1994 - Adams Overlooks Spirit of Prophecy Regarding Repentance

1994 . . .

Dr. Roy Adams (Associate Editor of the Adventist Review) published The Nature of Christ, a new example of vindictiveness never before seen in Seventh-day Adventist church publications. The most noted apostates in Adventist history have never been maligned with the vengeance this treatise heaps upon Elder M. L. Andreasen and the authors of 1888 Re-examined.

More than fifty times the authors are mentioned by name. The “bloodshed and backwardness” of the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and the Sudan is what people like the authors of 1888 Re-examined wish on us” (p. 106).

They are placed in “the same continuum” as Jim Jones and David Koresh of Jonestown and Waco disrepute (pp. 109, 110). Dr. Adams considers he has good reason for his indictment, based on his adamant rejection of corporate repentance. He proclaims “that the idea of corporate repentance … has no merit,” but even more, he says the call for “corporate repentance” is not from the “God of the Bible.” To make sure his readers understand his aversion to the idea he repeats—” Corporate repentance. Who demands it of us? I make bold to say it: Not the Lord!”—which can only mean—the idea comes from Satan (p. 112).

This view does not recognize that the Lord Jesus Himself is the One calling His people to repentance (Rev. 3:19). Dr. Adams’ dictum that corporate repentance “has not a single shred of support in the writings of Ellen G. White” (p. 109) overlooks the extended pleas found in her 1888 Materials. She not only wrote to “leading brethren in Battle Creek” (p. 1010), but she pleaded with the General Conference in Session, March 12, 1890, to “fulfill the conditions of repentance and confession” (pp. 906-914).

Similar authoritative calls went to the entire church through the church paper as published in the Review, for example, August 26, 1890: “Since the time of Minneapolis. … Those who realize their need of repentance toward God, … will repent for their resistance of the Spirit of the Lord. They will confess their sin of refusing the light that Heaven has so graciously sent them” (p. 695).

(Quoted from article: "Do We Love the Truth About "1888"? by Donald K. Short, September / October 2004).