ADVENTIST HISTORY
The Talented Johannes de Heer and the 1902 Devastation of the Dutch Church BY REINDER BRUINSMA
One of the things I feared in my early ministry was that people to whom I was giving Bible studies would get their hands on a little book written by Johannes de Heer, titled Het Zevende- dags Adventisme en de Sabbat-Vierings, which in English is translated as Seventh-day Adventists and Sabbath-keeping. Te title was more irenic than its content; the booklet was
a series of hard-hitting arguments against worshiping on the seventh day of the week. Its author knew all of the nuts and bolts of the Sabbath-Sunday issue; he had worshiped on the Sabbath for more than six years before he abandoned it. Te foreword was written by D. M. Canright, “a former prominent Adventist preacher in America,” who concludes, “I am fully persuaded in my own mind that the evidence is overwhelmingly against the observance of the seventh day.”
Becoming a Household Name Johannes de Heer was born in 1866 in Rotterdam and lived a long and rewarding life, to age 95. Aſter finishing elementary school, he worked in his father’s blacksmith shop but later found employment in a music store. From his early childhood, the boy had been fond of music, which suited him for his new job. Tough he never learned to read music, he taught himself to play from memory on the small pump organ his parents gave him. When de Heer began to feel uneasy with the kind of music his
employer was selling, he decided at age 32 to start his own music store. His small company soon flourished and is still, aſter more than 125 years, a successful enterprise, now known for selling musical instruments of all kinds. A man of extraordinary talent, Johannes de Heer was a larger-
than-life figure who would become a household name among Dutch Protestants because of the hymnal he created, which first appeared in 1905. Since then, many greatly expanded editions have been published. A total of 7 million copies have found their way into Christian homes and (mostly evangelical) congregations. De Heer himself wrote many hymns and translated others.
A few dozen of his hymns are still found in the current Dutch Adventist hymnal.
24 AD VENTIS T T OD A Y
His Days in the Dutch Church When de Heer and his wife, Cornelia Petronella van Meeteren, lost their 5-year-old daughter in 1896, this tragedy caused Johannes to embark on an intense spiritual search. Aſter attending Adventist evangelistic meetings, he was convinced he had found the truth. Both husband and wife joined the newly organized Adventist congregation in Rotterdam, with its 44 members. Aſter a short time, Johannes was ordained as an elder. Because the literal translation of “de Heer” is “the Lord” and
another elder had the surname Knecht, which in Dutch means “servant” or “employee,” it’s no wonder that Johannes de Heer and Maarten Knecht were jokingly referred to as de heer en zijn Knecht, or “the lord and his servant.” De Heer, who assumed a prominent role in the small group of
Adventists in Rotterdam and its surroundings, took his new faith very seriously and decided to close his business on Saturdays. In Het Zevende-dags Adventisme en de Sabbat-Vierings, he described his pattern of Sabbath-keeping in a way that can only be characterized as extremely legalistic. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his love affair with Adventism did not
endure. In 1901, de Heer began to have doubts about the Christian’s obligation to keep the Sabbath. A year later, he leſt the Adventist Church with 140 other members. Although few details were preserved, it is said that some pastors were among those leaving. In the end, only 37 church members remained in the entire
Netherlands! Pastor Reinhold Gustav Klingbeil (1868-1928) was so shaken that he withdrew from the ministry for a time. Little is known about how the conflict developed or what
transpired to cause the departure of more than three-quarters of the Adventist members. When Louis R. Conradi, the leader of European Adventism in 1925, looked back on the devastation in the Dutch field, he pointed to three things. First, he believed that many Adventists there were unhappy with the Dutch church’s close organizational ties with the church in Germany and felt that too much of their money went to German projects. Also, the Sabbath School lessons of the second quarter of 1901 dealt with the topic of the sanctuary and its services, which led to intense discussions and created a widespread uneasiness about distinctive Adventist beliefs. And finally, many were unconvinced that Ellen G. White had prophetic authority almost on a par with the Bible writers, as some Adventists insisted. De Heer became a member of the Dutch Reformed Church
and was soon involved in large-scale lay-evangelistic activities. He became one of the pioneers of tent-evangelism in the Netherlands, and he started a journal and an interchurch movement that focused on proclaiming the soon return of Christ.
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