Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

by Richard W. Schwarz

Quick Overview A classic work of Adventist history revised and updated for today’s reader More than 20 years ago Richard W. Schwarz chronicled the exciting story of how a "little flock" grew into the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist denomination with some 10 million members operating churches, schools, hospitals, publishing houses, and other institutions in the book Light Bearers to the Remnant. Now Floyd Greenleaf, for many years a professor of history at Southern Adventist University, has revised and updated the book to deal with the developments in the world of Adventism since the earlier edition was published. The result is Light Bearers, a carefully researched, contemporary history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that shows how continuity despite change, unity in diversity, and singleness of purpose amid an expanding breadth of activity have combined to produce an Adventist world that the pioneers could never have imagined.

688 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Edith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a big fat book...think “Pillars of the Earth” size. There was much of interest in it, but I only read the assigned chapters, given that it is quite a comprehensive history of Adventism. The stories of most of the movers and shakers of this group from its inception to the 1980s are included, many of them fascinating.

One of the most interesting is John Harvey Kellogg. Yes, folks, we are talking about the breakfast cereal here. Kellogg was brought under the tutelage of James and Ellen White (two of the founders of Seventh-day Adventism) as a teenager and was sent to school to become a doctor. He established the first Adventist medical sanitarium in Battlecreek, MI which became known worldwide for combining natural treatment methods with the best science of the day. He was a writer, a lecturer, an educator, and inventor of granola and cornflakes. Kellogg was a dynamo who created numerous medical programs and institutions which organized all the humanitarian work of the church. His operations became an empire administered in his “imperial style”. He was heavy with control. But alas, conflict with the church eventually occurred because Kellogg wanted his sanitarium and medical mission work to be non-denominational and he did not want to share control with the church, who felt he was pouring too much money into his projects. Kellogg’s vision of Adventism was as the “Good Samaritan to all the world”. He felt that the mission of the church was to heal the sick and uplift the poor; his view was that helping people was more important than theology. On the other hand, the clergy saw Kellogg’s health reform as secondary to the gospel message. Other differences factored in, and it was with great sadness that Kellogg’s membership as a practicing Seventh-day Adventist was finally terminated in 1907. Interesting man.

See? You didn’t know that cornflakes had a connection to Seventh-day Adventism, did you?

[Lana Kapiniak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to read historical books and to find out where the roots are of a certain belief, tradition, or a situation. The book thoroughly answered my cravings for knowledge in this area.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of the Seventh-day Adventist church is the emergence of a small band of disappointed Millerites to that of a worldwide church of more than 10 million members by the end of the 20th Century, but not without struggles of all kinds along the way. Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church by Richard W. Schwarz with revisions and updates by Floyd Greenleaf is comprehensive look into the development the denomination over the course of over 170 years by professional historians balancing their own religious beliefs and professionalism.

“Beginning” in 1839, though not without highlighting Advent strains across the Christian spectrum leading up to that point, and finishing at the year 2000 with the need to focus on the doctrinal, organizational, institutional, and missionary facets of the denomination’s history was a challenge needing an organized and methodical approach for the reader. Dividing the history into three parts Greenleaf used Schwarz’s formula of advancing all the facets of the denomination’s development at the same space—though some overlap from one part to another was unavoidable—in different chapters but linking them to past or future characters when required. These three parts, “Origins and Formative Years 1839-1888”, “Years of Growth and Reorganization 1888-1945”, and “The Globalization of the Church 1945-2000” give the reader, while not a step-by-step look at the denomination’s history, at least a lens to view the events that shaped the denomination as its history developed. A fourth part, “Maintaining a Biblical Message”, relates the challenges that 20th Century members had keeping the unique doctrines of the Church based Biblically as well as answering challenges from not only without but within as well.

Given the multifaceted aspect of history that a book on the Seventh-day Adventist Church entails as well as revising and updating a previous history, Greenleaf did a professional job. Yet as the first 15 chapters of the book are the original work of Schwarz with scant revisions, it is also a testament to his own professionalism that they hold up just as much as the final third when Greenleaf’s own work is solely on display. With numerous historical actors and events throughout the over 170 years, both authors delicately balanced the need to be informative enough without slowing down the pace of the book unless the covered topic was doctrinal and thus needed a thorough explanation to better understand the controversy being covered.

Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church might look like a daunting book at nearly 700 pages, but for those interested in the development of the denomination that they are either apart of or wanting to understand this is the book for them. Longtime Adventist historians Richard W. Schwarz and Floyd Greenleaf both balance their religious beliefs with their professionalism to give the reader an accurate—warts and all—look at a now global church that developed from only a few hundred disappointed Millerites.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of details in the reading, It was hard to put a context around the details unless you already knew the frame of reference. I needed to read it as part of a certification process. Enjoy!