We have all heard the story of a ship's captain who carefully piloted his precious vessel through dangerous waters, steering it exactly by his compass. In spite of his best efforts, the vessel hit the rocks and sank.
In the inquest, the ship's compass was examined. Someone cleaning the wooden case had carelessly left a knife fragment lodged in a crack. This had deflected the compass enough to lead the vessel onto the rocks.
If any fundamental doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist church can be likened to a ship's compass, it's the sanctuary truth. This outline suggests that one of our illustrious leaders deflected our compass by a radical interpretation of Daniel 8 which has been widely but mistakenly accepted uncritically.
Undetected, it has magnetized Brinsmead, Ford, Cottrell, and other scholars into a repudiation of Bible support for the 1844 cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary. Sincere scholars have inherited a faulty compass. So this thesis suggests.
The prophecy of Daniel 8 and 9 provided direction for this church as a compass directs a ship. Our pioneers were virtually unanimous in their understanding of it. A key element was Daniel's figure of "the daily" taken away by the little horn. They saw it as paganism "taken away" politically in order to "set up" the temporal and persecuting power of the papacy. They understood the 1290 "days" as symbolic of years, commencing in 508 A.D. and ending in 1798. They also saw the 1335 "days" as parallel years, inter-related. This locked 1844 into Daniel 8:14, making Daniel's cleansing of the sanctuary to be necessarily the cleansing of the heavenly one. The pioneers' view was held unanimously by our people until the 1900s and enjoyed Ellen White's consistent endorsement (EW 74, 75; MS 67, 1910 [MS Release 1425]).
Then came a change. This outline suggests that Louis R. Conradi deflected our "compass" by introducing his "new view" that "the daily" was not an evil power (paganism) taken away or supplanted by a worse one, but it was the heavenly High Priestly ministry of Christ "taken away" by the papacy.
One of the first to accept his view was E. J. Waggoner. He forthwith repudiated Ellen White, for he saw clearly that she upheld the pioneers' view. This was the beginning of his seriously losing his way. Next, W. W. Prescott embraced Conradi's view, followed by A. G. Daniells, the General Conference president. These two gave the "new view" wide publicity, against Ellen White's counsel. In 1931 Conradi left the church completely, acknowledging that he had not been a Seventh-day Adventist for 25 years while being leader of our church in Europe.
Others who left over this issue were Ballenger, Fletcher, Grieve, Snide, Hilgert-a questionable track record for "new light." Many others of course have not pursued Conradi's view to its logical end, but these astute scholars did so, and it has proved a short circuit that makes Antiochus Epiphanes of 168 B.C. to be the necessary "primary" fulfillment of the Daniel 8 prophecy. In their schema, there is no room for an 1844 application except by a contrived "secondary" or "apotelesmatic" fulfillment which is seen as a "face-saving" accommodation ridiculed by non-Adventist theologians. Now some of our own such as Raymond F. Cottrell see the 1844 application as a "liability" supported only by Ellen White's writings. There is also resultant confusion spread by attempts to "interpret" the 1290 and 1335 days of Daniel 12 in a futurist literal sense.
These contradictory speculations are built on a repudiation of the pioneer view of "The Daily." None could even exist today within the framework of the pioneer view.
We must agree that the Seventh-day Adventist Church has not as yet made the world conscious of the stupendous implications of an 1844 change in Christ's High Priestly ministry. Is not our own zeal in proclaiming the message considerably dissipated by these in-house misgivings? How can we expect to convince the world of a doctrine we ourselves are not sure of?
This outline is offered tentatively, soliciting criticism, comment, or refutation from readers. Although I see evidence that Ellen White consistently supported the pioneer view, I appeal for a close study of the original Hebrew for its validation. I suggest the possibility that the pioneers' view was right, and Conradi's was wrong. And had it not been for the latter, we would not be mired in our present confusion and controversy about the sanctuary truth and prophetic interpretations.