The heresy of certain Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) doctrines
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1990.
In your second letter, I note your zeal to save both me and the many thousands of my fellow believers from 'our sleep, total ignorance and unpreparedness to meet the future, and from being lost at last'.
However, your desire to save me would seem to be based on misunderstanding, to this extent at least: you have presented me with a half-dozen of your books as if I did not already know the special doctrines of the SDA, and as if all I needed to do was to discover what SDA doctrines are, and then I should believe them.
But the matter is not so simple. I learned the SDA doctrines in great detail in the early 1950s, at a time when you, I suspect, were not yet a teenager; and I learned them from reading Mrs. White's book, from discussion with SDA lay-persons, and with several SDA ministers; from the head of the SDA printing and publishing work in the Philippines and his wife; and from detailed discussion with a man who was in charge of aspects of the SDA work in Britain, and had been involved in the SDA radio-programme 'The Voice of Prophecy'.
I learned, of course, that the SDA Movement, as its name declares, is built on two foundational pillars:
- Its doctrine of the Sabbath, and
- Its prophetic teaching regarding our Lord's second advent. And it was with great distress and revulsion that I learned all those years ago that at the heart of the SDA teaching on our Lord's second coming lies in an interpretation of the Day of Atonement ceremonies (Lev 16) which carries (unintentionally, I am sure) the most horrendous implications for the spotless purity of our Lord's person and of his precious blood. It dares to teach that our Lord's atoning blood carried sin into the heavenly tabernacle and thus defiled it; and that the heavenly tabernacle remained thus defiled by the blood of Christ until 1844 when he began the work of cleansing the heavenly tabernacle, which cleansing will only be completed when Christ, at his second coming, removes our sins from the heavenly tabernacle and puts them on the head of Satan; and then Satan—not Christ!—will pay the final penalty of our sin.
When I pointed out these horrific implications of Mrs. White's teaching to the man heading aspects of the SDA work in Britain, he visibly recoiled—for he self-evidently loved the Lord Jesus. He at first protested that Mrs. White could not have meant what her book plainly said. He then explained that he had never closely studied this element in SDA teaching, and therefore could not offer me any explanation of it. In his horror at Mrs. White's apparent meaning, he tried to argue that this particular doctrine was only a tiny part of the totality of SDA doctrine, and that it was unfair of me to emphasize it so much. But his argument failed him. For the Movement calls itself the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, and the whole of its prophetic timetable and doctrine is built on this interpretation of the Day of Atonement ceremonies and their fulfilment in Christ.
He promised to investigate this matter and give me an explanation; but in the nearly fifty years since then, I have received none.
And you, if you do indeed love the Lord Jesus, will not ignore this charge I bring against this SDA doctrine. For you not only gave me Mrs. White's updated book, but along with it The Great Judgment Day by John L. Shuter (published 1995), which states this horrendous doctrine more fully and explicitly, if possible, than Mrs. White. I repeat: if you do love the Lord Jesus, you will answer me and clear yourself of the impression you give of agreeing with these horrific (unintentional) aspersions on the person and work of Christ.
And please, when you reply, do not content yourself with repeating mere assertions: show me at least one Scripture that explicitly says that the blood of Christ carried our sins into the heavenly tabernacle and so defiled it.
Mrs. White (p. 442) says that in Old Testament times 'By this ceremony, the sin was, through the blood, transferred in figure to the sanctuary'. Hence the need for the sanctuary to be cleansed on the Day of Atonement.
But Scripture nowhere says any such thing. Nowhere does it say that even in Old Testament times the blood of the sin-offering carried the sin into the sanctuary and defiled it.
What defiled the sanctuary and the altar, according to Scripture, was the presence of sinful people around the tabernacle. Leviticus 16:16 explains why the tabernacle needed cleansing: 'because of the uncleannesses of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, even all their sins; and so shall he do for the Tent of Meeting, that dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses'. It was the presence of unclean people around the tabernacle that defiled it. Far from the blood of the sin-offerings carrying the sin and uncleanness into the sanctuary, it was the blood of the sin offerings that cleansed the sanctuary and its sacred vessels (Leviticus 16:15–16, 19).
The blood that was brought into the Holiest of All on the Day of Atonement was the blood of the nation's sin-offering. If that blood carried the sin of the people into the sanctuary and defiled it, how could that same blood cleanse the sanctuary?
I repeat: Scripture does not say that the blood of Israel's sin-offerings carried their sins into the sanctuary and defiled it. This idea is an invention of SDA interpretation, and is asserted without any Scriptural basis or authority.
But then, basing themselves on this unscriptural interpretation of the Day of Atonement, both Mrs. White and John L. Shuter proceed by analogy to claim that the blood of Christ transfers the sins of believers to the heavenly sanctuary and thus defiles the sanctuary so that it needs to be cleansed (see Shuter p. 46).
