Tell it to the World. The Story of Seventh-day Adventists

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The Story of Seventh-dayAdventiSts What Adventists Owe to Other Christians

Tell It to the Worid On the continent of Europe devout Anabaptists called for "believer's baptism." And they gave their lives for it when necessary. The first Anabaptist to die appears to have been a pretty Swiss girl whose head was held under water in a horse trough in mock imitation of believer's baptism. Others died in this way or by beLng drowned in rivers. Or burned at the stake. Or barbecued beside-a fire. Others were laid on open coffins too small for them. Soldiers pounded them in with their hobnailed boots. Analagous to the Anabaptists on the continent of Europe were the Baptists of England and America. 6 These also insisted that only believers and not infants should be baptized. But unlike most Anabaptists they advanced to "baptism by immersion." In the eighteenth century teaching on predestination began to grow stale. Millions who had never felt the fear of priests began to fear that God Himself might have chosen them to be lost! John Wesley recovered the New Testament truth that salvation is free for all-for "whosoever believeth." John 3 :16. Wesley founded the Methodist Church, which accepted the principles of "the Bible and the Bible only," the "priesthood of believers," the status of the Lord's Supper as a memorial bringing through faith a healing sense of the presence of Christ, and the doctrine that the Christian's life should be a transformation. Wesley always held to infant baptism, but he and his church permitted baptism by immersion to those who desired it. (Ellen Harmon was baptized by immersion into the Methodist Church.) What the Methodists did was typical of other Christians. They accepted truth from those who had gone before and added further new light, and in this way God's truth was ever seen more clearly. There were individual Christians, too, through the centuries, who learned that God does not torture sinners after death but lets them rest. Wycliffe believed in the "unconscious sleep between death and resurrection." Martin Luther taughtthat death in Christ "is a fine, sweet, and brief sleep." In England the Anglican Francis Blackbu rne, the Baptist Matthew Caffyn, and the Puritan poet John Milton shared this belief. In America the former Methodist minister George Storrs and the former Congregationalist minister Charles Fitch also taught the sleep of death. These are a few samples of a large number who believed the same.? Reference to Storrs and Fitch reminds us that in the early nineteenth century came the great interdenominational second

advent awakening, in which the truth about the second coming of Jesus shone with greater luster than it had since the second century. Out of that awakening rose the Seventh-day Adventist Chu rch. Annie Smith was a Baptist. Rachel Oakes was a Seventh Day Baptist. Hiram Edson, Frederick Wheeler, and Ellen Harmon were Methodists. Joseph Bates and James White were members of the Christian Connection. stockbridge Howland was a Congregationalist. As these and increasing thousands of others became Seventhday Adventists in the early days of the new movement, they did not give up the beautiful truth about God which they had learned in their former denominations. I nstead, they fou nd new glory in it as they learned still richer concepts. Justification through Jesus Christ, victory through the Holy Spirit, salvation by faith alone, the Bible as the only rule of faith, priesthood of believers, baptism by immersion, the near return of Christ-all this and more Seventh-day Adventists drew from their former churches. To it they added the Sabbath (from the Seventh Day Baptists) and fanned its flame into a brilliant torch. More than any before them, they taught that a gracious God lets the dead sleep until the resurrection. Supremely, they offered to the world the exciting news about the great new enterprise in which Jesus is now engaged in heaven. So when Adventists say that they have "the truth," they mean that they have the truth that other Christians held beforethem, and also the present truth, the special additional truth which applies particularly to this present time. The knowledge that Jesus is in the most holy place, blotting out sins, would not have been truth in the days of Martin Luther. Jesus wasn't in the most holy placethen. But He is now. And the implications are immense. When Adventists invite a friend to leave his denomination and ~ecome a Seventh-day Adventist, they don't expect him to give up everything he knows as a Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian or Catholic. Far from it! Every beautiful facet of truth he learned about Jesus in his former church, he should cherish even more warmly in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, adding to the glorious things 113

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s Tel! It to the World he al ready knows the great and vital truth discovered by Seventh. day Adventists. When an Adventist says he has "the truth," he is not boasting. It isn't his truth. It's God's truth; truth which God has revealed, not to satisfy curiosity, but to be spread everywhere to everyone who will listen, to everyone for whom Christ gave His fife and whom H'e lives to save. God has placed this lustrous truth in our hands. Now He asks us urgently, expectantly, to run with it and tell it to the world. '

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16 Jesus and "Investigative Judgment" 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 18705, and Adventist 115

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ministers in the 1850s often went about their duties very much underpaid. A considerable shock would strike John and Marilyn in the mid. die 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 sun· set rather than, as they supposed, from six to six. And if, during supper before flying back to the 19705, John and Marifyn talked anxiously about one another's "Laodicean" condition, they would be met with uncomprehending stares. Sabbathkeeping Adventists applied the Laodicean message to Sunday. keeping Adventists until clearer (and more embarrassing) light came in 1856. AI( 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 18405. Great new truths kept coming to light in the 1850s-as also in the 18605 (notably healthful living), the 1870s (foreign missions and education), the 18805 (deeper insights into righteousness by faith), and the 1890s (richer understanding of the person of Ch rist). 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 worthwhileto 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, liThe 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 116

Jesus and "Investigative Judgment" 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 Dav of Atonement was also a day of judgment. The Israelites wer~ 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 :-vas 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 "disfe\lowshiped" 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 judgmentin the Day of Atonementof 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 Atonement3 • 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." 117

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~t Tell It to the World It is quite obvious that if the first angel's message (lithe hour of his judgment is come") precedes the second and third angels' messages, then the hour of God's judgment must strike beforethe 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 concerneditself only with the people of Cod. 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 subjectto 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 throwaway 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,OOO-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 di:covery. 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 118

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some names are retained and others erased. See Revel, . 21:27; 22:19. ;:: Now Daniel 7 says that this judgment sits to give "the.t