The Seventh Day

Words to Know

Seventh-day Adventist Church — the church organized in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1863, out of the movement that had waited for my return in 1844. It counts more than twenty million baptized members around the world.¹

The Great Disappointment — the 22nd of October, 1844, the day that tens of thousands of followers of the Baptist preacher William Miller expected me to return, and I did not.²

The Spirit of Prophecy — the name your church gives to the gift of prophecy it believes was shown in Ellen G. White (1827–1915), whose writings it says “speak with prophetic authority.”³

The investigative judgment — your church’s teaching that in 1844 I began a final phase of my work in a heavenly sanctuary, reviewing the records of all who have professed faith, to show who is worthy of eternal life.⁴

Start with the morning after.

On the night of the 22nd of October, 1844, thousands of people sat up waiting for me. Many had paid their debts and left their crops in the field, and some had sold their farms, because their preachers, William Miller among them, had worked out from the book of Daniel and the Day of Atonement that I would return that day. Midnight came and went. One of them wrote later that they wept until the day dawned.²

The next morning, a farmer named Hiram Edson was crossing a cornfield and became convinced that the date had been right, but the event had been wrong: that on that day I had not come to earth, but had moved into a new room of a sanctuary in heaven.⁵ From that conviction, and from the visions of a seventeen-year-old girl named Ellen Harmon, later Ellen White, grew your church.

Your church carries two words in its name. Seventh-day is a day. Adventist is a coming, and it began with a date. Let me hold both of them, and the things that grew from them, next to my own words.

I am not going to tell you that the people in your church are bad people. Many of them are among the healthiest, kindest and most hardworking people you will meet, and your church has kept the Sabbath as a gift in a world that has almost forgotten how to rest. I will come back to that, because it is close to me. The question is whether the four things your church was built on, the day, the date, the judgment and the prophet, are the ones I set down. Let me take them one at a time.

The First Pillar: The Day

You were taught to keep the seventh day holy. So did I. Watch what I did with it.

You are right about the day. I kept the Sabbath, and it was Saturday. Luke says I went to the synagogue on the Sabbath as was his custom (Luke 4:16).

But notice what I did on it, and what the religious experts said about me for doing it. I healed a woman who had been bent double for eighteen years, on the Sabbath, in the synagogue. The ruler of the synagogue told the crowd to come back on a weekday for healing. I said: Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound eighteen long years, be freed from this bondage on the Sabbath day? (Luke 13:16). I healed a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath, and the experts went out and began plotting to destroy me (Mark 3:1–6). When my hungry friends picked grain on the Sabbath, I defended them: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

The law itself tells you what the Sabbath is for. In Deuteronomy, the day of rest is for everyone, including your male servant … your female servant … your stranger who is within your gates; that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And the reason given there is freedom: You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:14–15). In Exodus the day is tied to creation (Exodus 20:11). Hold both. The Sabbath is the day slaves stop working. It is one of the oldest labor laws we have.

Your church has made the day into something more. Ellen White taught that before I return, laws will be passed forcing people to keep Sunday, and that those who knowingly obey them, once the choice is plain, will receive the mark of the beast, while those who keep the Sabbath will receive the seal of God.⁶ Your church teaches that no one has that mark yet, and that there are true Christians in every church. But many of your children grew up afraid of a coming Sunday law, and of a day when churches and governments would turn on those who keep the Sabbath.

I never made the Sabbath into a boundary between people. I made it into a day for setting them free.

The Second Pillar: The Date

You were taught that 1844 was the date. I told you that no one knows the date.

Miller built his date on a verse of Daniel: To two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary will be cleansed (Daniel 8:14). He counted each day as a year and started the count in 457 BC, the year he took from the decree in Ezra 7.²

Read the verses around it. The vision is about the continual burnt offering being stopped and the sanctuary being trodden under foot (Daniel 8:13). Most scholars think the book of Daniel was finished around 165 BC, during the persecution by the Greek king Antiochus IV, who stopped the daily offering in the Temple in Jerusalem and set up a pagan altar there. The Temple was cleansed and dedicated again in 164 BC.⁷ Most scholars read the sanctuary in Daniel as the one in Jerusalem, and its cleansing as the one that happened before I was born.

