MARTIN CAREY | Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Life Assurance Ministries Board Member
If you knew for certain that in one year, Jesus is coming, how would you change your life? What must we do to be ready for Jesus to come?
Those questions excited the followers of William Miller in the 1840s, and today they are vital to understanding the movement that led to the formation of Seventh-day Adventism. At the height of his movement, Miller estimated that as many as 100,000 people believed his message that Jesus would come in 1843. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Miller). Millions of other Christians, however, did not believe Miller and continued attending their churches and living their daily lives.
To this day, devout Adventists believe Ellen White’s statements that the message of Jesus’ soon coming was a test of genuine faith for the people of that day (The Great Controversy, 373). They believe that those Christians who heard Miller’s message and didn’t believe it were lost forever. That is because Miller’s message was said to be the First Angel’s Message, a message of judgment, for the people of that time.
If you ask an Adventist today what the final test of true faith will be, right before Christ comes, they will surely say, “The seventh-day Sabbath!”
The Sabbath-test has been a consistent, core conviction for the Adventists since the late 1840s, and it forms the Adventist identity.
The Sabbath-test has been a consistent, core conviction for the Adventists since the late 1840s, and it forms the Adventist identity. In this article, my purpose is to explore how the early Adventists came to embrace the seventh-day Sabbath, how it was elevated to a last-days test of faith. Finally, we’ll examine how the Sabbath test doctrine can stand the ultimate test, the New Testament gospel.
First, let’s look at the historical and religious background of the Advent movement.
The Christian Connexion
In the years 1790-1840, religious excitement swept across the American population. This movement sought to restore a more authentic, original Christianity without the institutions, denominations, and creeds inherited from Europe. Americans wanted complete separation from Europe to form their own culture while rejecting European politics, religions, customs, philosophy, and even medical science. In religious life, Americans saw traditional churches as corrupt and elitist and looked for a more down-to-earth, experiential faith that embraced the common man. Americans strongly preferred an individualistic, nativist, and radically republican citizenship, where leaders are chosen by the common people.
Separatist idealism was the seedbed of the Restorationist Movement. To be a real Christian, they believed one must leave the corrupt European system and start over fresh and new. The European church committed a “great apostasy” by falling away from genuine Christianity, they believed. As a part of that strong impulse towards authenticity and original Christianity, the Restorationist movement sought to unite all Christians of all denominations into one united church, as it was perceived to be in the New Testament. Prominent in this movement were preachers Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. They gathered followers separately, but by 1810, they had joined forces and united on a handshake. They agreed to use only Biblical language to describe their beliefs, and avoided any strong theological statements that they believed divided the church. A Stone-Campbell slogan stated, “No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no law but love, no name but the divine” (https://www.covenant-christian.org/i-am-new/historical-slogans-of-disciples/).
Although they avoided theology and creeds, the Restorationists took strong theological positions on core Christian beliefs:
- Denied the Trinity: that is a man-made doctrine. Jesus is the “Son of God,” but he is less than God, and not fully divine.
- Denied the blood-atonement of Jesus: His vicarious atonement for our sins to satisfy God’s wrath is not a Biblical doctrine.
- Nuda scriptura: reading “The Bible alone,” without looking at any other sources on theology.
- Arminianism, anti-Calvinism. They strongly emphasized free will and rejected election and predestination as taught by reformed theology.
From this large group of Restorationists who left the established churches, many religious sects sprang up, including the Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists. How ironic that as a movement that urged Christians to separate from traditional churches, they would naturally “flow together” and would, instead, give birth to many separate sects, each with distinctive doctrines and identities.
The Christian Connexion, a subgroup of the Restoration movement, likewise rejected the classic Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Jesus’ divinity, and His blood atonement. In New England, Abner Jones and Elias Smith were prominent leaders of the Connexion. Author J.F. Burnett captures the fiercely independent, dogmatic spirit of Connexion leader, Elias Smith:
“Any proposed system of theology was promptly and decisively rejected when submitted to him; what he liked one day, he might not like the next; what he taught today, he might deny tomorrow, except those fundamental truths which he had discovered for himself by searching the Word of God. From these he never departed, and for them he had no apology nor modification. To him the doctrine of the trinity, closed communion, vicarious atonement, election and reprobation, were repulsive, and he did not hesitate to attack them with terse, crisp, fearless denunciation” (Elias Smith, Reformer, Preacher, Journalist, Doctor, J.F. Burnett, p. 3, https://archive.org/details/eliassmithreform00burn).
