For 22 years, Dudley Melvin Canright defended the message, the movement, and the beliefs of the Advent people. Evangelist, debator, and fierce opponent of the Trinity doctrine, Canright had been the first to state that Christ “was begotten of the Father’s own substance,” an expression later repeated by EJ Waggoner and then Ellen White.
But in 1887, just one year before the 1888 Minneapolis General Conference, after years of depression and confession, he left the Adventist communion to write his book, “Seventh-Day Adventism Renounced,” which was published 1889. In it he charged SDAs with rejecting the Trinity and therefore the divinity of Christ.
Canright’s critical book did not go unnoticed. Adventist authors objected. “We do not deny the divinity of Christ!” “Let us explain just what we understand concerning the Trinity.” So the year following Canright’s publication, the October 15, 1890 issue of the Bible Echo and Signs of the Times featured an article entitled, The Trinity by Charles Boyd.
“6. After whose form was Christ created?”
Created? Littlejohn had said that Adventists do not believe Christ was created, but rather begotten of the Father in the remote ages of eternity. But he was “in the form of God,” “the express image of his Person.”
“8. What words were addressed to Christ at the beginning of his existence?”
Boyd wrote that Christ has a beginning of his existence, the day when the Father had begotten him.
The following year, TR Williamson wrote in the October 18 issue of the Review and Herald an article, “The Holy Spirit—Is It a Person?” Williamson concluded, after “examining every passage in Scripture” that the Holy Spirit could not be a separate person, in the sense that God the Father and the Son of God were. Rather he understood it to be an influence.
Believers are never baptized with a person, but with water, fire, and the Spirit. The Son has the name Jesus; the Father has the name Jehovah; but the Spirit is always just called the Spirit. His conclusion? The Holy Spirit is the presence of Jehovah the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father’s glorious Son.
Then in December, William Covert wrote an article…
“Union of the Believer with Christ” in which he noted “a triple union, or Christian trinity.” “In this union Christ forms the link which unites the believer to the Father.”
“Here is seen a trinity which is the blending together in unity the Father, the Son, and man.”
Thus when Adventist editors discovered the article written by Samuel Spear, pastor of the South Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, NY in an 1889 issue of The New York Independent called “The Subordination of Christ”, they gladly reprinted it in the Signs of the Times.
In February, 1892 they published it again under the title, The Bible Doctrine of the Trinity because it was expressed in “the terms used in the Bible, and therefore avoids all philosophical discussion and foolish speculation.”
Here was a Trinitarian pastor challenging the philosophical language of the creeds that go beyond Scripture. Spear begins with John 17:3 and 1 Corinthians 8:6 noting that the Father is “the only true God” “the one God…of whom are all things.” Yet, Jesus Christ is “truly divine and truly God in the most absolute sense.” “Nevertheless…distinct from and subordinate to God the Father. For example, Paul writes “Christ is God’s” “and the head of Christ is God” and at the end “then shall the Son [Christ] also Himself be subject unto Him.” Furthermore, it was “God” who “raised Him [Christ] from the dead.”
There was nothing in the Spear article that Adventists found objectionable…except one statement. An ellipsis replaced his origin wording: “or triune God, which has so long been the faith of the Christian Church.” Adventists believed in two distinct and separate persons: God and His Son, not an amalgamated, consubstantial fusion of persons.
The same year, Ellen white weighed in on the discussion. She was happy to accept the truth as it is in Jesus. She wrote, “The holy Spirit is the comforter, as the personal presence of Christ to the soul.” “This is the thing most essential to us.” RH Nov 29, 1892. And, like Spear, she ended with John 17:3. “For this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”
After traveling with Jones and Waggoner for two years sharing the 1888 message across the country, Ellen White was sent to Australia and Waggoner to England. It was not her idea.
“our brethren in America desired me to visit this field...I felt no inclination to go and had no light that it was my duty. The journey was a dread to me. I desired to remain at home and complete my work on the life of Christ” {2MR 150.2}
The following year, she traveled to New Zealand for some evangelistic meetings. But the people there had read Canright’s book. She wrote about the experience in the December 5, 1893 Review and Herald. It was an appeal for support and a report on the trials they were facing.