Nowhere in the whole of the New Testament is such a horrific thing said about the blood of Christ. The Scripture that Shuter quotes to support this horrendous statement, namely 1 Timothy 5:24 (see his p. 46) does not say that the blood of Christ conveys some men's sins into the heavenly sanctuary.
Scripture explicitly says the very opposite: it is the blood and sacrifice of Christ that cleanses the heavenly things: that is, the tabernacle (see Heb 9:23, 11–14). If the blood of Christ our sin-offering conveyed our sin into the heavenly sanctuary, how could that same blood cleanse the sanctuary?
The Holy Spirit explicitly assures us (Heb 10:14–18) that the once-for-all offering of Christ at Calvary has perfected those who are sanctified (not will one day perfect them). And because of this God states categorically, 'their sins and iniquities I will remember no more'.
The verb 'not remember' is highly significant. It does not mean that God will ever forget that we were once sinners. It is based on the legal custom of the ancient Jewish kings. In their courts there was an officer called 'the remembrancer', or 'the recorder' (see 2 Sam 8:16). This officer's job was to keep a record of people's crimes and from time to time to call the king's attention to them, to cause the king to 'remember them', and so to pronounce the penalty and have it executed, or else to remember people's good deeds and have them rewarded (see Esth 6:1–3).
So in Hebrews 10:3, the Holy Spirit reminds us that in Israel 'there was a remembrance made of sins year by year,' i.e. on the yearly Day of Atonement. By contrast he gives us God's own explicit assurance that because of Christ's once-for-all (and not yearly) sacrifice, forever completed at Calvary, God will not in this sense remember our sins any more.
Yes, he will, says SDA doctrine, basing itself on the Jewish Day of Atonement. In 1844 Christ began to 'remember', i.e. to investigate the sins of those who profess to trust him, and still is continuing with this 'remembering'.
Moreover, the New Testament says that, when Christ ascended, he entered through the veil and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 8:1; 10:12; Rev 3:21). In the ancient earthly tabernacle, the throne of God was situated in the Most Holy Place behind the veil.
But no, says SDA; Christ entered the Most Holy Place only in 1844.
The New Testament says that it is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). SDA doctrine says, however, that the goat which on the Jewish Day of Atonement 'bore upon him all their iniquities into a solitary land' typifies not Christ but Satan; and that when Christ has finished investigating our sins, he will at his return bring our sins out of the heavenly sanctuary and place them upon Satan. In the words of Mrs. White:
When Christ, by virtue of His own blood, removes the sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary at the close of his ministration, He will place them upon Satan, who in the execution of the judgment, must bear the final penalty. (p. 446)
So when Peter says (1 Pet 2:24) that Christ his own self 'bore our sins in his body on the tree . . .', if SDA doctrine is to be believed, he did not mean that Christ exhausted the penalty of our sin; we have to thank Satan for doing that.
On the Jewish Day of Atonement, when the high priest came out of the Most Holy Place and appeared the second time before the people, his work of atoning for sin was not yet complete. He had to make atonement by placing Israel's sins on the live goat and sending that goat away (Lev 16:10, 21–22).
The New Testament says that when Christ appears the second time (at his second coming), he shall appear without, i.e. apart from, sin altogether. He shall not need to put our sins on any one or thing; for the work of atoning for sin was complete when Christ died at Calvary, ascended and sat down on his Father's throne (Heb 9:28).
On the basis of such verses as Hebrews 9:24 and 10:19, SDA doctrine argues (or used to argue) that, upon his ascension, Christ did not enter the Holiest of All, but only the Holy Place (i.e. the counterpart of the first division in the tabernacle). But this argument is mistaken: it overlooks the usage of both Old and New Testaments. When the context makes clear that it is talking about 'the Holy Place within the veil' (Lev 16:2), the inspired writers are content thereafter to refer to the Most Holy Place simply as 'the Holy Place' (see Lev 16:3,16). The New Testament does likewise. When Hebrews 9:8 says: '. . . the way into the holy place has not yet been made manifest while as the first tabernacle is yet standing', the holy place referred to is 'the holy place within the veil' i.e. the Holiest of All. So it is likewise in Hebrews 9:24 and 10:19.
And finally, when we look to see the Biblical passage on which this special SDA doctrine is based, namely Daniel 8:14—'Then shall the sanctuary be cleansed'—we find that there is nothing whatsoever in the whole of the context about the Jewish ceremonies on the Day of Atonement. The association of the cleansing of this sanctuary with the cleansing of the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement is something that Mrs. White and others have read into this chapter of Daniel. It is nowhere stated in the chapter itself. Moreover, the previous verse (Dan 8:13) explains why this sanctuary would have to be cleansed, and the reason is that the continual burnt offering would be taken away and the sanctuary and the host would be trodden underfoot. According to this SDA interpretation of these things, it would mean that the heavenly sanctuary had to be cleansed because it too had been trodden underfoot, and this does not make sense. When, and by whom has the heavenly sanctuary even been trodden underfoot?
