Calvary at Sinai

Chapter 7

D. M. Canright

Elder Butler received a devastating blow on February 17, 1887. It was to be the first fallout from "that terrible conference" of 1886. Butler listened as his old friend and colleague, Dudley Canright, asked to be disfellowshipped from the Otsego, Michigan, church. Butler reported the reason for Canright's decision to Ellen White.

He talked perhaps three-fourths of an hour or more. He said in substance that he could go no longer with Seventh-day Adventists, he had ceased to believe that the law was binding, and did not expect to keep another sabbath. . . .

The last straw for Canright was evidently the 1886 conference and the experience he had on the Theological Committee. As Butler reported it-

He was very much disgusted at the turn some things took at the time of our last General Conference, some of the theological questions that came up and the way that some of our brethren acted toward them made him feel badly and set him to thinking so he said he went to studying this law question and came to the conclusions that he has.

Canright had been on the theological committee of nine, at the time of the 1886 conference, centered on the law in Galatians 3. That discussion had caused Canright to think that his views were incorrect. Galatians 3 was talking about the moral law. Then Canright reasoned, if it was the Ten Commandments that was the "schoolmaster," it was truly done away with at the cross, and that included the Sabbath.

Canright had a typological covenant dispensational view of the old and new covenants just like Butler and others. That framework of the covenants caused a misunderstanding in Canright's view of the relationship between the law and the covenants in Galatians 3 which addresses the issue of the heart in relation to faith, law and covenant. He was compelled to abandon the Ten Commandments as far as the new dispensation was concerned. concerned.

Canright later wrote:

No other subject perplexes Adventists so much as the covenants. They dread to meet it. They have tried various ways to explain it away, but they are not satisfactory even to themselves. I have been there and know. "The abolition of the Sinatic covenant carries with it the abolition of the Jewish Sabbath so completely that no authoritative trace of it can be found this side of the grave of our risen Lord."

Elder Smith says: "If the ten commandments constituted the old covenant, then they are forever gone." This, therefore, becomes a test question.

One of the main reasons Elder Canright left the Seventh-day Adventist Church was because he believed the law was abolished with the old covenant when Christ died. He did not see any connection between the law and the new covenant as a heart experience. Hence the Sabbath was viewed as abolished with the Sinai covenant. This was but a logical conclusion for him, having already embraced the time-based paradigm that the old covenant is followed by the new covenant which went into effect after the cross. He shared this view of the covenants with Elders Butler and Smith.