In Defense of the Faith

“A Brood of Errors and Heresies”

Another deliberate effort to confuse the issue and to create a false impression regarding the belief of Seventh day Adventists is found on pages 74 and 75 of Mr. Canright’s book. We quote him as follows: DOF 371.4

“What do Adventists believe? Go ask what language was spoken by the people after the Lord confused their tongues at Babel.... Such a brood of errors and heresies as has resulted from Adventism, cannot be found in the history of the church before. Time setting, visions, miracles, fanatics, false prophets, sleep of the dead, annihilation of the wicked, non resurrection of the wicked, future probation, restoration, community of goods, denial of the divinity of Christ, no devil, no baptism, no organization, etc., etc. Gracious! And these are the people sent with a ‘message’ to warn the church!” DOF 371.5

Of course, the inference here is that Seventh-day Adventists hold and teach these doctrines. It is “Seventh-day Adventism” that Mr. Canright is professedly writing against. True, he here uses only the terms Adventists and Adventism but he leaves the reader to believe that he is speaking of the system of doctrine which he renounced. Now, there are in existence a number of religious bodies which use the word Adventist or Adventists as a part of their denominational name, and he here proceeds to throw all these Adventist bodies into one group, and then begins to enumerate doctrines supposedly held by them, leaving the reader to draw the conclusion that these are the doctrines held by Seventh-day Adventists. It is just as if we should set out to write a book against the faith of the Missionary Baptists, and then charge to that church all the beliefs, good or bad, of the many other branches of the Baptists. DOF 372.1

Seventh-day Adventists hold little in common with other churches who use the term Adventist in their denominational name. What these others may believe is their own concern, and the name they go by is no doubt of their own choosing. Whether some of them believe in the “non resurrection of the wicked, future probation.... community of goods, denial of the divinity of Christ, no devil, no baptism,” we do not know, but we do know, and Mr. Canright knew when he wrote these words, that Seventh-day Adventists do not believe these things. Not one of these doctrines was ever held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. But Seventh-day Adventists do believe in visions when these visions are from the Lord, and they also believe in the miracles recorded in the Bible. To cast aside the miracles of Jesus Christ is to reject His divinity, and to refuse the instruction God has given through visions, is to reject a very considerable portion of the Sacred Scriptures. As to the views of the Seventh-day Adventists regarding the sleep of the dead and the final annihilation of the wicked, the reader is referred to the chapter in this book dealing with these subjects. DOF 372.2

These facts were, of course, well known to Mr. Canright, but in an effort to confuse the minds of his readers he apparently gathered together all the errors he could think of, charged them against the “Adventists” as a group, and left the reader to infer that these things were held and taught by the denomination under review, 1.e., the Seventh-day Adventists. We ask our readers to ponder this for a moment, and then decide whether it is straightforward and honest. DOF 373.1