Seventh-Day Adventism

(From Horton Davies, understood to be public domain)

Now therefore why tempt ye God, that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
(Acts 15:10)

This millenarian sect, which flourishes among uneducated and underprivileged peoples and classes, claims that it is the only true Church because it alone keeps the fourth Commandment inviolate by observing the Sabbath on the seventh day, whereas the rest of Christendom observes it on the first day of the week. Its followers, the Seventh-Day Adventists declare, alone will be among the 144,000 elect who will attain to everlasting life.

How then, does such an odd creed commend itself to hundreds of thousands of adherents? In the first place, it has an army of agressive evangelists; it does not, like so many Churches, leave witnessing to the professionals. These evangelists would shame most Christians by their thorough, if literal, acquaintance with the Bible, which they are able to quote volubly, with references to chapter and verse. Even their Adventism, despite the crudity of some of its teaching, represents a two-fold protest against both the modernism that teaches an inevitable progress towards Utopia and the less refined traditionalism that clings to a belief in a Hell where the damned suffer everlasting torments. In opposition to both of these concepts, Seventh-Day Adventism declares that the Second Advent will take place quietly (no blood-curdling Armageddon will bring the new world order in) and that evildoers will be annihilated, not subjected to eternal torture. These factors account, at least partially, for the numerical success of this sect which originated, like so many others, in the United States of America in the nineteenth century.

The movement cannot be understood apart from a brief account of its history. As in the case of Christian Science and Theosophy, Seventh-Day Adventism had a female founder, Ellen Harmon, though she is better known under her married name, as Mrs. Ellen White. She shares with Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy another peculiarity - she did not admit her theological thefts! Just as Mrs. Eddy leaned heavily upon the teaching of the quack Quimby, without acknowledging her indebtness, so did Mrs. White pick the brains of William Miller, the founder of the Adventists.

William Miller was a Baptist, born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1782, who was educated at Low Hampton in New York State. This farmer studied the Bible with extraordinary zeal, but without historical knowledge or critical acumen, and announced in 1831 that he had discovered the exact date of Christ's Second Coming. He declared confidently that, on the basis of the predictions of Daniel and Revelation, this event would take place in 1843. When nothing happened during this year, he admitted a mistake in his calculations and postponed the fulfilment of his prophecy to the following year. When he was again proved wrong, he gave up Adventism. In his significant renunciation, he stated:

"On the passing of the published time, I frankly acknowledged my disappointment. We expected the personal coming of Christ at that time; and now to contend that we were not mistaken is dishonest. We should never be ashamed frankly to confess our errors. I have no confidence in any of the new theories that grew out of that movement, namely, that Christ then came as the Bridegroom, that the door of mercy was closed, that there is no salvation for sinners, that the seventh trumpet then sounded, or that it was a fulfilment of prophecy in any sense." [1]

Despite his recantation, Ellen Harmon (White), a neurotic young woman, persisted in believing that his prophecies were substantially correct, and founded a sect, named the Seventh-Day Adventists. They held the view that

"the Lord did really come in 1844, not to the earth, but to cleanse the sanctuary in Heaven...The Lord passed into the sanctuary in 1844, which Mrs. White was taken up to Heaven and shown." [2]

They believed that our Lord then cleansed the sanctuary and commenced the Final Judgement, closing the door of mercy to sinners. They claimed that only those who knew about the 'change' could benefit by His mediation. Others, according to Ellen White, 'offer up their useless prayers to the apartment which Jesus left'. [3] Salvation was made to depend on knowledge of an event in 1844 of which only the Seventh-Day Adventists had heard, and upon the observance of the Jewish Sabbath in place of the Christian Lord's Day. The latter tradition of Christendom is named 'The Mark of the Beast' by Seventh-Day Adventists. Their greatest claim is that they are alone in preaching the three messages referred to in Revelation 14.6-12 that 'the seal of God is the holy Sabbath' and that the 144,000 of Revelation 7.1-8, who are to be translated at the Advent, are now being sealed.

The peculiar beliefs of the Seventh-Day Adventists must now be considered in detail. The first feature is, of course, their teaching on Adventism. Now, although the founder of the Adventist movement, William Miller, admitted that his predictions had been erroneous, Mrs. White refused to give up the idea of a predicted Advent. Mr. D. M. Canright, a former elder of the sect, informs us in his Seventh-Day Adventism Renounced that he was taught that 'the Judgement of the World had started already in 1844, and that the End of the World was to be expected in this generation'.

The assertion that Christ entered into the sanctuary of Heaven to effect its cleansing was the doctrine discovered by Mrs. White which gave a significance to the year 1844. This, however, was done only at the cost of a severe distortion of the New Testament teaching on the Atonement. She held that the world of our Lord was not finished on earth in the days of His Passion, because 'as the closing portion of His work as priest, before He takes His throne as King, He will make the great atonement'. [4] According to her, Christ entered only the outer sanctuary at the Ascension, not the holy of holies, although this is clearly contradicted by Hebrews 1.3.

