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The Long Way Home
Larry Kirkpatrick, Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, November 20, 2004
Numbers 14:4 “And they said to one another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.”
What God Hath Wrought
For a generation, Seventh-day Adventists have lingered in the wilderness. Like the Hebrews who took the long way home from Egypt—a generational detour into the desert—We “have done worse than they” (Testimonies, vol. 1, p. 129).
Recall the history. I say recall the history because this is the biblically confirmed record. After 400 years of bondage in Egyptian slavery, God sent the deliverer-combination: Moses, His prophet, and Jesus, His divine intermediary.
You know the story. God urges, through His prophet, that His people be released in order that they might serve Him. Pharaoh resists. A battle of wills erupts between God and Pharaoh. Finally, in the end, Egypt broken, Pharaoh’s firstborn slain, the proud Egyptian king relents. The Hebrews are delivered. They cross the Red Sea. God takes them to Sinai. He gives them His law.
But the journey through the wilderness, which ought to have taken just a few weeks, takes far longer. God’s people are slow to exercise faith. Finally they stand at the very border of the promised land. Scouts are sent ahead to investigate. They return with a report of the wonderful land but they fear its people and claim the Hebrews cannot follow through to enter. God, wroth at their base cowardice, sends them back into the wilderness. The faithless generation is not suffered to enter the land of promise. Except for the two faithful scouts, Caleb and Joshua, the generation dies in the wilderness; all so unnecessary. God’s people are delayed.
This is the Bible. This is the record of history. This is not apocalyptic speculation or the focus on eccentric ideas. These are the facts.
God was ready to move for His people. Opportunity was not just knocking on their door; it was screaming! But conventional thinking interfered, a faithless perspective interposed. They had to go back for another lap. The generation was tested, failed miserably, and died in the wilderness; they never walked into Canaan to claim the promise.
They took the long way home; the subway; The grave.
Christ Sought to Lead Them
Nor did our Father leave His children alone in the way. They may not have been fully aware of His presence at the beginning, but He was with them. After they left Egypt and before they had crossed the Red Sea, Christ was there:
And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night (Exodus 14:19, 20).
But after the Ten Commandments were given on Sinai came this:
Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of Him, and obey His voice, provoke Him not; for He will not pardon your transgressions: for My name is in Him. But if thou shalt indeed obey His voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For Mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images (Exodus 23:20-24).
Yet again and again they turned back in their hearts to Egypt. They refused to heed the help of the angel who led them, a being who actually was none other than Jesus Christ. Listen:
There appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an Angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him, Saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold. Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground. I have seen, I have seen the affliction of My people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt. This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the Angel which appeared to him in the bush. He brought them out, after that He had showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years. This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; Him shall ye hear. This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the Angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust Him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt (Acts 7:30-39).
Jesus was the angel, the messenger, who guided God’s people through the wilderness. He was with them in the pillar of fire by night and the shade-giving cloud of comfort during the hot day. Jesus was there. Why was He there? “To keep thee in the way.”
Utterly they were to break down all images. That is, all false portrayals of God were to be jettisoned. Of course they were! Christ was with them. The Father’s name was in the Angel that was sent before them—His character. But they refused Him. They kept a view of God that said He refused to deliver them. They kept on board a false image of their deliverer. Consequently, they could not be delivered. They refused to exercise faith in the true God, to see Him according to His true image.
The evils that flowed from this were hard ones. Hebrews 3:19 reports that “they could not enter in because of unbelief.” God’s prophet puts it before us in even more detail:
It was not the will of God that Israel should wander forty years in the wilderness; He desired to lead them directly to the land of Canaan and establish them there, a holy, happy people. But ‘they could not enter in because of unbelief.’ Hebrews 3:19. Because of their backsliding and apostasy they perished in the desert, and others were raised up to enter the Promised Land. In like manner, it was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be so long delayed and His people should remain so many years in this world of sin and sorrow. But unbelief separated them from God. As they refused to do the work which He had appointed them, others were raised up to proclaim the message. In mercy to the world, Jesus delays His coming, that sinners may have an opportunity to hear the warning and find in Him a shelter before the wrath of God shall be poured out (The Great Controversy, p. 458).
And again:
The character and prospects of the people of God are similar to those of the Jews, who could not enter in because of unbelief. Self-sufficiency, self-importance, and spiritual pride separated them from God, and He hid His face from them....” (Manuscript Releases, vol. 11, p. 287).
And:
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 (Selected Messages, vol. 1, p. 69). (Written in 1883 with apparent reference to the period of disunity that immediately followed the great disappointment.)
