Seventh-day Adventists unblush- ingly explain their explanation to cover up William Miller’s false predictions in Belief & Work of Seventh-day Adventists, Alonzo L. Baker: . . The . . . group, out of which the Seventh-day Adven tist denomination came, held that the date was correct but that the event predicted fo r the date was wrong. They opened their Bibles, and with determination studied the prophecies anew. Soon they discovered their mistake . The ‘sanctuary’ o f Daniel 8:14 was not the earth, as they had sup posed, but, instead, was the sanc tuary in heaven. . . . A fter dili gent study of the sanctuary ques tion, they found that Christ, our great High Priest (Heb. 8:1, 2), upon His ascension to heaven, en tered the holy place o f the heav enly sanctuary, and that in 1844 He entered the most holy place, there to cleanse it by blotting out the sins of all those who have accepted the sacrifice He made on Calvary. They learned that the great antitypical Day of Atone ment began at the time they had supposed Christ was to appear. Furthermore, they d i s co v e r ed that when Christ finishes His work in the sanctuary, He will come to visit judgment upon the earth — an event, of course, still future” (p. 13). Out o f this unscriptural sanc tuary theory grew the Seventh- day Adventist teaching of “ The I n v e s t i g a t i v e Judgment” de scribed in detail in Mrs. White’s The Great Controversy, pages 545 to 557. According to this fab rication, the blotting o f sins will not be accomplished until the coming of Christ, and our Lord Jesus Christ is now engaged in reviewing the sins o f believers. They therefore cannot now re joice in an accomplished salva tion. William Miller lived six years after his unfulfilled predictions and died a broken man, who had sadly stated: “We expected the personal coming o f Christ at that time; and now to contend we were not mistaken is dishonest. I have
No cult claims to adhere to the Bible more than does Seventh-day Adventism. In reality, they de pend upon Mrs. White’s writings for the full truth rather than the Word. Her pretensions were au dacious and blasphemous. Of her own writings, The Testimonies, she averred: “ It is God, and not an erring mortal that has spoken” (V. 3, p. 257) ; “ I f you lessen the confidence o f God’s people in the Testimonies He has sent them, you are rebelling as certainly against God as did Korah, and Dathan, and Abiram” (No. 31, p. 62). “ They are what God has opened to me in vision” (No. 31, p. 63) ; “ In ancient times God spoke to men by the mouth o f the prophets and apostles. In these days He speaks to them by the Testimonies of His Spirit” (No. 33, p. 189); “ It is hardly possible for men to offer a greater insult to God than to despise and reject the instru mentalities that He has appointed to lead them” (No. 33, p. 208). The officials of the sect corrob orated Mrs. White’s belief that she was a prophetess of God: “We believe that she has been empow ered by a divine illumination to speak o f some past events which have been brought to her knowl edge with g r e a t e r minuteness than is set forth in any existing records, and to read the future with more than human foresight” (Unnamed SDA writer in preface to 1903 ed. o f The Great Contro- versey by Mrs. White). “ As with the ancient prophets, the talking is done by the Holy Spirit through her vocal organs. The prophets spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (Lake Union Herald, 11-7-41). F. M. Wilcox, longtime leader and editor of the SDAs, declared of Mrs. White: “ As Samuel was a prophet to Israel in his day, as Jeremiah was a prophet to Israel in the days of his captivity, as John the Baptist came as a spe cial messenger of God to prepare the way for Christ’s appearing, so we believe that Mrs. White was a prophet to the church to-
no confidence in the new theories that grew out of the movement” (History of the Advent Message, pp. 410, 412). These new theories were a whole brood o f heresies which still form the Seventh-day Adventist doct r ine , contributed by various leaders — Bates, Holt, Rhodes, Edson, Andr ews , etc., and, above all, James White and his extraordinary, neurotic and visionary, wife, Mrs. Ellen G. White, who, after his death, be came the prophetess of the move ment. Married when very young, the Whites had been part o f the date-setting movement of 1843- 44. They exercised unbelievable influence. Ellen White, when only 17 years of age, had fallen into trances and claimed visions in periods of unconsciousness. Her claims were preposterous: that she conversed w i t h angels in Heaven who guided her about and that actually she talked with the Lord Jesus Christ in person. She wrote these visions in what are called her “Testimonies,” accept ed by the Adventists as “ divine revelations.” In them are found all the basic teachings of the sect: the Jewish sabbath as binding up on believers; soul sleep; annihila tion — not eternal punishment — of the unsaved; the incomplete atonement; the sanctuary theory. Amazingly, the older leaders of the movement, let the young, un educated, fanciful girl direct their thinking as she gathered their various views into her volumes. Of Miller’s p r e d i c t i on s Mrs. White made this outrageous ex planation: “ I have seen that the 1843 chart was directed by the hand of the Lord, and that it should not be altered; that the figures were as He wanted them; that His hand was over, and hid a mistake in some o f the figures” (Early Writings, p. 64). Of the churches who did not accept Mill er’s prophecy, she dec l a r ed : “ They rejected the light from heaven, and fell from the favor of God” (Early Writings, p. 237).
Seventh-day Adventism and the Bible
JANUARY, 1970
37
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