Note: This is the first of a multi-post series. It is taken from the work of Francis M. Darter. While I disagree with Darter on many issues (he would be a leading advocate of Fundamentalism), this is the only sustained interaction with, and critique, of the Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine of the Investigative Judgment and related prophecy from Dan 8:14.
THE
ADVENTIST OPINION
There is a division in Christendom known
as “Adventists.” They are God-fearing people and they have many able students
in theology and history who have for many years taken a great interest in these
certain prophecies. They arrive at the same date for their fulfillment; namely,
A.D. 1843-44. These people formerly believed that these certain prophecies
referred to the end of the world, and they gathered in 1843, looking for the
coming of the Christ at that time. The term “the time of the end” was
their stumbling stone. Their writers admit their error, and some of them now
acknowledge that they refer to the restoration of the Sanctuary, and that it
was set up in A.D. 1844 in the Heavens. The Lord being a High-priest
began a vicarious work on that date in that Heavenly built Sanctuary for the
dead and that He will come to the living just as soon as He completes this work
for the dead.
I quote in brief from “Thoughts on the
Prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation,” by one of their leading
writers, Uriah Smith:
“Setting aside for a moment the
arguments by which they are shown to have ended in 1844, and letting them date
from any point where the least shadow of reason can be imagined for placing
them, for from which the wildest dreamer could date them, it is still true that
the utmost limit to which they could extend had gone by” (p. 208).
“We have seen (and this is what brings
the solemnities of the Judgment to our door) that the long prophetic period which
was to mark the commencement of this final work in the heavenly
sanctuary, has met its termination in our own generation. In 1844 the days
ended. And since that time the final work for man’s salvation has been going
forward” (p. 209).
“How long it will take to examine the
cases of all the dead, how son the work will reach the cases of the living, no
man can know. And as above remarked, since the year 1844, this solemn work has
been going forward” (p. 210).
“The opening of this heavenly temple
or the commencement of the service in its second apartment, marks the
commencement of the sounding of the seventh angel.” (Rev. 11:15, 19) *** “It
gives a definite idea of the position and work of our great High Priest, AND
BRINGS OUT THE PLAN OF SALVATION in its distinctive and beautiful features. It
reins us up, as no other subject does, to the realities of the judgment,
and shows the preparation we need to be able to stand in the coming day” (p.
211).
“The 2300 days, as has been already
shown, terminated in 1844, and brought us to the cleansing of the Sanctuary”
(p. 316).
“The mistake made by Adventists in
1844 was not in the time, has been shown by the argument on the seventy weeks
and twenty-three hundred days in Daniel 9; that it was in the nature of the event
to occur at the end of those days, has been sown in the argument on the
sanctuary in Daniel 8.” “Thoughts on the Book of Revelation” p. 598. (Francis M.
Darter, “The Time of the End”: Mysteries of Daniel Unveiled [Los Angeles:
Wetzel Publishing Company, 1928], 202-4)