In defense of Bible truth—do you think the truth can be defended?  Yes, the truth can be defended.  There are plenty of people attacking the truth, and the truth needs to be defended so the people are not deceived.  It is not wrong but upright to defend the truth.  Paul was a defender of the truth; Martin Luther was a defender of the truth; Ellen White was a defender of the truth; John the Baptist was a defender of the truth; Elijah was a defender of the truth.  The truth can be defended.

You need to study your Bible, though, if you are going to be able to defend it.  I want to tell you friends, before the end, if you are a follower of Jesus, and you are faithful to his discipleship, every one of you are going to have an opportunity to defend the truth.

In the December 11, 1888, Review and Herald, Ellen White wrote, “If God has ever spoken by me, the time will come when we shall be brought before councils [perhaps singly or alone], and every position of truth which we hold will be severely criticised.”  Then many will find out that they didn’t really know what they thought they knew. 

Do you know why you believe what you believe?  A lot of people don’t!  They think they know, but when the winds of doctrine start to blow harder, and harder, and harder—remember that every wind of doctrine will be blowing—how much wind can they stand before they will no longer be defending the truth?  Are you ready for a hurricane wind?

I remember when our family moved to the State of Colorado from the State of Tennessee.  It was less than five years before my maternal grandfather’s death.  My mother had not been to see her parents for about two years, so at Christmas time my brother and sister and I went with our mother on a bus to Washington state to visit our grandparents and some other relatives there.

The wind where we lived comes from the west, right off the Rocky Mountains.  My father had an old, Ford pickup, and one day, while we were gone, he was driving home and the wind was blowing so hard that it just seemed like that truck wouldn’t go.  Well, he finally did make it home.  When he got home, he listened to the news, and he found out that that night there had been a 100-mile-an-hour wind.  He had been driving into a 100-mile-an-hour wind!

There was a house being built near us.  They just had a two-by-four framing up on the walls.  That wind scattered that framing all over the place.  We lived there several years, and I’ve been by that place many times.  They never did build that house.  I guess they got discouraged.  How much wind can you stand?

When we were flying between Denver and Los Angeles recently, the pilot came on the loud speaker and said, “It is going to take us a little longer than usual.  We have a 140-mile-an-hour wind right on the nose.”  So we got into Los Angels a little bit late.

The winds are already blowing, but the winds are going to get more severe.  It is going to be a head wind directed right at you.  Do you know how to explain—can you explain to anyone—why you keep the Sabbath?  Why you believe that since 1844 we are living in the time of the judgment—the investigative judgment?

Our opponents, at least some of them, think that we can’t explain those things.  I have books, written by people that used to be Seventh-day Adventist ministers.  They claim that they have written to conference presidents and “asked the Adventists to explain their position” but don’t get any answer.  I don’t know who is not answering, but I will tell you this, the truth can be defended.

The truth can be defended.  Someone needs to tell the truth, so I’m beginning a series of sermons, in which we are going to defend some things.  One of the things that we are going to defend is what the Scripture teaches about the investigative judgment.  I was shocked, about 23 years ago, when I read that a well-known Adventist writer and theologian had written that he didn’t know how to prove the investigative judgment from the Bible.  I said what?  If you don’t believe that, why do you call yourself an Adventist?  Why don’t you join the Baptists?

We are going to look at these winds of doctrine, and before we are done, we are going to look directly at the investigative judgment and what the Bible says about it.  But, before we do that, we need to ask some questions.  This is just an introductory study.  We will tape the others, so if some of you want the other studies that we are going to do on defending the truth, we will be glad to send them to you on tape.

Here is the first question that we need to ask to get started on this subject: What does a prophetic endorsement mean?  Let us go to the Bible first.

