What lies ahead for Adventism? Can we learn anything from our past experience?

As Seventh-day Adventists address the future of their God-ordained movement, one fact quickly becomes dominant: Their movement's future will be triumphant. God's plan will be gloriously completed, in and through His end-time Sabbath-keeping people.

1TRIUMPH ASSURED

It is in the Bible. The three angels' messages are going to be preached "to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people" (Rev 14:6-12). Jesus has promised that this gospel shall be preached in all the world and then shall the end come (Matt 24:14).*

Christ's true end-time gospel is to go to every people group in the whole world. It will not be limited to the 5000 people groups with a population of 1,000,000 or more that we are quite rightly hearing so much about these days. You can name any people group in the world—the Kasseng, the Kayagar, the Shankilla, the Barasana, the Manobo—you can name any and every people group in the whole world, of whatever size and of whatever current hostility to Christianity, and Seventh-day Adventism will be preached among it.

And when all the people groups in the world have heard the Adventist message, the end will come. We used to think that the word "nations" in Matthew 24:14 meant countries; so we appropriately listed some 220 countries and did our best to reach them all. God abundantly blessed, and we have work in nearly 190. But now we realize that "nations" comes from a Greek word that in over ninety other places in the New Testament is translated "Gentiles"!

Without doubt, the greatest day for Seventh-day Adventist missions is in the future—in the short-range future. The Sabbath and the Christ of the Sabbath are going to be talked about everywhere. And then Jesus will return. For the coming of the Lord "will not tarry past the time that the message is borne to all nations, tongues, and peoples" (Evangelism, p. 697).

Christlike Character

This triumph of the Adventist message will be accompanied by another triumph. Indeed it will be made possible, in part, by this other triumph: the triumph of Christ's work inside the men, women, and children who carry the message. Revelation 18:1-4 promises that just before Jesus returns, God's glory will enlighten the whole earth. In this passage, God's glory is God's beautiful character lived out in the lives and shining in the faces of His end-time Sabbath-keeping saints. Symbolized by the prophetic 144,000, God's end-time saints are described in Revelation 14:1-5 as having God's "name" in their "foreheads," an expression that means that they will have His beautiful character in their minds, permeating their entire beings.

This promise about God's name in people's foreheads foretells a moment that Christ Himself longs for. "Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church," Ellen White tells us in Christ's Object Lessons, p. 69. A triumphant promise follows: "When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own."

What a prospect to anticipate! When discussing the future of Seventh-day Adventism, let us not omit our marvelous potential in Christ for becoming part of a movement in which every true believer is nice!

Sealed

In fact, every believer will be "two-table" nice. That is, all the true believers will be loyal to both tables of the law. They will show consistent, whole-hearted love to God as well as consistent, whole-hearted love to their neighbors and enemies. They'll be sealed in God's law as well as being nice. They'll be nice as well as being sealed.

And just as soon as they are nice and sealed, the very last of the final events will take place and Christ will return. "Just as soon as the people of God are sealed in their foreheads . . . it [the shaking] will come," says Ellen G. White (SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 4, p. 1161). And again, "When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then he will come" (Christ's Object Lessons, p. 69).

2TROUBLES TO CONTRAST WITH TRIUMPH

But the triumphant future of Seventh-day Adventism is not to be realized without notorious troubles crowding in along the way. And let's remember that our apprehension of these notorious troubles is not based on in-group paranoia or on the writings of Ellen G. White, as some critics have unwisely averred. The Bible foretells this time of notorious trial in Daniel 12:1: "At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time."

Thank God that the prophecy adds, "But at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book."

We know from Revelation 13:11-18 that this time of trouble will entail bitter economic penalties and even the threat of martyrdom. Revelation 16 indicates that just prior to the close of probation, the beast of rejuvenated Catholicism, the false prophet of apostate Protestantism, and the dragon of renewed paganism will become actively hostile to the Adventist movement.

But saddest of all among the turbulent aspects of the future of Adventism is the certain prospect of widespread discouragement and apostasy within the ranks. Jesus warned, "Many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another." "Because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold" (Matt 24:10-12). How very sad that this should be so, just when Christ is triumphing in His true people and sealing them in His own kind of loyalty and love.

In The Great Controversy, p. 608, Ellen White comments: "As the storm approaches, a large class who have professed faith in the third angel's message, but have not been sanctified through obedience to the truth, abandon their position and join the ranks of the opposition. . . . They become the most bitter enemies of their former brethren."

When my father was asked to move from England to the Pacific Press in California in 1936, I enjoyed the privilege for the first time of attending a Seventh-day Adventist elementary school. My teacher introduced his class to thoughts in Prophets and Kings (pp. 188, 189) that made a profound impression on me then and have continued to make a profound impression ever since: "[When the universal test comes regarding the Sabbath commandment] those who have yielded step by step to worldly demands and conformed to worldly customs will then yield to the powers that be, rather than subject themselves to derision, insult, threatened imprisonment, and death. . . . Many a star that we have admired for its brilliance will then go out in darkness."

As a child I tried to comprehend the thought of some "brilliant star" among us going out, but it was more than I could grasp. I had much less difficulty with the paragraph that followed. "Among earth's inhabitants, scattered in every land, there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Like the stars of heaven, which appear only at night, these faithful ones will shine forth when darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people. In heathen Africa, in the Catholic lands of Europe and of South America, in China, in India, in the islands of the sea, and in all the dark corners of the earth, God has in reserve a firmament of chosen ones that will yet shine forth amidst the darkness, revealing clearly to an apostate world the transforming power of obedience to His law. . . . The darker the night, the more brilliantly will they shine."

