Can the Lamp Go Out?


An Important Question for Seventh-day Adventists

"The words spoken by Christ of Jerusalem are, "Your house is left unto you desolate." What anguish of soul did Jesus feel when all His appeals, His warnings and reproofs were resisted! At the time He brought them home to the soul, impressions were made; but self- love, self-sufficiency, love of the world, came in and choked the good seed sown. Pride of heart prevented His hearers from humbling themselves before God and confessing their sin in resisting His Holy Spirit, and reluctantly it left them. . . . ".

"Behold your house is left unto you desolate." The Lord forbid that this scene should be repeated in the experience of God's professed people! "My Spirit," He says, "shall not always strive with man." The time will come when it must be said of the impenitent, "Ephraim is joined to his idols; let him alone."

"The message to the Laodicean church is appropriate to the church of this time. . . . But He declares, "I will come unto thee quickly and remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." How long shall this warning be resisted? How long shall it be slighted?

"Spiritually deadened, humility and childlike faith gone, a mechanical, formal profession of faith has taken the place of love and devotion. Is this mournful condition of things to continue? Is the lamp of God's love to go out in darkness? . . .

"The church is like the unproductive tree which, receiving the dew and rain and sunshine, should have produced an abundance of fruit, but on which the divine search discovers nothing but leaves. Solemn thought for our churches! Solemn, indeed for every individual! Marvelous is the patience and forbearance of God; but 'except thou repent', it will be exhausted; the churches, our institutions, will go from weakness to weakness, from cold formality to deadness, while they are saying, "I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing." The True Witness says, "And knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor and blind, and naked?" Will they ever see clearly their true condition?

"There is to be in the churches a wonderful manifestation of the power of God, but it will not move upon those who have not humbled themselves before the Lord, and opened the doors of the heart by confession and repentance. In the manifestation of that power which lightens the earth with the glory of God, they will see only something which in their blindness they think dangerous, something which will arouse their fears, and they will brace themselves to resist it. Because the Lord does not work according to their ideas and expectations, they will oppose the work. "Why," they say, "should not we know the Spirit of God, when we have been in the work so many years?" - because they did not respond to the warnings, the entreaties of the messages of God, but persistently said, 'I am rich, and increased with goods and have need of nothing.'"

Review and Herald Extra
December 23, 1890; bound Volume 2 of Review and Herald
[EGW articles, pages 453 (column 3) and 454 (columns 1 and 2)]


THE REMNANT CHURCH?

          "The Scriptures are constantly opening to the people of God. There always has been and always will be a truth specially applicable to each generation" (Ellen G. White, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, June 1886).

          What is the "truth specially applicable to [this] generation"? Is it true that Seventh- day Adventism has all the light", and our only responsibility is to live up to the light already given? (Clifford Goldstein, The Remnant, p. 95).

          "The Adventist church mains the remnant church, if for no other reason than it alone possess the remnant truth. . . . we are still corporately the remnant because we alone have the remnant truth. And it is ultimately truth, not holiness, that distinguishes God's corporate people today just as it did in the days of ancient Israel" (Ibid., pp. 98,99).

          "The time came when Israel no longer functioned as a corporate, political entity, as the remnant church. The Lord had to call out a new people, a new movement, a church with a new message.
          "Can the same thing happen to us?" (Ibid., p.99).

          "What about it? Can the Adventist church lose its remnant status? Can what happened to physical Israel after the death of Christ happen to spiritual Israel today? Will God eventually spit Laodicea as a whole out of his mouth and start another body, one that will better fulfill His purposes?
          "No, because Laodicea is the last church! . . . we-- hard as it is to believe! -- are it, the last corporate body!" (Ibid., p. 102).

          "Had the nation [Israel], corporately, accepted the truth, God wouldn't have needed to form a new body" (Ibid., p. 102).

          "Truth, present truth -- not holiness -- has been the distinguishing characteristic of God's corporate remnant in every age. Thus, as enfeebled and defective as it is, Adventism still has the present-truth message for this time . . . No need exists to call out a new church, a remnant with new light or another present-truth message. A new church would have to have a new message, yet what could be more present truth than the second coming?" (Ibid., p. 102).

What is the testing truth for this generation? Adventism's "remnant status" hinges upon this testing truth! The testing truth for this generation is the investigative judgment of the living. Either the Seventh-day Adventist Church will corporately present this present truth and keep its "remnant status," or the Seventh-day Adventist Church will not present the full truth of the investigative judgment of the living and will be cast down to hell. This fact is not for the Seventh-day Adventist church only but for every independent group and church out there as well. The investigative judgment of the living is the final test for this final generation.

I challenge the Seventh-day Adventist church and every other "Advent" church out there, before the Lord, to "corporately" preach and teach the God-given truth of the investigative judgment of the living. If you are able, the Lord God is with you. If you are not able, prepare for a fall.

Kevin Hughes
1770 Turkey McCollum Road
Cornersville, TN 37047

REMEMBER: "The will is the choice, the deciding power."
Thank you for your visit.

Email Address: Contact