Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Comments on Editor’s Exposition

James White, as do all our other writers, consistently refuses to say that the door of mercy was shut in 1844. Those rejected and “left without an advocate, when Jesus passed from the Holy Place, and shut that door in 1844,” are those “who had rejected the offers of salvation.” This thought that there was a great host of people who had sinned away their day of grace by rejecting God’s offers of salvation, is a primary point in the thinking of these men who were now writing on the shut door. They had, of course, abundant Scriptural precedent for believing that men can sin away their day of grace. EGWC 602.2

He declares also that “the professed church, who rejected the truth, was also rejected, and smitten with blindness.” This is a reference, evidently, to the preaching of the second angel’s message. The Bible declares that the day will come, near the end of time, when “Babylon is fallen.” EGWC 602.3

James White uses Hosea 5:6, 7 and declares that “the reason why they do not find the Lord is simply this, they seek him where he is not.” This seems to imply that members of “the professed church,” whom Arnold described as “misguided souls,” could avail themselves of the intercessory service of our High Priest in heaven if they would but seek Him where He is to be found, that is, in the most holy place. If these Present Truth writers did not always reason consistently with this implication, it was simply because they failed to see, at the outset, that their very interpretation of Hosea 5:6, 7 really laid the foundations for preaching that “whosoever will,” may come. EGWC 602.4

Note finally that James White makes belief in “the shut door in 1844” necessary to the validity of the great Advent movement. “This view,” says he, “establishes our holy advent experience in the past, gives certainty to the ‘blessed hope’ of very soon seeing Jesus, and causes our path to shine ‘more and more unto the perfect day.’” How clear it is that they stressed the shut door of the parable, not from a desire to keep anyone out of the kingdom, but from a resolute determination to hold onto their belief that God had raised up the Advent movement in fulfillment of prophecy. EGWC 603.1

Joseph Bates, who, as we have seen in chapter 13, wrote in 1849 that a portion of the 144,000 will be constituted of sincere persons over the whole earth who were not, presumably, in the Advent movement of 1844, spoke as follows in 1850 concerning the ending of Christ’s ministry in the first apartment in 1844: EGWC 603.2

“Here his work ceased; Ministering and Mediating for the whole world forever; and he like his pattern in the type, entered the Most Holy Place, bearing upon his breast plate of Judgment the twelve tribes of the House of Israel.”—An Explanation of the Typical and Anti-typical Sanctuary, p. 9. (Italics his.) EGWC 603.3