1844 and the Sanctuary: Adventism's Message for the Last Days

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Adventist Theological Society

Richard Davidson

The Sanctuary: So What?

Michael asked me to share with you this morning my own spiritual journey with regard to the sanctuary message.

And as he asked me that, I felt almost overwhelmed, like, man, where do I start?

So much I want to say, so little time to say it.

So much that I have gotten excited about, how do I share that in just a few minutes?

God's gonna help me to say what he wants me to say today.

And this is actually, I've shared parts of this before, but I've never tried to put it all together.

So I should say that if I would put 1 name at the head of those who inspired me about the sanctuary doctrine, it would be Michael's dad.

Hasel taught me the doctrine of the sanctuary.

And I learned more from that class about the sanctuary than I've ever learned anywhere else.

So I'm just adding a few pieces of icing on the cake to what he already bequeathed to me.

But, well, you should know I'm a fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist.

As Joanne's mother-in-law, Alberta Mazat, liked to say, we must have our Adventist message racing through our genes and chromosomes by this time.

And I was raised in a God-fearing home with godly Bible teachers who believed in the sanctuary message and 1 of my teachers actually bought us a new Bible and spent the whole year, our senior year, just underlining all the texts about the doctrines of the Bible in red and all the promises in blue and then making us memorize those.

And then our final exam was just, he gave us a list of texts and we had to find them in the Bible.

So praise God for Bible teachers in high school and beyond and below everywhere that are teaching this great message.

At the Seventh-day Adventist College that I attended and then at the seminary in the, now I have to tell about that age, you know, a few years after Noah's flood is what I'd rather say, because that's probably close to the truth, but When I was going in the 60s and early 70s to college and to seminary, there wasn't much said about the sanctuary.

And more surprisingly, the seminary had no class in the doctrine of the sanctuary.

There's a little history behind that, but the fact was I never got a class in the sanctuary doctrine at the seminary.

I think people believed in the sanctuary, but had not developed into, hey, it's important, we need to have a special class on this.

And so I found myself as a young pastor at the ripe old age of 24, heading to Buckeye, Arizona.

You think it's hot down here in the summertime.

Buckeye holds the record with Death Valley almost every day of the summer at 120 degrees in the shade, sometimes 125.

And so here I arrived the first Sabbath to preach at Buckeye, Arizona.

I was 24, and the youngest person in the church was 65.

I didn't think, I thought that was really old then.

I think that's pretty young now, but That was the reaction.

And Elder Hayward was my district supervisor, pastor, and anybody who knew James Hayward, he had a model of the sanctuary, this beautiful model that he had built himself.

And he spent a whole day helping me erect it out there in the front of the church, this little Buckeye church.

It took up about a third of the church, you know, but it was there so that anyone that came for our evangelistic meetings that we were having, I could walk them through the sanctuary.

I had never preached a sermon on the sanctuary.

And so I worked hard, many hours writing my notes so that I'd remember what to say.

And I got there for that night when I was to preach on the sanctuary.

I stood up to preach, and I opened my Bible, and I'd left my notes at home, 45 minutes back.

And so it was my first extemporaneous sermon and also the first sermon on the sanctuary.

And by God's grace, I'm not a very good mathematician, but he helped me get through the math from 457 BC past the 0 year and on to 1844 and the 2300 days somehow came out right and I made the calculations and fortunately I had a great visual aid so I could walk them through the pieces of the sanctuary and say something meaningful.

Sermon was over and I moved on to the next topic because you see the sanctuary had not touched my heart.

It was a list of texts about what Jesus started to do in 1844, but it had little, if any, spiritual impact upon my personal life.

Well, you know, throughout my childhood and adult years, the subject of the judgment was not good news for me.

I would go to hear evangelistic series and when the preacher would shame us with our bad deeds and try to scare us into heaven by the fear of the judgment, I would tremble.

And when he would say, your name may come up any time, are you ready for the judgment?

And so, in my first district, back from seminary, I refused to preach on the judgment until 1 prayer meeting series.

And we went through every chapter of that book dealing with the different themes of the Psalms, except I skipped 1.

But then my conscience started smiting me.

I said, Lord, there must be some good news in the judgment that I've missed.

So I just spent the week, that week before the next prayer meeting, just opening up my Bible and looking through the Psalms, just reading the whole book of Psalms.

Lord, show me about the judgment from the Psalms.

I got to Psalm 7 and I read verse 8, the Lord shall judge the peoples.

Where the psalmist David says, judge me, oh Lord.

Like, as if he were saying, hurry up, Lord, bring it on!

I can hardly wait, come on, bring on the judgment!

I said, how could David pray such a prayer?

Didn't he understand the seriousness of sin?

Didn't he understand the certainty of the judgment?

So I kept reading and I got to Psalm 51, where David prayed that great prayer of repentance after his heart had been awakened.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness.

And on he prays, down into verse 4, against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge." Yes, He knew the judgment was certain.

And his prayer showed he knew that his sin was real.

He was confessing not only his act of adultery and power rape against Bathsheba, not only his murder against Uriah, but he goes into his very motives and he says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, my very heart.

And verse 6, Behold you desire truth in the inward part, in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom.

He knew that even if he did the right things, he often had wrong motives.

He knew that there was a solemn judgment, but he knew something else.

My favorite verse of the prayer, verse 7, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Hyssop, you remember, was that branch that was dipped in the blood of the Passover lamb.

And then put on the doorpost and the lentils of the houses so that when the destroying angel passed over, everyone who was under the blood was saved.

Now I understand, my wife told me, when you go down this weekend, there's a picture down on this campus someplace, she saw it when she was here last, of a father putting blood on the doorpost of that house.

If anybody knows where that picture is, come and see me afterwards, because Joanne wants me to take a picture of it, and if I don't bring it back, I'm going to be in trouble, so please help me.

But David understood that he could pray to God, cover me with the blood of the lamb.

He understood that God was in the business of forgiving our sins and covering us with the robe of his righteousness.

He understood that as he confessed his sins to God, God acquitted him, pardoned him, and cleansed him.

The Sanctuary: So What?

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