EDIT: 5/31/15
Here’s a 1906 article on the early “Eden Day Line Theory” I quoted Ellen White speaking against above:
A False Issue: The Day-line
We cannot conceive that God will leave His people to be confronted with an error for which there is not a simple solution, suitable for the defence and protection of every believing soul.
http://sabbathissues.org/false-issue-the-day-line/
Another quote:
All that needs to be decided in any locality is, Which day does Rome honour as a sabbath? The answer is invariably, ” Sunday.” Then, in order to embrace the third angel’s message, loyalty to God calls upon us to keep the day which precedes the Roman festival, that is, Saturday.
This seems to be the reasoning of the Advindicate author I quoted above, who said,
But this issue effects fewer than 1 in 10,000 people; it is a non-issue for the overwhelming majority of the human race.
Yet he he is not content to let the local people follow their own consciences but wants the “world church” in San Antonio to come down on them. So apparently, it is not a “non-issue” to the rest of the world, after all.
Adventists are in conflict, but I’m not confident that a “simple solution” will present itself in San Antonio or anywhere else.
Personally, I think (and correct me, please) Adventists are facing a number of insoluble foundational problems (in addition to having been steeplejacked, it seems), and round earth sabbath is one, and what Ellen White says about the blood being carried in the Sanctuary for the common people is another.
Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 354: The most important part of the daily ministration was the service performed in behalf of individuals. … By his own hand the animal was then slain, and the blood was carried by the priest into the holy place and sprinkled before the veil, behind which was the ark containing the law that the sinner had transgressed. By this ceremony the sin was, through the blood, transferred in figure to the sanctuary.
And, if Miller built his interpretation on luni-solar rather than Rabbinical calendar, what are the implications of that?
Leroy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. 4, p. 796: This was that the solution of Daniel’s prophecy is dependent upon the ancient or original Jewish form of luni-solar time, and not upon the altered modern rabbinical Jewish calendar.
All this is not to even mention Ford, and the implications around that.
Desmond Ford: If my experience as a teacher at the Seminary may be taken as a criterion, I would say that a large number of our ministers have serious doubt as to the correctness of the views we hold on certain phases of the sanctuary. They believe, in a general way, that we are correct, but they are as fully assured that Ballenger’s views have never been fully met and that we cannot meet them. They decide that the question is not vital and relegate it to the background.
Many recognized Adventist Bible scholars, past and present, have acknowledged the problems in the traditional Adventist interpretation of Daniel 8:14 and Hebrews 9, and standard Adventist publications such as the SDA Bible Commentary explicitly acknowledge them. Over the past 75 years, repeated crises have arisen over these problems and not a few have left the church because of them, but once each crisis had passed little or nothing was done to deal adequately with the substance of the problems.
Desmond Ford, on Glacier View: Most of the Bible scholars at Glacier View accepted the essence of my views. Most of them refused to teach the investigative judgment. Andrews had not taught it for decades. Raymond Cottrell’s reports in Spectrum were very accurate. He told me it was obvious that most of the administrators present had not read my manuscript. Cottrell had given up the investigative judgment decades before and we had discussed it with complete agreement at the end of the 1950s.
The most important result of Glacier View was the evidence in the years that followed that our Bible scholars had not and do not believe in the investigative judgment. One Andrews professor said the teaching was like that about the man in the moon.
Des Ford Reflects on the Investigative Judgment, Ellen White, Church Controversy and Health
Raymond Cottrell: Well, I went to Elder Nichol. Since he had gotten me into this fix, it was up to him to get me out of it. You know what he did? He took them (the responses) over to the President of the General Conference, Elder Figuhr. And the General Conference appointed the Committee on Problems in the Book of Daniel to try to find some answers to these questions. Well, the Committee on Problems in the Book of Daniel met for five Years. I was a member of the committee. We studied forty-five prepared papers for the committee and adjourned without finding any answers.
http://truthorfables.com/Cottrell_IJ_Recollection.htm
Raymond Cottrell said of his “significant work” Eschatology of Daniel which was never formally published, "the manuscript awaits a climate of openness and objectivity in the church, which is essential to a fair examination of the facts.
Raymond Cottrell, The Eschatology of Daniel
Perfecting the Corporate Biblical-Theological-Doctrinal Process
Throughout the prooftext era of the church–to approximately 1940–there
were no trained Adventist Bible scholars who would be recognized as such today.
Its corporate biblical-theological-doctrinal process was conducted
almost exclusively by church administrators, who were perhaps more adept than
most others at prooftexting the Bible.
Today there is a large Adventist community of fully qualified Bible
scholars, now the “brethren of experience” in such matters, yet no viable
working relationship has developed between the scholars, collectively, and
administrators, whereby the church can benefit by the collective expertise,
experience, and wisdom of its Bible scholars.
http://www.andrews.edu/library/car/cardigital/digitized/documents/b17278600.pdf
Raymond Cottrell, A History of Problems with the Sanctuary Doctrine
http://www.goodnewsunlimited.org/library/exegesisofdaniel/22part2.cfm
Raymond Cottrell: What should an editor do with “proof texts” that inherently do not prove what is traditionally attributed to them — as for example, Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6; Revelation 12:17 and 19:10; Daniel 12:4, Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:1,2; and most of the texts usually cited with respect to “the law”? In most of these and number of other passages, pastoral concern led us to conclude that the Commentary was not the place to make an issue of the Bible versus the traditional interpretation, much as this disappointed us as Bible scholars and would be a disappointment to our scholarly friends who know better.
http://spectrummagazine.org/article/book-reviews/2010/03/09/bible-commentary-theological-booby-traps-road-blocks
The Sanctuary Doctrine – Asset or Liability? Part 11
by Raymond F. Cottrell
Obscurantism and the Sanctuary Doctrine
Webster defines obscurantism as “depreciation of or positive opposition to enlightenment or the spread of knowledge, esp. a policy . . . of deliberately making something obscure or withholding knowledge from the general public.” Here, the word “obscurantism” is used in the specific sense of making presumably authoritative decisions and/or statements with respect to the sanctuary doctrine on the basis of untested, preconceived opinions and/or without first weighing all of the available evidence on the basis of sound, recognized principles of exegesis and basing conclusions exclusively on the weight of all the evidence.