I was asked about the date of my return, and I answered: of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Mark 13:32). And: Watch out that you don’t get led astray, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is at hand.’ Therefore don’t follow them (Luke 21:8).

When the date failed, most of the movement let go of it. The small group that became your church held on to the date and moved the event into heaven, where it could not be checked.

The Third Pillar: The Judgment

You were taught that since 1844 your records are being examined. I told a thief he would be with me today.

Your church teaches that since 1844 I have been reviewing the lives of everyone who has professed faith, to confirm who is worthy, and that this judgment will close before I return.⁴ Many Adventist children grew up wondering whether their names had come up yet, and whether something they had forgotten to confess would be found.

In 1979 one of your own leading theologians, Desmond Ford, questioned this teaching in a public lecture, from the Bible. In 1980 your church removed his credentials as a minister.⁸

Here is how I judged. A man was dying next to me on a cross, a criminal by his own admission. He said: Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom. I did not open a record. I said: Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:42–43). Some of you put the comma after today. Either way, I gave him my word that day and opened no record. A woman wept on my feet at a dinner, and I said, Your sins are forgiven (Luke 7:48). In my story about the son who wasted everything, the father did not review the accounts. He saw him far off, and ran (Luke 15:20).

A letter in my beloved disciple’s name says it as plainly as it can be said: There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment (1 John 4:18).

The Fourth Pillar: The Prophet

You were taught that Ellen White had the Spirit of Prophecy. She told you herself where to look.

Your church holds that Ellen White’s writings “speak with prophetic authority,” though it says that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested.³ She wrote dozens of books and thousands of articles, and for many Adventists her words have shaped how they read mine.

In 1982 a former Adventist pastor, Walter Rea, published evidence that she had borrowed large parts of her books from other writers, often without naming them. Your church commissioned its own study of her book on my life, The Desire of Ages. The scholar who led it, Fred Veltman, reported in 1988 that in a random sample of fifteen of the book’s eighty-seven chapters, about a third of her sentences depended on other authors, most of them as loose paraphrase, and that the amount varied widely from chapter to chapter.⁹ That does not make her a liar. Many writers in her day borrowed freely. But it means that some of her words, and in some chapters most of them, came from the same place everyone’s words come from: other people’s books.

She said something about herself that is worth more than any of it. She wrote that her work was a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light.¹⁰ Take her at her word. Go to the greater light.

What Your Church Kept

Now, in fairness, look at what your church kept. Some of it is very close to me.

You kept the day of rest, whole, from sundown to sundown, in a world that works seven days a week. That is a gift to every worker, and it is one of the oldest labor laws we have.

You kept the body. Your church took health seriously when others did not, and large studies have found that Adventists in California live several years longer than their neighbors.¹¹ You built hospitals and clinics around the world, and your relief agency, ADRA, works in well over a hundred countries.¹² I spent much of my life healing. That is my work.

You kept the refusal to kill. Your church has long urged its members to serve without bearing arms, though it leaves the choice to each member’s conscience. Desmond Doss, an Adventist medic who would not carry a rifle, stayed on a cliff on Okinawa in 1945 and lowered wounded men to safety one by one, by the usual count about seventy-five of them, and received the Medal of Honor.¹³

You kept a stand against slavery. Ellen White wrote that Christians must not obey the law requiring them to return escaped slaves to their masters.¹⁴

So the question is not whether I am in your church. I am in the Sabbath rest, the clinic and the man on the cliff at Okinawa. The question is which part stands on top. On top are a date that did not come, a judgment that has frightened many children, and a prophet read in place of me.

What You’ll Hear Back

If you show this to someone you love, they will have answers ready. Here are the six you will hear most, and what is underneath each one.

“The Sabbath is the seal of God. Sunday will be the mark of the beast.”

The Sabbath is a gift. I never used it as a seal or a mark. I said that I was lord even of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28), and that it was made for man (Mark 2:27).

