illerite Adventism struggled in utter confusion in the wake of the October 22 disappointment. The majority of believers may have left the faith, while those who remained divided into several camps.

The Centrality of the Shut Door
and the Struggle for Identity
The primary task for the various Millerites in late 1844 and throughout 1845 was to find meaning, to discover what it meant to be an Adventist. The most basic theological dividing line among them centered on whether anything had happened on October 22. Those advocating that no prophecy had been fulfilled became known as “open door” Adventists, while those claiming a prophetic fulfillment were viewed as “shut door” Adventists.

The open and shut door labels came from the Millerite understanding of Matthew 25:10, which says that when the bridegroom arrived the wise virgins went into the marriage with him while the door was shut to all the rest. Miller, understanding the coming to the marriage to be the Second Advent, interpreted the closing of the door to be the ending of probation. Following Miller’s lead, the 1842 Boston general conference of Millerite Adventists had resolved “that the notion of a probation after Christ’s coming, is a lure to destruction, entirely contradictory to the word of God, which positively teaches that when Christ comes the door is shut, and such as are not ready can never enter in” (ST, June 1, 1842, 69). Along that line of logic, and still believing that prophecy had been fulfilled on October 22, Miller wrote on November 18, 1844, that “we have done [finished] our work in warning sinners” (AH, Dec. 11, 1844, 142).

In short, the real issue was whether any prophecy had been fulfilled in October 1844, with the shut door believers in the affirmative and the open door advocates in the negative. Those understandings were intimately connected to their concept of mission. The open door Adventists came to believe in early 1845 that they still had a task of warning the world of impending doom, while the shut door Adventists concluded that they had completed their mission to humanity and that their only duty was to stir up and instruct other Adventists who had been in the 1844 movement.

Joshua V. Himes became the leading voice among the open door Adventists. He rapidly concluded that nothing had happened on October 22, 1844. Holding that they had been correct as to the expected event (i.e., the second coming of Jesus), he reasoned that they had been wrong on the time calculation. On November 4, 1844, Himes wrote that “we are now satisfied that the authorities on which we based our calculations cannot be depended upon for definite time.” Although “we are near the end, . . . we have no knowledge of a fixed date or definite time, but do most fully believe that we should watch and wait for the coming of Christ, as an event that may take place at any hour” (MC, Nov. 7, 1844, 150). Under Himes’s leadership this group took steps to organize itself into a distinct Adventist body at Albany, New York, in April 1845. By that time, in order to escape the fanaticism of some of the shut door Adventists, Miller had moved to the open door camp (see MF 267-293).

Whereas the open door Adventists were able to unify at Albany, the shut door concept eventually gave birth to two quite distinct orientations. The first, the “spiritualizers,” got its name from the fact that it offered a spiritualized interpretation of the October 22 event. Concluding that the Millerites had been correct on both the time and the event predicted at the end of the 2300 days, the spiritualizers inferred that Christ had returned on October 22. That advent, however, had been a spiritual coming to the hearts of the believers rather than a visible appearing in the clouds of heaven. Fanaticism and charismatic excesses plagued the ranks of the spiritualizers (see MF 245-266).

The second strand of shut door Adventism agreed with the spiritualizers on the fulfillment of the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14 on October 22, but disagreed with them on the nature of the event. In short, the latter reasoned that the Millerites had been correct on the time but wrong on the event to take place. They came to believe that the cleansing of the sanctuary was not the Second Advent while at the same time they continued to hold to the shut door/close of probation belief. To make matters worse, they failed to connect the fact that Miller’s understanding of the end of probation occurring at the close of the 2300 days rested on the mistaken interpretation of the cleansing of the sanctuary as the Second Advent. Only after they had arrived at a new insight on the cleansing of the sanctuary could they rid themselves of their faulty concept of the shut door. But, as we shall see, that recognition came only gradually. It would be nearly a decade before they worked through the issue.

It was in the latter group that we find the future leaders of what would eventually develop into Seventh-day Adventism. To them it seemed that the majority party under Himes had abandoned the Adventist message by rejecting the validity of the 1844 movement and that the spiritualizers had denied the integrity of the Bible by spiritualizing its plainest statements. Although originally the smallest of the post-Millerite groups, it came to see itself as the true successor of the once-powerful Millerite movement.

Of the three divisions of Millerism discussed above, the third one was the last to emerge.

In fact, between October 1844 and 1847 or 1848 it had no shape or visibility. Rather, the future Sabbatarian Adventists consisted of a few Bible students here and there searching for the meaning of their Adventist experience but who generally didn’t personally know one another before 1846 or 1847. They were united in the search for identity but on little else in that early period. Their task was to explore their Bibles anew in the context of the chaotic conditions of post-1844 Millerism to discover where they stood in prophetic history (see MF 295-325). As a result, their foremost task during the extended period of transition from Millerism to Sabbatarianism was to determine what was Adventist in Adventism. The Bible was their primary tool in that enterprise.

A People of “the Book”
The most basic issue for any religious group is its source of authority. Those on the path to becoming Sabbatarians were clear on that topic. As James White put it in early 1847, “the Bible is a perfect and complete revelation. It is our only rule of faith and practice” (WLF 13; italics supplied).

As we will see in the balance of this chapter, the Sabbatarians developed their distinctive beliefs on the basis of Bible study. That fact was not always obvious to their detractors. Miles Grant, for example, argued in 1874 in the World’s Crisis (a leading first-day Adventist periodical) that “‘it is claimed by the Seventh-day Adventists that the sanctuary to be cleansed at the end of the 1300 [2300] days, mentioned in Dan. 8:13, 14, is in heaven, and that the cleansing began in the autumn of A.D. 1844. If any one should ask why they thus believe, the answer would be, the information came through one of Mrs. E. G. White’s visions’” (WC, Nov. 25, 1874 in RH, Dec. 22, 1874, 204).

Uriah Smith vigorously responded to that accusation. “Hundreds of articles,” he stated, “have been written upon the subject [of the sanctuary]. But in no one of these are the visions once referred to as any authority on this subject, or the source from whence any view we hold has been derived. Nor does any preacher ever refer to them on this question. The appeal is invariably to the Bible, where there is abundant evidence for the views we hold on this subject” (RH, Dec. 22, 1874, 204; italics supplied).

Smith, it should be pointed out, made a statement that any person willing to go back into early Seventh-day Adventist literature can verify or disprove. On the subject of the sanctuary Paul Gordon has done that in his The Sanctuary, 1844, and the Pioneers (1983). His findings verify Smith’s claims. Whereas many later Adventists have tended to lean on Ellen White’s authority to substantiate or at least help support their positions on various of their doctrines, the early Adventists were a people of the “Book.” Current Seventh-day Adventists of all persuasions need to note that fact as they seek to discover the genuine Adventism of history.

