If John and Marilyn Adventist could get out of bed extra early some summery Sabbath morning in the 1970s, hop into a backward-flying time machine, and attend church with the Seventh-day Adventists of 1851, they would need to be prepared for some very real surprises.
Even though they would find that the Howlands or Beldens or Chamberlains or Arnolds (or whoever else they sat next to during church) cherished many doctrines with which they were familiar, John and Marilyn would soon discover that several of the features of modern Adventism were strangely missing.
For one thing, "church" would not be held in a church. Sabbath-keeping Adventists first erected church buildings in Battle Creek, Michigan, and Bucks Bridge, New York, in 1855. When James White included a certain favorite Methodist hymn in his 1850 Hymns for God's Peculiar People, he left out the words, "On this Thy day, in this Thy house." [l] Early Adventists met in their own houses, with several families worshiping together under one roof.
Very likely there would be no preaching on the Sabbath morning when John and Marilyn paid their visit. By 1851 ministerial ranks had enlarged to include William Ingraham, George Holt, and a number of others in addition to Joseph Bates and James White; but there were by no means enough preachers to meet with all the weekly gatherings of the "scattered flock." Sabbath morning sermons were consequently rare. On a typical Sabbath hymns were sung to the accompaniment of a pump organ (if the leading family were fortunate enough to own one), Scripture and the Review were read aloud by local laity and discussed, prayers were offered, and, quite likely a "social meeting" was held during which the believers confessed their faults to one another and bore testimony to their faith.
If John and Marilyn remembered to take their Bibles with them, they would make good use of them. But their purses would likely remain unopened. Indispensable as offerings may be to modern Adventist gatherings, they were almost unheard of in 1851. Foreign missions were scarcely thought of till the 1870s, and Adventist ministers in the 1850s often went about their duties very much underpaid.
A considerable shock would strike John and Marilyn in the middle of the day when, invited to lunch, they saw pork placed on the table--and observed some of the other folk who were also invited to dinner light their pipes while they awaited their meal! Smoking, though scarcely approved, was reluctantly permitted among the brethren in 1851, and Ellen White's first comprehensive health reform vision was twelve years in the future.
Another shock would come at six o'clock in the evening. With summer's sunset still several hours away, our John and Marilyn would watch incredulous as their 1851 counterparts promptly at six pm set about their ordinary weekday duties! It would not be until November 1855 that Adventist pioneers would discover that "from even unto even" (Leviticus 23:32) means from sunset to sunset rather than, as they supposed, from six to six.
And if, during supper before flying back to the 1970s, John and Marilyn talked anxiously about one another's "Laodicean" condition, they would be met with uncomprehending stares. Sabbath-keeping Adventists applied the Laodicean message to Sunday-keeping Adventists until clearer (and more embarrassing) light came in 1856.
All of this points up the fact that the discovery of new light did not come to an end with the establishment of the "landmark" doctrines [2] in the late 1840s. Great new truths kept coming to light in the 1850s--as also in the 1860s (notably healthful living), the 1870s (foreign missions and education), the 1880s (deeper insights into righteousness by faith), and the 1890s (richer understanding of the person of Christ). In fact, Adventist understanding of the Bible advanced considerably after 1900 as well, and especially so in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
But to return to the 1850s. It is worthwhile to examine a particular belief which was developed during that decade and which was to become characteristic of the advent movement. This is the doctrine of the "investigative judgment."
When asked today, "What new work did Jesus begin in 1844?" an Adventist instinctively replies, "The investigative judgment." Surprisingly, when Hiram Edson's friend wrote out their great new understanding of the Day of Atonement in the Day-Star Extra--the publication which Ellen Harmon felt "fully authorized by the Lord to recommend to every saint"--he breathed not one word about investigative judgment! His emphasis, instead, was on Christ's work of blotting out sins in the sanctuary and on the cleansing of the people.
Probably this was providential. The primary purpose of the ancient Day of Atonement was indeed the blotting out of sins in the sanctuary and the cleansing of the people. The Lord (through Moses) told the people that the high priest entered the most holy place to "make an atonement for the holy sanctuary" and "to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord." (Leviticus 16:33,30)
But the Day of Atonement was also a day of judgment. The Israelites were expected to "afflict their souls" on that day. That is, they were required to search their hearts to the core to see if they were truly sorry for the sins which they had confessed day by day during the previous year. Any Israelite who refused to do this was to be investigated by the elders and cut off from the congregation. (Leviticus 23:29) But the Day of Atonement was not primarily a day of judgment.
