John T. Anderson is a business man who used to work as a pastor in southern California. This book is the result of his personal study of the subject of the investigative judgment as he searched for answers to questions raised by the critics of the doctrine. He provides for us a readable discussion of the subject based on an impressive amount of biblical evidence. He has taken advantage of studies written by other Adventists on the subject of the sanctuary during the last twenty-five years.

After discussing the need for the investigative judgment, Anderson develops the Adventist model of the final judgment from its pre-advent beginning to its conclusion after the millennium. Several chapters are dedicated to a discussion of the biblical evidence supporting the biblical teaching of an investigative judgment. There is a very useful discussion of the prophetic evidence found in Dan 7-8 and in other prophetic books of the OT. This is followed by a study of the word “cleansed,” used in Dan 8:14, concluding that the term expresses in the OT the ideas of judgment and cleansing.

The author has collected a significant amount of evidence from biblical narratives to demonstrate that the idea of an investigative judgment permeates the Old and New Testaments. There is much more material than he was able to gather in this small book, but what he offers is significant. The book concludes with a study of Dan 8:14 and a short discussion of Christ’s entrance into the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. Anderson’s discussion of the question raised in Dan 8:13 is weak, incomplete and overlooks the reference made there to the ministry of Christ as our mediator. The reader will have to supplement it with materials written by other Adventist investigators (see materials found on the BRI web page). Concerning Christ’s entrance into the most holy place, he suggests that “to say that Christ did not enter the Most Holy Place of the sanctuary in heaven for the purpose of beginning the investigative judgment until 1844 does not have to mean that He was not in the presence of His Father before that time, or even that He was not in the Most Holy Place prior to 1844. It simply indicates that He began a new phase of His ministry at that time” (p. 116). This book will help to reaffirm the faith of Adventists interested in this important topic.