Oct. 6-Righteousness By Faith And The Loud Cry

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor. And he called out with a mighty voice, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! ... Come out of her, my people. Rev. 18:1-4, RSV.

We observed yesterday that one aspect of Waggoner and Jones' 1888 message that excited Ellen White was that they had combined the two halves of Revelation 14:12. They not only preached the commandments of God but also faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Thus they had rescued the truths of justification by faith "front the companionship of [antinomian] error" and "placed them in their proper framework"--the third angel's message (MS 8a, 1888).

From her perspective, the importance of the 1888 message was not some special Adventist doctrine developed by Jones and Waggoner. Rather, it was the reuniting of Adventism with basic Christianity. It uplifted Jesus Christ as the central pillar of all Christian living and thinking, proclaimed justification through faith, and taught sanctification as reflected in obedience to God's law through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Once we grasp that the heart of Waggoner and Jones' contribution was the putting together of the various parts of the third angel's message, it is possible to understand her intriguing statement regarding the beginning of the loud cry in 1888. In the Review of November 22, 1892, we read: "The time of test is just upon us, for the loud cry of the third angel has already begun in the revelation of the righteousness of Christ, the inpardoning Redeemer. This is the beginning of the light of the angel whose glory shall fill the whole earth. For [because] it is the work of every one to whom the message of warning has come...to lift up Jesus."

Jones, confusing the latter rain (an outpouring of the Holy Spirit--a person) with the loud cry (a message), made a great deal of the 1892 loud cry statement, proclaiming that the latter rain had begun. But he needed to read more carefully. It was the loud cry and not the latter rain that had begun at Minneapolis.

The powerful point that Ellen White made in 1892 was that at last in 1888 the Seventhday Adventists finally had the complete last message of mercy to preach to the world before the Second Advent. The loud cry message would proclaim the continuing importance of the Ten Commandments in the context of a firm faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, all set within an expectancy in the Second Advent (Rev. 14:12).