James White touched on the unique role of the Bible in doctrinal formation in 1847 after claiming that Scripture is “our only rule of faith and practice.” In the context of his wife’s prophetic ministry he wrote that “true visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but those that are given for a new rule of faith and practice, separate from the Bible, cannot be from God, and should be rejected” (WLF 13).

Four years later he again made that point explicit. “Every Christian,” he wrote, “is therefore in duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect rule of faith and duty. He should pray fervently to be aided by the Holy Spirit in searching the Scriptures for the whole truth, and for his whole duty. He is not at liberty to turn from them to learn his duty through any of the gifts. We say that the very moment he does, he places the gifts in a wrong place, and takes an extremely dangerous position. The Word should be in front, and the eye of the church should be placed upon it, as the rule to walk by, and the foundation of wisdom, from which to learn duty in ‘all good works’” (RH, Apr. 21, 1851, 70; italics supplied).

In summary, early Adventists rejected tradition, church authority, and even the gifts of the Spirit in their doctrinal formation. They were a people of the “Book,” as we shall see in the rest of this chapter.

In regard to principles of interpretation, they believed Miller’s “Rules of Interpretation” to be correct. Comparing Scripture with Scripture, letting each word and sentence have its proper significance, and utilizing prophetic parallelism, typology, and the interpretation of symbolic figures as outlined by Miller in his quite conscious approach to Bible study, became a foundational perspective on how the Sabbatarians looked at Scripture. Needless to say, the Sabbatarians continued to interpret prophecy from the historicist perspective (rather than the preterist, which views prophecy as being fulfilled in the time of the prophet, or the futurist, which holds that a large portion of prophecy will have its fulfillment immediately before the Second Advent). As with Miller, the Sabbatarian Adventists continued to see prophecy as a sequence of historical fulfillments beginning at the time of the biblical prophets but extending throughout history to the end of the world. Thus they built their theology upon Miller’s prophetic platform.

Moving Toward an Understanding
of the Sanctuary
Those becoming Sabbatarian Adventists not only followed Miller’s principles of biblical interpretation, they also continued to accept his basic eschatology. In particular, they believed in the premillennial return of Christ in the clouds of heaven. Thus they carried over the central doctrine of Millerism.

They would formulate a second doctrinal understanding in the months following the Great Disappointment. That second position involved the meaning of the sanctuary that needed to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 days. It became progressively clearer to them that the sanctuary of Daniel 8:14 could not be the earth as Miller had taught and that the cleansing was not the Second Advent. However, it was one thing to come to those negative conclusions, but quite another to determine the actual nature of the sanctuary and its cleansing. The Sabbatarians would come to agreement on the nature of the sanctuary by 1847, but they would not arrive at a consensus on the meaning of the cleansing until the mid-1850s.

Josiah Litch had expressed doubts as to Miller’s interpretation of the cleansing of the sanctuary after the spring 1844 disappointment. “It has not been proved,” he penned in April, “that the cleansing of the sanctuary, which was to take place at the end of the 2300 days, was the coming of Christ or the purification of the earth.” Again he noted, as he wrestled with the meaning of the recent disappointment, that they were most likely to be “in error relative to the event which marked its close” (AShield, May 1844, 75, 80).

That line of thought rose again soon after the October disappointment. Thus Joseph Marsh could write in early November: “We cheerfully admit that we have been mistaken in the nature of the event we expected would occur on the tenth [day] of the seventh month; but we cannot yet admit that our great High Priest did not on that very day, accomplish all that the type would justify us to expect” (VT, Nov. 7, 1844, 166).

Apollos Hale and Joseph Turner followed Marsh’s reasoning in an article in January 1845. They equated the October 22 event with the coming of Christ to the Ancient of Days (God) in the judgment scene of Daniel 7. Hale and Turner concluded that “the coming of the bridegroom” indicated “some change of work or office, on the part of our Lord.” Christ would return to earth to gather His elect after His work “within the veil . . . where he has gone to prepare a place for us” is completed. As a result, “some time must elapse” between the coming of the Bridegroom to the Ancient of Days and the coming in glory. Hale and Turner went on to indicate that “the judgment is here!” (AM, January 1845, 3).

Some heretofore minor actors in the Advent drama developed the fullest extant exposition of the line of thought suggested by Litch, Marsh, Hale, and Turner. On October 23, 1844, Hiram Edson, a Methodist farmer of Port Gibson, New York, became convicted during a session of prayer with fellow believers “that light should be given, and our disappointment be explained.”

Soon thereafter, he and a companion (probably O.R.L. Crosier) set out to encourage their fellow believers. As they crossed a field, Edson reported, “I was stopped about midway,” and “heaven seemed open to my view. . . . I saw distinctly, and clearly, that instead of our High Priest coming out [the common expectation of the Millerites] of the Most Holy of the heavenly sanctuary to come to this earth on the tenth day of the seventh month, at the end of the 2300 days, that he for the first time entered on that day the second apartment of that sanctuary; and that he had a work to perform in the Most Holy before coming to this earth.”

Soon the summons of his companion, who had passed far beyond him, brought Edson back to the realities of the field. To a query as to what was wrong, Edson replied that “‘the Lord was answering our morning prayer; by giving light with regard to our disappointment.’”

Edson’s insight soon drove him into extended Bible study with Crosier and Dr. F. B. Hahn. Following Miller’s concordance approach to unlocking the meaning of Scripture, they concluded that the sanctuary to be cleansed in Daniel 8:14 was not the earth or the church, but the sanctuary in heaven, of which the earthly sanctuary had been a type or copy.

Hahn and Edson decided that their discoveries were “just what the scattered remnant needed” to explain the disappointment and “set the brethren on the right track.” They agreed to share the expense of publication between them if Crosier would “‘write out the subject of the sanctuary’” based on their Bible study. As a result, Crosier began to publish the findings of their combined study in early 1845 in the Day Dawn (H. Edson MS).

Then, on February 7, 1846, Crosier presented their conclusions in the Day-Star Extra under the title “The Law of Moses.” By that time their understanding of the sanctuary had fairly well matured.

