ORL Crosier

Crosier (or Crozier), Owen Russell Loomis (1820-1912). Millerite preacher and early expositor of the *sanctuary doctrine. Born in Ontario County, New York, Crosier received ministerial training at the Wesleyan Seminary at Lima, Livingston County, in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In 1843 he joined the Millerite movement and began to lecture on the second coming of Christ. On the morning of the *disappointment, October 23, 1844, *Hiram Edson of Port Gibson, New York, invited a friend (identified by J. N. Loughborough as Crosier) to go with him to encourage a few Millerite families. While walking through a cornfield, Edson received a pivotal insight (perhaps a short vision) that on October 22 Christ had moved from the holy place into the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary to receive the kingdom from His Father (see Daniel 7:9-14; 8:14).

Hence, the Millerite expectation that Christ would return to earth on that day was mistaken. This insight led Edson, Crosier, and Franklin B. Hahn to an in-depth Bible study of the cleansing of the sanctuary (Daniel 8:14).Some of the group's preliminary views appeared in the first issue of the *Day-Dawn, edited by Crosier and published by Hahn in Canandaigua, New York, in March 1845. But the first issue of the Day-Dawn had a limited circulation and its content did not go much beyond the notion that the eschatological marriage mentioned in Matthew 25:1-13 was the heavenly antitype of the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16. Crosier's view on the two-phase atonement in the heavenly sanctuary became more evident in a few of his letters published in 1845 in the Hope of Israel (Apr. 17), the Day-Star (Oct. 11, Nov. 15), and the Voice of Truth (Oct. 29). His most extensive and mature treatment of the subject is his article “The Law of Moses,” published in the Day-Star “Extra” of February 7, 1846, with an endorsing note by Edson and Hahn.

The Day-Star “Extra” led Joseph Bates, James White, Ellen G. Harmon (White), and several others to a deeper understanding of Christ's two-phase priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary, and set the stage for the development of the Sabbatarian Adventist doctrine of the sanctuary. Ellen White wrote in 1847, “The Lord shew me in vision, more than one year ago, that Brother Crosier had the true light, on the cleansing of the Sanctuary, &c; and that it was his will, that Brother C. should write out the view which he gave us in the Day-Star, Extra, February 7, 1846. I feel fully authorized by the Lord, to recommend that Extra, to every saint” (A Word to the Little Flock, 12). This statement confirms the general tenor of Crosier's article without necessarily endorsing all its details.In 1846, through the influence of Joseph Bates, Crosier reluctantly accepted the seventh-day Sabbath, and kept it for about a year.

His decision in 1847 to join Joseph Marsh in editing the Advent Harbinger, in Rochester, New York, marked a major theological turning point. From then on Crosier opposed the seventh-day Sabbath and even his own earlier sanctuary doctrine, and began to advocate the “age-to-come” theory. Soon he also changed the spelling of his name to Crozier (with a “z”). In 1854 he moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he worked as an evangelist for the Michigan Conference of the Advent Christian Church. He died in Grand Rapids on September 15, 1912

Retrieved from https://ellenwhite.org/people/15 on October 11, 2022.

Here is an interesting timeline of some of the events in Crosier's life - https://www.aplib.org/files/pioneer-reviews/CrosierORLReview.pdf

Further reading: O.R.L. Crozier, “Early History of Ontario County Revealed in Story of Late Owen R. L. Crozier,” The Daily Messenger (Canandaigua, N.Y.: Nov. 22, 1923), pp. 17, 22, 23; A. R. Timm, “O.R.L. Crosier: A Biographical Introduction” (research paper, AU, 1991); M. D. Burt, “The Day-Dawn of Canandaigua, New York: Reprint of a Significant Millerite Adventist Journal,” AUSS 44, no. 2 (Autumn 2006): 317-330; M. D. Burt, “The Extended Atonement View in the Day-Dawn and the Emergence of Sabbatarian Adventism,” AUSS 44, no. 2 (Autumn 2006): 331-339; SDA Encyclopedia (1996), vol. 10, p. 420.Alberto R. Timm