The Gathering of Israel

Chapter 7—Seventh-day Adventists in Middle Position

The Seventh-day Adventist founders—a mere handful at first (the Whites, Bates, and others)—came from this middle group. They adopted the new heavenly-sanctuary explanation arrived at by Hiram Edson on the day after the disappointment; ¹ they proclaimed the Sabbath doctrine as the third of the three angels’ messages, and eventually they formed the Seventh-day Adventist church. GI 5.8

From the first the Seventh-day Adventist founders opposed the spiritualizers and emphasized the future personal coming of Christ. In fact, they found the ranks of ex-spiritualizers a very poor source of converts. Such converts, observed James White, were so filled with notions of their own spiritual superiority that they could not fit in with their brethren; they proved unstable members, likely to fall away again. ² GI 5.9

Thus it appears that the early Seventh-day Adventists were drawn mostly from the middle group, since they could not gain a hearing with the majority. The latter confused them with the spiritualizers because both the Seventh-day Adventists and the spiritualizers held to the validity of the 1844 movement. ³ GI 5.10

It is no wonder, then, that during these early years of division—the time of scattering, as Mrs. White said in September, 1850—“efforts made to spread the truth had but little effect, accomplished but little or nothing.” Now, in 1850, she was urging unity and action in this “gathering time,” when “efforts to spread the truth will have their designed effect.” ⁴ GI 5.11

But at that very time, she said, Satan was trying to divert them from the present truth and the present task by still other distractions, principally time setting and the age-to-come doctrine. GI 6.1

Since the Seventh-day Adventists held to the date 1844 for the end of the 2300 days, they were not seeking for a substitute date. This gave them a certain immunity to the date-setting fevers transmitted by various individuals among the other Adventists. (There were a few exceptions, around 1850.) GI 6.2

As for their view of the future age, the Seventh-day Adventists had retained the original Millerite belief that Christ’s return would end probation and would begin the reign of the immortal saints, Jew and Gentile alike. They also developed by 1850 a new doctrine of the millennium—held, so far as I know, by no one else—a view that placed the millennial reign in heaven, with the earth left during that period without a single living human being. This view provided an effective inoculation against the Literalist millennialism being newly taught under the name “the age to come.” ⁵ GI 6.3

The age-to-come party, which might be called another minority group, emerged later from the original majority group of Adventists. Since it belongs to the 1850s, it will be deferred to a later section, after a survey of the period of 1848-1850 and its time settings. GI 6.4