We can summarize their most important conclusions in “The Law of Moses” as follows: (1) A literal sanctuary exists in heaven. (2) The Hebrew sanctuary system was a complete visual representation of the plan of salvation patterned after the heavenly sanctuary. (3) Just as the earthly priests had a two-phase ministry in the wilderness sanctuary, so Christ had a two-phase ministry in the heavenly. The first phase began in the Holy Place at His ascension, the second on October 22, 1844, when Christ moved from the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary to the second. Thus the antitypical or heavenly Day of Atonement started on that date. (4) The first phase of Christ’s ministry dealt with forgiveness, while the second involves the blotting out of sins and the cleansing of both the sanctuary and individual believers. (5) The cleansing of Daniel 8:14 was a cleansing from sin and was therefore accomplished by blood rather than by fire. (6) Christ would not return to earth until He completed His second-apartment ministry (DS Extra, Feb. 7, 1846, 37-44).

Crosier’s article did not go unnoticed by those who would become the leaders of Sabbatarian Adventists. In early 1847 Joseph Bates recommended Crosier’s treatment of the sanctuary as being “superior to any thing of the kind extant” (Opening Heavens, 25). About that same time Ellen White penned that “the Lord shew me in vision, more than one year ago, that Brother Crosier had the true light, on the cleansing of the Sanctuary, &c; and that it was his will, that Brother C. should write out the view which he gave us in the Day-Star, Extra, February 7, 1846” (WLF 12).

Crosier wasn’t the only shut door believer writing on the two-apartment ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary. Others included Emily C. Clemons, who edited a periodical in mid-1845 graphically entitled Hope Within the Veil, and G. W. Peavey, who was teaching in April 1845 that Christ had “closed the work typified by the daily ministrations previous to the 10th day of the 7th month, and on that day went into the holiest of all” (JS, Apr. 24, 1845, 55). Peavey also saw an interrelationship between Daniel 8:14, Hebrews 9:23-24, and Leviticus 16 and concluded that the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary needed purification by Christ’s blood on the antitypical day of atonement (ibid., Aug. 7, 1845, 166). He believed, however, that the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary had taken place on October 22, 1844, whereas Crosier and his colleagues regarded the atonement as an unfinished process that had begun on that date. It was Crosier’s understanding that would eventually find its way into Sabbatarian Adventism.

Ellen Harmon’s (Ellen White after her marriage in 1846) early visions also touched upon the topic of the sanctuary. Her first vision (December 1844) dealt with the validity of the seventh-month movement (a position she had given up [see WLF 22]) rather than the sanctuary. But in early 1845 she reported another vision in which she “saw the Father rise from the throne, and in a flaming chariot go into the holy of holies within the veil, and sit down” at the beginning of the second phase of Christ’s heavenly ministry (see EW 14, 15, 54-56).

While Ellen Harmon’s vision harmonized with the Bible-based conclusions of Crosier and others, we must remember that she had no authority in Adventism at that time. She was basically unknown to the major players in the developing sanctuary theology. To them she was merely a 17-year-old girl claiming to have visions amidst the conflicting voices of a shut door Adventism literally overrun by a multitude of individuals claiming charismatic gifts. It would take time to separate the genuine from the false in the chaotic conditions of the post-Disappointment Adventism of 1845. In the meantime, extensive and intensive Bible study was settling many of the issues.

A final point that should be raised in relation to the heavenly sanctuary is the discovery by James White and Joseph Bates of Revelation 11:19: “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament” (WLF 23). Not only did that verse, as they saw it, point to the opening up of the Most Holy Place in heaven (the location of the ark in the earthly sanctuary) near the end of time, but it also directed their eyes to the ark and its contents—the Ten Commandments. That thought brings us to another step in the development of Sabbatarian identity, the emphasis on the seventh-day Sabbath.

The Sabbath and the Third Angel’s Message
An interest in the seventh-day Sabbath among Adventists had originated before the October disappointment. J. A. Begg, a student of prophecy in Scotland, had first called their attention to it. But the real push for the Sabbath came from the Seventh Day Baptists. The first known attempt by that group to influence the Millerites took place in early 1842, but the Signs of the Times refused to publish the material (ST, Apr. 1, 1841, 3; Apr. 6, 1842, 5).

Yet a felt need to spread the message of the Sabbath was building among the Seventh Day Baptists. In 1843 their general conference session determined to take a more aggressive approach (contrary to their traditional stance on the topic) to promoting their understanding of the Sabbath. Thus the meeting resolved that it was their “solemn duty” to enlighten their fellow citizens on the topic. The 1843 conference also took steps to put that resolution into practice. Their efforts had some positive results. At their 1844 session they thanked God that “a deeper and wider-spread interest upon the subject had sprung up than has ever before been known in our country” (History of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, 243, 244).

Part of that interest had developed among the Millerites. While its extent is now impossible to determine, we do know that a zealous Seventh Day Baptist by the name of Rachel Oaks became interested in the Second Advent. By 1844 she had not only accepted the nearness of the Advent but she had also shared her understanding of the Sabbath with the Millerite congregation in Washington, New Hampshire. Several of the members in that church began keeping the seventh-day Sabbath in the spring of 1844. It is quite probable that the Washington congregation influenced a Free Will Baptist Millerite preacher by the name of Thomas M. Preble to accept the importance of the Sabbath in the summer of 1844.

By September 1844 the amount of agitation over the seventh day had become significant enough for the Midnight Cry to publish an extensive two-part editorial on the topic. “Many persons,” noted the Cry, “have their minds deeply exercised respecting a supposed obligation to observe the seventh day” (MC, Sept. 5, 1844, 68).

The editorials concluded that the first day of the week was not the biblical Sabbath. But they also noted that Christians were not under obligation to observe any special holy time. However, if such a requirement did exist, “then we think the seventh day is the only day for the observance of which there is any LAW” (ibid., Sept. 12, 1844, 76).

Those predisappointment seventh-day Sabbath seeds would produce more fruit in early 1845. On February 28 Preble set forth his beliefs on the Sabbath in the Hope of Israel. In March he published an expanded treatment of his views in a 12-page pamphlet not so subtly entitled A Tract, Showing That the Seventh Day Should Be Observed as the Sabbath, Instead of the First Day; “According to the Commandment.”

By April 1845 Joseph Bates had discovered Preble’s treatment of the topic in the Hope of Israel. He “read and compared” Preble’s evidence “with the bible” and became convinced “that there never had been any change” of the Sabbath to the first day of the week (SDS [1846], 40). From that point on Bates strongly advocated the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath.

