Stephen
Terry, Director
God's
Call
Commentary
for the October 19, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were
called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were
influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of
the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame
the strong. 1 Corinthians 1:26-27, NIV
Finally, with this week's lesson, we can move beyond the
Seventy Years Prophecy of Daniel, chapter 9, with the questionable dates
provided by the lesson quarterly as I have discussed in the previous two lesson
commentaries. Now we move into the real meat and bones of the Seventh-day
Adventist prophetic perspective. The longest prophetic time frame in the Bible
is found in Daniel, chapter 8, the 2,300 days, if those days are interpreted as
years.[i] Some would interpret this
based on a prophetic year-for-a-day principle derived from the Lord's words to
the prophet Ezekiel.[ii]
But this creates a bit of a dilemma for Adventists, because the text doesn't
say 2,300 days, but 2,300 evenings and mornings. This is the same descriptive language
used in the Creation account in Genesis, chapter 1. Our Statement of
Fundamental Beliefs wants to box us in to accepting only the most literal
interpretation of those "evenings and mornings" in Genesis, yet
expects us to abandon all of that with the identical phraseology in Daniel. It
seems we want to have our cake and eat it, too. This has backed us into a bit
of a corner, but rather than admit the possibility of an error somewhere along
the way and restructuring our beliefs into something more consistent with the actual
text, we have doubled down in a manner very reminiscent of the Roman Catholic
Church when confronted by Martin Luther's discovery that we are saved by faith,
and his defense of that position at the Diet of Worms.
When the evidence was presented at our own hastily contrived
"Diet" of Glacier View, rather than
carefully examining the evidence presented by Desmond Ford, a modern
Martin Luther, the church leaders convened for this 1980 "diet"
determined that mother church could not be wrong, much in the same way as our
1521 predecessors decided. In such an atmosphere, the evidence is irrelevant
and acquiescence to the dictates of the church becomes the only thing that
matters. Just as the Diet of Worms resulted in Emperor Charles V issuing an
edict totally rejecting Martin Luther and his teachings, in effect defrocking him
to eliminate his influence, so the Glacier View "diet" also resulted
in the defrocking of Dr. Ford, a purging of those who honestly sought to
examine our beliefs based on the evidence he offered, and the establishment of
a creedal Statement of Fundamental Beliefs that has been continually fine-tuned
in an effort to eradicate dissent from the official position of mother church.
Short-sighted, they did not realize that in their persecution of Desmond Ford,
they were only creating a martyr to freedom of religious belief. Now that he
has passed and is beyond the reach of any further torment from his persecutors,
his legacy of defense of the right to freely go wherever theology takes us in our
search for understanding lives on. It is in honor of that legacy that I also
seek a faith defined not by creed, but by what I am able to parse from
scripture, science and history and the Holy Spirit's leading. Although, just
like the time of Christ, the existing church seeks to harness and control the
working of the Holy Spirit, demanding the right to "authorize" any
ministry not derived from their control,[iii] the Spirit does not
submit to such control and will, in fact, leave any organization seeking to
control rather than surrender to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the spirit
that inspires the prophets, and through that inspiration, they testify of the
grace of God that grants us salvation through Jesus.[iv] The Christian church, as
evidenced by its lack of power, having only the appearance of godliness, has
striven relentlessly to quench the moving of the Holy Spirit whenever it has
arisen, despite counsel to the contrary.[v]
But now let us return to the issue of the prophetic
timeline under question. Why does the church adamantly adhere to a
year-for-a-day interpretation for the 2,300 days? Perhaps it is because it was
the principle promoted by William Miller and others who preached that Jesus
would return in 1844 based on that interpretive slant on Daniel 8:14. When
Jesus failed to return in 1844, rather than question the interpretive principle
thus applied, they denied its error and rationalized that it must have meant
something different than the Parousia, since 1) it didn't happen and 2) there
could not be an error in the timeline. Hiram Edson is given credit for deriving
an altered understanding that did not sacrifice their dedication to William
Miller's accuracy. Amazingly, this was in spite of Miller's previous error in
date setting that might have called into question his entire premise. Edson
claimed to have received a vision that 1844 was when Christ entered the Most
Holy Place of the temple in heaven. This was ultimately heralded as the
beginning of the Investigative Judgment with the judgment of the dead to
precede the judgment of the living. This seems a reasonable conclusion based on
the Parousia portrayed in Revelation[vi] where Jesus is said to
bring his reward with him, so logically, those rewards must have previously
been determined. But this assumes that judgment has not always been an ongoing
process, that Jesus did enter the Most Holy Place in 1844, that such an entry
was about judgment beginning, and perhaps most importantly that William Miller
did not err in his interpretation of prophecy. This is a rather long chain of
assumptions.
