The Truth About the
Human Nature of Christ
Vance
Ferrell
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The truth about the human nature of Christ is one of the basic
doctrines undergirding the entire plan of redemption. Few facts are more
crucial to our salvation. Yet it is a tragic fact that few of our people recognize this
truth for what it is—a cornerstone, not only to the work of Christ to save us
from sin, but to the quality of our daily Christian experience. WHAT IS THIS TRUTH? This great truth, which is fully supported by the Bible and
Spirit of Prophecy, explains that Christ came from the highest heaven down to
our level in order to save us. Jacob’s ladder reached all the way. “Christ is the ladder that Jacob saw . .
If that ladder had failed by a single step of reaching the earth, we should
have been lost. But Christ reaches us where we are. He took our nature and
overcame, that we through taking His nature might overcome.”— Desire of
Ages, 311-312. “It took the divine and the human to bring into the world the
salvation that was needed by fallen man.”—Review, November 1, 1892. Christ had to
become a human being like us, in order to save us. If He had only become a
man like unfallen Adam,—He could only have saved unfallen Adam. (Yet,
ironically, Adam before his fall did not need saving; he was sinless.) “Christ took our nature in its deteriorated condition.”—Manuscript,
143, 1897. It was necessary for Christ to unite the fullness of divinity
with the fullness of our fallen nature, in order to reach man and lift him
up. “He took upon Him our nature that He might reach man in his
fallen condition.”—Signs, September23, 1889. “He assumed human nature, that He might elevate the human
family.”—Review, February 15,1898. In order to successfully redeem us, Christ had to successfully
resist the temptations we must meet. He is the Forerunner. He has gone before
us, showing us the way. That way is obedience to the law of God, through
faith in divine power. “He took our nature, and in it lived a life of perfect
obedience.”—Signs, January 25, 1899. “Every temptation that could be brought against fallen
humanity, He met and overcame . . Had He not been
fully human, He could not have been our substitute.”--Bible Echo, August 2, 1897. Because Christ took the humanity we daily live with , He had to resist sin just as we do. How then did He
succeed? Did He rely on His divinity to help Him? No, no. We are never told
that in Scripture. Instead, we are told that He trusted in a divine power
outside of Himself. By faith, He received power from God to help Him
overcome. Through the life, death, and mediation of Christ, that power is
available to us also! “Christ took upon Himself our infirmities, and in the weakness
of humanity He needed to seek strength from the Father.”—Review, October 11, 1881. “Here He lived as a man among men, meeting the temptations that we must meet,
and overcoming through strength from above. By His sinless life He
demonstrated that through the power of God it is possible for man to
withstand Satan’s temptations.”—The
Watchman, February 26, 1907. He came down fully to our level. The ladder reached all the
way to the ground where we stand; not the mountaintop up in the clouds where
unfallen Adam stood. “He suffered every phase of trial and temptation with which
humanity is beset.”—Manuscript 35,1895. “He had all the strength of the passion of humanity.”—Signs, November 21, 1892. He had the strength of the inherited tendencies to passion,
but He did not have the passion itself. For He never once chose to indulge in
sin. He never once yielded. In full reliance upon His Father for help, He
stood firm as a rock for the right. He was sinless. “But many say that Jesus was not like us, that He was not as
we are in the world, that He was divine, and therefore we cannot overcome as
He overcame. But this is
not true. ‘For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on
Him the seed of Abraham.’ (Hebrews 2:16) . . He took
upon Himself our nature.”—Bible Echo, November 1, 1892. The plan of salvation required that Christ, who was fully God,
become fully man—and in our fallen nature, live a perfectly clean, sinless
life. His sacrificial death on Calvary, and His mediation
in the Sanctuary above, provide the atonement by which we may be
saved. For, from heaven, Jesus provides His followers with enabling grace so
they, too, can obey the Father’s law, just as Jesus did while on earth! “Many claim that it was impossible for Christ to be overcome
by temptation. Then He could not have been placed in Adam’s position; He
could not have obained the victory that Adam failed
to gain. If we have in any sense a more trying conflict than had Christ, then
He would not be able to succor us. But our Saviour
took humanity, with all its liabilities. He took the nature of man, with the possibility of yielding to
temptation. We have nothing to bear which He has not endured.”—Desire of Ages, 117. “As Jesus was in human nature, so God means His followers to
be.”—Signs, April 1, 1897. “The Saviour took upon Himself the infirmities of humanity,
and on this earth lived a sinless life that men should have no fear that
because of the weakness of human nature they would not be able to overcome.”—Manuscript 51, 1903. So there is the glorious truth of the human nature of Christ!