In Matthew 11 we find more than a prophetic endorsement.  This is an endorsement by the Majesty of Heaven, the King of Glory.  We read, “And these going away [speaking of the disciples of John the Baptist], Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John: ‘What did you go out into the desert to see?  A reed shaken by the wind?  What did you go out to see?  A man in soft clothing?  Behold those that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses.  But what did you go out to see?  A prophet?  Yes, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.’ ”  Verses 7–9.  This is Jesus Christ speaking.  If you are a Christian, this is the Majesty of Heaven, Lord of Glory; this is the King of the universe, and He says, concerning John the Baptist, “What did you go out to see?  A prophet?  Yes, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.”  Well, how much more?  “This is he concerning of whom it is written: ‘Behold I am sending My messenger before You, who shall prepare Your way before You.’  Truly, I say to you, there has not arisen from those who have been born of women, one greater than John the Baptist.”  Is that an endorsement?  That is more than a prophetic endorsement, that is an endorsement by the Majesty of Heaven, by Jesus Himself.  He endorsed the work of John the Baptist—that he was a prophet.  In fact, He said, “Among those who have been born of women there is no greater than John the Baptist.”

Now, I have a question for you.  This is a trick question.  This is the kind of a question our opponents ask us.  Therefore, because Jesus made such a sweeping endorsement about John the Baptist, would you then assume that as long as you believed everything that John the Baptist believed you would have to be right?  Would that be so?  If John the Baptist was so great that there wasn’t anyone born of women greater than he, if you believed the same as John the Baptist, you should be on pretty safe ground, wouldn’t you think?  Not necessarily.

What I want you to see here is the fact that a prophet, even though endorsed by Jesus Christ as being even more than a prophet, doesn’t mean that that person is infallible or doesn’t make any mistakes—or doesn’t have any mistaken ideas. 

Now this is something that our theological opponents completely don’t seem to understand.  It is thought by some that if a prophet endorses somebody, then, obviously, if that individual is wrong, that prophet is wrong, because the prophet endorsed the person that is wrong.  That is exactly the reasoning that is used by our opponents to try to prove that Ellen White is a false prophet and that Adventism is a hoax.  We are going to go into that shortly.

Jesus said, regarding John the Baptist, “He is more than a prophet.”  This is the strongest endorsement that a person can get!  “Among them that are born of women there is not one greater than John the Baptist.”  Yet, my dear fiends, do you know how confused John the Baptist was when Jesus spoke these words?

In verse 2, we read, “And John, hearing in the prison the works of Christ, sent two of his disciples, who said to Him, ‘Are You the One that is coming, or are we looking for somebody else?’ ”  This is the person that Jesus said, “Among those who are born of women there is not risen one greater than he.”  But John the Baptist is in the prison wondering if Jesus is the Messiah! 

Why was he wondering if Jesus was the Messiah?  Because, friends, John the Baptist had a mistaken idea about the nature of the kingdom that Christ had come to establish.  John the Baptist—just like the disciples at that time—did not understand the difference between the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory.  They just didn’t understand the difference.

What we learn from this story is that a person can have a prophetic endorsement—they can be endowed by Jesus Christ Himself—yet they can be mixed up on a lot of things.  That is very important to understand.

Let us come to modern times.  There were two young ministers.  One was 36 years old, and one was 38 years old.  They came to the 1888 General Conference.  They had some messages, and the editor of the Review and Herald and the General Conference president, along with the majority of the older ministers, completely rejected the messages.  However, Ellen White not only accepted the messages but endorsed them!

Ellen White endorsed the work and the messages of Jones and Waggoner.  Now the next question is, Does that mean that Jones and Waggoner were right on every point of theology?  No, it doesn’t.  Does that mean that if you believe what Jones and Waggoner believed that you will be all right.  Not necessarily.

I find people today that think if Jones and Waggoner believed it, then that is the gospel truth.  It may not be!  Jones and Waggoner are not the criteria; the criteria are the Spirit of Prophecy and the Bible.  

In fact, Ellen White wrote a statement, that she saw in vision, to Elder Butler concerning Jones and Waggoner and their opponents.  “He [Ellen White’s angelic guide] stretched out his arms toward Dr. Waggoner and to you, Elder Butler, and said in substance as follows: ‘Neither have all the light upon the law, neither position is perfect.’ ”  Manuscript Releases, vol. 9, 218.

You see, they were arguing about the law in Galatians, and the angel told Ellen White, concerning these two people that were arguing (Waggoner and Butler), “Neither have all the light upon the law, neither position is perfect.  ‘Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart’ (Psalm 97:11).  There are hundreds that know not why they believe the doctrines they do.”  Ibid.

