Seventh-day Adventist Doctrines Begin to Take Shape

We must come to the year 1846 for the first definite evidence of crystallizing convictions and united thinking on doctrine among those who were to be the pioneers of Seventh-day Adventism. In that year O. R. L. Crosier published an amplified statement of the new sanctuary doctrine in a well-known Millerite paper, thus giving the doctrine a certain publicity and prominence that it had not received up to that time. ^{*See his article, “The Law of Moses,” published as an eight-page Extra of The Day-Star, February 7, 1846. However, Crosier soon repudiated this new sanctuary doctrine and became a sharp critic of the Sabbathkeeping group.}EGWC 174.1

It was early in this same year and in this same paper that there appeared the first published writings of Ellen G. Harmon, who in August, 1846, became the wife of James White.EGWC 174.2

It was in 1846 that Joseph Bates and James White first met. ^{†See The Early Life and Later Experiences and Labors of Elder Joseph Bates (edited by James White), p. 311.}EGWC 174.3

Though Bates had first been persuaded, in 1845, that the seventh day is the Sabbath, it was not until the summer of 1846 that he became firmly and irrevocably settled in his conviction. It was in this latter year that he brought to James and Ellen White the seventh-day Sabbath, which they soon accepted. And it was in that same year that Bates published the first of a number of pamphlets that were to come from his pen through the years.EGWC 174.4

Even in 1846 these three principal pioneers—Joseph Bates and James and Ellen White—were leaders of nothing faintly resembling an organization or a denomination. The Sabbath conferences of 1848, which constitute the first evidence of more or less well-defined groups of believers, had an aggregate attendance of only a few hundred persons. In those first years after the great disappointment these three pioneers were the leaders, or rather promoters, of little more than ideas and theological views.EGWC 174.5