Can you now see why it is a bedrock truth,—a truth the entire atonement is
based upon? If Christ did not take our nature, if the ladder did not reach
all the way,—we would be hopelessly lost. We could not be saved. We could not
go to heaven. IT IS A GREAT EVIL TO TRY TO DESTROY THIS TRUTH FROM MEN’S
MINDS But, unfortunately, men are trying to do just that. They are
working at cross-purposes with God. They are trying to convince men that it
is not necessary to obey God’s Holy Word. The excuse they give is that they fear “perfectionism.” What
they really fear is that they might have to put away their own sins and give
up their darling idols. What is more evil than inventing a religious teaching
which excuses sin, and then tries to deceive thousands into believing that
lie! These men assuage their sense of guilt, by finding comfort in the number
of people they can convert to their error. They draw assurance from the many
on their side—that they must be right: that God will not punish them for
holding onto their cherished sins. Surely, theirs is an evil work, and, if those men do not
repent, erelong it will bring the wrath of God and a burning in hellfire. It is bad enough when Catholic priests and Protestant pastors
convert their flocks to the hideous teaching that it is safe to sin. But when
men, funded by the tithe in the Adventist denomination, use that support to
spread their deception that men can have salvation in sin, the sin becomes
profoundly great. Who can give an atonement for the
souls of such men? “He who has not sufficient faith in
Christ to believe that He can keep him from sinning, has not the faith that
will give him an entrance into the kingdom of God.”—Review, March 10, 1904. That which makes the evil even worse is that so many of these
men have had great light. They have had the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.
They know that both teach that Christ took our fallen nature. The truth is so
obvious that only those believing the most carefully-crafted deception can
withstand it. Some of these men, such as Helmut Ott
and Morris Venden, have declared that those who try
to obey God’s law, will be lost in perdition unless they repent. It is
claimed that man can only be saved by sitting back and letting God do it for
him. But God’s Word assures us that unless we do our part, we will
not—we cannot—be saved. We must personally choose to resist temptation and
sin. We must actively, sacrificially obey the teachings found in the Bible
and Spirit of Prophecy. THE ROY ADAMS BOOK A basic landmark in the ongoing apostasy of the leadership of
our denomination occurred this year, 1994. The Review and Herald Publishing Association published the book,
The Nature of Christ: Help for a Church
Divided Over Perfection. It is being advertised in denominational
journals and sold in our bookstores. The book purports to explain that Christ took the nature of
unfallen Adam, that our leaders and writers—with the exception of three
men—all taught it until recent times, and that it is the only teaching in the
Bible and Spirit of Prophecy. But such a contention is blatantly untrue! “My thesis throughout is that the theology of these three men
[A.T. Jones, E.J. Waggoner, and M.L. Andreason] has
provided the spawning ground for the position on righteousness by faith and
perfection held by certain Adventists today . . “Without a doubt, the roots of the present agitation go all
the way back to Jones and Waggoner.”—Page 29. Yes, such a claim is blatantly untrue. A.T. Jones and E.J.
Waggoner primarily spoke and wrote on this subject between 1891 and 1901. But
Ellen White and other of our pioneer leaders were writing on the subject all
the way back to the early 1850s. This is abundantly verified by Ralph
Larson’s excellent book, The Word Was
Made Flesh. Repeatedly, our early leaders taught the Bible truth that
Jesus took our human nature, not Adam’s unfallen nature. And they showed that
this great truth was a bedrock truth underlying the fact that, in Christ, we
too can resist and overcome sin—and overcome as Christ overcame—by relying on
divine power! The ten spies in the wilderness brought a lying report to the
people, which caused so many to miss out on Canaan. Men today are knowingly
bringing equally false reports. I say “knowingly” advisedly. There is far too
much detail referred to, in Adams’ book, for it to be the work of individuals
unacquainted with the writings of the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy, and our
earlier leaders. In a recent study, [the late] Ralph Larson described the
situation well: “By the end of the year 1898, other church leaders had
published their own views on the nature of Christ, not different from hers, a
total of 76 times. (See The Word Was Made Flesh.) This number does not
include statements from Jones and Waggoner. It does include statements from
such other church leaders as James White, Uriah Smith, Stephen Haskell, W.W.
