Most of our articles relate to the encroachment of liberalism into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Because our readers are conservative, we are usually preaching to the choir. You (or, as we say in Texas, y’all) agree with us that popular and culturally promoted sins are a problem, not only in our own church but in the larger culture—because what is in the larger culture inevitably comes into the church, much as we would like to keep it out.
But we would be a poor excuse for watchmen on the wall if we never pointed out the sins, errors, and foibles of the conservative Adventists who make up our own readers and commenters. Messages pointing out the sins of conservative Adventism are the very messages most among our readership most need to hear.
Our church grew out of the Millerite movement. William Miller was most famous for believing that the Second Coming of Christ would take place in 1843, and, later, on October 22, 1844. One of the groups of Millerites became the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1863, after a transitional period of new Scriptural discoveries—Hiram Edson’s cornfield vision, which led to discerning the real significance of 1844, and Captain Joseph Bates’ rediscovery of the Seventh-day Sabbath—our denomination was formally organized.
Our founding prophet, Ellen White, has told us in no uncertain terms that 1844 was the final prophetic date, that no prophetic period of time extends beyond 1844, and that we cannot set a date when Jesus will return. But as heirs to the movement founded and led by William Miller, date-setting is imprinted on our DNA. Every few years our Sabbath School quarterly directs a study of these prophetic periods—the 2,300 days, the 490 days, the 1260 days, etc.—which returns us to the frame of mind of the Millerites. “Surely,” we think, “there must be some way to calculate when the most important event of all, the Second Coming, will take place!”
Does Scripture Say We Can Know When Christ Returns?
One of the verses William Miller ignored or explained away was:
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. . . . Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Mat. 24:36-44
Only God the Father knows when the Second Coming will take place. We are told to be ready, to be on watch at all times, because “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
In commenting on this Bible passage, Ellen White wrote:
Many who have called themselves Adventists have been time-setters. Time after time has been set for Christ to come, but repeated failures have been the result. The definite time of our Lord's coming is declared to be beyond the ken of mortals. Even the angels, who minister unto those who shall be heirs of salvation, know not the day nor the hour. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:307 (1879).
“Beware of anyone who would set a time for the Lord to fulfill His word in regard to His coming, or in regard to any other promise He has made of special significance. "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. . . . We would see the truth developing and expanding in lines of which we have little dreamed, but it will never develop in any line that will lead us to imagine that we may know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power.” --Selected Messages 1:188
Ellen White was clear that Jesus meant exactly what He said: No one knows when Jesus Christ will return to earth, and we are not to set dates for the Second Coming. God the Father has “put this in his own power,” meaning that He alone knows when these things shall be.
The Specific Controls the General
When you confront the date-setters with Matthew 24, and the fact that not even Christ or the angels know when the Second Coming will be, but only the Father, they usually respond with this passage:
“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7.
See! God does nothing without revealing His plan to the prophets, so there must be a prophecy somewhere that reveals the time of the Second Coming. If we just search hard enough and exegete hard enough, we can find where the Second Coming is predicted.
A principle of textual and legal interpretation or construction is that the specific controls the general. If you have a general provision that arguably pertains to an issue, and a specific provision that by its own terms clearly addresses that specific issue, the specific controls the general.
Here is an example, ripped from today’s headlines, of this principle being ignored: Supposedly because of his handling of his presidential documents, the Hive have indicted President Trump under the Espionage Act, passed in 1917 to allow Woodrow Wilson to harass those (including Adventists) critical of involving the United States in a pointless and deadly European war. But there is a more recent statute, the Presidential Records Act of 1978, that governs the handling of documents by presidents and former presidents. If President Trump complied with the law written specifically for his situation, as this satute has been interpreted by the courts and applied to previous presidents, he must be judged by that law, and cannot be prosecuted under a more general law, because the specific controls the general.
Thus it is with Amos 3:7: it is a general principle text, but we have specific guidance pertaining to the Second Coming. Matthew 24 tells us specifically that the timing of that very event has not been revealed to the prophets, nor to the angels in heaven, nor even to Jesus Christ. The timing of that event is known only to the Father.
