O. R. L. CROSIER

The moral is clear. When our best scholarship worked on Hebrews, it came up with this conclusion Do not use in support of our sanctuary doctrine the only New Testament passage which discusses the meaning of the tabernacle and its services. Especially ignore its references to the Day of Atonement.

Let us now take a rapid survey of the history of the sanctuary issues amongst us. No attempt is made to be exhaustive as that would yield a massive volume, at least partly irrelevant for our purposes. Instead we touch upon high points, and refer chiefly to well-known names of people who after study felt our traditional exposition of the sanctuary truth to be inadequate.

O. R. L. CROSIER

The first to find fault with the Adventist sanctuary teaching was its creator

O. R. L. Crosier. Damsteegt tells us concerning him, “In 1846 he accepted the Sabbath but soon repudiated it together with his sanctuary teaching.” (11)

JAMES WHITE

The second prominent figure with difficulties in this area was James White. Not until 1857 did he accept the doctrine of the investigative judgment, and prior to that time he wrote against any such concept. For example, in the Advent Review of September, 1850, he declared:

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. Daniel, “in the night visions” saw that “judgment was given to the Saints of the Most High,” but not to mortal saints not “until the Ancient of days came,” and the “little horn” ceased prevailing, which will not be until he is destroyed by the brightness of Christ’s coming. “I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at (not before) his appearing and his kingdom” 2 Tim. 4:1.

The advent angel (Rev. 14:6, 7) saying with a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to him: for the hour of his judgment is come does not prove that the day of judgment came in 1840, or in 1844, nor that it will come prior to the Second Advent.

Prior to that he had declared in his Word to the Little Flock, p. 24,

“The event which will introduce the judgment day, will be the coming of the Son of Man, to raise the sleeping saints, and to change those that are alive at that time.

It is not necessary that the final sentence should be given before the first resurrection, as some 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.

There is no evidence that at this time Ellen G. White differed with her husband on this point. Her 1849 statement in Early Writings 36 about the judgment is only a general statement and seems to place it after the seven last plagues.

saw that the anger of the nations, the wrath of God, and the time to judge the dead, were separate and distinct, one following the other.

Damsteegt’s comment about James White probably also applies to Ellen G. White:

“The view of a pre-Advent judgment was only gradually adopted by J. White.” (12)

It took Joseph Bates, J. N. Andrews, J. N. Loughborough, and Uriah Smith to fully formulate the judgment doctrine over a period of years, and by the end of the fifties, more than a decade after the great disappointment, the doctrine became prevalent in the small community of Sabbath-keeping Adventists. In 1857 James White uses the expression “the investigative judgment” (R&H, Jan. 29,1857). It should be kept in mind that this doctrine was not formulated by the historic Sabbath conferences, the sixth of which took place in 1848. It is not one of the landmarks, though the final atonement in the heavenly sanctuary is. Rather, it seemed to emerge to fill the gap made by the collapse of the first interpretation of the shut door. Believers everywhere wanted to know “Well, if probation for the world did not close in 1844, just what did happen?”