Seventh Day Adventist Summary

Leading Seventh-day Adventist historian, author, and educator, George R. Knight, born in 1941, is a retired professor of church history at the theological seminary at Andrews University. His books include the Adventist Heritage series, the Ellen White series, and a devotional Bible commentary series. Just last year, in 2014, he was considered to be the “best-selling and [most] influential voice,” ever since Ellen White, for the past three decades within the denomination. Throughout this book, Knight traces the theological journey of the Seventh-day Adventist church and how the denomination moved from its earlier understandings to its present doctrinal positions. Knight begins by briefly explaining how Adventism was shaped through theological …show more content…
The first period of the Seventh-day Adventist theological development occurred from 1844-1885, starting with the Great Disappointment in October and leading to the question of what an Adventist is in Adventism. It is the foundations of Adventism that were created which made Seventh-day Adventists unique from other Christian denominations. The early Adventists were pleased with their identity and their great pillar doctrines of the Second Advent, the Sabbath, the heavenly sanctuary, and the state of the dead. But from 1886-1919 they started to face issues when they forgot the Christian aspects of their theology. By the end of 1919, the Seventh-day Adventist Church had already gone through two identity crises. Then, from 1919-1950, the issues and debates between liberalism and fundamentalism arose. Seventh-day Adventists were more on the fundamentalist side, since it held all the essentials that included the truth of the Sabbath, the state of the dead, and the two-phase heavenly ministry of Jesus. Many Adventists identify this mistakenly as “historic Adventism,” when in reality it was just a late development. From that point on, there was constant theological tension. Knight closes the book on what all this means and concludes that Revelation 14:12 gives the best description on what Seventh-day …show more content…
Knight is on point about how the Second Coming of Christ is what brought Adventism into this world. We look forward to the Second Advent, and it is this very reason that the Seventh-day Adventist realm exists today. As I have learned from class, Knight is also on a roll when he mentions how Adventists have struggled with the issues of focusing more on theology than on its center, Christ. We still have issues about that today, and Mrs. White also noted this and began centering her teachings on Christ in all her books. That is what should be instilled in our brains—that Christ is the center of