Messenger of the Lord

No Sabbath Keepers at Atkinson

Did the Seventh-day Adventist Church begin amidst shouting, crawling, hugging, allegorizers of the Second Advent? Definitely not. No one at Atkinson was a Sabbath keeper, not even Ellen Harmon. No one that night understood the role of Jesus as High Priest. No one in Dammon’s circle had the slightest concept of the Great Controversy Theme and its implications for them. The Dammon gathering was made up of disappointed Millerites who had not abandoned the Biblical doctrine of the Advent, even though they were groping their way through theological fog. The only person at that Saturday night meeting who had any light regarding God’s plan for the future was Ellen Harmon. MOL 474.5

Using the plan He had followed since our first parents left the Garden of Eden, God had to start somewhere after the disappointment of October 22, 1844. He chose to work through the “weakest of the weak” to reach people where they were. Out of those experiences early in 1845 emerged a nucleus of Bible students who soon saw the dangers of emotion-dominated religion. MOL 474.6

God gently started with the few who had not discarded their 1844 experience. Ever so patiently He led the few who would listen away from their many errors, such as Sunday sacredness, the extreme shut-door, “no-work” conviction, and emotional excesses in worship. Without the teaching, guiding intervention of the Spirit of prophecy working through Ellen White, clearly the Adventist witness of the 1840s would have been far different. MOL 475.1