All who love Jesus.
You say, what?
You can include people with all sorts of errors?
Well, when I include Adventists, I do that.
You know, all our teaching of historicism on prophetic themes and setting dates,
our scholars have known for decades that's all wrong.
William Miller was a great Christian.
God used him to revive the Second Advent pre-millennial hope.
God used him, great man, but not a great scholar and not even a great
mathematician.
And almost all our dates like 538, 508, 1798, 1844, they all come from Billy
Miller and he's wrong in all of them.
He's wrong in all of them.
There is no evidence of papal supremacy from 538 to 1798, that's just not true.
Ask any historian.
There was papal supremacy for two to three centuries, around the 11th century or so.
It's just not true, all we said about 538 to 1798, that's a hangover from Miller and
Miller was wrong.
All the stuff we said on the trumpets, French Revolution and Revelation 11,
United States and Revelation 13, none of it's correct.
I remember one night
when I walked with Cottrell around Tacoma Park in the 1950s and told him my problems
with Adventist interpretation of prophecy.
He had all the same problems.
So he went to Elder Nicholl, he said, what do we do?
This one on 814, he said, none of our scholars believe it.
Nicholl said, write to all the scholars who know Hebrew and Greek and ask them.
All 27 came back and said, you can't prove an investigative judgment or in 1844 out
of Daniel 814.
We should look at her statements and if she doesn't agree with scripture and if
she's contrary to the gospel, you know a few twisted rails can cause a terrible
train wreck.
All right, so what have we learned?
Here's a quote, and you tell me if this is gospel or not.
Not one of us will ever receive the seal of God while our characters have one spot
or stain on them.
It is left with us to remedy the defects of our characters, to cleanse the soul
temple of every defilement.
Testimonies to the Church, Volume 5, 214.
Does that sound like scripture?
Let's read Ephesians 1, 13, okay?
In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your
salvation, having also believed, you were sealed with him, with the Holy
Spirit of promise.
So Ellen White says, you've got to cleanse the soul temple of every defilement before
you're sealed with the Holy Spirit, or the Sabbath, she would probably say.
Paul says that when we listen to the gospel and we believe it, we are sealed.
And that's eris passif, means in a point of time, done by somebody else.
Praise God for the gospel.
How about this one?
Ellen White says, we cannot receive the Holy Spirit until we break every yoke that
binds us to our objectionable traits of character.
Adventists want to appear as an open, friendly, evangelical church.
And they're making great inroads in that respect.
They really are.
And yet in their evangelistic series, they will tell believing Christians that
they're going to get the mark of the beast if they don't keep Sabbath and join the
true remnant church.
Now I think it's deceptive to teach both.
They can't have it both ways.
But they are doing it both ways because the evangelical church is asleep and does
not understand it.
And Paul, I appreciate what he is doing to open it up so people understand what's
going on.
Now let's review.
The writings of Ellen White are a continuing and authoritative source of
truth.
And she has many, many statements contrary to Scripture that undermine the gospel.
She has some good statements too.
Many of them.
The Sabbath observance is required for salvation and Sunday is the mark of the
beast.
Now we come to pillar number three.
This is the central pillar of the Adventist church.
And it is the investigative judgment and the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary.
Now, take a deep breath and listen.
I'm going to read to you a summary of this teaching.
And by the way, this was the teaching that caused me to leave the church.
I have read thousands of pages on it.
And I've talked with many Adventist leaders including Chairman of the
Department of Religion and so on on this topic.
And everybody I talked to in private admitted it was an error.
But in public they wouldn't say that.
Every sin must be confessed.
And as was alluded here tonight, sins which have been forgotten and
unconfessed will stand against them in the day of judgment.
You wonder why Adventists have fear.
Here it is.
Their characters must demonstrate perfect obedience to the Ten Commandment Law,
especially the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment.
Some names in the list of professed believers will be accepted.
Others will be rejected.
When every person confessing faith in God has come up in review, Jesus, note,
then pleads His blood before the Father on behalf of those who are found worthy,
and blots out the record of their sins from the book of heaven.
Then, not knowing if or when the work of judgment has been completed, the
righteous, still in their human state before the second coming of Christ,
will have to live in the sight of God without an intercessor.
How's that for fear?
This then completes the atonement.
Listen carefully.
Jesus then takes the sins of God's people and transfers them to Satan, who is
represented by the Day of Atonement scapegoat who made atonement, okay?
In Leviticus 16, Satan then bears the ultimate responsibility for all the sins
he has committed the righteous to commit.
He will suffer for these in the lake of fire and then be blotted from existence.
So he is the final sin bearer.
What Christ did, and Adventists have a whole theory of transfer.
That's the whole thesis behind their investigative judgment.
It's the sins are transferred to Christ when we confess it, then he transfers them
to the heavenly sanctuary, and then they're transferred to Satan, okay?
That's a transfer thing.
Okay, he will suffer for these things in the lake of fire and be blotted from
existence.
This investigative judgment is conducted before the intelligences of the universe.
This then, this, okay now listen carefully, this whole thing that I've been
telling you about, what this then vindicates the character of God before all
unfallen beings, and then everyone will know the immutability of the law of God
and the righteous character of God.
So they teach that this investigative judgment that I've gone through with you
is the very thing that vindicates the character of God.
Now I'm going to give you, I think in the book I have some 14 evaluations,
I'm going to give you just a few here, okay?
There are some Adventists who say, well Dale, this is not our central pillar,
okay?
You'll get that.
However, it is.
Ellen White said, the Daniel 8.14 is the foundation and central pillar of the
Adventist faith.
Here's a book written by Dr. Roy Adams, SDA theologian on the sanctuary.
Can you read what that says right there?
Understanding the heart of Adventist theology.
Now is that central?
Okay, here is a 2008 Sabbath school quarterly, they call it, for adults.
It's called the Pillars of our Faith.
What is it talking about?
Keep the Sabbath day holy, light and shadows, the earthly sanctuary,
the heavenly sanctuary, the hours of God's judgment, the remnant.
These are central pillars.
They may try to tell you they're not, but they really are, okay?
Now this teaching is based on 22 linking assumptions.
14 of the 22 are absolutely contrary to evidence, 8 can't be proved.
This doctrine... well that's true.
This doctrine completely ignores the context of Daniel 8.14, which is the
central pillar of Adventist faith.
Now the late Dr. Raymond Cottrell, who used to live right here, close,
okay?
He lived what, 15 miles from here, something like that?
He was Adventist's top Hebrew scholar.
And in his long study of this, he said Adventists cannot get the theology
out of Daniel 8.14 unless they completely take it out of context.
He says if you take it in context, it makes Christ the wicked little horn of
the prophecy.
I wonder who would want to make Christ the wicked horn?
This doctrine teaches or denies the finished atonement at the cross.
In fact the original teaching of this doctrine, which was by Higher Medicine and
then Crozer, said no atonement was made at the cross.
And Ellen White endorsed that, who is a source of truth.
Do you believe atonement was made at the cross?
Then this kills us dead, because they say no atonement was made at the cross,
originally.
Now they say it was now partially, but not totally.
