Losing the discernment to honestly weigh evidence of Jesus

“As a nation, the people of Israel, while desiring the advent of the Messiah, were so far separated from God in heart and life that they could have no true conception of the character or mission of the promised Redeemer. Instead of desiring redemption from sin, and the glory and peace of holiness, their hearts were fixed upon deliverance from their national foes, and restoration to worldly power. They looked for Messiah to come as a conqueror, to break every yoke, and exalt Israel to dominion over all nations. Thus Satan had succeeded in preparing the hearts of the people to reject the Saviour when He should appear. Their own pride of heart, and their false conceptions of His character and mission, would prevent them from honestly weighing the evidences of His Messiahship.

For more than a thousand years the Jewish people had waited the coming of the promised Saviour. Their brightest hopes had rested upon this event. For a thousand years, in song and prophecy, in temple rite and household prayer, His name had been enshrined; and yet when He came, they did not recognize Him as the Messiah for whom they had so long waited. ‘He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.’ John 1:11. To their world-loving hearts the Beloved of heaven was ‘as a root out of a dry ground.’ In their eyes He had ‘no form nor comeliness;’ they discerned in Him no beauty that they should desire Him. Isaiah 53:2.” Prophets and Kings, p. 709,710.

“Their own pride of heart, and their false conceptions of His character and mission, would prevent them from honestly weighing the evidences of His Messiahship.”

The last generation awaiting Christ’s first coming could not honestly look at the evidences that would lead them to believe that He was the Messiah. What does this say about the last group waiting for His second coming? Aren’t we repeating the history of Israel? “Pride of heart, and resistance to give up false conceptions” is why it is so difficult for people to accept the truth today. Selfishness and seeking a worldly, political Messiah drives many of today’s Protestants and Adventists.

Few there are who are wrestling with their guilt and shame, seeking a Messiah for their sin. The few in Christ’s day were not blinded by hopes in this world. Their hopes were on eternal things—redemption from sin. Therefore, they only could “honestly [weigh] the evidences of His Messiahship”; therefore they recognized the Messiah in Jesus. Only the folks who heeded John the Baptist’s strong message of sin, righteousness, and of judgment to come with the Messiah, could be disciples of the Messiah when He appeared.

Who will recognize the Spirit of Jesus when He comes close to His laboring, battling people, to walk among them and to boost their spirits in the work of spreading His gospel? Will they know that the Spirit is Jesus Himself? Or will they dismiss Jesus’ work for them in the sanctuary above, which opens them to hear the still, small Voice, Jesus’ precious voice— Jesus Himself. Will the false conception of the distant, unknowable, unheard Trinity Jesus prevent their opening to the real Jesus? Who will be true non-Trinitarians? Who will know the true doctrine of the Godhead by the experience of wrestling with sin and righteousness, and not a theory non-Trinitarianism?

History will be repeated, as it always has been. A willingness to be humbled by conviction of sin has always been the strait turnstile to the narrow path to life. And few ever accept the humbling, and therefore most never find the path to life. As it was in the Early Rain, only those who have battled with their sins will receive the dawning gleams of the Latter Rain of Jesus. They have struggled to please God until their total thinking involves the cry of Paul, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24).

They were publicans and sinners. They were hopeless without God in the world. And they found help only from “God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:25), “the Spirit, … the Spirit of God” through “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9). “God the Father” (Gal. 1:1) put in them conviction of sin, and “The Spirit of His Son” (Gal. 4:6) gave them repentance that didn’t itself need repentance, and full forgiveness. Only they will truly know the truth about the only true God and His only begotten Son. Only they will be true non-Trinitarians. 

And everyone else will be without the ability to read the word of God honestly. Their misconceptions will “prevent them from honestly weighing the evidences” of the Spirit, which is Jesus Himself. They will only be able to “[handle] the word of God deceitfully.” (2Cor. 4:2). And they will miss the beautiful evidences of Jesus present in the Latter Rain because the Latter Rain will be all about Jesus joining His people. [“God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you” (Acts 3:26). “Go to, let us go down.” (Gen. 11:7).] Therefore they will end up “none of His” (Rom. 8:9) because they chose not to be His. They chose to join themselves with present Baal-peor, and to serve the gods of Baal-peor. Instead of saying to the Trinity idolaters, “Ye have nothing to do with us” (Ezra 4:3), they believed the heathen, Sunday theologians who told them, “We seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto Him.” (Ezra 4:2).

Now when the people of the only true God read, “Cumbered with humanity, Christ could not be in every place personally; therefore it was altogether for their advantage that He should leave them, go to His father, and send the Holy Spirit to be His successor on earth. The Holy Spirit is Himself divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. He would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit, as the Omnipresent” (14MR 23.3), they will say, “I believe that. The Holy Spirit is the Himself; Himself, the Holy Spirit. He will represent Himself by His Holy Spirit. That sounds right to me. I’ve always believed that.” It is amazing the self-manipulation we will do in order to avoid the conviction of truth and light.

When they read, “The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, which is sent to all men to give them sufficiency, that through His grace we might be complete in Him. The Lord has provided that we should always be under the teaching and influence of the Holy Spirit. We shall then discover that the law of God is holy, just, and good, and we would learn to delight in the law of God. We love the requirements of the law, and from our hearts render obedience to its requirements” (14MR 84), they read somehow that the Holy Spirit isn’t Christ present by His personal spirit. They won’t accept the fact that grace comes from Christ alone, not another person of the Godhead. No man comes to the Father but through Christ, and through no one else except Christ. Jesus died for us, and no one except the self-sacrificing One can minister the power of His death into our hearts.

When the Trinitarians read, “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him” (1Cor. 8:6), they will find some way to add a third person to that verse.