Obscurantism has characterized the official response of the church to every question raised with respect to the traditional interpretation of Daniel 8:14, the sanctuary doctrine, and the investigative judgment. In at least most instances this obscurantism has been inadvertent and not intentional, but its effect has been the same as if it had been intentional. It is high time for the church to be done with the traditional clichés with which it has heretofore responded to questions regarding the sanctuary doctrine. It is time to face up to and to deal fairly and objectively with all of the evidence.
http://culvercity.adventistfaith.org/site_data/233/assets/0002/8590/Assetorliability-11.doc
Raymond Cottrell, The Sanctuary Doctrine, Asset or Liability? (PDF of complete text)
During sessions of the Biblical Research Committee (now Institute) Gerhard Hasel repeatedly stated that it was a mistake even to try to be objective.
In the plenary session of the Sanctuary Review Committee at Glacier View, for instance, he
demonstrated this by emphatically declaring in the plenary session Monday afternoon, August 10, 1980,
“God’s only intention in Daniel 8:14 was to point forward to 1844!”
This statement was met by a loud chorus of amens.
http://www.lifeassuranceministries.com/pdf%20files/cottrell%201844.pdf
1983 Adventist Currents:
http://www.hacksplace.com/images/magazines/AC%20PDFs/AC%20B&W/AC%201-2%20BW%20300dpi.pdf
Leroy E. Froom, Ministry, 1944:
Subtle Inroad of Scholasticism
The pioneers of this message, and their early successors, were pre-eminently men of the Book. They were conspicuously students of the Word. Their grasp of great Biblical truths and basic prophetic principles was astonishing. It was, of course, this intensive study of the Word on their part that laid the fundations of this heaven-indited message. Their mastery of the text of Scripture was often phenomenal, because they spent most of their study time mastering the essential message of the Book.
Our scholars are often erudite, for example, in the Greek or Hebrew text, but all too often they have lost the fundamental intent and larger relationships of the text itself amid the speculative niceties of their acquired technicalities. The basic truth at issue is lost in the display of erudition. They follow, doubtless unconsciously, in the wake of their teachers back in the universities of Babylon. And how could it be otherwise? That training was sought ; and now it constitutes the background and colors the attitude, the emphasis, and the outlook.
How dare a man contemplate, or have the temerity to present, the degree of doctor of divinity, gained in the universities of Babylon, as a credential for teaching or preaching this threefold message, the second stipulation of which is, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen… Come out of her, My people.” How dare we accept such a Babylonian credential in lieu of mastery of the truth? Shall a man go into Babylon to gain strength and wisdom to call men out of Babylon? To ask the question is but to disclose how far some have compromised with Babylon, as they have gone back to Babylon to drink from her wells of wisdom. Oh, for the living waters of truth fresh.from the Word!
https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1944/04/the-subtle-inroad-of-scholasticism
Ironically, Leroy Froom, one of the key participants in the Evangelical-Adventist meetings, was a typical Adventist and sounded much like the “lunatic fringe” to which Andreasen had been relegated. Unlike Andreasen, however, Froom reached out to Martin and Barnhouse in the 1950’s. This apparent cordiality belied his earlier hostility toward working with those from “Babylon”.
http://www.lifeassuranceministries.org/proclamation/2010/3/waltermartin.html
Maybe this is another:
Dennis Hokama: Daniel’s “Daily”
Does 1844 Have a “Pagan” Foundation?
When William Miller came to the novel conclusion that the “daily” of Daniel 8:11,12 and 11:31 was “paganism” rather than sacrifices connected with Jewish temple services, he opened up new possibilities for the treatment of the 2300 days in Daniel 8:14. A seemingly viable justification and defense of 1843 or 1844 as the terminus of the 2300 days was now possible.
Since it was Miller’s “paganism” interpretation of the “daily” that permitted the 457 B.C. to 1843/1844 application of the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14, the Seventh-day Adventist sanctuary doctrine, in a sense, has a “pagan” foundation. This, in and of itself, would amount to nothing more than a mischievous play on words. But it is the fact that Adventism has long since abandoned Miller’s “pagan-ism” interpretation while continuing to claim eschatological significance for 1844 that gives the title of this paper legitimacy.
It is the thesis of this paper that Miller’s identification of the “daily” as “paganism” was crucial to his defense of 1843/1844 as the terminus of the 2300 days. If this thesis is correct, then Advent-ism unwittingly annulled the significance of 1844 when it abandoned the “pagan” interpretation of the “daily” around 1910.
This paper is not concerned with determining the true meaning of the “daily,” but it is concerned with the history of Adventist treatments of it, and the implications that its history has for Adventist theology today.
http://www.prophecyhelps101.com/rich_text_63.html
The reasoning that sufficed in the 19th and 20th centuries is inadequate in the 21st, it seems to me.
I agree with Sirje that all of this is well and good but for the resulting condemnation SDA heaps on other groups, and, I would add, the social damage inflicted on the Adventist people themselves, which cannot go unremarked.
1980 was a pivotal year, as is 2015.
And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.