This doctrine teaches that Christ did not go into the most holy place and sit at the
Father's right hand until October 22, 1844.
Thus it contradicts many, many passages of Scripture.
For example, Hebrews 6, 19 and 20.
This hope we have as an anchor for the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast,
one which enters within the veil, that's the most holy place, where Jesus
has entered.
That's in the Aorist tense, it means it went in at a point of time and that point
of time was the Ascension, not October 22.
He went in there as a forerunner for us, having become a priest forever.
Which is right?
The writer of Hebrews or Adventist doctrine?
A central pillar of Adventist doctrine.
You've got to decide.
This doctrine teaches that sins are not really forgiven at the time of repentance
and faith, but the repentant believer is placed on what?
Probation.
To see if they will be found worthy of Christ's final atonement.
Ellen White uses the word probation over a thousand times in her writings.
How many times does Scripture use probation?
Zero.
Do you know who else uses the word probation in their writings?
Joseph Smith.
Okay.
1 John 2.12 states, I am writing to you little children, because your sins have
been forgiven.
What's the text, the tense there?
Perfect passive.
We live in the state, the ongoing state of having our sins forgiven.
Not only perfection, but our sins forgiven.
That's the gospel.
That's the good news of the gospel.
Okay.
This doctrine teaches that the final punishment for the sins of the righteous
will be placed on Satan.
Therefore Christ really did not suffer the full penalty of our sins.
His death served mostly to transfer our sins to heaven and then transfer them
again to Satan, who becomes the final sin bearer.
However, 1 Peter 2.24 states, he himself bore our sins in his own body on the
cross.
Who is right?
Ellen White or Peter?
You got to make a decision.
This doctrine teaches that God's people will have to live in the sight of a holy
God without an intercessor.
What does Hebrews say?
Therefore since he is also, he is able also to save forever those who draw near
to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.
Who is right?
The Adventist doctrine or the investigative judgment in Ellen White or
the writer of Hebrews?
You got to decide.
And if you are a Seventh-day Adventist here tonight, I challenge you to study
these things out and go with what scripture says.
The Seventh-day Adventist church was founded on prophecies concerning the
Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
It's no coincidence that the Bible contains many warnings about false
prophets.
The Bible test of a false prophet in Deuteronomy chapters 13 and 18 is simply
whether or not the prophecy comes true.
It's a matter of historical record that the following prophecies of Ellen G.
White did not come true as she foretold.
The exact opposite of Ellen White's prediction has happened.
Old Jerusalem has been greatly built up in the years since 1948 when Israel became a
nation.
She was absolutely wrong.
Again, Mrs. White foretold in early writings that she would be among the
living saints when Jesus returned.
Soon our eyes were drawn to the east, for a small black cloud had appeared,
about half as large as a man's hand, which we all knew was the sign of the Son
of Man.
The graves opened, and in the same moment we were changed and caught up together
with them to meet the Lord in the air.
Mrs. White was not among the living saints seen in her vision.
This event did not occur in her lifetime.
We are still looking for the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rather than being caught up with the living saints at Jesus' return,
Mrs. White died on July 16, 1915, and was buried beside her husband James.
Another one of her prophecies failed.
Like others of her time, Mrs. White taught the imminent end of the world to spur on
her workers.
In early writings in the 1850s, she urged the new converts on,
telling them they only had a few months to wait.
But now time is almost finished, and what we have been years learning,
they will have to learn in a few months.
These were not isolated prophecies, but restated over and over again.
In May 1856, at a church meeting in Battle Creek, Michigan, Mrs. White boldly
stated...
I saw that some of those present would be food for worms, some subjects for the
seven last plagues, and some would be translated to heaven at the second coming
of Christ without seeing death.
In biblical times, she would have been stoned to death for being a false prophet.
Mrs. White did not confine her prophesying to the events surrounding the coming of
the Lord, but prophesied how foreign governments would act against the United
States.
In 1862, Ellen White predicted the downfall of the United States following a
great war involving many nations.
During the Civil War, she prophesied that England would declare war on the northern
states and humble them into the dust.
Said the angel, when England does declare war, all nations will have an interest of
their own to serve, and there will be general war, general confusion.
This nation will yet be humbled into the dust.
History proves the utter error of this prophecy.
England did not declare war on the northern states.
Other nations did not join in.
The United States of America was not humbled into the dust in defeat.
Mrs. White, again clearly to the objective mind, prophesied falsely.
She prophesied that England would declare war on the northern states and humble them
into the dust, and there will be general war, general confusion.
This nation will yet be humbled into the dust.
Other nations did not join in.
The United States of America was not humbled into the dust.
Other nations did not join in.
The United States of America
was not humbled into the dust.
This nation will yet be humbled into the dust.
Church.
A couple of bombshells have been dropped, and one of those bombshells is a
theological bombshell that Dr. Ford, in part, you are responsible for,
or have at least brought up.
And quoting Time, it says this, that Ellen G.
White's Sanctuary Explanation of 1844, in your opinion, is no longer able to
stand up to the light of the Bible.
And let's start with that.
For all of us that are not Seventh-day Adventists, would you please explain a
little bit about what the Sanctuary Explanation of 1844, what it is,
for those of us that are not part of Seventh-day Adventism.
Gladly, John.
If I may just give a moment of background.
You said you were not a Seventh-day Adventist.
I accept that apology.
I am one, and I love the Church, but I want to see it come in full harmony
with Scripture.
Adventists have long claimed to be the heirs of the Reformation.
And the Reformation was based on the primacy and the adequacy and the
sufficiency of Holy Writ.
It was based on the priesthood of all believers, and it was based on
justification by faith.
And I want to see my Church come into full harmony in these areas.
I believe the Church has made a great contribution in Christendom.
It's stress on the blessed hope in an age of hopelessness.
It's stress on the law in an age of lawlessness.
But the Sanctuary, as usually presented by Seventh-day Adventists, seems to many to
be a threat to the Reformation doctrine of salvation by grace alone.
Okay, what is it?
The Adventist Sanctuary doctrine affirms that in 1844, our Lord Jesus Christ
entered the second apartment of the Heavenly Sanctuary, or as some would say,
entered upon a second phase of His ministry.
This being a work of investigative judgment, a work that has now been in
procedure for over 140 years, which is to determine who shall be saved and who shall
be lost.
A review of the saints, the way it is often presented, has taken assurance from
the vast membership of the Church.
For those who are not Seventh-day Adventists, let's pause here to clarify
what Dr. Ford just said.
Seventh-day Adventists believe Daniel 8.14 supports their view that Jesus moved from
one compartment of the Heavenly Sanctuary to another in 1844.
At that point, Jesus began an investigative judgment of all Christians.
Ellen White wrote, quote,
But a number of Seventh-day Adventists, like Dr. Ford, are questioning this.
They believe the Bible teaches that Atonement was completed at the cross,
through the shed blood of Christ, and that believers' sins are forgiven once
for all at the moment of salvation.
However, Ellen White has written, quote, The blood of Christ, while it was
to release the repentant sinner from the condemnation of the law, was not to cancel
the sin.
It would stand on record in the Sanctuary until the final Atonement.
