Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Shut-Door and Sanctuary Doctrine

Up to the time of the disappointment, the shutting of the door had been to all the Millerites a synonym for probation’s close, even as the sanctuary cleansing had been a synonym for fiery judgment. The Sabbathkeepers quickly escaped from the false interpretation of the sanctuary cleansing through Edson and Crosier’s exposition. But there was no one ready, at the outset, with a new interpretation of the shut door. That the Sabbathkeeping Adventists believed, for a time, that probation had ended, was really incidental. In other words, while the logic of the time element in their theological view demanded that they believe that the door in the parable was shut on October 22, 1844, it did not demand that they believe that probation had closed. It is true that in their discussions of Christ’s work in the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, in the years immediately following 1844, they restricted His service to the household of faith, which was “still within the reach of mercy and salvation.”—The Review and Herald, December 1850, p. 14. But this restrictive view of Christ’s work simply revealed that they had not yet freed their minds of the idea that probation for the world at large ended in 1844. There is nothing in the belief that Christ began a ministry in the second apartment in 1844 that requires belief, also, that probation for the world ended then. Seventh-day Adventists today believe that the door of the parable was shut in 1844, for we employ essentially the same logic as did our fathers of a hundred years ago. Yet we do not believe that the world’s probation closed in 1844. EGWC 176.1

Keeping in mind, then, the fact that from the outset, belief in the shut door of the parable was, to our forebears, synonymous with the belief in the truth of divine leadership of the 1844 movement, we can see the full meaning and force of a statement made by James White in 1847. He is speaking of Mrs. White’s first vision, in December, 1844, in which she saw the children of God journeying to the New Jerusalem, with a “bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry.” He states: EGWC 177.1

“When she received her first vision, Dec. 1844, she and all the band in Portland, Maine, (where her parents then resided) had given up the midnight-cry, and shut door, as being in the past. It was then that the Lord shew[ed] her in vision, the error into which she and the band in Portland had fallen. She then related her vision to the band, and about sixty confessed their error, and acknowledged their 7th month experience to be the work of God.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,” p. 22. EGWC 177.2

The “band in Portland” were typical of most of the Adventists immediately after the disappointment. They had decided that nothing happened, in fulfillment of prophecy, on October 22, 1844. In other words, that the midnight cry and the shutting of the door were not “in the past,” but were events still to take place. Hence their “7th-month experience” had not been of God. James White declares that Mrs. White’s vision caused them to confess their “error” in the timing of these two events. They were then ready to acknowledge “their 7th month experience to be the work of God.” EGWC 177.3

As we have noted, Edson’s view, first expressed on October 23, 1844, which was the core of the revised interpretation on the sanctuary cleansing, placed that cleansing and the coming of the bridegroom, not at the Advent, and in relation to this earth, but before the Advent, and in heaven. Edson declared that Christ “entered” into the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary on October 22, 1844, to cleanse it. At the same time He came in before the Ancient of Days in the most holy place to receive a kingdom—His marriage to the bride, the New Jerusalem—and that we must wait for His return from the wedding. (See Daniel 7:13, 14; Luke 12:36.) EGWC 177.4