Not a New Issue
As you might expect, the impulse to set dates for the second coming was even stronger in the 19th Century, when many of the Millerites were still alive and within the SDA Church, than it is today. Ellen White often encountered them; for example, at this Jackson camp meeting in 1884:
I plainly stated at the Jackson camp meeting to these fanatical parties that they were doing the work of the adversary of souls; they were in darkness. They claimed to have great light that probation would close in October, 1884. I there stated in public that the Lord had been pleased to show me that there would be no definite time in the message given of God since 1844.—Selected Messages 2:73 (1885).
One of the few advantages to growing old is that you realize there is nothing new under the sun. You remember the last time a “new” fad came around. I remember that, back in the mid-1990s, there was a belief that Jesus would return around the year 2000, based upon what is known as the “Great Week of Time Theory.”
The idea behind the Great Week of Time Theory is that each millennium of human history corresponds to a day of the week, and the seventh millennium will be the millennium in heaven, and will be a sort of Sabbath rest. It was an attempt to predict the timing of the Second Coming based upon theories of Bible chronology that placed the end of the sixth millennium right around the year 2,000 AD.
It is a theory that had (and still has, with adjusted chronology) massive appeal to conservative Adventists, but it is ultimately just another gimmick to set a date for the Second Coming, one of many. The theories upon which date-setters rest a date for the Second Coming are legion. One date-setter just wrote this:
“If one accepts that the 2300 days ending on October 22, 1844, shouldn’t we be consistent and teach that Christ will return “at the time pointed out in the symbolic service” of the Feast of Tabernacles?
No, we should not teach that, because it is an obvious attempt to start constructing a date for the Second Coming. First we’ll say that his coming must occur in a season that corresponds to the ancient Hebrew feasts, then we’ll move on to figuring out the year.
Time Never Again an Issue
There is an important point in the above passage from Selected Messages: not only will we not know the date of the Second Coming, Adventists will never again have a message regarding time for the period subsequent to 1844. This is a crucial point: not only are we not to set dates regarding the Second Coming, there are no more time periods or dates for the Adventist Church to puzzle over that supposedly have their fulfillment after 1844.
Ellen White was clear about this, and repeated the point several times:
“Time has not been a test since 1844, and it will never again be a test. . . . I saw that some were getting false excitement, arising from preaching time; but the third angel’s message is stronger than time can be.” Early Writings, p. 75.
“We would see the truth developing and expanding in lines of which we have little dreamed, but it will never develop in any line that will lead us to imagine that we may know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power. Again and again have I been warned in regard to time setting. There will never again be a message for the people of God that will be based on time. We are not to know the definite time either for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit or for the coming of Christ.” 1 Selected Messages, p. 188
“The people will not have another message upon definite time. . . . The longest reckoning reaches to the autumn of 1844.”—The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 7:971 (1900).
So when someone tries to tell you that the 42 months of Revelation 13 will have a double fulfillment, first as 1260 literal years during the middle ages, and then, at some future time, as 42 literal months—three and a half years—you can be certain that person is deceived. Time will never again be an issue.
Date Setting Erodes Faith and Causes Adventists to be Ridiculed
One of the reasons we are counseled so strongly to avoid setting dates is that when they fail, as they always do, the faith of those Adventists who have credited or heeded the date-setters is harmed, and the Adventist cause is damaged before an onlooking world:
“Because the times repeatedly set have passed, the world is in a more decided state of unbelief than before in regard to the near advent of Christ. They look upon the failures of the time-setters with disgust, and because men have been so deceived, they turn from the truth substantiated by the Word of God that the end of all things is at hand.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:307 (1879).
“Those who so presumptuously preach definite time, in so doing gratify the adversary of souls; for they are advancing infidelity rather than Christianity. They produce Scripture and by false interpretation show a chain of argument which apparently proves their position. But their failures show that they are false prophets, that they do not rightly interpret the language of inspiration. . . . Those errors have brought the truth of God for these last days into disrepute.” Testimonies for the Church, 4:307 (1879).
