The historically monumental gathering of delegates to the 1888 Minneapolis General Conference Session has become a focal point of intense interest in the world-wide Seventh-day Adventist Church. Questions of vital importance have arisen:
- What really happened in 1888?
- What were the doctrinal issues involved?
- Who were the personalities involved?
- What were the results that followed?
This book addresses these questions and other key issues. It was written originally as a private document for the General Conference. It is now updated and released in response to numerous requests world-wide. In many previously unpublished statements Ellen G. White is permitted at last to speak freely and frankly to 1888 issues of paramount interest. The bulk of these statements were unknown to most of her contemporaries. What she says will come as a surprise to many in this generation.
The authors of this key historical chronical, Donald K. Short and Robert J. Wieland, as ordained ministers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, had an aggregate of over 100 years of service, 62 as missionaries in Africa. This publication was initiated by loyal Seventh-day Adventist ministers and lay members longing for a revival of that “most precious message.”
The critical importance of learning and understanding our history as a people is underscored by the following testimony:
The work is soon to close. The members of the church militant who have proved faithful will become the church triumphant. In reviewing our past history, having travelled over every step of advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment and with confidence in Christ our 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.
—Letter 32, December 19, 1892, par.38 (Ellen G. White writing from Australia to the Brethren of the General Conference)