It was primarily a day of intimate communion with God and of ultimate cleansing from sin. Backsliders were "disfellowshiped" on that day not so much because it was a day of judgment as because it was a day of supreme spiritual opportunity--and they didn't care.
The Millerites associated judgment with the cleansing of the sanctuary not because they found judgment in the Day of Atonement of Leviticus 16 but because the end of the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 parallels the judgment scene in Daniel 7:9-14, an event which they wrongly interpreted as the second coming. This is why they preached the first angel's message, "The hour of his judgment is come," When Jesus failed to arrive on October 22, 1844, some of the Millerites assumed that He had begun a brief period of judgment in heaven at the close of which He would yet descend to the earth. But when still He did not appear, they gave up the idea.
During the 1850s, however, J. N. Loughborough and Uriah Smith, who were both won to the Sabbath in 1852, had their attention directed to the judgment aspect of the Day of Atonement [3]. In 1857, two years after the Review and Herald office was moved from Rochester, New York, to Battle Creek, Michigan, James White used the term "investigative judgment."
It is quite obvious that if the first angel's message ("the hour of his judgment is come") precedes the second and third angels' messages, then the hour of God's judgment must strike before the end of the world in order to allow time for the second and third messages to be preached after the judgment begins.
The Day-of-Atonement judgment in ancient Israel concerned itself only with the people of God. It was they who had confessed their sins during the year. It was they whose sins were then to be blotted out. And it was they, not the Gentiles, who were subject to being "cut off."
Jesus referred to this special judgment of believers in His parables. He spoke about fishermen who catch all kinds of fish (converts) in their net (the church) and then sit down (in the judgment) to keep the good and throw away the bad. (See Matthew 13:47-50) He told of a king who invited everyone to a wedding feast and then, just before the meal, inspected the guests to see if those who had accepted the invitation had also put on the free wedding robe. When he found a man who thought that his own clothing was good enough, without the free covering robe, he ordered him out. (See Matthew 22:1-14)
Jesus also told of a man who owed his employer 10,000 talents. When the employee begged for mercy, he was freely forgiven. But when he went out and abused a fellow employee who owed him a hundred pence the employer had him thrown in jail. "So likewise," Jesus concluded, "shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses." (Matthew 18:23-35)
When in 1844 Jesus went on the clouds of heaven (Daniel 7) to begin this pre-second-coming judgment, He commenced an investigation into the records of the saints to see if those who had accepted His invitation to salvation had also put on the robe of His righteousness; to see if those who had been forgiven 10,000-talent sins at their conversion had thereafter forgiven other people who owed them a hundred pence.
So important a doctrine as this has continually engaged the thoughts of Seventh-day Adventists through the years since its discovery. Ellen G. White wrote about it frequently and clearly. She said, for example, that Christ's final ministry in the heavenly sanctuary is indeed a time of judgment in which each name written in the Lamb's book of life is taken up one at a time, and at which some names are retained and others erased. See Revelation 3:5; 21:27; 22:19.
Now Daniel 7 says that this judgment sits to give "the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven" to "the people of the saints of the most High." Its grand climax, therefore, unlike that of many earthly tribunals, is not so much the condemnation of the accused as the justification of the redeemed.
Because God really desires to honor His people in this judgment, He summons into evidence the book of remembrance (Malachi 3:16) where "every deed of righteousness" committed by His people, "every temptation resisted, every evil overcome, every word of tender pity expressed" has been carefully recorded, along with every sacrifice and sorrow endured for Christ's sake. [4]
God of course knows the verdict in advance. He conducts the judgment in the presence of unnumbered angels (Daniel 7:10) so that they can know it too. He wants every unfallen inhabitant of the entire universe to be proud of His earthbound but earnest saints who so soon will share the delights of eternity with them. The judgment, said Ellen White in 1898, is "held in the presence of other worlds, [so] that the love, the integrity, the service, of man for God, may be honored to the highest degree." [5]
Wonder, O heavens! Be amazed, O earth!
