Ty Gibson's Sermon on Penal Atonement

Thanks to the Good News Tour some people may have been under the impression that Ty Gibson is like many Progressive Adventists against the Penal/Substitutionary Atonement Theory; instead holding to Christ’s revelation of His Character of love as the method of drawing us to God. Simply put God did not have to punish Christ, Christ did not suffer the wrath of God but God was through Christ demonstrating the love of God and His ability to forgive and reconcile no need to kill in order to forgive. Today I listened to Ty Gibson’s Auburn Camp meeting presentation from Tuesday June 23, 2009. The first 30 to 40 minutes seemed innocuous enough mainly dealing with the attractive nature of God’s love revealed by Jesus Christ. But then as so many Adventists do he began to intentionally misinterpret the Bible to make it appear that Christ could not see through the portals of the tomb, even though He clearly could from the New Testament stories and Jesus made it plan to the thief on the cross that the thief would be with Jesus in paradise. But the need to incorporate Ellen White’s extra biblical ideas into the Bible is very strong among traditional Adventists. Yes I would label Ty Gibson a traditional Adventist, not simply because of his history on 3ABN, but his theology is very much that of traditional Adventists who can’t seem to pull themselves away from Ellen White and Penal/Substitutionary Atonement. The Good News Tour often uses Ty Gibson in their presentations because he seems to have a willingness to speak on the influence of the love of God, but make no mistake he does not really depart from penal atonement theory as I will demonstrate here. In fact his opening text at the camp meeting sermon was not from the Bible but from Ellen White. I suppose that such things are appropriate at camp meetings since they are mainly attended by traditional Adventists who think that Ellen White is in total harmony with the Bible because they interpret the Bible by Ellen White.

After a highly questionable attempt to indicate that Christ is a separate person who no longer held to the attributes of God. Instead of recognizing Christ as still God but living as a human being because if God was Omnipresent, Omnipotent and all knowing Christ’s life would be like a charade.

Ty Gibson says:

“What would it mean for someone who is omniscient to say My God My God why have you forsaken me, what would it mean?

The answer is probably that Jesus was directing the listener’s attention to Psalm 22 which is a Psalm of tragedy to triumph. There is nothing in the New Testament to indicate that God abandoned Christ, nothing to indicate that God forsook Christ. But it is a founding tenant in Traditional Adventist’s Penal Atonement theory despite its lack of New Testament documentation other then reading into those words “My God My God why have you forsaken me”

He continues:

“What would it mean? Approximately nothing. It would be meaningless because if you were omniscient not to mention omnipresent you would be on the cross in that locale and you would simultaneously be where? In heaven with the Father.”…

“So Jesus was revealing love authentically so that we could look at the cross and believe that He did lay down His life for you and me. That there was a period of time when He couldn’t see through the portals of the tomb. When bright hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave as a conqurer. Jesus hung between heaven and earth my friends and He literally was submerged within the deep dense psychological darkness of your shame and mine. Our guilt our sin”…

He then quotes Isaiah 53 where the Lord laid the iniquity of all of us on him.

“The collective whole of all human sin as though He were the guilty party. Do you know what that means? Just to give a hint as to what it might mean imagine for a nanosecond what it would be like right now if you were made perfectly conscious of every sin you have ever committed. .. all the guilt of sin would come to an acute awareness in our consciousness that would crush us. Jesus goes to the cross and He experiences the full ramifications of our sin. Not as a charade, but as a literal actual sacrifice of Himself, and there hanging upon the cross, unbelievable.”

“Psalm 88 as a messianic prophecy pointing forward to Jesus probing into the inner workings of mind and heart hanging there upon the cross not to mention in Gethsemane he says [I am using the NIV I don’t know which version or paraphrase he is quoting but instead of transcribing I will use the NIV] “my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more,”

He then interjects: “This is second death language by the way”

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. “what kind of darkness, like the turn off the lights kind of darkness? This is a metaphor for what is going on in His mind in His heart as He bares our sins.” Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah He said in chapter 26 of Matthew I am exceedingly sorrowful even to the point of death” Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah

“Verse 8 is crucial”

You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?

“You hear what Jesus is going through here? Jesus is feeling a psychological and emotional chasm of separation from the Father that is so immense that He begins to feel that He is sinking into a depth from which there will be no resurrection. I am shut out and I can’t get out shall I arise even? Is there a resurrection Father from the death to which I am sinking? But here is the thing my friend. Jesus had earlier told His disciples no man takes my life from me I lay it down freely…”

Now is there some indication that Psalms 88 is a messianic prophecy let alone one that talks about Jesus Christ’s psychological and emotional state on the cross? Here is the whole Psalm.

Ps 88:1-18

CHAPTER 88

1 O LORD, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you.

2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

3 For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah

8 You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;

9 my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah

11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?

15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.

17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend. (NIV)

Take the time to read the surrounding chapters as well, you will see that there is nothing here to cause one to place this as a messianic prophecy other then a desire to find something in the Bible to back up Ellen White’s statements and the Penal idea that the wrath of God was poured out upon Christ, which we have to remember is another of those ideas missing from the New Testament. If one looks at the lists of presumed Messianic prophecies 88:8 is however listed. These lists are made primarily by comparing any phrase found in the Gospels that is close to a phrase found in the Psalms. For instance the website 365 Messianic prophecies states under number 127:

Psalms 88:8...They stood afar off and watched...Luke 23:49

A site called 324 Messianic prophecies uses the same thing. These type of messianic prophecies are all based upon a very loose comparisons of a few words based upon the King James Version of the Bible. For this Luke 23:49 says: And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things. Compared with the KJV version of Psalms 88:8 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. The similarity being the word “acquaintance” and “far” of course if you consider going from Hebrew to Greek even those limited words could be questionable.

Considering Psalm 88 does seem to begin naturally in verse 1 (remember verse numbers were not used in the original texts of the Bible and Psalms were referred to by how they began since they had no numbers or some other memorable refrain from the Psalm). This Psalm begins with “O LORD, the God who saves me”, to use this as some sort of evidence that Christ did not think He would be resurrected is to ignore the beginning sentiments. No, there is little evidence that this is a messianic Psalm. This is a good example of having an idea and reading meaning into a section of the Bible to make it appear that the Bible is saying something it is not. This is known as Eisegesis.

Eisegesis is a huge problem in Christianity. Remember above where Ty Gibson said “this is second death language”. Biblically the second death is mentioned only in the book of Revelation and it is described as a death to which there is no resurrection. In Ty Gibson’s sermon he uses eisegesis to arrive at a position very similar to the Word Faith teachers, such as Kenneth Copeland who once said:

"How did Jesus then on the cross say, ‘My God.’ Because God was not His Father any more. He took upon Himself the nature of Satan. And I’m telling you Jesus is in the middle of that pit. He’s suffering all that there is to suffer, there is no suffering left . . . apart from Him. His emaciated, little wormy spirit is down in the bottom of that thing and the devil thinks He’s got Him destroyed. But, all of a sudden God started talking." (Kenneth Copeland, Believer's Voice of Victory (television program), TBN, 21 April 1991.)

The similarities here are interesting, first Ty Gibson set forth Jesus as not God because He did not have the 3 omni characteristics of God. They can then move to the next step which is that Jesus died Spiritually, as in Adventist terminology Jesus died the second death. There is an interesting article by Troy J. Edwards and Victory through the Word Ministries I am going to use some of the sections from this article to point out the similarities between Ty Gibson, Word of Faith movement and earlier Penal Atonement theorists. The above link is to Part 1, most of my quotes will be from Part 2 of the article.

First here is a bit from the article about what the Word of Faith teaches using Psalm 88:

The Old Testament, according to the Lord Himself, gives us a picture of all that the Lord was to suffer. Though the disciples were focused on what the Messiah would suffer at the hands of the chief priests and rulers (Luke 24:20), the OT Scriptures focus on both His physical sufferings as well with His internal sufferings. One of the first passages we find in relation to His internal sufferings is in Psalm 71:20-21:

Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side.

Though this might be applied to David symbolically, it's literal meaning can only be applied to Jesus Christ Himself. David never died and had to be made alive again and David never went to the depths of the earth. On the other hand, God gave David a glimpse into the future concerning the coming Messiah that the Father would send in the fulness of time. It was He who died and was made alive again. It was He who went to the depths of the earth. The New Living Translation interprets the first part of verse 20 this way: "You allowed me to suffer much hardship..."

If read in the sequence in which this Psalm is written and applied to the Lord, it would seem that the Lord had suffered while still in the depths of the earth. However, I can understand if this passage from the 71^st Psalm is not enough to convince the reader that perhaps Christ suffering in hell on behalf of His people may have been prophesied. I believe however, that Psalms 88 gives us much stronger evidence of this possibility. Although a sound exposition of this Psalm would do more justice in the presentation of our case, it would require us to make this series of essays longer than we desire. Instead, I will quote the first seven verses from two different translations:

I won’t deal with the eisegesis of Psalm 71:20-21 now, you can read it and see that it is simply another example of reading into a text the meaning you want just as is being done to Psalms 88. When you read into a text you can always make it refer to whatever you want, here we see that they apply Psalm 88 to Jesus in hell, whereas Ty Gibson makes it Jesus on the cross. What is so interesting about this article is how they relate the Word Faith movement beliefs with pervious Christian writers who taught Penal Atonement theory:

John Calvin seemed to believe wholeheartedly that Christ descended to hell and suffered there. In his well known works, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin says:

If Christ had dies[sic] only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No – it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God's vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgement. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and and the dread of everlasting death ... Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge – submitting himself even as the accused – to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained. All this with one exception: "He could not be held by the pangs of death."[19]

Now some critics of the Faith Movement would attempt to make us believe that Calvin's teaching is different from that which is advocated by the Faith Movement.[20] Yet we have Calvin saying that Christ had to "suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained." Is Calvin saying that men would only have suffered torments in their soul for the rest of eternity if Christ had not suffered them on their behalf? Furthermore, what does it [sic] Calvin mean by having to "grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and and the dread of everlasting death?" Calvin is very clear that Christ's suffering was not limited to the cross alone but He actually descended into hell itself and suffered there:

The article gives several other examples which I won’t list but they are interesting how so much of Christian history believed that Jesus (who is God) had to die spiritually, that God had to literally cease to be God, which indicates a real lack of understanding about the nature of God. Primarily that God is One. In the words of Ty Gibson it becomes a charade. For the Word of Faith movement that Jesus (who is God) suffered in Hell and for Ty Gibson that conservatively 10 Billion lives worth of human sins were placed upon Christ who felt the guilt for all of them though He was guiltless but this feeling of guilt was the second death and Jesus thought He would die forever for undertaking the charade.

While in the main I have not offered the alternative to Ty Gibson and the other Penal Theory proponents you can read more in my article What is wrong with the Substitutionary theory of the Atonement? And Moral Influence Theory and the Adventist World Magazine This is probably the biggest problem in Christianity today as it says horrible things about God, God has to punish, pour out His wrath and place as a penalty on Jesus (who is God) so that God can forgive the guilty. It makes it appear that Christ is more loving than God, Christ loves and offers Himself as sacrifice while God demands that someone even if it is the innocent has to suffer before God will forgive. It is a terrible view of God and it is not the New Testament view of God but a relatively new view only popularized about 500 years ago with the Satisfaction theory of atonement which progressed into the penal/Substitutionary atonement. Still most people don’t think about what their tradition really says about God. But in the postmodern world we need to present a much more accurate view of God than this human based medieval traditions.

Would you die for the Adventist church?

