A challenge to a Major Part of Adventism

[Gregory Matthews]

The following article will likely challenge in a manner that may not be comfortable.  I do not agree with everything that it suggests.  However, I do believe that it contains some information that  it is likely you did not know.  This is true for me.  In part  I am posting this link due to that fact.

If you chose to   read the article, I suggest that you also read that comments that people have  made about the article.  They are both pro and con.  Those comments provide balance and also some  facts that you may not have known.

https://conversation.spectrummagazine.org/t/the-great-controversy-shackles-adventist-theology/15990

 

 

[Gregory Matthews]

The following quote is taken from a comment posted by Sam Geli about the article cited above.  As my quote does not contain the entire post, I suggest that you read it in full.  In addition, you may find other comments to be of value.

Quote

 

“Readers comparing the Spanish edition of The Great Controversy to the English original may be surprised to learn that the Spanish version contains an additional chapter—chapter 13. The origin of this chapter is explained in The Later Elmshaven Years, [vol. 6 of the Ellen G. White Biography series,] p. 377, as follows:
As the work of the church was broadening to take in many countries and many languages, steps were taken to translate the new book so that the peoples of many tongues might read. One of the first was the Spanish, undertaken almost immediately. As this work was entered upon, it was observed that no place had been given to the reformation in Spain. As counsel was taken with Ellen White, it was decided it would be well if in the Spanish printing, a supplementary chapter compiled by competent writers could be added. Thus, the Spanish Great Controversy carries forty-three chapters in place of the forty-two in other printings. Chapter thirteen in that book, titled The Awakening in Spain, is clearly designated as a work of “collaboration” and has a footnote stating: This chapter was compiled by C. C. Crisler and H. H. Hall, and was inserted in this book with the approval of the author.–Page 252. Consequently, there has never been any missing chapter from The Great Controversy. This non-Ellen White material has always been available in the Spanish edition, and it was never intended by her to be a part of the original English edition.”

[Kevin H]

George Knight wrote a book "Myths in Adventism" where he compared what Mrs. White was believed to have taught to what she actually taught.
 I find two of the three problems pointed out in this article to not be a problem with Mrs. White and Adventism as such but rather is discussing myths in Adventism which I have seen coming into the church over my life time.  I will deal with both myths separately but in summary the two Myths are:

1. We can only defend 1844 using the word "Days" in the KJV and not with the evening-morning of the other translations. I'm sorry but at both Atlantic Union College and Andrews University our whole apologetic on 1844 has been built on the evening-morning translation, and that this translation gives an even stronger case for 1844 than the KJV's "days" Dr. Shay wrote a lot about this in the books by the Daniel and Revelation committee. 

2. That Mrs. White believed that the world was only 6,000 years old. This myth was studied again both at AUC and in the class "Archaeology and the Bible" at Andrews. I hate it that I can't remember the reference, but Dr. Gerrity sent us into the White Estate vault to read a document where Mrs. White down played the 6,000 years and said that what ever age we pick for the age of the earth to just make sure that it is fair to the Bible.

Our problem is that we are reading Adventist tradition into Mrs. White and are lagging miles behind her.

[Kevin H]

Myth #!:

1. We can only defend 1844 using the word "Days" in the KJV and not with the evening-morning of the other translations.
 

I have no idea where this myth came from and I have only heard it in recent years. Some who use this argument are completely silenced by the arguments against it that they can only reply "that can't be, because you can only defend it from the word 'days' in the KJV."  At both Atlantic Union College and Andrews University our whole apologetic on 1844 has been built on the evening-morning translation, and that this translation gives an even stronger case for 1844 than the KJV's "days" Dr. Shay wrote a lot about this in the books by the Daniel and Revelation committee.   but at both Atlantic Union College and Andrews University our whole apologetic on 1844 has been built on the evening-morning translation, and that this translation gives an even stronger case for 1844 than the KJV's "days" Dr. Shay wrote a lot about this in the books by the Daniel and Revelation committee. 