She also wrote, again quoting, In the New Covenant, the sins of the
repentant are by faith placed upon Christ and transferred, in fact, to the Heavenly
Sanctuary.
The actual cleansing of the heavenly is to be accomplished by the removal of sins
which are there recorded.
But before this can be accomplished, there must be an examination of the books
of record to determine who, through repentance and faith in Christ,
are entitled to the benefits of His Atonement.
But some Seventh-day Adventists, like Dr. Ford, point out that God has
removed forgiven sin as far as the East is from the West.
Why, then, they ask, must there be any further investigative judgment by Christ
based on past sins to determine a believer's salvation?
The key question that emerges is this.
Is salvation by faith alone, that is, faith in Christ, whose life and death
satisfies God's demands, or is it by a mixture of faith plus works, that is,
faith in Christ, who only gives me strength for me to go out and live perfect
so He can later finally approve me?
The way it is often presented has taken assurance from the vast membership of the
Church, very few Adventists comparatively rejoice in the known possession of eternal
life now in harmony with John 5, 24, that he who believes has eternal life.
Usually Adventists think that if they can get through that tremendous hurdle of
their name passing through the investigative judgment, that if their
characters are found in harmony with the law of God, they can make it.
If a guy can read three lines from a President of the General Conference on the
point, this is what he wrote in Drama of the Ages, this was Branson, Elder Branson,
a Christian who through faith in Jesus Christ has faithfully kept the law's
requirements will be acquitted.
There's no condemnation for the law finds no fault in him.
If that's true, we're all done for.
Okay, let's go back.
I think you lost a few of us here.
The first thing I was thinking about is why do we even need a sanctuary doctrine?
The Seventh-day Adventists, the sanctuary doctrine, grew out of the Miller Revival,
the Advent Revival in 1844, a Baptist pastor who was responsible for the
resurgence of pre-millennialism, the doctrine that Jesus Christ would come
before the Millennium, which was quite contrary to the post-millennialism of the
day.
In an age of progress, it was taken for granted the world would get better and
better for a thousand years, then Jesus would come.
Miller was a skeptic, then found the Lord, and under his own study he came up with
the idea that the Lord was coming back in 1844.
An honest Christian who preached Christ, who preached the gospel, but sadly,
ultimately, not for years, ultimately settled on a date of October 22,
1844 for Christ to come.
Most people in the movement were opposed to date setting.
Okay, what verse did he get that from?
He felt it was found in Daniel 8.14 when linked with Daniel 9.24.
Okay, read it for us.
You've got there?
Daniel 8.14 in the KJV says, under 2,300 days, then shall the sanctuary be
cleansed.
And Daniel 9.24 speaks about 70 weeks are determined upon thy people.
And Adventists have said the word determined means cut off from.
So 490 years would be cut off from 2,300, and both should begin with the date of
Daniel 9.25, a decree to restore Jerusalem in 457 DC.
How did William Miller pick the date of 1844 AD as the time Jesus would return to
earth?
He made at least five wrong assumptions to do so.
First, he assumed two unrelated passages of scripture, Daniel 8.14 and Daniel 9.24,
were actually related.
Second, in Daniel 8.14, he assumed that the 2,300 days mentioned could mean 2,300
years.
He was wrong.
The Hebrew literally reads 2,300 evenings and mornings, which total 1,150 whole
days.
Third, he further assumed from Daniel 8.14 that in the words, then shall the
sanctuary be cleansed, that the sanctuary stood for the whole earth, and cleansed
stood for Jesus leaving heaven and coming to earth.
Again, he was wrong.
The Hebrew word for cleansed literally means vindicated.
Fourth, in the other verse, Daniel 9.24, he assumed that when the 77's,
or 490 years, were decreed, the word decreed could be translated cut off from.
He was wrong.
The Hebrew literally means decreed or determined.
He further postulated the 490 years mentioned here were cut off from the 2,300
years postulated in the other passage of Daniel 8.14.
Fifth, from these two non-related texts, he joined his wrongly translated words in
those texts to assume he knew when the 2,300 years began and when they would end.
This postulated date, mixed with his assumptions that the cleansing of the
sanctuary stood for Jesus coming to earth, led Miller to wrongly conclude that Jesus
would come back to the earth on October 22, 1844 A.D.
Later, in a vision, Ellen G.
White claimed it was revealed to her that Jesus did not come to earth, or the
earthly sanctuary as she called it.
Rather, on October 22, 1844, Jesus changed his location in heaven and entered the
heavenly sanctuary, or the Holy of Holies.
The event did not take place, of course.
And there was great disillusionment.
Not the extreme going up on hilltops and ascension roads, all that has been
debunked long ago by historians.
But nevertheless, tremendous disillusionment.
And Adventists who felt the Lord had led them sought for an explanation.
Those who became Seventh-day Adventists came up with the explanation after 13
years.
After 13 years, in 1857, came up with the investigative judgment that at that time
Christ had come, not to earth, but to the most holy place of heaven,
to do an anti-typical work of judgment as prefigured by the Day of Atonement.
In other words, would you say that was a face-saving device?
Most theologians from outside looking at it have drawn that conclusion,
particularly in as much as Adventists had several other explanations.
Shut door, going into the marriage, receiving the kingdom.
There are a number of other theological devices that were tried for a while,
found wanting and given away before this one was adopted.
James White, husband of Ellen White, opposed this one in print, in the church
paper, when it originally came out.
But in 1857, it took control.
Okay, and so, Jesus was supposed to come back to the earthly sanctuary,
or the earth.
He didn't come.
And so, was it Ellen G.
White that said?
No, Ellen White did not devise a single doctrine of the Adventist church,
but she did write on it, after it had been accepted by the church.
Okay, but she accepted and...
Yes.
What would you say?
Promulgated.
Alright.
She endorsed it.
Yes.
That Jesus had not come to this sanctuary, but had just switched compartments in the
heavenly.
To begin a work of investigative judgment to see who would be saved when Jesus came.
And this, to most of the scholars of the church, flies in the face of the
everlasting gospel, which says that we can have assurance of eternal life now,
that we have the verdict of the last judgment, the moment we believe,
because Christ's merits, and Christ's merits alone, are the only issue in the
judgment.
Have we laid hold of them by faith?
Alright, what in brief are the reasons that you have found does not support that
original interpretation?
John, I am not an original thinker in this area.
The things I am saying have been said by various men in the church for nearly a
century.
Okay, give us some of the things that they've been saying that would be solid
evidence.
Right.
The major thing is this.
There's only one place in the New Testament that speaks of the meaning of
the two apartments of the Jewish sanctuary.
That's Hebrews 9.
There's only one place in the New Testament that discusses the cleansing of
the heavenly sanctuary.
That's Hebrews 9.
There's only one part in the New Testament that explains in detail the meaning of the
anti-typical day of atonement when the high priest went to the most holy place.
That's Hebrews 9.
This chapter embarrasses Seventh-day Adventists to no end.
Of course, I'm generalizing.
The scholars have known what I said for decades.
This doctrine has not been taught at our university for decades.
