Pick the reply a Seventh-day Adventist would make, from Ellen White and 1844 to the Sabbath and the thousand years, and see how we answer each one from the Bible.
We state our position first. Under it are the replies a well-read Seventh-day Adventist would make, put as strongly as we can put them. Choose one to see our answer from the Bible, then the next reply that person might make. Every answer links to the fuller case, and every exchange has its own link you can share.
Adventists are our nearest neighbours: we agree that the dead sleep, that the wicked are destroyed, that Christ will return visibly, that believers are baptised by immersion, and that Daniel and Revelation are history written in advance. We differ where a later prophet and the date 1844 are added to Scripture, and on the Sabbath and the thousand years.
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
Our positionScripture is complete and is its own interpreter. A prophet whose words carry divine authority is either adding to the Bible or is not a prophet. “Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:6).
Ellen White is a lesser light pointing to the greater light, the Bible. She adds nothing to it.
Then why must a new member affirm her? Baptismal vow 8 asks candidates to accept that ‘the gift of prophecy is one of the identifying marks of the remnant church’. A lesser light that is a condition of membership is not lesser. And your own Biblical Research Institute says her inspiration is not lower in quality or degree than Scripture’s. Inspired writing on the level of Scripture, binding on the church, is an addition to God’s words, whatever it is called. “Add thou not unto his words” (Proverbs 30:6).
Read the full case: The written word now does what the signs did
Revelation 12:17 says the remnant has ‘the testimony of Jesus Christ’, and 19:10 says that is ‘the spirit of prophecy’. That is Ellen White.
Revelation 19:10 says who has the testimony of Jesus: the angel tells John, “I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 19:10). It belongs to all John’s brethren, the faithful who hold to Jesus’ witness. Nothing in the verse points to one woman in nineteenth-century America. A church that reads itself into Revelation 12:17 and its founder into 19:10 is writing its own credentials.
Read the full case: Paul said they would ceaseIf they reply: Where she used other writers, God guided her choices
Her writings were inspired. Where she used other writers, God guided her choices.
Your church commissioned Fred Veltman to study The Desire of Ages. He found ‘31.4 percent of the DA text is dependent to some extent on literary sources’, and that ‘Ellen White and others speaking on her behalf did not admit to and even denied literary dependency’ (Ministry, December 1990). Prophets of God did not present other men’s words as visions. Jeremiah heard God say the opposite: “I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour” (Jeremiah 23:30).
She was a true prophet. Her visions were tested and proved.
Test the first one. After the disappointment of 22 October 1844, she held that ‘the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world’. The Ellen G. White Estate concedes she held that view ‘for a short period’. She later wrote, ‘I am still a believer in the shut-door theory, but not in the sense in which we at first employed the term.’ A prophet does not need her meaning changed after the event. “If the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22).
Read the full case: God proves his word by prophecyIf they reply: Daniel 8:14: 2,300 years to 1844, then the sanctuary is cleansed
Our positionChrist entered the very presence of God at his ascension, within the veil, having finished the work of atonement. Nothing new began in heaven in 1844. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12).
Daniel 8:14: 2,300 days are 2,300 years, from 457 BC to 1844. Then the sanctuary is cleansed.
William Miller made that same sum and preached that Christ would come in 1843–44. He took the sanctuary to be the earth. When Christ did not come on 22 October 1844, Hiram Edson decided the next morning that the sanctuary was in heaven and the event had happened there, unseen. That is the move the Witnesses later made with 1914: a failed visible event becomes an invisible one. And Daniel’s sanctuary is one that could be “trodden under foot” (Daniel 8:13). No one treads down heaven.
Read the full case: Daniel 8:14 in our Daniel walkthrough: the holy land vindicated
In 1844 Christ moved from the holy place to the most holy place, to begin the investigative judgment.
Hebrews says Jesus entered the most holy place at his ascension. Our hope “entereth into that within the veil; Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus” (Hebrews 6:19–20). “Within the veil” is the most holy place. He entered “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24), and “after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). He was in the presence of God eighteen centuries before 1844.
Read the full case: Our representative, and our way inIf they reply: God must review the records before Christ comes
God must review the records before the advent, so the universe can see his judgments are fair.
Scripture places the judgment at Christ’s coming, not before: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory … before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them” (Matthew 25:31–32). And God needs no inquiry to know his own: “The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). An unseen review, begun on a date fixed to rescue a failed prediction, leaves believers unsure whether their names have yet passed. John wrote so that we might know: “we have an advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1).
Read the full case: Christ will judge at his appearingIf they reply: Ellen White is a lesser light pointing to the Bible
Our positionBelievers are under Christ, not the Law of Moses, and the Sabbath was the Law’s sign between God and Israel. “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). Robert Roberts: Christ ‘never enjoined the observance of the Sabbath’, and enforcing it on his friends today is ‘in direct violation of Christ’s teaching’ (The Law of Moses, chapter 6).
The Ten Commandments are God’s eternal law, written in stone. The fourth is one of them.
God gave the Sabbath to Israel as their sign: “It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever” (Exodus 31:17). Paul calls the covenant engraved in stone “the ministration of death”, and says it “is done away” (2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:11). Believers “are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). Every other commandment of the ten is repeated in the New Testament as a command to Christians. The Sabbath never is.
Read the full case: Robert Roberts, The Law of Moses, chapter 6
Colossians 2:16 is about the ceremonial sabbaths, the yearly feasts, not the weekly Sabbath.
