Men Who Have Arisen

LESSONS FROM THE PAST

From time to time, men have arisen in our ranks with a message. But there were earmarks in their conduct and/or in their message that were as red flags which should have been a warning. Other men arose whose deportment and message were both beneficial.

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Milian Lauritz Andreasen (1876-1962) was another man who arose among us with a message. But M.L. Andreasen was neither proud nor did he try to tear down our God—given Bible—Spirit of Prophecy beliefs. Instead, he sought to defend them, even though to do so meant opposing leaders in our denomination. Andreasen was not afraid to name names and call sin by its right name.

For decades, he had been a leading evangelist, and later dean or president of one or more of our colleges. Andreasen had a clear mind and never swerved from loyalty to the God of heaven and the Bible—Spirit of Prophecy writings. He wrote 13 books, and, by the 1940s and 1950s, was our leading authority on the sanctuary service.
But while the Evangelical Conferences met in the mid-1950s, efforts were made to keep a lid on the doctrinal sellout that our leaders in Washington were carrying out with representatives of the Evangelicals. When M. L. Andreasen learned what was happening, he was aghast.

It is an intriguing fact that there were hundreds of other men in our colleges, publishing houses, administrative offices, and local churches, who also gradually learned what was taking place. Word spreads fast among the work force. But, fearing to lose their job, nearly everyone kept quiet. But not M. L. Andreasen. He would not sell out for a mess of pottage. You will find the entire story of what occurred in our Evangelical Conferences, now in section two of our Doctrinal History Tractbook. Andreasen published the facts and named the names. He called sin by its right name. The only response was to castigate him as a "troublemaker.” But he could rightly reply, as did Elijah to Ahab, "I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim" (read 1 Kings 18:17—18).

Not the burden of denouncing error, but the vicious response of rejection and abandonment hurled at the man from every direction, led to bleeding ulcers which killed Andreasen in 1962. He died a martyr for God's truth. And that is not a poetic sentiment, but an accurate statement.

Andreasen was a man who arose with a message—not of denunciation of the Spirit of Prophecy or our historic beliefs,—but rather a defense of both, combined with a strong reproof of the very men who were trying to new—model our beliefs into an image of modern Protestant error.

M. L Andreasen tried as hard as he could to stem the doctrinal apostasy that two men in Washington, D.C. (LE. Froom and RA. Anderson) were agreeing to, in order to keep peace with Walter Martin and Donald Barnhouse, so those Protestant leaders would print in their journal, Eternity; that we were a true-blue "Evangelical" church.

Most of Andreasen's efforts were made in the middle and late 1950s. Soon another voice was to be raised in our church.


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