April 14 - Becoming Open-Door Adventists-2

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: "The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens." Rev. 3:7, RSV.

One of the most significant events in Seventh-dau Adventist history was in shift from shut-door Adventism to open door in the early 1850s.

Before we examine the new position, we need to summarize the various meanings they had read into the old one. By the late 1840s the shut-door phrase had at least three meanings in their minds: (1) that probation had closed by October 22, 1844, (2)  that prophecy had been fulfilled on that date, and (3) that their evangelistic mission after that time was restricted to those who had been Millerites.

Most discussions of the topic center on points 1 and 3, but the second was equally important. When James White referred to the Sabbatarians as the seventh-day shut-door people, he was refering to their two cardinal doctrines-the Sabbath and their understanding that prophecy had indeed been fulfilled in 1844 at the end of the 2300 days. They never changed their understanding of the second meaning.

But, as we noted earlier, the fulfillment of prophecy had obviously not been the Second Advent. Thus probation had not closed. As a result, they eventually realized their error on point 1 and gave up that interpretation of the shut door.

That conclusion led them to change on the third point. Beginning with Ellen White's vision in November 1848 regarding the Advent message going round the world like streams of light, the perception of an open door on mission to the world gradually dawned to the struggling believers. They began to see ever more clearly that they had an end-time message for the entire world, rather than merely to ex-Millerites.

As Ellen Whtie put it in March 1849, "I was shown that. . .the time for the commandments of God to shine out with all their importance. . .was when the door was opened in the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary, where the ark is." In 1844, according to this veiw, Jesus rose up and shut the door of the holy of the holy place, and no man can open it"(EW 42). And with that opening came insights on a new message on the Sabbath and related propetic topics that would eventually drive the Sabbatarians to the far corners of the earth.

In terms of mission, Adventism would never be the same. It faced open-door mission with a message tht the world needed to hear before the advent of Jesus in the clouds.