What About Date Setting?-3

April 8 - What About Date Setting?-3

 


Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. Matt. 25:19, RSV.

Yesterday we found Joseph Bates struggling mightily with the "long time" aspect of Jesus' sermon in Matthew 24 and 25. On the basis of the one spot of blood for a year principle he had determined that Jesus would return in October 1851. We also saw Ellen White challenging Bates. But she isn't finished with him. Let's listen in a bit more.

"I saw," she wrote in the Review of July 21, 1851, "that some were making everything bend to the time of this next fall-that is, making their calulations in reference to that time. I saw that this was wrong, for this reason: Instead of going to God daily to know their PRESENT duty, they took ahead, and make their calculations as though they knew the work would end this fall, without inquiring their duty of God daily."

The next month James cut loose on Bates, claiming that he had been against his time teaching from its inception a year earlier. Referring specifically to Jeseph's theory, White wrote that "some who have thus taught we esteem very highly, and love 'fervently' as brethren, and we feel that it becomes us to be slow to say anything to hurt their feelings; yet we cannot refrain from giving some reasons why we do not receive the time." He then launched into six reasons that he believed Bates was wrong.

The combined confrontation by the Whites apparently convinced Bates(who believed Ellen to be a prophet) that he had been wrong on the time issue. Soon he and most of those who had followed him dropped the emphasis. As a result, James could report in early September that the "seven years time" was a nonissue held on to the time expectation and were very "low and dark," confused, and distracted(Lt 8, 1851).

The "seven spots" crisis cured Bates of time setting. After that, although he would see the end as near, he never set a date for the Second Advent.

It's too bad that some of his spritual followers haven't gotten the point. The time-setting temptation, with its resulting excitement and eventual letdown, is stil with us. It is unfortunate that all too many Adventists are still more interested in blessing until we get our priorities reversed.

        

Lord, help us to focus today on "present duty."

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