It is very important to understand that a divine endorsement or a prophetic endorsement of a person does not mean that that person’s theology is without fault and that we don’t need to study.  It didn’t mean that for John the Baptist, and it didn’t mean that for Jones and Waggoner.  It doesn’t even mean that about Ellen White!

Let me read you a few things that Ellen White wrote about this.  Incidentally, we do not test the Bible by Ellen White; we test Ellen White by the Bible.  Just like in the days of the apostle Paul, we do not test Moses by the apostle Paul.  We test Paul by Moses.

Ellen White wrote: “We have many lessons to learn, and many, many to unlearn.  God and heaven alone are infallible.  Those who think that they will never have to give up a cherished view, never have occasion to change an opinion, will be disappointed.  As long as we hold to our own ideas and opinions with determined persistency, we cannot have the unity for which Christ prayed.”  Review and Herald, July 26, 1892.

That is one of the big reasons, friends, that we don’t have the unity we should be having.  Mrs. White says that if we hold onto our own ideas with determined persistency and refuse to accept evidence that contradicts what we believe, that is called stubborn.  The Biblical expression is stiffnecked. 

Then, writing in regard to infallibility, she says, “I never claimed it.”  This was written in answer to Dr. David Paulson.  Doctor Paulson was one of the physicians who founded Hinsdale Sanitarium near Chicago.  He wrote to Ellen White saying that he was very perturbed about something.  Let me tell you why he got upset.  Ellen White was supposed to have said—and probably did say—that in a certain sanitarium there were 40 beds.  A physician went to that sanitarium and counted the beds; he counted 38.  When he counted 38 beds where Ellen White had referred to a 40-bed sanitarium, he said that he had lost all confidence in the Spirit of Prophecy.

About this same time, Doctor Paulson got very perturbed, and he wrote to Ellen White, saying, “I was trained and I was taught that anything you said or anything you wrote was just as valid as the Ten Commandments.  She wrote back and said, “Where did you ever get such an idea?  I never said that.”

That is when she wrote, “ ‘In regard to infallibility, I never claimed it; God alone is infallible.  His word is true, and in Him is no variableness, or shadow of turning.’—Letter 10, 1895.”  Selected Messages, Book 1, 37. 

Ellen White did not claim to be infallible.  Did you know that the Bible writers did not claim to be infallible either?

I need to clarify that, so nobody will be mistaken.  The Bible is an infallible guide to eternal life.  There will not be a single person that will be able to come to the Lord in the Day of Judgment and say, “I accepted your book.  I surrendered to it.  I read it.  I followed it, and now I am lost.”  There won’t be a single person that will be able to say that, because the Bible is an infallible guide to salvation.  It is an infallible guide.

Ellen White wrote to the ministers, telling them, “You need to quit quibbling about the Bible.  Just read it and follow it.  If you read and follow the Bible, you will not be lost.”  That is true for the whole world.  Take the Bible; read it and study it and follow it.  Not one person that does that will be lost.  But that doesn’t mean that the Bible is infallible in an absolute sense.  Read again what Ellen White said: “In regard to infallibility, I never claimed it; God alone is infallible.  His word is true, and in Him is no variableness, or shadow of turning.” 

There have been people—just the same as Doctor Paulson who said he lost all confidence in Ellen White—who lose confidence in the Bible.  It is the same thing.  In I Corinthians 10, Paul referred to a time of the children of Israel, when a number of people died in a plague as the result of what they had done.  Moses wrote about the same thing.  Speaking of the same event, one of them says that it was 23,000, and the other one says that it was 24,000.  Skeptics lose all confidence in the Bible over something like that.  But there is no need to do so.  Ellen White and the Bible writers use round numbers many, many times.  If Moses rounded up and Paul rounded down, are you going to lose you faith over that?  Some people do.

