J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH by John Norton Loughborough

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Oct 15, 1914

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH

By John Norton Loughborough

The Second Advent Movement — No. 12

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH

The Adventists, by their study of the sanctuary, not only found out the error of the popular idea that the earth was the sanctuary, but learned much in regard to the judgment. They found that instead of the judgment of the righteous following the second advent, it came prior to that event, in harmony with the statement, “They which shall be accounted worthy to attain that world, and the resurrection from the dead,” etc. Luke 20:35. The accounting worthy must be done before they are raised. When the temple containing the ark should be opened, voices in heaven would be heard saying, It is “the time of the dead, that they should be judged.” Rev. 11:18. They found that the day of atonement—the cleansing of the sanctuary—was regarded by the Jews in their typical service as the day of judgment. This idea is clearly stated in Canon Farrar’s “Early Days of Christianity,” in these words: “So awful was the day of atonement that, as we are told in a Jewish book of ritual, the angels run to and fro in fear and trembling, saying, ‘Lo, the day of judgment has come.’”

In the Jewish Talmud it is stated: “On New Year’s Day [first day of the seventh month] three books were opened,—that of life, for those whose works had been good; another of death, for those who had been thoroughly evil; and a third (intermediate) for those cases to be decided on the day of atonement [ten days after New Year’s], the delay being granted for repentance or otherwise, after which their names would finally be entered in the book of life or in that of death.”—“The Temple,” page 295.

As to how the Jews now regard the day of atonement may be gained from the statements of their rabbis in announcing the day. In the Jewish Exponent, San Francisco, September, 1892, the day was thus announced: “The month of Elul [sixth month] is here, and the monitory sounds of the shophar are to be heard [on the opening of the seventh month] every morning in the orthodox synagogues, announcing preparation for the day of memorial and the final judgment of Yom Kippur.” Yom is day, and Kippur is atonement.

In 1902, Isidore Meyer, rabbi of a large congregation in San Francisco, thus announced the day of atonement: “While crossing the threshold of time from one year to another, the Israelite is forcibly reminded of the creation and of the universal sovereignty of the Creator, and is called upon to celebrate with blast of trumpet the anniversary, so to speak, of the birth of time and the coronation of the great King. He is also summoned by the same trumpet, or shophar, to scrutinize retrospectively his actions of the past year while he stands tremblingly before the all-seeing eye of Eternal Justice, sitting on the throne of judgment.”

As our brethren turned to the Scriptures on the subject of the judgment of God’s people, they found it placed before Christ’s actual coming, as in the case of Peter’s testimony, where he says: “Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. . . . But the end of all things is at hand.” 1 Peter 4: 5-7. And to those still on earth, in trial, he says: “If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf, for the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? and if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” Verses 16-18.

Our people said: “Surely the decision of the cases of the righteous must be before the coming of Christ; for when the trumpet sounds, the righteous dead, with the righteous living, in the twinkling of an eye, are changed from mortal to immortality. 1 Cor. 15: 52. Their cases must be decided before they are raised. The work of examining the record of every case, and the blotting out of their sins in the cleansing of the sanctuary, must be the investigative judgment. So when we preached that the judgment would come at the end of the 2300 days, we preached the truth, although the event has come in a different manner from what we expected.”

After the tenth day of the seventh month Elder Joseph Bates’s attention was more especially drawn to the fact that in the advent proclamation of Revelation 14 there are three messages to be given. They had given the first and second, and there was a third to be given. In the third message, after warning against false worship, it was announced, “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14: 12. This, to his mind, was the best of evidence that the message must be calling attention to some lack by the masses in obeying God’s commandments. As to the matter of false worship, the Bible commentators at that time were stating: “When a civil or an ecclesiastical enactment conflicts with the requirements of Jehovah, that power is worshiped whose commandments we obey in preference to the other. ‘To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey.’”

Brother Bates found that the papal church, which most commentators called the beast of Revelation, claimed that it was by them that the first day of the week had come to be observed in place of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. This showed plainly that the vital point in the message was the vindication of the Lord’s holy Sabbath. As he saw, by faith, the law of ten commandments in the ark in heaven, he zealously pressed on from place to place, wherever he could find those who had been in the former messages, showing them that this message was to follow in line with the other two, or as one translation reads, “The third angel went with them;” that is, with the other two. So here was a threefold warning. In giving the message, Brother Bates rehearsed past experiences and the present development of truth, showing a solid platform on which the disappointed ones might rally with the utmost confidence. So the message, like every other great work of God in the earth, small in its beginning, would surely triumph, and accomplish the Lord’s purpose respecting it.

Lodi, Cal.