When the Trinitarian compares the verse, “Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2Pet. 1:21) with the verse, “Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow” (1Pet. 1:11), they then say or think, “If the world-wide Adult Sabbath School Quarterly didn’t make this comparison, then these verses must be like apples and oranges. They cannot be laid together line upon line. The editor of the quarterly wouldn’t mislead us; he used to be the editor of Liberty Magazine. He’s a loyal SDA minister. Theologians wrote the quarterly, and surely they know the Bible better than you.” (But, maybe a magisterium put together that quarterly.)

So, they will remain faithful to the church at the expense of a plain reading of scripture. But, will all the theologians be involved in the Latter Rain? Will all the pastors? “As the time comes for [the message of the third angel] to be given with greatest power, the Lord will work through humble instruments, leading the minds of those who consecrate themselves to His service. The laborers will be qualified rather by the unction of His Spirit than by the training of literary institutions. Men of faith and prayer will be constrained to go forth with holy zeal, declaring the words which God gives them.” Great Controversy, p. 606.

Being the sacrificed Lamb of God, from Him comes the power of God unto salvation (see Revelation 5:6). Through His angels come His words of life. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to shew unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John….” (Rev. 1:1).

The Latter Rain of Jesus will come and go, and all who do not know Jesus’ voice will fight Him all the way while they wait for the Latter Rain of a personless, intangible, unfeeling, misty, third person of their Trinity. There can be no redemption, no reconciliation with God from such a platonic mediator. The third person of the Trinity will give them much emotional power, much light and wisdom, but no redemptive power that overcomes sin. Only Jesus, only by being crucified with Him,stung with the guilt of playing around with sin that put Him on the altar of sacrifice, will He offer victory over their sins, while the other Spirit will focus on deep mysteries. They will be ever learning about the mysteries, but never come to a knowledge of the truth. Such a revival of the third person will evade victory over sin because that Spirit has no power to redeem, nor does it want anyone to have it. Its power will be cold and tense, lacking promise of mercy. It will not have the power of an only-begotten Son and an everlasting Father can have. “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:35,36).

By the other Spirit, Jesus will be kept buried in spiritual ideas, and unknowable mysteries. Simple knowledge of Jesus’ mercy and the law of kindness in His mouth will not be encouraged. Yet there lies “the hiding of His power” (Hab. 3:4).

They will reason away the Trinity Spirit’s lack of warmth and personality because they serve a mystery. “It’s a mystery! My imaginary friend, the Comforter!” “It doesn’t matter if my third God can’t feel for the infirmities of my flesh. It doesn’t matter if He has never walked a mile in my moccasins. It doesn’t matter if He wasn’t crucified for me, as were the Father and His only-begotten Son. He doesn’t have to do any of that because He already knows my infirmities; He is omniscient. It doesn’t matter if He doesn’t give me the ability to identify with Him, it’s all a mystery and I just have to accept it! I won’t be held accountable for losing every opportunity to have a relationship with Jesus if our religion’s foundational doctrine kept me slack on seeking Jesus for His ‘likeness to sinful flesh’ (Rom. 8:3), who ‘in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren’ (Heb. 2:17). The Spirit third Person doesn’t have to be seen by faith, because He has no shape or recognizable features. The Spirit is a mystery, and that’s biblical. I’ll just rest on my strong faith in the Bible (I’m off the hook for striving to know Jesus because the whole Godhead is a mystery anyway). I’ll just go on trudging through life without a true friend from heaven. That’s the lot of a Christian, isn’t it?! Even if I spend 50 years of my life in the dark and without Jesus near my heart, as occurred with Mother Teresa, I’ll show God how strong my love is for Him.”

For the Trinitarians the Latter Rain won’t be about “unto us a Child is born”, but about “unto us the mighty, eternal, co-equal third person of the Trinity has come”. Thank you Trinity god! You have single-handedly destroyed the whole world by your ingenious, lying doctrine. “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” (Rev. 18:3).

“I saw the rapidity with which this delusion was spreading. A train of cars was shown me, going with the speed of lightning. The angel bade me look carefully. I fixed my eyes upon the train. It seemed that the whole world was on board. Then he showed me the conductor, a fair, stately person, whom all the passengers looked up to and reverenced. I was perplexed and asked my attending angel who it was. He said, ‘It is Satan. He is the conductor, in the form of an angel of light. He has taken the world captive. They are given over to strong delusions, to believe a lie that they may be damned. His agent, the highest in order next to him, is the engineer, and others of his agents are employed in different offices as he may need them, and they are all going with lightning speed to perdition.’” Early Writings, p. 263.

If the training of literary institutions of today is set on the Trinity, then their students will fit in perfectly with Ellen White’s Great Controversy, page 606  prophecy, quoted above. They won’t know “His Spirit”, Jesus’ Spirit, “the Spirit of Christ” (1Pet. 1:11; Rom. 8:9). The Latter Rain will be heretical to them. It will appear heretical and even blasphemous, as Jesus was called. It will not fit their expectations. It will require self-sacrifice. It will require conviction, their surrender to God’s heavy condemnation of sin, and their repentance. But, all who comply will have redemption; Jesus will be living in them by His Spirit. They will know it and will say it. This will be called unbiblical and heresy.

“For more than a thousand years the Jewish people had waited the coming of the promised Saviour. Their brightest hopes had rested upon this event. For a thousand years, in song and prophecy, in temple rite and household prayer, His name had been enshrined; and yet when He came, they did not recognize Him as the Messiah for whom they had so long waited. ‘He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.’ John 1:11. To their world-loving hearts the Beloved of heaven was ‘as a root out of a dry ground.’ In their eyes He had ‘no form nor comeliness;’ they discerned in Him no beauty that they should desire Him. Isaiah 53:2.” Prophets and Kings, p. 710.