Editorial – Ellen White’s Counsel Regarding the Controversy over the “Daily,” Pt I

[Editor’s Note: Historically—in the 1840s and afterward—Seventh-day Adventists have believed that the daily in Daniel 8, 11, and 12 refers to paganism in contrast with “the abomination that makes desolate” (Daniel 11:31) or the papacy; that both terms identify persecuting powers; that the word for daily—correctly meaning “continual or continually or continuance”—refers to the long continuance of Satan’s opposition to the work of Christ through the medium of paganism; that the taking away of the daily and the setting up of “the abomination that makes desolate” represents the action of papal Rome replacing pagan Rome and that this even is the same as that described in 11 Thessalonians 2:7 and Revelation 13:2; and that this replacing of paganism with the papal religion as the official religion of the most prominent country in Europe at that time (France) occurred in a.d. 508.]

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a new view of the daily surfaced in Adventism. This new view was promoted by W. W. Prescott (college president and later vice-president of the General Conference, chairman of the Review and Herald Publishing Association board, editor of the Review and Herald, and later field secretary of the General Conference) and A. G. Daniells (General Conference president at that time). The new view was that the daily, or continual, referred to the continual priestly ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary and to the true worship of Christ in the gospel age; that the taking away of the daily represents the substitution by the papacy of compulsory unity in a visible church in place of the voluntary unity of all believers in Christ, and the replacing of Christ, the invisible head, by the pope, a visible head, and an earthly priestly hierarchy in place of direct access to Christ by all believers; of a system of salvation by works ordained by the visible church in place of salvation by faith in Christ; and the confessional and the sacrifice of the mass in place of the mediatorial work of Christ as our great high priest in the courts of heaven. Those holding this view have no adequate explanation of the 1290 days in Daniel 12 unless they adopt futuristic interpretations. It was concerning this second view held by Prescott and Daniells that the following testimony by Ellen White was written. (See Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 4, 842, 843, 880, 881 for source material about the above two views.)

“At this stage of our experience we are not to have our minds drawn away from the special light given [us] to consider at the important gathering of our conference. And there was Brother Daniells, whose mind the enemy was working; and your mind and Elder Prescott’s mind were being worked by the angels that were expelled from heaven. Satan’s work was to divert your minds that jots and tittles should be brought in which the Lord did not inspire you to bring in. They were not essential. But this meant much to the cause of truth. And the ideas of your minds, if you could be drawn away to jots or tittles, is a work of Satan’s devising. To correct little things in the books written, you suppose would be doing a great work. But I am charged, Silence is eloquence.” Manuscript Releases, vol. 20, 17.

To be continued . . .