Eugene Prewitt: Adventist Heritage

Eugene Prewitt

Ouachita Hills College

Fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets

Today we're going to be studying about the fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets.

In the history of the Christian Church, You had the experience of Jesus dying on the cross.

Just prior to that was the experience of the Lord's supper.

Following that by 50 days was the experience of Pentecost.

These were fulfillments of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of the Passover, and the Feast of Pentecost.

And in each case, the Feast was fulfilled on even the same day of the same month as the Feast occurred in the Jewish history.

The Passover, the time Jesus died, and then the Pentecost was fulfilled on Pentecost.

The Feast of First Fruits was a reference, well the Wave Sheath in particular, was a reference to those that were resurrected with Jesus, well when He died and were taken to heaven with Him when He ascended.

And I'm about to move to a different set of feasts.

These happened in the first 2 months, or first 2 and a half months of the Jewish year, and represented the events in the beginning of the Christian age.

But beginning in the seventh month, 7 being a number that often has represented the end or completeness, Beginning the seventh month were another series of feasts those were the feast of trumpets Which was followed by the day of atonement whoops which was followed by the Feast of Tabernacles.

In the seventh month, representing their fulfillment in the end of time.

Adventists are more typically familiar with the Day of Atonement being fulfilled in 1844 when Christ entered the Most Holy Place.

What date did He enter the Most Holy place?

Because the feasts are fulfilled on the day that the feast happened, as was Pentecost, as was Passover, as was the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Is there anyone who's lost and would like me to say something again?

Start over or would you like me to start over?

There were some feasts in the first 2 months that represented things that happened in the beginning of Christianity, and there were some feasts in the seventh month that represented events that happened in the end of Christian history.

And the 3 that we're talking about right now in Adventist Church history would be the 3 in the end.

And the 3 in the end are, in order, trumpets, atonement, tabernacles.

The Feast of Trumpets came before the Feast, or the Day of Atonement.

The Feast of Trumpets was an announcement that the Day of Atonement was coming.

The trumpets were blown in a celebrant announcement that the Judgment Day of Atonement was on its way.

If a judgment is coming, would you like to prepare?

And the Feast of Trumpets was placed so that you could prepare for the day of judgment coming.

Prior to the beginning of the judgment in 1844, God sent messengers around the world to warn the world of the soon coming judgment, of the soon coming Christ.

Today we're going to talk about a number of them, and I want you to understand when we mention them by names that they were cumulatively the fulfillment of the feast of trumpets Did it make sense that time?

We're going forward all right If we were going to do them chronologically, we might start with Wengel.

He wrote in the early 1700s, kind of too early perhaps for us to put him in this list.

My G's and S's, you have to listen to the word to know which they are.

Bengal was a reformer who wrote from the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation about Christ soon coming.

He predicted it based on the prophecies of Daniel just as William Miller did later.

He was in Europe and if there's something about the European expositors that you probably ought to know, they never had the kind of unanimity on the dates that the American expositors had.

That make any sense to you what I just said?

In other words, everyone Under William Miller in America, they believed Christ would come back about 1843.

Well, if you go to Europe and look at these expositors, they weren't united in that way.

They would say some 1860s, some 1880s, some 1840s, some 1820s.

Europe did not go through the kind of disappointment that existed in America because it was not united in this respect.

Were met on the day that they would have been held.

How do we jump into this, quite a large group of people, I assume.

Perhaps showing, not that there were 7 days of announcing the coming judgment, but that there was a period of time and it was happening all through it.

It was a valid question when I've asked myself before, and now you know my best answer.

If you find a better 1, get back with me.

I was trying to deal with that question to find a good answer.

So I'm going to go right away from it because I don't like guessing and there's no sense talking about things you don't know, right?

Moving on The next significant expositor was a man by the name of Manuel Lacanza Manuel it's Man uel I think Lacanza is 1 of those beautiful words spelled phonetically.