Zealot on the topic that he was, Bates tried to convince young Ellen Harmon about the Sabbath during their first meeting in the summer of 1846. “I did not,” she later reported, “feel its importance, and thought that he erred in dwelling upon the fourth commandment more than upon the other nine” (LS 95). Later that year Ellen and her new spouse (James White) both accepted the validity of the seventh-day Sabbath, probably after studying the evidence in Bates’s The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, which he had published in August (1T 75). That same autumn appears to have been the time when Bates traveled to western New York where he met with Crosier, Hahn, and Edson. Edson and Hahn accepted the biblical Sabbath, while Crosier at least seemed favorable toward its observance. Meanwhile, they shared their insights on the heavenly sanctuary with Bates, which he readily accepted as being founded on solid Bible study. Thus by late 1846 a small group of Adventist believers began to form around the united doctrines of the two-phase ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary and the binding nature of the seventh-day Sabbath (H. Edson MS; YI, Mar. 8, 1910, 4-6).

Bates’s personal witnessing was important to the developing Sabbatarian mentality, but his books were even more vital. Between the summer of 1846 and 1849 Bates published a series of small books that not only set forth the Sabbath as the right day but developed a theology that integrated the key doctrines of the heavenly sanctuary, the Second Advent, and the Sabbath. Beyond that, Bates set those integrated doctrines in the historical flow of events moving from Revelation 11:19 through the end of chapter 14. His development of that integrated package in essence formed the platform for what would become the core of Seventh-day Adventist theology.

Foundational to Bates’s theology of the Sabbath was his Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, first published in 1846 and significantly revised in 1847. It is not especially surprising that in the 1846 edition Bates presented a largely Seventh Day Baptist concept of the Sabbath. Thus he set forth the ideas that the seventh-day Sabbath was the correct day of worship and that the Papacy had attempted to change God’s law (Dan. 7:25). Two points of special interest in the 1846 edition indicate that Bates was beginning to interpret the Sabbath in the light of an Adventist theological framework. The first is the thought in the “Preface” that “the seventh day Sabbath” is “to be restored before the second advent of Jesus Christ” (SDS [1846], 1). That idea derived from the restorationistic platform that Bates brought with him from the Christian Connexion. Thus the Reformation was not complete and would not be until all the great Bible truths neglected or perverted down through history found their rightful place in God’s church.

The second very Adventist tilt in the 1846 edition is Bates’s interpretation of the Sabbath within the context of the book of Revelation. In that little volume he tied the Sabbath to Revelation 14:12: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” “Now,” commented Bates, “it seems to me that the seventh day Sabbath is more clearly included in these commandments” than the other nine (ibid. 24). It was that very emphasis that had turned off Ellen Harmon in the summer of 1846 when she “thought that Elder B. erred in dwelling upon the fourth commandment more than upon the other nine” (1T 76). But Bates didn’t back off just because he ran into some criticism. To the contrary, he would develop both the restorationist implications of the biblical Sabbath and its apocalyptic aspects much more fully in the 1847 edition of The Seventh Day Sabbath.

That edition indicates that between August 1846 and January 1847 Bates’s distinctly Sabbatarian theology had made large strides toward maturity. In the preface he highlighted the fact that according to Revelation 11:19 the Most Holy Place of the heavenly temple of God had been opened so that all could see the ark of the testament containing the Ten Commandments. That would lead, he claimed, to “a space of time in which the commandments will be fully kept” (SDS [1847], iii, iv).

Thus in the preface he linked the newly discovered sanctuary doctrine that he had accepted during his discussions with Crosier, Edson, and Hahn late in 1846 to his restorationist vision of the Sabbath. That connection would become central later in the book. In his thinking the upsurge of interest in the Sabbath had resulted because of the opening up of the Most Holy Place in late 1844. That new interest had led some to focus on Revelation 14:12 with its teaching that God would have a last-day people who obeyed the commandments of God. According to Bates, “that such a people can be found on the earth as described in the 12v. and have been uniting in companies for the last two years, on the commandments of God and faith or testimony of Jesus, is indisputable and clear” (ibid. 58, 59). Thus he saw the beginnings of Sabbatarianism as a movement of prophecy.

The prophecy of Revelation 14:12, as Bates viewed it, was not an isolated passage of Scripture but formed a vital part of the very flow of Revelation 14. He pictured the preaching of Miller’s judgment hour summons as fulfilling the first angel’s message (14:6, 7), the second (14:8) as being the summons to come out of those churches that did not accept the Bible truth presented by Millerism, and the third (14:9-11) as presenting the curse that befalls those who remain in Babylon. In his early thinking on the topic the preaching of the third angel ended on October 22, 1844. Then the temple of God opened in heaven and a group of believers began to unite on Revelation 14:12 by keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus (ibid. 58, 59; VSDS 102-104).

It was in that context that Bates set forth what would become the Sabbatarian understanding of the mark of the beast. Building upon Revelation 12:17 with its idea that God would have a last-day remnant that would “keep the commandments of God,” he noted that “there will yet be a mighty struggle about the restoring and keeping [of] the seventh day Sabbath, that will test every living soul that enters the gates of the city” (SDS [1847], 60). God’s people would be “persecuted for keeping the commandments” by those who had the mark of the beast. “Is it not clear,” Bates asked in examining Revelation 14:9-12, “that the first day of the week for the Sabbath or holy day is a mark of the beast[?]” Thus at the end of time only two groups would live on earth—those having the mark of the beast and those keeping God’s commandments, including the seventh-day Sabbath (ibid. 59). Once Bates had reached those conclusions it was only a short step for him to reason that the sealing of the 144,000 of Revelation 14:1-5 had to do with the acceptance of the Sabbath by God’s last-day people, an interpretation he filled out in January 1849 when he published A Seal of the Living God. Given such an understanding, it is of little wonder that Bates had concluded early in 1847 “that God’s holy Sabbath is a present truth” (ibid. 56; italics supplied).

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Bates’s contributions to the development of Sabbatarian Adventist theology. As Adventism’s first theologian he set forth a system of concepts that united the doctrines of the Second Coming, the Sabbath, and the sanctuary within a great struggle between good and evil as portrayed in Revelation 11:19-14:20. Building on those understandings, the Sabbatarians would eventually see themselves not only as the true continuation of Millerite Adventism but as a prophetic people who possessed a last-day message of dire urgency. They would come to regard themselves as having a duty to preach the message of the third angel.

The Final Doctrinal Pillar:
Conditional Immortality
Beyond the doctrine of Christ’s two-phase ministry in the heavenly sanctuary, the seventh-day Sabbath, and the Second Advent, Sabbatarian Adventists would have one more belief that they considered a “pillar doctrine.” That fourth doctrine had to do with humanity’s true nature. Most Christians throughout history have believed, following Greek philosophy, that people are born immortal. Thus when their bodies die, their spirits or souls go either to heaven to live with God or to an eternally burning hell. But a minority of Bible students down through history have looked at the issue through Hebrew rather than Greek eyes and have denied the teaching of innate immortality. Adventism’s founders belonged to the latter camp.