What have the scholars known all of these years concerning Hebrews 9 that seems to
straighten us out in terms of what Scripture is saying about the two
sanctuaries and the investigative judgment?
John, to take the cross from the Christian is like blotting the sun out of the sky.
And when the writer of Hebrews talks about the ancient sanctuary, he makes it all
point to the cross of Christ.
And when we come to Hebrews 9, he opens the chapter by discussing the two
apartments of the sanctuary.
And if we look at verse 6, he says that when everything had been arranged like
this, the priest entered regularly into the outer room.
There's the first apartment to carry on the ministry.
But, he's going to talk about the second apartment all the way through.
So now he has a but.
But only the high priest entered the inner room and that only once a year and never
without blood.
And then verse 8 says, the Holy Spirit was showing by this the way into the most holy
place.
That's the equivalent of the word inner room or second mentioned in verse 7.
Now it's called the most holy place had not yet been disclosed as long as the
first room was still standing.
This is an illustration for the present time.
In other words, Hebrews is saying the first apartment represented the Jewish
age.
Verse 9 and 10 goes on to talk about the age of food and drink offerings,
various carnal regulations that couldn't clear the conscience.
And the writer of Hebrews says the first apartment represented the first era,
the Jewish era.
When there was continual ministration that didn't achieve anything because the cross
hadn't come.
But the second apartment, when the high priest went through the veil into the
presence of God, where the Shekinah was, where the ark was, and the mercy seat,
where the blood was sprinkled.
That represented our Lord Jesus Christ in the cross, resurrection, ascension event.
So there's the first answer.
The two apartments according to the New Testament, the only place that discusses
them, are said to prefigure the two eras.
One, the Jewish, not the era to 1844, as Adventists have said, but the Jewish
era.
And the second apartment, not the era from 1844, but the whole Christian age.
Now the second point, the meaning of the cleansing of the sanctuary, verse 23.
It was necessary then for the copies of the heavenly things to be cleansed with
these sacrifices.
But the heavenly things themselves, cleansed in parenthesis, with better
sacrifices than these.
For Christ didn't enter a man-made sanctuary, there was only a copy of the
true one.
He entered heaven itself.
And then verse 25.
Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest
enters the most holy place every year with blood that's not his own.
So here the writer says, the cleansing of the earthly sanctuary on the day of
atonement, pointed forward to the time when Christ would cleanse the record,
the shadow of sin, which had been cast into heaven through the ages of
transgression of God's holy law.
That Christ would cleanse away that blot by shedding his own blood, the better
sacrifice.
He entered heaven itself with blood, you see.
And then it speaks about the sacrifice of himself in verse 26.
So there's the second.
The cleansing of the sanctuary is said to be fulfilled in the cross of Christ,
and Christ ascending into the most holy place.
Now the third one, the meaning of the day of atonement, if we go to verse 12.
Of chapter 10?
Of chapter 9 again.
Chapter 9.
All three in chapter 9.
He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, these are what were used
on the day of atonement.
But he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, having obtained
eternal redemption.
So that is the parallel to verse 8.
Only the high priest entered the inner room, only once a year, never without
blood.
Verse 12.
He entered with blood, but not goats and calves, the most holy place, once for all,
having obtained eternal redemption.
So the high priest's entrance on the day of atonement in the second department is
here said to be fulfilled.
When our Lord died on the cross, and by virtue of his own blood,
entered into the presence of God on our behalf.
Take him with him legally, the whole human race.
So the moment I affirm by faith that he represented me, he substituted for me.
That moment I am as close to God as he is.
And the law can no more condemn me than it condemned him.
Because the great atonement has been offered.
The atonement is complete.
Salvation is procured.
Sin has been blotted out.
I have eternal life.
So long as I trust in the merits of Jesus, I cannot be lost.
That's the gospel.
So there are the three points.
I think that, John, is a very important point.
It's not just theological that Ford caused the dilemma in.
The Adventist does not believe, nor does not teach, nor has not taught
that the atonement was complete at the cross.
That that experience comes at conversion with Christ at the cross.
You see, they separated it.
And to an Adventist, technically, philosophically, I think his atonement is
never completed till after his judgment and the coming of Christ.
The Adventist is tempted to hold his breath until he's gotten through the
investigative judgment.
This is not true of everyone because there are many people in the Adventist church
that do know the gospel.
But people that only know the traditional teaching...
Can I summarize it and see if I'm right or wrong here, okay?
When a person is converted under the teachings that you have been saying have
not been correct, when they were converted, in one sense, they still
weren't sure of heaven.
They weren't sure they were going to make it because of this doctrine.
Correct.
Which simply says that in 1844, Jesus started investigating people,
started going back on the records, and as he looked at those records,
somewhere along the line, he was going to come up to you in the present.
That's right.
He could come into judgment at any time.
Okay, and when he did come to you in the present, what did he do?
He would weigh my life in the balances of the sanctuary.
Even though you were converted already?
Yes.
According to the President of the General Conference, Pastor Branson, unless my life
is found in harmony with the law of God, I'm a goner.
And he says in one other place, and I may quote him again, if it is found
that one has broken even a single precept, and this transgression is unconfessed,
he'll be dealt with just as if he'd broken all ten.
So here salvation even depends on good memory.
And the interesting thing is that it came to mean not only the Ten Commandments,
but all of the ideas and concepts of Ellen G.
White, which ties the problem together.
Okay, so a person that was converted, he was still looking toward this
investigative judgment.
Would he ever know while he's living?
Usually Adventists have said this would happen towards the end of time,
but nevertheless popularly in homiletic presentations it has often been said,
your name may come up at any time.
And instead of the glad, joyous note that should characterize every Christian that
knows the good news, so many earnest Adventists have been bowed down with
guilt, wondering whether they're going to make it.
And John, we have even said and argued theologically, you can remember that,
well, maybe some of your probations have closed and you don't know it.
What a thought, you know.
Yeah.
In other words, at that point, if you're to be the progenitors,
the ones that advance the Reformation, it seems to me that you've picked up the
very theology that the Reformation was working against.
John, that's correct.
It can be said this way, that the Council of Trent opposed the Reformation and began
to talk about an infused righteousness, the God medicinally infused righteousness,
so man could be blessed and justified.
In other words, Christ, when a conversion came into your life and gave you the
power, and you've got to work it out after that.
That's right.
And tragically, that has been the theological belief of many Adventists.
They think their sins were forgiven when they came in, but then they roll up their
sleeves, they cooperate with God, and get such a sanctification,
that that sanctification can meet the gaze of the lawgiver.
See, which ignores...
Some people say, you know, but that sounds just like the gospel I believe.
Why are you saying that's not the gospel?
Because the infinite law of God takes account of our motives, you know.
It looks at every drive, even to desire sin as sin.
It looks at our mixed motives.
And you see that the teaching of the Bible on depravity says that it's not enough,
even if we keep the law from now on.
One slip will fix us, one slip will ruin us.
The law demands perfect thoughts, perfect desires, perfect motives from the
beginning of your experience.
None of us will ever have this to offer, unless we're saved by grace alone,
we'll not be saved.
But you see, the interesting thing too was that it emphasized that sin was an act,
not an attitude.
Right.