Paul faced Christians arguing about days. Whichever days he meant, he refused to make it a test: One man esteems one day as more important. Another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind (Romans 14:5). Keep the seventh day with joy. Do not use it to divide yourself from the people I told you to love.

“Jesus is coming soon.”

Adventists have said soon for more than a hundred and eighty years. I told you what the faithful servant would be doing when his master came: feeding the household (Matthew 24:45–46). I did tell you to watch (Matthew 24:42). The watching I meant is the work of feeding the household, not guessing from the news.

“Ellen White was inspired. She helps us understand the Bible.”

She said her writings were the lesser light, to lead you to the greater (see her own words above). Read the greater light first. If her words help you see mine, use them. If they stand in front of mine, move them.

“The investigative judgment shows that God is fair.”

God is fair. Read what fair looked like when I did it: a thief on a cross, a woman at a dinner, a son on the road home. None of them waited for a review. Today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43). If the teaching has made you afraid, it has done the opposite of what perfect love does (1 John 4:18).

“Our health message proves God is with us. We live longer.”

I am glad you live longer, and glad of every hospital you built. But I was not known for my diet. My critics said: Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! (Matthew 11:19). And I taught that whatever goes into the man from outside can’t defile him (Mark 7:18). A long life is a gift. It is not a sign of who is right. The sign I gave was love, and the poor hearing good news.

“We are the remnant who keep the commandments of God.”

They mean Revelation 12:17, about those who keep God’s commandments and hold Jesus’ testimony. Your church teaches that it is that remnant, while saying that believers in other churches belong to Christ’s universal church.¹⁵

I was asked which commandment was greatest, and I named two: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Then I said: The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments (Matthew 22:40). If you want to be the people who keep the commandments, those are the two everything hangs on. The Sabbath hangs on them too.

If You Were Raised in It

You may remember Friday evenings, the house cleaned and the food made before sundown, Sabbath school and Pathfinders, potlucks with no meat, an Adventist school, and the peace of a whole day with nothing to buy and nowhere to work. You may also remember the books about the time of trouble, the dreams about the Sunday law, and the fear that your name would come up in heaven before you had confessed everything.

Nothing here asks you to give up the Sabbath. Keep it. It is mine too.

It only asks you to do what I asked of the lawyer: How do you read it? (Luke 10:26). Read the gospels without anyone’s commentary between you and them. Notice what I did on the Sabbath, every time: I set someone free. Then do that, on the seventh day and on the other six.

Check It Yourself

Read Luke 13:10–17, Mark 3:1–6 and Mark 2:23–28. Write down what I did on the Sabbath and why.

Read Deuteronomy 5:12–15. Write down who the day of rest is for, and why it was given.

Read Daniel 8, the whole chapter. Write down what is happening to the sanctuary in the vision.

Read Mark 13:32, Luke 21:8 and Acts 1:7.

Read Luke 23:39–43 and Luke 15:11–24. Write down how long each person waited to be forgiven.

Read Romans 14:1–6.

Look up Ellen White’s words about the lesser light and the greater light, and read them in full.

The Short Version

• Your church’s name holds a day and a hope: the seventh day, and my return, which the movement first expected on 22 October 1844.
• You are right about the day. I kept the Sabbath as was his custom.
• I used the Sabbath to set people free: the woman bent double, the withered hand, my hungry friends. The law gives it to servants and strangers in memory of slavery.
• Your church teaches that knowingly obeying a coming Sunday law will be the mark of the beast. I never made the Sabbath a boundary between people.
• Most scholars read Daniel 8:14 as about the Temple in Jerusalem, desecrated and cleansed in 164 BC. I said no one knows the date.
• The investigative judgment has frightened many children. I told a dying thief, today. A theologian who questioned it, Desmond Ford, lost his credentials in 1980.
• Ellen White called her work a lesser light leading to the greater light. Your church’s own study found she borrowed from other writers, in some chapters heavily.
• You kept a whole day of rest, the body, the hospitals, Desmond Doss, and a stand against slavery.
• The commandments hang on two: love God, and love your neighbor.