Now there is the argument that the phrase evening-morning is dealing with 2300 sacrifices, two given each day and thus 1155 literal days. and is applied to the events of Antiochus Epiphanes.

The first problem with this is that while 2300 days are too long the 1150 days are too short.

Second problem is that the sacrifices have a technical term, "morning and evening" sacrifices. Not evening-morning. At Andrews I read in a couple of commentaries and articles on this that the author of Daniel must have been dyslexic, that he meant to write "morning and evening" but wrote it down backwards and forgot to include the "and".  The only thing we find close to Daniel's "evenings-mornings" is Genesis 1's "evenings and mornings." indicating a daily cycle.

The phrase "evenings-mornings" is cyclic terms. The ancient word viewed the world as going through cycles. (May I recommend a book that is sadly out of print, I don't know why our church does not get permission and reprint this book as it would save us many heart aches: "Before Philosophy" by Henri Frankfort and others, 1946 University of Chicago Press.) In Egypt the daily cycle is either the cycle of the sun or the cycle of the Nile flooding. We find the Hebrew cycles in Leviticus 23 and scattered in Deuteronomy. A Hebrew week was  6 days and the Sabbath. 6 months and either Passover or Yom Kippur (the two growing seasons) 6 years and the Sabbatical year, and 6 Sabbatical years and the Jubilee. (Deuteronomy is different in that it does not have the Jubilee. All that happens in Leviticus on the Jubilee occurred in the Sabbatical year.) Daniel is based on Deuteronomy so it's individual cycles would be days,  half years and full years.

Therefore in using the term "evenings-mornings" gives Daniel 8:14 more flexibility in application than limiting it to just days or half years or full years.

A third problem is that while Daniel was in Babylon he was not interested in Antiochus nor the Pope but when will God's people again have a son of David as their king. The method used in teaching at AUC was called Exegesis and Analogy. Every semester we had to read and do a report on the article in the SDABC "The Role of Israel in Old Testament Prophecy." The assumption of the method is that God has given each generation either the chance to be the last generation or to prepare for their children or grandchildren to be the last generation. We would study how all the prophecies had an immediate context where they COULD HAVE been fulfilled soon after it was given, but if the conditions were not fulfilled back then we would see them cycle around again. Daniel 8 was given in the third year of Belshazzar. When our theories of Daniel 8 was formed Belshazzar was a forgotten figure of history so we knew nothing about him. Then he was discovered and he ruled about 10 years. If we start from the third year of Belshazzar and add 1150 days to it we come to business as usual. However if starting in his third year (we don't know when in this year the vision came) and we add 2300 literal days to it we come to the year that has Cyrus breathing down Belshazzar's neck, Belshazzar's feast, and the early days of Medio Persia's rule.

So what happened in 1844?

We have in heaven is a review of the lives of those who have in one way or another claimed to have given their hearts to God. They review how having Jesus in their lives affected them. Reviewing what God does for sinners helps the unfallen understand their own salvation and need of Christ better. (Just because they did not sin, they are still saved by Christ, not their works.)

The reflection on earth is as we find that in the 1820s the Rosetta stone was understood and it took a while to be able to expand that knowledge. In the late 1830s Edward Robison conducted his first exploration of the Holy Land, which lead to serious Biblical geography and opened the door to archaeology. 1844 is a time that the knowledge of these events were starting to converge leading into an age were we are able to study the Bible as never before. It is the dawning of the age of exegesis.

As we get to know the Bible better, we get to understand the God of the Bible better and can thus love Jesus even more. Understanding the issues of the Great Controversy and the truth about hell and liberation from superstition. We are living in an age that Tyndale, Luther or Wesley would love to be living in.

 

 

 

[B/W Photodude]

I have read some of the reader comments along with the article and given the atmosphere in the SDA church today, I am not surprised that someone has come along with this idea. However, I am very against changing this book in any way, or any of EGWs writings,  and that includes those people trying to gender neutral EGWs writings, those people putting out compilations under her name like she wrote it, and those putting out books of hers with some other title to trick people into reading the book. 

