The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

The Sanctuary Believed to be the Earth

This idea is brought out in an article by Geo. Storrs, in the Midnight Cry of April 25, 1844. He asks, “What is the sanctuary to be cleansed? My previous views have been that it was the whole earth. That it is a part of the earth I still believe. But what part? is the inquiry I shall endeavor to answer.” GSAM 190.2

He quotes the promise to Abraham, the establishment of the same to Isaac, and its renewal to Jacob, and then quotes the song of Moses, composed by Miriam after the passage of the Red Sea, in which they sang: “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.” ¹⁰ GSAM 190.3

If the reader will carefully compare the above text with the record of its fulfillment made by the psalmist, he will see that it does not state that even the land of Palestine is the sanctuary. David says, when speaking of the Lord’s leading the children of Israel: “He brought them to the border of his sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand had purchased.” ¹¹ In the song at the Red Sea it is said of the land of Canaan, that it was the place he had made to “dwell in, in the sanctuary.” So in this quotation from the psalms, the Mount Moriah, where the sanctuary was built, is only called “the border of his sanctuary.” But in this same psalm it is said, “He chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved. And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established forever.” ¹² GSAM 190.4