The Seventh-Day Adventists.
By Uriah Smith
A BRIEF SKETCH OF THEIR ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND PRINCIPLES.
Our field of inquiry leads us back only to the great Advent movement of 1840–1844. Respecting that movement it is presumed that the public are more or less informed. They may not be so well aware of the causes which have led since that time to the rise of a class of people calling themselves Seventh-day Adventists. Adventists looked for the end of the world in 1844, because of the prophecy in Dan. 8:14, which says that at the end of the prophetic period of 2300 days the sanctuary should be cleansed. They computed that time to end in that year. They held that the earth was the sanctuary then to be cleansed, that its cleansing was to be accomplished with fire which would accompany the manifestation of the Lord from heaven. Hence they supposed the Lord would then come. There were, of course, many other facts and arguments in support of the view that the second coming of Christ was near, but what we have stated was the principal argument for fixing upon that particular time for the occurrence of the event. The time passed, and the coming of Christ did not take place as was expected. It then became apparent that a mistake had been made in one or both of the following points: either the period of 2300 days did not end at that time, or the cleansing of the sanctuary was not to be the burning of the earth by fire at the second coming of Christ. While there was a possibility of their being mistaken on both these points, a mistake on either one would be sufficient to account for the fact that the Lord did not then appear. A movement which had enlisted the whole interest of thousands upon thousands, would not of course be abandoned without reflection. The ground was looked over and two methods adopted for explaining the disappointment. One class jumped to the conclusion at once that they were wrong on time, and the prophetic periods had not ended. Another class, on a careful survey of the whole field, impressed with the strength and harmony of the argument on chronology, saw no ground to change their views upon that point, but became satisfied that the mistake lay in the subject of the sanctuary and its cleansing. This class are the ones now known as Seventh-day Adventists. This brings us to note Between Seventh-day Adventists and First-day, or No-day Adventists, as respects chronology. The latter, believing that the prophetic periods were given to make known the time of Christ's coming, and that they have not yet ended, are held to one of two conclusions: either that all that is said in the Bible about these periods is so much of revelation unrevealed, or else that the time of Christ's coming is to be known. The first conclusion, as consistent believers in the Bible, they cannot adopt, and hence their continual efforts to re-adjust the prophetic periods and fix upon the time for Christ to come. From this has arisen in these later years all the fantastic time-setting which has very properly disgusted the world, and worse than this, has brought reproach on prophetical study. On the other hand SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS SET NO TIME.
They do not believe that any prophetic period given in the Bible reaches to the coming of Christ, or was designed to mark the day or year of that event. As already mentioned, they believe the chronological argument of the great Advent movement of 1844, was all right, locating the termination of the longest prophetic period, the 2300 days, in the autumn of that year. The prophecy said that then the sanctuary should be cleansed. That sanctuary they found to be, not the earth, which is never so-called, but the sanctuary of which Paul so fully and definitely treats in his epistle to the Hebrews, “the sanctuary” and “true tabernacle” in Heaven, “which the Lord pitched and not man,” of which Christ, our great High Priest, is minister while “on the throne of the Majesty in the Heavens.” Heb. 8:1, 2. The tabernacle erected by Moses in the wilderness of Sinai about 1500 years before Christ, Ex. 25 and onward, which was the sanctuary of the first covenant, Heb. 9:1, from that time till the first advent, was a type, figure, or pattern of this heavenly sanctuary of the new covenant, Heb. 9:9, 23, 24. The ministration of the sanctuary consisted of two grand divisions which were accomplished every year: the daily ministration, and a brief service in the most holy place, or second apartment, of the sanctuary, which completed the yearly round of service. This latter work was called the cleansing of the sanctuary, and was performed by the priest. So likewise the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, Heb. 9:23, must be performed by Christ while yet a priest, before he takes his kingdom and appears in his glory. The view we take of the prophecy, consequently, is that the termination of the 2300 days in 1844, brought us to the commencement of this last portion of Christ's work as priest in the true tabernacle above, called the cleansing of the sanctuary, not a cleansing from physical impurities, but from the presence of our sins, imparted to it through the blood of Christ there ministered in our behalf. This explains at once the mistake in 1844, and shows our present position. We are now in the time of the cleansing of the sanctuary; a period of brief but indefinite duration. While, therefore, we do not throw away the prophetic periods, but believe they are to be understood, we believe also that they have been correctly interpreted, and have all terminated; so that we now have no data from which to reason respecting a definite time for the Lord to come. Two causes have operated to introduce the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath among Adventists, and thus to develop that class known as Seventh-day Adventists. First, a Seventh-day Baptist sister, Mrs. Rachel D. Preston, from the State of New York, moved to Washington, N. H., where there was a church of Adventists. From them she received the doctrine of the soon-coming of Christ, and in return instructed them in reference to the claims of the fourth commandment of the decalogue. This was in 1844. Nearly that whole church immediately commenced the observance of the seventh day, and thus have the honor of being the first Seventh-day Adventist church in America. The ravages of death, and removals from the place, have considerably diminished their numbers; but the church there still lives to bear witness to the truth thus introduced among them. The Sabbath question began immediately to be agitated among Adventists, and within a few months, many from their ranks commenced its observance. Among the earliest permanent converts to this doctrine, three deserve especial mention: 1. Eld. Joseph Bates, who with great zeal, devotion, and self-sacrifice, gave himself to its advocacy, and brought many to its observance. He fell asleep March 19, 1872, in the 80th year of his age. 2. Eld. James White, the founder and manager, to the present time, of the S. D. Adventist publishing work, and now president of their five leading organizations; namely, The General Conference, The Publishing Association, The Health Reform Institute, The General Tract and Missionary Society, and the Educational Society. 3. Eld. J. N. Andrews, author of the History of the Sabbath, the Sanctuary, the Three Messages, and other important works, and now absent as a missionary to Switzerland in Europe. 2. Another consideration which has tended to strengthen them in the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath is the subject of the sanctuary, to which we have already alluded. It was seen at once that the central object in the sanctuary, in whichever dispensation we view it, is the ark of God, which was enshrined in the most holy place. This ark was prepared expressly as a receptacle for the tables of stone on which were written the great moral precepts of God's government, the ten commandments. Thus attention was called to the law of God. It was also seen that if the law in the ark of the heavenly sanctuary, Rev. 11:19, is the great original, and that deposited in the typical sanctuary was only a copy or transcript, that law must read the same now as it read then, and the idea of any change is placed beyond the range of possibilities; that heaven and earth, as Christ in his first sermon declared, would sooner pass than one jot or tittle pass149from the law; and that the fourth commandment requires of the second house of Israel, what it required of the first, and has required from Eden down, the observance of the seventh day of the week, as the grand and glorious memorial of our creation at the hands of God.