Chapter 7—Further Bible Study Urged
Probably the restlessness on the part of some members concerning the time to begin the Sabbath, and the repeated instruction through the prophetic gift directing them to the Bible, led James White in 1855, to urge J. N. Andrews, a young minister residing in Paris, Maine, to undertake a careful investigation of the Scriptures to gain evidence from God’s Word as to when the Sabbath should begin. In the summer, after several weeks in a careful investigation of the Scriptures, he demonstrated from nine texts in the Old Testament and two texts in the New that the Sabbath began at sundown.CEESDAH 7.9
Andrews’ conclusions were read at the conference in Battle Creek, November, 1855, and, from the scriptural evidence set forth, those present accepted the responsibility of shifting from six o’clock to sundown as the time to begin the Sabbath. But the decision was not entirely unanimous. Joseph Bates, the older member of the pioneer group and the apostle of the Sabbath truth, held out. He was unwilling to surrender his well-established views. And Ellen White reasoned that, since they had kept the Sabbath this way for ten years, why should they change now? A rift developed.CEESDAH 7.10
However, at the close of the conference Ellen White was given a vision in which she was shown that the Sabbath began at sundown. Her conversation with the angel in this vision is enlightening:CEESDAH 7.11
“I saw that it is even so: ‘From even unto even, shall ye celebrate your Sabbath.’ Said the angel: ‘Take the word of God, read it, understand, and ye cannot err. Read carefully, and ye shall there find what even is, and when it is.’ I asked the angel if the frown of God had been upon His people for commencing the Sabbath as they had. I was directed back to the first rise of the Sabbath, and followed the people of God up to this time, but did not see that the Lord was displeased, or frowned upon them. I inquired why it had been thus, that at this late day we must change the time of commencing the Sabbath. Said the angel: ‘Ye shall understand, but not yet, not yet.’ Said the angel: ‘If light comes, and that light is set aside or rejected, then comes condemnation and the frown of God; but before the light comes, there is no sin, for there is no light for them to reject.’ I saw that it was in the minds of some that the Lord had shown that the Sabbath commenced at six o’clock, when I had only seen that it commenced at ‘even,’ and it was inferred that even was at six. I saw that the servants of God must draw together, press together.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:116.
Two points are paramount. First, the believers were to go to the Word of God for their guidance in doctrinal matters. Second, they were to press together in unity. In subsequent years James White used this experience to illustrate the place of the gift of prophecy in the church. The gift was not to run ahead of Bible study, but had its place in guarding the church and in confirming truth. The Bible was ever to be held paramount, its authority never subordinated to feelings or ecstatic exercises.CEESDAH 7.12
There is no record of Ellen White’s giving explicit support to, or placing her endorsement upon, these ecstatic experiences with unknown tongues, although she was an eyewitness to three of the four. She probably was silent as she watched with interest the developments in the instance of Brother Rhodes. Even the speaking in tongues by Brother Ralph failed to convince her. She was later shown that a person’s thinking and his feelings have a large influence on such experiences.CEESDAH 8.1
In tracing the events that led to the Bible-based position on the time to begin the Sabbath, we jumped five years beyond the 1850 vision that warned of dangers to come when ecstatic manifestations were relied on inordinately. Other visions followed that forcibly revealed that a spirit other than that of the Holy Ghost could in a large measure affect the feelings. In an 1851 vision she depicted the experience of certain persons who, unknown to them, were under the influence of “an unholy spirit,” and she declares that “the spirit moved strongly on the feelings, and these feelings, many of them, are yet cherished as sacred, as [indited by] the Holy Ghost.”—Letter 2, 1851.CEESDAH 8.2