Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Early Views Summed Up

As we look back over the beginnings of Seventh-day Adventism, we may say this regarding the views of the founders as to salvation for sinners: EGWC 199.3

They were right in believing from Scripture that men may sin away their day of grace, and who can read the record of 1844 without feeling that many did at that time! They were wrong in generalizing from this that the world at large had done so. They were wrong, also, in their initial view, inherited from Millerism, that the shutting of the door involved the end of probation. EGWC 199.4

But a religious body should be judged by the doctrines it formulates and adopts as its distinguishing marks, and not by the initial and varied views the founders entertained before they had had opportunity to coordinate or consolidate their thinking. Though the tree of Seventh-day Adventism sprang from the soil of Millerism, there is a certain real difference between the soil and the tree. Millerism was an interdenominational awakening on a central truth, the personal Advent of Christ, but was in no sense a church or organization with a formal creedal statement or a discipline. EGWC 199.5

When men first walk a path, particularly if they walk in the dusk of early morning, they may not consistently walk in a straight line. They may step to one side or the other; they may even retrace a step occasionally. Our fathers started out on the path that was to set them off as a distinct church body, because their eyes were on a certain doctrinal road map that they believed would lead them out of the morass of dark disappointment into which they suddenly plunged after October 22, 1844. In the dim light they did not, at first, read the map accurately. But we should never forget that the worth of a road map is not to be measured by the faltering steps of the travelers who use it, but by the destination to which the map leads them. The record is clear that the doctrinal road map did lead our fathers out of the morass onto solid ground and rapidly onto an ever widening road, until, on a vast plateau before them they saw the multitudes of the world to whom Seventh-day Adventists have ever since sought to bring the “everlasting gospel.” EGWC 200.1