Recently I got the following comment:

Ron, what is your purpose in even remaining a Seventh-day Adventist? You would probably find it much more agreeable to join the many other denominations whose beliefs are very similar to yours. What is your agenda in remaining in a church that you seem to have no affinity towards? The Seventh-day Adventist church has been raised up by God to give the last warning to the world, living in the hour of God's judgment. It is a church that keeps the commandments of God and has the Spirit of prophecy (which the church believes to be Ellen White). If you do not agree with this and the other beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist church, then why remain in a church whose sole reason for existance is the proclaimation of the three angel's message? You could then spend your time differently then in attempting to show why the church you are a member of (I am assuming you are, otherwise, disregard this post) was wrong from the beginning. Please consider why you are a Seventh-day Adventist, and if the reason is enough that you would be willing to die for it. Grace be with you.

I was wondering how representative this person’s views are of Adventism. So after the questions he asks he makes the following claims, are these claims true of Seventh-day Adventism?

The Seventh-day Adventist church has been raised up by God to give the last warning to the world, living in the hour of God's judgment.

Is that a true statement? Did God raise up the Adventist church or is that an assumption. Most all churches feel that God in some way was involved in their origin, is that only really true for Adventism? Do you believe that Adventist church was raised for no other reason than to give the last warning to the world? Has the message of God so changed that there even has to be a last warning to the world? What kind of church would give up all the other Christians duties of a church just to offer a warning to the world? What is the hour of God’s judgment, the same God who knows the end from the beginning, who knows who are His and they will never be snatched from His hand. Is God somehow judging us differently then anyone else in history? You notice that single statement raises a lot of questions, most of which I doubt the author of the comment can answer adequately, but he continues.

It is a church that keeps the commandments of God and has the Spirit of prophecy (which the church believes to be Ellen White).

How does an organization keep the commandments of God? Does the organization have a mother and father to honor? We know very well that the organization has stolen from its members and misused their money at times so just how do they keep the commandments of God? I know very well that the people in the organization don’t keep the commandments of God, not the 10 and not even the simply love your neighbor as yourself. Even if you excluded the heretics like me the members or the church itself will not be found to keep the commandments of God. Does the Adventist church have the Spirit of prophecy? Most all churches claim to have the Spirit of prophecy as most all churches claim to hold to the Bible in some way, to the inspiration of the founders of Christianity and Judaism. Is Ellen White the Spirit of Prophecy? Not by a long shot, to say that is to totally rip the meaning out from the text which makes use of the term Spirit of Prophecy. It is rather like the claim that the church keeps the commandments, a big claim with no truth behind it.


If you do not agree with this and the other beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist church, then why remain in a church whose sole reason for existance is the proclaimation of the three angel's message?

Probably because I reject your views and the views of those who because of their spiritual blindness think that the sole reason for the Adventist church is the proclamation of the three angel’s message. Because the church began by thinking it was soon to be taken to heaven and that the door to salvation was closed to anyone but a select few does not mean that the church has to remain thinking in that provincial way. The church actually did change unfortunately now there are people like the person who wrote the above comment who want to go back instead of forward. Do we cede the Adventist church to those people because they claim it is theirs or do we fight for truth?

You could then spend your time differently then in attempting to show why the church you are a member of (I am assuming you are, otherwise, disregard this post) was wrong from the beginning.

So if the church is wrong just don’t tell them…does that sound like a wise strategy? If someone was eating low grade poison should not one tell them to stop before they destroy themselves? Is not that the whole emphasis of Adventist evangelism, we claim we are giving them truth, we ask them to decide and change their beliefs, is it only acceptable if we tell others to change but we don’t dare internally look at our beliefs and consider if what we say is true or not. Has Adventism simply become the haunt of hypocrites unwilling to think differently from the traditions of some Adventists, saying you must change your beliefs, we can never change ours?

Please consider why you are a Seventh-day Adventist, and if the reason is enough that you would be willing to die for it.

How many Adventists are willing to die for the Seventh-day Adventist church? Is the Seventh-day Adventist church God that we should die for a denomination. Perish the thought…well probably very few Adventists would have ever produced that thought. To me it represents a misplaced allegiance. But maybe I am wrong maybe most of the Adventists out there agree with that comment. Because if my church has really become as myopic as the message of the comment above the question is very good…why would I or anyone remain in such a denomination?

The destruction of Adventist Sabbath Schools

Adventist Today alerted me to a recent survey which covers numerous areas dealing with Adventists. There is a convergence of thought in my mind concerning the recent topic of theistic evolution vs. 6 day literal creation and some of the information in this survey dealing with Sabbath School.

Here are a couple of Sabbath School survey results:

Sabbath School Compared to Sunday School

Adventist churches are nearly twice as likely as other faiths in America to have a regular Sabbath School or Sunday School or similar religious education program for children and adults. More than 99% of Adventist local churches have Sabbath School each week, while only 53% of the local congregations of all religions have Sunday School or a similar program each week.

This is a major strength of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America. Dr. Win Arn and other church growth researchers working across many denominations have shown that congregations that have regular religious education programs are more likely to have significant growth. The research shows that this is especially true for those congregations that have a regular adult religious education program.

Research also shows that the better the attendance at the religious education program, the more likely a congregation is to grow. This is one reason why it is important to have a strong, vibrant Sabbath School, perhaps making changes to increase attendance if it has fallen off because the program is boring and not meeting the needs.

Small Groups

This week a church member considered moving her membership because her Sabbath School class didn't have enough interaction among class members.

"Because I have a stressful job and my family lives in other parts of the country, I look forward to relating to other believers at church," she stated. "But most classes are very impersonal with the entire focus on the lesson. I would really like to find a class that includes both in-depth Bible study and social activities."

According to data from the "Faith Communities Today" (FACT) study, in more than 75% of local Adventist churches, only a few members participate in small groups.

Only about one in fifteen churches have strong small group ministries with many or most adults participating. Nine Facets of Small Groups book.

Last week at the Sabbath School class I attend we were talking about how few people go to Sabbath school classes in our church, as we waited for more than the two of us to arrive. The largest class that week in the church had 9 people in attendance, yes I went out and counted them. This is a moderate sized church and I am pretty sure it is also representative of the majority of Adventist churches. Of course the numbers will vary with the size of the churches but I have noticed over the last 10 years that Sabbath School classes are very poorly attended. As the Center for Creative Ministries research shows the small groups and Sabbath Schools are important for the health of our churches. To be correlated to the small groups the Sabbath Schools must be the interactive variety rather then the sermon variety. The sermon variety is easily identified with the Sabbath School class that Doug Batchelor teaches.

But as we can see from the recent blog discussions here and elsewhere there are often people who don’t handle discussions very well. There seems to be a large segment in Adventism who are so certain, that they cannot even allow other ideas to be entertained. That is part of the problem when one assumes that their church is the remnant and that it holds the truth. The church then has the answers and no other ideas need apply. What do people like that do to a discussion group? Well they stifle it, they make it hurt for others to express their views if they are different from traditional church beliefs. If every one agrees with the traditional beliefs there is usually no discussion at all. No discussion leaves you with a Doug Batchelor style sermon class where half true amazing facts are inserted to add some interest to the topic. But the problem is that in a sermon class people don’t get to know other people. The problem with a class or small group that can’t allow other opinions is that people with other opinions do not feel accepted enough to care to go to the class. That can even be uncomfortable for people who may accept other ideas but don’t like to see any friction in a class.

It is very possible that we live in a time when people need to relearn how to talk to other people; how to discuss things without needing to become judgmental or overly protective of their traditions or orthodoxy. We will never connect with people until we can talk to them and if we don’t listen to other people we will not learn from them or about them. Thus there will really be no connection, no real church growth because as a church what do we really have to offer. If we can’t even accept the people in our churches who are we going to accept?

So tell your pastor to consider giving some sermons on how to accept people, how to listen to people and how to communicate what you believe and why you believe it without resorting to demanding that the other person leave their church. Sermons that address the need for small group community, because often sermons are the only thing people are coming to church for as they think that fulfills their worship requirements. So we have to depend on our pastors to communicate the need to form a community at an interpersonal level. Frankly I am constantly amazed at how irrelevant most sermons are today to the needs of modern people. Perhaps there is a class on irrelevance in seminary; I suppose if the sermon is so milquetoast it does not upset anyone that may be what some pastors are shooting for. But as it is now we are shooting ourselves constantly, driving out our own members and helping practically no one, within or without our churches. Many may want to stay doctrinally pure but that assumes that their doctrines were pure to begin with, that their doctrines were completely correct and without any need to ever be updated or rethought. Which strikes me as a very conceited point of few, and conceited points of view are poison to churches and community.

Do 6 literal day creationists really believe the account is literal?

The answer to that question is no they don’t. What is so hard to pin down with these people is what they really believe. They constantly revise their statements. They will say how literal they take the story of creation and the flood and then as you discuss with them you see that they take only certain parts literally. All the while claiming they are the ones who accept the Bible just as it reads. Here I will examine with the aid of a review of David’s Read’s comments why he does not do what he claims. Adventist Today has an interview with Read about his new book Dinosaurs: An Adventist View ($34.95 you can see why I am not going to buy it and review it).

Notice this quote from the Adventist Today interview:

Q. Do Ellen White's writings figure into the content of your book?

A. Absolutely. The book's central thesis revolves around a cryptic statement by Ellen White concerning "amalgamation." She stated that the worst sin of the people who lived before the Genesis Flood was the sin of amalgamation, which produced species that God did not create, and that one of the most urgent reasons for the Flood was to destroy the amalgamated species. For many years, the most knowledgeable, doctrinally well-grounded Adventists have seen a connection between extinct pre-historic animals, such as dinosaurs, and Ellen White's "amalgamation" statements. My book explores the thesis that dinosaurs were the products of amalgamation-now understood as genetic engineering-by people who lived before the Genesis Flood. While this theory, like any theory about origins, has its problems, it turns out to be a very defensible thesis. Moreover, it explains much about the fossil record that cannot otherwise be explained within the "young earth creationist" paradigm. This theory has been discussed by and among Seventh-day Adventists for more than three decades, but there has never been a book-length exploration of it. An appellate court justice I worked for back in Texarkana, Texas, once told me, in the context of legal appeals, "You don't really know what you've got until you write the opinion." In other words, you do not know how strong your position is until you write it down on paper, and explain and argue it in a logical, step-by-step manner. That's what I've tried to do in this book. I hope everyone who reads it will find it interesting, and receive a blessing from it.

So here we see the fantasy position that the antediluvians were technically so savvy and scientifically so advanced that they created dinosaurs. Judging by the number of different dinosaur species they were an industrious bunch as there are hundreds of species. As the USGS says:

Approximately 700 species have been named. However, a recent scientific review suggests that only about half of these are based on fairly complete specimens that can be shown to be unique and separate species. These species are placed in about 300 valid dinosaur genera (Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, etc.), although about 540 have been named. Recent estimates suggest that about 700 to 900 more dinosaur genera may remain to be discovered.

But how does this conflict with a literal view of Creation? Let’s look at the Bible verse that begins the Genesis account of animals created:

(Gen 1:21 NIV) So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:25 NIV) God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Now does the story contain anything about new creatures created by amalgamation by man and beast? Now of course not it is not found in the story that they claim to take literally, no it is found in a nineteenth century writer…that is roughly 1700 years after the books of the Bible were combined into what we call the canon of scripture. No, what these people mean is that when they believe in the literal 6 days of creation they believe in their traditional interpretation of what happened. Of course then if you don’t believe like they do then you simply don’t believe the “word of God” or the word of Moses because they think that Moses really did write all the Pentateuch because that is what tradition has held.

But David Read even goes farther as a recent comment on my article on Adam’s Busy Day shows. The article shows the huge number of animals that he would have to name in a 24 hour period. David Read puts forth this argument on 02 June 2009 at 4:17 on the Spectrum Blog under the thread The Creation Wars:

No creationist argues that every one of the modern "species" was originally created by God in its present form and brought aboard Noah’s ark. There was a period of rapid speciation immediately following the Flood….

Some creationists believe that as few as 1,000 pairs of animals were brought on board the ark and that all modern land animals and birds descended from these….

