Sabbath School Today, Volume 9 - Paul E. Penno

In Revelation 12 we see the history of the true church and the
identification of the "remnant" church. Through the ages she is symbolized
as a "woman." After the horrors of 1260 years of papal persecution, she
emerges as from a tunnel, now identified as "the remnant": "And the dragon
was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her
seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of
Jesus Christ" (vs. 17).
With the end of the Dark Ages, inventions began pouring out of fertile
minds. The horror of slavery began to be abolished; the little nation of ex-
British colonies began to prosper in the New World; Christian people
awakened as from a long sleep--the second coming of Christ was near. The
world had embarked on what the Bible describes as "the time of the end." A
preparation for the return of Jesus Christ became to intelligent people a
reasonable "blessed hope." Through unmistakably divine leading, the
message began to go worldwide.
Hearts responded and capable people did things. Clearly blessed by the
Holy Spirit, a message joining together the gospel of Jesus with the ideals of
healthful living worked wonders in tired, sickly people; the world's finest
health institution (for then) was established in Battle Creek, Michigan, where
even European royalty crossed the Atlantic to come. There the "West's"
finest Christian publishing house was established. What the apostles after
Pentecost longed for seemed to be on the verge. A solemn but joyous sense
that the world had entered into the cosmic Day of Atonement gripped hearts
worldwide. The "blessed hope" of the imminent return of Christ made life
here below a taste of heaven.
For a century and a half that church has been identified by divine
inspiration as the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, which had its roots
in the Great Disappointment of 1844 and the reformations that followed in
succeeding decades until its formal organization in 1863. Throughout the
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