Literally hundreds of thousands of stars are joining us every year! I have met some of them in my travels overseas. I pray that God will help us who live in the land where this movement began become as faithful as they. Their "shining out" is part of the developing triumph-amid-turbulence of the future of Seventh-day Adventism.

Familiar to many is a prediction in Testimonies, volume 8, p. 41, which says, "In vision I saw two armies in terrible conflict. One army was led by banners bearing the world's insignia; the other was led by the bloodstained banner of Prince Immanuel. Standard after standard was left to trail in the dust as company after company from the Lord's army joined the foe and tribe after tribe from the ranks of the enemy united with the commandment-keeping people of God."

3GOD'S TRIUMPH IN OTHER CRISES

For years my assignment at the Seminary has been to teach church history. When I ponder the turbulence facing our movement as it moves inexorably toward its Christ-ordained triumph, I am deeply encouraged by reflecting on God's leadership in our past. God's Sabbath keepers have already been rocked several times by severe turbulence, and each time they have emerged, by God's grace, stronger than ever.

Even in the 1850s, before our movement had either name or organization, two of our ministers (or traveling brethren as they were often known) defected and started a publication of their own called Messenger of Truth. They opposed what most defectors since them have also opposed: the sanctuary message, the Spirit of Prophecy, and central leadership. Their names were H. S. Case and C. P. Russell. They created much trouble among the thousand or so members of our young movement. The loyal ministers spent much of their effort countering the influence of the "Messenger Party"—until Sr. White after a vision advised them to ignore the defection and concentrate only on proclaiming present truth. She promised a doubling of our membership if they would comply. Amazed, the loyal ministers complied; but the situation seemed at first to get worse, for two other well-known ministers joined the Messenger Party, J. M. Stephenson and D. P. Hall. Altogether a third or even a half of our thirty or so ministers joined the defection! Here was turbulence indeed.

But true to God's prediction, when ignored the defectors lost their influence on Sabbath keepers and faded away. And true to God's prediction also, circulation of the Review rose in a few years from 1,000 to 2,000! We doubled our membership.

In the 1860s, within a year or two of the formation of our General Conference, B. F. Snook and W. H. Brinkerhof, leaders of the Iowa Conference, defected. We had only seven conferences in those days, so their defection was proportionately severe. Another turbulence. And again, God brought His people through triumphantly.

In 1887, Dudley M. Canright left us. He had been our leading evangelist! He not only left us, he also turned his guns against us, writing eloquent books that are still widely used by our opponents. But the movement grew without him, from 25,000 when he departed to 175,000 in 1919, when he died.

Dr. J. H. Kellogg left us in 1907, carrying with him, it is said, some 200 ministers, teachers, and medical workers. Proportionately the loss was equivalent to many thousands of ministers, teachers, and medical workers today. Dr. Kellogg made the heavenly sanctuary merely "spiritual," undermining 1844; he denied effective authority to the Spirit of Prophecy; and he opposed General Conference leadership. His influence was very great. He felt confident enough to state in his famous "seven hour interview" just before his departure that he "didn't see anything ahead of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination but complete wreckage" as long as the present leaders had "hold of the crank." A. G. Daniells and W. A. Spicer were our topmost leaders in 1907. We had 80,000 members when Dr. Kellogg made this statement; but by the time Elder Spicer died in 1952 we counted 800,000 members. Under God's blessing, this movement, faced with a very turbulent shaking time, had triumphed once again.

L. R. Conradi, our first long-term European leader, left us in the 1930s; and as he did so, in the United States the Shepherd's Rod was getting underway. Many members still recall the havoc that the Shepherd's Rod brought to camp meetings and local churches. During its heyday, we could scarcely make out where the chaos would lead. But we found out. By the time the Rod was shredded in the early 1960s, Seventh-day Adventists had increased from 350,000 to 1,350,000.

The Brinsmead problem came in the 1960s and left in the early 1970s. Desmond Ford was next, and the controversy surrounding him prompted many to make their exit.

And now we're faced with a severe wave of Adventist "liberalism." Through their own publications and in other places, some Adventists are becoming increasingly strident in their demands for change. They also appear to be growing increasingly effective in their influence. Ellen G. White, they say, is good for devotions, but her writings have no real authority, for she was a Victorian lady and largely a daughter of her times. Adventist lifestyle, they say, should be determined by vote or by personal preference, not by Scripture, for the Bible writers were culturally conditioned beyond particular application to our situation today. Revelation's beasts, they say, represent nothing more than the social ills of any age. 1844 they describe as significant for our earthly history but as marking no particular event in heaven. As for creation and the flood, our friends teach astonishing things. Most recently such Adventists have begun urging us to ape the secular world and turn our worship services into entertainments.

Sometimes it seems in the North American Division that the tide of "liberalism" is sweeping everything before it. Is there no one left, we cry, to champion the cause of basic solid Adventism? Will Seventh-day Adventism merge at last into the world and fade into an incoherent mumble?

We conclude that this movement is going to triumph beyond the shadow of a doubt and beyond our most enthusiastic anticipations. The current turbulence, like similar defections in the past, will reach its high tide and then drain away. And as it drains away, on every side will be seen men, women, and youth who have stood loyal and true to God in the crisis. Crowding in to join them will be "tribe after tribe" of God's "firmament of chosen ones" in whom the character of Jesus has been beautifully consummated.

Soon after that, we'll see Jesus coming back to claim His people as His own. This is the dependable future of Seventh-day Adventism.