Prescott, J.H. Waggoner, M.C. Wilcox, R.A. Underwood, Alton Farnsworth, Elgin
Farnsworth, W.H. Glenn, J.E. Evans, William Covert, J.H. Durland,
G.C. Tenny, G.E. Fifield,
and others. These writers did not mute their messages. The total includes
nine editorials and five front page editorials . . “And let us not overlook the fact that while Jones and
Waggoner were co-editors of the Signs
of theTimes (1885-1891), they published, in
that journal, three statements by Ellen White that Christ had come to earth
in the human nature of fallen man. In the years 1890-1891, Waggoner, as sole
editor, published five more. Meanwhile, Jones, as editor of the Review (1887-1891), published eleven
such statements in that journal . . “Jones and Waggoner, far from being innovators or teachers of
the new doctrines, were actually standing firmly in the mainstream of
Seventh-day Adventist theology, regarding the nature of Christ and character
perfection. Their teachings were emphatically not the root of those
doctrines; they were rather the fruit . . “In our The Word Was Made Flesh, we document 1,200 statements
on the nature of Christ that were published by our church leaders between the
years 1852 and 1952, 400 of them by Ellen White. During that same period,
until her death in 1915, Ellen White published 4,500 statements regarding
character perfection. (See Tell of His Power.)”—Ralph Larson, World-Class Straw Man, Landmarks, June1994. Regarding the teaching that Christ took our nature, not of
unfallen Adam, Roy Adams declares that, among our people, only A.T. Jones and
E.J. Waggoner taught it in the nineteenth century. We have viewed the
inaccuracy of that idea. “So in the construction of his world-class straw man, Adams
has apparently arbitrarily selected two persons, Jones and Waggoner, from
among a large group of Adventist thought leaders, including Ellen White, and
assigned to them the responsibility for creating doctrinal attitudes that
were actually shared by them all and had been witnessed to by some of them
before Jones and Waggoner came along.”—Ibid. What about Adams’ other charge that no leaders taught it in
the twentieth century until M.L. Andreasen did? “The perfectionist agitation within the Seventh-day Adventist Church
today had its genesis in the post-1888 teachings of A.T. Jones and E.J.
Waggoner... The linkage of sanctification, perfection, and Christ’s nature
that has become dominant among certain groups is a direct legacy of M.L. Andreason’s theology.”—Page 37. Ralph Larson, who spent months preparing an in-depth book on
the subject, replies to Adams’ second charge: “This leads us directly to the other proposition in the
structure of straw erected by Adams. Was M.L. Andreason
a person who accepted strange and new doctrines from Jones and Waggoner and
urged them upon the church, or was he only one among a host of witnesses to
generally accept these truths?. . “In regard to the nature of Christ, we have documented
statements by General Conference presidents such as Daniells,
Watson, Branson, and McElhany; vice presidents such
as Prescott, Thompson, Haynes, Fulton, Olsen, Christian, Rudy, and Hackman; union presidents such as Underwood, Farnsworth,
Slade, and Turner; local conference presidents such as Farnsworth and Evans; Signsand Review editors and associate editors such as
M.C. Wilcox, G.C. Tenney, W.H. Glenn, Uriah Smith,
F.D. Nichol, Oscar Tait, Alonzo Baker, C.M. Snow,
and F.M. Wilcox; the first president of our theological seminary, M.E. Kern;
seminary teacher, L.E. Froom; college president,
W.E. Howell; other teachers and leaders including T.M. French, Merlin Neff,
L.C. Wilcox, Meade Macquire, C.L. Bond, and J.E.
