An Earnest Appeal by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1873

An Earnest Appeal

By James White

To the General Conference Committee, the “Picked Men” at Battle Creek, the Committees of the Several State Conferences, and the Officers of the Several Branches of our Tract and Missionary Society.

DEAR BRETHREN: We take up our pen to address you with assurance that the Lord has been leading out our mind to consider the present condition of our people, and the wants of the cause, such as we never felt before. In our Rocky Mountain retreat, we have taken time to review the whole ground of our position. We have surveyed the entire field of labor, and have considered our own condition before God, and that of our people. And with repentance and confession of want of faith and patience, when in deep afflictions in times past, to wait for God to vindicate the right, we have been drawing near the Lord.

At our early season of prayer this morning, August 20, as we retired from the family by ourselves, to especially seek the Lord, as has been our custom since we have been in the mountains, Mrs. W.’s feelings were with ours in the strongest assurance that the hand of the Lord had separated us from his people for awhile, to improve our health, and to gather spiritual strength, and clear light as to the condition and wants of the cause. Here, by the grace of God, we expect to remain until the Lord shall send us out to labor among his people.

And while we enjoy great freedom in the Lord, and the assurance that he is leading us, and forgiving our want of faith, and hope, and courage, and patience to wait, and is restoring to us the joys of his salvation, we feel the deepest interest for those of our fellow-laborers who have brought darkness and bondage to their own minds and spirits in not standing independently for the Lord and for the right; and our earnest prayers go up to God many times a day for them, and also for those who have double labor, and care, and responsibility in the cause, on account of the failure of some to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The Spirit’s cry is in our hearts for them, and we expect to see in them the work of the Spirit in answer. If ever God’s servants should stand together in the toils, and sorrows, and joys, and responsibilities of the work, they should in the crisis of the present hour.

Dear brethren, as to the correctness of our positions, relative to the soon close of human probation, the coming of the Son of man, and their clear and easy defense from the Scriptures of truth, we need not address you. You see complete harmony in them, all agreeing with the sure word of prophecy in wonderful perfection. And you come to the natural and inevitable conclusion that the close of our work must soon come. Otherwise, the entire movement must be an inexplicable delusion. But no! the Bible is the rock on which we firmly stand. Our system of interpretation is the only safe and true one.

● And in harmony with God’s warnings to, and his dealings with, men and nations in the past, the world’s last warning has come, and her final grand crisis is just upon us.

But, dear brethren, our people are in a fearful condition before God. It is generally admitted that the testimony of the True Witness to the church of the Laodiceans, Rev. 3:14–21, applies to our time, and to our people. And this position seems to be ably defended, and sustained by overwhelming evidences, in Bro. Smith’s “Thoughts on the Revelation.”

Our present confidence as a people that we have the truth, and that God is with us, while we are so far separated from him by the love of this world, self-confidence, and, with many, a decided hatred to reproof, gives point and force to the rebuke of the Son of God to the last church:

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent.”

Dear brethren, it is not enough for us to simply admit the correct application of this startling rebuke to ourselves at the present time. We should ponder its fearful import with care, and let its terrific threatening move us to immediate action. You very well know that at no period of our existence, as a people, was its application as forcible as at the present time.

The Lord has been appealing to our people through the manifestation of the Spirit of prophecy in our day, in reproofs, warnings, and entreaties. They have been warned of the sins of covetousness, love of the world, selfishness, pride, self-confidence, and love of ease; and of a want of consecration, self-sacrifice, the love of God, and love for the salvation of souls. Many have read these reproofs until they are tired of them, and now neglect them. And some cherish a hatred to such testimony. These see no need of reproof. They feel assured that we have the truth, and that the Lord is with us; and they conclude that these continued reproofs and warnings hinder the progress of the cause.