If we look at the primary foundation, William Miller's proclamation
of the Parousia, we might find some clues regarding where he could have gone
astray. It is important that we see things from Miller's perspective in order
to glean understanding. Aside from his application of a year-for-a-day
principle, it might also be noted that his Bible of choice was the King James
Version. It is significant that so much of Adventist teaching is dependent upon
that version for support. For instance, the passage found in Isaiah 8:20,[vii] which is only rendered
in a supportive manner for such a purpose in the King James Version, has long
been used by Seventh-day Adventists as a foundational text for uplifting the
legal requirements of the Ten Commandments and consequently the Seventh-day
Sabbath. As might be discerned from its pre-eminence in the denominational
name, the seventh-day Sabbath may have attained greater importance than the
Advent in the minds of some. But the essential point I want to make here is the
translation of Daniel 9:24[viii] and the key word
"determined." Some, including William Miller, looked at the Hebrew
that "determined" was translated from and noted that it is the verb
"to cut off." Then they reasoned that if it is cut off from something
and it is a timeline, it must be cut off from the 2,300 days and they must both
begin in 457 BC with the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I, the order
that sent Ezra to Jerusalem to take charge of the rebuilding. The timeline of
the 490 years is fairly easy to substantiate because it takes us to the
ministry of Jesus, his crucifixion and the opening of the work for the Gentiles,
events that all fit neatly into that timeline. With the accuracy of that
timeline well founded, the temptation naturally arises to want to view the
2,300 "evenings and mornings" in the same way. If we do not then the
idea of cutting the 490 years from the 2,300 "mornings and evenings"
is impossible since 2,300 literal days would be a shorter time period than the
490 years. In addition, since the 490 days could not logically be cut off from
the middle or the end of the 2,300 days or the timeline would not fit, it must have
been cut off from the beginning. Therefore the application of the
year=for=a=day principle to the 2,300 days takes us to William Miller's 1844.
(Yes, I know that from 457 BC, it should be 1843, and this is what Miller
thought originally, but he later discovered that just as when you are another
year older is determined by when your birthday falls during the year, so it is
with Artaxerxes' decree. This discovery caused Miller to change the date to the
fall of 1844.)
This whole scenario might have played out differently
had they not become hung up on the "cut off" idea. Is it not amazing
that an entire denomination could arise from a single Hebrew word? Sometimes it
is not wise to take Hebrew as literally as we sometimes take our English translations
of the Bible. For instance, in Hebrew, when God is angry, it says his nose
burns. Do we take this to mean that God literally has a nose when the point was
not about that but simply that he was angry? It is possible that what God was
telling Daniel was simply that these 490 years from the 457 BC decree area going
to be significant to the Jewish nation. If we cast aside the idea that the 490
years is part of the 2,300 "evenings and mornings" with an identical
starting date, we may be able to admit that we really don't know what it was
pointing to, and that's OK. We have struggled for generations trying to figure
out what Daniel, chapter 11 really means, and we have survived that without fully
understanding. Maybe we tend to be like the Disciple Thomas who refused to believe
in Jesus resurrection and said, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands
and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will
not believe." But Jesus responded, "Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have believed."[ix] It is possible to be
saved without vowing to accept the meaning of the 2,300 days or the Investigative
Judgment as dictated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. As Martin Luther
pointed out 700 years ago, we are saved by God's good grace and not by church
decrees. That's good news for the world.