It's an Old Testament concept, rather than New Testament.
So that many Adventists, faithful Adventists, good Adventists, are really
Old Testament believers, not New Testament Christians.
Because they believe that sin is an act, not an attitude.
Let me see if we can get this into some other terms for people.
Let's take the terms, you know, these big hairy theological words like
justification and sanctification.
Okay.
What I hear you saying is that Seventh-day Adventists got those words confused and
turned them around.
And let's put this in language for the layman.
What is justification?
What is sanctification?
Let's come up with an illustration here.
Let me say something first, John.
It's very difficult to put all Adventists in one bag, because that would not be
correct.
There's a wide spectrum of Adventists.
I'll hardly say anything tonight that a large number of our scholars would not say
amen to in their hearts, at least.
And we're going to bring this up, though.
You have 3.8 million Adventists, and how many of them are scholars?
Well, an influential, very tiny minority, but influential.
How influential?
Right, let's talk about justification.
The term justification, it's the same word in the Greek as righteousness.
And what it means is the verdict of acquittal.
The verdict of forgiveness, but more than forgiveness.
The imputation, the recting to us of the merits of Christ.
So we stand without guilt, spotless before God, as spotless as His own Son.
For as long as we believe in His Son, you can never be lost while trusting the
merits of Jesus.
That justification is continual.
It's over you like the cloud that protected Israel from the sun.
And the Reformation made the point, for illustration, that it didn't take
place inside of you.
It took place outside of you.
It is reckoned, it is external.
My righteousness is in heaven.
That's why I can't lose it, so long as I'm trusting Him.
And sanctification, quickly, sanctification.
But sanctification is the fruit of it, whereby the Holy Spirit comes in and
begins that lifetime process of changing my life.
Because God does not justify any He does not sanctify.
He gives His gifts with both hands.
We're not talking about cheap grace.
Obedience to the law of God is the fruit of salvation, but it's never the root.
Now, with many Adventists, they've sadly taken hold of the pagan philosophy,
if I'm good, God will love me.
The gospel is the opposite.
God loves you, though you're not good.
And if you believe it, you'll become good.
And also, this whole idea that I can be perfect once I'm converted.
The New Testament knows nothing of sinless perfectionism.
The Bible says, in many things we all offend.
The Lord's Prayer, forgive us our trespasses.
You know, none of us will ever outgrow it.
But it's not willful sin.
The Christian does not willfully cherish known sin.
He hates his sins.
But knowing he's accepted, he's mainly there to overcoming it.
Glad that you're here.
And gentlemen, on the platform tonight, you are written up in Time Magazine as we
do this show.
And Walter Ray, they say about you in Time Magazine, Ford's challenge was mild
compared with a bombshell dropped by Walter T.
Ray of Patterson, California, a veteran pastor.
Ray, in the course of Ph.D.
research, stumbled across some long buried writings by forgotten divines that matched
huge swatches of Prophet White's books.
And it goes on to say, Ray was the first to document the vast scale of borrowing
from 75 assorted books on history, doctrine, and the Bible.
And last April, Ray issued his full findings in a book titled The White Lie.
You're holding The White Lie in your hand.
For people that don't know who Ellen G.
White is, tell us who was Ellen G.
White.
Well, of course, I had no Adventist background, John.
I was, I came into the church, I was a Christian before I was an
Adventist, but I was not denominationally oriented.
So when I became an Adventist, I became acquainted with Mrs. White,
which is the Seventh-day Adventist prophet.
And I was always a devotee of Mrs. White, began to read.
She fascinated me.
She covered all the doctrines from Genesis to Revelation, and our Christology and
Eschatology, mainly our main points of doctrine.
And I had spent probably 25 years of my lifetime devoted to her study.
I had written three books, Bible biographies, Old and New Testament,
in which I had accumulated all of the published and unpublished works of Mrs.
White and sent it out to the Bible houses of the Adventists.
They were used in all of our schools, universities.
Also the book of Daniel and Revelation, all of her statements I could find,
I had sent that out, but not commented on them, merely because I felt that they were
something special that had been given by divine revelation.
Some critics have said I believed in verbal inspiration.
I really don't believe that's correct.
But I did believe they had authority, and much more authority than anyone else
that had written.
Des, would it be fair to say that the man sitting next to you has published more on
Ellen G.
White than anybody else?
Walter Ray has done more research on the origin of the Ellen G.
White writings than any person that's ever lived.
So we're taking not only contemporary Adventists, but the Adventists over a
century, that is certain.
And you loved her, believed in her, knew her writings, published them?
I think anyone who does that, John, is known in Adventism as a conservative.
That is, they really are a true believer.
And I think it's fair to say I was a true believer.
Okay, and as you had these large pastorates in different places,
people gave you books.
What happened?
The first book that came to my attention while I was in Florida from one of our
eminent doctors, Dr. Kress, and gave me the book Sketches from the Life of Paul.
It was written by Coney Baranhausen, and I naively started to read it.
And one of the members who was an older member of Knowledgeable said, well,
that's the book that the Adventists would rather forget because Mrs. White's Life of
Paul, or Sketches from the Life of Paul, was largely taken from that material.
So I did a study and found that the criticism was correct, that there were
similarities.
What did you think when you saw that?
I was shocked because we had been taught... you have to understand what
you're taught in Adventism, at least in our generation.
Okay, what were you taught?
We were taught that Mrs. White was not influenced by outside sources.
And while I never thought that through at the time, it sounded logical.
So that was one thing that bothered me.
Where did you think that she got this?
Well, she got it directly from God, by revelation or inspiration without
outside influences.
Second is, in most of Mrs. White's counsel, she counseled against all of our
ministers using outside sources.
So as a theologian, I found it very difficult to get my degrees without
reading all of this, you know, quote so far, so-called trash and outside
world.
And we weren't supposed to use this.
And so it was shocking to find from the standpoint, wait a minute, she was using
what she condemned and said we shouldn't use.
So your curiosity was at least awakened.
It was at least awakened.
And I began to correspond with the White Estate, which is the official organization
for handling the doctrines of Ellen G.
White.
And I expressed some of my concern.
And they said, well, these are not new concerns.
And they pointed out that some had found this before.
Then what?
Then I moved to California and someone else gave me another book, the
Hanedersheim, his Old and New Testament.
I found that he also, he was a converted Jew.
He'd written on the life of Christ.
Lo and behold, I found that some of the format for patriarchs and prophets written
by Ellen G.
White had the same titles.
I put them in the book.
And also that some of the statements were taken directly from Hanedersheim.
And this was devastating.
In fact, I used to say facetiously at that time the guilt was overwhelming and I used
to do the study under the bed with the lights out because I was, you know,
really nervous.
But I notified the White Estate and they wrote back and encouraged me in the study
and I kept the letters saying, you know, keep us informed, although this
is not new, we're interested in some of these angles.
Well, I went to a public meeting and there some member of the White Estate denied
that there was any borrowing in the book Desire of Ages.
By that time I had found a book by Hannah, which was an English writer on the life of
Christ.
And this was the most shocking of all.
Why?