The Sabbatarian Adventist understanding on the nature of humanity came through two sources. One was the teaching of George Storrs. Storrs, a Methodist minister, became convinced in 1840 after several years of Bible study that a person does not possess inherent immortality, but receives it only as a gift through Christ. As a result, the wicked who refuse the gift will be utterly exterminated by fire at the second death. Those conclusions led him to withdraw from the Methodist ministry.

In 1841 Storrs anonymously published An Inquiry: Are the Souls of the Wicked Immortal? In Three Letters. The next year he published an expanded version under his name as An Inquiry: Are the Souls of the Wicked Immortal? In Six Sermons. Although Storrs joined the Millerite movement in 1842, his views on immortality didn’t get much of a hearing since Miller and his associates saw Millerism as a one-doctrine movement. Josiah Litch, in fact, in April 1844 began publishing a 32-page periodical in opposition to Storrs entitled The Anti-Annihilationist. Storrs’s first ministerial convert was Charles Fitch, who wrote him in January 1844 that “after much thought and prayer, and a full conviction of duty to God, [I am] prepared to take my stand by your side” on the topic of “the state of the dead” (Charles Fitch to George Storrs, Jan. 25, 1844). Storrs’s teachings on the topic wouldn’t catch on in most of Adventism until after 1844.

A second source for the Sabbatarian Adventist understanding of the concept of conditional immortality came through the Christian Connexion with its desire to get back to the teachings of the Bible on every topic and move beyond the theological deviations that had crept in during the history of the Christian church. James White and Joseph Bates brought conditionalism (the doctrine that people are not born immortal but are granted immortality as a result of their faith in Jesus) and annihilationism (the belief that since people do not have innate immortality they will perish in the fires of hell rather than be endlessly tortured because they cannot die) with them from the Connexion.

Ellen Harmon discovered those doctrines from the same source, albeit indirectly. As a Methodist, she had been raised with the idea of innate immortality and a hell that burned people forever. Those doctrines created great perplexity in her young mind. “When the thought took possession of my mind that God delighted in the torture of His creatures, who were formed in His image, a wall of darkness seemed to separate me from Him” (LS 31).

A revised understanding on the topic came through her mother who had most likely come into contact with conditionalism at meetings she attended at the Casco Street Christian (Connexion) Church in Portland, Maine, in the early 1840s. Ellen subsequently heard her mother discussing the topic with a friend and talked to her about it. But it would be several months more before the girl became convicted on the biblical truthfulness of the topic. Once she accepted it, she saw how nicely it integrated with Adventist theology. As she put it, “My mind had often been disturbed by its efforts to reconcile the immediate reward or punishment of the dead with the undoubted fact of a future resurrection and judgment. If at death the soul entered upon eternal happiness or misery, where was the need of a resurrection of the poor moldering body? But this new and beautiful faith taught me the reason why inspired writers had dwelt so much upon the resurrection of the body; it was because the entire being was slumbering in the grave” (ibid. 48-50).

In short, conditional immortality harmonized fully with Adventist theology as the founders of Sabbatarianism understood the Bible in 1847. Beyond that, it would support the teaching of the investigative judgment, a topic that would be widely accepted by the late 1850s.

Putting It All Together
By early 1848 the Sabbatarian Adventist leaders, through both extensive and intensive Bible study, had come to basic agreement on at least four points of doctrine: (1) the personal, visible, premillennial return of Jesus, (2) the two-phase ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary, (3) the perpetuity of the seventh-day Sabbath and its end-time importance, and (4) the concept that immortality is not inherent, but something that comes only as a gift through Christ. Those four pillar or landmark doctrines not only set off the Sabbatarians from other Millerites, but from other Christians in general. The pillar doctrines provided the answer to the question of what was Adventist in Adventism. Such teachings provided the Sabbatarians with their identity.

The Sabbatarians shared many beliefs with other Christians, but their teaching and preaching focused on their pillar doctrines as being present truth for their time. They viewed their message in terms of two focal points. The first was a theological orientation that saw “the sanctuary in heaven as the grand center of the Christian system,” a concept that helped them unify all their other beliefs (RH, Dec. 15, 1863, 21). The second unifying focal point for their theology involved the message of the three angels of Revelation 14.

By 1848 Sabbatarian Adventists were beginning to see the prophetic importance of the three angels for their mission. In 1850 James White published an important article summarizing their conclusions on the topic. In it he equated the first angel’s message (see Rev. 14:6, 7) with the Millerite preaching of the Second Advent. For him the time element in “‘the hour (time) of his judgment is come’” was crucial. “The whole Advent host,” he penned, “once believed” that something special would happen in 1843. “The unbelief of those who doubt now,” he continued, “does not prove that we were all mistaken then. The passing of the time, and the perpetual backsliding and unbelief of Adventists has not changed this truth of God into a lie; but it remains truth still.”

The second angel (see Rev. 14:8), White emphasized, “followed” the first angel. When the churches began to shut their doors to Millerites and disfellowship them, then the second angel sounded the message that “‘Babylon is fallen. . . . Come out of her my people.’”

“This prophecy,” White stated, “was exactly fulfilled, and in the right time, and place. . . . We heard it with our ears, our voices proclaimed it, and our whole being felt its power, and with our eyes we saw its effect, as the oppressed people of God burst the bands that bound them to the various sects, and made their escape from Babylon. . . .

“The second angel’s message called us out from the fallen churches where we are now free to think, and act for ourselves in the fear of God. It is an exceedingly interesting fact that the Sabbath question began to be agitated among second advent believers immediately after they were called out of the churches by the second angel’s message. God’s work moves in order. The Sabbath truth came up in just the right time to fulfill prophecy” (PT, April 1850, 65-68).

White (in disagreement with Bates who saw the third angel’s message as ending on October 22, 1844, with the rise of the Sabbath truth of Revelation 14:12 following that date) held that the third angel’s message included Revelation 14:12 and had begun to be preached in October 1844 (WLF 11). He regarded the message of the third angel of Revelation 14:9-12 as the climax of the prophetic movement that began with Miller’s preaching of the first angel’s message. It would be God’s last message of mercy to the world just prior to the great harvest of souls at the Second Advent pictured in verses 15-20.