Then again Daniel 8:13 points out that at one stage the daily burnt offering, the Tamid, would be taken away. This prophecy was fulfilled in history when the little horn, namely Antiochus Epiphanes, rose up from among Alexander's successors, put the abomination of desolation into the temple at Jerusalem, and put a stop to the daily burnt offering. At the time this was an outrageous insult to God. Eventually the abomination of desolation was removed, and the daily burnt offering restored, and in this way the sanctuary was cleansed. (The Jews thereafter celebrated this event by the yearly Feast of Dedication, mentioned in John 10:22).
It is immediately evident from the text of Daniel 8:13–14 that it was not Christ but Antiochus Epiphanes, the little horn, who took away the daily burnt offering, and in doing so desecrated the sanctuary until the sanctuary was cleansed and the daily offering restored.
It makes nonsense of this prophecy to apply it to the supposed cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary by Christ in 1844. It was the Romans who, by their destruction of the Jewish temple at Jerusalem in AD 70, put an end to the daily burnt offering in the temple. And of that event our Lord prophesied when he said that the temple would be destroyed and Jerusalem city would be trodden down underfoot until the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled. Our Lord nowhere ever said that the heavenly sanctuary would be trodden underfoot. It is true that our Lord's offering himself as a burnt offering of a sweet-smelling savour to God (Eph 5:2) made the Old Testament system of sacrifices obsolete; but he did not thereby defile the temple at Jerusalem, nor set up in that temple the abomination of desolation.
Why ever, then, did the SDA movement take this prophecy in Daniel 8:14 and wrest it from its context, apply it to a cleansing of the heavenly temple, supposedly begun by our Lord in 1844, when there is nothing in the whole of Daniel 8 that even mentions the heavenly sanctuary? (What Daniel 8 does prefigure is the event mentioned in 2 Thess 2.)
The reason for the SDA's strange misinterpretation of Daniel 8 is that they invented it to cover up their confusion. As their books declare, they had originally taught that Daniel 8:14 referred to the cleansing of the literal sanctuary in Jerusalem, which they predicted according to their arithmetical calculations would happen in 1844. It did not happen. Their interpretation was proved wrong. Somehow, then, they had to salvage what they could of their misinterpretation, and did so by inventing the notion that somehow Daniel 8:14 could be understood as a cleansing of the tabernacle such as happened on the Jewish Day of Atonement. And they did this without any biblical support whatsoever. Worse than that, to salvage what they could from their misinterpretation, they invented this horrific notion that it was not Antiochus Epiphanes, nor yet the future Man of Sin, who should defile the earthly sanctuary so that it needed to be cleansed. It was the blood of Christ himself that defiled the heavenly sanctuary, which remained defiled until Christ somehow by that same blood began to cleanse the heavenly sanctuary in 1844. How anybody who loves the Lord could take something that refers to the defiling of the heavenly sanctuary by these infamous ungodly men, Antiochus in the past and the Man of Sin in the future, and use it as an analogy to suggest that Christ likewise defiled the sanctuary, though this time not the earthly one but the heavenly one—this, I say, completely surpasses my understanding.
And then there is the added point: the notion that on the Day of Atonement in Israel God held an investigative judgment of his people's sins, is nowhere mentioned in Leviticus 16. The idea is to be found, as we all know, in the Jewish Midrash and Haggadah. These are Jewish fables such as Paul warned us about and told us not to accept them. It is a significant thing that, in trying to solve their confusion that arose from their original misinterpretation of Daniel 8:14, that the SDA elders were obliged to turn not to Scripture but to Jewish fables.
Not all their zeal in promoting the Sabbath and the food laws and their particular interpretations of prophecy can compensate for the dishonour that they have thereby done to the name and person of Christ.
Now, I have not forgotten that you did not wish to receive my considered judgment on the books you gave me. But I for my part did not ask for your books; you thrust them on me, without my asking for them. You cannot complain, therefore, if without your asking for it, I reply to the basic SDA doctrines which you have thrust into my hands.
Of course, you may choose to ignore my comments and refuse to reply. But, I say again, if you really love the Lord Jesus, you will reply. The charge I bring against these SDA doctrines which you propagate is very serious: that you spread among the peoples of the world doctrines that are seriously derogatory to the person of Christ and to his precious blood. If you really love the Lord, this charge will hurt you deeply, not simply for your own sake, but for Christ's sake. And you will hasten to defend the honour of Christ, and your own loyalty to him, by replying to me indicating your change of heart, or else by demonstrating to me that Scripture itself does explicitly state that the blood of Christ conveyed our sins into the heavenly sanctuary and thus defiled it; and that this defilement of God's own dwelling-place persisted until, in 1844, Christ began the process of gradually cleansing the sanctuary from the defilement which his own blood had introduced into heaven.
Yours very sincerely,