Well, it was shocking because chapter after chapter she was plagiarizing or
taking whole sections of that book and paraphrasing it.
So when a person says you can't find three or four sentences that she copied,
this is deceitful.
It wasn't the sentences that she wanted to copy.
So the White Estate was saying that there was no borrowing and here you had all the
books showing that it was.
This is true.
So what did you do?
Well, then we asked for a meeting.
We asked for a meeting with the scholars of the church.
And in January of 80, with picking and choosing, we were allowed to sit before 18
scholars.
And after two days, those 18 scholars voted six motions.
One was that the borrowing was more extensive than they had believed,
that it was really shocking.
Second is that it should be brought to the attention of the church immediately in
seminars and study groups.
Third, I should be given scholarly help to work it out into a printed form.
They had discouraged me from publishing anything.
And that's important because when I went before the committee, I didn't have
anything published.
They said, you should have this published.
And I said, well, you've forbade it and don't think that you'll be the only ones
that will read it if I go to the trouble of publishing it.
So I hadn't published.
So they said, well, we'll help you get it in this form.
And then they gave me a vote of thanks.
Well, we were elated because we felt that this was a problem that had long been
overdue, had been discussed in scholarly circles.
I will grant that scholars do have some benefits.
But nonetheless, the church as a whole had not known this.
And it is erroneous to say that the church has always known this.
If they have always known it, why was I fired?
And why did they meet with me?
And why was the committee upset?
And why did they vote?
So they didn't.
Well, within about 60 days, the President's Advisory Committee of the
General Conference wrote a letter, which I put a copy, I think, in a book and
said, forget it.
We'll take it from here.
We'll notify the people what we think they should know.
And you go back to your work as a pastor.
And then what did you do?
Well, I wrote them a letter and said, well, it evidently the church has decided
that I should not be the one.
And they felt that I was too harsh in my judgments and perhaps too negative in my
approach or conclusion.
So I said, the church has spoken.
I had a decision whether I wanted to stay with the system or get out.
And I wanted to stay with the system and work within it.
My purpose was to lower the voice in the church and the administration on Ellen G.
White and to put Jesus Christ back in the center of the church where I felt it
really was wrong.
And I felt that Mrs. White, from my study and research, had been a deterrent.
She was the one that endorsed the 2300 days that Des talks about.
She was the one that endorsed all the doctrines we held officially.
And therefore no one was allowed to go beyond the thinking and the endorsement of
Ellen G.
White and plow new ground.
So I merely wanted to lower.
And my premise was the five books that Adventists count on, the conflict series
from Genesis to Revelation, were thus came by human means rather than divine
revelation.
This they didn't want to accept.
Walter, you have touched on the writings of Ellen G.
White.
You've published more than anybody else.
You've done more research in this area than anybody else.
In terms of... do you use the word plagiarism?
I do, they don't.
Define it for us.
What is plagiarism?
The first time I was acquainted with the word was when John Dart from the Los
Angeles Times wrote his article in November and asked me the question,
did I believe that Mrs. White was a plagiarist?
I asked him his definition and he said, I take an amoral view.
That is, I'm not imputing any good or bad motives to it.
I'm merely saying that this is a person who uses others' material and use it as
their own.
I said, in that case, I accept the word plagiarism.
I still do.
I think that word has been bantered around in the case of Mrs. White for a hundred
years.
Ellen G.
White is the lady that has been known as the prophet with inside of Seventh-day
Adventists.
And it was her interpretation of Daniel chapter 8 on the sanctuary and the
investigative judgment that when William Miller said Jesus was going to come in
1844 when Jesus did not come, Ellen G.
White came on the scene and gave this interpretation and said, Jesus actually
wasn't talking about coming to this earth.
He was talking about coming to the heavenly sanctuary, just switching
compartments.
And at that point, Seventh-day Adventism was off and running and she was its
leader.
She was the one that spurred it on.
Now, as time went along, how many books did she actually write?
They claim something like 70 books.
That includes compilations.
Many of which are repetitive.
Okay, and these writings have been a source of authority, supposedly not as
authoritative as scripture, but in actual practice held up to be the thing that
gives you guidance in terms of what the scriptures are actually saying.
Is that a correct statement?
I think it's fair what Ford is trying to approach in that we claim, and rightfully
so, now I've proven that, and this is what I couldn't understand.
If you claim as Adventist that we did not get any of our doctrines from Mrs. White,
why do you get upset when I prove that you're absolutely right?
She got it from others.
That's what I couldn't understand.
And so she became an endorser of other ideas.
The problem was we accepted the endorsement rather than the theology.
All right, you wrote a book called The White Lie.
Correct.
Okay, would you hold it up for us there?
Inside of this book, you have how many pages of just column after column where
you put Ellen G.
White's writing on one side, and then you put the author that she copied it from on
the other, just going right straight down the page.
Approximately 150 pages.
150 pages for anybody that wants to see it.
Where can they get that book, Walter?
It's published by M&R Publications in Turlock, California.
Great.
How can they get it?
It's just box 2056.
All right, we'll put that up at the end of the program.
Des, you've also got a book that you...
This is the manuscript I wrote for the church, nearly 1,000 pages, on which my
trial took place at Glacier View.
And this book is also available from Desmond Ford Publications, Bullard Drive,
that's B-U-L-L-A-R-D, Newcastle, California, 95658.
And you may be putting it on the screen.
I'll put that on the screen as well.
And we ought to say that that is basically your doctoral dissertation that you did
with F.F.
Bruce at Manchester.
No, it does include some insights from it, but this is the doctrine...
this is the doctrine I wrote for the church, protesting against the traditional
view...
That's the cut-down version, right?
This is the whole thing.
Okay.
And that's written specifically on what?
This is covering most of the doctoral problems of Seventh-day Adventism,
which center around the misuse of Ellen White and the investigative judgment.
Okay.
Which you concluded she was wrong in her view.
Yes, that's right.
And you brought the denomination back to Scripture.
Yeah, I do not regard Ellen White as a doctrinal authority.
She didn't regard herself as a doctrinal authority.
Time and again said only the Bible.
But you're saying the scholars have always known that.
They've known it for decades.
But the reason they fired him was not because he had a different nuance in his
idea.
They could have accepted that had not Mrs. White endorsed, and he was really
challenging the endorsement of Ellen G.
White.
Yes, Ellen White was threatened by the presentation.
Okay.
And so we come back.
How much was actually taken from other writers?
How much have you found?
Well, I think it's fair to say that in the latest ministry magazine of the
denomination, which the Time magazine talks about, they have for the first time
in Adventism, to my knowledge, admitted that there was a vast amount of
material copied.
And they have said in their publication that they have found no book she wrote
that does not show copy work.
They have found her diaries also had copy work.
They have found her visions also had copy work.
And that they figured it would take a decade to survey the at least 1,200 books
they have at the present time to find out the extent of the copy work.
But it was vastly more than what they'd seen.
The problem, again, was if they had confessed that or admitted it,
they don't like the word confession, before the book, The White Lie,
had been put out, perhaps there would have been no need for The White Lie.
But they didn't do that.
You actually approached the Ellen G.
White estate as well as the denominational leaders with the fact this is the way it
is.
