THE TEMPLE IN HEAVEN by W. H. Littlejohn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, December 2, 1884

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 61, No. 48

THE TEMPLE IN HEAVEN.

By W. H. Littlejohn

BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN.

MR. MILLER'S MISTAKE DISCUSSED.

Mr. Biblist.—“I suppose, Mr. Thoughtful, that Mr. Clerical will not be present this evening?”

Mr. Thoughtful.—“No, sir. I saw him on the street and invited him to do so; but he declined. In fact, I think he would go to almost any other place rather than to come to this room again. He did not seem inclined to talk with me at all; but hurried away on the pretext that urgent business demanded his attention. His appearance, however, was such as to indicate that he realized that he was worsted last evening in the discussion about the ascension robes, and that he wished to escape before I alluded to the subject.”

Mr. B.—“Well, I am glad that he is convinced at heart that he was wrong; but I am doubtful as to the outcome. The fact is, Mr. Thoughtful, it is a very hard matter to disabuse the minds of ministers of their errors on that subject. I have in the past few years met with a large number of preachers who took the same position that Mr. Clerical has; and—I am sorry to say it—the great majority of them, though unable to stand before the facts for a single moment, have still persisted in spreading the ascension robe scandal. I know not how to explain this circumstance, unless it be on the theory of the old maxim which says, ‘He who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.’ When a man has once publicly committed himself to a given view, it is very humiliating for him to acknowledge that he was mistaken.”

Maud.—“You do not mean to say, father, that ministers would dissemble?”

Mr. B.—“Ministers are men, Maud. Like other men they have their ambitions and resentments; sometimes also they descend to the low level of mere partisanship, and in their anxiety to overthrow an opponent employ means which are very questionable in themselves. I am happy to be able to say, however, that these remarks apply to some of them in a very limited sense.”

“But enough of this very unpleasant feature of the subject. It is now time to take up the special topic for the evening; i. e., the mistake of Mr. Miller. That this good man did predict the coming of the Lord in 1844, and that he was disappointed in his expectations, there is no dispute. In 1847 he wrote these words: ‘Were I to live my life over again, with the same evidence that I then had, to be honest with God and man I should have to do as I have done. I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door.’ You will find what I have just read on page 437 of ‘Our First Century.’”

“The question now before us is this: Is it possible for a man to do the special work of the Lord, and yet be mistaken in certain particulars as it regards the doctrines that he advocates?”

Mr. T.—“You don’t mean to intimate, Mr. Biblist, that an inspired man could teach false doctrine when speaking by inspiration?”

Mr. B.—“By no means, sir. We are not discussing the point of Mr. Miller’s inspiration. I doubt whether even his most ardent admirers would claim for him anything more than the honor of being led in his interpretations of God’s word to a limited extent by that Spirit which enlightens the minds of ordinary believers in their search after truth. Mr. Miller did not claim to be a prophet, but rather a student of prophecy. He believed and taught that he could find in the Bible abundant evidence that certain great events, such as the Judgment and the advent, were at hand, and that God had laid upon him and others the duty of proclaiming their convictions to the world with a view to preparing them for that which was to take place in the near future. In other words, that a divine impulse had been imparted to the movement of 1843–4 because it was the will of God that the men engaged in that movement should stir the world on the great themes which occupied their attention. I repeat, therefore, that the point before us is not whether Mr. Miller and his followers were inspired in the full sense of that word; but whether, without inspiration, and while entertaining, to a limited extent, erroneous views, they did nevertheless move out in the order of God in their attempt to give the message found in Rev. 14:6, 7. That message relates to the Judgment. We have already seen that it should have been given in 1844. If, therefore, Mr. Miller and his friends did not give that message, then the Scriptures were broken; since there was no movement at the time in question save that of Mr. Miller that would answer to the requirements of the prophecy. Every presumption, consequently, favors the idea that Mr. Miller’s work was a genuine one.”

“That the objection grounded upon his mistake is not necessarily fatal to the view that he was the special instrument of Providence, I will now proceed to prove by several illustrations. The first that I shall produce is that of John the Baptist. That he was a prophetic character will not be denied. He was the forerunner of Christ, and was designated as such by Isaiah 700 years before his birth. Christ said of him that he was the greatest born of women, and that he was more than a prophet. But it is demonstrable that John, though enabled to point out the Messiah, was nevertheless mistaken in his conceptions of the nature of the mission of the latter. You will remember that on one occasion John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to the Saviour with these words: ‘Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?’ The course of the Saviour had been so different from what John had anticipated that he had become bewildered and needed to be reassured that he was really the person that he had taken him to be. If, therefore, absolute freedom from error is indispensable to those whom the Lord commissions to announce great truths to the world, then it would be impossible to verify the claims of John the Baptist to that honor.”

“Passing now from an individual to a multitude, let me call your attention to the vast throng that accompanied our Lord into Jerusalem on what is called, by way of distinction, ‘Palm Sunday.’ Zechariah had employed this language 487 years before this vast concourse of people was assembled: ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion: shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.’ That these words were a prediction of that which transpired on Palm Sunday, and that the men who placed Christ upon the ass, cast their garments in the way, strewed it with palm branches, and shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,’ moved out in the order of God, there can be no doubt; since we read in the 21st chapter of Matthew, where the apostle is speaking of the events in question, that these things were done that the prediction of Zechariah which I have read might be fulfilled. Additional proof that the disciples were impelled by a divine impulse when they shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ can be gathered from Luke 19:40, where the Saviour declares that had they held their peace ‘the stones would have immediately cried out.’”