Fulton; and many, many others . . “We did not find a single evidence that any of our leaders or
believers held a different view from the mainstream on either the nature of
Christ or character perfection until the mid 1900s—not one. And let it be
remembered that we made it our goal to examine every article or book that had
been published in the English language during the period of 1852-1952”—Ibid. Well, now we have a far better understanding of Roy Adams’
book,—a book which is being highly recommended by many of our denominational
leaders. It is of the highest significance that the liberals in our
church are praising Adams’ book the most. Those who are weakest on reproving
sin, upholding standards, or urging men and women to obey the law of
God;—these are the ones who are especially urging our people to read and
believe Roy Adams’ book. But, of them all, the highest praises have been sung by none
other than Desmond Ford! He simply raves about Adams’ book. WHAT FORD SAYS ABOUT ADAMS’ BOOK Desmond Ford, the most active breakaway liberal among us in
the past several decades, lauds the book—and for two special reasons: (1)
because he fully believes what it teaches, but (2)—because it represents a
major victory for the liberals in the entire Adventist denomination! “At last! After a century and a half, the Seventh-day
Adventist Church has published a book devoted entirely to the vital subject
of the sinless nature of Christ, our Lord and Saviour. “For nearly fifty years, the denomination has been rent by
divisions over this issue [37 years: 1957, when Questions on Doctrine was
printed, on down to the present time]. “The denomination’s major university, Andrews University, has
for nearly half a century clearly taught that our Lord’s spiritual nature was
like that of Adam—without spot or blemish. Still, the denomination’s publishing
houses have hesitated to proclaim that truth in any publication of scholarly
responses that many have longed to make.”—Desmond Ford, A Book Review, Good News Unlimited, July 1994. For the record, Andrews was not teaching the unfallen nature
between 1955 and 1958. But, three months after the present writer graduated
from that institution, Desmond Ford arrived and, I have been told, urged
Edward Heppenstall to come out in the open with his
beliefs. Ford can hardly lavish enough praise for Adams’ book. I recommend Roy Adams’ book wholeheartedly. It reminds me of Perfect in Christ, by Helmut Ott, which was published in 1987 by the same publishers. Ott’s book, which I also heartily recommend, is of the
same genre. However, as mentioned at the beginning of this review, Roy Adams’
The Nature of Christ is (as far as
I know) a first in Adventist publications. It is the first official S.D.A.
book to affirm the sinless nature of Christ, our Lord and Saviour. We salute
the author and the publishers.—Ibid. Note by rwb: It should be pointed out that Dr. George R.
Knight, fully endorsed Roy Adams’ book The
Nature of Christ. So George is just as errant as
Roy Adams. End note. Intriguingly enough, Ford, in his book review, differs with
Adams on two points: (1) Ford says he takes a more open stand on the error of
St. Augustine, that we are locked into sin, by means of “original sin” from
Adam. “First, as with many modern theologians, Roy does not like to
speak of mankind inheriting guilt from Adam.”—Ibid. (2) Ford maintains that it was not possible for Christ not to
succeed. It was an easy victory, since He could not really sin anyway (since
He supposedly had Adam’s unfallen nature). So there was little sacrifice in
coming to earth, living here for a time and then dying on the cross. “Second, Dr. Adams takes the popular Adventist view (found in
Ellen White’s writings) that the destiny of the human race hung in the
balance when Christ came to earth. There was no absolute certainty that
Christ would overcome and conquer and successfully complete the Atonement. In
other words, Christ could have sinned . . “The salvation of the human race did not hang in the balance
when Christ came. Success was absolutely certain. Success had been predicted
with full assurance—Christ’s provision of salvation would, indeed, eventuate
on behalf of the whole human race.”—Ibid. CONCLUSION It was stated, at the beginning of this article, that there
can be few evils more terrible for one who knows the Spirit of Prophecy
writings, to attempt to lead everyone in the church into the belief that they
no longer need to obey God’s Inspired Writings or His laws. Let us say it again: Why is it such a terrible evil? Because
the God of heaven committed the special message of Revelation 14:6-12—the
Third Angel’s Message—to this people. And for anyone to attempt to turn them
from their assigned task—to live and preach obedience to the law of God—is
unmitigated evil of the very worst sort. A correct understanding of the nature of Christ is part of the
Third Angel’s Message! As we clearly saw from Ralph Larson’s comments, Roy
Adams’ book is founded on a terrible untruth. Read what the Bible says about the matter: “God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.”—Romans 8:3. “Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which
was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.”—Romans 1:3. “For both He that sanctifieth and
they who are sanctified are all of one: For which
cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.”—Hebrews 2:11. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and
blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same.”—Hebrews 2:14. “For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He
took on Him the seed of Abraham.”—Hebrews 2:16. “Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto
His brethren.”—Hebrews 2:17. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”—John 1:14. May God have mercy on His people! There is so little time
left, and there are so many false teachers! —Vance Ferrell Addendum by rwb: Scripture says that all who do not believe Christ is come in
human flesh are come in the spirit of antichrist. So the SDA omega of
apostasy new movement 1. 1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye
have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. 2. 2 John 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. |