It is over the same kinds of things that people lose confidence in Ellen White.  They think that because Ellen White endorsed somebody that obviously you have to believe everything that person taught; otherwise she is a false prophet or something is terribly wrong.  There has been an attempt recently by former Seventh-day Adventist ministers to prove that William Miller is wrong on 15 or more points.  Then, because Ellen White endorsed William Miller—and she did—at the same time they have tried to prove William Miller wrong as a false messenger and discredit him, they have attempted to also discredit the entire second Advent movement and show that Ellen White is a false prophet; thereby, they can accuse Seventh-day Adventists as being a cult.  That is the direction reason goes.  Being called a cult is not the worst thing in the world. 

At the present time, by the way of the mercies and grace of God, the first of November [2003] we have gone on Internet radio.  We are on Internet radio now seven days a week.  If you have access to the Internet, sign onto www.khib.tv.  This is an Internet radio station.  It can be heard anywhere in the world.  I hope to reach the thought leaders of the world with this radio program.  Please pray for us.  This is a huge undertaking, and we are not totally up to speed yet.  Our programming is broadcast Saturday and Sunday at 9:00 a.m. Central Time and weeknights at 9:00 p.m. Central Time.  This is a brand new venture, a brand-new Internet radio station.  This radio station just went into operation April 15, 2003.

It is very interesting how this came to be.  The owner is a physician.  He told me, “I came under conviction that God wanted me to quit what I was doing.”  He formerly worked for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.  He said, “I came under conviction that the Lord wanted me to quit what I was doing and to go full time into ministry.” 

After he became convicted of that, he called an Evangelical minister, and told him about his new decision.  He was going to quit practicing medicine, and he was going to go full time in the ministry.  This pastor started to laugh, and the doctor asked, “What are you laughing for?  This is very serious.  I have given up my whole career to do this.” 

The pastor answered, “I’m not laughing at you.  The Lord told me a year ago that He was going to call you into the ministry, but you weren’t ready.”

Anyway, this physician has been led to develop this radio station.  It is an independent Christian radio station.  It is housed in the basement of a church, called the Corner Stone Church, which is an independent church.  It is one of the biggest churches in Wichita—probably a 4,000-member congregation.  We’ve talked to the pastor, and we have been in the church a number of times recently.  One of the biggest churches in town is an independent church!  It has in big letters, right on the front, “non-denominational.”  This is a new phenomenal of our time.  They are non-denominational; they receive calls from Bible churches and Christian churches and independent churches rising up all over the country.

Being on this radio station is going to bring us into contact with large numbers of  Sunday-keeping evangelicals that need to learn the truth.  So please pray for us.  We don’t know what is going to happen, except the road could get very exciting.  Some of these Evangelicals are very sincere.   

Right now, since they have just started, they don’t have 24 hours of programs, so they repeat the same programs during the second twelve-hour period.  Then they still don’t have enough to fill in all the time so they are using our program for filler.  That means that during the week we are on at 9 o’clock at night plus we are on in the morning, and we are also on at 1:30 to 2:00 in the morning, which is prime time in Europe.  So this is heard worldwide!  He has deliberately put us on when it is prime time in Europe.  So we are hoping to get some responses from Europe pretty soon.  Please pray for us.  It is our hope that in several weeks we will have a different program every day of the week.  It is a huge project to go on the radio every day of the week!

I was talking to the manager of the station recently.  She told me about a Presbyterian lady that came in recently.  They were talking, and this lady was telling her how she was just so unhappy about what her church had done in deciding to ordain homosexual clergymen, but she didn’t know what she was going to do.  She knew it was the right church, but she just didn’t like what they were doing.  The station manager told her in no uncertain terms that there wasn’t going to be anything on this station having to do with homosexuality; they would close the station down before they let the homosexuals get on the air.

The lady asked her, “What church do you belong to?”  The station manager attends a Pentecostal or a Holiness church, and she told her a little bit of what they believed. 

The lady from the Presbyterian Church said, “You’re a cult!”

She said, “Well, we also broadcast Steps to Life on our radio station.” 

The other lady knew something about Steps to Life, and she said, “Oh! They are a sect!” 