The third and most prominent element in their teaching is their insistence upon a seventh-day Sabbath. This position they defend on Biblical and historical grounds. While Mrs. Ellen White admitted that the New Covenant had done away with the Old Covenant of Moses, she yet held that the moral, as distinct from the ceremonial precepts of the Law were still binding on Christians. She went on to argue that since the observance of the Sabbath on the seventh day occurs as one of the commandments of the moral law, therefore the observance of the Sabbath on the seventh day is unrepealed and is a perpetual obligation on Christians. To substantiate this teaching, Mrs. White claimed to have had a vision of the santuary in Heaven where

"Jesus raised the cover of the ark, and she beheld the tables of stone on white the ten commandments were written. She was amazed as she saw the Fourth Commandment in the very centre of the ten precepts, with a soft halo of light encircling it." [5]

The historical claims of the Seventh-Day Adventists that the Churches fell into apostasy in this matter rests on the assertion that the Council of Laodicea in A.D. 394 changed the Sabbath or seventh day to Sunday or the first day of the week.

They further teach that Jesus Christ inherited a fallen human nature, as may be gathered from the following citation:

"In His humanity Christ partook of our sinful, fallen nature. If not, then He was not 'made like unto us His brethren', was not 'in all points tempted like as we are', did not overcome as we have to overcome, and is not therefore, the complete and perfect Saviour man needs and must have to be saved." [6]

Their final distinctive doctrine is their belief in the sleep of the soul after death. The state of the dead is said to be 'one of silence, inactivity and entire unconsciousness'. The five proof texts for this doctrine, all significantly taken from the Old Testament, are: Psalm 146.4; Eccl. 9.5,6,10; Dan. 12.2.

Seventh-Day Adventism must now be subjected to detailed criticism, the thoroughness of which is warranted only by its rapid spread and its tendency to insinuate itself by glossing over the differences between its tenets and those of the historic Christian Churches.

This sect lacks the charity which should characterize the company of those to whom Christ addressed the words, 'I have called you friends, not servants'. None the less, the Seventh-Day Adventists acknowledge themselves alone to be among the 144,000 elect and castigate all the Churches which celebrate the Lord's Day on the first day of the week (the rest of Christendom, no less) as 'Babylon', bearing 'the mark of the Beast'.

Their insistence upon this necessity for keeping the seventh day or Jewish Sabbath as one of the main articles of faith on whicih salvation depends is both foreign to the New Testament in its declension from grace to legalism and deficient in any true sense of Christian proportion. Furthermore, its assertion that the change from the seventh day Sabbath to the first day Sunday was made by the Council of Laodicea is unhistorical.

Col. 2.14 rightly reminds us that 'the hand-writing of ordinances' (the Law of Moses) was 'blotted out' and nailed to Christ's Cross, as in ancient times old bills were nailed to the doorpost when paid. Since Christ has met every claim of the Law on our behalf, its precepts are no longer obligatory on Christians. The distinction which Mrs. White made between ceremonial and moral law is entirely unknown in the Old Testament, as a perusal of Ex. 24.3 will show conclusively. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand how she could have regarded the matter of observing a particular day as more holy than another as a moral issue, when it is more obviously a matter of ceremonial import. In any case, Christians believe in the supremacy of grace over law, whereas she would make the New Testament a new Leviticus. The New Testament shows us that even the moral law of the Old Testament is superceded. The Old Testament declares 'Thou shalt not kill'. But this negative concept is replaced in the New Testament by the more positive and penetrating counsel, 'If thine enemy hunger, feed him; and if he thirst, give him drink'.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ frees us from empty ceremonial and scrupulous adherence to the letter of the Law. St. Augustine insisted that all the ethical precepts of Christianity could be summed up in the injuction: 'Love God and do what you like'. In short, this doctrine of the Seventh-Day Adventists is an irrelevant legalism in the life of the Spirit. It is already condemned in the words of Col. 2.16-17, 'Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.'

There is, moreover, a positive reason for the change from the seventh day to the first for the celebration of the Lord's Day during the Christian dispensation. The old Sabbath was a memorial of the origin of life; the new Sabbath, commemorating Christ's resurrection, is a memorial of the victory of life over death. In the felicitous words of Dr. Lewis Radford:

"The old Sabbath marked the close of the first stage of divine activity, Creation; the new Lord's Day marks the beginning of the second stage, Regeneration. The Sabbath ended the week with a Nunc Dimittis of resignation; the Lord's Day begins the week with a Te Deum of renewal." [7]

Even the claim that the Council of Laodicea introduced the change from the celebration of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Lord's Day is unwarranted. In the first place, this was an Eastern Council and was therefore not authoritative for the more important Western Churches. In the second place, it merely forbade Christians from abstaining from work on the Jewish Sabbath, calling this practise 'Judaising'. In fact, there is evidence to show that the Lord's Day was generally celebrated on the first day of the week in the second century. The Epistle to Barnabas (early second century) records: 'Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose from the dead'. And Justin Martyr, writing about the middle of the second century, declares: 'But Sunday is the day on which we all hold a common assembly, because it is the first day of the week on which God...made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.'