I realize that various editions of Great Controversy were put out by EGW and once she allowed someone else to make changes for a specific group, but she is no longer with us to supervise what changes are made in her writings. Great Controversy, like good art, should be left as is. Because Great Controversy does not say what this or that person may want it to say, it does not stop them from putting out their own books under their own names and try and find Scriptural support for whatever they are promoting. 

While this articles author used the term "freezing Adventist theology", I would seriously disagree with that. There have been many books put out by different authors since EGW left us. Some I believe to have new light and fresh viewpoints and some not. Since God has promised to make available what we need at the present time, there be no need to fear leaving EGWs writings alone.

So, this leaves me to wonder just what the motives of those trying to change EGWs writings anyway. And given this authors overall impression to me, this quote of EGW comes to mind, "The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God's remnant people in the true testimony." —Selected Messages 1:48 (1890). I say this because very much of the Sabbath School lesson this past May 19 was o the warnings of "if possible, deceiving the very elect." Needless to say, I know what they do.

From every direction these days, it seems, someone is out to pick, pick, pick away at SDA beliefs. Unfortunately, they are having successes. One of the startling places to view the current frame of mind of church members is to read reader's comments. Almost all SDA forums, and unfortunately Spectrum most, there is a real air of disgruntlement. This concerns me because one of the greatest desires of Jesus Christ for His church is unity. Unfortunately, there is little unity within the church today. However, the parable of the wheat and tares was a story that Jesus told and it was not told to just be talking.

Given the concept of our lives as vapors and vanities, it seems that in some of our short sad lives in this world some want their ears scratched and run from one thing to another to try and fill their lives. It is only 3 years past a hundred years since EGW went to sleep. Noah preached the same message for 120 years until the flood. Makes me wonder how many times someone told Noah he needed something new because that message he had been preaching for over 100 years was getting old!

[Kevin H]

Myth #2 is the issue of the 6,000 years:

We want to be fair to Mrs. White. At both AUC and Andrews we had classes which looked at and dealt with every one of Mrs. White's "6,000" and "4,000" It was pointed out that her manuscripts was inconsistent with numbers and that it was her editors who made them consistently either "6,000" or "4,000" depending on context. Second all but a couple of the comments were only using the years as a symbol for the scope of the Great Controversy with some events being much older than others yet they would all be listed under the "4,000" or "6,000". 

 I took a Biblical Archaeology by Dr. Gerity at the Seminary in the summer of 1984. One day he gave us a reference that we had to read in person at the While Estate in the James White library. Sadly after 30 years I have forgotten what the reference is. I wish someone would find it and share it with us. Anyway, we were all shocked to read this article and the next class was a buzz with this shocking article. In this article Mrs. White down plays the 6,000 years saying that they may not be accurate. She supports the literal 7 day creation week and a fairly young world, but appeals that what ever age we pick for the age of the world, just make sure that it is fair to the Biblical Record. For some reason that article likes to stay buried in the White vault.

At AUC it had been pointed out that when young Mrs. White did make a fairly strong quote that appears to have supported the 6,000 years. As she was revising her works into Patriarchs and Prophets, she came across that earlier quote. She crossed the statement out and put her initials by the cross out. I am not positive in the exact dating, but it seems to me that the approximation of working on Patriarchs and Prophets seems like the ball park of time for her to have written that amazing article we had to read at the Seminary. 

As Adventists, the life and ministry of Mrs. White is important to us. Thus we need to be fair to her as an older woman crossing out that 6,000 year quote from when she was young, and her writing that article.
An additional issue with Mrs. White is with her Great Controversy theme, this world was created to help the angels and beings on other planets to deal with the issues on the great controversy. God worked long with them. He worked with evidence rather than proof so that they could make their choice based on faith. Once they had made their decisions whether to join the rebellion or stay faithful to God did God come and hover over the empty and void waters (and water's represented chaos) of what ever was happening here to help them choose sides, before God gave the proof saying "Let there be light."

