p. 120 | Untitled article by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 6, 1867

RE-ORDINATION.

By James White

By this I mean the New Testament modes of setting men, who are called of God to preach, apart to the work of the ministry by the laying on of hands and prayer.

As I said of baptism, when this is done to and by the proper persons, once is sufficient, if the candidate does not apostatize. But when one or all of these particulars is not true, the ordination in my opinion is not valid.

Let us now compare some of the circumstances that surround Seventh-day Adventists with those connected with Christ's first ministers. The Jewish priesthood was ordained of God. The priests were anointed to their holy office by the authority of Heaven. Had one of them become a convert to Christianity as did Paul, and had been called to suffer for Christ as was he, they would have received ordination to their new work as directed in the New Testament. The change from the Jewish to the Christian commission would have been truly great. But it would have been only an advance step from truth to greater truth, from light to greater light.

But in the case of some Seventh-day Adventist ministers they were ordained in error, by errorists, and continued to preach error. They had to change from error to truth, from darkness to light. If passing on the plane of truth from light to greater light, from truth to greater truth, would have called for a new ordination, how much more necessary in the cases of ministers who, after their first ordination, had to cast away their errors before they could come to the true light. In the true light, let them be set apart anew to the sacred work of the closing message.

JAMES WHITE.

Greenville, Mich.