Now what does the book of Genesis literally say. I mean that is what these people claim to believe isn’t it?

(Gen 6:19 NIV) You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.(Gen 6:20 NIV) Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

(Gen 7:2 NIV) Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,

(Gen 7:3 NIV) and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

So here is a guy right in the fight with David Asscherick to decry evolution, who claims that man created dinosaurs and that only a limited number of animals were taken on the ark and that: “There was a period of rapid speciation immediately following the Flood.

He in his book is not only speculating about the creation of dinosaurs but it is a book against evolution.

Q. I assume that you are writing from the creationist perspective?

1. Absolutely. Darwinism has plenty of defenders; it is the dominant point of view in academia, media, the museums, foundations, government, entertainment, business, etc. Darwinism has no need of additional advocates.

Q. Do you bring any new insights into explaining the young earth creationist model and the critique of Darwinism?

1. Maybe not, but I think I have presented the material in a fresh and interesting way. One example is my discussion of the theory of evolution: When our DNA copies itself, it does so flawlessly 99.99% of the time, but occasionally there is a copying error. The modern theory of evolution posits that those copying errors accumulate to create new biochemical mechanisms, new organs, and eventually change species into different, new species. That is the theory of evolution in a nutshell. But our real-world experience with DNA copying errors is that they cause all kinds of problems, including thousands of diseases. The notion that DNA copying errors are responsible for all of the diversity of plant and animal life that we see around us is an idea that I don't find at all credible, and I marvel that it has become scientific dogma. But it has, and to remind readers what the theory is, I refer to it throughout the book as "the copying error theory of evolution."

The sad thing is this book probably does represent an Adventist perspective. Poorly reasoned and largely based upon the writings of Ellen White treated as if her writings are the literal Biblical story. Because frankly the literal Biblical story is not all that likely at least not as mankind realizes the scientific method of reasoning. The story still teaches some important lessons and that is what is really important, that the Bible story can inspire ideas from the primitive to the modern mind is encouraging that God is able to communicate to us on any level of knowledge that man has. The problem comes when we try to remain stuck in a previous more primitive mindset and claim that that is simply the right thing to do and the right way to interpret the Bible.

Is Radiometric dating flawed

Here is my response to Pickle's latest comment:

Your reply comes across as if you aren't interested in a serious discussion.

When you say that Ellen White said such and such, are you saying by that that you reject the biblical teaching that it is Jesus who testifies by His Spirit through the prophets? See 1 Pet. 1:10-11. If you reject what peter taught on this in the New Testament, I would be curious to know what part of the Bible you do accept as authoritative.

Feel free to cite a specific article that gives specific U/Pb ratios, and then perhaps we can discuss that, if you really are as open to scientific evidence as you apparently want creationists to be.

A 1976 Science article reported U-238/Pb-206 ratios as high as 27,300, which suggests a time of formation more recent by a factor of 270 for Cretaceous and 760 for Triassic.

If it truly is all about science, then this scientific evidence will be properly and objectively considered. But if the root of the matter is certain philosophical and religious presuppositions, then it will probably be ignored or ridiculed even if it can't be refuted. That's just the nature of how this topic seems to work.

Before I get to the scientific side you can see from Pickle's circular reasoning is the order of the day for some people. As Pickle (I am assuming this is Bob Pickle) said:

When you say that Ellen White said such and such, are you saying by that that you reject the biblical teaching that it is Jesus who testifies by His Spirit through the prophets? See 1 Pet. 1:10-11. If you reject what peter taught on this in the New Testament, I would be curious to know what part of the Bible you do accept as authoritative.

What nonsense. if you can show things where Ellen White is clearly wrong you must be rejecting the Bible in entirety. As if Ellen White is somehow even talked about in the Bible. It is complete nonsense. But the assumption is Ellen White is a prophet, that assumption carries even when Ellen White is wrong because the assumption is the most important thing, not truth and not reality.

Do a Google search and see just how often the radiometric dating techniques are used. The science is against your position, that is all there is too it. In most all areas of science the sub specialities have become too technical for us amateurs to pretend that we understand the data.
Here is an article that refutes Gentry.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html

Yahoo answers has a good answer to the question, has Science refuted Gentry
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080423224447AAKW4OR


Odom, L.A., and Rink, W.J., 1989, "Giant Radiation-Induced Color Halos in Quartz: Solution to a Riddle," Science, v. 246, pp. 107-109

Wakefield, J. Richard , 1988, Geology of Gentry's "Tiny Mystery", Journal of Geological Education, May, 1988

If you are specifically referring to Gentry's 1992 "Creation's Tiny Mystery" 3rd Edition, then almost every peer reviewed work dealing with radioactive decay refutes it, because in order to avoid internal conflicts within his argument Gentry was forced to conclude that decay rates for his chosen polonium isotopes remained constant while those of a select few other radioactive isotopes were much, much greater until recently for some unknown reason, after which time they have remained absolutely constant.

I will give him credit though, to my knowledge he is one of the very few people (if not the only) to make a serious attempt, at least in the past half dozen or so decades, to publish Creationist oriented work for mainstream peer review on a subject similar to what he has some credentials in (Master's degree in physics from the U of Fla and an honorary doctorate of sciences from a small liberal arts college).

--
Here is an article that may help you

--
http://www.answersincreation.org/rate_admit.htm


"RATE" Leaders Abandon Geologic Fantasies and Admit that Extensive Radioactive Decay has Occurred

Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.

The following material may be freely copied and distributed as long as the author is properly acknowledged
and the material is not altered, edited or sold.

For decades, young-Earth creationists (YECs) have vainly searched the geology and geochemistry literature to find ways of discrediting radiometric dating and protecting their antiquated biblical interpretations. YEC John Woodmorappe (a pseudonym), for example, has been at the forefront in misquoting and misrepresenting radiometric dating results from the geology and geochemistry literature (e.g., Woodmorappe, 1979, 1999). Woodmorappe's shotgun attacks against radiometric dating even include the ridiculous accusation that concordant radiometric dates may be nothing more than products of "chance"; that is, random numbers (Woodmorappe, 1999, Figure 20, p. 51; p. 52, 87-92). Woodmorappe (1999, p. 85) even endorses YEC Robert Witter's outrageous charge that geochronologists could obtain just as good radiometric results by throwing darts at a concordia diagram. I often refer to this groundless attack as "Woodmorappe's Crapshoot".



A small group of YECs with legitimate Ph.D.s (including D. Russell Humphreys and John R. Baumgardner) have formed the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) committee to attack the validity of radiometric dating. Rather than embracing the embarrassing distortions and nonsensical accusations of Woodmorappe or John and Henry Morris, Humphreys and Baumgardner have finally realized that geology and geochemistry are not going to give them the answers that they want. In an Answers in Genesis (AiG) article Carl Wieland had this to say:

When physicist Dr Russell Humphreys was still at Sandia National Laboratories (he now works full-time for ICR), he and Dr John Baumgardner (still with Los Alamos National Laboratory) were both convinced that they knew the direction in which to look for the definitive answer to the radiometric dating puzzle. [new paragraph] Others had tried—and for some, the search went on for a while in the early RATE days—to find the answer in geological processes. But Drs Humphreys and Baumgardner realized that there were too many independent lines of evidence (the variety of elements used in "standard" radioisotope dating, mature uranium radiohalos, fission track dating and more) that indicated that huge amounts of radioactive decay had actually taken place. It would be hard to imagine that geologic processes could explain all these. Rather, there was likely to be a single, unifying answer that concerned the nuclear decay processes themselves.

In other words, after decades of YEC failures to undermine radiometric dating with geology and geochemistry, these YEC leaders now recognize that enormous amounts of radioactive decay have occurred. They are now relying on nuclear physics, e.g., Chaffin, 2003 (Adobe Acrobat file) and probably an ample supply of groundless miracles to speed up the decay rates without frying Adam or Noah. Humphreys et al. (2003) (Adobe Acrobat file), although full of errors and bad assumptions, also makes the following candid admission (p. 3), which is a veiled attack on Woodmorappe's "crapshoot" and similar YEC schemes that involve bogus accusations against radiometric dating methods and equipment:

Samples 1 through 3 had helium retentions of 58, 27 and 17 percent. The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [Humphreys, 2000, p. 335-337]. WE EMPHASIZE THIS POINT BECAUSE MANY CREATIONISTS HAVE ASSUMED THAT "OLD" RADIOISOTOPIC AGES ARE MERELY AN ARTIFACT OF ANALYSIS, NOT REALLY INDICATING THE OCCURRENCE OF LARGE AMOUNTS OF NUCLEAR DECAY. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth — at today's rates — of nuclear decay occurred. [my emphasis]



CONCLUSIONS



Over the years, YECs have invoked a large array of imaginative and fruitless excuses to defame radiometric dating. These attacks include: magma mixing, Woodmorappe's crapshoot, excess argon, neutron fluxes, neutrinos, and just plain creationist magic. Humphreys, Baumgardner, and other YECs in the ICR-AiG alliance have finally realized that they can't use geology and geochemistry to undermine radiometric dating. They are now relying on physics and probably a liberal dose of untenable miracles to save their dogma. YECs must realize that they're rapidly running out of "scientific excuses" for confusing and deluding the public about the true nature of radiometric dating.



REFERENCES



Chaffin, E.F., 2003, "Accelerated Decay: Theoretical Models," Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey (ed.), Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA. Chaffin, 2003



Humphreys, D.R., 2000, "Accelerated nuclear decay: a viable hypothesis?" in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, editors, Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, San Diego, CA, p. 333-379.



Humphreys, D.R.; S.A. Austin; J.R. Baumgardner and A.A. Snelling, 2003, "Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay", Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. Ivey (ed.), Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA. Humphreys et al. (2003).



Woodmorappe, J., 1979, "Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised", Creation Research Society Quarterly, v. 16, September, p. 102f.


Woodmorappe, J., 1999, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.


Here is some links to important articles:

Here is a site whose purpose is to contradict the prevailing idea that it is not Christian to believe in Theistic evolution.

http://freespace.virgin.net/karl_and.gnome/origins.htm

Here is an article which deals with that as well as several other Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look There is also a lot of other articles, some of which deal with the idea of a global flood. Certainly there is much evidence for amazing water activity through geologic time, but most all of these do not fit in with the global flood idea.

Theistic Evolution

When we read some of the letters from the anti-evolutionists here and elsewhere we see them use words like Darwinian Evolution. So here is a quote from Darwin’s concluding chapter in Origin of the Species.

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.

To be clear evolutionary theory is not the same as what Darwin posited. To be even clearer Theistic evolution is not the same as atheistic evolution. But when the anti-evolution people talk they rarely address the ideas of Theistic evolution. Theistic evolution holds that there is indeed a Creator. So all that stuff about not believing in creation is not true, the idea is that God did create, the question is how does it appear that God created? The anti-evolutionists ignore the Theistic component so they often talk about the second law of thermodynamics or how can mutations ever be beneficial. (though that second one is poorly informed just ask modern medical people about drug resistant bacteria.)

So with our 6 day literalist creationists Theistic Evolutionists believe that there is a God, the Creator, the uncaused first cause. Which we acknowledge is a position taken on faith a presupposition which is not testable and unexplainable as to how God came about to be God. Granted it is just as much faith based as the atheist evolutionists singularity which caused the Big Bang. When we go back far enough we all seem to arrive at an unexplainable beginning. As Christian evolutionists we see theistic evolution as the best option to explain what we see. Like the 6 day literal creationists we acknowledge that life in the form of a cell is made up of two critical things as my old Bioenergetics class said; “energy and information”. Neither of which spontaneously happen. So our differences are not about the Creator but about how creation occurred. They are not differences about thermodynamics or even mutations. I would assume that even 6 day literal creationists acknowledge that mutations must have occurred to arrive at the blood sucking insects or carnivore teeth.

