A Response to the Video:
Seventh-day Adventism, the Spirit Behind the Church

by Bob Pickle

Answers to Questions Raised by:
Mark Martin, Sydney Cleveland
Dale Ratzlaff, The White Lie
. . . and Others

Discern Fact from Fiction

The Investigative Judgment and Shut Door, and Their Ramifications

#56: "Ellen G. White immediately put God's endorsement on this new explanation for the date October 22nd, 1844. 'The Lord shew me in vision more than one year ago that Brother Crosier had the true light of the cleansing of the sanctuary.' A Word to the Little Flock p. 12."—Dale Ratzlaff.

#56: She immediately put God's endorsement on their explanation. Actually, she put God's endorsement on Edson and Crosier's explanation before she heard that they had found an explanation, and even before they had had time to publish it.

Edson and Crosier's findings were printed in the February 7, 1846, issue of the Day-Star, published in Cincinnati. Their findings may have also appeared in an issue of the Canandaigua, New York, Day Dawn in March or April of 1845, though opinions vary on this (Lest We Forget, 3rd qtr., 1994, p. 5; "Day-Dawn" and "Crosier, Owen Russell Loomis," Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia).

However, in mid-February of 1845, Mrs. White had a vision at Exeter, Maine, during her first journey east, the same vision referred to under #50. This vision endorsed Edson and Crosier's ideas:

While in Exeter, Maine . . . . It was then I had a view of Jesus rising from His mediatorial throne and going to the Holiest as Bridegroom to receive His kingdom. They were all deeply interested in the view. They all said it was entirely new to them. . . . Previous to this I had no light on the coming of the Bridegroom, but had expected Him to [come to] this earth to deliver His people on the tenth day of the seventh month. I did not hear a lecture or a word in any way relating to the Bridegroom's going to the Holiest.—Manuscript Releases, vol. 5, pp. 97, 98.

There was no way she could have heard of Edson and Crosier's study at the time she had this vision.

Typically, someone else found a doctrine in the Bible, and then her visions endorsed it. In this case her visions endorsed the doctrine before she heard of it.

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