Look what it says about sects in Acts 28:22.  We’ve been a sect actually for a long time.  “We think it is worthy that we hear from you what you think; for concerning this sect, it is known everywhere and spoken about everywhere and spoken against.”  That is, throughout the world.  The early Christians were called a sect.  Paul was part of a sect, and we are going to be a sect at the end.  In The Great Controversy, 635, we read: “When the protection of human laws shall be withdrawn from those who honor the law of God, there will be, in different lands, a simultaneous movement for their destruction.  As the time appointed in the decree draws near, the people will conspire to root out the hated sect.  It will be determined to strike in one night a decisive blow, which shall utterly silence the voice of dissent and reproof.”  When God’s people are called “the hated sect,” they are going to get rid of them all in one night.  So it is not bad to belong to a sect, if it is the right one.

When we examine the evidence—whether we are talking about John the Baptist or Jones and Waggoner or William Miller—these individuals were correct in their major conclusions, but they were not correct in all points.  Nobody needs to be embarrassed by this. 

Read the following from “Appendix B” of Selected Messages, Book 3, about this very point.  This statement is written by W. C. White, Ellen White’s son, in a letter dated November 4, 1912, to W. W. Eastman who was a publishing department secretary at that time in the Southwestern Union Conference.  He says, “Regarding mother’s writings and their use as authority on points of history and chronology, mother has never wished our brethren to treat them as authority regarding the details of history or historical dates.  The great truths revealed to mother regarding the controversy between good and evil, light and darkness, have been given to her in various ways, but chiefly as flashlight views of great events in the lives of individuals and in the experiences of churches, of bands of reformers, and of nations. . . .

“When writing out the experiences of reformers in the time of the reformation and in the great Advent movement of 1844, mother often gave at first a  partial description of some scene presented to her.  Later on she would write it out more fully, and again still more fully.  I have known her to write upon one subject four or five times, and then mourn because she could not command language to describe the matter more perfectly.

“When writing out the chapters for Great Controversy, she sometimes gave a partial description of an important historical event, and when her copyist who was preparing the manuscripts for the printer, made inquiry regarding time and place, mother would say that those things are recorded by conscientious historians.  Let the dates used by those historians be inserted.  At other times when writing out what had been presented to her, mother found such perfect descriptions of events and presentations of facts and of doctrines written out in our denominational books, that she copied the words of these authorities.

“When Controversy [that is the book Great Controversy] was written, mother never thought that the readers would take it as authority on historical dates or use it to settle controversy regarding details of history, and she does not now feel that it should be used in that way.  Mother regards with great respect the work of those faithful historians who devoted years of time to the study of God’s great plan as presented in the prophecy, and the outworking of that plan as recorded in history.

“In past years whenever definite proof has been found that the writers of our Adventist literature had come short of finding the exact proof regarding details, mother has taken her position in favor of correcting those things that were clearly found to be in error.  When she was consulted about the efforts that were being made to revise and correct the good book Daniel and Revelation, she has always opposed making many changes, and has always favored correcting those things that were plainly shown to be incorrect. . . . 

“For myself, I will say this: that the more I study the experiences of the Adventist people, the more I feel to honor and praise and magnify the wisdom of the God of heaven Who gave to a plain man like William Miller an understanding of the great truths of the prophecies.  It is evident to anyone who will study his explanation of prophecy . . .” Notice what he is going to say now.  “. . . that while he had the truth regarding the principal features, that he adopted at first many inaccurate and incorrect interpretations regarding details.” Selected Messages, Book 3, 446–448.  Did you get that?

Miller had the truth, he says, in “regarding principal features,” and Ellen White endorsed that.  But W. C. White says William Miller “adopted at first many inaccurate and incorrect interpretations regarding details.” 

“At first these were accepted by his associates; but God raised up scholarly men who had enjoyed broader opportunities for study than Miller, and these men by their study of the prophecies and history found the truth regarding many points in which Miller’s exposition was incorrect. . . . 

“If we claim that Miller and his associates had a perfect and complete knowledge of the truth regarding the correspondence of history with prophecy, or if we claim for the pioneers in the third angel’s message that their knowledge was complete and infallible, if we say ‘never in the history of this cause have we been obliged to confess ourselves in error,’ we shall unwisely and unnecessarily challenge criticism that will display to the world in a manifold and exaggerated light the imperfections and inaccuracies of some of our expositions, which have been corrected by the results of faithful study in later years.”  Ibid., 448, 449.

