CITIES OF REFUGE
Candice and I frequently recount how the Lord has led us in our experience together. How He brought us together while attending college. How He opened the doors for entering into lifelong ministry together. How he gave us two children. How He has led from church to church and school to school in service to various communities.
There were forty distinct stages between Egypt and Jericho on Israel’s forty-year-long journey, recounted in Numbers 33. They were reminded of how the Lord led in their past history.
I was told on one occasion in a gathering of Adventists that we don’t need to be reminded of our past history. Our future is what is important. George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Those who work with young people in our schools state that it is not easy to get our youth to look at our history as a people. Maybe the antipathy of the old generation toward our history is a clue as to why the youth take a similar attitude.
An Inspired writer has stated: “In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what God has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”[1]
There is such a rewriting of our SDA history known as revisionism. The reality of the past is reinterpreted so as to cast the players in a positive light; and thus, the present generation has inherited their mind-set. Since the human mind is susceptible to such revisionism, it is imperative that we allow Inspiration to accurately paint the portrait of our history in order that we might learn the lessons which it teachings and take action to correct the course. “We may have to remain here in this world because of insubordination many more years, as did the children of Israel. . . But if all now would only see and confess and repent of their own course of action in departing from the truth of God, and following human devisings, then the Lord would pardon.”[2]
It is a standard objection: “We don’t need to repent because Sister White never specifically called for repentance over the matter.”
For the same reason that Moses, during the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness, never called for a renewed attempt to conquer Canaan through re-doing the Ai campaign. He recognized that Israel must wander the full forty years. The people’s sin was very deep and could not be truly eradicated until they all were buried. A new generation must take Canaan. So Ellen White recognized that we were forced to wait “in this world because of insubordination many more years as did the children of Israel.”[3]
Repeatedly, from 1888 to