As I understand it,  there are different  problems for Adventists for the 6,000 years. First of all the ancient manuscripts and translation problems get different ways of translations and thus additions, getting to 6,000 to 10,000. (In one class the professor pointed out that there were 3 textual families in Jesus day. The Palestinian Family, the Bible Jesus used had the world just turning 7,000 when Jesus came. A Rabbi seeing this a little before Jesus came made a comparison with the thousand years. The second family was the Egyptian family of texts used by Jews in Egypt, where the ages are different. Then there was the Babylonian family, the Bible used by the Jews who stayed behind in Babylon. Theirs had the ages only add up to about 4,000. As Jews wanted to down play Jesus, they gave up the Bible that has Jesus coming when the world turns 7,000 but puts off the 7,000 years three thousand years in the future.) But anyway we have issued with the translations of the numbers to be able to stand fully on them and say that we are 6,000 years old. Sadly we have people who are carrying on the same intertestamental Jewish tradition that was expecting the Messiah to come around there time (I think they figured the 7,000 year would start around what we call 30 AD) and are trying to say that God is waiting for the 7,000 year for the second coming. 

A second problem is that to get the 6,000 we have to impose on this Ancient genealogy the assumptions of a post-Alexander the Great Greek ideas. Some of the differences between our modern Greek genealogy's and ancient genealogies include: 1.) They are not necessary father-son, but other relationships. For example if we were living then and wanted to list the Presidents of the US they would say "George Washington begat John Adams.."

Now what we have in Genesis is most likely a Father-son Genealogy but not necessary. However, the next problem with the genealogy is that the ancient genealogies, the genealogies we have in the Bible and other genealogies found in the ancient world then DO NOT LIST EVERYONE, but just the most important!!! When we read "When Enosh was 90 years old he had a son named Kenan" it meant that when Enosh was 90 years old he had a son. Either that son's name was Kenan, or that son was one of Kenan's ancestors but was the direct link between Enosh and Kenan.

The third issue with the genealogies is that frequently in history the first born son would be named after the Paternal Grandfather. Thus you have several generations where the two names are switched back and forth. In ancient genealogies the two names that cover several generations only have the one mention. As Adventists we want to be fair to the Bible, and that means being fair to realizing the historic context of ancient genealogies and not impose modern Greek presuppositions to a completely different thought process.

As Adventists we need to be flexible enough to be fair to the translation problems, need to be fair enough to respect that we are working with ancient genealogies, not Greek genealogies and thus we are being unfair to scripture to impose a modern Greek genealogy upon an ancient document instead of reading it in light of genealogies from it's culture. And we have to deal with the fact that Mrs. White crossed out that one quote and wrote an article down playing the 6,000 years just encouraging us to whatever age we pick for the world that it be fair to the scriptures. As Seventh-day Adventists we cannot approach this topic without including these three issues. 

 While we are literal creationists, our understanding of creation is different than say the Baptists or other evangelicals. But unfortunately we tend to be more interested in tradition rather than scripture, and as Adventists we sadly have a tendency to want to prove to the world that we are good Baptists. We lag behind Mrs. White and blame her for our not keeping up with her.

[Kevin H]

18 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

Was this a typo my friend? Is it supposed to be "Rosetta Stone?"

Yes indeed. Fixed. (besides without my glasses "ne" and "re" and even "me" look the same)

[Gregory Matthews]

Re:  The Spanish edition of the Great Controversy has an additional chapter that is not    in the English edition.

 

I have verified this with a Hispanic family of which I am friends.

 

 

[GayatfootofCross]

Thank you Chaplain Gregory Matthews for the article and the suggestion to read the comments.

(on articles i find rather intriguing  or confusing ..I turn to comments)

Fascinating.