George R.

Knight, A Search for Identity

“A People of “the Book”

The most basic issue for any religious group is its source of authority. Those on the path to becoming
Sabbatarians were clear on that topic. As James White put it in early 1847, “the Bible is a perfect and
complete revelation. It is our only rule of faith and practice” (WLF 13; italics supplied). As we will see
in the balance of this chapter, the Sabbatarians developed their distinctive beliefs on the basis of

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What Is A dv ent i st in Adventism? ( 1 8 4 4 - 1 8 8 5 )

Bible study. That fact was not always obvious to their detractors. Miles Grant, for example, argued in
1874 in the World’s Crisis (a leading first-day Adventist periodical) that “‘it is claimed by the Seventh-
day Adventists that the sanctuary to be cleansed at the end of the 1300 [2300] days, mentioned in
Dan. 8:13, 14, is in heaven, and that the cleansing began in the autumn of A.D. 1844. If any one
should ask why they thus believe, the answer would be, the information came through one of Mrs.
E. G. White’s visions’” (WC, Nov. 25, 1874 in RH, Dec. 22,1874, 204). Uriah Smith vigorously
responded to that accusation. “Hundreds of articles,” he stated, “have been written upon the -
subject [of the sanctuary]. But in no one of these are the visions once referred to as any authority on
this subject, or the source from whence any view we hold has been derived. Nor does any preacher
ever refer to them on this question. The appeal is invariably to the Bible, where there is abundant
evidence for the views we hold on this subject” (RH, Dec. 22, 1874, 204; italics supplied). Smith, it
should be pointed out, made a statement that any person willing to go back into early Seventh-day
Adventist literature can verify or disprove. On the subject of the sanctuary Paul Gordon has done
that in his The Sanctuary, 1844, and the Pioneers (1983). His findings verify Smith’s claims. Whereas
many later Adventists have tended to lean on Ellen White’s authority to substantiate or at least help
support their positions on various of their doctrines, the early Adventists were a people of the
“Book.” Current Seventh-day Adventists of all persuasions need to note that fact as they seek to
discover the genuine Adventism of history. James White touched on the unique role of the Bible in
doctrinal formation in 1847 after claiming that Scripture is “our only rule of faith and practice.” In
the context of his wife’s

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A S e a r c h for Id e n t i t y

prophetic ministry he wrote that “true visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but
those that are given for a new rule of faith and practice, separate from the Bible, cannot be from
God, and should be rejected” (WLF 13). Four years later he again made that point explicit. “Every
Christian,” he wrote, “is therefore in duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect rule of faith and duty.
He should pray fervently to be aided by the Holy Spirit in searching the Scriptures for the whole
truth, and for his whole duty. He is not at liberty to turn from them to learn his duty through any of
the gifts. We say that the very moment he does, he places the gifts in a wrong place, and takes an
extremely dangerous position. The Word should be in front, and the eye of the church should be
placed upon it, as the rule to walk by, and the foundation of wisdom, from which to learn duty in ‘all
good works’” (RH, Apr. 21, 1851, 70; italics supplied). In summary, early Adventists rejected
tradition, church authority, and even the gifts of the Spirit in their doctrinal formation. They were a
people of the “Book,” as we shall see in the rest of this chapter. In regard to principles of
interpretation, they believed Miller’s “Rules of Interpretation” to be correct. Comparing Scripture
with Scripture, letting each word and sentence have its proper significance, and utilizing prophetic
parallelism, typology, and the interpretation of symbolic figures as outlined by Miller in his quite
conscious approach to Bible study, became a foundational perspective on how the Sabbatarians
looked at Scripture. Needless to say, the Sabbatarians continued to interpret prophecy from the
historicist perspective (rather than the preterist, which views prophecy as being fulfilled in the time
of the prophet, or the futurist, which holds that a large portion of prophecy will have its fulfillment
immediately before the Second Advent). As with Miller, the

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Sabbatarian Adventists continued to see prophecy as a sequence of historical fulfillments beginning

at the time of the biblical prophets but extending throughout history to the end of the world. Thus
they built their theology upon Miller’s prophetic platform.