What is Adventist in Adventism.....or the “shut door” Adventists.

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Here is a excellent article on how the “shut door” Adventists, or how those claiming a prophetic fulfillment became the center of Adventism...


[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]"...Millerite Adventism struggled in utter confusion in the wake of the October 22 disappointment. The majority of believers may have left the faith, while those who remained divided into several camps...[/FONT]


The Centrality of the Shut Door
and the Struggle for Identity
The primary task for the various Millerites in late 1844 and throughout 1845 was to find meaning, to discover what it meant to be an Adventist. The most basic theological dividing line among them centered on whether anything had happened on October 22. Those advocating that no prophecy had been fulfilled became known as “open door” Adventists, while those claiming a prophetic fulfillment were viewed as “shut door” Adventists.

The open and shut door labels came from the Millerite understanding of Matthew 25:10, which says that when the bridegroom arrived the wise virgins went into the marriage with him while the door was shut to all the rest. Miller, understanding the coming to the marriage to be the Second Advent, interpreted the closing of the door to be the ending of probation. Following Miller’s lead, the 1842 Boston general conference of Millerite Adventists had resolved “that the notion of a probation after Christ’s coming, is a lure to destruction, entirely contradictory to the word of God, which positively teaches that when Christ comes the door is shut, and such as are not ready can never enter in” (ST, June 1, 1842, 69). Along that line of logic, and still believing that prophecy had been fulfilled on October 22, Miller wrote on November 18, 1844, that “we have done [finished] our work in warning sinners” (AH, Dec. 11, 1844, 142).

In short, the real issue was whether any prophecy had been fulfilled in October 1844, with the shut door believers in the affirmative and the open door advocates in the negative. Those understandings were intimately connected to their concept of mission. The open door Adventists came to believe in early 1845 that they still had a task of warning the world of impending doom, while the shut door Adventists concluded that they had completed their mission to humanity and that their only duty was to stir up and instruct other Adventists who had been in the 1844 movement.

Joshua V. Himes became the leading voice among the open door Adventists. He rapidly concluded that nothing had happened on October 22, 1844. Holding that they had been correct as to the expected event (i.e., the second coming of Jesus), he reasoned that they had been wrong on the time calculation. On November 4, 1844, Himes wrote that “we are now satisfied that the authorities on which we based our calculations cannot be depended upon for definite time.” Although “we are near the end, . . . we have no knowledge of a fixed date or definite time, but do most fully believe that we should watch and wait for the coming of Christ, as an event that may take place at any hour” (MC, Nov. 7, 1844, 150). Under Himes’s leadership this group took steps to organize itself into a distinct Adventist body at Albany, New York, in April 1845. By that time, in order to escape the fanaticism of some of the shut door Adventists, Miller had moved to the open door camp (see MF 267-293).

Whereas the open door Adventists were able to unify at Albany, the shut door concept eventually gave birth to two quite distinct orientations. The first, the “spiritualizers,” got its name from the fact that it offered a spiritualized interpretation of the October 22 event. Concluding that the Millerites had been correct on both the time and the event predicted at the end of the 2300 days, the spiritualizers inferred that Christ had returned on October 22. That advent, however, had been a spiritual coming to the hearts of the believers rather than a visible appearing in the clouds of heaven. Fanaticism and charismatic excesses plagued the ranks of the spiritualizers (see MF 245-266).

The second strand of shut door Adventism agreed with the spiritualizers on the fulfillment of the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14 on October 22, but disagreed with them on the nature of the event. In short, the latter reasoned that the Millerites had been correct on the time but wrong on the event to take place. They came to believe that the cleansing of the sanctuary was not the Second Advent while at the same time they continued to hold to the shut door/close of probation belief. To make matters worse, they failed to connect the fact that Miller’s understanding of the end of probation occurring at the close of the 2300 days rested on the mistaken interpretation of the cleansing of the sanctuary as the Second Advent. Only after they had arrived at a new insight on the cleansing of the sanctuary could they rid themselves of their faulty concept of the shut door. But, as we shall see, that recognition came only gradually. It would be nearly a decade before they worked through the issue.