He was from the country of Chile, South America.

But there came a time when the Spanish Empire that was over Chile became irritated with the Jesuits.

And they expelled, was it Portuguese or Spanish?

Whichever was over Chile, expelled the Jesuits.

And the reason it's confusing to me to say it Spanish is because you know where he went when he was expelled?

And I'm trying to harmonize that in my mind.

The Weak Confound the Wise

Our Father in Heaven, I ask that as we study today, that you would bring to this class the very lesson that you intend, that you would use the history of the Advent movement to warn and inspire us.

I ask for that gift in the name of Jesus.

Today we're talking about 6 men, not about the whole story of their life, but about a particular contribution they made to what has become the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I have thought about, and if time permits, I might add several more.

But these 6 are particularly interesting.

Crozier was the man who first wrote about the sanctuary message that you understand today.

He first wrote out the message that Jesus went into the most holy place on October 22, 1844.

He was the 1 that helped Adventists understand why they had been disappointed.

And he began writing that just about on October 23.

Lich, Josiah Lich, was a man we mentioned yesterday.

He was that minister who joined William Miller.

While William Miller was not the first man to use the day for year principle, in fact that principle is traced by some way back to Joachim of Florence, who was a false prophet of the 12th century.

Yet Josiah Lich was the first man to make a prediction based upon the day-for-year principle that came to be true.

That is, where people could look and say, it happened.

It's 1 thing to use the day for your principle and say it was fulfilled in the past.

You could almost cut and paste and put it on the past.

Like I can say, here's 600 year prophecy, and it started in this date and ended in that date, see it was fulfilled.

But it's an entirely different thing to predict a future event at a certain time and have it happen.

We talked about it yesterday, the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Preble was a Sabbatarian, originally of course a Sunday keeper, but when he came across the truth about the seventh-day Sabbath, he published it in a little tract.

Joseph Bates accepted it and shared it with some of his friends, Ellen and James White, and the rest is history of how the little group of Adventists came to know about the seventh-day Sabbath.

Ellen White, for example, was a prophet before she was a Sabbatarian.

It was through Preble we learned about the Sabbath.

Samuel Snow, Sheffield Snow, his initials were SSS.

Samuel Snow was the first expositor of the prophecies to correlate the day of atonement with the cleansing of the sanctuary of Daniel 8 14 He wasn't the first to really Allude to it William Miller had even made a passing allusion to their factor might be a connection but he was the first 1 to really develop the idea.

And he presented it at a camp meeting in August of 1844.

The idea that, yeah I didn't explain much idea, that in the parable of the 10 virgins, where there was the midnight cry, Go ye out to meet him.

That that was fulfilled in, I need to back up Ms.

Tara, this isn't going to make any sense to you.

The main idea he was presenting was that the Day of Atonement is connected to the cleansing of the sanctuary in Daniel 8.14.

That when it says 2300 days then shall the sanctuary be cleansed, that that was referring to the day of atonement.

And following that reckoning through as he developed it, he showed that the Day of Atonement would fall that year in October 22.

So he was the first 1 to promote the idea that Christ would come back on October 22, 1844.

And he presented that idea in August of 1844 at a camp meeting in what came to be known as the Midnight Cry.

I'll give you an example of his kind of prophetic interpretation.

He showed that in the parable of the 10 virgins that that it was a representation of the Millerite movement.

Then he showed that the cry goes forth at midnight.

Which virgins were sleeping, the wise or the foolish?

And he showed that since the disappointment in the spring of 1844 that the Millerites had been asleep in their energy and preaching about the second advent that had really shut down their energy.

Can you understand why it would shut down their energy?

If they expected Christ to come back in April and he didn't do it?

Did you all know that the Millerites expected Christ to come back in April of 1844?

Samuel Snow showed that if a day in Bible prophecy is a year, then how long would a night be?

I mean if a 24 hour period is a year, it would be 6 months.

Then how long would the middle night be from the beginning of the night?

