been had they moved as God had intended. They would have returned, the people, gathered round, would have heard a serious, realistic report. They would have better realized the greatness of God who had led them to that day. They would have been led to realize how much now, more than ever before, they needed to trust in Him.
They instead returned to slave-thinking. Remember, the last thing they knew about slave-thinking was that they must “do it all.” Pharaoh had commanded them to make bricks without even being provided the straw. Now they were led by their emotions. Their hopes had been high when the 12 returned to the camp, but when the ten began to spout their litany of reasons why they could not “go up,” the people rode the emotional roller coaster straight downward. The Hebrews, wrapped up in themselves made a very small package. Here they stood at the very border. But they were not consecrated to God’s purposes.
How Did Adventists Following 1844 Behave Unconsecratedly?
When it comes to Adventists, we are told precisely what happened. God desired them to hold fast their faith and follow on unitedly in the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world. That was His plan. They didn’t do it.
But what if they had? What if they had followed on unitedly, received the message and proclaiming it? Then we are told exactly what would have happened: “God had committed to His people a work to be accomplished on earth. The third angel’s message was to be given, the minds of believers were to be directed to the heavenly sanctuary, where Christ had entered to make atonement of His people. The Sabbath reform was to be carried forward. The breach in the law of God must be made up. The message must be proclaimed with a loud voice, that all the inhabitants of earth might receive the warning. The people of God must purify their souls through obedience to the truth, and be prepared to stand without fault before Him at His coming.”
See, here is the alternate outcome. Following the disappointment, they would have studied their position more closely and discovered their mistake. The way into the heavenly sanctuary would have become clear to them. They would have seen the three angel messages laid out in their order and understood exactly where they stood in prophetic history. They would have united on the seventh day Sabbath. The message would have run like fire through the whole of populated North America, then globally. The proclaimers would have been changed by the very message they were proclaiming, been purified. They would have become the 144K mentioned in Revelation 14.
They did not. To a man, to a woman, that generation, one by one died; one by one funerals were held; one by one graves were dug, tombstones erected. The undertaker remained in business. Satan’s final execution was stayed.
No doubt, there were Calebs and Joshuas then. There were those who were ready to go in, but instead must take the wilderness journey with the unready. There were not 144,000 ready in that generation. Entry into the heavenly Canaan was delayed.
Application to Adventists Today
So let us bring this across now to ourselves. Are we manifesting unconsecration today? Come now. What is the business of the Seventh-day Adventist Church today?
Is it to be evangelistic, to take the 27 fundamental beliefs to every nation and kindred and tongue and people and see how many we can get to sign up for baptism? Is it to grow the church and tell ourselves each year how many more have joined the church, and to have an earthbound centennial celebration every hundred years while Jesus has yet to come?
That is not God’s purpose for us today. Yes, we do some of those things. But let’s be straightforward here. Let’s be fair to God and to the catalogue of end-time events as we have been educated in Bible prophecy. What is His purpose for His Church today?
Actually, it is to facilitate the preparation of souls for heaven in the context of the Second Coming. This immediately puts us in a very different place than other generations. Because you see, there are certain things that will be true of the last generation that have never been true of a significant group in any generation ever before. Let’s lay this out.
Since Jesus’ Second Coming occurs—only—in the case of the final generation, they—only—live in the time when probation shall close. Hence, this generation—alone—must live in a time when there is no Mediator for continued sinning. Forgiveness has been available to every other generation continuously. But at the final generation there comes a time when God’s people have stopped sinning, the sanctuary is cleansed. Purified lives on earth mean a clean sanctuary at last. No longer is the record of sins added to. The time has come. Jesus exits the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary, removes His priestly robes, clothes Himself in His kingly robes, heaven is emptied and He comes at the head of cloud of angels for His people at last!
Since these people live at this time, this, of course, implies that the work of the church is much more than business-as-usual evangelism. It will include evangelism. It is, after all, the last opportunity for soul-winning! But there is our dilemma. We have the wrong definition of soul-winning. Yes, we must, we absolutely must, reach out to everyone possible and intelligently present the gospel to them so that they are led to Christ for healing and salvation and protection in the dark day. But soul-winning in the end-time means a people prepared for the cleansing of the sanctuary. That means the development of a people ready for sealing.
A century ago they used to call our message “the sealing message.” We don’t call it that any more. Because we are unconsecrated. We have not set ourselves apart to live this and give this gospel. In Romans 1:16 Paul speaks loud and clear. He says He is not ashamed of the gospel because He knows that it is the power of God unto salvation. Is that how you know the gospel? Is your understanding of salvation one that facilitates the sealing process for you?
What is the sealing? I’ve never heard it put better than this way: a settling into the truth both intellectually and spiritually, so that you cannot be moved. In other words, the power of God unto salvation. So our message is that God is preparing a people who experience, here and now, the ultimate change. Through the power of the risen Christ we are enabled to obey God. We stop sinning. God’s character, His claims, are vindicated. The great controversy war is concluded. We get to go home. We live in the time without a Mediator for continued sinning, we walk through the time of trouble such as has never been, we go through Jacob’s trouble, we at last look up in the sky and with these eyes, these retinas, these rods and cones, see Jesus coming in the sky. We are changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. We hear the rumble of graves opening, we see the dead leaping out of their dusty caskets. We ascend with them into the sky to meet Jesus and ever be with the Lord.
So how then are we doing with that? Few in the church today seem to have anything to say concerning these life-and-death topics. But consider. Did you really expect that as we neared the end, these things would be presented aright? No, I don’t think you ever did. So it is not surprising that we are hearing little or nothing concerning these topics.
Unconsecration brothers and sisters—few of God’s people are converted to His message, know the effect of His truth, and are willing to, without batting an eye, stand toe-to-toe with the unfaithful spies in our midst who are determined to retreat back to Egypt.
They are asking, the ten unfaithful today, what contribution Adventists have made to conventional Christianity. Wrong question. Or they are doing evangelism but using a modified Evangelical gospel. Wrong approach. They think they can take the popular gospel and sprinkle it through with Adventist ideas or Ellen White quotations and transform it into this in-between pseudo-Seventh-day Adventist glop. It will do nothing for anyone. It will not change you for the better. It certainly won’t prepare you so that you are sealed. It is a toxic, in-betweener kind of message. It won’t take you into the promised land, it won’t make anyone from Babylon or Egypt happy with you; it is suitable only for one thing: wandering in the wilderness.
Conclusion
Like the Hebrews in the Wilderness, like Adventists in 1844, we must be consecrated to the mission God has appointed us. There is a lot of good work to do in this world. But we must ask ourselves, Are we fulfilling specifically the commission that God has entrusted to us? The Hebrews were not. As long as they were not, the door to the promised land was locked by their own disobedience.
This people today must return to the mission assigned them. God did not ask His people to spy out the land and then commence debate on whether they could or could not conquer it without Him. Nor did He in 1844 grant entrance to the heavenly Canaan without their embrace of the Third Angel’s Message. He does not with us today either. We’ve been granted the Third Message. Will we embrace it? Can we imagine that we have been sent to spy out the land and then debate whether we can live as He says we can live? Do we know the hour of our visitation?
Unconsecration has been our bane. The Hebrews in the wilderness refused to be satisfied with the manna they were sent. Today, too many Adventists have been unsatisfied with the message Heaven has entrusted to us. We do not know our work. We must learn it again. The land flowing with milk and honey is just across the way. Jesus stands out on the lonely ridge and beckons. He will stand on Mount Zion, not alone, but with the 144,000. The Spirit says, Come (Revelation 22:17).
What will the bride say? GCO
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