Dear Dr. Rodriguez:

As you may be aware I am a pastor in the Pennsylvania Conference and have served as president of the 1888 Message Study Committee for more than five years. As a result of my own personal investigation of the writings of Jones and Waggoner, Ellen White, and Scripture, I have concluded that we as a Committee have misinterpreted and misrepresented, in significant respects, the Message that Jones and Waggoner brought to the Church in the 1888 Minneapolis General Conference and during the ensuing years.

We have conveyed the impression in our publications and seminars that every soul comes into the world in Christ and therefore is legally justified with eternal life placed in their hands which can only be lost by spurning that which one presumably already possesses. I find no evidence for these propositions in the overall context of the writings of Jones and Waggoner, especially during the years 1888-1896. Neither do they exist within the writings of Ellen G. White and Scripture.

I have further concluded that these teachings of the Committee leave the listener with a false sense of assurance leading to presumption. From my own study on these subjects I have written a rather extensive critique of the “in Christ” motif and the Committee’s concept of legal justification which I have attached to this email. If you find any value in the critique, please feel free to add it to the other documents on the BRI Web Site dealing with the teachings of the Committee.

From John W. Peters