Guidance by the Spirit

Just what measure of spiritual illumination they received, it is impossible for us to know and declare. From our knowledge of the limitations and blindness of the minds of men at the present time, we cannot conceive how those leaders could see, and understand, and do as perfectly as they did without special guidance by the Holy Spirit. Perversion, darkness, and corruption were universal and supreme. Many of the spiritual leaders of the period sincerely believed that the Lord made Himself known to them in visions and spoke to them in dreams.AGP 221.2

Many of God’s servants and messengers in Old Testament times had similar experiences. Abraham’s call to the land of Canaan, his journey to Egypt and back, his strange experience with Abimelech, king of Gerar, and many other providences must have been full of mystery to him. They could not be “understood by themselves.” But when they were all brought together in the central purpose of God to establish a model nation for Himself in this ruined world, they could be understood.AGP 221.3

But although Abraham could not understand the meaning of these single, detached events as they came along one by one, he believed in God. He knew God had spoken to him. He obeyed by rendering prompt and full co-operation in carrying out the divine purpose. He wrote no prophecies. He worked no miracles. He made some mistakes. Yet of Abraham the Lord said, “He is a prophet.” Genesis 20:7.AGP 221.4

So it was with leaders in succeeding generations. They were called men of God, seers, prophets. The brief and seemingly ordinary service of some would not lead us to count them as prophets, but for the direct statement of the word of God. Evidently they had communications from the Lord of which there is no mention. They were given messages, however, which led them to meet the purpose of God in the gospel. Not all were called to foretell events or to work miracles. To them were revealed the purposes of God not known to others. Their mission was to bear these messages to their fellow men.AGP 222.1

John the Baptist was brought into the world to bear a new message to the human race—to herald the advent of the Son of God. He recognized God’s purpose, he understood the mission of his very existence, and performed it exactly as God had planned. This is true greatness as God estimates greatness. The Saviour declared that there had been no greater prophet than John.AGP 222.2

The great Reformation was in the purpose and plan of God. He allowed the apostasy to come, but He did not intend that it should forever fully eclipse the light of His glorious gospel. He did not intend that His light should shine no more, that the human race should end in the midnight blackness of papal ascendancy. Therefore, in His own time and way He visited men, spoke to them, illumined their minds, gave them messages to bear to their fellows, and inspired them to carry out His purposes and plans. Such a glorious company of messengers was raised up in the early part of the sixteenth century. Says Wylie:AGP 222.3

“One thing has struck all who have studied, with minds at once intelligent and reverent, the era of which we speak, and that is the contemporaneous appearance of so many men of great character and sublimest intellect at this epoch. No other age can show such a galaxy of illustrious names.” “The History of Protestantism,” Vol. I, Book 8, chap. 1, p. 410.

All the great reformers built on the same foundation. All placed emphasis on the great fundamentals,—the Christ, the Spirit, the word, the law, and the gospel, according to the Scriptures of truth.AGP 222.4

The history of the post-Reformation times shows unquestioned evidence of the same imperative need of inspired leaders who had existed in the pre-Reformation centuries. The Reformation did not spring up in a day, nor was it finished in a day. The great events that took place between the nailing of Luther’s propositions on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, and the signing of the Augsburg Confession in 1530, were the climax, the consummation, of centuries of study, preaching, persecution, and martyrdom of godly men. The maintenance, the holding of what had been gained, and its fuller development, have required the same kind of men who, under God’s inspired leadership, brought the Reformation to birth.AGP 223.1