A school teacher had prevented them from renting a hall for evangelistic meetings by spreading word that the Adventists did not believe, as Canright claimed, in the divinity of Christ.
But, as Ellen explained: “he was not left in ignorance of what Adventists believe. He was informed that there is not a people on earth who hold more firmly to the truth of Christ's pre-existence
than do Seventh-day Adventists.”
NO OTHER PEOPLE ON EARTH? How could that be? To Ellen, belief in Christ’s pre-existence was belief in his divinity.
“We are obliged to go over the very same ground in these fields that we had to go over in the beginning of the work in America.”
“Mrs. W” had encountered this 20 years before. James wrote about it in his 1871 editorial.
“We invite all to compare the testimonies of the Holy Spirit through Mrs. W., with the word of God. And in this we do not invite you to compare them with your creed…The trinitarian may compare them with his creed, and because they do not agree with it, condemn them.” RH 1871 June 6 p. 204
James, “in company with Mrs. W,” were traveling on “the Michigan Central Railroad” There they met a return missionary from China. “But after catechizing us upon the trinity, and finding that we were not sound upon the subject of his triune God, he became earnest in denouncing Unitarianism, which takes from Christ his divinity, and leaves him but a man. Here, as far as our views were concerned, he was combating a man of straw. We do not deny the divinity of Christ. We delight in giving full credit to all those strong expressions of Scripture which exalt the Son of God. We believe him to be the divine person addressed by Jehovah in the words, “Let us make man.”
The modern version of the Trinity goes beyond scripture to hypothesize an amalgamated coequal three person being. It was this that Spear had rejected. This was exactly what Adventists believed and taught during the lifetime of Ellen White. And Spear confirmed their position. This is why they chose to feature his paper in their publications.
While Ellen White was assembling material for the Desire of Ages in Australia, Uriah Smith, then editor of the Review and Herald, pursued his own work, “Looking Unto Jesus.” In it he repeated the views of Waggoner, Jones, Underwood, Prescott, Cottrell, and James White.
“God alone is without beginning. At the earliest epoch when a beginning could be,—a period so remote that to finite minds it is essentially eternity, —appeared the Word.” “This uncreated Word was the Being, who, in the fullness of time, was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
“His beginning was not like that of any other being in the universe. It is set forth in the mysterious expressions, ‘his [God's] only begotten Son’ (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9), ‘the only begotten of the Father’ (John 1:14), [who] ‘proceeded forth and came from God.’ John 8:42.”
Smith clearly described the true and literal Son of God, begotten from the Father in the deep recesses of eternity. The assertion is frequently made that Smith’s belief in a literally begotten Son of God was merely his own personal view, was not shared by the majority of Adventists at that time, and particularly was at odds with Ellen White. However, Ellen White not only failed to reprove him of his alleged “error” but strongly endorsed the truths he had previously presented. In 1899, the year following his latest publication, she wrote:
“Especially should the book Daniel and the Revelation be brought before people as the very book for this time. This book contains the message which all need to read and understand.” Manuscript Releases Volume one, No. 26. page 60, MS 174 1899
“I speak of this book because it is a means of educating those who need to understand the truth of the Word.” Page 63
Two years later her endorsement intensified.
“Everything that can be done should be done to circulate Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation. I know of no other book that can take the place of this one. It is God’s helping hand.” (Ellen G. White, Manuscript Releases Volume 21 No. 1595, 1901)
And four years after that,.
“ ‘Patriarchs and Prophets,’ ‘Daniel and the Revelation,’ and ‘Great Controversy’ are needed now as never before.” Ellen G. White, Review and Herald February 16, 1905.
Ellen White then commissioned Stephen Haskell to produce a simplified version of Smith’s monumental works which appeared in 1901 and 1905. She did not instruct him to change any of its theology, for he, too, voiced the same understanding of the Father and His divinely begotten Son.
