Benign Neglect of a Long-Standing Problem Leads to Crisis
Summarizing the experience of the church with the sanctuary doctrine
over the preceding 130 years Ford concludes that it is
not the recurrence of problems within the church over our sanctuary
teaching, but the failure to deal adequately with these problems [that]
is the strangest feature of any historical review of the subject. While
we have works which are exhaustive in treating objections regarding our
views on the Sabbath and the nature of man, there is no parallel in the
issue of the sanctuary. Instead, a silence confronts us.
According to many of our contemporary Adventist scholars, all our sanctuary
apologetic works of this century are both inadequate and inaccurate.
Commenting on this strange omission, in 1934 W. W. Prescott, a participant
in the hearings of Ballenger in 1905 and Fletcher in 1930, said:
I have waited all these years for someone to make an adequate answer to
Ballenger, Fletcher and others on their positions re. the sanctuary but
I have not yet seen or heard it.38
Some church leaders of that earlier time commented that E. E. Andross' A
More Excellent Ministry, the official response of the church to Ballenger,
contained more heresy than Ballenger's polemics it was intended to answer.
F. D. Nichol once told Ford that "a definitive work on the sanctuary is our
greatest need."39 The church, Ford says, has never dealt adequately and
fairly with the exegetical problems; it has always responded with diversionary
arguments that leave the problems themselves untouched. (This was as
true of the "answers" to Ford at Glacier View as it had been previously.)
In his Glacier View document Ford expresses concern that unless the
church faces up realistically to the problems inherent in the traditional
sanctuary doctrine a major crisis will arise:
One thing is sure--unless the church works in this area with promptness
and efficiency, the sanctuary doctrine as traditionally taught will
become an increasing source of embarrassment, and a cause of loss of
membership among both ministry and laity. With our increasing number of
graduate students proficient in the original languages of Scripture and
the tools of grammatico-historical exegesis, awareness of the problems
under consideration is inevitably going to spread and multiply.40
In 1942 M. L. Andreasen, a Seminary professor and at the time dean of
Adventist theologians, expressed similar concern in a letter addressed to J.
L. McElhaney, president of the General Conference, and W. H. Branson, a vice
president:
To the best of my knowledge and belief, there has been no official or
authorized study since [Fletcher and Conrade left the church over the
sanctuary question]. We shall be unprepared when another crisis occurs.
I doubt that we fully appreciate how much these heresies have undermined
the faith of the ministry in our doctrine of the sanctuary. If my experience
as a teacher in the Seminary may be taken as a criterion, I
would say that a large number of our ministers have serious doubt as to
the correctness of the views we hold on certain phases of the sanctuary.
They believe, in a general way, that we are correct, but they are as
fully assured that Ballenger's views [nearly forty years ago] have never
been fully met and that we cannot meet them. . . . This is not a wholesome
situation. If the subject is as vital as we have thought and
taught it to be, it is not of secondary importance. Today, in the minds
of a considerable part of the ministry, as far as my experience in the
Seminary is concerned, it has little vital bearing, either in their
lives or theology.
I dread to see the day when our enemies will make capital of our weakness.
I dread still more to see the day when our ministry will begin to
raise questions.41
On the last page of The Reasons for My Faith, published two years after
he left the church in 1930, W. W. Fletcher had likewise warned against continuing
obscurantism and neglect:
Seventh-day Adventists are in danger to-day of holding on blindly to a
misinterpretation of prophecy, because they feel that so much of their
past experience in the things of God must stand or fall with it. In
this we have received our impressions from Sister White and the pioneers,
a relic of similar impressions that led them to persist in a
mistaken position some eighty years ago. Let us beware of reaping the
results of their error, and passing them on to perplex the minds of our
children, and to make faith difficult for them.42
As long ago as 1915 W. W. Prescott wrote to W. C. White lamenting that
no special effort was being made to correct errors in her books he had been
calling to White's attention for six or eight years, neglect by which we were
"betraying our trust and deceiving ministers and people. . . . I think how-
ever that we are drifting toward a crisis which will come sooner or later and
perhaps sooner. A very strong feeling of reaction has already set in."43
To these expressions of concern over several decades Ford adds his own:
At the 1919 Bible conference church leaders, . . . while loyal to Ellen
G. White, . . . stressed that a crisis would come if we did not inform
our people on the true nature of her inspiration. That crisis now
[1980] confronts us. In every discipline our scholars feel hamstrung
lest their expressions of scholarly conclusions should seem to contradict
anything in Ellen G. White. This is a deplorable situation, and
the church will make little progress until the situation is remedied.44
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