Paul lists all three: “an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days” (Colossians 2:16), yearly, monthly and weekly, the three the Old Testament names together: “in the sabbaths, in the new moons, and on the set feasts” (1 Chronicles 23:31). The yearly feasts are already “an holyday”; “sabbath days” is the weekly Sabbath. And he says what they are: “a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17).
Romans 14:5 is about fast days, not the Sabbath.
Paul doesn’t say fast days. He says “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). To the Galatians, who were turning back to the Law, he wrote: “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you” (Galatians 4:10–11).
Read the full case: ‘At liberty on all questions of eating and drinking’, in the Commandments of ChristIf they reply: Sunday worship came from Rome, and will be the mark of the beast
Jesus kept the Sabbath, ‘as his custom was’ (Luke 4:16). We follow him.
Jesus was “made under the law” (Galatians 4:4) and kept all of it: Passover, the temple, the sacrifices. No Adventist keeps those. After his resurrection the church gathered “upon the first day of the week … to break bread” (Acts 20:7), and Paul told them to set aside their gifts “upon the first day of the week” (1 Corinthians 16:2). The rest that remains is Christ himself: “he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works” (Hebrews 4:10).
Read the full case: How do we remember him?If they reply: Sunday worship came from Rome, and will be the mark of the beast
Abraham kept the Sabbath before the Law. He ‘kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws’ (Genesis 26:5). So it binds all believers, not just Israel.
Genesis never records Abraham keeping a Sabbath. Whatever “my laws” were (Genesis 26:5), they were not the Law of Moses: Abraham married his father’s daughter (Genesis 20:12), which that Law forbids (Leviticus 18:9). And the argument proves too much. Abraham was circumcised and offered sacrifices before the Law, yet Paul told Gentiles, “if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing” (Galatians 5:2). Roberts: ‘Any contention based on pre-Mosaic practice must apply also to the sacrifice of animals.’ Christ ended both: the Sabbath was a shadow, and “the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17).
Read the full case: Robert Roberts, The Law of Moses, chapter 6
The Sabbath goes back to creation: God ‘blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it’ (Genesis 2:3). And Jesus said ‘The sabbath was made for man’ (Mark 2:27), not only for Jews.
We agree God rested on the seventh day, and Roberts held that the Sabbath was known before Sinai. But Genesis gives Adam no command, and God made the Sabbath the sign of his covenant with one nation: “it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations” (Exodus 31:13). Jesus said it was made for man when his disciples were accused of breaking it, to show that “the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:28). God’s rest is entered by faith: “he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works” (Hebrews 4:10).
Read the full case: Robert Roberts, The Law of Moses, chapter 6If they reply: Colossians 2:16 means the yearly feasts, not the weekly Sabbath
Sunday worship was brought in by Rome. When Sunday laws come, keeping Sunday will be the mark of the beast.
We agree Rome made Sunday a Sabbath; we don’t keep it as one either. But Ellen White herself wrote, ‘No one has yet received the mark of the beast’, and ‘There are true Christians in every church’ (Evangelism, 234–235). Making a day of the week the line between the saved and the lost turns the Law into the way of salvation. Paul’s warning is stark: “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4).
Read the full case: Saved by grace: a gift, not a wageIf they reply: We are the remnant who ‘keep the commandments of God’
Our positionChrist will reign with his saints on the earth for the thousand years. “And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10).
During the thousand years the saints are in heaven and the earth lies desolate: ‘without form, and void’ (Jeremiah 4:23).
The saints themselves say “we shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10). Daniel says the kingdom “under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints” (Daniel 7:27). At the end of the thousand years the nations go “up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city” (Revelation 20:9): the saints are on earth. Jeremiah 4 is Judah laid waste by Babylon: “the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way … to make thy land desolate” (Jeremiah 4:7).
Jesus promised, ‘I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there ye may be also’ (John 14:2–3).
Read the middle of the verse: “I will come again, and receive you unto myself” (John 14:3). He comes to them. Where he will be is the earth: “his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives” (Zechariah 14:4), and God will give him “the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). The meek “shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
Read the full case: Don’t Christians go to heaven when they die?If they reply: We are the remnant who ‘keep the commandments of God’
Our positionChrist’s commandments are the law of his people, not the Law of Moses. “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
God’s health laws still stand. Leviticus 11 tells us which animals are unclean.
Jesus declared otherwise, “purging all meats” (Mark 7:19). Peter was told, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:15). Paul: “there is nothing unclean of itself” (Romans 14:14), and he warned against those “commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3). Roberts put it plainly: pork ‘was forbidden to the Jews, but the law that forbade it has been done away’ (The Law of Moses, chapter 29). Health advice may be wise. A baptismal vow makes it law.
Read the full case: Robert Roberts, The Law of Moses, chapter 29If they reply: We are the remnant who ‘keep the commandments of God’
We are the remnant of Revelation 12:17, who ‘keep the commandments of God’, the Sabbath included.
Whose commandments? Jesus: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). John says what they are: “This is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another” (1 John 3:23). A remnant defined by the seventh day and the food laws is the Galatian error again. And a vow that names one denomination the remnant church asks a candidate to be baptised into an organisation, not only into Christ.
Read the full case: Keeping his sayings: the commandments of ChristIf they reply: Ellen White is a lesser light pointing to the Bible
Is your reply not here? Ask us. We read every message and answer from Scripture.
