Lesson 7: “Motivated by Hope”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Life Assurance Ministries
Problems with this lesson:
- The lesson upholds William Miller as opening up truths and says God used his false predictions to motivate people to get ready for His return.
- Isaiah’s “Here a little, there a little” curse on Israel is used as a proof-text for Bible interpretation
- The lesson summarizes EGW’s convoluted 2300-day-year prophecy with Daniel 8:14 at the center.
This lesson, based on chapters 18–21 of Ellen White’s The Great Controversy, demonstrates its shameless twisting of Scripture to force Daniel 8:14 to predict 1844 instead of what the context says it means. By examining just a few key arguments, we can see how Mark Finley summarizes Ellen White’s blatant misuse of Scripture to promote Adventism’s 2300-day prophecy and its supposed end point in 1844.
Finley introduces this week’s studies by introducing William Miller as one of those who “sought to pick up the mantle of truth, including the truth about the Second Coming.”
We know Miller as the date-setter who predicted that Jesus would come on October 22, 1844. In spite of Jesus’ clear words that no one knows the day or the hour of His return—that only the Father knows that day—Miller started a movement that led countless people in New England to leave their churches, their crops, and in some cases even their sanity as they anticipated Jesus’s return that day.
Although we clearly see that Miller was a false prophet who destroyed many lives, Saturday’s lesson says this about him:
From his study of the Bible, he believed that Jesus was coming soon, even in his lifetime, and then began preaching that message. Miller started a movement that, though facing a great disappointment, opened up to many people Bible truths that remain relevant to this day.
Finley, like Ellen White, presents Miller as doing a work of God in spite of his false date-setting which was a clear disobedience to the word of God. This crazy-making double-speak confirms Adventists’ blind acceptance of the great controversy worldview and endorses their relativism about truth and error. By saying Miller’s false date-setting movement nevertheless opened Bible truths to many people, Adventists learn that the end justifies the means. In fact, they are taught not to reveal that they are Adventists when proselytizing people.
“If they know we are Adventists before they hear our about our healthy lifestyle and our Sabbath-advantage, they won’t listen to us,” Adventists are taught. Thus, using the same rationalization they use to justify William Miller’s false teaching, they seduce people with vegetarian cooking schools, free medical screenings, and friendship evangelism before introducing the Sabbath, soul-sleep, and—oh, yes—Ellen White.
Here A Little, There A Little
In Tuesday’s lesson, Finley makes a case that William Miller “compared scripture with scripture”, and “the mysteries of the Bible were opened to him.” In fact, Finley portrays Miller as an earnest, honest man to whom “the Holy Spirit opened the Word of God to his understanding.”
How can this be true when he twisted prophecies to force the Bible to say Jesus was coming back on October 22, 1844??
Finley even asks us to read four passages to discover principles of interpretation. The first of these is Isaiah 28:9, 10. Importantly, most Adventists have heard verse 10 used to validate Adventist proof-texting—and this notion came straight from Ellen White who presented these words as the way we are to learn biblical truth. However, EGW was wrong in her application of this text, and Adventism has missed this verse throughout its history. I will share one of many EGW quotes establishing her views:
The Lord has sent His people much instruction, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little. Little heed is given to the Bible, and the Lord has given a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light.” —(CM 125.2)
Most Adventists are familiar with the concept in that quote: biblical truth is perceived by reading a little bit here, a little bit there, and putting it all together in an Adventist “soup” of proof-texted doctrines. But what does the actual passage in Isaiah say?
In a passage in which Isaiah warns Israel about their impending exile because of their refusal to obey the Lord, he says this:
“Whom would He instruct in knowledge, And whom would He provide understanding about the report? Those [just] weaned from milk? Those [just] taken from the breast?
“For [He says], ‘Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.’”
Indeed, He will speak to this people Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue,
He who said to them, “Here is rest, give rest to the weary,” And, “Here is repose,” but they would not listen.
So the word of Yahweh to them will be, “Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there,” That they may go and stumble backward, be broken, snared, and taken captive.—(Isaiah 28: 9–13, LSB)
We see in context that the “line upon line…here a little, there a little” description of God’s word is a JUDGMENT, not a hermeneutic! The Hebrew monosyllables behind these words are meant to mimic a child’s babbling, the mocking response of stubborn Israel to the prophet’s warnings. They would not listen to God’s words to them, and they would be taken into captivity by a people whose foreign words would be gibberish to them. Since Israel refused to hear and understand the prophet’s words, God’s word would remain nonsense to them.
The fact that Ellen White used this passage to illustrate how to understand the Bible shows that she, like apostate, stubborn Israel, did not understand God’s word, and she taught her followers not to understand it.
What About Daniel 8:14?