W. C. White acknowledged that even though William Miller had been endorsed by Ellen White—remember that Jesus endorsed John the Baptist—Miller’s understanding of many points was not correct and not accurate.

Now I want to go to a statement that is used by our opponents to try to destroy both William Miller and Ellen White.  This statement is in regards to the 1843 chart that was developed mainly by Miller but probably with some help from others.  “The Lord showed me that He had stretched out His hand the second time to recover the remnant of His people, and that efforts must be redoubled in this gathering time. . . .  I have seen that the 1843 chart was directed by the hand of the Lord, and that it should not be altered; that the figures were as He wanted them; that His hand was over and hid a mistake in some of the figures, so that none could see it, until His hand was removed.”  Early Writings, 74.

Notice that Ellen White says that “His hand was over and hid a mistake.”  In how many of the figures?  Some.  Some is more than one.  “His hand was over and hid a mistake in some of the figures, so that none could see it, until His hand was removed.”  Now, we don’t have time in an introductory message like this to go through many of the figures in the 1843 chart, but we are going to study the figures right at the very top of the chart.

If you have an 1843 chart and if you look right at the top, the very first number you will see is 677 b.c.  I have a reprint of a book that was published in Boston, by Joshua V. Himes in 1842.  The name of this book is Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the year 1843; Exhibited in a Course of Lectures by William Miller.  In this book, on page 250, is “Lecture XVII” entitled “On the Punishment of the People of God Seven Times for Their Sins.”

This lecture is based on Leviticus 26:23, 24 in the Bible.  (See also verses 18 and 28.)  Three times in this chapter the Lord is telling the children of Israel what is going to happen to them if they won’t listen.  He said to them, “If you walk contrary to me, if you won’t listen to me, if you won’t be reformed by me in these things, then I will also walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins.”  That is the text for Lecture XVII by William Miller.  It is a very, very interesting sermon.

Our opponents have attacked Miller—and of course when they are attacking Miller they are using the attack to discredit Miller and then the whole Advent movement and then Ellen White.  One of their prominent arguments is, “It doesn’t actually say seven times, it just says seven.”  I have the Hebrew Bible and several Hebrew Lexicons, so I checked this out.

It is true that only the word sheba which is the Hebrew word for seven appears, but if you look in Gesinius’ Lexicon, you will find that this word means “seven times.”  That is one of the principal meanings of the word.  The opponents say (they did this in William Miller’s time) it is not talking about “seven times” but about “seven fold.”  The trouble with that is that if you interpret it that way you have just made the Bible contradict itself.

The Bible is very clear how many fold you are going to be punished for sin, whether it is Israel or Babylon.  Both to Babylon in Revelation and to Israel in the Book of Isaiah, the Lord says you are getting double for your sins.  (See Isaiah 40:2; 61:7; Revelation 18:6.)  That is the Lord’s pronouncement.  You are going to get punished for your sins.  There is no statement in the Bible about getting punished seven fold for your sins but it does say double for your sins.  This word does not mean “seven fold.”  It means “seven times.”

What did William Miller do with this verse?  He said that it is a prophecy about what would happen to the people of God as a punishment of the conduct therein specified.  That is right in the verses. 

Miller said: “I shall, therefore, in explanation of our subject, show, (1) For what the people of God are punished; (2) Show how they are punished.”  There is no controversy about those two, but number three, “the time they will be punished,” is where the controversy erupts. 

Miller has included all of the numbers at the end of the sermon where he goes into the times.  Nebuchadnezzar was punished seven times in Babylon for his pride.  When he was punished seven times, and that is what it says in the Aramaic in Daniel 4, he was punished seven times.  How long was that?  It was seven years.  Seven times is used as a description for a seven-year period over and over again in the Bible.

William Miller did the same with this.  He said, “It says here that the Lord is going to punish His people seven times for their rebellion against Him, if they walk contrary to Him.”  And he says that is a prophecy.  Well, I would have to agree that that is prophecy.  Whether our opponents think so or not, Leviticus 26:23 and 24 is a prophecy.  

And William Miller said, “Seven times (or seven years), if it is seven prophetic years, that would be 2520 years.  That happens to be the second number that you will see, if you get an 1843 chart.  The first number will be 677, and the second number will be 2520.  Subtracting one from the other, you get 1843.