It was in the latter group that we find the future leaders of what would eventually develop into Seventh-day Adventism. To them it seemed that the majority party under Himes had abandoned the Adventist message by rejecting the validity of the 1844 movement and that the spiritualizers had denied the integrity of the Bible by spiritualizing its plainest statements. Although originally the smallest of the post-Millerite groups, it came to see itself as the true successor of the once-powerful Millerite movement.

Of the three divisions of Millerism discussed above, the third one was the last to emerge.
In fact, between October 1844 and 1847 or 1848 it had no shape or visibility. Rather, the future Sabbatarian Adventists consisted of a few Bible students here and there searching for the meaning of their Adventist experience but who generally didn’t personally know one another before 1846 or 1847. They were united in the search for identity but on little else in that early period. Their task was to explore their Bibles anew in the context of the chaotic conditions of post-1844 Millerism to discover where they stood in prophetic history (see MF 295-325). As a result, their foremost task during the extended period of transition from Millerism to Sabbatarianism was to determine what was Adventist in Adventism. The Bible was their primary tool in that enterprise

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A People of “the Book”

The most basic issue for any religious group is its source of authority. Those on the path to becoming Sabbatarians were clear on that topic. As James White put it in early 1847, “the Bible is a perfect and complete revelation. It is our only rule of faith and practice” (WLF 13; italics supplied).
As we will see in the balance of this chapter, the Sabbatarians developed their distinctive beliefs on the basis of Bible study. That fact was not always obvious to their detractors. Miles Grant, for example, argued in 1874 in the World’s Crisis (a leading first-day Adventist periodical) that “‘it is claimed by the Seventh-day Adventists that the sanctuary to be cleansed at the end of the 1300 [2300] days, mentioned in Dan. 8:13, 14, is in heaven, and that the cleansing began in the autumn of A.D. 1844. If any one should ask why they thus believe, the answer would be, the information came through one of Mrs. E. G. White’s visions’” (WC, Nov. 25, 1874 in RH, Dec. 22, 1874, 204).

Uriah Smith vigorously responded to that accusation. “Hundreds of articles,” he stated, “have been written upon the subject [of the sanctuary]. But in no one of these are the visions once referred to as any authority on this subject, or the source from whence any view we hold has been derived. Nor does any preacher ever refer to them on this question. The appeal is invariably to the Bible, where there is abundant evidence for the views we hold on this subject” (RH, Dec. 22, 1874, 204; italics supplied).

Smith, it should be pointed out, made a statement that any person willing to go back into early Seventh-day Adventist literature can verify or disprove. On the subject of the sanctuary Paul Gordon has done that in his The Sanctuary, 1844, and the Pioneers (1983). His findings verify Smith’s claims. Whereas many later Adventists have tended to lean on Ellen White’s authority to substantiate or at least help support their positions on various of their doctrines, the early Adventists were a people of the “Book.” Current Seventh-day Adventists of all persuasions need to note that fact as they seek to discover the genuine Adventism of history.

James White touched on the unique role of the Bible in doctrinal formation in 1847 after claiming that Scripture is “our only rule of faith and practice.” In the context of his wife’s prophetic ministry he wrote that “true visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but those that are given for a new rule of faith and practice, separate from the Bible, cannot be from God, and should be rejected” (WLF 13).
Four years later he again made that point explicit. “Every Christian,” he wrote, “is therefore in duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect rule of faith and duty. He should pray fervently to be aided by the Holy Spirit in searching the Scriptures for the whole truth, and for his whole duty. He is not at liberty to turn from them to learn his duty through any of the gifts. We say that the very moment he does, he places the gifts in a wrong place, and takes an extremely dangerous position. The Word should be in front, and the eye of the church should be placed upon it, as the rule to walk by, and the foundation of wisdom, from which to learn duty in ‘all good works’” (RH, Apr. 21, 1851, 70; italics supplied).

In summary, early Adventists rejected tradition, church authority, and even the gifts of the Spirit in their doctrinal formation. They were a people of the “Book,” as we shall see in the rest of this chapter.
In regard to principles of interpretation, they believed Miller’s “Rules of Interpretation” to be correct. Comparing Scripture with Scripture, letting each word and sentence have its proper significance, and utilizing prophetic parallelism, typology, and the interpretation of symbolic figures as outlined by Miller in his quite conscious approach to Bible study, became a foundational perspective on how the Sabbatarians looked at Scripture. Needless to say, the Sabbatarians continued to interpret prophecy from the historicist perspective (rather than the preterist, which views prophecy as being fulfilled in the time of the prophet, or the futurist, which holds that a large portion of prophecy will have its fulfillment immediately before the Second Advent). As with Miller, the Sabbatarian Adventists continued to see prophecy as a sequence of historical fulfillments beginning at the time of the biblical prophets but extending throughout history to the end of the world. Thus they built their theology upon Miller’s prophetic platform....."

