A Timely Communication

So timely was this message, so providential the arrival of the communication from California at the very time when the question was under discussion with strong convictions on both sides, so evident was it that of her own self the writer could have known nothing of the crisis to which they had come, and so clear was the analysis of the dangers of the theory under discussion, that there was an almost unanimous conviction among those present in the council that it had been indited by One more than human. The result was a sharp cleavage between those who accepted it and a very few who continued to maintain and teach the theory of God’s actual presence throughout the universe. The Battle Creek Sanitarium became the headquarters of this group, and the Medical Missionary its official publication. There was no immediate change of denominational affiliation, however.SHM 324.1

The subtle dangers connected with the new conception of God were clearly pointed out by the ministry of the denomination by voice and pen. While “claiming to be a new revelation of the greatness and the nearness of God,” it was shown that in reality it “belittles God in His true character, and puts Him far away. That concept of God which makes Him too large to sit upon His throne in heaven as a personal being, and diffuses Him throughout the universe, really reduces Him to nothingness, and puts Him outside the universe.” It strikes at the heart of the heavenly sanctuary, and its cleansing, with the personal ministry of Christ as high priest. Furthermore, as pointed out editorially in the Review and Herald, when such a doctrine is accepted, “the way is prepared to reverse the whole order of faith, and to exalt self to the place which belongs to God by substituting a so-called ‘spiritual consciousness’ for the revelation of divine truth, and by looking to self-effort in the way of evolution rather than to faith in the direct working of another actual being in a new creation.”—The Review and Herald, January 7, 1904.SHM 324.2