everlasting-gospels.gif Redefining The First Angel's Message-5
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April 25  Redefining The First Angel's Message-5

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My reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. Rev. 22:12.

Yesterday we left James White publicly thundering at Joseph Bates that the later was confused regarding the judgment in his belief that it was prior to the Second Adent. Such a teaching, James declared, "is certainly without foundation in the word of God."

For James "the great day of judgment will be one thousnad years long" and would begin at the Second Advent. As to a pre-Advent judgment, White had observed that "it is not necessary that the final sentence should be given before the first resurrection, as some have taught; for the names of the saints are written in  heaven, and Jesus, and the angels will certainly know who to raise, and gather to the New Jerusalem." Thus as late as September 1850 White opposed his wife and Bates on the topic of a pre-Advent judgment. But that would change-graudally.

Circumstantial evidence for White's shift appears in the Review of February 1854, in which he published a piece by J. N. Loughborough that tied the first angel's message to the pre-Advent jugdment. Even though Loughborough had not written it for publication, James' position were put to rest in January 1857 when he published a full-blown treatment of the pre-Advent judgment under his own name. Both the just and the evil, he penned that month, "will be judged before they are raised from the dead. The investigative judgment of the house, or church, of God will take place before the first resurrection; so will the judgement of the wicked take place during the 1000 years of Rev. 20, and they will be raised at the close of that period."

The terminology of "investigative judgment" had earlier that month found its first use in print in an article by Elon Everts. By 1857 the Sabbatarian Adventists had widely acccepted the teaching of a pre-Advent judgment.

The development of the doctrine of the pre-Advent judgment nicely illustrates how God leads the undertstanding of His followers across time. He is always guiding as His people seek a better grasp of His Word. His task is to provide that Word. Ours is to sutdy it prayfully as we seek to know God's will and ways ever more fully.

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The warfare which we are to wage is the "good fight of faith."(TFMB, 143).
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