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Early Writings
nati, Ohio, and published the
Day-Star
, one of the early journals
proclaiming the second advent of Christ. It was to Enoch Jacobs that
Ellen Harmon in December, 1845, sent an account of her first vision,
hoping to stabilize him. She had observed that he was wavering in
his confidence in God’s leadership in the Advent experience. It was
in the
Day-Star
that the editor published Mrs. White’s first vision, in
the issue of January 24, 1846. In a special number of his journal, the
Day-Star Extra, February 7, 1846
, the memorable article concerning
the heavenly sanctuary and its cleansing, prepared by Hiram Edson,
Dr. Hahn, and O. R. L. Crozier, was published. It set forth the
scripture teaching relative to the ministry of Christ in the most holy
place of the heavenly sanctuary beginning October 22, 1844. In
this journal also on March 14, 1846, a second communication from
Ellen Harmon’s pen was published. (see
Early Writings, 32-35
.)
Reference in the paragraph under discussion is to later views held
by Mr. Jacobs and the spiritualistic delusions he espoused
.
Page 86: See appendix note for pages 43, 44
.
Page 89:
Thomas Paine
.—The writings of Thomas Paine were
well known and widely read in the United States in the 1840’s. His
book
Age of Reason
was a deistic work and detrimental to Christian
faith and practice. The book began with the words “I believe in one
God and no more.” Paine had no faith in Christ, and he was used
successfully by Satan in his attacks upon the church. As Mrs. White
indicated, if such a man as Paine could find entrance to heaven and
be highly honored there, any sinner, without a reformation of life
and without faith in Jesus Christ, could find admittance. She exposed
this fallacy in vigorous language and pointed out the irrationality of
spiritualism
.
Page 101:
Perfectionism
.—Some of the early Adventists, shortly
after the 1844 experience, lost their hold on God and drifted into
fanaticism. Ellen White met these extremists with a “thus saith the
Lord.” She rebuked those who taught a state of perfection in the
flesh and therefore could not sin. Of such Mrs. White later wrote:
“They held that those who are sanctified cannot sin. And this
naturally led to the belief that the affections and desires of the sanc-
tified ones were always right, and never in danger of leading them
into sin. In harmony with these sophistries, they were practising
the worst sins under the garb of sanctification, and through their