Those who think they must preach definite time in order to make an impression upon the people do not work from the right standpoint. The feelings of the people may be stirred and their fears aroused, but they do not move from principle. An excitement is created; but when the time passes, as it has done repeatedly, those who moved out upon time fall back into coldness, darkness, and sin, and it is almost impossible to arouse their consciences without some great excitement. Testimonies for the Church, 4:308 (1879).
The Date-Setters are Never Competent Exegetes
Note that the date-setters always quote Scripture and “show a chain of argument which apparently proves their position.” But their reasoning is faulty; they have misinterpreted the relevant passages.
They end up advocating absurdities, such as that the recently deceased pope-emeritus Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger, will be resurrected from the dead. When these bizarre predictions fail to materialize, the date-setters never re-examine their methods or abandon their faulty hermeneutics. They just move on to the next prediction.
The date-setters make a great show of honoring the prophetic ministry of Ellen White, but they will not submit to her plain, repeated warnings against date-setting. To the contrary, they look for ways to avoid them.
One date-setter recently wrote that he “discards” Ellen White statements that have been placed in compilations such as “Last Day Events,” the third chapter of which contains several of Ellen White’s statements warning against date-setting. When challenged, he stated that “discard” was perhaps not the right term; rather, he “lays aside” statements included in compilations until they can be sourced in their original context.
But this is a dodge. For one thing, Adventists have always arrived at doctrine on the basis of “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little,” looking throughout the whole Bible for verses, and fragments of verses, that relate to the topic being studied, regardless of context. This has been derided as the “proof-text method,” but it is thoroughly Adventist. Why would we not treat Ellen White the same way?
But, more importantly, a study of the context of these passages never does away with the plain meaning of the warning against date-setting. For example, if you look up Testimonies, vol. 4 , and read pages 307-308, the “context” is simply three large paragraphs warning, in the strongest terms, against date-setting.
The reality is that date-setters, contrary to the impression they wish to convey, are married to setting dates, not to the Spirit of Prophecy.
And these people are not going away. There will always be false and fanatical interpreters and interpretations of Bible prophecy:
“There will always be false and fanatical movements made by persons in the church who claim to be led of God—those who will run before they are sent and will give day and date for the occurrence of unfulfilled prophecy. The enemy is pleased to have them do this, for their successive failures and leading into false lines cause confusion and unbelief.”—Selected Messages 2:84 (1897).
Yes, date-setters will always be around. But we are not thereby excused from calling them out and warning the people against their false messages, just as the fact that “the poor ye have always with ye” does not excuse us from working to help the poor.
Conclusion
I well understand the conundrum facing conservative Adventists. We have an end-time scenario in which apostate Protestantism “reaches across the gulf to clasp hands with Rome,” to enforce a national, and eventually an international, Sunday law. But this is not happening now. There is little interest in the Sabbath vs. Sunday controversy, nor even in Christianity itself, which is in precipitous decline throughout Christendom—including in the United States, which, in 30 years, will no longer be a majority Christian country.
For now, we seem to be stuck in the “Sodom and Egypt”/Revolutionary France (Rev. 11) phase of prophetic history: The atheistic Left controls all cultural institutions, and almost all corporate and governmental institutions. The godless Left, allied with globalist economic elites who have no ideology but money and power, seem to be nearing absolute control over the United States, and they are working feverishly to render their control irreversible and immune to any attempted “backlash” or counter-revolution.
The Left have weaponized the unlimited resources of federal law enforcement against conservatives, Christians, and anyone else who might challenge their power (and, thanks to social media, which the spooks were monitoring all along, they know who we are). Through mail-out/mail-in ballots, the Left have rendered our elections fraudulent but, just in case they do not achieve a fool-proof rigging of the elections, they are attempting to eliminate their least favorite candidate by bringing multiple baseless and harassing criminal prosecutions.
But however frustrating our current situation is, however much it does not seem to resemble our end-times prophetic scenario, we have no choice but to let history play out. God has His own timetable; we cannot force God’s hand by predicting when Christ will return, or when probation will close, or when this or that pope or prelate will be raised from the dead. We cannot make God dance to our tune.
Those who try to yank shut the curtains on this earth’s history with time-setting and tortured prophetic interpretations do no good for anyone. Their false predictions discredit themselves and the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They ought to know better, but they do not seem to care.