"They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up"--not my pebbles, or my stones--but "my jewels." (Malachi 3:17)
In His estimation of character God makes no mistakes. Notice the words of Ellen White: "How solemn is the thought! Day after day ... our acts, our words, even our most secret motives, all have their weight in deciding our destiny for weal or woe." [6] Those "believers" who have not grown in grace will not be allowed to enter the holy city.
But when Christ sees that a child of His has clung faithfully to Him to the end, He triumphantly claims on that person's behalf justification full and complete. Of that glorious time when the sins of the righteous will be blotted out finally, fully, and forever, Ellen White wrote with great warmth: "Christ will clothe His faithful ones with His own righteousness. ... Thus will be realized the complete fulfillment of the new-covenant promise, 'I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.' 'In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none.' (Jeremiah 31:34; 50:20)" [7]
It seems incomprehensible: "I will remember their sin no more." Can the infinite God forget anything? Are not past, present, and future all the same to His omniscience?
But the Bible doesn't say that God cannot remember their sins anymore. It says that God will not remember them anymore.
What a lot this reveals about the heavenly Father! With what eagerness He must anticipate this moment of the blotting out of sins! How deeply He has yearned, since rebellion first began, to rid His universe and His people of sin, to have done with it once and for all and forever! When He closes the cases of His people in their favor, He will remember their sins no more--not because He could not, but because He emphatically and lovingly will not.
When their sins are blotted out, the saints will not claim to be sinless. They need not. They claim Christ's sinlessness and cling to that.
The remembrance that they have fallen far short of the glory of God and their awareness that they are utterly dependent on Jesus for safety and support is enough to prevent any claim to self-righteousness. Yet when probation closes and the time of Jacob's trouble sets in, [8] although the saints "have a deep sense of their unworthiness, they have no concealed wrongs to reveal." [9]
Their confessed sins are blotted out, and they have left none unconfessed. Their sins have "gone beforehand to judgment." [10] They have been "borne away into the land of forgetfulness." [11] "Their sins ... have been blotted out." [12] And the heralds of heaven announce with joy, "You are clean from all your sins before the Lord."
But can sins be blotted out merely from the record books of heaven? Suppose that after their sins were blotted out the saints committed new ones--what would the "blotting out" have meant?
God can blot out the sins of those who die in faith by simply attending to their records. They are dead and cannot sin again. But will it not be vitally different for those who are alive when their names are called in the judgment? Can their sins be blotted out in heaven unless they are completely overcome on earth? The "blotting out of sins" must be achieved in the hearts of the living saints before it can be accomplished in their books of record.
Ellen White wrote very seriously about this in The Great Controversy: "Now, while our great High Priest is making the atonement for us, we should seek to become perfect in Christ. Not even by a thought could our Saviour be brought to yield to the power of temptation. ... There was no sin in Him that Satan could use to his advantage. This is the condition in which those must be found who shall stand in the time of trouble." [13]
In the same year that these lines appeared, Ellen White delivered a sermon [14] on a Sabbath afternoon at the great 1888 General Conference? held in Minneapolis in which she reminded her large congregation that "now Christ is in the heavenly sanctuary." Then she asked, "What is He doing?"
"Making atonement for us," the answer followed, "cleansing the sanctuary from the sins of the people,"
What then? "Then we must enter by faith into the sanctuary with Him, we must commence the work in the sanctuary of our souls. We are to cleanse ourselves from all defilement. We must 'cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.' "
We must do it? We must cleanse ourselves from all defilement? Is that in the Bible?
Indeed it is! She quoted from Second Corinthians 7:1. And James 4:8 adds: "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded."
Referring to the white-clad multitude in heaven, Revelation 7:14 describes them not as those whose robes Christ washed but as those who have "washed their robes, and made them white." Where did they wash them? In the blood of the Lamb, of course. There is no other source of righteousness. But they brought their robes to the blood; Jesus did not do the washing for them while they slept. Ellen White, writing in 1882, plainly stated that many "wish to have righteousness put upon them as a garment. But the white-robed throng of the redeemed ones, are those who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Christ has presented the matter as it is: 'Agonize to enter in at the strait gate; for many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.' " [15]
Everything hinges on our relationship to Christ, on our entire submission to the will and work of the Saviour. While our High Priest is engaged in His final atonement we, like the Israelites of old, must earnestly afflict our souls, our proud self-sufficient souls; for if we do not do this, we, like they, will be cut off--not because we have sinned (the very purpose of atonement is to forgive sins), but because Jesus engaged in a very special work of grace, and we didn't care.