 

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Moving Toward an Understanding
of the Sanctuary

Those becoming Sabbatarian Adventists not only followed Miller’s principles of biblical interpretation, they also continued to accept his basic eschatology. In particular, they believed in the premillennial return of Christ in the clouds of heaven. Thus they carried over the central doctrine of Millerism.

They would formulate a second doctrinal understanding in the months following the Great Disappointment. That second position involved the meaning of the sanctuary that needed to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 days. It became progressively clearer to them that the sanctuary of Daniel 8:14 could not be the earth as Miller had taught and that the cleansing was not the Second Advent. However, it was one thing to come to those negative conclusions, but quite another to determine the actual nature of the sanctuary and its cleansing. The Sabbatarians would come to agreement on the nature of the sanctuary by 1847, but they would not arrive at a consensus on the meaning of the cleansing until the mid-1850s.

Josiah Litch had expressed doubts as to Miller’s interpretation of the cleansing of the sanctuary after the spring 1844 disappointment. “It has not been proved,” he penned in April, “that the cleansing of the sanctuary, which was to take place at the end of the 2300 days, was the coming of Christ or the purification of the earth.” Again he noted, as he wrestled with the meaning of the recent disappointment, that they were most likely to be “in error relative to the event which marked its close” (AShield, May 1844, 75, 80).

That line of thought rose again soon after the October disappointment. Thus Joseph Marsh could write in early November: “We cheerfully admit that we have been mistaken in the nature of the event we expected would occur on the tenth [day] of the seventh month; but we cannot yet admit that our great High Priest did not on that very day, accomplish all that the type would justify us to expect” (VT, Nov. 7, 1844, 166).
Apollos Hale and Joseph Turner followed Marsh’s reasoning in an article in January 1845. They equated the October 22 event with the coming of Christ to the Ancient of Days (God) in the judgment scene of Daniel 7. Hale and Turner concluded that “the coming of the bridegroom” indicated “some change of work or office, on the part of our Lord.” Christ would return to earth to gather His elect after His work “within the veil . . . where he has gone to prepare a place for us” is completed. As a result, “some time must elapse” between the coming of the Bridegroom to the Ancient of Days and the coming in glory. Hale and Turner went on to indicate that “the judgment is here!” (AM, January 1845, 3).

Some heretofore minor actors in the Advent drama developed the fullest extant exposition of the line of thought suggested by Litch, Marsh, Hale, and Turner. On October 23, 1844, Hiram Edson, a Methodist farmer of Port Gibson, New York, became convicted during a session of prayer with fellow believers “that light should be given, and our disappointment be explained.”

Soon thereafter, he and a companion (probably O.R.L. Crosier) set out to encourage their fellow believers. As they crossed a field, Edson reported, “I was stopped about midway,” and “heaven seemed open to my view. . . . I saw distinctly, and clearly, that instead of our High Priest coming out [the common expectation of the Millerites] of the Most Holy of the heavenly sanctuary to come to this earth on the tenth day of the seventh month, at the end of the 2300 days, that he for the first time entered on that day the second apartment of that sanctuary; and that he had a work to perform in the Most Holy before coming to this earth.”
Soon the summons of his companion, who had passed far beyond him, brought Edson back to the realities of the field. To a query as to what was wrong, Edson replied that “‘the Lord was answering our morning prayer; by giving light with regard to our disappointment.’”

Edson’s insight soon drove him into extended Bible study with Crosier and Dr. F. B. Hahn. Following Miller’s concordance approach to unlocking the meaning of Scripture, they concluded that the sanctuary to be cleansed in Daniel 8:14 was not the earth or the church, but the sanctuary in heaven, of which the earthly sanctuary had been a type or copy.

