THE TEMPLE IN HEAVEN by W. H. Littlejohn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, March 17, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 11

THE TEMPLE IN HEAVEN.

By W. H. Littlejohn

INVESTIGATION OF THE THIRD MESSAGE COMMENCED; SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS AND THEIR RELATION TO THE SUBJECT; WHEN AND HOW THEY ARISE.

BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN.

Mr. B.—By agreement I am at this time to enter upon the examination of the third angel’s message, as brought to view in Rev. 14:9-11. We may proceed to our task intelligently, I call upon Maud to read the verses in which it is embodied.

Maud.—Wait a moment, till I turn to them. Here they are: “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”

Mr. B.—The preliminary work of our investigation has been already very largely accomplished. Having decided that the first and second angels which are found in the series in which the third is grouped, represent religious movements, it would be superfluous to demonstrate that the same general fact must be true of the third angel. Again, as it is distinctly stated that the third followed the first and second angels in the order of their presentation in the view given to John, it needs not to be proved that they will succeed each other in the line of their historic fulfillment. Once more; since it has been proved already that the first and second messages have been given to the world this side of 1844, we are shut up to the conclusion that the third message could not have been due until we had reached a point this side of that date. As a rule, the genuine fulfillment of prophecies takes place before the spurious ones are allowed to transpire. There are two reasons for this: First, were the spurious fulfillments allowed to precede the genuine ones, the effect would be to hinder the reception of the latter; secondly, when a genuine fulfillment of a prophecy has been realized, those who have rejected the same, as an act of substantial justice are given over to blindness of mind and hardness of heart. The Devil, seeing that his opportunity has come, then steps in, and easily captures by a bogus work those who have refused to receive the truth in the love of it. A good illustration of this principle is found in the crop of false christs which immediately sprang up and deceived the people after the true Messiah had been put to death.

I make these remarks with a view to creating a presumption in favor of Seventh-day Adventists, who, so far as I know, are the only body of Christians who can with propriety be said to be giving the third angel’s message. As they are the first to claim this honor, and as the movement with which they are identified has been in progress for nearly forty years, they are at least entitled to a candid hearing. I will speak first of their rise.

Immediately after the disappointment of 1844, at which time the first and second angels’ messages had been given, there followed a brief period of uncertainty in regard to the experience of the past and their duty for the future. While all who were connected with the first and second messages were confident that God’s hand had led them in the work in which they had been engaged, they could not deny that they had been mistaken at least to a certain extent respecting the coming of Christ. For awhile they consoled themselves with the thought that their disappointment could be attributed to some little inaccuracy in the dates which had formed the basis of their calculations. It did not take long, however, to dispel this theory; since after repeated efforts it was found to be impossible either to answer the logic which they themselves had employed in fixing the commencement and the termination of the twenty-three hundred years, or to formulate even a plausible argument in support of any other view that would locate their beginning and end elsewhere than they had located them in the outset. In process of time the light shone out upon the sanctuary question as I have presented it in these talks. O. R. L. Crosier seems to have been the first person to whom it occurred that while they had been right in the matter of the time it was possible that they had been mistaken respecting the true nature of the sanctuary which Daniel declared should be cleansed at the end of the prophetic period brought to view in Dan. 8:13, 14.

Gradually the temple in heaven, in all of its grandeur and beauty as the antitype of the temple of Solomon on the earth, was evolved from the types and shadows of the Mosaic law, as the outlines of distant mountains, hills, valleys, and cities are developed out of the mists of the morning by the rays of the sun. At last everything was perfectly defined. It was seen beyond all question that the temple or tabernacle of God in heaven, and not the earth, constituted the sanctuary that was to be cleansed in 1844. It was also discovered that the cleansing of that sanctuary was nothing more nor less than the work of the Judgment. By putting this and that together, several important additional facts were brought out. It was distinctly seen that if the heavenly temple were the antitype of the earthly tabernacle and temple, it must, like them, contain the ark and law of God. Not only so, but as the day of atonement, as celebrated in connection with the services of the Mosaic tabernacle and the temple of Solomon, was a type of the Judgment, and as in the type the blood was sprinkled before the ark that contained the law of the ten commandments,—thus recognizing them as the standard of judgment,—so that law must necessarily be the standard of judgment in the temple in heaven. As a consequence, it was at once perceived that exact obedience to the decalogue was a matter of infinite importance to all, since it was to be the criterion of judgment in the cases of all.

In the meanwhile a Sabbath-keeping lady, by the name of Rachel D. Preston, had providentially been brought in contact with a few Adventists who lived at Washington, N. H. She laid before them in a plain and simple manner the argument in favor of God’s ancient seventh-day Sabbath as it is drawn from the fourth commandment of the decalogue. Some of those who belonged to the Washington church commenced the observance of the seventh day of the week as the result of her teachings. From them Eld. T. M. Preble received the light, and in 1845 presented his views through the press to the whole body of advent believers. The minds of a few of these were in that peculiar state of transition where they, being conscious that there must be a route that would lead them out of their difficulties, if only they could find it, were particularly receptive of truth. The logic of Eld. Preble was unanswerable. Beyond all question, some one had been tampering with the law of God, and had transferred the Sabbath from the last to the first day of the week. Turning to the Bible in the simplicity of the faith that it would furnish a key to the situation, the Adventists opened to the 14th chapter of Revelation, with which they had thought they were as familiar as they were with the multiplication table. They discovered in it startling declarations which had never before attracted their attention. There were the first and second angels’ messages just as they had read them a hundred times. They could neither add to nor take from the interpretation that they had always placed upon them. But how about the third message? It seemed to read differently from what it ever had done before. How was it that it had previously attracted so little of their attention? That twelfth verse particularly—what did the Revelator or the angel mean by the words, “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus”? Why, evidently the first and the second messages were to

be given to the world, and then a third message was to be proclaimed with great power in all the earth, warning men against the worship of a certain beast and the reception of his mark. Furthermore, it was clearly stated that those who should give this warning message would be distinguished by the characteristic of keeping the commandments of God and also the faith of Jesus. But were not all Christians doing this?—Manifestly not, if they were violating the fourth commandment by substituting as the Sabbath the first day of the week in the place of the seventh, provided that commandment enforces the observance of the latter; since James says, “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”