Now the next question is, Where did the number 677 come from?  The texts that Miller gave are II Chronicles 33:9–13 and Jeremiah 15:4.  He stated that the Lord said that, because of the sins of Manasseh, He was going to scatter and punish His people.  Now, I’m just going to give you what I believe was a mistake.  It should not blow your faith away if William Miller made a mistake.  When God, through Moses, gave this prophecy in Leviticus 26, He was not talking to just Judah and Benjamin.  He was talking to all of Israel.  So, the scattering of the children of Israel—and remember this is given to God’s people, so it refers to not just literal Israel but to spiritual Israel—could have begun when Manasseh was taken captive, which Miller thought was 677 b.c.  I have searched and searched, and I cannot prove the 677 date.  I cannot disprove it either.  The 677 date could be exactly correct.

However, I personally am not sure that that is the right event even if it is the right year.  I believe that the better event to take for the scattering and punishment of the children of Israel would be when the ten tribes were taken captive, and we do have an exact date for when the ten tribes were taken captive and scattered by the nation of the Assyrians.  Do you happen to know the exact date when that happened?  Some say 721 b.c.; some say 722 b.c.  I have no argument with either one; 721 is plenty close enough.  If that is the beginning of seven times, seven prophetic years, and you take 2520 and add it on to that period for the time of their scattering and punishment, that would bring you right up to 1798.  Interesting isn’t it?

The mistake was in the event.  The mistake was actually not—in my opinion—in the concept that God was going to punish them seven times, which would be seven prophetic years.  I don’t see a mistake there at all.  Some do, and I would not have an argument with them, because I do not think that this happens to be a point of salvation.

In my opinion, you still have 2520 years, and it is still going to bring you to 1798.  And when you get halfway through the 2520 years, the half way point would bring you right up to the year 538, which is also interesting. 

Ellen White writes, in Prophets and Kings page 291, that the distraction that befell the northern kingdom was a direct judgment from heaven.  The Assyrians were merely the instruments that God used to carry out His purpose.  Then she quotes Isaiah 10:5 and says, “The Lord ‘afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight,’ in harmony with the plain warnings He had sent them ‘by all His servants the prophets.’ ” 

Ellen White also writes: “Thank God, His church is no longer in bondage. . . .  No longer have the hosts of evil power to keep the church captive.”  Ibid., 714, 715.  When you study sacred history, you find out that after the ten tribes went into captivity—and a little while later Manasseh went into captivity and the Jewish nation went into captivity— from then on God’s people were never autonomous again.  They just went from Babylon to Assyria to Medo Persia to Greece to Pagan Rome to Papal Rome.  There were a few years of respite when people were not being slaughtered everywhere, but God’s people were scattered.

If you understand how they were scattered in all nations of the earth, do you begin to understand why Ellen White said that now [talking about 1840] we are in the gathering time?  “In the scattering, Israel was smitten and torn; but now in the gathering time God will heal and bind up his people.”  Review and Herald, November 1, 1850.  We are in the gathering time.

Since this is the first point in the 1843 chart, this is the first point that comes under attack.  But actually, when I read William Miller’s sermon on this, it is an excellent sermon, a very spiritual lecture.  Even though I personally think he was mixed up on the beginning date of the beginning event, the 1843 chart, Ellen White says, was directed by the hand of the Lord. 

 Do you not have confidence in God or in Ellen White or in the Advent movement, because there is a mistake in a chart that she said “God had His hand over and He directed him”?  God directed in the work of John the Baptist, too, and he was greater than any born of women, Jesus said.  Yet he was mixed up on some very big things.  If you are trying to win a debate on the point of technicality, God will just let you win the debate—but you may still be all wrong.

Can truth be defended?  Truth can be defended.  Can the prophecy in Leviticus 26 be defended?  Yes, it can.  It can be defended from history.  This is not a wild proof text method like some people are claiming. This is solid, Biblical exegesis, which is comparing Scripture with Scripture—which is exactly what Isaiah says to do.

The truth can be defended.  And what William Miller said about the seven times—just because he made a mistake in his calculation—is nothing to be ashamed of or be embarrassed.  The truth is that God’s people were scattered for seven times.

