The Reason for Our Existence by Francis McLellan Wilcox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 21, 1911

The Reason for Our Existence

By Francis McLellan Wilcox

as a Denomination

WHAT reason has the Seventh-day Adventist denomination for an existence? Why was it necessary, with the numerous churches and religious organizations on every side, to inaugurate a new movement, and add one more cult to those already in the field? Why could not the men and women making up the membership of this church have found in connection with other religious bodies abundant opportunities for the exercise of Christian activity?

We find an answer to these queries in the aim and character of this movement in which we are engaged. In God's order the time has come when this earth's history is about to close. The kingdoms of this world are soon to give place to the everlasting kingdom of Christ. “And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth.”

Fulfilling prophecies and signs — conditions existing in the social, political, industrial, and even the religious, worlds — plainly indicate that the time has been reached when events of a significant, startling, and most stupendous character are about to take place; that the long reign of sin is soon to be cut short, and that the generation now living will witness the appearing of Christ in the clouds of heaven.

A message, the burden of which is to call men's attention to these events, and bring about a reformation of life in all who will heed it, is due the world. As heaven's professed light-bearer, the great Christian church should be able to recognize the times and seasons, and sound the message of Christ's coming. But this it is not doing. The great Episcopal Church is not doing it, nor the Methodists, nor the Baptists, nor the Presbyterians, nor the Congregationalists, to say nothing of the smaller divisions of the so-called Protestant church, and the Greek and Catholic churches.

Some of these denominations have done excellent work in the past. Among their communicants to-day are many devoted Christian people. But their stereotyped creeds preclude the acceptance of advanced light. They have no place in their system of religious belief for the doctrines comprehended in this movement.

Nor, must it be confessed, would these churches welcome to their fellowship men and women who might proclaim the special truths of this message. For this there is a reason. The truths due the world to-day are diametrically opposed to much of the teaching and practise of these churches.

The message for this generation, to prepare a people to stand in the day of Christ's coming, is a message of reform. Its purpose is to call men back to the old, forsaken paths of truth, and to a higher and holier plane of Christian living. It presents Christ as man's all-sufficient sacrifice and Saviour; his ministry as the only means by which the merits of that sacrifice may be made available; his righteousness, obtained through faith, as the one source of eternal life; his coming as the realization of the Christian's hope. It enjoins the binding claims of God's great law, restoring to its rightful place the downtrodden Sabbath of Jehovah, and warning men of the false claims of the counterfeit sabbath, and of its enforcement by legal enactment. It brings to view the work of the investigative judgment, the final reward to be given to the righteous, and the punishment to be meted out to the wicked at the last great day. This comprehends, in brief, the special message for this day.

This message the great Christian

church itself needs. It has grown worldly and careless and indifferent. Form and ceremony, show and ostentation, rites and ritualism, have supplanted our simplicity and vital godliness. It has no time for the proclamation of God's special testing truths for this generation. In consequence, God calls into being a new movement for the giving of his message to the world.

This is why Seventh-day Adventists exist as a separate church body. They exist for the same reason that Noah was called to proclaim the impending doom in his day; that Jonah was sent to warn Nineveh of its overthrow; that John the Baptist was made the voice crying in the wilderness in preparation for the first advent; and that, later, upon Luther, Zwingli, and the Wesleys was placed the burden of a great spiritual awakening in the ages in which they lived. Heaven had truth to give to men, and it used those, humble though they might be, who were willing to become the messengers.

To act the part of heaven's messengers to the people of this generation, proclaiming the special truths now due the world, is the only excuse Seventh-day Adventists have for an existence as a separate denomination. They are not separate from their fellows as the result of whim or caprice or from selfish choice. The separation entails trial, opposition, misunderstanding, monetary loss, and great inconvenience. But they must be true to what they recognize as the call of God, at whatever cost or personal sacrifice. Nor can they cover up or compromise the distinctive characteristics of their faith. They may and should heartily unite with others in the promotion of every moral reform; they may join hands with those of other churches in combating great moral evils. All this is commendable and praiseworthy. But let not any union be formed, or any influence be allowed to control, which will lead to a compromise of the distinctive features of our faith. This does not mean that on every occasion we are to proclaim the second coming of Christ or some other peculiar feature of our belief; but rather that we shall not forget why we are Seventh-day Adventists, and so lose out of our lives the very spirit and inspiration of this message and this movement.

“The commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus”—this is the motto to be emblazoned on our standard. The spirit of this motto should ever be kept in mind, and all our plans and purposes, and our very lives themselves, should be molded by its influence.

But there are more personal ways in which we may compromise this message. We may do it in our own lives, in our personal relationship to our fellows. In affairs of business, in honesty of deal, in our relation to society and the pleasures of the world, in the manner in which we discharge our obligations to our neighbors and to our own families, we are commending to our fellows the movement we represent, or casting discredit upon it.

By the manner in which we allow the truth to sanctify our lives we are determining whether the ordinary, superficial standard of Christianity seen about us shall be the gage of our experience, or whether we shall manifest a devotion and zeal proportionate to the character of the work we are called to do. By our daily lives we shall answer the question which many are asking to-day, “Is this great advent movement now encircling the earth in God's order?” May we give a true and affirmative response to the question, and demonstrate to every onlooker, not only by theoretical arguments, but above all by Christlike, Spirit-filled lives, that in God's order and providence there is a heaven-ordained reason for the existence of Seventh-day Adventists as a separate denomination, and that in that existence they are meeting, both severally and collectively, heaven's high and holy purpose. We may do this through the grace and wisdom which heaven will impart.

F. M. W.