And he showed that from the beginning of the disappointment until the time early in August when he was preaching that it had been about 3 months.

What did the midnight cry do in the parable?

And they went forth to meet the bridegroom.

Anyway, the power of that movement, maybe we'll talk about it later, you'll read about it if we don't.

Some compared it to a tornado, some compared it to electricity.

It just zapped to life an entire movement that had become lethargic.

Anyway, that was Samuel Snow, The Midnight Cry.

Then George Storrs, in the year of 1844, kind of late in his preaching of the Advent Movement, he discovered that the soul sleeps unconsciously in the grave when it dies.

And that immortality is promised only to the righteous after the resurrection.

And that God only has immortality naturally.

And that the dead will be destroyed in the lake of fire and will cease to exist and will not burn forever and ever.

All which things Adventists take almost for granted, but those things were not understood prior to George Storrs by many people at Paul.

George Storrs produced a sermon, 6 lectures.

We printed 1 of those in the magazine we produced last year.

Enoch Jacobs was the first man that had the courage and confidence to print the writings of the young Ellen Harmon.

Ellen Harmon, the lady who later became Ellen White, but this was before she was married.

In a way, you can trace the history of the adoption of the Adventist doctrines of the sanctuary, the day for your principle, the Sabbath, the midnight cry, the October 22 movement, death as sleep, and the spirit of prophecy, you can trace it to these 6 men.

Crozier repudiated the sanctuary message that he had written about.

He became an enemy of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, wrote prolifically against it, and his letters, you can find them in the most bitter enemies of Adventism in their works.

Crozier printed this in the Daystar Extra of February 1846, the material that he had put together with Hiram Edson and with a physician.

Josiah Litch, after the great disappointment, concluded that his Advent experience had been false.

He gave up not only Adventism in general, but specifically the day for year principle, and went back to a literal understanding of a day for day end time prophecies.

Preble, after writing that little publication on the Pope's Sabbath, Pope's Sabbath, referring to Sunday, gave up the Sabbath, died as a Sunday keeper.

Samuel Snow, entirely abandoned Adventism.

George Storrs became a false prophet in the period immediately following 1844.

Had visions, shared them, they didn't come to pass.

The Shut Door

We're going to have a prayer and then we're going to begin.

Miss Bowerheads, our Father in Heaven, I ask that as we discuss 1 of the controversial issues in the history of Adventism, that you'd bless my mind with accuracy and memory, with tact and skill and communication, that you'd help us to understand.

Today we're going to be talking about the history of what is called the shut door doctrine in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

If 10 years from Now, 3 or 4 of you have left the Adventist church.

It's very likely that 1 or 2 of you will be very convinced that Ellen White is a false prophet and that somewhere along the way this story will have played into that conclusion.

Although certainly not the way I'm about to tell it.

Let me explain it, then you'll be able to write it.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a Millerite movement with some 50, 000 adherents, give or take 50, 000.

I mean 40 to 100, 000, you know what I mean?

In the eastern United States, when they had the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, It was very difficult for them to make out what had gone wrong.

Miller, and Litch, and Himes, for a while, took up this line.

They said that our prophetic prediction was based on human chronology.

Now it's possible that human chronology could have been off by days or weeks or months or a year or 2, and maybe it never would have been discovered.

For that reason, we should just wait until Christ comes.

But as time continued and nothing in particular happened, that position became less and less tenable until that group, the primary leaders of Adventism, eventually concluded that nothing particular happened on October 22, 1844.

They concluded that no fulfillment of prophecy happened on October 22, 1844.

It's natural that they would conclude that because they didn't see anything happen.

But before they concluded that, William Miller with the rest, especially soon after October 22, took a slightly different position.

They concluded that Jesus had closed up his priestly administration on October 22.

That they had done their work for the world, and now it only remained for them to wait.

You can understand how William Miller came to that conclusion.

Jesus said, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man." So what happened in the days of Noah?