On Wednesday, Finley goes to Adventism’s central passage that undergirds their unique doctrine of 1844 and the investigative judgment. He asks, “What event was to occur at the end of the 2,300 days?”
The Adventist interpretation of Daniel 8:14 is perhaps their most egregious example deliberately misusing Scripture. In fact, their use of this passage can’t be seen merely as a misunderstanding. They have intentionally defined this text wrongly. Finley says,
He discovered the linkage between Daniel 8 and Daniel 9. In Daniel 8, the angel was instructed to “make this man understand the vision” (Dan. 8:16). By the end of the chapter, the only portion of the entire vision of Daniel 8 left unexplained (see Dan. 8:27) was the part about the 2,300 days. Later the angel returned to Daniel and declared, “ ‘I have now come forth to give you skill to understand’ ” (Dan. 9:22, NKJV; see also Dan. 9:23, 25–27). This was to help him understand about the 2,300 days.
We know this because, after bidding Daniel to “ ‘consider the matter, and understand the vision’ ” (Dan. 9:23, NKJV), the first words of the angel were: “ ‘Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city’ ” (Dan. 9:24, NKJV). The word translated “determined” literally means “cut off.” Seventy weeks, 490 years, are to be cut off. But from what? The vision of the 2,300 days, obviously—the only part of Daniel 8 that Daniel did not understand, and that the angel now came to explain.
And since the starting point of the 70 weeks was “ ‘from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem’ ” (Dan. 9:25, NKJV), Miller knew that if he had that date, he could know the beginning of the 70 weeks and the 2,300-day prophecy.
If you are confused—you should be! In context, the second half of Daniel 8 explains Daniel 8:14. It doesn’t identify the people involved directly, but it clearly explains that the desecration and cleansing described in Daniel 8:13, 14 would occur during the coming empire of Greece. Furthermore, history shows that the events described actually took place under the rule of Antiochus Epiphanes when he sacrificed a pig on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem, and after the cessation of 2300 morning and evening sacrifices, Antiochus was overthrown and the temple was restored and reconsecrated!
In context, Daniel 9:24 with its 70-week prophecy has nothing at all to do with the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14—yet EGW and Adventism equates them. They are separate with separate meanings. One doesn’t have to know history to read these prophecies and to see that they are not referring to the same things—and furthermore, the Adventist interpretation of those 2300 days to mean 2300 years is, as we discussed last week, completely false.
If ever there were an example of Ellen White’s “here a little, there a little” approach to Scripture, this is one of the worst.
Finally, in Friday’s lesson after displaying a classic Adventist 2300-day time chart, Finley quotes Ellen White’s assurance that God had given this false prophecy to William Miller. See for yourself how she endorsed the idea that God intended the people to have a false understanding because He wanted to test and purify them:
“Like the first disciples, William Miller and his associates did not, themselves, fully comprehend the import of the message which they bore. Errors that had been long established in the church prevented them from arriving at a correct interpretation of an important point in the prophecy. Therefore, though they proclaimed the message which God had committed to them to be given to the world, yet through a misapprehension of its meaning they suffered disappointment.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, pp. 351, 352.
“Yet God accomplished His own beneficent purpose in permitting the warning of the judgment to be given just as it was. The great day was at hand, and in His providence the people were brought to the test of a definite time, in order to reveal to them what was in their hearts. The message was designed for the testing and purification of the church. They were to be led to see whether their affections were set upon this world or upon Christ and heaven. —The Great Controversy, p. 353.
Ellen White is accusing God of being a trickster! She is claiming that He intentionally used the Millerite confusion to reveal the people’s true intentions and to purify them. She is saying first of all that God gave Miller his false date and the egregious misinterpretation of Daniel 8:14. Second, she is saying that, in spite of Jesus’ clear words that no one knows the day or the hour of His coming, He used that misunderstanding to see what was in their hearts. Were they willing to leave the world? He intended to use their confusion to purify the church!
Ellen White accused God of the deviousness she herself practiced. God cannot lie; He did not give Miller that false date, and He did not give EGW and her colleagues that dreadful interpretation of Daniel 8:14! Ellen White, the false prophet, is here attributing to our holy, sovereign God the deceit and manipulation which defined her own life.
Here, in Week 7—the heart of a 13-week series on the heart of The Great Controversy—we find the dark confusion of the pillar of Adventism: the defilement of Daniel 8:14, the subtle accusation of God as an intentional trickster, and the foundation of Adventism’s unique 1844 doctrine. Here we find the cesspool at the heart of Adventist soteriology. The true gospel is missing.
The Lord Jesus took our sin and died a human death as the propitiation for us. He died, was buried, and because His blood was sufficient to atone for our sin, He rose on the third day and broke the curse of death into which we were born. If you haven’t trusted Him, today is the day to do so. Your sin is either on Him—or on you. Trust Him today. He will not trick you, but He will save you. †
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