And:
How can finite man carry the burdens of responsibility for this time? His people have been far behind. Human agencies under the divine planning may recover something of what is lost because the people who had great light did not have corresponding piety, sanctification, and zeal in working out God's specified plans. They have lost to their own disadvantage what they might have gained to the advancement of the truth if they had carried out the plans and will of God. Man can not possibly stretch over that gulf that has been made by the workers who have not been following the divine Leader. We may have to remain here in this world because of insubordination many more years, as did the children of Israel, but for Christ's sake, His people should not add sin to sin by charging God with the consequence of their own wrong course of action. Now, have men who claim to believe the Word of God learned their lesson that obedience is better than sacrifice? (Spalding and Magan Collection, p. 202 [see also Evangelism, p. 697]).
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a unique help and perspective in its relationship to salvation history. God has, really to our shame and embarrassment because we have taken it so lightly, granted us the supernatural insight of the prophetic gift through Ellen G. White. So have you heard the warnings?
Consider the inspired charges against Israel, and if possible, moreso against us:
- Unbelief
- Backsliding
- Apostasy
- Refusal to do the work which God has appointed
- Self-sufficiency
- Self-importance
- Spiritual pride
- Murmuring
- Rebellion
- Worldliness
- Unconsecration
- Strife among ourselves
- Insubordination
As a people we are declared guilty of these things, even worse than the Hebrews who turned back into the worlderness. And we have been here now for how long since 1844? The Hebrews went back for 40 years. We have been here for 160.
More fascinating, you might think all of the references given were from 1888. In fact, most of them preceded 1888 and had actual reference to the confusion that resulted immediately after the great disappointment in 1844.
So why were our people disappointed in 1844? They misapprehended what was the sanctuary to be cleansed. What then would the crash and burn of the great disappointment teach them? Listen:
It would teach them, as only such an experience could, the danger of accepting the theories and interpretations of men, instead of making the Bible its own interpreter. To the children of faith the perplexity and sorrow resulting from their error would work the needed correction. They would be led to a closer study of the prophetic word. They would be taught to examine more carefully the foundation of their faith, and to reject everything, however widely accepted by the Christian world, that was not founded upon the Scriptures of truth (The Great Controversy, p. 354).
Is that where we are? Have we truly learned this lesson?
The White Flag of Surrender
Perhaps not. When we turn to Adventism this century past, evidence arises of a grim turning back in our hearts toward Egypt. In 1957 the white flag of surrender was run up the pole by the authors of Questions on Doctrine (QOD).
This book, published under the auspices of this Seventh-day Adventist denomination, but without General Conference Session approval for the teachings it contained, perpetrated great changes in our system of faith. Most obvious, it switched our Christology, making Jesus into an alien Christ with pre-fall nature of Adam rather than seeing Him as bearing our after-the-fall humanity. Later, this was changed to His having a “synthetic” nature, a little bit of both, pre-fall and post-fall. These changes mostly have prevailed. Some time ago within our ranks it began to be considered uncouth to hold that Jesus had the nature of Adam after his fall.
Less well known is the fact that QOD heralded other dramatic changes in our understanding of the atonement and of the relationship between justification, sanctification, obedience, and salvation. QOD taught that obedience was the fruit that follows salvation (QOD, pp. 102, 116, 141). Obedience does follow salvation; yet it also accompanies it. (For a detailed discussion of precedence in salvation, see Larry Kirkpatrick, Real Grace for Real people, pp. 86-129; for QOD’s changes on our view of the atonement, see Larry Kirkpatrick, “Walter Martin’s Trump Card,” at http://www.greatcontroversy.org/reportandreview/kir-qod-atonement.php3).
At the bottom line is the fact that within the Seventh-day Adventist Church today, two distinct, contrasting theological packages exist. They are systematically in contrast to one another, starkly exclusive of one another, and beyond reconciliation with one another. One is truth, the other is error. Years of influence have wrought their grim result, bringing us to this situation.
But no longer. The shelf-life on QOD ran out long ago. Historical facts have caught up with historical farce. The illegitimate QOD theological revision has been exposed. Adventists can do another lap in the wilderness or set course for home. The authentic picture of the humanity of Jesus Christ marks “North” on this compass of truth. What will we do?
Unfortunately, another problem has arisen in connection with QOD and our surrender to error and evangelicals. Along with the New Theology which then (1950s) especially arose which made overcoming sin unnecessary, developed the attitude of keeping our personal convictions on these “controverted points” quiet. Rather than working closely and in humility to correct the dangerous notions, many stood by while the standard of piety was lowered throughout the remnant church. Much that we had taught for a century was quietly retired, surreptitiously replaced, or more accurately, done in the open but with carefully crafted wording. The wilderness walk continued.
The general indifference and neutrality in a time of religious crisis was not Christlike gentleness, but was equal to the worst kind of hostility toward God (Testimonies, vol. 3, p. 281). Inaction by most at that crucial time led to acceptance of a different gospel that is not another (Galatians 1:6-8), and the church caught in a loop of laps, traveling round in circle after circle after circle.