When we survey the gospel as taught in the New Testament, it is clear that at its center is Christ and Him crucified. Paul said he must proclaim this truth without “lofty speech or wisdom,” so that our faith can rest on God’s power, not on man’s power (1Corinthians 2:1-5). That gospel states plainly why Jesus died:
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”—1Peter 3:18
Clearly, Jesus the Righteous One, suffered for our sins so that we might be brought to God. “The righteous for the unrighteous” describes Jesus suffering in the place of sinners, a vicarious act. Elias Smith refused to respect the plain words of Scripture. Standing firmly on the true gospel that leads us to God is a very relevant principle needed by the rebellious Restorationist movement, as well as the Millerite Adventist movement that was intensely focused on Jesus’ second coming. They hoped that by intense preparation and good works, they would be saved and brought near to God. The gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection for our sins was set aside to focus on getting ready for Jesus to return. What Jesus had already done to save them was undermined by their date-setting and frantic preparations.
Among the eager followers of Elias Smith and Abner Jones were Joshua Himes, Joseph Bates, and James White. From their background in the Christian Connexion, these men had formed their theological convictions and would later carry those convictions into the Seventh-day Adventist movement.
Predictions and Disappointments
In 1814, a young army veteran returned home to his wife in Poultney, Vermont. After serving in the army during the war of 1812, he was determined to settle down to a life of farming and preaching. Although the young soldier was raised a Baptist, he loved to read, studying the philosophers with the leading men of his town. He came to believe in the deist’s God, one who created the universe sometime in the past, then lost interest and abandoned his creation. However, the young deist soon came to doubt his deism and returned to church. One Sunday service while reading aloud a Scripture about God’s fatherhood, he became deeply moved by the simple idea that “there might be a Being so good and compassionate as to Himself atone for our transgressions, and thereby save us from suffering the penalty of sin. I immediately felt how lovely such a Being must be; and imagined that I could cast myself into the arms of, and trust in the mercy of such a One” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher).
From then on, William Miller decided to put his trust in Jesus. He poured himself into studying the Bible, especially prophecy. By 1818, he became convicted that Daniel 8:14’s 2300 days prophesied that Jesus was returning to cleanse the earth with fire. Combining various prophecies from Daniel 9’s seventy weeks, Habbakuk 2, and Revelation 12 and 14, performing some creative date calculations from other scriptures, and applying the day for a year principle from Ezekiel 4:6 and Numbers 14:34, Miller calculated that Jesus would come to earth in 25 years, sometime in 1843.
As Miller shared his passionate study of prophecy and Jesus’ second coming, he was soon publishing articles on Jesus’ soon coming, speaking in churches, and gaining a rapidly growing audience. The Millerite movement was set in motion. When Jesus did not arrive in 1843, Miller recalculated, using the Jewish Karaite calendar instead of the Rabbinic calendar, and reset the date to March 18 of 1844. When that date passed without Christ’s return, there was disappointment and much surmising.
On May 2, Miller told the Advent believers, “I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door.”—(Sylvester Bliss, Memoirs of William Miller, https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_quw1rnlbYcwC/page/n265/mode/1up?view=theater).
At a camp meeting in August of 1844, Samuel Snow presented a new interpretation of the Second Coming, using some complex arguments, that Christ would come on the tenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish Karaite calendar, which was the Day of Atonement. This new message was embraced by many and called the “Seventh-month message,” because of seven months passing from March to October of 1844 (https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=88Y2). This new message was called the “midnight cry,” after Jesus’ parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25, where, in the parable, the announcement of the bridegroom coming is announced at midnight, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh!”
