...I resolved at once
that I would study the Bible in the light of that revelation, in order that I might help others to see the same truth. I have always believed that
every part of the Bible must set forth, with more or less vividness, that glorious revelation [Christ crucified]."—The Last
Confession of Faith.
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Ellet J. Waggoner
1855-1916
Ellet J. Waggoner was the son of J. H. Waggoner. Ellet was a learned young man, and while in school he had become a doctor. This young man along
with Alonzo Trevier Jones were chosen of the Lord to bring a special message to his people—The message of RIGHTEOUSNESS or JUSTIFICATION BY
FAITH. They held Christ before the minds of the Church, and up lifted him as an all sufficient means for the salvaion of the Christian, proclaiming
that it was faith in the merits of Christ alone that could avail the Christian of eternal life. E. J. Waggoner left his profession as a physician
and began to teach the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Waggoner relates part of his experience in these words: "I was sitting a little apart from
the body of the congregation in the large tent at a camp meeting in Healdsburg, one gloomy Sabbath afternoon. I have no idea what was the subject
of the discourse. Not a text nor a word have I ever known. All that has remained with me was what I saw. Suddenly, a light shone around me, and the
tent was, for me, far more brilliantly lighted than if the noon-day sun had been shining, and I saw Christ hanging on the cross, crucified for me.
In that moment I had my first positive knowledge, which came like an overwhelming flood, that God loved me, and that Christ died for me. God and I
were the only beings I was conscious of in the universe. I knew then, by actual sight, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself;
I was the whole world with all its sin. I am sure that Paul's experience on the way to Damascus was no more real than mine.
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