Hahn and Edson decided that their discoveries were “just what the scattered remnant needed” to explain the disappointment and “set the brethren on the right track.” They agreed to share the expense of publication between them if Crosier would “‘write out the subject of the sanctuary’” based on their Bible study. As a result, Crosier began to publish the findings of their combined study in early 1845 in the Day Dawn (H. Edson MS).

Then, on February 7, 1846, Crosier presented their conclusions in the Day-Star Extra under the title “The Law of Moses.” By that time their understanding of the sanctuary had fairly well matured.

We can summarize their most important conclusions in “The Law of Moses” as follows: (1) A literal sanctuary exists in heaven. (2) The Hebrew sanctuary system was a complete visual representation of the plan of salvation patterned after the heavenly sanctuary. (3) Just as the earthly priests had a two-phase ministry in the wilderness sanctuary, so Christ had a two-phase ministry in the heavenly. The first phase began in the Holy Place at His ascension, the second on October 22, 1844, when Christ moved from the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary to the second. Thus the antitypical or heavenly Day of Atonement started on that date. (4) The first phase of Christ’s ministry dealt with forgiveness, while the second involves the blotting out of sins and the cleansing of both the sanctuary and individual believers. (5) The cleansing of Daniel 8:14 was a cleansing from sin and was therefore accomplished by blood rather than by fire. (6) Christ would not return to earth until He completed His second-apartment ministry (DS Extra, Feb. 7, 1846, 37-44).

Crosier’s article did not go unnoticed by those who would become the leaders of Sabbatarian Adventists. In early 1847 Joseph Bates recommended Crosier’s treatment of the sanctuary as being “superior to any thing of the kind extant” (Opening Heavens, 25). About that same time Ellen White penned that “the Lord shew me in vision, more than one year ago, that Brother Crosier had the true light, on the cleansing of the Sanctuary, &c; and that it was his will, that Brother C. should write out the view which he gave us in the Day-Star, Extra, February 7, 1846” (WLF 12).

Crosier wasn’t the only shut door believer writing on the two-apartment ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary. Others included Emily C. Clemons, who edited a periodical in mid-1845 graphically entitled Hope Within the Veil, and G. W. Peavey, who was teaching in April 1845 that Christ had “closed the work typified by the daily ministrations previous to the 10th day of the 7th month, and on that day went into the holiest of all” (JS, Apr. 24, 1845, 55). Peavey also saw an interrelationship between Daniel 8:14, Hebrews 9:23-24, and Leviticus 16 and concluded that the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary needed purification by Christ’s blood on the antitypical day of atonement (ibid., Aug. 7, 1845, 166). He believed, however, that the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary had taken place on October 22, 1844, whereas Crosier and his colleagues regarded the atonement as an unfinished process that had begun on that date. It was Crosier’s understanding that would eventually find its way into Sabbatarian Adventism.

Ellen Harmon’s (Ellen White after her marriage in 1846) early visions also touched upon the topic of the sanctuary. Her first vision (December 1844) dealt with the validity of the seventh-month movement (a position she had given up [see WLF 22]) rather than the sanctuary. But in early 1845 she reported another vision in which she “saw the Father rise from the throne, and in a flaming chariot go into the holy of holies within the veil, and sit down” at the beginning of the second phase of Christ’s heavenly ministry (see EW 14, 15, 54-56).

While Ellen Harmon’s vision harmonized with the Bible-based conclusions of Crosier and others, we must remember that she had no authority in Adventism at that time. She was basically unknown to the major players in the developing sanctuary theology. To them she was merely a 17-year-old girl claiming to have visions amidst the conflicting voices of a shut door Adventism literally overrun by a multitude of individuals claiming charismatic gifts. It would take time to separate the genuine from the false in the chaotic conditions of the post-Disappointment Adventism of 1845. In the meantime, extensive and intensive Bible study was settling many of the issues. A final point that should be raised in relation to the heavenly sanctuary is the discovery by James White and Joseph Bates of Revelation 11:19: “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament” (WLF 23). Not only did that verse, as they saw it, point to the opening up of the Most Holy Place in heaven (the location of the ark in the earthly sanctuary) near the end of time, but it also directed their eyes to the ark and its contents—the Ten Commandments......"

http://www.adventistreview.org/2001-1524/story5.html