So what are we left with today? Although the bankruptcy of the false gospel has been made plain, few are willing to study it out. Quickly they grimace and declare this has been a problem that the church could never solve, a side-show, an aberration, a distraction from doing the real thing. But they are those caught in the wrong teaching, blinded to the truth.
We might have been misled into taking their counsel, setting this aside, consenting to quietly minimize the issue in the interest of Christian humility and charity, of keeping our convictions to ourselves.
We won’t force anyone. But we will speak our convictions. The Holy Spirit has led us to this place. Retreat for us now would be apostasy. Now we will make a noise. Each one will choose for Himself. At the edge of eternity, who can turn back? Who will consent to take the long way home?
Our Convictions
Our convictions are marked. Very simply,
- The lack of character perfection in the people of God’s remnant church has delayed the Second Coming. Remember our list of blockading, chosen behaviors and attitudes: unbelief, backsliding, apostasy, refusal to do the work which God has appointed, self-sufficiency, self-importance, spiritual pride, murmuring, rebellion, worldliness, unconsecration, strife among ourselves, and insubordination.
- Only the full post-fall view of Christ’s humanity, now in this contemporary setting of finessed error, is likely to lead to the creation of the 144K. Did Jesus leave me an example. or not? “Satan had pointed to Adam's sin as proof that God's law was unjust, and could not be obeyed. In our humanity, Christ was to redeem Adam's failure. But when Adam was assailed by the tempter, none of the effects of sin were upon him. He stood in the strength of perfect manhood, possessing the full vigor of mind and body. He was surrounded with the glories of Eden, and was in daily communion with heavenly beings. It was not thus with Jesus when He entered the wilderness to cope with Satan. For four thousand years the race had been decreasing in physical strength, in mental power, and in moral worth; and Christ took upon Him the infirmities of degenerate humanity. Only thus could He rescue man from the lowest depths of his degradation” (The Desire of Ages, p. 117).
- Our understanding of sin, guilt, and righteousness has everything to do with how we prepare—or fail to—for the close of probation and existence in fallen flesh with no Mediator for continued sinning. Sin is a choice problem. No one is born in a state of condemnation, for no one had choice in their birth. We are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil. “It is the Spirit that makes effectual what has been wrought out by the world’s Redeemer. It is by the Spirit that the heart is made pure. Through the Spirit the believer becomes a partaker of the divine nature. Christ has given His Spirit as a divine power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil, and to impress His own character upon His church” (The Desire of Ages, p. 671).
Only one of the two distinct, contrasting theological packages will lead to the perfect reproduction of the character of Christ in God’s people. God has placed truth in front of us—right in front of us. He’s done this to help us. Truth is not put in front of us as a nice knickknack to display on a shelf somewhere, but to have its place in sin-removal from our lives. The situation is this:
The Reformation did not, as many suppose, end with Luther. It is to be continued to the close of this world’s history. Luther had a great work to do in reflecting to others the light which God had permitted to shine upon him; yet he did not receive all the light which was to be given to the world. From that time to this, new light has been continually shining upon the Scriptures, and new truths have been constantly unfolding (The Great Controversy, pp. 148, 149).
Is this a true statement, or not? Has truth been constantly unfolding to us, or not? I find that the increased clarity on the issues of the nature of sin, the nature of Christ, and righteounsess by faith in the end-time setting that have been developing in just the past two decades has been exactly this. But as in 1888, many hearts remain closed and boarded-up. Laodicea thinks it is rich and increased with the goods of the evangelical gospel! But it is poor and miserable and blind and naked, so it trembles and seeks for hooks to hang salvation assurance on even as it prepares to take yet another lap on the well-worn desert track.
If you have not studied these things, then the only suggestion we have to urge upon you is to study them. God will not condemn for unclarity unless you are evading opportunities to know the truth.
Make Yourself Jesus’ Special Project
What does the Bible say? “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18). And “the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament” (Revelation 11:19). Sin unfits us for divine communion. Indeed, not just sin but the regarding of sin, the indifferent sponsorship of it, that brings ruin. Sin is bad enough; it contains the ultimate outcome of death. But it is sin regarded in the heart, sin coddled, left to multiply and send its shoots down deep into the soil of character that becomes finally ineradicable.
Jesus our great high Priest, Intercessor, Mediator, is ready and waiting to take us on, to make us His special projects, to cleanse us, to repair and heal us. Yet it is our choice to plead for Him to work or to surrender to the corruption we have nurtured in our characters. He urges but does not force. He longs to transform but respects our freewill. We were designed and created in God’s image, with the power to think and do. That is, we are granted the opportunity freely to make our own moral commitments, to choose good or evil. But it is later and later in the hour of opportunity to make that choice.