“Here, then, we have a case precisely in point; that is, we have a multitude who were impelled to do a certain thing because God’s time had come for its accomplishment. If, therefore, the theory is correct that before men can be truthfully said to be moved out by God to perform a specific work they must be so thoroughly illuminated that they will fully comprehend the nature and bearing of all that they are doing, then the disciples on Palm Sunday must have fully understood the mission of the King Messiah, whose advent they heralded. But we know that such was not the case. In the 24th chapter of Luke two of their number, while walking to Emmaus in company with the risen Christ—one week after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem—confessed their utter astonishment at the crucifixion of the Lord, admitting that this event had destroyed their hope that he was to be the deliverer of Israel. The Lord, in order to reassure them, was compelled to go carefully over the prophecies with them before they could be made to understand that it was necessary for him to be crucified and raised from the dead in order to fulfill the predictions concerning himself. That which was true of the two disciples in question, was also true of the twelve apostles as a body. The death of Christ smote them like a thunder-bolt, dashing to the ground their fondest hopes, and leaving them in a condition bordering upon despair. The Lord had predicted his cutting off again and again; but it had all been to no purpose. They had not comprehended his words. In common with the Jews of their time, they entertained the expectation that the Messiah would come as a temporal deliverer to the Jews, overthrow their enemies, and place the Hebrew people at the head of the nations. When, therefore, Jesus failed to do this, and suffered himself to be put to death, they feared the very worst.”

“I might carry this matter still further by showing, as it is possible to do, that not one of those whom Christ commissioned to preach his gospel in the outset, and who were clothed with miraculous powers as a credential that they were called of Heaven to the work, readily comprehended the nature of the kingdom which they declared to be at hand. Their ignorance of what we now term some of the plainest principles of the gospel is, to say the least, astonishing. Nor is this all. At times they manifested a spirit which was very far from being commendable. James and John on a certain occasion desired to bring down fire from heaven that they might consume the inhabitants of a Samaritan village who would not receive Christ because he was going up to Jerusalem, the rival of their own city. Jesus, according to the record, turned and rebuked his disciples, saying, ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.’”

Maud.—“I do not recollect ever to have read about that, father.”

Mr. B.—“No doubt you have done so, however, Maud; but the circumstances have passed from your memory. You will find the narrative in Luke 9:51–55.”

“Another illustration of the point under consideration will be found in Matt. 16:21–23. The Lord was endeavoring to teach his followers respecting his anticipated death on the cross, when Peter openly rebuked him, saying, ‘Be it far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee.’ To this the Master replied thus: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me; for thou savorest not of the things that be of God, but those that be of men.’”

“Did time permit, I might speak of the altercation between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:1, 2), the dissembling of Peter (Gal. 2:11, 12), and the division in sentiment among the disciples concerning the circumcision of the Gentiles even as late as A. D. 51 (Acts 15:5–21); but it is unnecessary. Enough has been said already to make it clear that those men whom we all agree that God employed in a most distinguished manner in laying the foundation of the gospel work, held many wrong views long after they were first employed in that manner. The simple fact is, that if we insist that God has never worked through any one who was not perfect in knowledge, and faultless in spirit, then we must throw away our Bible; because it was written by men who were not of that character. Furthermore, we must deny to Huss, Jerome of Prague, Wycliffe, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox, and Wesley, the honor generally accorded to them of being the chosen agents of Providence for the accomplishment of a particular work. That each one of these men entertained errors, no intelligent person will deny, since they differed widely upon some very essential points. Calvin, for example, held stoutly to the doctrine of reprobation; while Wesley regarded that doctrine as false and extremely dangerous. Again, Luther believed in consubstantiation (i. e., the opinion that the blood and body of Christ is in the bread and wine of the eucharist as the heat is in the red-hot iron); while Zwingle, in common with most modern Protestants, maintained that the bread and wine were mere symbols, the nature of which is not changed a particle when employed for sacramental purposes.”

Mr. T.—“I perceive that you are correct, Mr. Biblist, as it regards your position that God does condescend to use fallible man in connection with great providential movements. The matter appears to me in a different light from what it has done before. I had come to the conclusion that Mr. Miller’s mistake in regard to the advent proved that his whole movement was wrong; but I see that it does not necessarily follow, and that all great reformers and even the apostles themselves were not entirely free from error at all times.”

Mr. B.—“Precisely so, sir. There is another point that you will do well to bear in mind; i. e., that it was not in reference to the time of the Judgment that Mr. Miller made his mistake. On that point he was sound. So far as the prophecy of Rev. 14:6, 7, is concerned, he fulfilled it accurately by proclaiming to the world that the hour of God’s Judgment had come just at the very point of time when according to all the prophetic periods, it had been reached. It was over the advent that he stumbled. But the advent question was not necessarily connected with the Judgment proclamation. To reject Mr. Miller’s movement, therefore, on the ground that he erred in one particular, while admitting that he was substantially correct in reference to the time of the Judgment, would be to take the position that no movement could be from heaven unless those engaged in it were sound in every point of their faith. Such a position, as we have seen, would not only overturn the Reformation of the sixteenth century, but it would also do away with the Scriptures themselves. It is safe, therefore, to accept as genuine the great Judgment proclamation of 1844; because it meets the requirements of the prophetic word in the essentials of time, extent, and spirit. Where these requisites are fulfilled we are perfectly safe in concluding that God is behind the movement which answers to them in every respect.”

Maud.—“I wish you would tell me, father, how Mr. Miller came to make his mistake, anyhow. I have heard a great deal about it; but I do not understand how it was brought about.”

Mr. B.—“Very good. To-morrow evening I will take up that matter and some others of equal interest.”