The most overwhelming indictment of the sabbatarianism of this sect is offered by Dr. James Black:

"To found a church on that ancient, outlived and outdated Jewish Sabbath passes comprehension. There are so many big things worth fighting for. Why fight for a shadow?" [8]

Our third criticism must be of the Adventism of the sect. Their system is vitiated by a misconception of the function of prophecy. They assume that the prophet's task is to foretell the course of events like an inspired crystal-gazer. Beyond the immediate horizon of the prophet there is only the vision of the final victory of the Kingdom of God. The prophet tells of the consequence of unrighteousness and predicts the joy of the people of God if they repent, but he does not predict events in detail. If he did, this would make his offer of salvation to be freely accepted meaningless, for a predetermined future and an appeal to change the heart are incompatible. In any case, the Seventh-Day Adventists go beyond the statement of our Lord in their arrogance, for He declared of the Second Advent, 'No man knoweth the hour...not even the Son'. Seventh-Day Adventists presumably lay claim to a higher revelation than that vouchsafed to the Messiah.

Fourthly, the Seventh-Day Adventists in their doctrine of the sanctuary would destroy the true significance of the Ascension of our Lord and of His Priesthood. They claim that there were two stages in our Lord's High Priesthood, corresponding to the Jewish high priest's ministrations first in the outer chamber and then in the inner chamber of the earthly tablernacle. But the Epistle to the Hebrews represents Jesus as entering into the inmost sanctuary of the presence of God, not merely to purify the heavenly things, but 'now to appear before the face of God for us'. [9] In the New Testament purifying and appearing are clearly two aspects of the one fact. Adventists have, therefore, no shred of Biblical evidence for their fantastic belief that the appearance of the perfect Man to present His sacrifice of obedience even unto death took place in A.D. 1844. The writer of Hebrews believed that it took place at the Ascension. [10]

Dr. Radford draws out the logical consequences of this belief, with its denial of the New Testament doctrine that Christ 'ever liveth to make intercession for us', in the comment:

"Adventism stands committed to the amazing theory that for eighteen centuries the ascended Christ was still waiting to enter the sanctuary of the presence of God and to prepare the heavenly world for the approach of man to God...If this atoning entry took place in 1844, what was the scene, the character, the efficacy of His activity for those eighteen centuries of human time?" [11]

The effect of this belief is also to redice the function of the Holy Spirit during eighteen centuries to being the minister of the unfinished work of the Father and the Son.

The assertion that the intermediate state after death is one of entire unconsciousness can find Old Testament warrants, but is entirely contradicted by the New Testament. The latter teaches or implies that the soul is conscious in the unseen world. The parable of Lazarus (Luke 16.22-5), the promise our Lord made to the dying thief (Luke 23.43), the impatient cry of the waiting martyrs (Rev. 6.9-11), the wish of St. Paul (Phil. 1.21), and the missionary activity of the human spirit of the Christ among the departed between His death and His resurrection (1 Pet. 3.19 and 4.6) controvert the assertions of the Seventh-Day Adventists.

Finally, their admittedly erroneous interpretations in the past awaken grave suspicions and leave little room for confidence in their doctrines. On two occasions their predictions of the Second Advent have been proved false. They once began their Sabbath at six in the evening, but changed the time when they discovered that the Biblical Sabbath began at sunset. There was a time when they enforced a vegetarian diet on their adherents; once they condemned all religious organization and political voting as 'marks of the Beast'; once they prevented their children from attending and being contaminated by State schools. None of these practices is now insisted upon. Their official explanation that the Lord was trying their faith by disappointments was convenient, but it is not convincing.

On the whole, then, their claims prove that their distinctive doctrines are merely the products of computation and speculation. They have no New Testament warrant and they deserve to be designated both heretical and schismatical. These labels will not disturb them in the least, for they have already anathematized all other Christian denominations as "The Whore of Babylon", since they do not imitate their Judaistic Sabbatarianism; but they will serve to put Christians on their guard against accepting the claims of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Yet more orthodox Christians would do well to imitate their warm missionary generosity, which speaks of grace in practice, despite their cold legalistic theology.

Footnotes

1. History of the Advent Message pp410, 412

2 Early Writings pp114-15

3 Spiritual Gifts p 172

4 Fundamental Principles

5 Cited W. C. Irvine, Heresies Exposed (Pickering and Inglis, 8th edn., 1937), p149

6 Bible Readings for the Home Circle (1915 edn.), p. 115

7 L. B. Radford, Ancient Heresies in Modern Dress (Robertson, Melbourne, 1913), p. 78

8 New Forms of the Old Faith (Nelson, 1948), p. 221.

9 Heb. 9.24

10 Heb. 8.1

11 Ancient Heresies in Modern Dress (Robertson, 1913), p. 87