A "TRUMPET" ON "ADVENTISM."
By Editor
We have received from many sources clippings from a paper on "Adventism," in which the editorial writer makes certain statements, and we are asked to review these articles. In the first place, it is hardly worth while to notice them. There are small papers of small circulation that are only too glad to get any kind of notice. To do this they frequently go out of their way to attack somebody. As a general thing, even tho they make many erroneous statements, their circulation is very limited and they reach only a certain class, which any refutation of their errors would not reach at all. What, then, is the use of denying their statements? In the article before us is this statement, for instance: "Adventism in its several branches started, or originated, in the work of William Miller." They give the date of this as somewhere about 1831. It is further stated, "He preached it as a revelation from God." Now, in the first place, Adventism began not with William Miller, but all over the world, at about that time. More than three hundred ministers of the Church of England were preaching that Christ was coming about the year 1840 to 1844. Joseph Wolfe declared that he preached it thruout all the East and in the highest circles in both Europe and America. Many ministers of other churches were preaching it in both Europe and America. It was not a denominational matter at all. Ministers were raised up of God in all the various denominations to preach that Christ was soon to come. The British Museum Library abounds in books and pamphlets which were written about that date. Miller led in this work in America because his interpretations of the prophecies were clearer and more definite than others who were preaching the same thing. He did not preach it as a revelation from God other than that God revealed it in His holy word. That Miller was mistaken is held by all Adventists. The explanation of his mistake is very easily shown in the study of the Gospel in the light of the Sanctuary question and in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Even so the disciples were disappointed when they thought that Christ would set up a temporal kingdom at the first advent. Yet were they fulfilling prophecy, so manifestly so that Jesus5said that if they should hold their peace, in proclaiming that His kingdom was then to be set up, the very stones would cry out. This writer quotes from Uriah Smith some things that are true, some things that are garbled. Of course Miller's disappointment affected many. Every test that comes in the individual Christian life, as well as the history of the church, affects many. Many at one time went back from Jesus Christ and walked no more with Him, and many more when He was crucified. That, however, did not prove His advent or doctrine a delusion, tho it was then counted so. Neither did it prove the prophecy a delusion, nor Miller a delusion, tho it was a mistake in the event to occur at the close of the long period of 2,300 days. This writer quotes Uriah Smith: "If we take the ground that the prophetic period did not then expire, the whole work falls to the ground as wholly false and unscriptural." "But if there is nothing to the past movement, there is certainly nothing to the present." Then he goes on to say that "I shall prove from their own writings that the time-setting was an error." But he proves absolutely nothing "from their own writings." Consistently from the very beginning Seventh-day Adventists have held that the prophetic time was rightly interpreted, the mistake was in the event to take place at the end of the period. This holiness paper teaches a holiness that is too holy to follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ and keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. The whole opposition to Seventh-day Adventism is not because of any mistakes that anybody has made, but it is because of enmity of the natural heart against God's law. The whole secret of the opposition to the truth of the Gospel lies there; for "the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." We have no more to say in regard to the matter than this. We only invite our readers who are troubled over the erroneous and garbled statements that many may make to study the truth at first hand; get Uriah Smith's book on the Sanctuary, and read it from beginning to end; and many who will read it will say, as did a learned Presbyterian minister of Ogdensburg, N. Y., after perusing and studying it, "The three angels' messages are founded on rock bottom."