The situation was a trying one. Could it be possible that the whole Christian world was actually involved in the observance of a counterfeit Sabbath? At first blush such a thing seemed incredible; but there were the facts, stubborn and inexorable, as facts always are. The only Sabbath law contained in the Bible declared in so many words that the seventh day is the Sabbath. Furthermore, Moses, who received that law from the hands of God and Christ, who was with him in the mount, as well as the people in whose language it was written, united, as proved by their uniform practice, in interpreting that law to require the observance, not of the first but of the last day of the week. What, then, should they do under the circumstances? They could not deny the binding obligation of the ten commandments; for that was too clearly taught in the word of God to admit of question. Should they decide, then, that Moses and Christ had placed a wrong interpretation upon the Sabbath law? So far as Moses was concerned, that was barely possible, though in the highest degree improbable. With Christ, however, the case was different. Admit for a moment that he did not understand the true import of his Father’s law, and you would virtually deny his divinity! Concede the point that he understood that the fourth commandment enforced the observance of the seventh day of the week, and that he hallowed its hours by devoting them to rest and worship, and then you would have his example superadded to the letter of the law in favor of seventh-day observance. Whichever way they looked, the result was the same. Everywhere God’s ten words confronted them, and they seemed to hear his majestic voice uttering the emphatic declaration, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.” Was there, then, no way out of the dilemma? Had not Christ the power to change the law of the Father? Did he not do so, and was not that after all the true explanation of the whole matter? Certain it was that if he had done so, the history of the transaction could be found somewhere in the record of his life and teachings.

With patient industry and prayerful anxiety they turned through the New Testament again and again in a fruitless search for the coveted passage that should give the time, the place, and the manner in which Christ had changed the law of his Father on the Sabbath question. It was of no use, however. Neither the gospels, the Acts, the epistles, nor the book of Revelation furnished so much as a hint that the Sabbath had ever been changed. Indeed, the very reverse was true. Wherever the term Sabbath was used, it was uniformly applied to the last day of the week. Perplexed, or rather dumbfounded, they asked each other significantly what this could mean. That the Sabbath had been changed was beyond dispute. That the Saviour had changed it, was incredible, since, were it true that he had done so, he certainly would have caused the record of that act to be preserved for the benefit of his people. Who, then, had brought about the change of the Sabbath? If it was not Christ, might it not have been anti-christ? If so, doubtless the Scriptures would furnish some clue to the facts. The book of Daniel was as familiar to them as household words. Speedily their minds reverted to these words found in the 7th chapter and 25th verse of that book: “And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” These words, as they knew very well, applied to the papacy. In them beyond all question was a prediction that the pope of Rome would assume that he was able to change the law of God.

Mr. T.—How did they know that the laws in question were the laws of God? The passage does not say so in so many words.

Mr. B.—Very true; but the connection makes that point clear. The antecedent of the word “he,” as you will see by referring to verse 24, is a certain king who was to arise in the Roman empire. That king, as is generally admitted by Protestant commentators, was the pope of Rome. Now it would be absurd to reason that the laws under discussion were the laws of the pope’s own kingdom; since every king has a right to change the laws of his own dominion. Again, it is said that the king in question should “speak great words against the Most High, and should wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws.” Inasmuch, therefore, as the words spoken were against the “Most High,” and the saints who were to be persecuted were to be the saints of the “Most High,” it is but natural to conclude that the laws to be changed were also those of the “Most High.” This conclusion receives additional confirmation from the reading of the 26th verse. In verse 25 we are informed that the “saints” and the “laws” were to be delivered into the hands of the king in question “for a time and times and the dividing of time;” i. e., for 1260 years. In verse 26 we are told that at the time of the Judgment the dominion of this priest-king would be taken away. But it is hardly to be supposed that the great God, while in the midst of the solemnities of the Judgment of the world, would concern himself particularly with the dominion of any king unless he were in a special sense irreligious. Any action on his part so trivial as that of changing his own laws or those of other earthly potentates, would never have been mentioned in such a connection.

But to return to my narrative. As I was saying, the Adventists, whose attention had been called to the change of the Sabbath, found in Dan. 7:25 presumptive evidence that the pope of Rome was the one who had been tampering with the fourth commandment; since they learned from this passage that he was to think to change the law of God, and since it was evident that, to say the least, some one besides Christ had changed the practice of the church in the matter of the day to be observed as the Sabbath.

Maud.—It is ten o’clock, father.

Mr. B.—Can it be possible? Well, at our next sitting I will tell you what our Adventist friends, upon investigation, found that the pope himself had to say about the change of the law and the Sabbath.

Mr. T.—You do not mean to intimate that the pope really claims that he has changed the Sabbath?

Mr. B.—Yes, sir; that is exactly what I expect to prove.

Battle Creek, Mich.