What is so significant about 1798?  It was in that year that the union of church and state was broken.  It was the union of church and state that produced persecution, and it is going to produce persecution right at the end again.  After this union was broken, the church in Rome still existed, but after that she did not have power to persecute like she did before through the state.  But the deadly wound is being healed.  And the result is that we are going to see persecution again right at the end.  There is going to be another scattering again, before Jesus gathers us all together.

Ellen White says that after the devil and his angels have done everything they can to scatter, then Jesus is going to gather every true and faithful one together.  We are going through a scattering again.  I’m afraid we are in the middle of it right now, and it is going to get worse.

Friend if you don’t know why and what you believe, you are going to get blown away.  You need to know, friend.  I want to tell you this: I am not embarrassed or ashamed of the 1843 chart, even though it has some mistakes in it.  It’s a tremendously educational chart.  If you don’t have access to it, you ought to try to get one.  The principle points of the prophecies on that chart are just as true as can be.

You need to study and know why you believe what you believe.  You need to know it from the Bible.  Don’t be embarrassed that there are translation errors in there.  Adventist Protestants have never ever claimed infallibility.  We have made a lot of mistakes, but we have never claimed infallibility.  Ellen White didn’t claim it; the Protestant reformers didn’t claim it.  We have never claimed infallibility for our Bible translations.  That is papal.

Do you know what the papists said when the Protestants first started translating the Bible?  They said, “Why are you doing that?  We already have a perfect translation.”  What was their perfect translation?  It was the Vulgate.  Just to ensure that that was right, Pope Sixtus, in 1590, made a brand new edition of the Vulgate.  He, himself, proof read it to be sure that there were no mistakes in it, so it would be an infallible Bible.  When scholars obtained that Bible, they found approximately 8,000 mistakes in it.  There are mistakes in all Bible translations; don’t ever forget that.  If somebody tells you a certain version is a perfect Bible translation, you know that he is taking a papal position.  That was a papal position in the time of the Protestant Reformation.  It was not the Protestant position.  That’s why the Protestants have so many translations.

Tyndale translated a Bible.  Then they decided they wanted to improve on that, so Coverdale translated a Bible.  They wanted to improve on that, so the Great Bible was translated.  But then they wanted to improve on that, and they translated the Geneva Bible.  I have a Geneva Bible; it’s a very good translation.  But they wanted to improve on that, and they made the Bishop’s Bible.  Finally King James said, “We want to improve on all of those,” so they took all of those versions and they compared them with the Hebrew and Greek languages, and they revised them.

You see, the King James Version is not a new translation, like some people think.  They think it was translated in 1611 a.d.  That is absolutely not so.  That was the result of almost 100 years of constant translating and retranslating.  Since then, it has been the Protestant translations that forced the Catholics to get into translating the Bible.  But since then, it’s an amazing thing to me, that many Protestants have taken the Roman Catholic position.

We are Protestants, friends.  You are going to need to stay Protestant in your thinking, if you are going to be around to the end.  And Protestants do not believe that we are infallible, and we do not believe that we are infallible as preachers.  We do not believe that prophecies are infallible—not in the absolute sense.  We do not believe that the church is infallible.  We don’t believe that Bible translations are infallible.  We don’t believe that our interpretations of prophecy are infallible.  We say, check the Word; it is true.  And as long as you stick to that position and as long as you study God’s Word, you will be safe.

If you ever take the catholic position and say that something, somebody, some church has to be infallible, you are headed for destruction.  If you say that a version of the Bible is infallible, you are headed for destruction.  I heard an Adventist say one time, “This version of the Bible doesn’t have any mistakes in it.”

I said, “I could point out to you a hundred mistakes, and some of them are serious doctrinal errors.”  But that doesn’t bother me, because I don’t think it is an infallible translation.  I can open my Greek New Testament and my Hebrew Bible and show you  that the way the Bible was originally written agrees exactly with what we believe.”  

The same is true with the interpretation of the prophecies.  If you stick with the Protestant position, if you stick with the Bible and with the Spirit of Prophecy, you will be safe.  The Lord will keep you safe.