Did Noah preach up until the day that it rained?

He preached up until he was led into the ark with a bunch of animals, and then the door of the ark was shut.

There was a period of time when they were shut in, and the wicked world was shut out.

And Jesus said, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

So Miller with others concluded that since Christ had not come, it must be that like in the story of Noah, they had been shut in.

Didn't it say that in the parable of the 10 virgins?

That after the cry went forth, the wise went with the bridegroom and the door was shut.

And what happened after the door was shut?

The unwise virgins came and said, open to us.

This idea that probation had closed was the shut door theory.

Adventists in general believed it for several weeks and some for several months.

But as time went on, the doctrine began to lose its popularity with most Adventism, including with the leaders.

But you remember we talked about Hiram Etzen some.

Crozier who concluded that Jesus went into the most holy place.

And with that conclusion was the idea that he had closed up the door to the holy place.

They got that partially from the message to Philadelphia, which says, I have set before you an open door and no man can close it.

But it indicates there also there's a closed door and no man can open it.

In Maine, where Ellen White was living as a 17 year old girl in Portland, the Adventists in that area were losing their confidence in the shut-door theory.

That is, in the idea that anything happened in 1844 as a fulfillment of prophecy.

And as they were beginning to waver on the fulfillment of the 2300 days, and maybe the whole thing was a delusion, little Ellen Harmon had a vision.

And in that vision, she was shown that the midnight cry was from God.

That was the cry that said, Go ye out to meet Him.

And that Christ had entered into a new phase of his ministry in 1844, and that the door of the holy place was shut.

The remarkable thing in her vision was that she was saying that October 22 was really a fulfillment of prophecy.

It's what happened next that is troubling to some.

James White and Joseph Bates concluded that William Miller had been right about probation closing on October 22, 1844, and that the reason he didn't hold on to it was because he didn't know about Christ going into the Most Holy Place.

So, the Adventists that were Sabbatarian began teaching that, now they were just becoming Sabbatarian, but even before they were Sabbatarian, they were teaching this, that probation had closed in October 22, 1844.

And for a while, you know what they were called?

Shut door Sabbatharians, or shut door Seventh-day people.

Because they were, what were the prominent aspects of their teaching?

That Christ had really gone into the most holy place in October 22 and that we ought to keep the seventh day Sabbath.

Listen they weren't teaching this for 3 months or 6 months or 9 months.

It looks like some of them are teaching it for 6 years.

During that time, Ellen White had a number of visions and revelations that related to the shut door.

Now I'm going to summarize for you the charges against her and then reply to them individually.

I gave you this paper, didn't I, the shut door, briefly?

Huh, maybe you're the only 1 that has it, Stephen.

That means it's in my room waiting to be handed to you.

So you don't necessarily have to take notes in what I'm about to read to you, unless you just like to write things down to remember them better.

The charge is that Ellen White taught that mercy for sinners closed in 1844.

This she did as a result of her first 2 visions.

The result was that many Adventists lost their burden for lost sinners.

Instead of frankly admitting her error or sticking to her guns, she cowardly turned coat and claimed that she had never taught the shut door.

That Ellen White was wrong, that she taught the church that there was no more mercy for sinners, that because of that many stopped doing evangelism, or some did, and that later when she changed her position, instead of saying, whoops, I goofed, she said that she never changed her position and she had never taught the shut door, which makes her a liar.

And if that charge was true as stated I would think you would have to conclude that Ellen White was a false prophet I think you would have to and I think many have I don't conclude that and I think the charge is entirely false, top to bottom.

Let's just go through it a piece at a time.

First of all, turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 6.

And look in the first few verses for something about people who have tasted the powers of the world to come.

Organization, Babylon, and the Civil War

Our Father in Heaven, I ask as we study today that you would give us wisdom, that you would teach us what is right and true.

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Eugene Prewitt: Adventist Heritage

The Shut Door

Transcript

Parent Series

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