“Back in the ages, which finite mind cannot fathom, the Father and Son were alone in the universe. Christ was the first begotten of the Father, and to Him Jehovah made known the divine plan of Creation.” “It was then, in those early councils, that Christ’s heart of love was touched and the only begotten Son pledged His life to redeem man, should he yield and fall. Father and Son, surrounded by impenetrable glory, clasped hands. It was in appreciation of this offer, that upon Christ was bestowed creative power, and the everlasting covenant was made; and henceforth Father and Son, with one mind, worked together to complete the work of creation.” The Story of the Seer of Patmos, 1905 p. 94
In the mean time a new idea about God and His Spirit was introduced by one of the most respected Adventists of all, John Harvey Kellogg. Physician, Author, Director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the first of many more Adventist health institutions, hospitals, and medical centers around the world, Kellogg was a major force within the Advent Movement. In 1879 he married 26 year old Ella Ervilla Eaton, a Seventh-day Baptist who was attending her church’s Alfred University in New York and from which she graduated in 1885.
It was that year she invited her Pastor, teacher, and editor of The Sabbath Recorder, Abram Herbert Lewis to her home. [5BIO p. 281] Lewis admitted that in his younger years he had been “under [a spiritualist physician’s] influence” and “became a medium after the rude manner of those times.” Because of this, he confessed, “my faith in the Bible and in orthodox Christianity was much shaken.” Thus “his standpoint on some questions was somewhat changed.”
Kellogg’s exposure to Lewis through his wife was also changing. Ellen White, far away in Australia, wrote to John Harvey, “Dr. Kellogg, it is not safe for us to employ as instructors in our institutions those who are not believers in the present truth. They advance ideas and theories that take hold of the mind with a bewitching power...” Letter 18, 1892. She already had concerns shortly after his marriage.
“Before my husband's death (in 1881), Dr. Kellogg came to my room to tell me that he had great light.” “He sat down and told me what it was. I said, ‘Those theories are wrong. I have met them before.’” 5MR p. 278.4
The Lewis-Kellogg connection became even more evident a few years later when John Harvey first presented his now famous patheistic views… …at the 1897 Ministerial institute at Lincoln, Nebraska. The General Conference Daily Bulletin printed his talk, “God In Man” in its February 19 issue. “God is in us and in everything,” he taught. Again from Down Under came a warning,
“You must never, never seek to lift one pin, remove one landmark of truth, that the Lord has given to His people as truth.” Letter 126, 1898. And it is the personal God, the Father who has “sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father.” Gal 4:6. The Spirit of Jesus is “the life of His life” (RH Jan 5, 1911), “the power, the very life of God” (COl p. 38 1900), “the very life of Christ” (RH June 13, 1899). To Ellen, the Spirit of God was the Spirit of a real person, the Father, who had a form like Jesus had. (Erly Writings p. 54 1882).
At about the same time in 1896, a new Adventist, converted from the Church of England, arrived in Australia to teach at the Avondale school, Herbert Camden Lacey. 50 years later in a letter to LeRoy Froom, Lacey recalled those early days.
“I do recall...my mother’s remarking on the strange language used by our ministers in speaking of the Holy Ghost as ‘it’ and ‘its’ as though they thought of the Holy Spirit as an influence, instead of as a Person. That seemed very strange to her, and in a measure to me also.”
I was really a Trinitarian at heart. And I went through Healsdburg College, and Battle Creek College, with a dim sort of a feeling that there was something wrong about our teaching on the Ministry and Personality of the Holy Ghost. ...And then in the Testimonies I noticed that, practically everywhere the same language was used,– ‘Holy Spirit’ ‘it’ ‘its’ etc, as though the ‘Spirit of God’ were an influence, instead of a Person, the Third Person of the Godhead."
Actually, Ellen White had been and would continue to use these terms for the next 15 years.
“the Holy Spirit, sent from God to do its office work.” Review & Herald Oct 13, 1904
“The God of heaven uses His Spirit as it pleases Him; and human minds, human judgment, and human methods can no more set boundaries to its working, or prescribe the channel through which it shall operate...” Signs of the Times March 8, 1910
“The Spirit”...“the highest influence in the universe.” Christ's Oblect Lessons p. 328 1900.
