IN the awful woe pronounced by the Redeemer upon the scribes and the Pharisees, He charges them with compassing sea and land to make one proselyte. The same holds true about a number of American sects, such as the Mormons, the Russellites, and the Seventh Day Adventists. These latter have sent their emissaries to remote places in the Highlands, and by the dissemination of their literature, such as “The Great Controversy” and “Daniel and Revelation,” have placed in the homes of unsuspecting people books which insidiously teach their false doctrines. It is because of this, and in view of the promise made in last issue, we lay before our readers a brief account of the Seventh Day Adventists and some of their views. The prophetess of the movement was Mrs E. G. White, whose work, “The Great Controversy,” has been widely circulated. The Seventh Day Adventists are an off-shoot of the Millerites, one of the numerous sects which had birth in the States. Miller had been a Deist, but being converted from Deism, became a diligent reader of his Bible. As he read it he was convinced by the literal interpretation of those passages referring to the Second Advent that it was to be pre-millennial. He went further, and fixed the date of the Second Advent in the spring of 1844. Miller, when the time came, was found a false prophet, and Mrs White says that those who had looked for the Redeemer’s coming were for a time involved in doubt and uncertainty. Miller, nothing daunted, reviewed his reckonings, and discovered that he had been somewhat premature, and now fixed the date for the autumn of 1844. Miller proved once again a false prophet, and, according to Mrs White, his followers “were doomed to disappointment.” Miller now candidly confessed his mistakes, but not so Elder White and his wife. Mrs White, says they discovered “that instead of coming to the earth at the termination of 2300 days in 1844, Christ then entered into the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary to perform the closing work of atonement preparatory to His coming” (“The Great Controversy”), and all this was written notwithstanding His own definite word on the Cross—”It is finished.”
Another daring piece of interpretation of the typology of Scripture is found in the following:—”It was seen also that while the sin-offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice, and the high priest represented Christ as Mediator, the scapegoat typified Satan, the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will finally be placed. . . . When Christ, by virtue of His own blood, removes the sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary at the close of His ministration, He will place them upon Satan, who, in the execution of the judgment, must bear the final penalty. . . . So will Satan be for ever banished from the presence of God and His people, and he will be blotted from existence—in the final destruction of sin and sinners.” The view adopted by the heavenly sanctuary led the Seventh Day Adventists to adopt the Jewish Sabbath as the day of rest, hence their name, “Seventh Day” Adventists. But as this subject has been ably dealt with in a short but excellent article by the late Rev. W. Scott, Chesley, which appeared recently in our pages, we pass from it in the meantime and concentrate our attention on other unscriptural doctrines held by this sect. The doctrine of eternal punishment is rejected, for, according to Mrs White “the theory of eternal punishment is one of the false doctrines that constitute the wine of the abominations of Babylon . . . They received it from Rome as they received the false Sabbath.” Closely connected with this view or perhaps to put it more correctly as part of their theory the Seventh Day Adventists hold the doctrine of Annihilation—the wicked are to be annihilated.
Mrs White is possessed of a vivid imagination which unfortunately plays fast and loose with divine truth. This earth is to be broken up and become a lake of fire then “the sins of the righteous having been transferred to Satan he is made not only to suffer for his own rebellion but for all the sins which he has caused God’s people to commit . . . After all have perished who fell by his deceptions, he is still to live and suffer on. In the cleansing flame the wicked are at last destroyed, root and branch, Satan the root, his followers the branches.”
Such are some of the views held by this sect and they are sufficiently serious and dangerous to move us to point them out to those who unsuspectingly purchased some of their costly books.