Also White pointed out that Revelation 13 and 14 and the message of the third angel recognize only two classes of people at the end of time. One persecutes the saints and receives the mark of the beast, while the other continues to be patient in waiting for Christ to return and is “KEEPING THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD.”

“Never did I have such feelings while holding my pen as now,” James wrote as he moved toward his presentation’s emotional climax. “And never did I see and feel the importance of the Sabbath as I do this moment. Surely the Sabbath truth, like the rising sun ascending from the east, has increased in light, in power and in importance until it is the great sealing truth. . . .

“Many stopped at the first angel’s message, and others at the second, and many will refuse the third; but a few will ‘follow the Lamb withersoever he goeth’ [Rev. 14:4], and go up and possess the land. Though they have to pass through fire and blood, or witness the ‘time of trouble such as never was,’ they will not yield, and ‘receive the mark of the beast,’ but they will struggle on, and press their holy warfare until they, with the harps of God, strike the note of victory on mount Zion” (PT, April 1850, 67, 68).

Truly the Sabbatarian Adventists had found their identity. They had come to see themselves as a people of prophecy. Because of their convictions they often referred to their movement as the “third angel’s message.” As they viewed it, the scattering time following the October 1844 disappointment had ended and the gathering time had arrived during which they were to preach their last-day message to the remnants of Millerism. As James White put it in November 1849, “the scattering time we have had; it is in the past, and now the time for the saints to be gathered into the unity of the faith, and be sealed by one holy, uniting truth has come. Yes, Brother, it has come. It is true that the work moves slowly, but it moves sure, and it gathers strength at every step. . . . Our past Advent experience and present position and future work is marked out in Rev. 14 Chap. as plain as the prophetic pencil could write it. Thank God that we see it. . . . I believe that the Sabbath truth is yet to ring through the land, as the Advent never has. . . . Jesus is coming to gather the poor outcasts home, home, HOME. Those who keep the whole truth will enter in. Blessed are they that do the commandments, they yes, THEY will have a right to the tree of life, and enter the Holy City” (JW to Bro. Bowles, Nov. 8, 1849).

Refining the First and
Second Angels’ Messages
The Sabbatarians would modify their original understanding of the first and second angels’ messages in several ways during the late 1840s and 1850s. Not only did they come to regard the third message as including Revelation 14:12 and beginning in October 1844, but they came to realize that even though the angels started giving their messages sequentially all three needed to be proclaimed simultaneously in the post-1844

period. The Sabbatarians came to understand that they must preach all three messages rather than merely the third. Thus they interchangeably referred to their movement as that of the third angel or that of the three angels.

Regarding the second angel’s message of Revelation 14:8, the Sabbatarians continued to follow the lead of Charles Fitch in interpreting Babylon as including both apostate Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. As James White put it in 1859: “We unhesitatingly apply the Babylon of the Apocalypse to all corrupt Christianity.” Corruption, as he saw it, involved both a moral fall and the intermingling of Christian teachings with non-Christian philosophies such as the immortality of the soul. The latter left the churches defenseless against such beliefs as spiritualism. Babylon, in short, stood for confused churches (RH, Mar. 10, 1859, 122, 123).

The one important line of development set forth by the Sabbatarians in regard to the second angel’s message was to conceive of the fall of Babylon as a two-phase or progressive corruption. Whereas Fitch had seen Revelation 14:8 and 18:1-4 as one event, James White and the Sabbatarians came to interpret those two texts as separate events. Thus he noted that the fall of Babylon described in 14:8 “is in the past” while that set forth in 18:1-4 is present and especially future. As he put it in 1859: “First she falls [14:8]; second, she becomes the habitation of devils, and ‘the hold of every foul spirit,’ & c.; third, God’s people are called out of her; and fourth, her plagues are poured out upon her” (ibid.). Thus although the religious world had made a serious mistake in the early 1840s in rejecting the biblical teaching of the Second Advent and for persecuting people for holding that belief, that 1840s fall was only the beginning of confusion. Developments before the end of time would lead the churches into much more serious moral and doctrinal turmoil until God would have to finally give up on those hopelessly confused churches that chose to be part of Babylon.

The Sabbatarians would also make one major change in the Millerite understanding of the first angel’s message. Whereas the Millerites had tied the judgment scene of Daniel 7, the cleansing of the sanctuary of Daniel 8:14, and “the hour of his judgment is come” of Revelation 14:7 to the judgment to take place at the Second Advent, the Sabbatarians would come to see it as a pre-Advent, or what they called an investigative judgment. They would not universally accept the idea of an investigative judgment, however, until the late 1850s. For a while the issue divided Bates and James White.

The concept of a pre-Advent judgment originated before the October 1844 disappointment. Josiah Litch developed the idea in 1840 and published it in 1841. His main point at that time was that the judgment needed to precede the resurrection (Address to the Public, 37). A year later he wrote that “no human tribunal would think of executing judgment on a prisoner until after his trial; much less God.” Thus God, before the resurrection, would bring every human work into judgment. At the resurrection He would execute the judgment on the basis of the pre-Advent trial judgment (Prophetic Expositions, vol. 1, 49-54). Several Millerites adopted Litch’s concept prior to October 1844.

Then, between the October disappointment and 1850, several others accepted the idea of a pre-Advent judgment beginning at the time of the Great Disappointment, including Bates. Enoch Jacobs, for example, after discussing the breastplate of judgment worn on the Day of Atonement, concluded in November 1844 that “unless something as decisive as the setting of the judgment took place on the tenth day [Oct. 22, 1844], the antitype is not yet given,” prophecy is not fulfilled, and we are still in darkness (WMC, Nov. 29, 1844, [19]). Again, in January 1845 Apollos Hale and Joseph Turner called for a deeper understanding of the wedding parables. In particular, they pointed out that the wedding parable of Luke 12 says that people needed to wait until Christ returned from the wedding. They went on to note that the wedding parable of Matthew 22 has a judgment scene in which the king examines his guests to determine whether they are wearing a wedding garment. Turner and Hale linked these wedding parables to Christ’s reception of His kingdom in the judgment scene of Daniel 7. They concluded that beginning on October 22 Christ had a new work to perform “in the invisible world.” Accordingly, they proclaimed, “the judgment is here!” (AM, January 1845, 3).

It was along such lines of argument that some post-disappointment Adventists began to see that such central Millerite texts as the judgment of Daniel 7 and the arrival of the bridegroom at the wedding meant the coming of Christ to the pre-Advent judgment rather than His return in the clouds of heaven. That same rationale they applied to the cleansing of the sanctuary of Daniel 8:14 and the judgment hour of Revelation 14:7. “Respecting ‘the hour of God’s judgment is come,’” Bates penned in 1847, “there must be order and time, for God in his judicial character to decide the cases of all the righteous, that their names may be registered in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and they be fully prepared for that eventful moment of their change from mortal to immortality” (Second Advent Way Marks, 6). In Bates’s understanding a perfecting of the saints on earth accompanied the pre-Advent cleansing of the sanctuary in heaven (i.e., the judgment; see VSDS 69).