It's not... it was devastating to yourself personally.
You were shocked when you found this out because you had always believed in her
yourself.
But then when you actually saw it, you said, OK, this is the way it is.
And you didn't think it would be a disrupting of Seventh-day Adventism to
say, OK, this is the way it was.
She had some good points.
She had some bad points.
She wasn't inspired and inerrant.
She was an advisor concerning Scripture.
And we should hold her that way and keep on rolling, right?
Actually, I... they felt that it would be more disruptive if I printed the book than
if they did.
I consented to that.
I said, I'm willing for you to bring this material if you'll do it.
But within three months, the Prexad letter said, no, we will not do it.
What is the Prexad letter?
Well, the Prexad letter was the political arm of the church which overrode the
committee that sat with me and voted in my favor.
What does Prexad mean for people who don't know?
President's Advisory Committee.
That's what the man shorted.
Prexad, OK.
Prexad.
And in essence, the letter says, we'll go back to harvesting, gathering or
gathering money or whatever pastors do and we'll take it from here.
And so the church was not to know.
That was unacceptable to me.
I do feel that people would have been less threatened and it could have been
accomplished on a more favorable plane if the church had revealed by some method
that which I had to reveal.
Evangelicals watching would say, hey, if you got Jesus, why is it so
important that you have to have LNG-Y?
In my view, which differs from Ford, we do not have Jesus.
Because of what?
We have made Ellen White the Adventist Savior.
And I think that if we could lower the voice and get rid of the all or
non-concept of Ellen White, then we could put Christ in the center of the church.
You say that's right, Des?
Johnny, it needs a bit of opposition, so can I come on?
Certainly.
Spurgeon once said, he that doesn't read will never be read.
He that doesn't quote will never be quoted.
He who doesn't use other people's brains shows he has no brains of his own.
The early pages of his book on commentaries and commenting warns people
not to read books from people that haven't read widely.
I've written a dozen books, at least nine or ten of which have been published,
and I read hundreds of books in connection with every book I ever write.
But I have to be more careful in the 19th century.
I can go into the stacks of the Library of Congress, and in every area, history,
religion, health, medicine, I find people using ad nauseum stuff without credit.
It still happens today.
Here, for example, is a Protestant writer, very well known, J.S.
Whale, Christian Doctrine, using word-for-word, another one that I've
quoted in this page, Brunner, word-for-word, without any quote marks,
whatever.
That's Protestant writers today.
Here's a Catholic.
Here's Fulton Sheen, using word-for-word stuff from Chester.
Again, without quote marks.
It still happens.
But there is a difference in the 20th century.
We are more careful.
Now, it's quite clear that Ellen White recommended certain of the key books that
she most used.
She recommended them in the church papers.
So, I don't really think she was trying to hide too much.
Furthermore, there are many, many quotes where she speaks about the duty of
gathering scattered gems of truth from erroneous settings and putting them in
right settings.
She said that even Jesus did that.
And today, in scholarship, we know there's not a phrase in the Lord's Prayer that's
original.
Jesus did gather out of a lot of rubbish and sawdust the gems and put them
together.
And Ellen White felt she was doing that.
I do not believe Ellen White was a deceptive or a cheat.
I believe she's an honest Christian woman.
But we have had a superstitious view about her as Adventist.
And Walter is right.
We have engaged in a type of idolatry which has been deleterious to Adventist
Christian experience.
The problem I find with that, John, is that she, for example, it's all right
for someone to copy.
The problem with not copying would be Mrs. White claimed to be inspired.
She claimed to be a prophet.
And she also really denied her borrowing.
Now, let me read the ministry magazine saying that.
Did Mrs. White make any attempt to conceal from Adventists?
The answer is no.
She even urged some, as Des said, to read.
I'd like to let you see what kind of books she urged them to see.
It wasn't the total one she copied from.
But notice what they say on the next page.
On the other hand, she did not generally draw particular attention to her use of
other authors.
I wish you had.
I wish the church could produce one definitive statement ever in the life of
Ellen G.
White or James where she admitted openly that she was using someone else for that
particular statement.
If she just said, now Edersheim says, or Geeky says, or Farrar says.
But you see, she never did that.
So I think this is the problem.
She did it in the health journals.
I do agree.
Yes, but now we're beginning to put space between the health journals.
And we're saying, well, it's possible that in her health journals now, because some
of the statements were ridiculous, she wasn't speaking as a prophet.
She was speaking as an editor.
And Arthur White is now saying this revolutionary idea, Des.
It's on tape.
And Bob Olson is saying, well, perhaps we're going to have to distinguish
between when she was speaking as a prophet and when she was speaking as a compiler or
an author.
Amen.
Let's keep going.
We're shifting from the superstitious view.
I do not think we should put Adventists in a little box by themselves.
I find in fundamentalist America, very superstitious views about the Bible.
Trying to prove the Bible by science.
This sort of approach is making science greater than the Bible.
The Bible is self-authenticating.
And so I don't think you should put Adventists in a separate camp.
The fact is, most of American Protestantism has a superstitious view
about how the Bible was written.
Of course, the thing that puzzles me there is that we claim, and he's read it from
Questions on Doctrine, we do not make Mrs. White canonical.
But in every case, we go back to the Bible to prove Mrs. White.
I thought it was the other way around.
We were to prove Mrs. White by the Bible.
Instead, if Mrs. White says it, then we say, well, the Bible did that too,
you see.
What would you say is the majority view of people concerning the Bible and Mrs.
White?
The majority view as a pastor of this church is unequivocally that Mrs. White is
the authority, and if there is a question on biblical interpretation in our church,
it is settled by the statements of Ellen G.
White, not by the interpretation of the Bible.
That's North America, not Europe.
That's why it is.
It's out, that's why I'm out.
The group is the exclusive group, the exclusive community in Christendom to
witness to Christ.
The remnant.
This is based on very poor exegesis.
Revelation 12, 17 is speaking about a remnant yet to be developed.
Questions on doctrine said that all faithful Christians are potential members
of that remnant.
But most small religious groups have a tendency to an inferiority complex,
which is compensated for by some extravagant claims.
Adventists have been guilty in that area.
But the things that Walter has just said do fit many parts of North America,
but it shouldn't be thought that this necessarily fits the whole world field.
I know hundreds of ministers, I've trained hundreds of ministers in part,
and they do know the gospel and they do speak of Jesus.
What Walter says is true in many areas.
It's not necessarily true of all of Adventism.
The problem that I have noticed in preparing for this program before you men
arrived was to meet with men in this area, and I'm not going to name names,
because they felt they could lose their job.
They know the gospel.
Yes.
They're afraid to say it.
Thousands of Adventist ministers know the gospel, and many of the laity know the
gospel.
In Australia, you taught most of the guys that are in the clergy there.
In Australia, yeah.
Okay, taking all of this, what hope do you see for the future?
If the church will be honest to God and get down the biblical evidence.
There's no basis for 1844 as a biblical datum.
The scholars know it.
The church needs to admit it.
If the church will be honest to God, God will bless the church.
It has much to offer the Christian world.
If the denomination takes the next step and hardens up the line and makes L.N.G.