“When John received [the revelation of Christ], He was worked by the Holy Spirit for Christ Himself came from heaven and told him what to write." Manuscript 139, Oct. 23, 1903, also in 18MR 37.1
“Christ declared that the divine influence of His Spirit was to be with His followers unto the end.” Acts of the Apostles p. 49 1911.
Lacey, in his 1945 letter to LeRoy Froom, continued,
“During my college course at Battle Creek, in March 1894, I attended as a delegate from the College, the second international convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, held at Detroit Michigan. Well now, one thing I noticed vividly; the emphasis placed by all these teachers upon the ministry of the ‘Holy Ghost’ in our lives as God’s servants and missionaries, a ministry as of a real, definite, divine person, always with us, and in us,.. On the voyage back to Australia during September 1895, I made that theme, the Personality and Work of the Holy Ghost, a special subject of Bible Study. And I became convinced for myself!
So when I was asked to conduct a series of Bible Studies at the 9:00 o’clock hour in a convention in Cooranbong in 1896, I presented that theme very much to the interest (I well remember!) of Sr Marian Davis, who took copious notes, and also to that of Elder A.G. Daniells. When the “Desire of Ages” came out in 1898, Brother Daniells himself called my attention to the expression found on page 671, where the Spirit is spoken of as ‘the third person of the Godhead’... Later, in ‘Testimonies for the Church, Series B, No 7’ on page 63 (Nov 1905) I found this: “THERE ARE THREE LIVING PERSONS IN THE HEAVENLY TRIO.” Actually, the words penned by Ellen White were “OF the heavenly trio”.
But while Lacey remained deeply affected by the Sunday-keeping speakers who spoke of the “Holy Ghost as a person,” he was not further guided by Sr. White to correctly identify that Person. In Desire of Ages page 671 she wrote, “Sin could be resisted and overcome only through the mighty agency of the Third Person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power.”
Who only can give us power to resist and overcome sin? Read the rest of the paragraph. “Christ has given His Spirit as a divine power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil,”| |
Only Jesus, the word, was made flesh and dwelt among us;
Only Jesus was touched by the feelings of our infirmities;
Only Jesus was acquainted with grief and carried our sorrows;
Only Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are;
Only Jesus learned obedience by the things which he suffered;
Only Jesus was both the Son of God and the Son of man.
|
“There is but one power that can break the hold of evil from the hearts of men, and that is the power of God in Jesus Christ. Only through the blood of the Crucified One is there cleansing from sin. His grace alone can enable us to resist and subdue the tendencies of our fallen nature.” Testimonies vol. 8 p. 291 1903
“There is only one power that can turn the sinner from sin to holiness—the power of Christ. Our Redeemer is the only one who can take away sin.” Review & Herald June 2, 1903
“There is no comforter like Christ, so tender and so true. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. His Spirit speaks to the heart.” “The influence of the Holy Spirit is the life of Christ in the soul.” Review & Herald Oct 26, 1897.
“Christ has given His life—to bring all believers into an inward, living union with Himself and with the Father,” 13MR p. 328 Letter 96, 1900
The power of God his Father was in Jesus, the third person of the Godhead, God manifest in the flesh. The prince of this world came and had nothing in Jesus (John 14:30) because the power of God was in him. Jesus said, “The Father... dwelleth in me, He doeth the works” (John 14:10).
In the year 1900, Ellen White returned from Australia back to the United States. A crisis was approaching and Ellen soon gave the warning.
“The presses in the Lord's institution have been printing the soul-destroying theories of Romanism and other mysteries of iniquity. The office must be purged of this objectionable matter. ...I have been almost afraid to open the Review, fearing to see that God has cleansed the publishing house by fire. (8T p. 91 November 1901)
Three months later disaster struck. Not the publishing house, but the Battle Creek Sanitarium burned to the ground on February 18, 1902. Kellogg quickly published an announcement that the four remaining staff buildings were being converted to a makeshift sanitarium and that services would continue while plans for a new, larger, fire-proof facility were moving forward.
To finance his new project, Kellogg immediately began writing a new book called, The Living Temple.
