Objection 60: For several years after the 1844 disappointment Seventh day Adventists believed that probation had closed for the world. Was God leading a movement that believed so un-Scriptural a teaching as that?
William Miller preached, and the Millerites believed, that the door of mercy was closed for those who had rejected the message that the Lord would return to the earth in 1844. This is popularly known as the “shut door” teaching. Yes, the Millerites, and many of those pioneer Adventists who would go on to found the Seventh-day Adventist Church, including Ellen White, believed the shut door teaching for a time after 1844.
But within a few years the teaching was abandoned. Hence, this is a parallel to the Millerite teaching that the Lord would return to earth in 1844, which we discussed in Objection 56. The same main point applies to both, namely, that since the SDA denomination was established in 1863, this was never an official teaching of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Here again, we are aided by comparison to the early Christian movement. Our Lord’s disciples, including Peter, thought that their message of salvation was only for the Jews. They did not think it proper even to sit down and eat with gentiles. Peter had to be given a divine vision from God in order to open the way for him to visit the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who was an early Christian believer.
The vision was of a most radical and challenging nature, commanding Peter to eat animals that were grossly impure and unclean under the laws given to Moses. Peter was shown, in the most dramatic way, that he was not to consider the gentiles unclean or unworthy of the gospel message of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: “For in as much, then, as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God?" Acts 11:17. “When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, ‘Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.’” Verse 18.
There is a parallel between the early Christian movement and the early SDA movement: visions were involved in both cases. Just as Peter was shown in vision that he was not to consider the gentiles unclean, Ellen White was shown that the door of mercy was still open:
For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold, in common with the advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position.--Selected Messages, book 1, page 63 (1883).
A well-established and almost universally believed tenet among the Jews was that salvation was only for the Jews. Only slowly did the Jewish believers in Christ come to sense the sublime truth that the gospel was to be preached to all men, even to the uttermost parts of the earth. Today, no Christian of any description denies that salvation is for the whole world, not just for Jewish believers. Why should it be considered a thing incredible that God also was leading the early Advent movement at the beginning, even despite the fact that they briefly held that probation for the world had closed? Is it any worse to believe that the door of mercy has closed on men than to believe that it never was opened to them?
If the apostolic church had failed to enlarge its vision and correct its narrow view, then might a real indictment be brought against the Christian church as the stronghold of un-Christian exclusivism. Likewise, if our spiritual ancestors of the 1840's had continued to hold that probation had closed for the world, then might a real indictment be brought against Seventh-day Adventists. But in both instances the Holy Spirit, whose task it is to lead God's children into all truth, soon led them to see the truth regarding the worldwide scope of the plan of salvation.
Far from being an indictment, it is a point in favor of Adventism that we are able to move on from error into greater truth. Too many cling to the teachings of their ancestors, to the teachings of the pioneers of their movement, rather than abandoning the error an moving into truth.