p. 204 | Profound Criticism by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 22, 1874

Profound Criticism.

By Uriah Smith

THERE appears a strange article, entitled “Mercy-Seat” in the World’s Crisis, of Dec. 9, 1874, written like other strange things of late in that paper by Miles Grant, and written for the purpose of giving another thrust at that over which he seems at the present time to be feeling so exceedingly bad, “Mrs. White’s Visions.” And we think the reader will agree with us that it is a strange production, when he learns the positions taken.

He says: “The word here [in Heb. 9:5] rendered mercy-seat, is ilasteerion.” Then he says the word propitiation, in Rom. 3:25, is “from ilasteerion, the very word rendered mercy-seat.” Then he draws the conclusion, “Christ is now our mercy-seat.” And “as the mercy-seat was ‘in the holiest of all,’ . . . it follows that Christ the great antitype has been ‘in the holiest of all,’ ever since he went to Heaven to be our mercy-seat.” From which he leaps to the desired conclusion, as follows:—

“As Christ has been our ilasteerion—mercy-seat, for over eighteen hundred years, and as the place for the mercy-seat is only in the holy of holies, it follows that Mrs. White’s visions, which declare he did not go into the holy of holies till A. D. 1844, are untrue.”

If Christ is the mercy-seat, we wonder who is the priest that ministers for us before the mercy-seat, or, have we no high priest in this dispensation, only a mercy-seat?

But if Eld. G. has enough knowledge of the Greek language to consult the lexicons (a feat which we judge from his criticism he is unable to perform) he will find not ilasteerion or ilasteerios, but hilasteerios, an adjective. He will see moreover that in Rom. 3:25, it is in the masculine gender, agreeing with Christ, in which case it means an expiatory sacrifice, and in Heb. 9:5 it is in the neuter gender, in which case it means the mercy-seat, the cover of the ark. From this use of the word, Greenfield, in his lexicon gives two words, one hilasteerion, neuter, meaning “the cover of the ark, mercy seat,” Heb. 9:5, the other hilasteerios, masculine, “one who makes expiation, a propitiator, or propitiatory sacrifice, Rom. 3:25.”

If Eld. G. could only divest himself of a little of his sanctified hatred against the visions, he would save himself from such mortifying blunders as confounding the high priest with the cover of the ark before which he ministers, and mistaking one Greek word for another.

U. S.