The book incorporated many threads of Kellogg’s new ideas of an all pervasive God force that was in the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breath, sunlight, earth, and sky. But just as it was about to be printed by the Review and Herald, fire struck again on the night of December 30, 1902. This time it was the 40,000 square foot Publishing House in Battle Creek. Within an hour it, too, was reduced to ashes. Ellen White responded,
“Already there are coming in among our people spiritualistic teachings that will undermine the faith of those who give heed to them. The theory that God is an essence pervading all nature is one of Satan's most subtle devices. It misrepresents God and is a dishonor to His greatness and majesty.” “The spiritualistic theories regarding the personality of God, followed to their logical conclusion, sweep away the whole Christian economy.”
“It introduces that which is nought but speculation in regard to the personality of God and where His presence is.”
“It is represented to me that the writer of this book is on a false track. He has lost sight of the distinguishing truths for this time.” “We need not the mysticism that is in this book.” Testimonies vol. 8 p. 291 1903.
However, Kellogg forged ahead anyway. October 29, 1903 General Conference president A.G. Danielle reported to W.C. White regarding The Living Temple.
“He had come to believe in the trinity, ...he now believed in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.”
This was no cause for celebration. Kellogg’s conversion to embracing a Triune God was not approved by Ellen White. She instead saw him “under the control of Satan.”
It was time to remind the church of its beginnings. To the delegates of the 1905 General Conference she cautioned not to be “…deceived by these sophistries. They lead to making God a nonentity and Christ a nonentity.” MS 70, 1905
As an example, she cited the Triune formula found in the popular book, The Higher Christian Life, by William Edwin Boardman who traveled with Dwight L. Moody and attended the Pentecostal Keswick Conventions in the UK.
On page 105 Boardman wrote, “The Father is all…
The Son is all…
The Spirit is all…”
In true trinitarian fashion, Boardman made each of the three persons co-equal, each IS all the fullness of the Godhead. But Ellen White corrected this in her handwritten revision of 1906.
The Father is all the fullness of the Godhead invisible to mortal earthly sight… The Son is all the fullness of the Godhead manifested. He is the express image of His Father’s person.
In revising the statements of the Father and Son, she agreed with Boardman that both are all the fullness of the Godhead. However, she emphasized the reality of the Father’s person and the begotten Son who is lovingly given by the Father, as evidence of his personality. But when she comes to the Spirit. She makes a significant change in Boardman’s version.
“The Spirit, the Comforter whom Christ promised to send after he ascended to heaven is Christ.”
Well, that was her initial thought, as you can see in the original handwritten manuscript at right, but not exactly following Boardman’s pattern. So she corrected it and continued.
“is the Spirit IN all the fullness of the Godhead making manifest to all who receive him and believe in Him.”
Instead of Boardman’s Spirit which is, equally together with the Father and Son, all the fulness of the Godhead, Ellen places the Spirit IN all the fullness of the Father and the Son.
Even in 1906 she continued to support the same position of Waggoner, Uriah Smith, and Scripture, that the Spirit of God resides in God, it is His Spirit (1Cor 2:11) and He gives it to His Son without measure (John 3:34). He who has the Spirit of God has the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9) and if a man loves Me, Jesus said, My Father will love him, and We will come and make our abode with him (John 14:23).
Ellen White foresaw the consequences of these new theories, new ideas that were foreign to the Adventist faith for the past 50 years.
“Let none seek to tear away the foundations of our faith—the foundations that were laid at the beginning of our work by prayerful study of the word and by revelation. Upon these foundations we have been building for the last fifty years.” Testimonies for the Church vol. 8, p. 297, 1904.
“Not one pin is to be removed from that which the Lord has established... Where shall we find safety unless it be in the truths that the Lord has been giving for the past fifty years?” Review and Herald, May 5, 1905
“The past fifty years have not dimmed one jot or principle of our faith …Not a word is changed or denied,” Ellen White wrote in Letter 326, Dec. 4, 1905; The Upward Look p. 352.4.
But change was one the way. 24 year old Milian Lauritz Andreasen encountered another statement in The Desire of Ages:
“In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived.” (DA p. 530).
