Exhortations from the Sanctuary
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the December 28, 2013
Sabbath School Lesson
“My children, I will be with you only a
little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you
now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one
another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:33-35,
NIV
Our lessons
this quarter have focused on the book of Hebrews. This book is foundational to
the idea of a heavenly sanctuary, a concept held in common by those within the
Seventh-day Adventist communion. While not every Adventist is fully invested in
this idea, it is enshrined in number four of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs of the
denomination. To be sure, it does not advance the detail that the Epistle to
the Hebrews does. However, it places Jesus in the sanctuary in heaven, a
sanctuary deemed to be identical to the one the Jews had here on Earth. Why is
this an important idea for Adventism?
On October
22, 1844, Christ was supposed to return in the clouds according to William
Miller’s understanding of the cleansing of the sanctuary.[i]
This was an appropriate understanding as on the annual Day of Atonement in the
Mosaic Law, the high priest stepped out of the Most Holy Place of the
Sanctuary, cleansing it by placing the sins of the altar on a goat to be taken
and left in the wilderness. However, Christ did not return on that date, a date
which had been calculated from the relevant passage in Daniel.[ii]
Either the calculation was wrong or the understanding of what cleansing the
sanctuary meant had to be incorrect.
The
Millerites, struggling to understand The Great Disappointment, as the failed
prophetic date came to be known, did not have to struggle long. The very next
day, a Methodist, Hiram Edson, claimed to have a vision that the sanctuary was
not the Earth, but a heavenly one, and that Christ, rather than cleansing the
Earth, went from the Holy Place to the Most Holy Place to begin the cleansing
ceremony.[iii]
Rather than continuing to research this topic, the group of believers that
would coalesce into the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863 found in Hiram
Edson’s vision an explanation that they could move forward with as a
denomination, a doctrine that continues to the present day. Due to her status
as church prophet, Ellen White’s endorsement of this idea pretty much put the
lid on any further discussion of alternative explanations, so much so that
anyone who might later challenge it faced the possibility of literally being
“kicked to the curb” by the denomination. A prima
facie example of this might be the treatment of Desmond Ford at Glacier
View Ranch, Colorado.[iv]
Doctor Ford
(he currently holds two doctorates), at the time an ordained Seventh-day
Adventist minister, felt that there was merit in exploring that the
calculations might be in error as opposed to simply assuming that the cleansing
of the sanctuary was erroneously understood. However, as several of those
attending the Glacier View conference perhaps rightly understood, such a
possibility would tumble the entire edifice of Adventism to the ground. For
over a century, the church had structured its systematic theology on the
assumption that the cleansing had been misunderstood by William Miller, and not
that his calculations were in error. The former became the foundation of the
doctrine of the Investigative Judgment, a belief held solely by Seventh-day
Adventists that Jesus in 1844 began the final judgment of all of mankind,
beginning with the dead and progressing eventually to the living.
In 1889,
Ellen White identified the doctrine regarding the heavenly sanctuary as being
an unmovable pillar of Adventism.[v]
Although not officially stated, Ellen White’s infallibility is also an
unmovable pillar of Adventism. This is commonly understood even though she
clearly stated in private correspondence that today is public that she was not
infallible.[vi]
When we consider these things the entire “house of cards” seems very tenuous.
If we admit the fallibility of Ellen White, then it becomes possible to admit
that the Investigative Judgment/Sanctuary Cleansing doctrine might be worth a
second look. However, if that turns out to be in error, a distinctive defining
characteristic that sets Seventh-day Adventism apart from other denominations
crumbles and we must search for a clearer understanding of what the time
prophecy of Daniel is all about.
Doctor Ford
asks if perhaps the seventy weeks of Daniel[vii]
has only symbolic significance similar to Jesus telling Peter to forgive until
you have done it “seventy times seven.”[viii]
In this way, the seventy weeks might appear to be simply a way of stating
“until the purpose is fulfilled” instead of a number meant to be taken
literally. Some felt that honestly examining these things would be profitable
toward greater understanding of what went wrong in 1844. However, Doctor Ford’s
temerity in even raising the question resulted in purges of entire churches in
the 1980s, let alone his own defrocking.
In some
ways, the purging continues to this day as conservative Adventists, emboldened
by Glacier View and its results, continue to rail against those who still feel
that the truth has nothing to fear from open investigation. If they could, they
would push all those who question our doctrines from church fellowship as
disloyal and even traitorous. They would do this even in spite of what Ellen
White said against such attitudes. She wrote, “The sin that leads to the most unhappy results is the cold, critical,
unforgiving spirit that characterizes Pharisaism. When the religious experience
is devoid of love, Jesus is not there; the sunshine of His presence is not
there. No busy activity or Christless zeal can supply the lack. There may be a
wonderful keenness of perception to discover the defects of others; but to
everyone who indulges this spirit, Jesus says, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out
the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the
mote out of thy brother’s eye.” He who is guilty of wrong is the first to
suspect wrong. By condemning another he is trying to conceal or excuse the evil
of his own heart. It was through sin that men gained the knowledge of evil; no
sooner had the first pair sinned than they began to accuse each other; and this
is what human nature will inevitably do when uncontrolled by the grace of
Christ.”
“When men indulge this accusing
spirit, they are not satisfied with pointing out what they suppose to be a
defect in their brother. If milder means fail of making him do what they think
ought to be done, they will resort to compulsion. Just as far as lies in their
power they will force men to comply with their ideas of what is right. This is what
the Jews did in the days of Christ and what the church has done ever since
whenever she has lost the grace of Christ.”[ix]
Perhaps the
crux of the controversy over the Sanctuary Doctrine is that we tend to view
Ellen White as infallible when it serves our purposes to do so, but when she
writes something that goes against the grain that we support, our answer is
often “Yes, but…” At Walla Walla University, I once had the opportunity to
watch two college professors in debate, each with their stack of 3x5 cards
containing relevant Ellen White quotes to support their viewpoints. In the end,
I came away very much believing that proof texting Ellen White can become very
much like proof texting the Bible. It can give the prophetess a wax nose to be
twisted in whichever direction one chooses. We see that doing this with the
Bible has resulted in many denominations that dialogue little with one another.
Perhaps the same is taking place within Adventism over the inspired writings
unique to the denomination. Certainly there are rifts and enough rancor to keep
those rifts growing.
Perhaps the
current quarterly was a “shot across the bow” from one side of the issue
directed at those who want more open discussion of the subject. If so, the
entire history of the Christian church is more than ample evidence that
suppression of dissenting viewpoints does not make them disappear. Even when
the church had the power of the state behind it as in the horrendous violence
of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew in France in 1572, it could not eliminate
theological dissent.[x]
Why does the church think it can silence it, today?
Sadly, the
whole controversy is perhaps as though it were fought amongst the stars in
heaven as opposed to here on Earth anyway. Having taught Sabbath School classes
for several decades, I know from experience that while church members may say I
believe in the Investigative Judgment and the Sanctuary Doctrine, not one in
ten, if asked, could give an adequate explanation of what they mean, in spite
of several quarterlies dedicated to those topics over those same decades. As a
theologian, the subject involves my area of expertise and training, but I doubt
that it, or even theology, is on the front burner for much of the membership.
