Messenger of the Lord

Jerusalem Never to Be Rebuilt

Ellen White wrote in 1851 that “old Jerusalem never would be built up.” ²² By itself, the statement looks unsustainable. But when the setting is reconstructed, we find Mrs. White counseling the growing Adventist group that both time-setting ²³and the “age-to-come” notion ²⁴were incompatible with Biblical truth. She emphasized that the Old Testament prophecies regarding the establishment of a Jewish kingdom in Palestine were conditional on obedience and forfeited by disobedience. Unfulfilled prophecies would be fulfilled to “true Israel” as unfolded in the New Testament text. MOL 488.6

Thus the popular movement of the 1840s and 1850s to promote a Zionist state in Palestine was not a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and not a quest in which Adventists should become involved. Her warnings and instruction were designed to turn the interest away from Palestine and toward the work God had opened up before them. MOL 488.7

In a September 1850 vision she saw that it was a “great error” to believe that “it is their duty to go to Old Jerusalem, and think they have a work to do there before the Lord comes...; for those who think that they are yet to go to Jerusalem will have their minds there, and their means will be withheld from the cause of present truth to get themselves and others there.” ²⁵ MOL 489.1

Less than a year later, August 1851, she wrote with greater emphasis “that Old Jerusalem never would be built up; and that Satan was doing his utmost to lead the minds of the children of the Lord into these things now, in the gathering time, to keep them from throwing their whole interest into the present work of the Lord, and to cause them to neglect the necessary preparation for the day of the Lord.” ²⁶ MOL 489.2

How did Ellen White’s readers understand this statement? That there was no light in the popular “age-to-come” teaching, that there is no Biblical significance in the Jews returning to Palestine, that Jerusalem will never be rebuilt in a future millennial period. She was not talking about a possible political rebuilding of Jerusalem but of a prophetically significant rebuilding of Old Jerusalem. To continue to think that way, she emphasized, was to sink further into Satan’s deceptions and away from present duty. ²⁷ MOL 489.3