When October 22 came and went, the Millerites’ perplexity and sadness led many to abandon any more attempts to predict Christ’s coming. A smaller number divided into various groups embracing various interpretations, some believing that Christ was still coming soon, but that no specific date could be known. Others stated that the date was correct, but instead of Jesus coming to earth, something cosmic must have happened. Among that small group was Joseph Bates, who borrowed from Hiram Edson’s cornfield vision where he saw Jesus entering the Most Holy place in the heavenly sanctuary. Edson and O.R.L. Crosier were convinced that somehow, Jesus was cleansing the heavenly sanctuary. Bates was sure that Christ’s cleansing of the sanctuary was a real physical arrival, and not merely some spiritual coming, as some claimed.
The Sabbath and the Shut Door
The early Adventists agreed that when Christ came back to earth to reward the faithful, all those who rejected the message of His coming would be lost. For those unbelievers, the hour of judgment had come, their probation was ended. As they read in Jesus’ parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25, the bridegroom delayed His coming, and the virgins slept. When the bridegroom finally came out, five of the virgins had run out of oil and were not ready to follow the bridegroom. When they attempted to enter the wedding later, they were denied entrance, for the “door was shut.” The Adventists applied that shut door to all the unbelieving world, including the Christians who had rejected Miller’s failed predictions. This became known as the “shut door teaching,” and it was endorsed and taught by many of the early Adventists, including Joseph Bates and both James and Ellen White. This is well-documented by D.M. Canright in Life of Mrs. E. G. White, Seventh-day Adventist Prophet: Her False Claims Refuted.
The early Adventists agreed that when Christ came back to earth to reward the faithful, all those who rejected the message of His coming would be lost. For those unbelievers, the hour of judgment had come, their probation was ended.
It is significant that William Miller rejected the shut door theory and rebuked its proponents (https://www.nonsda.org/egw/canright/can7.htm) . The Shut Door factions were know for certain extreme behaviors, such as selling their properties and ceasing from all work. “More generally, Shut-Door teaching was associated with ecstatic worship, visions, foot-washing, and the holy kiss. The latter two practices became particularly notorious when men and women engaged in them with each other in mixed groups” (https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=88Y2).
Joseph Bates, Doctrinal Innovator
Among all the early Adventist leaders, Joseph Bates stands out as the doctrinal innovator and leader. As a man of means with a decent education, Bates used his powers of persuasion to guide the Adventists into a cohesive group, with the help a the 19-year old Ellen and her new husband, James. Bates met the newly married Whites at his home in November of 1846, where Ellen had a vision and saw other planets and the stars of the great nebula of Orion. Because Ellen had no previous knowledge of astronomy, Bates was impressed with her prophetic gift, and apparently didn’t suspect the Whites had read his tract from earlier that year, “The Opening Heavens.” There he argued that Christ would come down through the “flaming sword of Orion.”
From that point forward, Bates became a close collaborator and sponsor for the Whites. Notably, Ellen White’s visions confirmed Joseph Bates’s doctrinal positions, which helped her credibility when others might oppose Bates. That collaboration would endure for his lifetime.
Joseph Bates brought the Seventh-day Sabbath into the teachings of the Adventists. He had read a tract by a fellow Millerite and Freewill Baptist preacher, Thomas Preble. Preble became convinced of the Sabbath from Methodist-Episcopal preacher Frederick Wheeler. Wheeler became convinced of the Sabbath one day, while preaching about getting ready for Christ’s soon coming by keeping God’s commandments. A woman approached him from the congregation, Rachel Oakes Preston, who was a Seventh-day Baptist. She told Wheeler, “You are not keeping all of God’s commandments.” She proceeded to argue against Sunday-keeping and for the seventh-day Sabbath, and Wheeler was deeply impressed. So from Mrs. Preston, to Reverend Wheeler, to Reverend Thomas Preble, the Sabbath came to the Adventists. Preble’s book was read by Joseph Bates, J.N. Andrews, and James White.
