If I was to share a quote from Ellen White that started like this, “Of all professed Christians, Seventh-day Adventists should be foremost in uplifting . . . ” and asked you to complete the sentence, what would you say?
Seventh-day Adventists should be foremost in uplifting . . . the Sabbath? the Second Coming? the state of the dead? the three angels’ messages? the health message?
Perhaps you’d be surprised at her answer.
“Of all professed Christians,” she wrote in 1891, “Seventh-day Adventists should be foremost in uplifting Christ before the world.”1
For those of us who are dyed-in-the-wool Seventh-day Adventists, and who have a heart for our unique mission and calling, her answer may catch us off guard. We’ve typically framed our purpose as focusing on matters that aren’t understood or emphasized by other faith communities.
Thus, we talk a lot about the Sabbath, what happens when a person dies, Christ’s return, the investigative judgment, or healthy eating—all things that fall under the banner of what we often label “present truth.”
Bringing emphasis to these topics is, in many ways, the reason for our existence.
Thus, we seem to imply, other Protestant denominations can preach Jesus; we’ll bring them “present truth.”
And yet, at least according to Ellen White in 1891, nobody should talk more about Jesus than Seventh-day Adventists. Indeed, as I like to say, no one should “out-Jesus” us.
No Adventist should ever preach a Christless or crossless sermon.
This isn’t to say, of course, that “present truth” and Jesus are in conflict with each other or that they’re necessarily even different subjects. As I’ve pointed out a number of times in various places, Adventist theology is never more beautiful and powerful than when it is understood and presented in the light of Jesus—and Jesus is never more attractive than when the depth of His character is explained through these various facets of “present truth” (so long, of course, as those various facets are truly saturated with the dynamism of Christ).2
But the larger point is that we as Adventists should be the head and not the tail when it comes to our emphasis on and living out the reality of Jesus. We should make much of Him. We should regularly speak of His love and dwell upon His sacrifice.
And we should talk about other themes only as they are connected to Christ and His love.
Elsewhere, Ellen White made this very point: “The sacrifice of Christ as an atonement for sin is the great truth around which all other truths cluster,” she explained in 1901. “This is to be the foundation of every discourse given by our ministers.”3
Simply put, no Adventist should ever preach a Christless or crossless sermon. Nor should any person, preacher or otherwise, center our faith on anyone or anything else. Jesus is where our power resides. He is how our lives are transformed. He is the reason for our existence.
Indeed, no person—or denomination—should be able to “out-Jesus” Adventists.
1 Ellen G. White, The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials (Washington, D.C.: Ellen G. White Estate, 1987), vol. 2, p. 891. (Italics supplied.)
2 See, for example, my book There’s More to Jesus: Encountering the Fullness of Christ in Adventism (Warburton, Victoria: Signs Publishing, 2016).
3 Ellen G. White, Evangelism (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1946), p. 190.