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New Faces: Meet E. J. Waggoner
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August 9 - New Faces: meet E. J. Waggoner

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This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Mark 14:24, RSV.

Ellet J. Waggoner was the youngest of the major participants at the 1888 General Conference session. Born in 1855, he was the son of Elder J. H. Waggoner, whom we have already met.

Ellet earned an M. D. degree in New York City in 1878, but never found the fulfillment he desired in medical practice. As a result, he entered the ministry and received an invitation to the assistant editorship of Signs of the Times in 1884.

The major theological turning point in young waggoner's life took place at a camp meeting at Healdburg, California, in October 1882. During a sermon he experienced what he called an "extra-biblical revelation."

"Suddenly," he reported, "a light shone round me, and the tent was, for me, far more brilliantly lighted than if the noonday sun had been shining, and I saw Christ hanging on the cross, crucified for me. In that moment I had my first positive knowledge, which came like an overwhelming flood, that God loved me, and that Christ died for me."

Waggoner "knew that this light. . . was a revelation direct from heaven." He therefore resolved then and there that he would "study the Bible in the light of that revelation," in order that he might "help others to see the same truth." Because of that plan, he noted, "wherever I have turned in the Sacred Book, I have found Christ set forth as the power of God, to the salvation of individuals, and I have never found anything else."

It was Waggoner's "vision" that eventually led him into an in-depth study of the book of Galatians. Thus, given his starting point, it is little wonder tha the found the gospel in Galatians. That discovery would bring him to prominence in Adventism during the late 1880s. It would also set him up for direct confrontation with the leaders of the General Conference-G. I. Butler and Uriah Smith-at the 1888 General Conference session.

As we will see, E. J. Waggoner was the gentlest of the men who participated in the events that swirled around the new teachings in the 1888 era.

Waggoner's experience shaped his life. A "vision" of Christ's righteousness always transforms our thinking and the way we act. Every day we need to ask if our Adventism has been baptized by the light of the cross.

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 The life that will be preserved is the life that is freely given in service to God and man. Those who for Christ's sake sacrifice their life in this world, will keep it unto life eternal(COL 87).
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