40 years later Andreason finally reported, that he was shocked when he first read it, so shocked he made a trip to California in 1909 to see Ellen White in person, convinced that she could not have possibly written these words herself. (chapel address at Loma Linda, California, November 30, 1948, Adventist Heritage Center, Andrews University, retold at the Ohio Camp Meeting 1955)
“I had brought with me all her many statements regarding theology. Because as I knew Sister White could have never written Desire of Ages with that beautiful language, because she didn’t have the education.
“I had brought with me five statements. …And as I compared them, reading now in the original, … Every one of those statements I found written by her own hand as they were printed. That was an astonishment to me. I wanted to see how those statements were written originally before they were printed. I well remember when we first discovered in Desire of Ages that tremendous statement ‘In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, and underived.’ ”
But his initial impression was correct because actually the expression was not original with Ellen White. It was borrowed and derived from a John Cumming, D.D., F.R.S.E. of London in his Sabbath Evening Readings on the New Testament - St. John published by the John P. Jewett Co. of Cleveland, OH in 1856.
The Bibliography of Ellen G. White's Private and Office Libraries lists Cumming’s Sabbath Evening Readings on the New Testament as one of the Office library books from which she would have had opportunity to read. There on page 5 were those very words.
“ ‘In him was life,’—that is, original, unborrowed, underived. In us there is a streamlet from the Fountain of Life; in him was the Fountain of Life. Our life is something we receive, something that the Giver takes back again to himself,—over which we have no control, and for which we must give God the account and the praise. But in Jesus was life underived, unborrowed;”
This is not an indictment of plagiarism to discredit the inspiration of Ellen White. Yet, we should at least recognize the true origins of this highly esteemed statement. Just as she used only certain words from William Boardman’s book to correct Kellogg’s spiritualistic theory, Ellen was instructed what to borrow and what not to copy.
When Cumming revealed his trinitarian convictions a few pages later, she did not drink of this wine. On page 75, he declares, “we believe in the Trinity—not a Tri-theism, but a Tri-unity.” Interestingly, he skips verse 26 in his commentary here on John 5, which clearly explains the true relationship between the Father and Son, who inherits all things, even the immortal, original, unborrowed, underived life of the Father who has “life in Himself.”
Then, in 1905, Mrs. White borrowed even more from Cumming.
“In Jesus is our life derived. In Him is life, that is original, unborrowed, underived life. In us there is a streamlet from the fountain of life. In Him is the fountain of life. Our life is something that we receive, something that the Giver takes back again to Himself.” Letter 309 in Medical Ministry p. 7.
But this wasn’t the first time she had used this phrase. It was actually in 1897.
“In Him was life, original, unborrowed, underived. This life is not inherent in man. He can possess it only through Christ. He cannot earn it; it is given him as a free gift if he will believe in Christ as His personal Saviour. Signs of the Times April 8, 1897; reprinted Feb 13, 1912.
In other words, "He [man] can possess it [original, unborrowed, underived life] only through Christ. He [man] cannot earn it [original, unborrowed, underived life]; it [original, unborrowed, underived life] is given him as a free gift if he [man] will believe in Christ as His personal Saviour."
Notice “life, original, unborrowed, underived,” the same kind of life that Christ had, is given to man as a free gift and that our life is derived from Jesus. In this sense, Jesus is our everlasting Father as we read in Isaiah 9:6, Isa 22:20-23, “he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah” Heb 2:13, Isa 8:18. “Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me”
Christ is the head of the Church, as His Father is the head of Christ, 1Cor 11:3.
Christ bestows this same life to us, because He received it from His Father. “For,” Jesus said, “as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” John 5:26
So, Christ, the Son of God, inherited “life, original, unborrowed, underived” from His Father. Christ is the only one who has this life by birth; He inherited it by being brought forth from God. The Son received this life as He has everything else, every other power, and divine attribute from His Father.
“All things Christ received from God, but He took to give. So in the heavenly courts, in His ministry for all created beings: through the beloved Son, the Father's life flows out to all; through the Son it returns, in praise and joyous service, a tide of love, to the great Source of all.” Desire of Ages, p. 19 1898.
The Father is the great Source of all, He is the one God, of whom are all things, and it is the Father’s original, unborrowed, underived life that flows out to all, through His Son, who received all things from God His Father.