White an extra-scriptural source of authority, which is a possibility,
denies justification by grace alone in the sense that the investigative judgment
stays in there.
We become a cult if we take those two steps which deny the gospel.
The Advent movement of the early 1800s expected Jesus to return in the year of
1844.
Jesus did not appear at that time.
Yet, instead of giving up on what they experienced as a false revival,
some within this movement decided that they had the correct date, but had
expected the wrong event to occur.
The Millerites decided that in 1844, Jesus had entered the second compartment
of the heavenly sanctuary and began an investigative judgment of his people.
This period would be a very short duration, hence their expectation of his
soon coming.
In hand with this doctrine, they taught that the opportunity for salvation for the
world was over.
No longer could anyone be saved other than the small group of Adventists who had
accepted the Millerite message and the Midnight Cry.
This particular doctrine became known as the shut door.
One of the first to propose this idea was O.R.L.
Crossier who states, In the year 1846, I explained the idea of the sanctuary in
an article in an extra number of the Day Star, Cincinnati, Ohio.
The object of that article was to support the theory that the door of mercy was
shut.
A theory which I and nearly all Adventists who had adopted William Miller's views,
had held from the years 1844 to 1848.
Yes, I know that Ellen G.
Harmon, now Mrs. White, held that shut door theory at that time.
Another one of the early teachers of the shut door doctrine was Joseph Turner.
But can any sinners be converted if the door is shut?
Of course they cannot.
The Advent Mirror of 1845.
These and men like them led Joseph Bates into accepting the shut door doctrine.
In the Review and Herald, August 19, 1851, Joseph Bates says, We understand
that he was a mediator for all the world, ministering in the holy place,
from the day of Pentecost, A.D.
31, until his appointed time, the end of the 2,300 days or years, the fall of 1844.
At this point of time then the door was shut against the Sardis Church,
A.K.A.
the Protestant Church, and the wicked world.
James White explains the shut door in the same manner.
In a May 1850 article of The Present Truth, page 79, James White deals with the
shut door subject, Quote, From the best light we could then obtain from the
autumnal types, we were very confident that the days would end at the seventh
month.
When we came up to that point of time, all our sympathy, burden, and prayers for
sinners ceased.
And the unanimous feeling and testimony was that our work for the world was
finished, forever.
But the sinner, to whom Jesus had stretched out his arms all the day long,
and to whom had rejected the offers of salvation, was left without an advocate
when Jesus passed from the holy place and shut that door in 1844.
This article establishes that James White believed in the shut door.
His article was to establish that what they had been preaching for the previous
five years was correct.
Keep in mind the dates on these articles.
They range from the fall of 1844 up to 1851.
In Selected Messages, Volume 1, page 63, Ellen explains what the term shut
door, quote, unquote, originally meant.
She admits that she did believe the doctrine like the rest of her associates,
but she insists that this was before her first vision and that her visions
corrected the error.
Quote, for a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold in common with the
advent body that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world.
This position was taken before my first vision was given me.
It was the light given me of God that corrected our error and enabled us to see
the true position.
Ellen also explains the shut door doctrine in the Spirit of Prophecy, Volume 4,
page 268.
There should be no misunderstanding on what the term shut door meant for the
Adventists in the years from 1844 through 1851, nor should we question the fact that
all three of these aforementioned Adventists believed in this doctrine.
Now, in the previous quote of Ellen White, she tells that she came to this position
before she had the vision.
And it was actually her visions that taught the group that they had erred.
She and her defenders deny that she ever had a vision that supported the shut door
doctrine.
With just a little investigation, we can see that this is false.
First, the clear history of this era teaches us that it took Ellen White six
years to finally wake up.
Is it true that she never had a vision that taught the classic shut door
doctrine?
Did her visions condemn it as error or support it?
If her visions had touted it as error, shouldn't she have been condemning the
error all of those years by inspiration and by straightening out her husband,
Bates, and the rest?
This was not a minor doctrine.
This was a doctrine that condemned the world and taught the poor sinners that
Jesus was no longer willing to save them.
We will see that her visions did give support to the doctrine of the shut door.
Ellen White's first vision is claimed for December 1844.
It was not printed until it appeared in the Day Star January 24, 1846,
and again in May 1847 in James White's booklet, A Word to the Little Flock.
And I quote...
Others rashly deny the light behind them and said that it was not God that had led
them out so far.
The light behind them went out, leaving their feet in perfect darkness,
and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus and fell
off the path down in the dark and the wicked world below.
It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the city as
all the wicked world which God had rejected.
What does the vision teach?
That the faint hearted Adventists that had left the light had forever lost their
salvation just like the rest of the wicked world.
My friend, this is the exact doctrine of the shut door.
What did James White say was the effect of the vision?
Quote...
When she received her first vision, December 1844, she and all the band in
Portland, Maine, where her parents then resided, had given up the midnight cry and
the shut door as being in the past.
It was then that the Lord showed her in her vision the error into which she and
the band in Portland had fallen.
She then related her vision to the band and about 60 confessed their error and
acknowledged their 7th month experience to be the work of God.
Unquote.
A word to the little flock, 1847, page 22.
Now notice what he says.
After the failure of October 22, the group had given up the midnight cry
and shut door as it was not in the past, but yet future.
What turned them around to renew their faith in all of that, including the shut
door, was Ellen White's vision.
And the shut door that they had given up before the vision and the one they
preached following that vision was that the opportunity for salvation for the
world was over.
Brother Crozier's view was repudiated by questions on doctrine and Mrs. White's
view on the subject was Crozier's view.
This is very significant because when we met, when you were, as you remember,
before beginning college, I was meeting with Theodore Heppenstall and Dr. Murdoch
and the top theologians of the denomination.
And we were discussing this very issue.
Dr. George Cannon, now professor of New Testament Greek at Bethel Theological
Seminary in St. Paul, took his Greek New Testament out as fresh in my mind as if it
happened yesterday.
And he said, brethren, I should like to set forth a question.
He said, if you'll open your testaments.
Heppenstall and Murdoch opened their testaments to Hebrews chapter 9.
And Cannon read, and I followed with him, that Jesus Christ entered once into the
holiest of all with his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
And I asked the question, and Cannon did too, did this take place as Crozier said,
as Mrs. White said, as the early Adventists taught?
Did it take place in 1844?
Or did it take place at the ascension of Jesus Christ?
The Greek text says, at the ascension of Jesus Christ, once into the holiest of
all, the most holy place.
The general conclusion was that the text of Hebrews left no doubt whatsoever that
at the ascension, Jesus Christ entered into the holiest of all with his own
blood, having obtained that redemption for us.
1844 was not included in Hebrews chapter 9.
It was written long before 1844.
Crozier said, no.
Mrs. White said, no.
James White said, no.
The early Adventists said, no.
They were wrong.
The Greek text is right.
It's a question of whether you're going to accept the text of the scripture or the
interpretation of Mrs. White over that text.
Which brings me back to the basic question I was discussing before.
Is Mrs. White the interpreter of scripture to the denomination?
Answer, on the investigative judgment of the sanctuary, she most certainly is.