everlasting-gospels.gif

Retrospect On Minneapolis
letter-text.gif
line.gif
guide_img.gif

Oct. 19 - Retrospect On Minneapolis

 guide_img.gif

 

line.gif

Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Matt. 1:21.

The 1888 General Conference session was one of the great turning points in Seventhday Adventist history. We cannot have the slightest doubt about its accomplishments. It directed the church back to the Bible as the only source of authority in both doctrine and practice, it uplifted Jesus and placed salvation by grace through faith at the center of Adventist theology, it contexted the proper role of the law within the gospel of grace, and it led to a restudying of the topics of the Trinity, the full divinity of Christ, and the personhood of the Holy Spirit.

And perhaps most important, it gave Adventism a fuller understanding of the third angel's message in Revelation 14:12--the central text in Seventh-day Adventist selfunderstanding.

Not only did that passage identify them as Adventists as they patiently waited for their Lord while keeping all of God's commandments, but it also set before them the gospel message in the fact that God's last message to the world before the Second Advent (verses 14-20) would center on having faith in Jesus.

In short, the 1888 message transformed the way Adventists thought about their message. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the devil is always out to make sure that we forget or neglect the good news. Thus it is that some Adventists in the 1890s and beyond continued to focus on the law rather than the gospel, while others used the message of Jones and Waggoner as a new gate into the old legalism and human perfectionism that they had been raised up to stand against.

The whole story of the Minneapolis saga brings to mind two of the greatest facts on earth. First, the utter perversity of human beings. Second, the unbounded grace of God.

Looking back on the history of the church in the Minneapolis era, what conies to my mind are the words of John Newton's great hymn: "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!"

"Amazing grace" is the only kind there is. Those two words sum up the message and meaning of the 1888 event.

         line.gif
guide_img_bottom.gif guide_img_bottom.gif

Christ was continually receiving from the Father that He might communicate to us. "The word which ye hear," He said, "is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me." John 14:24. "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." Matt. 20:28. Not for Himself, but for others, He lived and thought and prayed. From hours spent with God He came forth morning by morning, to bring the light of heaven to men. Daily He received a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. In the early hours of the new day the Lord awakened Him from His slumbers, and His soul and His lips were anointed with grace, that He might impart to others(COL 139).
line.gif
이 게시물을...