James White totally disagreed with Bates on the pre-Advent judgment. In 1847 White wrote that “it is not necessary that the final sentence should be given before the first resurrection, as some [e.g., Bates] have taught; for the names of the saints are written in heaven, and Jesus and the angels will certainly know who to raise and gather to the New Jerusalem” (WLF 24). Again in September 1850 he stated: “The great day of judgment will be one thousand years long” and “will be introduced by the second advent.” “Many minds,” he noted, “have been confused by the conflicting views that have been published on this subject. Some have contended that the day of judgment was prior to the second advent. This view is certainly without foundation in the word of God” (AR, September 1850, 49).

Sometime between 1850 and 1857, however, White came around to Bates’s view on the pre-Advent judgment. Circumstantial evidence for that change appears in the Review of February 1854 when James published a piece by J. N. Loughborough that tied the first angel’s message to the pre-Advent judgment. Even though Loughborough had not written it for publication, White notes in a short introduction that he had printed it anyway because “it meets inquiries which have been presented to us” (RH, Feb. 14, 1854, 29). Any questions about James’s position were put to rest in January 1857 when he published a full-blown treatment of the “investigative judgment” under his own name (RH, Jan. 29, 1857, 100, 101). The terminology of “investigative judgment” had earlier that month found its first use in print in an article by E. Everts (RH, Jan. 1, 1857, 72). By that time Sabbatarian Adventists had widely accepted the pre-Advent judgment.

Other Post-1850 Theological Refinements
It was only natural that the passage of time would have a modifying effect on certain Sabbatarian teachings. Time setting in regard to the Second Advent was one idea that underwent a radical transformation. After the Great Disappointment, establishing dates for the Second Advent had become rife among the ex-Millerites. Thus William Miller and Josiah Litch came to expect that Jesus would return before the end of the Jewish year 1844 (that is, by the spring of 1845). H. H. Gross, Joseph Marsh, and others set dates in 1846, and when that year passed Gross discovered reasons to look for Christ in 1847 (see R. Schwarz, Light Bearers, 54).

James White also got caught up in date setting. Up through at least September of 1845 he believed Jesus would return that October. Bates also participated in time setting. In 1850, for example, he sparked a time-setting excitement by interpreting “the seven spots of blood on the Golden Altar and before the Mercy Seat” as representing “the duration of the judicial proceedings on the living saints in the Most Holy.” Since each spot stood for a year, Christ’s heavenly ministration would last seven years and He would arrive in October 1851—seven years after the Disappointment (Explanation of the Typical and Anti-Typical Sanctuary, 10).

One of the other two founders of the Sabbatarian Adventist movement, however, opposed Bates. “Dear Brethren,” Ellen White penned in July 1851, “the Lord has shown me that the message of the third angel must go, and be proclaimed to the scattered children of the Lord, and that it should not be hung on time, for time never will be a test again. I saw that some were getting a false excitement arising from preaching time; that the third angel’s message was stronger than time can be.  I saw that this message can stand on its own foundation, and that it needs not time to strengthen it, and that it will go in mighty power, and do its work, and will be cut short in righteousness.

“I saw that some were making every thing bend to the time of this next fall—that is, making their calculations in reference to that time. I saw that this was wrong, for this reason: Instead of going to God daily to know their PRESENT duty, they look ahead, and make their calculations as though they knew the work would end this fall, without inquiring their duty of God daily” (RH, July 21, 1851, 4).

It was not the first time Ellen White had opposed date setting. As early as 1845 she had repeatedly warned her fellow believers that time was no longer a test and that every passing of a suggested date would weaken the faith of those who had put their hope in it. Even her first vision hinted that the city might be a “great way off.” In response to her position on date setting some charged her “with being with the evil servant that said in his heart, ‘My Lord delayeth his coming’” (EW 14, 15, 22; cf. 75; WLF 22).

She was clear that the third angel’s message provided a more certain foundation for their faith than date setting. Beyond that, in relating to time she consistently pointed the Sabbatarians away from excitement and toward their present duty on earth. That emphasis would eventually form the rationale for the creation of Adventist institutions that could take Seventh-day Adventism to the far corners of the earth.

But before that missiological experience could hope to find a reality the Sabbatarians would have to deal with their shut door error. It taught that probation had closed and that their only evangelistic mission was to gather other disappointed Millerites into the third angel’s message. There is not the slightest doubt that all the Sabbatarians initially accepted Miller’s shut-door teaching. He and others had tied the shut door as the close of human probation, as we noted earlier, directly to the idea that the cleansing of the sanctuary was the second advent of Christ. That equation meant that probation would be over at the end of the 2300 days.

The Sabbatarians had accepted that identification, and all of their leaders taught the shut-door position for several years. However, Bible study, as noted above, soon led the Sabbatarians to conclude that the cleansing of the sanctuary was not the Second Advent, but had to do with Christ’s ministry in the heavenly temple.

At that point they found themselves holding a theology that no longer fit together. They had changed their interpretations of the cleansing of the sanctuary but had not reinterpreted the shut door. A transformation in one belief, however, demanded a shift in the other. But that point was not immediately obvious to the Sabbatarians.

It would be the early 1850s before they had worked out a harmonized position on the topic. But they gradually came to see the shut door in the framework of shutting the door of the holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, when the first phase of Christ’s ministry had been completed in 1844, and the opening up of the door to the second phase of His heavenly ministry that same year (see SDA Encyclopedia [1996], vol. 2, 249-252).

Their new understanding of the shut and open doors also eventually included the opening up of a new divine imperative to preach the Sabbath and the third angel’s message of Revelation 14 “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (Rev. 14:6). Thus that mandate would in time form the foundation for an Adventist theology of mission (see P. G. Damsteegt, Foundations of the Seventh-day Adventist Message and Mission).

