Messenger of the Lord

Summary:

1. Both affirmers and critics must deal fairly with all source materials available, not merely with those that fit their paradigms and presuppositions. MOL 509.3

2. During 1844 and 1845, Shut-door Millerites held a fairly uniform view that probation had closed for the world on October 22, 1844. Ellen White began to use this term as a code word for what happened in heaven on October 22, 1844, when Christ “shut” the door to the Holy Place and “opened” the door to the last phase of His atonement in the Most Holy Place. MOL 509.4

3. No source materials indicate that Ellen White or any of those who became Sabbatarian leaders engaged in the fanaticism associated with other shut-door advocates. MOL 509.5

4. No records prove that Ellen White believed that the door of mercy was shut on anyone in 1844, except for those who shut their own door by rejecting Bible truth—and only God could know those personal decisions. No records indicate that Ellen White repudiated any of her vision-messages. MOL 509.6

5. Source materials do not indicate that Ellen White in the early 1850s changed her mind and moved from an extreme shut-door position in the early 1850s because of changing circumstances. Early Sabbatarian Adventists were moving more aggressively in reaching out to the general public in the early 1850s, chiefly because it had taken a few years to formulate their message. What would they have said to anyone regarding their reason for existing as a religious group much before 1850? All this took time. MOL 509.7

6. The principle of rejection emphasizes the Biblical concept that (a) each person is responsible for his or her own salvation; (b) that no one is rejected by God until that person chooses to reject God; (c) that probation will not close for the world until all have settled into a habitual pattern of accepting light or rejecting it. This principle threads its way through all of Ellen White’s vision-messages. MOL 509.8

7. Each successive vision revealed additional building material in the development of an integrated, consistent theological system that eventually became the “present” and distinctive truths of Seventh-day Adventists. MOL 509.9