By 1913, Canright’s book, now in its 13th edition, was being referenced as an authoritative description of Adventism’s heretical beliefs.
James M. Gray, dean of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, quoted Canright in his own 1913 edition of “Bible Problems Explained” on page 81: “Seventh-Day Adventists believe in the Bible...but they reject the doctrine of the Trinity, which involves the Diety of Christ”
Signs of the Times editor, Milton Charles Wilcox, blasted Canright in the April 8 issue, denouncing Canright’s apostasy from the church he once defended. Something had to be done to silence him.
Canright’s secretary, Carrie Shasky-Johnson, recorded the historic event.
“Canright met with church leaders during the summer of 1913. In a letter to J.H. Morrison, dated June 25, 1913, he wrote, “I have just spent two weeks in Battle Creek, attending all their meetings and having long visits with ministers, brethren and sisters.” (Carrie Shasky-Johnson, I Was Canright’s Secretary, p. 104.)
The long visits appear to have resulted in a mutual agreement. And both sides responded. In the October 9 issue of the Review and Herald there appeared an unsuspecting article by editor Francis McClellan Wilcox on page 21. But buried in the middle column was for the first time a declaration that...
“Adventist believe...In the divine Trinity”.
Then there appeared the change in Cancright’s 1914 printing and 14th edition of his book. It no longer contained the charge against Adventists that they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
Though FM Wilcox wrote his article without official church sanction, it served its purpose.
In 1918, John Elward Brown published his book, “In the Cult Kingdom”. Seventh-day Adventists were approved on page 7. “On all the doctrines of the Bible”, including “the Deity of Christ”, “the Seventh-day Adventist rings as true as steel.”
The new God was soon promoted everywhere. Vestiges of the true were removed from books like 1944 edition of Uriah Smith’s Daniel and Revelation with no mention of his posthumous approval.
The new God began to appear with increasing frequency from print to pulpit, incorporated into new versions of the baptismal certificates, and Church Manuals. The 1957 release of Questions on Doctrine portrayed a new evangelical church that could now be welcomed into the right hand of fellowship.
No longer classified among the cults, Adventists were now accepted among the “sisterhood” of all the other evangelical Protestant churches, and even by the Mother church herself.
Today, these sisters all have one thing in common. They have joined the ranks of the seven women of Isaiah 4, whose only desire is to be called by the name of the One Man. Just let us be called Christian. Let us be accepted by the daughters rather than be accepted in the Beloved (Eph 1:6).
But the prophetic words of Ellen White following her death in 1915 were now fulfilled.
“The enemy of souls has sought to bring in the supposition that a great reformation was to take place among Seventh-day Adventists, …and that this reformation would consist in giving up the doctrines which stand as the pillars of our faith, and engaging in a process of reorganization.” “what would result?
The principles of truth that God in His wisdom has given to the remnant church, would be discarded. Our religion would be changed.” “The fundamental principles that have sustained the work for the last fifty years would be accounted as error.”
“A new organization would be established.“
“Books of a new order would be written.”
From the True God of Judea to the New God of Nicea and its war on heresy, we are repeating history yet again today. The Christians of early America held the Bible as their only creed. They worshiped God and Christ, a real Father and His true Son. In the course of prophetic time, the Son was brought before His Father, the Ancient of Days (Dan 7:13), and the everlasting gospel cried out, “Worship Him who made heaven and earth and the fountains of water” (Rev 14:7).
The God who created all things by Jesus Christ His Son (Eph 3:9), is now to create many sons and daughters of God as He sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts (Gal 4:6). The hour of His judgment is come (Rev 14:7).
It is at this time, while the world is uniting in the worship of the new God, a triune deity forged over centuries of ecclesiastical debate and speculation, that the true God and His Son desires to be worshiped in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). God so loved the world that He sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him (John 3:16; 1John 4:9), His Son in love and truth (2John 3). “If a man love me,” Jesus said, “my Father will love him, and We will come and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). I invite you to turn and worship “the living and true God, and wait for His Son from heaven” (1Thes 1:9,10). “Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” 1John 1:3.
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