Ellen G. White and Her Critics

James White’s 1847 Statement on Shut Door

Let us listen to James White speak through the oldest document that presents the semblance of a consensus of Seventh-day Adventist thinking. He is writing in May, 1847: EGWC 183.1

“From the ascension, to the shutting of the door, Oct. 1844, Jesus stood with wide-spread arms of love, and mercy; ready to receive, and plead the case of every sinner, who would come to God by him. EGWC 183.2

“On the 10th day of the 7th month, 1844, he passed into the Holy of Holies, where he has since been a merciful ‘high priest over the house of God.’ But when his priestly work is finished there, he is to lay off his priestly attire, and put on his most kingly robes, to execute his judgment on the living wicked.... I think the following is a prophesy which has been fulfilling since Oct. 1844. [Then he quotes Isaiah 59:14-16. The 16th verse begins:] EGWC 183.3

“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,” p. 2. (Italics his.) EGWC 183.4

However, when an opponent cried out that they were closing “the door of mercy,” these Sabbathkeeping Adventists replied in a way that indicates that even at the outset they sensed that God’s mercy is great. Listen to these words of Joseph Bates, written also in 1847. He quotes Paul as saying, “I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 2:12), and adds immediately: EGWC 183.5

“Paul’s open door, then, was the preaching the gospel with effect to the Gentiles. Now let this door be shut, and the preaching of this gospel will have no effect. This is just what we say is the fact. The gospel message ended at the appointed time with the closing of the 2,300 days; and almost every honest believer that is watching the signs of the times will admit it. I know it will be said ‘why you have, or would close the door of mercy!’ There is no such language in the Bible. I have no desire nor wish in my soul to see my worst enemy lost. I think I have made it manifest for the last twenty years, and am still willing to do what I can to save those that will help themselves. But I am perfectly sensible that it cannot be done only in God’s appointed way; and all that will walk under the shadow of his wing will rejoice at the fulfilment of his word, although their hearts may be burdend and pained at seeing the opposite in their friends.”—JOSEPH BATES, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps, pp. 67, 68. EGWC 183.6

In 1847 Bates also wrote the following in a comment on the work of Mrs. E. G. White: EGWC 183.7

“I believe the work is of God, and is given to comfort and strengthen his ‘scattered,’ ‘torn’ and ‘pealed people,’ since the closing up of our work for the world in October, 1844.”—Broadside, A Vision, April 7, 1847. ^* EGWC 184.1

Exclusive of debated passages by Mrs. White, to be considered later, these statements by James White and Joseph Bates, in 1847, are about the earliest published on the subject of probation’s close by the spokesmen of the Sabbathkeeping group of Adventists. ^† The lack of harmony between the statements is easily explained by the fact that the writers were in transition in their thinking. They had not yet thought through their new interpretation of the heavenly sanctuary to the point where that interpretation harmonized with all other Christian doctrine. James White could preface his citation of Isaiah 59:16, which speaks of there being “no intercessor,” with the frank, but hardly dogmatic, declaration: “I think the following is a prophesy which has been fulfilling since Oct. 1844.” However, he believed that Christ was still an “intercessor” for the elect of God. EGWC 184.2

Bates’s statement in his broadside about the “closing up of our work for the world” squares with a further statement in his pamphlet, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps. He is commenting on the prophecies that prove the Advent movement to be of God: EGWC 184.3

“I am aware of the arguments that are resorted to, to resist these clear scriptural fulfilments in advent history. We hear (say they) there are souls converted. So your argument won’t stand. I think the scripture argument will stand ten thousand times firmer than all the said be converts since this [seventh] trumpet has been sounding. How can you have faith in Babylonish revivals, after Babylon has fallen?”—BATES, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps, p. 53. EGWC 184.4

Bates had little or no faith, either, in revivals by those Adventists who had really undermined the foundations of the Advent movement by questioning, if not rejecting, the basic premises of prophetic interpretation on which it had been reared. EGWC 184.5

But that did not prevent him from declaring that he was “still willing to do” what he could “to save those that will help themselves.” He does not clarify his next statement: “I am perfectly sensible that it cannot be done only in God’s appointed way.” But he is emphatic in the second half of the sentence: “all that will walk under the shadow of his wing will rejoice at the fulfilment of his word.” EGWC 185.1

The only way we can explain how these two statements—on pages 53 and 68 of Bates’s pamphlet—came from the same writer at the same time is that the “whosoever will” of Revelation 22 was warring in Bates’s mind with his earlier Millerite interpretation of the “shut door” of Matthew 25. That such a mental conflict should take place is no rarity in the history of religious thought. The happy sequel is that the “whosoever will” was soon to become dominant and to demand that the shut door open into a new area of light and divine intercession for whosoever will accept the still proffered salvation. EGWC 185.2