April 22  Redefining The First Angel's Message-2

Thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat. . . . A thousand thousnads served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgement, and the books were opened. Dan. 7:9, 10, RSV.

Besides emphasizing the seventh-day Sabbath aspect of Revelation 14:7, the one major change the Sabbatarians would make in the first angel's message focused on the words "the hour of his judgment is come."

The Millerites had identified the judgment scene of Daniel 7, the cleansing of the sanctuary of Daniel 8:14, and the judgment of Revelation 14:7 as the judgment that would take place at the Second Advent. Thus for them it was an executive judgment, a time when God passed out rewards according to what individuals had chosen and done (see Matt. 16:27). Charles Fitch stated that the judgment of Revelation 14:7 referred to the "destruction" of the world.

The Sabbatarians, after years of study for some of them, would come to see the judgment of those texts as a pre-Advent judgment, or what they eventually called an investigative judgment. That new interpretation, however, would cause disruption in their ranks and not all the Sabbatarians leaders would accept the concept until the mid to late 1850s. Some critics in the swentieth century taught that Adventists quickly put the pre-Advent judgment in place soon after 1844 as an apology for the Disappointment. That may sound like a plausible interpretation, but it doesn't match up with the historical facts.

For one thing, the concept of a pre-Advent judgment originated before the October 1844 disappointment. Josiah Litch had developed the idea by the late 1830s. His main point at that time was that the judgment needed to precede the resurrection.

In 1841 he wrote that "no human tribunal would think of executing judgment on a prisoner until after his trial, much less God." Thus God, before the resurrection, would bring every human deed into judgment. At the resurrection He would execute judgment in accordance with His findings. Several Millerites adopted Litch's concept before October 1844. And that wasn't too difficult a task, since the Bible teaching that Christ rewards people when He comes in the clouds of heaven suggests that prior to that time GOd has decided who will come up in the first resurrection.

We can be thankful that we serve a just God who is not arbitrary, one who relies on evidence and not despotic whim.