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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eugene Prewitt

A History of Dissent Regarding the Sanctuary

History is a source of sadness if you study it.

I mean, if there is anything proven well by Adventist history, it's that if you are standing, take heed lest you fall.

So that it happened right near the beginning of Seventh-day Adventist movement that a man named O.R.L.

Crozer wrote an article on the sanctuary.

Originally he called his article The Law of Moses, but when it was republished in Advent's publications, we usually left out the beginning of it and the ending of it, and we republished the middle, which we called The Sanctuary.

But I like even the original, the Law of Moses.

Malachi chapter 4, and we're going to look at verse… first you're just going to observe verses 1 through 3 that you're familiar with them.

The description of the end of the world and how Jesus will choose his own and destroy the wicked.

And after this obvious reference to the end of time, there's verse 4.

Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel with the statutes and judgments.

And then comes verses 5 and 6 that we're familiar with.

In other words, we're familiar with all of this chapter except verse 4.

And Malachi 4.4 is the heading verse in the article by Crozier on the law of Moses.

The theory that he's presenting is that in the end of time, God is calling His people back to study the types and symbols found in the sanctuary and in the message of the ceremonial law.

Crozier wrote the article on the sanctuary, but it was only a few years after he wrote it that he repudiated the doctrine of the sanctuary.

And in fact, his most famous writings are found in the book Adventism Renounced by D.M.

That's where you'll find most of Crozer's letters.

In those… in that book, Crozer says again and again how he is so upset with the Adventist church, quoting him repeatedly on this article he wrote when it was just a phase in his life, and he got past it.

Maybe you could say in some sense that Crozer was 1 of the first dissidents from the Adventist movement on the sanctuary, and he was the 1 who wrote it.

But before you get the idea that the man who gave us that doctrine was an apostate, Maybe you should know that Crozer isn't really the 1 who gave it to us.

I mean, he's the man who wrote it, but really he got it from his friend Hiram Edson.

And it was Edson and Hahn and Crozer together that put these things, the ideas together, and Crozer being the more ready writer of them is the 1 who scribbled it, Hahn and Edson were faithful to the doctrine.

But we're going to stay on history before we get to our Bible study.

You go forward just a few decades, and well, there you have Canwright.

Canwright, on a number of adventist fundamentals, blew hot and cold.

I think 1 of the most interesting things you can read in literature is the book Ellen White and Her Critics, the section on Canwright's objections to Ellen White.

Has anyone read that section of that book?

It's that Nichols just makes a two-column section there with Canwright's objections against Ellen White in 1 column and Ken Wright's defense of Ellen White in the other column, so that both columns are written by the man, and you can examine his… the arguments of the same man on both sides of the same question.

And honestly, he thoroughly refutes himself so that his arguments in favor are much stronger than his arguments against.

Wouldn't that be interesting to you if you noticed something like that?

It wasn't long after… In fact, I say it wasn't long after Kenwright, it was really while Kenwright was still alive and functioning that another 1 of the leaders in the Adventist church, his name is Ballinger, ended up having questions about the sanctuary.

He had been a leader in the church in Iceland for a while.

And it looks like Ballinger had quite an influence on Conradi.

He had talked to him and had spoken to him about his views on the sanctuary.

Ballinger found 3 primary objections against the Adventist position on the sanctuary, and he wrote them out.

I remember it was published in the Adventist Review sometime in the last 10 years.

It was an editorial where 1 of the editors there bemoaned the fact that Ballinger's arguments against the sanctuary have never been well refuted." That's a strong statement.

It makes them sound like they'd be true if they'd never been well refuted.

So before we finish this section, I'm going to just simply refute them for you, so that if you ever read something like that again, that will bounce off you, because it was just this afternoon when I was doing more research, I found that Raymond Cottrell was quoting someone else.

No, it was just Raymond Cottrell himself.

Raymond Cottrell himself was saying that Ballinger's arguments had never been well refuted.

And he quoted it from Prescott, near the end of Prescott's life.

Prescott apparently wrote in a letter that Ballinger's arguments have never been well refuted.

Well, from these 3 men, you might get the idea that his arguments are just some mind-numbing, inexplicable, solid, logical argument, you can't get past it, and it should make you fear a little bit that maybe you're in the wrong.

1 of them is that Jesus must have been in the holy place during the time of the Old Testament because you find Him, for example, in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 10 and 11, you find Jesus there in the sanctuary.

Don't you remember that in Isaiah 6, the Lord high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple, and from the Psalms, the Lord is in His holy temple.

And so if Jesus was in the holy place in the Old Testament, surely he would be in the most holy place in the New Testament.

His second argument went like this, that the New Testament repeatedly refers to Jesus as being the 1 that is at God's right hand.

And then Ballinger asks the question, here's the sanctuary, most holy place, holy place, where is God's throne in the sanctuary?

And he answers, It's obviously in the most holy place, that's where the Shekinah is.

So if Jesus is at God's right hand, then which apartment is Jesus in?

Did you understand both of his arguments so far?

His third argument was like this, that if you do a word study on within the veil, you know in Hebrews Adventists talk about within the veil and we talk about it as if it means the holy place in Hebrews 6.

But within the veil, when you look at that same, those same 2 words spelled a little different, but the same 2 words otherwise in the Old Testament, it's there 20 times.

And Ballinger said in every single instant, it is obviously the most holy place.

So here's Adventists, we come to Hebrews 6 and we ask the question, what does within the veil mean?

The Bible says most holy place, Ellen White says holy place, and we take Ellen White over the Bible, and we shouldn't have done that.

First of all, what about Jesus in the Old Testament being a priest in the sanctuary?

Don't you know in Isaiah 53, it speaks about Jesus as if He was already bearing our sins as the Lamb?

You are despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Was that true during the time of Isaiah?

According to Romans chapter 4, Jesus speaks about things that are not as though they are because He sees the end from the beginning.

And Isaiah 6, for example, and Ezekiel 10, the 2 examples given by Ballinger, are very obviously to me prophecies about the end of time.

Isaiah 6 speaking about the millennium when the cities are wasted without inhabitants, and Ezekiel 10 being the tail end of Ezekiel 9 where it talks about the seal of God being placed in the foreheads of God's people.

We find Jesus in the sanctuary in the Old Testament?

In prophecies about the New Testament period of time.

What about the idea that Jesus is at God's right hand?

You know what you learn from the book of Daniel and from the book of Ezekiel?

And Jesus was at God's right hand when he was in the holy place.

And when the Father comes to the most holy place, Daniel portrays that scene, and Jesus is brought near before him.

Jesus and the Father are on thrones that have wheels.

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A History of Dissent Regarding the Sanctuary

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