A final development of importance in Sabbatarian theology during the 1850s would be the formulation of a biblical argument to support the calling of a modern prophet and to integrate the concept of a last-day prophet into the Sabbatarian theological package. Early on Sabbatarian Adventists did little theologizing about Ellen White’s gift except for its relationship to the Bible. Bates in early 1847 believed that the gift had been “given to comfort and strengthen [God’s] ‘scattered,’ ‘torn,’ and ‘pealed people,’ since the closing up of our work for the world in October 1844” (WLF 21). Her husband, after noting that the Bible was their “only rule of faith and practice,” declared that the perfect revelation in the Bible did not mean that God couldn’t still guide His people “in these last days by dreams and visions” according to Peter’s testimony in Acts 2. “True visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but those that are given for a new rule of faith and practice, separate from the Bible . . . and should be rejected” (ibid. 13). In a similar vein, Otis Nichol wrote to William Miller in early 1846 in regard to Ellen’s visions that one should not despise prophecy but should test all prophetic claims by the Bible as Paul urged in 1 Thessalonians 5:20, 21 (Otis Nichol to WM, Apr. 20, 1846).

By 1856 the Sabbatarians felt a more pressing need to develop a theology of prophetic gifts and to integrate that concept into their entire theological package. In February of that year James White wrote an article that set forth his understanding of the topic. He first supplied several texts that indicate that the gifts of the Spirit (including prophecy) would remain in the church until the Second Advent. He then focused on Joel 2:28-32 with its promise of an outpouring of the gift of prophecy, noting that Pentecost was only a partial fulfillment and that the real emphasis of Joel was a special outpouring of the gift of prophecy on the “remnant” of verse 32. White next equated the remnant of Joel 2:32 with the remnant in Revelation 12:17 who would be keeping the commandments of God and “have the Testimony of Jesus Christ.” And “what is the Testimony of Jesus Christ? We will let the angel who addressed John answer this question. He says, ‘The Testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’ Rev. xix, 10.” White concluded by implying that a special mark of God’s last-day church would be a revival of the gift of prophecy, a gift that he firmly believed his wife possessed (RH, Feb. 28, 1856, 172). Thus by 1856 the Sabbatarians had not only rationalized a biblical understanding of the gift of prophecy but had fit it into those apocalyptic passages that supplied their own self-understanding and identity.

Perspective
By early 1847 the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church held the basic pillar doctrines of the Second Advent, the sanctuary, the Sabbath, and the state of the dead. What we need to note is that not only were each of those doctrines the product of Bible study, but that each of them had been developed by individuals who never became a part of the Sabbatarian movement. The function of the Sabbatarian founders, especially Joseph Bates, was to integrate those four doctrines into an understanding of the end times as portrayed from Revelation 11:19 through the end of chapter 14. In relation to that process, Ellen White’s visions filled the role of confirmation rather than initiation (see e.g., WLF 18-20, 12).

Another point that we should emphasize about Sabbatarian Adventist theology during the late 1840s is that it was a theology rather than a list of discrete doctrines. They found the unifying focal point of their theology in the apocalyptic core of the book of Revelation. The passage running from Revelation 11:19 through 14:20 intertwined the Second Advent with an understanding of the opening of the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary and the eschatological importance of the Ten Commandments, especially the Sabbath. The various aspects of that theology did not exist as isolated units. To the contrary, it was a united whole with each aspect related to the others. The placement of their theology in the framework of the last great conflict between good and evil set forth in the heart of the book of Revelation gave it an urgency that eventually set the Sabbatarians upon an ever-expanding mission of warning the world.

Thus by the beginning of 1848 the Sabbatarians had a distinct theology. They also had concluded that the gathering time had come. As a result, they began to call together groups of ex-Millerites so that they could “teach them the truth” (2SG 98). Those Sabbatarian Conferences (lasting from 1848 through 1850) primarily functioned to begin assembling a people on the platform of Sabbatarian theology. A second avenue for bringing a people together was the publication of books (especially by Bates) and James White’s initiation of a periodical ministry (see MF 319-325). The early 1850s would result in a rapid expansion in the number of Sabbatarians, and 1861 through 1863 would witness the formal establishment of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The theological task of the Adventists in the decades following 1850 would be to expound and expand upon their core pillar doctrines and the apocalyptic prophecies that provided the young church with its identity. The denomination’s periodicals and books never tired of hammering home “present truth” and the distinctively Adventist aspects of its belief system.

In the process, several troubling trends developed. A first was a temptation toward legalism. Even though Ellen White could urge that they keep their “eyes fixed on Jesus” (EW 14) and her husband could proclaim “a free and full salvation through the blood of Christ” (PT, April 1850, 66), a less helpful trend also emerged. Bates, for example, repeatedly taught that “the keeping of GOD’S SABBATH HOLY . . . SAVES THE SOUL” (SDS [1847], 55, 57). After all, hadn’t Jesus told the rich young ruler that “the only way to enter into life was to keep the commandments” (SDS [1846], 19; cf. WLF 21; VSDS 7)?

A second serious tendency involved the abrasive manner in which Seventh-day Adventist ministers often did evangelism. They discovered that they could draw a crowd through challenging local preachers of other denominations to a debate on such topics as the true Sabbath or the condition of individuals in death. People loved a good fight and often filled the place of the debate, thus giving the Adventist preacher an opportunity to “evangelize” them. Being good Bible students and able debaters, Adventist ministers convinced many of their hearers. But in seeking to teach them the “truth” in this manner they often exhibited an aggressive spirit that was long on doctrinal purity and short on kindness and the loving spirit of Jesus.

A third disturbing pattern that developed in the 1870s and 1880s was a growing tendency among Seventh-day Adventist leaders to preserve and protect their theological insights rather than to continue to progress in understanding. Thus at the 1883 General Conference session a specially appointed 10-member committee rejected one minister’s exposition of the seven trumpets in part because it “would unsettle some of the most important and fundamental points of our faith” (RH, Nov. 27, 1883, 741).

A fourth trend gave a larger role to Ellen White’s writings in explaining issues. For example, in the first three-and-a-half decades of the Review’s existence its editors had consistently answered questions directed to them from the Bible alone. That began to change in the 1880s, when they for the first time began to refer to what Ellen White had written on biblical subjects (see, e.g., RH, Apr. 17, 1883, 250). The practice would increase over time as the young church moved away from its roots.

In conclusion, during the first period of Seventh-day Adventist theological development (1844-1885) the denomination had answered the question of what was essentially Adventist in Adventism. The church would enter the 1880s emphasizing its distinctive pillar doctrines contexted within the core of the book of Revelation. It would also bring into the 1880s the four troubling tendencies that had developed in its early theological history. All those factors would be prominent at the crucial Minneapolis General Conference session of 1888, when the leadership of the church came face-to-face with a second great question of identity—What is Christian in Adventism?

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George R. Knight is a professor of church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary and author of many books, including A Brief History of Seventh-day Adventists.