This view of things, and this spirit, is increasing among our people. Love for the pure testimony is waning; and those who dare speak plainly and decidedly against prevailing wrongs and sins among us make themselves a prey to a bitter spirit of rebellion in those who have been often reproved, and have stiffened their necks against correction. The deception upon the minds of our people is a fearful one. The prophecy to the last stage of the church of Jesus Christ, given A. D. 96, looks forward nearly eighteen hundred years, to 1873, and describes, with minute exactness, the condition of things among us, utters a terrific warning of utter rejection without zealous repentance, counsels the only way of escape, and then, in strains of fullest benevolence and tenderest affection, promises the nearest and dearest communion with Christ to all who hear the voice of warning and open the door of their hearts by zeal in repenting of the sins which have barred the dear Saviour from them.

And let it be remembered that this testimony to the church of the Laodiceans is from the True Witness. It is from the Son of God. It appeals to our people at the present critical hour. It describes their true condition of blindness as to their standing before God; and nothing has done so much to bring our people into this condition as the influence of those who have cherished a feeling of dislike, and with some it has amounted to determined hatred, against the reproofs which the Lord has given his people through his faithful servants.

A fearful crisis is just upon us. A testimony is ripening among us that will find a hearty response from those whose highest ambition and greatest desire is to be right before God. It will touch the tenderest feelings of all those who bear the burdens of the cause, and who sigh and cry for the growing evils among us. This testimony, in harmony with that of the True Witness to the last stage of the church, representing the condition of our people to be very bad, when

those who are blinded with their sins of omission and commission think their state to be very good, will not be received by all. Some have so far blinded their eyes to repeated warnings, and are held so fast in the spirit of rebellion, that they never will see things clearly, and feel their lost condition, until it shall be too late for complete reform.

Dear brethren, we invite your especial attention to the fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth chapters of Isaiah. We suggest that there is strong evidence that the fifty-eighth chapter has a clear and forcible application to our time, and to our condition and duty. This chapter opens with the injunction, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins.”

The prophet then describes the people of the Lord as formal in their religious devotions. They seek the Lord with prayer and fasting, but not with acceptance. And they murmur because the Lord does not seem to accept their devotions. The Lord then shows that they are defective in their works, as the reason why their lip-service, and their fasting, are not acceptable to him. He rebukes their covetousness and oppression, and teaches them a lesson of benevolence and love, that is manifested in noble, Christ-like deeds. And in the opening verses of the fifty-ninth chapter he addresses those with burning, hope-inspiring words to the formal, self-righteous, deceived sinners in Zion. The Lord would call them even from their knees and from their devout fasting, to consider facts in the case, of vast importance, as follows:—

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” If the sins mentioned in these verses are pointed out in the previous chapter, then we safely, and from necessity, conclude that the great sin of the people of God at this time is in selfishly hoarding the good things of this life, in neglect of that liberality which God requires. In this neglect of duty, their fasting and their prayers are not acceptable in his sight.

The Lord’s ear is not heavy, neither is his hand short; but he will not answer their prayers, and reach down his hand to their deliverance, until they put away their sins. When they will do this, he will manifest himself to them gloriously. Who has a clean record in Heaven? All our sins are on record in the books above. And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to impress upon the minds of sinners in Zion the very sins that are written against them, and which separate them from God.

Dear brethren, shall we marvel, and complain, and murmur, because God does not answer our prayers graciously, when, if he did answer them at all, it would have to be done over a record of unconfessed sins in the books above? Rather, let us closely examine our hearts and lives; and if God in mercy speaks from Heaven and points out our sins, we should be the most grateful people that live, and should humble ourselves greatly, repent zealously, and pray fervently that the Holy Spirit may bring before our minds the very sins that are written against us in the heavenly records, that we may put them away and draw very near to the Lord.

We address you, dear brethren, because, in the providence of God, it has fallen to your lot to bear the responsibilities of the cause of such magnitude and vast importance. It is right that our people should look to you to lead out in the cause of present truth. If your faith shall be weak, and your views and plans as to the extent of the work and the means to be immediately employed for its advancement limited, theirs will be. If you rise up, leaning upon a consistent faith, and lead off in plans, and ways, and means, in harmony with the professed position of Seventh-day Adventists, the true and the good at heart will follow.

J. W.