Darwin certainly documented that special creation could not explain the animals he saw on the Galapagos Islands as well as providing convincing evidence of natural selection. Natural selection is Darwinian evolution and it stands on very firm ground, as the Wikipedia article linked above states it is the cornerstone of modern biology. I would be amazed if it was not taught in Adventist schools from High School to College. To think that we have people in our church today saying not to teach it is astounding. To think anyone is listening to them is frightening.

This leaves two areas still to be examined. One is the biological and geological evidence found in the world around us. The same science that gives us radiometric dating and Oil production is the same science that gives us cell phones, television nuclear power and space travel. To say that the dating is wrong after as much success as science has had is difficult to accept. The second area is Biblical interpretation. We have traditionally believed in the literal 6 day creation because our knowledge of the natural world was so limited; just as our ancestors limited knowledge of our solar system allowed for the geocentric universe that Galileo (defending Copernicus’ discovery) disproved. As knowledge increases some traditions have to fall, some Bible interpretations have to fall as well. We have found that the Bible contains human ideas, poetry and mythology and not everything appears to be meant to be taken as literal. The Bible had to impact people from thousands of years ago to today. Of necessity the interpretations will change with the knowledge of people. Something that Adventists should be particularly aware of since they feel that they were called out to be special representatives giving new and different Biblical interpretations. We have a special term for this progressive understanding called “Present Truth”. What we see today is the pendulum swinging away from progressive knowledge to traditional knowledge. Summed up by some as this is what our church believes so love it or leave it. But our church also teaches progressive revelation, it teaches a growth toward present truth. We even have leaders such as Jan Paulsen who acknowledge diversity in the SDA church and even encourage critical thinking as well as acceptance of the fact that we don’t know everything. As this quote from Adventist Today notes:

Some might ask: Where is God in all of this? I can do no better to answer this than to quote a comment make by Dr. Jan Paulsen, the president of the General Conference at the Denver conference: "Knowing and understanding may not always be comfortable on this walk, but this is faith's world; it is a world of mysteries, it is the world of God's moving and doing".

With the 6 day creationists we agree that God is moving and doing but we may not fully understand the how He is moving and doing. Some of us think we can accept science and God. Science can certainly not insert God into their investigations, they can only study the natural world and that leaves some presuppositions up in the air, but it does not mean that only one possible presupposition is possible.

Who defines what an Adventist is?

I walked out of the sermon today. It was a special youth rally sponsored by our conference. The music was good the lighting was dramatic and then the sermon began. The speaker for the rally was an Academy student probably from Auburn Academy. He recapped some of his sermon from the previous Friday night meeting. He began by saying that Jesus came up with a plan to come and die to save man. He brought the plan to God who twice rejected it because He did not want Jesus to die. I left.

Of course this child of our educational system did not arrive at the above atrocity on his own. He is parroting what the confused Arians and Tri-theists of Adventism think. He is repeating the errors of our own so called prophet; Ellen White says in a number of places usually under the title The Plan of Salvation. Here are some excerpts so you can see the source of this Arian idea:

Sorrow filled heaven, as it was realized that man was lost, and that world which God had created was to be filled with mortals doomed to misery, sickness, and death, and there was no way of escape for the offender. The whole family of Adam must die. I saw the lovely Jesus and beheld an expression of sympathy and sorrow upon His countenance. Soon I saw Him approach the exceeding bright light which enshrouded the Father. Said my accompanying angel, He is in close converse with His Father. The anxiety of the angels seemed to be intense while Jesus was communing with His Father. Three times He was shut in by the glorious light about the Father, and the third time He came from the Father, His person could be seen. His countenance was calm, free from all perplexity and doubt, and shone with benevolence and loveliness, such as words cannot express. He then made known to the angelic host that a way of escape had been made for lost man. He told them that He had been pleading with His Father, and had offered to give His life a ransom, to take the sentence of death upon Himself, that through Him man might find pardon; that through the merits of His blood, and obedience to the law of God, they could have the favor of God, and be brought into the beautiful garden, and eat of the fruit of the tree of life.

…that He would die the cruelest of deaths, hung up between the heavens and the earth as a guilty sinner; that He would suffer dreadful hours of agony, which even angels could not look upon, but would veil their faces from the sight. Not merely agony of body would He suffer, but mental agony, that with which bodily suffering could in no wise be compared. The weight of the sins of the whole world would be upon Him. He told them He would die and rise again the third day, and would ascend to His Father to intercede for wayward, guilty man.

… The angels prostrated themselves before Him. They offered their lives. Jesus said to them that He would by His death save many, that the life of an angel could not pay the debt. His life alone could be accepted of His Father as a ransom for man.

... Satan and sinners would be destroyed, nevermore to disturb heaven or the purified new earth. Jesus bade the heavenly host be reconciled to the plan that His Father had accepted and rejoice that through His death fallen man could again be exalted to obtain favor with God and enjoy heaven. (Early Writings of Ellen G. White, page 149 1882; Spirit of Prophecy Vol. 1 page-45 1870 ; Spiritual Gifts, Volume 1, page 23 1858;)

I bring this incident up in light of the past two posts where some in the Adventist church are demanding that scientifically accepted evolutionary theory not be taught in Adventist Colleges. If you read the arguments they make their primary reason is that the SDA church teaches a literal 6 day (assumed 24 hour) time period in the recent past, most again assuming that recent means 6-10,000 year period of time. If you are a Seventh-day Adventist this has to be your belief or you simply are not a Seventh-day Adventist. Here is a quote from the Adventist Theological Journal article from a few years back:

But Scripture does not only indicate that the miracle of creation was performed in a short period of time. Through its genealogical listings and its naming of generations traced back to Adam, the first human being, it strongly indicates that the creation occurred not long ago, as compared to the claims of evolution.And so, we Adventists accept the account of a recent creation on the basis of the credibility of God’s supreme revelation, Scripture. And we believe also on the basis of the credibility of God’s recent revelation through the visions and writings of Ellen G. White,10 which likewise emphasize that creation took place approximately six thousand years ago. (What Is an Adventist? Someone Who Upholds Creation Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 7/2 (Autumn 1996): 142-167. Article copyright © 1996 by Marco T. Terreros.)

One has to wonder then if we must believe that God and His Son are not in fact One That one of them had to convince the other about a plan to save humanity. That Jesus was pleading with the Father to give His life a ransom. Because that is the way Ellen White saw it in a vision and we are Adventists and we have a fundamental belief about Ellen White whereby we say she is an authoritative source of truth. Likewise if Ellen White says that creation was six literal days approximately six thousand years ago we all must accept it to be SDA’s.

Today I saw at least in part the power of our schools indoctrination, not even indoctrination in the Bible or Christianity but in a very faulty Adventist tradition that we can easily trace to Ellen White. To be a true Adventist then is to be fully indoctrinated into whatever beliefs the denominational hierarchy or some self appointed traditional Adventist chooses to assert as our beliefs. Accept it and people like the Adventist Theological Society will accept you. Reject some of their beliefs and you are simply not a Seventh-day Adventist. Teach our students current scientific theory in a Biology class and those teachers should be released or restricted, they are violating Adventism.

The problem is that most Adventists don’t really pay all that much attention to what the church leadership says. We don’t feel that they are defining our positions, some of them perhaps but not all of our positions. We feel it is appropriate to live up to the light we see from God, science, history and even tradition. We don’t need the official denomination to define for us what an Adventist is. Then there is the other side which says we will cleanse the church. These are the Churches beliefs accept them or don’t but if you don’t you should not teach, you should not be in any kind of leadership role and you should not call yourself an Adventist.

It is pretty plain why so many of us don’t ever call ourselves Adventists but use terms like Progressive Adventists. We want to indicate that we are not of those who are trying to restrict the freedom of belief that is found in Christianity. To be a Christian we don’t have to hold to what somebody in some position of supposed authority calls “orthodox Christianity” and we don’t have to violate our conscience to believe in traditional Adventist views either. May our tribe increase! But to do that we have to fight the traditional Adventists attempts to cleanse thinking Christians from the Seventh-day Adventist church. Because make no mistake about it they are after you.

Letter to the GC Against Teaching Evolution Part 2

It appears we have the answer to the question in my previous post; Letter to the GC Against Teaching Evolution That the letter is from David Asscherick. Well at least as far as we can be certain in the electronic media. Since I don’t use any type of verification process in my comments section. But as I have not had any problem that I know of with fictitious authors I will act on the premise that the letter truly is from Asscherick. I am posting his comment here under its own thread since it does bring up some additional points to consider. Here is his comment:

David Asscherick here. I can confirm that the letter is, in fact, mine. Wow, a true rumor, that's novel! And on the internet no less! Someone call the press…

While I did write the letter it was not originally written or sent as an open, public letter. I sent it to a few colleagues for review. From there it was passed on to a few others, and the rest is history. Bad news travels fast. If only we could get our people this excited about sharing the Good News…

I have mixed feelings about the wide circulation my letter has received. I am happy to see this serious issue receive the attention it needs and deserves, but I could wish that it wouldn’t have happened with a personal letter being made exceedingly public. I have already been in touch with one of the individuals to whom the letter was written. I explained to him that it was not my intent to undercut him by broadcasting a private letter. He was very gracious and understanding. I would’ve expected nothing less, after all he is a fine Christian and a friend.

As for Ron's comments here, I am surprised that he fails to see the utter illogic of his position. The point is not whether or not Darwinian evolution is true (I don't believe it is, but that is another issue altogether). The point is an ecclesiastical one, not a scientific one: Like it or not (and I take it that Ron doesn't like it), the official, endorsed, published, voted, endorsed, sanctioned, (add your own synonyms here _____________) position of the world-wide Seventh-day Adventist Church is that the Genesis creation account is to be literally understood as communicating an actual, literal, solar Six Day Creation.

Surely this concept is not difficult to grasp.

No one is compelled to believe this, because no one is compelled to be a Seventh-day Adventist. However, it is logically coherent that if you are a Seventh-day Adventist you do believe this. Note: this also applies to professors, teachers, pastors, administrators, etc. In fact it applies to these persons doubly since they receive a paycheck to promote as true the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Surely this concept is not difficult to grasp.

If someone wants to work for Nike, great! Let them sell Nike. But if they like Adidas better, then let them work for Adidas. If they work for Nike and insist on promoting Adidas as the superior product they are unethical. And Nike is delinquent in letting this behavior (provided they know about it) to continue.

There are lots and lots of universities these guys/ gals can teach at. Let them teach "the preferred and normative worldview of most every area of science", as Ron calls it, there. We wish you the best, and commend you heartily for your ethically upstanding decision.

Note: this is my first ever blog post. So I'm feeling very modern and hip right now.

Have a great Sabbath! (That is, if you believe in those kinds of things...)

Warm regards,

David

I particularly want to deal with this statement:

As for Ron's comments here, I am surprised that he fails to see the utter illogic of his position. The point is not whether or not Darwinian evolution is true (I don't believe it is, but that is another issue altogether). The point is an ecclesiastical one, not a scientific one: Like it or not (and I take it that Ron doesn't like it), the official, endorsed, published, voted, endorsed, sanctioned, (add your own synonyms here _____________) position of the world-wide Seventh-day Adventist Church is that the Genesis creation account is to be literally understood as communicating an actual, literal, solar Six Day Creation.

Is this really an ecclesiastical issue? That apparently is what makes my position that a science class should teach generally accepted scientific theory and information. Dictionary.com defines ecclesiastical as “–adjective of or pertaining to the church or the clergy; churchly; clerical; not secular.” My feeling is that science classes are secular rather then church oriented. I also feel that the janitor cleaning the classroom of an Adventist University is occupied in a secular vocation. Being paid by the church organization does not make everything the church organization pays for fall under the ecclesiastical umbrella. I don’t think our students would be too thrilled to find out that their degrees are ecclesiastical degrees. We and those students for the most part want to have educations that will be readily accepted by other non ecclesiastical institutions whether of higher learning or research or technical institutions or employment. If that is not the intent of our Colleges and Universities I think once that fact is know there will be a steep drop off in students at Adventist colleges.

Do I agree with the statement that the “Genesis creation account is to be literally understood as communicating an actual, literal, solar Six Day Creation.” Well of course not. There was not even a sun until the 4^th day per the story (Genesis 1:14-19) so that would be an illogical statement. I tend not to agree with a lot of committee type publications about doctrines as they are often poorly stated. At some point the committee just wants to get out of there and garbage gets included as official language. As an SDA am I bound but what someone at the General Conference says? I think Ellen White would even have a problem with that one, and she thought at one time that the GC in general session was the highest authority on earth. It did not take too many years before she seemed to realize that they were just as fallible as any else, in or out of session. Even the preamble of our fundamental beliefs acknowledges we can change our positions if we receive new light on a subject.

With all the animosity the Adventist Church has had toward the Roman Catholic Church it is troubling to see some in the denomination try to recapitulate Catholicism in the Adventist church. A person would think the reformation thinking would lead us away from the all powerful dictation of a church hierarchy.

So where is academic freedom if we hold to Adventist colleges and universities as ecclesiastical institutes?

Letter to the GC Against Teaching Evolution

Recently I was forwarded a viral e-mail letter from David Asscherick to some General Conference officials. The letter is a politely worded document complaining about evolutionary theory taught in science classes at La Sierra University. The outcome of the letter is clearly to have denominational leadership dictate the curriculum of science course for the welfare of Adventist University students, which the letter equates to little children. I was unable to find a copy of the letter posted on the internet connected to Asscherick however. I will post the letter in its entirety here with a few of my comments (in red). While the letter does sound like it is from Asscherick I cannot say it is with certainty. Someone may be able to say for certain, if they can I would like to know.

Circulating by viral e-mail

April 30, 2009
Pastors Jan Paulsen, Don C. Schneider, Ricardo Graham
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904

Dear Pastors Paulsen, Schneider, and Graham,

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ. Like each of you, I am an
ordained pastor of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church. I write these words with my heart on full display--from pastor to pastor. This letter concerns the teaching of evolution at La Sierra University. While I am not a formally trained scientist, I am, however, familiar with many of the apologetic, philosophical, and theological issues surrounding the theories of naturalistic evolution. I have made this an area of special study in my life and ministry. So, I feel both comfortable and qualified to speak to the issue, especially in its ecclesiastical ramifications.

It is a matter of incontestable fact that naturalistic evolution is being taught at La Sierra University. This is not in and of itself a bad thing. Evolution should be taught at our denominational universities. But it should be taught as a competing and inimical worldview to the biblical worldview. We need our young people to know what it is they are up against, yes, but when naturalistic evolution is taught as fact or as the preferred and normative worldview, then we can be sure that the enemy has breached our lines.

There is no point in equivocating. I have seen the class materials with my own eyes. Frankly, I think every Seventh-day Adventist deserves to see them. Our people need to know what is happening. Many of them have heard various rumblings, but being the conscientious, confiding, and hopeful people they are, they have generally assumed the very best. We are making capital of their trust.

Notice his beginning argument: teaching evolution is OK but only if we teach that it is a view that we oppose. We should not even teach it as the preferred and normative worldview. Yet clearly it is the preferred and normative worldview of most every area of science. This is an important point when we seek to find what the intentions of the author of the letter are speaking about. He does not want the university to acknowledge the scientific reality, the worldview of modern academia. Instead we should only teach how to oppose the reality, the worldview. Something that numerous Young Earth Creation books have tried to do and something that has failed to move practically anyone in the scientific community to the young earth creation viewpoint. This should reflect that what David Asscherick wants, is in itself not possible at this time. Perhaps in a religion class where the focus is upon some type of church apologetic, then it would be appropriate to teach an inimical view of evolution. But in a science class the idea is to teach the most widely accepted scientific information.

In 2003 I preached a two-week evangelistic meeting on the Loma Linda University campus. The event was student-led and university-sponsored. Many students from La Sierra University attended those meetings, and I personally visited with many of them. They told me what was being taught in some of their science classes. I shall never forget the looks and questions of unadorned incredulity that I witnessed among those students. I have talked to many more since. "What should I do?" "Should I say something?" "Should I just attend a non-SDA school?" Do our leaders know about this?" "How come these people are allowed to teach at a Seventh-day Adventist University?" These young people, and many others like them, are justifiably nonplussed. Frankly, I share their confusion!

At this point we have to ask the question; why are the students confused? Is there some reason that they think that they should not be taught current scientific information at a university? Apparently the answer for these particular students is no, they should not be taught scientific theory at a Seventh-day Adventist University. That raises the second question why would they think that an SDA university because it is run by a denomination could or should only teach the beliefs of the denomination? I doubt the denomination has any particular teachings regarding physics or electrical engineering or even English classes. Do they honestly expect our University instructors to submit to denomination bureaucrats details of every part of their curriculum? We see that there is a problem of expectations. That is there are certain assumptions being made about the Bible, particularly Genesis, that it is meant as a literal account of creation, as if what is recorded was actually recorded by a first hand witness.

Later in the letter Asscherick, tells of his recent evangelistic meetings where the theme was follow the Bible. What he really means is follow one particular interpretation of the Bible. The one that says in the beginning God created light, but we have no idea what that light could be because it was before the creation of the sun. The earth was formless and void and covered with water. But without a sun water would look like stone, frozen solid, the deep is a phrase used of liquid water, not to mention the planet would not retain water without an atmosphere, something again created later according to the Genesis account. Then we have the creation of the sun, moon and stars. But we know from the speed of light those stars could not possibly have been created and be visible to us if the young earth creationist view is correct.

So really how literal are we to take the Genesis account? Are we really following the Bible because we make claims about interpreting possibly symbolic/allegorical stories? Remember the two trees in Eden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, with a talking snake, does that really sound like a literal story? What about nature, lions, tigers, sharks and parasites? How do we explain them? Nothing about how they came to be as we see them in nature, we could of course blame it on Satan’s manipulation but we don’t see that at all in Genesis or anywhere else in the Bible. So there are legitimate other ways of interpreting the Bible stories, to claim that whatever our tradition is the only way to “follow the Bible” means that we may in fact be the ones leading our children astray.

What deeply concerns me is that the faith of many students, who look up to their Adventist professors as more than just academic instructors, but also as spiritual leaders, is being undermined. Jesus' words in Luke 17:1, 2 about causing "one of these little ones to stumble" carry inestimable weight, and they should be reason enough to propel us to responsible action. Brethren, what are we doing and allowing? Will not God hold us accountable in our respective spheres for what happens on our watch?

I am aware, of course, that the church's governmental structure gives institutions like La Sierra University a necessary degree of administrative freedom. This is a good and wise arrangement. But this freedom, surely, is not synonymous with virtually unaccountable autonomy. La Sierra University is, after all, a denominational university. If the board has not yet adequately addressed this matter, then doesn't that evince a kind of complicity, if not outright mismanagement and denominational disloyalty? I genuinely ask, at what point is La Sierra University's board accountable and answerable to you men and the levels of church government that you represent? When, if
ever, can someone step in and save our children and the institutions they attend?

Governing and administrative structures are not the church. The people are the church. The governing and administrative structures are the scaffolding of the church. Scaffolds are for building and strengthening a thing; they are not the thing itself. But what if some are using the scaffolding to tear down the very church they were commissioned and created to build up? What then? I genuinely want to know. Where does the buck stop?

Perhaps you feel that your hands are tied by policy and protocol. But surely they cannot be tied completely. What should I, as a church pastor, do if someone is teaching doctrine that undermines the church's biblical positions in one of my Sabbath School classes? Wouldn't it be expected of me, the pastor--shepherd--of the flock, to address it? To ask this question is to answer it. Of course, I would work though the Sabbath School council and the church board, but you can be sure that I would deal with the problem. My conference president, to say nothing of my Lord, would surely hold me in contempt if I told him lamely that my hands were tied, no?

Furthermore, the greater the errancy, the greater the urgency. As even a cursory analysis plainly reveals, few doctrines are at greater philosophical odds with Seventh-day Adventism than naturalistic evolution, the arguments of well-meaning theistic evolutionists notwithstanding. Our Magna Carta is Revelation 14:6-12. If naturalistic evolution is true, Creation is cremated, the Sabbath is sabotaged, and our very name is neutered. What becomes of Scripture? And of our unique eschatology? We are not talking about bongo drums, wedding bands, and Christmas trees here.

If our hands are tied, then surely we must let an unfaltering love for God, for His Word, and for His young people dash these fetters into so many deserved pieces! We must do something. You must do something.

Who knows but that you have come to your positions for such a time as this. My ministry places me in somewhat of a unique situation in the world church. In partnership with the Central California Conference, I run ARISE, a mission training school that has seen hundreds of young people over the last seven years. I also have the privilege of preaching regularly on 3ABN and the Hope Channel. Too, I travel all over the world holding evangelistic meetings and preaching at camp meetings, youth conferences, weeks of prayer, etc. I genuinely feel that I have my finger on the pulse of the "average lay person" in the Seventh-day Adventist church the world over. Especially the young people ages 15 to 30. I can say with unblinking confidence that God is working in His church! Praise Him!

I just arrived home from the Youth Mission Congress in Frankfurt, Germany. Over 1600 young people attended the meetings. Night after night I preached the Adventist message--I preached Christ! The theme chosen for the congress was Follow the Bible, and what an indescribable joy it was to see, at the end of my last sermon, hundreds and hundreds of young people streaming forward. All of them had personal decision cards in their hands. A beautiful, five-foot-tall wooden Bible had been constructed for just this moment. On the side of the Bible was a slot designed to receive the decision cards the young people clutched in their surrendered hands. One by one, each placed his or her card in the Bible. The symbolism was rich and thrillingly profound. It was impossible to not be moved at a fundamental level as each eager young person placed their decision, and thus their life in that wooden Bible. My translator openly wept at the sight. "We will follow the Bible," they were each saying. All over the world, God's people--and in particular, it seems, His young people--are saying We will follow the Word--the Living Word, Jesus, and the Written Word, the Bible.

God has entrusted us with these young people. They are His. He has given us His wise counsel to raise up institutions of learning to educate, equip, and empower them. To build them up.

But what do we do when one of our institutions turns from this inestimably important responsibility, a responsibility that is fraught with eternal significance and involves the souls of those Jesus died to save? This is what I want to know.

And so do many, many others.

I thank each of you for your time, and, in advance, for your thoughtful responses.

Sincerely,
David Asscherick
Director, ARISE

Ellen White's ordination creditials

I have to admit it has been a long time since I have seen anything noteworthy on SDANET. But this post is rather stunning. SDANET has had a discussion on the ordination credentials of Ellen White, which they have posted on their at issues page here. A person inquired of the White Estate if Ellen White had been ordained. The answer was no she was not ordained though she was given the ordination credentials probably because they were the highest recognition the church could give since they did not have "prophet credentials". Of course the whole reason that most Traditional SDA's don't want women's ordination is because of the Biblical prohibition against women having authority over men. What an amazing disconnect! A prophet even a female prophet would have far more authority over men than an ordained Pastor (assuming the definition used by Adventists where a prophet is defined like an Old Testament prophet see funamental belief 18). But read for yourself William Fagal, Associate Director Ellen G. White Estate as he proves that logic is for others, not the White Estate.


Dear Brother Mutambirwa,


Thank you for contacting the Ellen G. White Estate. Mrs. White was not an
ordained minister, though she was granted the credentials of an ordained
minister, which sometimes results in confusion on this point. From 1871
onward various organizations in the church issued her ministerial
credentials (typically they were valid for two years at a time, so they
needed to be renewed). The printed form for such credentials says that
so-and-so (fill in the blank) is an ordained minister of the Seventh-day
Adventist church. I'm sure this has led some people honestly to conclude
that she was ordained. But in some cases on Mrs. White's credentials, the
word "ordained" was neatly struck out. In 1909 a "Biographical Information
Blank" that Mrs. White filled out for the General Conference asked "If
ordained, state where, when, and by whom." Her answer on this line was an
X, the same answer that appears on the question about remarriage. She had
not remarried after her husband's death, and neither had she ever been
ordained.


So why was she given the credentials of an ordained minister? I can only
guess, but my guess is that the church wished to recognize her contribution
officially. It had no "prophet's credentials" (and it still doesn't), so it
gave her the highest credentials it had, recognizing that they were not a
perfect fit (hence the occasional crossing out of "ordained"). She never
functioned as an ordained minister--never baptized, officiated at communion
services or marriages, organized or disbanded churches, presided at business
meetings of the church, etc. In her prophetic role, she functioned for more
than 25 years (1844-1871) without any credentials at all.


I hope this will help to resolve the question for you. Let me know if I may
be of further service. Thank you for writing, and God bless!


William Fagal
Associate Director
Ellen G. White Estate
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600 U.S.A.

Phone: 301 680-6550
FAX: 301 680-6559
http://www.WhiteEstate.org

See also Bille Burdick response to Fagal's letter here.

Sabbath School audio lessons

I was thinking recently that there really should be a Progressive Adventist Sabbath School lesson discussion pod cast. So I decided to search the internet and see what Sabbath School pod casts (mp3 or streamed) are available for people to download and listen to. There really don’t seem to be many, the closest I could find were those which are based upon Graham Maxwell’s Larger View, AKA Great Controversy Trust and Healing model. Listed as follows:

The Sabbath School Lesson page at Pine Knoll Publications Jonathan Gallagher http://www.pineknoll.org/sabbath-school-lessons

Ken Hart's Sabbath School Class is recorded weekly on the campus of Loma Linda University in the Randall Visitor Center at 11080 Anderson Street (at the corner of Anderson Street and University Court) in Loma Linda, California. Recordings and Handouts are provided here in multiple formats for your personal and group study. https://www.theox.org/index.cfm/pageid/615/index.html

Dr Tim Jennings’ Bible Study Class

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The following would consist of more traditional Adventist viewpoints:

Walla Walla University School of Theology present the Good Word hosted by Paul Dybdahl http://www.wallawalla.edu/academics/departments/theology/goodword/

Doug Batchelor’s ‘Central Study Hour’ Batchelor’s class is not a discussion at all more like a sermon, though he does have audience members read Bible verses.

The Denomination sponsors a couple of downloadable Sabbath School related programs:

A reading of the quarterly: Sabbath School Bible Study a pod cast service is brought to you by the South Pacific Division SDA quarterly weekly reading pod cast (mp3) audio recordings, in MP3 file format, of the Seventh-day Adventist Adult Bible Study Guide - Sabbath School lesson. Each file plays for about 40 minutes and is around 10mb in size. http://link.adventistconnect.org/lesson/podcast/index.htm Streamed version at http://record.net.au/sabbath-school-bible-study

Sabbath School U is a weekly program produced by the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries covering a quarterly topic or theme. It follows the studies found at www.cqbiblestudy.org or http://www.sabbathschoolu.org/podcastlist.php or http://gcyouthministries.org/Resources/SabbathSchoolLesson/SabbathSchoolUPodcast/tabid/195/Default.aspx

Sabbath School U Colligate: http://cqbiblestudy.org/article.php?id=3

Hope Sabbath School Study See HopeTV.org for a schedule of when the class is broadcast. You can also subscribe to a podcast of the class to automatically download the video or audio in your own podcast feed reader. Teacher: Dr. Derek Morris

http://media.forestlakechurch.org/content/hope-sabbath-school-study

This runs a week behind unlike many of the other downloads which record their discussions earlier so that people can listen to the discussions before their local class,

And finally at Sharon Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Omaha, Nebraska the Sabbath School Department has a weekly Sabbath School Teachers Meeting. (does not post in advance of actual date thus you hear the last weeks lesson) http://pkwsabbathschoolwrap.podbean.com/

Review of William Young's The Shack

Recently I discovered a new pariah in the Evangelical world. His name is William Young and he authored the recent book called “The Shack”. After reading or in my case listening to the audio version of the book it is pretty clear that the problem with Young is found in things he has said elsewhere and those are seen as implied in the things read in the book. But I will get more into that in the second part of this review.

The book takes the form of a story of someone who suffered a tragedy and who then receives an invitation by God to meet at the shack. I won’t tell you the tragedy as to protect some of the literary integrity of the book but you will find it relayed in some of the reviews that I link to below. The Shack is used as the symbol for the life changing tragedy. Thus the book is a novel; a work of fiction which he hopes will reveal truth. Something that no doubt most novelists want from their books, though this book is certainly more overt in the process and as a story teller much less proficient. In some ways the book has a lot in common with the Celestine Prophecy, not so much as a New Age religious tome as Redfield’s book, but as something which so often presents an other worldly view in which light and color play as major emphasis and clarity is often unworldly brilliant. That of course is only a small part of the book but I wanted to point out that while the Celestine Prophecy is basically a primer on New Age thought it is written in a very engaging style which carries on through the book.

The Shack begins by telling of the main character “Mack” setting up his life and his relationship with his abusive and religious father and Mack’s experience which leads to the life changing tragedy which makes him question his religion. This only takes a couple of chapters and then the book turns into something of a conversation with God. A conversation with God is always a difficult task as each person who believes in God is likely going to have a different perspective on what God is like. To counter this problem the author mixes up the ways that God appears in the conversation. God appears as an older Black lady who enjoys cooking and who is referred to as Papa which is Mack’s wife’s term for God. Jesus appears pretty much as simply a Middle Eastern carpenter in contemporary clothes and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman (Sarayu) who is not quite in focus, or constantly in motion. Over all it works pretty well imparting to God both male and female cultural characteristics and demonstrating as well as can be expected the standard Trinitarian concept of God (that is 3 distinct persons). These three deeply loving each other and all three are in a deep relationship. The author’s technique does incorporate the idea of Jesus as a son in more then just the physical incarnation concept however. But the book does not go into that part with the conversations: staying mainly within the framework of unity of all three. That unity being based upon a loving relationship.

The real meat of the book is found in the conversations which are the main focus of the book; the story is about getting to the conversation, between a hurting man and a loving God. How to make the man see things the way God see’s things. As a novel the book is not written very engagingly in other words it is not a story you read to take you into the life of a character and explore his or her feeling and adventures. The story is the preface to the conversation where the author can reveal his ideas about God. That is the reason to read this book. In fact I think the book would be useful in church small discussion groups. The conversations are packed with a lot of ideas. Some showing some real thought and provoking thought in people who might not otherwise think about these things. Others ideas which should be viewed as questionable of traditional Christianities views of God and the authors own questionable views about God.

From my perspective the theology is not quite right and still has some major flaws but it is much better than the theology we find in most Christian authors. It is not the giant leap but a first small step. That small step is focusing upon relationships. The relationship between God and man which spurs better relationships between humans. The author’s views would fit well within most Evangelicals views of God. Most people reading the book would likely not see many problems at all with his theology. Which is why several Christian watchdog types have attempted to discredit William Young, perhaps even making the book more interesting in the process. Their two chosen avenues are that Young does not accept the Penal/Substitutionary Atonement and that he believes in universal reconciliation (salvation). But these are not really concepts that can be found in the book. They may be mildly hinted at but if the reader did not know otherwise they would likely not notice them. In some ways it is an interesting phenomenon that these Evangelical watchdogs get so upset over such things even though they are not found in the book. It is not like most anyone agrees with Martin Luther or John Calvin or Charles Spurgeon on every theological idea. But that should not relegate their books to the trash heap of Evangelicalism.

As I move into part two about other reviews of the book it seems only fair that I lay out my pet criticism of the book. One of the annoying errors in the book is speaking of Jesus God says :

“Jesus is fully human although he is fully God he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything he has only lived out of his relationship with me. Living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the first to do it to the uttermost the first to absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence. “So when he healed the blind” he did so as a dependent limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus as a human being had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

A little later this view of Jesus is countered when God says: I am one God and I am three persons and each of the three is fully and entirely one. Obviously the author has some internal confusion about God. However this idea that Jesus relied on God as an external force is all too prevalent in Christianity and especially in Adventism. As if God acting as God is somehow different if it is God acting as a human depending on God. This kind of ideas does nothing but make Christians and their God look silly. I touched upon this topic in my previous article. I don’t understand how the concept of God with us (Immanuel) is so easily discounted by some Christians. So Jesus depending on God for power is somehow different than God depending on God for His Power. If there is only One God than there is no need to keep separating God from God. It seems those who do this want to subordinate their members of the One God into different orders of God. In fact many Trinitarians are more tri-theists then Trinitarians and many Trinitarians are very much believers in Subordinationism.

Part 2

This section is mainly dealing with the criticisms of the book because they really seem to reflect a difference between Emergent Christianity and Traditional Christianity. By way of reading the reviews you see which style of Christianity people feel is most appropriate. Some of the statements made by these so called discernment ministries are outright lies. But I won’t deal with some of the worst to save time. Anyone who actually reads the book will be able to see. (actually I lost the quote I typed in that showed how much one reviewer lied and I am not about to go and find the spot again and type it in.)

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Update 4/25/09: It bothered me so much to see this particular falsehood in a review that I took the time to transcribe it from the audio. It is from a book review done by David Dunlap

He writes:

The third Person of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit, is depicted as “...a small, distinctively Asian woman ’...I am Sarayu...keeper of the gardens among other things...’ ” (pp. 82-87). Young teaches that the Holy Spirit was a created being. Mack says, “Sarayu, I know your are the Creator...” Sarayu replies, ”A created being can only take what already exists and from it fashion something different” (p. 131). Evangelical theologians have always insisted that the Holy Spirit as a Person of the Godhead was not a created being. (Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that the Holy Spirit was a created being.) At another point in Young’s book, Mack queries, “Speaking of Sarayu, is she the Holy Spirit?” “Yes.” Replies Jesus, “She is Creativity; she is Action; she is the Breathing of Life; she is much more. She is my Spirit.” (p. 110).

In fact Young in no way teaches that the Holy Spirit was a created being and it is pretty near impossible to derive that from the book quote in context. When you have people like this lying for the sake of their gospel it is a pretty sure sign their gospel is corrupt. Here is the quote from the book:

Mack says, “Sarayu, I know your are the Creator but did you make the poisonous plants, stinging nettles and mosquitoes too? Sarayu seem to move in tandem with the breezes. Mackenzie, a created being can only take what already exists and from it fashion something different. So are you saying that you ”created everything that actually exists including what you consider the bad stuff. But when I created it, it was only good. Because that is just the way I am"…

End Update

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One of the big problems some feel with the book is as the character who portrays God says: “mixed metaphors to help you from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning…reinforcing religious stereotypes.” In other words don’t question your traditions. As one review says:

The Shack contains subtle and not so subtle heresies. The Shack also contains what many Bible scholars would call “aberrant” teaching. Former Professor of Theology at Denver Seminary Dr. Gordon Lewis wrote me in a private e-mail that “heresy is a conscious and deliberate rejection of orthodox teaching and the acceptance of contradictory views on the biblically revealed essentials of the Christian faith” (Lewis). In the category of aberration, Dr. Lewis writes, “unorthodox doctrine leads to aberrant behavior that wanders from the path of right action (ortho-practice) on biblically revealed moral and spiritual essentials of Christian living. Beliefs have consequence” (Lewis).

What is kind of funny about the above statement is that that is the method of argument the Roman Catholic Church used against Protestantism. Orthodoxy has never really been about what is right as about who has the power to say that they are right. Dr. Lewis is correct that beliefs have consequences but that in the case of this book is generally only acknowledged as beliefs that are different from traditional beliefs have the consequence of exposing traditional beliefs as inadequate, not dealing at all with the quality of the life as a consequence of the different beliefs.

From SHACK ATTACK- OR A CALL TO DISCERNMENT?:

Christian, what about this assertion by the Jesus of The Shack? “I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” (This is a false Jesus. The Jesus Christ of the Bible does not say that He is the best way, He says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” John 14:6. He is not the best way – He is the only way.)

The shack quote actually continues:

“I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” to see me is to see them. The love you sense from me is no different from how they love you.

This is all in response to Mack saying that he can relate to Jesus more easily then to the other two. The Shack Attack article however displays the proof text illogical techniques that I found in many of the reviews. If these people would only stop to think they have the whole Old Testament with not a mention of Jesus does that mean that they had no way to God? What these people act like is that if they can insert a Bible verse some place they have answered the question or solved the problem. That however is not true and is pretty clearly not the method the writers of the Bible wanted to convey. In context the statement in no way makes the Jesus referred to in the Shack as a false Jesus.

From Shack Attack:

Jesus: “God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things . . .”

(Isn’t this Pantheism – God in all things?)

The quote from the book continues:

“Ultimately emerging as the real and any appearances that mask that reality will fall away.”

This is in the context of Jesus explaining that when Mack knows Jesus better appearance will not be as important. Clearly the review does not even know what Pantheism actually is but you see the pattern of taking a snippet out of context and inserting something that would sound horrible to most Christians. Another quick example is:

Papa to Mack: “We [the Trinity] have limited ourselves out of respect for you.” (Isn’t this Open Theism – God choosing to limit Himself?)

Again that review does not know what Open Theism is or the concept of literary license or the simple Biblical examples of God revealing Himself as an angel or a burning bush or as Moses saw when he requested to see God the back of God so that Moses would not die. And of course the ultimate example of Jesus Christ the incarnation of God in form of a man a little lower than the angels. That these people think they are discerning is truly amazing to me. I will only deal with one more example from the Shack Attack review because it is very representative of many traditionalists views.

Shack attack:

Papa: “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It is not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” (Certainly there are consequences of our sin which we realize in this life and which impact other people. And certainly God has provided the cure for sin. That “cure” is the penal

substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross. Most certainly there is punishment for sin. Christ suffered the punishment for us. However, the implication of Papa’s statement is that the only punishment for sin is sin’s own punishment in a person’s life. The Bible is clear that punishment for the unredeemed, those who refuse Christ’s atonement, is the sting of spiritual death and eternal separation from God. The Shack makes light work of

the cross.)

The quote from the Shack:

“But if you are God aren’t you the one spilling out great bowls of wrath and throwing people into a burning lake of fire. Mack could feel his deep anger emerging again. Pushing out the questions in front a little chagrined at his own lack of self control, but he asked anyway. Honestly don’t you enjoy punishing those who disappoint you. At that Papa stopped her preparations and turned toward Mack he could see a deep sadness in her eyes. I am not who you think I am Mackenzie I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It is not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it…”

This is what I think is the heart of the traditionalists dislike for the book. God is not the kind of person most Christians think He is. To them God must punish someone in order to forgive. In fact they have a perverted view of the atonement and to question their atonement theory is nearly the greatest crime a Christian can commit.

A slightly better thought our review entitled a reader’s review of the Shack says:

The Shack offers only hints as to the importance of the cross and to its function within the faith. “Honey,” says Papa, “you asked me what Jesus accomplished on the cross; so now listen to me carefully: through his death and resurrection, I am now fully reconciled to the world.” “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “The whole world, Mack. All I am telling you is that reconciliation is a two way street, and I have done my part, totally, completely, finally. It is not the nature of love to force a relationship but it is the nature of love to open the way.” What then is the nature of this reconciliation? Young never tells us in any clear way. What is clear, though, is that the God of The Shack is not a God who could have punished His Son for the sins of others. After all, Papa says, “Regardless of what he felt at that moment, I never left him” (96). He is not a a [sic] relationship with God? “Those who love me come from every stream that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don't vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions” (182). Mack asks for clarification. “Does that mean...that all roads will lead to you?” “'Not at all,' smiled Jesus...'Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you'” (182). While these words cannot rightly be said to actually teach universalism, the view that all men will go to heaven, neither do they clearly deny it. Is Jesus the only way to be reconciled to God? The book is less than clear on this point. Jesus says to Mack, “I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” Jesus does not say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” as he does in John 14:6, but merely states that He is the best way.

What is interesting is that the review does not even realize that love is the means to reconciliation. Because to the traditionalist God is loving in that He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our sin…because God had to punish someone. Young on the other hand see love as making the first move…God toward man offering man salvation. Healing as opposed to punishment. Reconciliation to the traditionalist is only based upon a legal fiction where the innocent pays the penalty demanded of the guilty. But how can it be demanded of the guilty if it can be substituted with the penalty paid by the innocent? What it comes down to is that the Penal/Substitutionary theory of the atonement has so colored modern Christians that the majority can’t see anything past it. It is historically not the main atonement theory and was a later development that seems to have been set in stone by the Reformation. Emergent Christianity is chipping away at that time encrusted idea and traditionalists are extremely unhappy about that. And that makes the Shack a very interesting book.

For more on the idea of Universal Reconciliation found in the book see The Shack A Friendly Critique

Why I can’t agree with Substitutionary Atonement

The argument for Substitutionary atonement is rarely ever made; it is generally assumed and has been since the Reformation. So it is instructive to actually see it written out in a simple way. That is what recently happened in the Adventist review. Norman R. Gulley from Southern Adventist University wrote the Cry of Anguish Why did Jesus Suffer? And what is it to you?

I will quote some paragraphs and respond because there are a lot of assumptions made in the article, common Christian assumptions which are not terribly logical and as such they don’t work that well when people actually critically think about the subject. In this case the cry of anguish is a reference to Christ’s cry on the cross, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me”. The first thing I noticed when reading the article is that the most obvious explanation for the cry is not addressed. That is the article makes no reference at all to Psalm 22 which begins with those very words. For more on that topic read my article Psalm on the Cross.

The article begins with the agony of Christ in Gethsemane. It is possible to speculate on what caused Christ’s agony, was it human fear of pain and rejection of the very people He came to save or was it fear of being separated from God? The idea that the article presents:

Some from His own nation had given Christ over to the Romans. Judas betrayed Him. Peter denied Him. His disciples all forsook Him when He needed them most. All of that He could take. But when God also seemed to abandon Him, His heart broke. Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

It was an anguished cry, wrung from quivering lips and a breaking heart, as He hung on the cross. This was the terrible price for our redemption, a cost we could never pay and will never fathom, even throughout eternity.

This hints at the common idea that Jesus died of a broken heart. In fact Ellen White who the author references later in the article actually says that Jesus died of a broken heart. As if the customary death caused by crucifixion was not able to kill Jesus. But the Bible says nothing of Jesus dying of a broken heart, what would that even mean? No doubt the rejection was painful but did that kill him or was that just an added agony to the physical torture of the beating and the cross? There is really little doubt that the act of crucifixion was the cause of Jesus death. The wonder is that he allowed people to murder him not that crucifixion resulted in death. As Peter in his sermon in Acts says:

(Acts 3:15 NIV) You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

The article states:

The word “cried” (Greek: anaboao) is used only here in the New Testament. It’s a strong verb and indicates a powerful emotion or appeal to God. It suggests a cry of agony out of a deep sense of alienation as Jesus suffered as a “ransom” for humanity (see Matt. 20:28). In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) this is the only time Jesus addresses God without calling him “Father.”3

This little tidbit of information makes the My God, My God statement appear to be used as a quote of Psalm 22 then to address that Jesus is thinking He was abandoned. But as I said Psalm 22 is not mentioned because it does not fit with the Substitutionary dogma of the Adventist church. I was an adult who first heard the idea from Dr. Walter Martin, yet I grew up in the Adventist church.

The article continues:

Nothing can separate a person from God (Rom. 8:35-39), except sin (Isa. 59:2); which means that Christ felt a separation to the depths of His soul as He bore “the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2b). “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6b). As an eternal member of the Trinity, Christ had always been enfolded by the wondrous love of the Father and the Spirit. How awful His separation from them now! His loneliness was intense. From the heights of eternal love He had plunged into abandonment to save humanity, whatever the price to Himself, knowing most would reject Him. There’s no greater love than this!

Notice the above logical fallacy. He quotes nothing can separate a person from God and follows that by giving something that separates from God. But that was not what Romans said. It did not include an exception.

(Rom 8:38-9 NIV) For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Isa 59:1-2 NIV) Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

We can tell by the context of Isaiah that the author has improperly used that text also. If it were true that our iniquities have separated you from God then we would be in a hopeless condition. But that is not the way Isaiah uses it. This is a type of proof texting which does not stand up to scrutiny. Clearly we have numerous Old Testament stories where sinners pleaded with God and God intervened for them.

The main text that Substitutionary proponents use is also found in Isaiah:

(Isa 53:5 -7 NIV) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

I quoted the surrounding verses so we can see that while Isaiah says the iniquity of us all was placed on him Peter quotes this section of Isaiah but not with the idea that sins were transferred to Christ. Rather that Christ suffered our sins by the things we as humans did to Him.

(1 Pet 2:22-25 NIV) "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth."

When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

He bore our sins by suffering at the hands of sinners, it is the undeniable consequence of sin, we hurt people, how can we not be moved to understand the terrible consequences of sin when we take and kill an innocent man, a man who committed no sin, a man who as Peter says in Acts is the author of life. Peter even explains how we are healed, because we return to the shepherd of our souls. This is the new life the end of the old man who lives to sin and the second birth, the birth from above.

Was Jesus who is one with the Father, who is God, separated from God as the article suggests? God abandoned God, yet He is God, it makes no sense. What would it prove if God abandoned God? That God is confused perhaps but not much else and how does one arrive at such a conclusion from the simple quotation of a few words; “My God, My God why have you forsaken me”. Apparently for Christ even if there was a feeling of being forsaken it did not last long as Christ concluded by commending His spirit to God. No the words do not show God abandoning Christ but rather the tragedy to triumph that is revealed in Psalm 22. Even if one does not buy the idea that Christ is referring those listening to Psalm 22 is it reasonable to assume from those few words which are more of a question than a statement of fact that God separated from God. That Jesus Christ ceased being God?

The article states:

Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). Christ felt abandoned, wrenched from the Father, as if no longer the Son of God. The terrible load of sin so abhorrent to the Father and the Spirit, and so horrendous to Christ, cursed Him, crushing out His life. Sin-bearing separated Jesus from the fellowship He longed to have and desperately needed with the Father and the Spirit.

Again the author takes some verses which don’t say that Christ was abandoned , wrenched from the Father or no longer the Son of God. In fact how can anyone even suggest such a thing when Jesus Christ on the cross promised one of the thieves that he would be with Christ in paradise? (Luke 23:43 NIV) Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." That whole paragraph is based upon the faulty assumption that God crushed out the life of Christ by abandonment of God from God. When you look at what these people say you really see how poorly thought out their reasoning is.

Again the article states:

Calvary was judgment first on Satan, the originator of sin (Heb. 2:14b), and second on the Savior as substitute for sinners (2 Cor. 5:21; cf. Isa. 53:10, 11). Christ took the place of every human and suffered God’s judgment on their sin. O wondrous exchange!

Again the article plays lose with the verses:

(Heb 2:14-15 NIV) Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil-- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Jesus had actually much earlier condemned Satan and judged him as a liar and a murder from the beginning actually speaking specifically of the judgment:

(John 16:11 NIV) and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

What about as a substitute? The author uses the concluding paradoxical statement of the chapter which really does not equal Substitutionary atonement.

