The Gathering of Israel

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Chapter 3—Judaism

It was this earthly-Utopia doctrine of postmillennialism that the Millerites at first labeled “Judaizing” and “Judaism.” These terms, used in their first Adventist general conference, held at Boston in 1840, were borrowed from two sixteenth-century Protestant creeds. 1 Only later did they apply them to the Literalist premillennialists. Here is the reason that they did so: GI 2.7

The Literalists insisted that the Old Testament Messianic prophecies were to be fulfilled literally and in detail in the millennial kingdom, especially to literal Israel and Judah in the flesh. According to this view the kingdom, though ruled by Christ and the resurrected and immortalized saints, would include mortal Jews in Palestine; its capital would be literal Jerusalem, with a literal temple, to which would come up those “left of the nations,” still in the flesh; and probation and mortality would continue through the millennium. 2 GI 2.8

Nevertheless the Adventists, at the time of their first general conference, in 1840, still regarded these fellow-premillennialists (including such men as Wolff, Irving, and others) as brethren in proclaiming the “advent near.” 3 They recommended the Literalist writings against postmillennialism, even though knowing these mingled certain errors with their central truth of the Second Advent. GI 2.9

Similarly, we today regard the Millerites as our forerunners although they, in correcting some of the Literalist errors, retained others of their own. We also recognize the British and European premillennialists as part of the “great religious awakening ... foretold in the prophecy of the first angel’s message of Revelation 14,” in that from “the study of the Scriptures” they saw and proclaimed “that the Saviour’s advent was near” (The Great Controversy, 355, 357) and not in the distant postmillennial future. We consider them used of God to awaken multitudes to the central truth of the Second Advent, at the time when the first angel’s message was due, even though they did not have the advancing truths developed by the Millerites and, still further, by the Seventh-day Adventists. GI 2.10

The Millerites emphasized what they held in common with the Literalists—Christ’s personal presence and reign during the millennium—and minimized the latter’s “Literalism” as a curable aberration. 4 GI 3.1

As Litch later told it: GI 3.2

In 1840, an attempt was made to open an interchange between the Literalists of England and the Adventists in the United States. But it was soon discovered that they had as little fellowship for our Anti-Judaizing notions, as we had for their Judaism; and the interchange was broken off. 5

What the Millerites repudiated as “Judaism” had nothing to do with either the religious teachings of the Jews or with the Sabbath. It was one specific doctrine of the millennium, namely, the teaching that the Old Testament prophecies of Israel’s restoration and world leadership were to be fulfilled by a future gathering of literal Jews into Christ’s millennial kingdom—a kingdom on this earth with its capital in literal Jerusalem, to which the nations would come up to a restored temple and its services. GI 3.3

The Millerites, on the contrary, saw in the gathering of Israel the gathering of the immortal saints to meet Christ in the air. All the true children of Abraham by faith—Jew and Gentile—would be caught up at the blast of the trumpet, then would return with Christ to possess the renewed earth. 6 GI 3.4

All attempts to win the Literalists to this view were doomed to failure. There were a few Literalists among the Millerites at first, but by 1842 the most vocal of these pulled out and established their own paper. By that time it had become clear to the Adventists that “Judaism” belonged less to the postmillennialists than to the Literalist premillennialists; that it was indeed basic to their system (as it is today to the modern Literalists, the futurist-dispensationalist premillennialists). 7 GI 3.5