Thank God, the grace of Christ is a wondrous strong detergent. If we submit ourselves to it, we can be made eternally sweet smelling and clean. "He is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap," Malachi 3:2 says; and then, speaking of the work Jesus is doing now in the heavenly sanctuary, Malachi adds in the next verse, "He shall purify the sons of Levi."
He shall purify the sons of Levi! In ancient Israel the priests were the sons of Levi. Since all believers in Christ are now called priests (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6), this promise to cleanse "the sons of Levi" is also a promise to cleanse every Christian who avails himself of the opportunity. The cleansing of the sanctuary, then, involves the cleansing of the people who look to the sanctuary. The blotting out of sins is not concerned merely with accounts but also with attitudes; not merely with the quantity of sins confessed but also with the quality of lives changed.
Here is where the Sabbath truth comes in. The Sabbath demands the very holiness that is required for the "blotting out of sins" in a person's daily experience. "In order to keep the Sabbath holy, men must themselves be holy. ... When the command was given to Israel, 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,' the Lord said also to them, 'Ye shall be holy men unto Me.' " [16] (See Exodus 20:8; 22:31)
Now, "holiness is not rapture: it is an entire surrender of the will to God; it is living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God; ... it is trusting God in trial ... ; it is walking by faith ... ; it is ... resting in His love." [17]
To keep the Sabbath holy in the ultimate sense, a person will live for an entire day with his will in complete surrender to Christ's power and holiness--living by the Word, walking by faith, resting in Love. Who can do this all day on Sabbath unless he practices it every day all week? Thus true Sabbath keeping and experiential "blotting out of sins" are one and the same.
But the Sabbath not only demands holiness, it also points to the only possible source of holiness. "I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." (Ezekiel 20:12)
As Christ stands beside the Ten Commandments in the most holy place blotting out sins in heaven, by His grace He sheds precious light on the world to help men and women, boys and girls, reach the standard of dedicated, well-informed victory that will enable them to stand in the time of trouble after Jesus leaves the heavenly sanctuary. "From the holy of holies," wrote Ellen White in 1887, "there goes on the grand work of instruction." [18] Accepting, believing, cooperating with this instruction, be the price what it may, is part of what is involved in bringing one's life to Christ to be washed, to have his sins "blotted out" in an experiential sense. "There must be a purifying of the souls here upon the earth, in harmony with Christ's cleansing of the sanctuary in heaven." [19]
Instruction about the sanctuary informs us what Jesus, the Lamb of Calvary, is doing now, and that we are living in a peculiarly crucial moment in human history.
Sabbath and sanctuary together remind us that as Jesus in the most holy place removes sins from records, He also seeks in a unique sense to remove sin from people's lives.
The sealing message points to the climactic moment when, through an indissoluble relationship with Jesus and an intelligent understanding of Sabbath and sanctuary, God's people will be settled into the truth, both intellectually and spiritually, so they cannot be moved.
The doctrine of the sleep of the dead guards against the supposition that people go to heaven or hell when they die, a belief that makes nonsense of any day of judgment. Why should God judge people after He has already sent them to heaven or hell?
Within this total context, the spirit of prophecy manifested through Ellen G. White is seen as a series of messages dispatched from the great High Priest, lovingly guiding His followers into the genuine Christlike holiness of character which He so much desires.
All together these concepts constitute a truly grand work of at-one-ment in which Jesus seeks to link His people into an ultimate and eternal bond of unity with Himself.
Wrote James White in 1868: "Seventh-day Adventists dwell upon this subject [of Christ in the sanctuary] with great delight. ... They treat [it] ... in their sermons and books, and find a place for it among the symbols of prophecy upon their charts. .... It is the great center around which all revealed truth relative to salvation clusters, and contributes more toward defining their present position, than any other." [20]
While the great truth of Jesus and the investigative judgment was first coming clear in the 1850s, the movement was growing at a very rapid rate, and the need for a central organization, much feared by some, was strongly urged by others. We turn now from doctrinal matters to the growth and organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church through the years.
Notes: