The story I tell is not well-known to Adventists. It goes back fully a half century, for one thing. Yet many Adventist theologians and other church history scholars and buffs may have a recollection of a singular event that changed how Christians viewed Adventists even to this day.

The story is not complicated. In the 1950s. Donald Grey Barnhouse served as editor of Eternity magazine, generally known as a conservative Christian publication. He and a young doctoral student, Walter Martin, became friends when they regularly attended a Bible study class in New York.

Barnhouse learned that Martin held clear interests in non-Christian religions of American beginnings. Martin, in his twenties, was already a published author and soon joined Barnhouse at Eternity. Consonant with Martin’s interest, they decided Martin would take an extensive look at Adventists, considered by both of them as un-Christian and even anti-Christian. Were Adventists, they mused, something more than a cult?

Several meetings with Adventist leaders followed in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and California. Together, all the participants examined Adventist doctrines. That included Sabbath keeping and the investigative judgment.1

Barnhouse, at the end of the extended meetings with Adventist leaders, wrote what he and Martin uncovered. Their findings appeared in Eternity, September 1956. He and Martin concluded: "Seventh-day Adventists are a truly Christian group, rather than an anti-Christian cult."2 This was a stunning announcement to the ears of Eternity’s readers and doubtless to others.

What transpired after that publication? At least two unusual phenomena. First, when Barnhouse published their conclusions that fall, he and Martin "were greeted with a storm of protest," says Bamhouse, "from people who had not had our opportunity to consider the evidence."3

A storm indeed. It was so great that of Eternity’s thirty-five thousand subscribers, six thousand "cancelled their subscriptions in protest," says Richard Schwartz in Light Bearers to the Remnant.4

There’s a second implication. It pivots on Billy Graham. Until Eternity made its pronouncement, neither Graham’s evangelistic team nor local ministerial councils sponsoring the crusades typically invited Adventist to participate in crusades—I leaned this while doing dissertation research on crusade organization.

The Graham people told me that Adventists were excluded from assisting in crusade meetings (such as singing in the choir or serving as spiritual counselors) for at least two reasons. For one, the Church was not viewed as among major Protestant faiths. For another, the Church was actively proselytizing from Christian groups and others.5 So Adventist were excluded virtually from all crusade campaigns.

With the Martin-Barnhouse findings and stunning announcement, Graham took notice. Gradually he began inviting Adventists to participate in large-scale crusades around the country.

Graham himself probably was not naive about the Barmhouse article. He, in fact, contributed articles to the magazine. And it’s further the case that Barnhouse’s son was an adviser on the staff of Graham’s crusade organization. So there appears to be a clear link between the Martin-Barnhouse conclusions and what the Graham organization did about them.

Based on what he’d learned about Adventists, Walter Martin went on to publish The Truth about Seventh-day Adventists. It appeared. in 1960, four years after his discussions with Adventist leaders.6

And about Barnhouse? Throughout his conversations with Adventists, he remained unconvinced of several Adventist positions. Those included Sabbath observance, conditional immortality, and investigative judgment. In fact, he said the Adventist view of judgment, was "the most colossal, psychological, face-saving phenomenon in religious history!"7 He claimed Adventists switched from earthly Sanctuary to heavenly Sanctuary when no Second Coming materialized in 1844. He found no direct scriptural reference to it.

Yet in fairness, it must be said that Donald Barnhouse altered this attitude about numerous Adventist positions and the people who held them.

When Martin’s 1960 book appeared, Barnhouse had written the forward. He made, in fact, this appeal: "May the Lord draw all members or His body to each other in mutual respect and love, knowing that each of us is answerable to Him alone."8

The day Adventists became Christians remains a significant event in church history. Once it emerged, it took on almost immediate consequences in the Christian community.

For that matter, it may well have eternal consequences.

Notes and References

1. Donald Grey Barnhouse, "Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians?" Eternity, September 1956, 7.
2. Walter Martin, The Truth about Seventh day Adventists (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1960). Forward by Donald Grey Barnhouse, 7.
3. Ibid., 7.
4. Richard Schwartz, Light Bearers to the Remnant (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Press, 1979), 544.
5. Personal interviews with Billy Graham team members, Atlanta, Ga., May 1967.
6. Walter Martin., The Truth about Seventh Adventists (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1960).
7. Barnhouse, Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians? 44.
8. Martin, Truth about Seventh-day Adventists, 8.

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