Bates could be very dogmatic and persuasive. Long before following William Miller, in 1827 as a sea captain, Bates took strong positions against his sailors consuming any alcohol and operated what he called his “temperance ship.” Later, Bates became increasingly ascetic in his lifestyle, rejecting tobacco, coffee, tea, meat, cheese, pies, and “rich, greasy foods.” Bates was very influential with the Whites on diet, as well as the doctrines that would later form the core of Seventh-day Adventist beliefs. We can see that influence with his teachings on the Sabbath and the Seal of God.
The early Adventists had applied the Day of Atonement language—the atonement from Leviticus 16—to the “cleansing” in Daniel 8:14 and claimed it would be fulfilled in 1844. They reasoned that the Day of Atonement was a type of the real completion of the atonement in 1844. They denied that the atonement was actually finished by Jesus on the cross, because they insisted that all our sins could not be blotted out until the sanctuary was cleansed. Joseph Bates and the early Adventists delayed that finished atonement and placed it in the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary, after 1844, where Christ entered for the first time.
Why did Jesus’ atonement for our sins have to be delayed until 1844? Bates argued that the sanctuary could not be clean of all record of sins, until the judgment of all believers was completed. That investigative judgment could not end until the remnant church had demonstrated that they were keeping all the commandments of God, especially the Sabbath. The Sabbath is thus their end of time final test of faith. Their reasoning goes something like this: Those who keep the seventh-day Sabbath prove themselves faithful (taken from Revelation 12:17). The Sabbath-keepers are faithful, in contrast to the “Babylonian” Christians who worship the beast and his image, because they go to church on Sunday. They will receive the Mark of the Beast (Rev. 14). The Sabbath-keepers will receive the seal of God, described in Revelation 7.
It is important to note that no text in Revelation states that Sunday-keeping is the mark of the beast, or that Sabbath-keeping is the seal of God.
It is important to note that no text in Revelation states that Sunday-keeping is the mark of the beast, or that Sabbath-keeping is the seal of God. For some years, Bates and the early Adventists were convinced that probation had closed, the “door had shut,” and that they were among the few who were receiving the seal of God. All the rest of the world was lost, even though very few had ever heard Miller’s message. They applied the first angel’s message of Revelation 14 to their little movement, even though Revelation 14:6 clearly states that the first angel brings:
“an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.”
Firstly, the Millerites’ message was never preached to every nation, tribe or language, not even close. Secondly, the Millerite message was not about the gospel of Jesus dying and rising for our sins. It was about Jesus coming again and getting ready by keeping all the commandments.
To summarize the problems with the early Adventists’ beliefs:
- Miller’s “present truth” was not the gospel—the first angel’s message.
- The date-setting messages proved to be false, three times. Yet, EGW called them “light” and condemned those who rejected them as lost.
- The 1844 “cleansing of the sanctuary” denies the gospel, teaching:
- Christ’s atonement for sins was not finished at the cross.
- Total blotting out of sins does not happen at conversion.
- The Atonement is only completed when our sins are finally laid on Satan, the Day of Atonement scapegoat. Making Satan our final sin-bearer is heresy.
- The Sabbath replaced the Gospel as the final test of genuine faith.
In conclusion, it is evident that the early Adventists were not clinging to the gospel for their hope and salvation. They set aside the true gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection for our sins and replaced it with the excitement of the judgment of the world. Their gospel message was also greatly weakened by the Christ-denying theology held by the Adventist founders from the Christian Connexion, Joseph Bates and James White. They did not honor Jesus as equal to God, and the whole structure of their theological system was thereby corrupted.
The Final Test
What is the everlasting gospel by which we are being saved? It is plainly stated in many places in scripture, especially in 1Corinthians 15:3-6, and in 1Peter 3:18,
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”
The gospel which saves and secures our standing with God is about what Jesus has done by His death for our sins, and by His resurrection for our justification. Our readiness to be with God grows out of that truth. So then, what is the “seal of God?” Look at Ephesians 1:13:
“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.”
The seal of God happens when we hear and believe the word of truth, the gospel, and we receive the Holy Spirit. He brings about our new birth (Jn. 3). The Spirit stays with us forever, once we believe:
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”—John 14:16 †
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