The ‘time of trouble, such as never was,’ is soon to open upon us; and we shall need an experience which we do not now possess and which many are too indolent to obtain. It is often the case that trouble is greater in anticipation than in reality; but this is not true of the crisis before us. The most vivid presentation cannot reach the magnitude of the ordeal. In that time of trial, every soul must stand for himself before God. ‘Though Noah, Daniel, and Job’ were in the land, ‘as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.’ Ezekiel 14:20.
Now, while our great High Priest is making the atonement for us, we should seek to become perfect in Christ. Not even by a thought could our Saviour be brought to yield to the power of temptation. Satan finds in human hearts some point where he can gain a foothold; some sinful desire is cherished, by means of which his temptations assert their power. But Christ declared of Himself: ‘The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.’ John 14:30. Satan could find nothing in the Son of God that would enable him to gain the victory. He had kept His Father's commandments, and there was no sin in Him that Satan could use to his advantage. This is the condition in which those must be found who shall stand in the time of trouble.
It is in this life that we are to separate sin from us, through faith in the atoning blood of Christ. Our precious Saviour invites us to join ourselves to Him, to unite our weakness to His strength, our ignorance to His wisdom, our unworthiness to His merits. God's providence is the school in which we are to learn the meekness and lowliness of Jesus. The Lord is ever setting before us, not the way we would choose, which seems easier and pleasanter to us, but the true aims of life. It rests with us to co-operate with the agencies which Heaven employs in the work of conforming our characters to the divine model. None can neglect or defer this work but at the most fearful peril to their souls (The Great Controversy, pp. 622, 623).
Do you possess this experience? Are you “too indolent,” too slow or too lazy “to obtain” it? Are you seeking for righteousness with an intensity of purpose matching the seriousness of the crisis just ahead, or have you been lulled by well-meaning teachers into notions of security and peace and safety in an understanding that says you cannot really overcome?
Have you been taught that the atonement has been made for us (past tense) or that presently our great high priest “is making the atonement for us” (present tense)? Are you aware that we must become like Jesus, precisely like Jesus in that, like Him, in your experience, not even by a thought could you be brought to yield to the power of temptation? That we need to walk so closely with our high Priest at this time that we are so changed that Satan will find in us nothing—nothing—that will enable him to gain the victory over us? That “This is the condition in which those must be found who shall stand in the time of trouble”?
If Heaven has provided us through sound doctrine truths that sanctify, truths that give us confidence in the fact that Christ’s victory can be our own, that through divine power and human cooperation character perfection can be reached, that sin is a matter of choice for us and not something inevitable, then ought we not lay hold of these realities? Remember, the word from above is that, “It rests with us to co-operate with the agencies which Heaven employs in the work of conforming our characters to the divine model.”
Appeal
Is it late in the hour? Yes! Why aren’t we across the Jordan and into our heavenly home yet? Because “we cannot be sanctified by error” (In Heavenly Places, p. 145). Because “light and darkness cannot harmonize. Between truth and error there is an irrepressible conflict. To uphold and defend the one is to attack and overthrow the other” (The Great Controversy, p. 126). When we consent to be neutral, to wish-away the controversy which has come to the very center for our denominational self-understanding, to count it as mere distraction, we are out of our place. If we are ever to walk out of here alive, if we are ever to be translated and see the face of Jesus with these eyes, we have to get clear on this question.
Heaven calls to our minds today the experience of our spiritual ancestors. The Hebrew nation had a short run from Egypt to Canaan. A dozen days could have seen the journey completed. But unwillingness to believe God meant the death of a generation in the wilderness. I submit to you today that we have grown too used to the wilderness wandering. We have grown too used to doing laps in this parched world. We have grown too used to worshiping God in the image we have remade Him rather than as inspiration portrays Him—as one of us.
Christ led them through the wilderness. While there was hope, He gave them the pillar of light by day and the cloud cover from heat in the day. But ultimately there was a separation. Death separated the unfaithful from the true. The wilderness was littered with the graves of the generation that let all their rebellion ripen into an attitude that rejected God and His truths. They turned back in their hearts to Egypt, and died outside the promised land.
A reckoning is due. God grant that we will follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth (Revelation 14:4), even if it means reviewing our doctrines and admitting at last that “new light has been continually shining upon the Scriptures, and new truths have been constantly unfolding.” And we have been slow to honor the Lord Jesus Christ by accepting what He is revealing. May it not be laid to our charge. May those who are willing take their journey at last in the experience of all the hard things and all the good things of the apocalypse. Jesus will hold your hand if you will only hold His. Already we have taken the long way home. May we add not even one unnecessary day to the finishing of the journey! GCO
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