(2 Cor 5:21 NIV) God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The method is to separate the verse from the context. We can sum up the context however simply a little earlier in the chapter:

(2 Cor 5:14-17 NIV) For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Christ died and His love compels us to accept the gift of God in being a new creation. The old therefore dies because the new has come. Therefore all who accept the new therefore die to the old. But when people disregard the context they make a pretext whereby God appears to punish the innocent so that He can forgive the guilty. Of course there is no reason for God to punish in order to forgive. That makes no sense to the meaning of forgiveness. The righteousness of God is that He does forgive that he restores and reconciles. We see this demonstration in the way human being chose to treat Christ, God in human flesh as if He were just some sinner because in our blindness because of sin we could not see God when He lived among us. It is the demonstration of that love that compels us to be reconciled with God. That He would come down to live in our sinful world and accept the consequences of sin upon his very body, to be tortured and killed by the very ones He created and offers them a chance to live just as He ever lives and demonstrated again by His resurrection, that even death is not an obstacle to God. That is what 2 Corinthians 5 is about, the article continues:

All through His life on earth Christ had clung to God alone, a power outside of Himself. He depended solely on God (Father and Spirit) in a union that knew no separation, and sometimes required whole nights in prayer (Luke 6:12). Fellowship with God was heaven to Him in a world so unlike His first home. Christ found escape from the depravity all around Him by communing with God. He sensed the Father so close that He could say: “The Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38b).

Where is the logic there? Christ clung to God a power outside of Himself, yet He said I and the Father are one, If you have seen me you have seen the Father, before Abraham was I AM. There is no verse that tells us Jesus in the incarnation depended upon God as an outside force. Why would that matter? Whether Jesus lived as a man and God or as a man depending on God? You can see how it matters. One sees Jesus as God and man the other as a man. Jesus’ statements make little sense as a man dependent upon an outside force. It tears the heart out of the meaning of incarnation. What we do see is the unity of God, Jesus does nothing on His own, His actions are one and the same as that of God.

(Col 1:19-20 NIV) For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Here is the section taken from Ellen White without a shred of Biblical support:

…during those awful hours on the cross He could not see through the darkness to the resurrection and the Second Advent. He felt that the “separation [from God and the Spirit] was to be eternal.”4 Christ was willing to perish in order to save humanity.

I have already pointed out that Christ conversation with the thief on the other cross shows that Christ did see past His death not to mention the numerous references such as where speaking of His body, He said destroy this temple and in three days I will build it again, or saying that He was going to lay down His life and pick it up again. Gulley is a professor in systematic Theology, but he would be hard pressed to back up his statement above from the Bible, it frankly is contradicted by the Bible. As you can tell he does not even try, not even with a verse taken out of context which we have seen is a technique he uses quite often.

Nearing the end of the article it says:

Each member of the Trinity suffered at the cross. And it wrenched the heart of Deity to hear the Man of sorrows cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). The “payment” for human guilt meant that Christ bore the punishment for all sin. He experienced what would have been our total abandonment by God. There was no other way.

The Bible is pretty clear saying that men killed Christ 5 times in the New Testament never once saying that His death was the punishment He paid for our sins. Never saying that the wrath of God was poured out on Christ. These are common Christian statements, but they have no New Testament support. Neither does the Bible say that Christ suffered the abandonment of God or that Christ suffered the payment for human guilt. To say that something that the Bible does not even say…that there is no other way is simply false. But it is the common practice for many Christians, mainly evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who think that no other possible atonement theory is acceptable, only substitutionary theory is acceptable. It is a plea to tradition which has far too many problems to be accepted today.

Which I why I can’t accept their tradition of Penal/Substitutionary theory.

Transitioning out part 1

An article in the Adventist Review on Mike Jones ministry to former Adventists contains the following excerpts:

As much as Mike Jones enjoys a solitary Sabbath afternoon hike in the mountains surrounding his Portland, Oregon home, he'll be the first to tell you a life without relationships is pointless, a series of meaningless motions.

The same goes for church attendance. If Seventh-day Adventists don't maintain solid, nurturing friendships with fellow members, Jones knows firsthand that leaving the church is far easier.

A 2006 study by the Adventist Church's Council on Evangelism and Witness gives good reason for Jones' emphasis on church community. It reports that former Adventists often cite a lack of friends among their top reasons for leaving the church…

He thinks his job is far from over, estimating at least 1 million former Adventists live in North America. Adventist pastor Lonnie Melashenko agrees.

Look at that last paragraph…they are estimating at least 1 million former Adventists in North America, some estimate 1.5-2 million. That means there is at least 1 former Adventist for every member still on the rolls of the Adventist church in North America; possibly as many as 2 former for every member. That tells us immediately that transitioning out of Adventism (a phrase we probably owe to Dale Ratzlaff) is extremely common for Adventists to do.

Mike Jones undoubtedly has pinpointed the problem as relationship and friends. Because there is certainly an atmosphere in the local church that points people toward the door. The Adventist church likes to say that the people who leave aren’t leaving because of doctrines but it is likely in fact the root cause. Here is a recent quote from the Spectrum blog posted by Clifford Goldstein an author, Sabbath School Quarterly editor and apologist for Adventism. He writes:

Hanson's comment about Daniel being a "historical novel" is typically indicative of just how out of touch most of the folks here are with the vast, vast bulk of the SDA church. (Daniel . . . a "historical novel"? And I suppose Hansen actually views himself as an SDA? Amazing!)

I had no idea what was going on here when I first started reading the blog, but it's painfuly obvious to me, and others whom I have talked to, that the Spectrum blog represents an irrelevant and extreme fringe with minimal influence in the denomination (no matter how much they delude themselves into thinking otherwise). I am, though, glad it's here, because now everyone can see just how totally out of touch with our mission, our message, our purpose it really is.

I could actually cite several other examples from Clifford Goldstein since he has been more vocal then most Adventist leaders on discussion boards and blogs. Now for illustration purposes take those comments and put them into a local church setting. What will they do to the relationships in the church? Traditional Adventists like Cliff have a very black and white world view. If one doesn’t agree with their way of looking at doctrines than that person is not really Adventist. How would someone who was subjected to such insinuations feel functioning in the local church? Will the Traditional Adventist reach out to that person to be their friend? Will that person be included in activities in the church? Probably not, for example in my experience since I stated I did not hold Ellen White to be a prophet in the Old Testament mode of thought current in most Christianity I was asked not to help lead out in my daughters Early teen class.

Who knows what other rumors spread about someone who questions certain doctrines or who does not meet the standards of the Traditional Adventist leadership of the local church. My daughter does not feel comfortable in the Early Teen Class and I am pretty much ignored by those who were involved with me in the short time I was helping out the class. Relationships strained for no other reason then doctrines.

There is a large element of former Adventists who seek to minister to Adventists leaving Adventism. You can ask them or read their material and you can clearly see that they stress doctrinal issues as the reason they left the Adventist church.

Glen Davidson in the same blog mentioned above states the case well saying:

I believe that exchanges such as we've seen on this thread ought to bring into question the idea that people leave the church (most, if not all, churches) for social reasons, and not for doctrinal reasons. Not that it isn't true at all, but the fact is that those whose minds are closed on doctrine also tend to make the social situation within the church problematic.

IOW, the people who are hostile to new or different ideas are typically hostile to the people who might not be quite as hidebound. I mean, how does the SDA church prevent "heretical" ideas from being considered and discussed? Not by meeting the intellectual challenge, rather by denying the right of any member, or ex-member, to bring up what is outside of the "mainstream" of SDA belief. You've noticed the broad spectrum of discussion in the quarterlies, have you not?

The idea that someone as hostile to different ideas as Goldstein or Diehl is could be warm and welcoming to anyone who does not quickly agree with them within their holy citadels is absurd. So while I don't doubt that it is more the social aspects that directly cause people to leave a church, I hardly think that the social environment is not deeply affected by the all-too-frequent sense in SDAism that discussion of many ideas is not to be tolerated.

So we should be clear that those transitioning out of Adventism are doing so because of the climate in the local church. Hopefully there are several Adventist churches in an area so that if one church becomes intolerant and hence damages the personal relationships there could be another local church which does not have the same problems. Usually this is only a delaying tactic in transitioning out of Adventism. As the structure of local churches tends to place in leadership Traditional Adventists, there were after all some major purges in the early 1980’s after Desmond Ford’s Glacier View Conference. When tradition wins over logic and facts as happened there it puts tradition in the forefront and those traditionalists gained ascendancy.

True now the median age of Adventist’s in North America is 58 so in another generation the church may start to look a lot different as traditionalist die off. But few folks in the transitioning out process are looking ahead 20 years or so. Who can blame them, church is meant to be a social organization who wants to be a social pariah for the next 20 years in hopes that a new generation will change the church.

It seems to me that Adventists are actively driving Adventists out of their churches. The numbers certainly suggest this is true. Adventists are not just driving out Adventists adults who may questions certain doctrines but we are driving out our young people, the ones we need to continue the church as our old people, who make up the majority of the North American church retire or expire. To the Traditionalist Adventist maybe this is all the supposed shaking of the Adventist church. No doubt they will still keep a few young people convinced of their traditions so that as the church shrinks to nearly nothing it won’t quite disappear. Maybe even make it down to that magic number, 144,000 North American Adventists. Will the hope for the church growth be the uneducated third world? But what if they become educated will they follow the same pattern of questioning and social rejection as occurs today in North America?

Before I end this part let me just say a little about statistics. Here is a quote from the final draft of the article Conserving Membership Gains - an Appeal

Seventh-day Adventists around the world rejoice in the rapid membership growth of recent years. The Church views this as evidence of Holy Spirit-led movements and a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. (Matthew 24:14, Revelation 14:6, 7) Although the Seventh-day Adventist Church baptized over 5 million people from 2000 - 2005, membership losses during that time equaled nearly 1.4 million. Current indications are that annual membership losses, for reasons other than death, equal approximately 28% of membership accessions. Some membership loss occurs among recent converts, however, this tragic outcome is not limited to new members.

Did you ever wonder why they just don’t say how many people leave the Adventist church per year, maybe by area? Rather they skew the numbers. 5 million baptized and we lose 1.4 million. We know very well that 5 million were not from North America so what do those numbers mean? Where are the most losses occurring? One website offers the following statement:

In 2005, the SDA Church reported alarming membership losses. Despite adding 5 million new believers during the 5-year period of 2000-2004, over 1.4 million members left the church during that same period.²

SDA minister Vance Ferrell describes the problem in his newsletter:

"That is a very high loss. According to the official report, 'for every 100 accessions, more than 35 others decided to leave.' This was a significant increase over the 24 per 100 which left in the preceding five year period (1995-1999). The drop rate has increased by almost one-half.

"A sheet distributed at one of the booths said that '70 percent of young people in developing nations drop out of the church.'

"One missionary declared that, in his field, 'a third are dropped from the membership rolls; another third are on the rolls but no longer attend; and only a third are active members.' That one-third which remains on the rolls but no longer attends is significant. It is clear that membership totals are not a true indicator of the actual number of members in the world church.

"The statistical report, presented at the Session, lists the Southern-Asia Pacific Division (SSD) as having the highest drop rate in the world. It is 104.75%. This means that 104.75% of the number of membership increase in the SSD between spring 2000 and spring 2004 have left the church. That is more than 100%! ... In that time period, the SSD lost more members than it brought into the church."² …

1. Vance Ferrell, More WAYMARKS - from PILGRIMS REST, "The 2005 St. Louis Session: Items of Interest General Conference Sessions: WM1305, "2005 ST. LOUIS SESSION: ITEMS OF INTEREST Nov 05 Index: General Conference Sessions / St. Louis".

2. Ibid

This all leads me to ask a few questions, I will try to circulate these to the local pastors here but it would be interesting for others to ask their pastors to answer these questions in an email form and we could post the answers in a later article or simply submit them as comments here and I can put them in an article.

1. Which is most important doctrines or relationships?

2. Is it possible to accept people in your church who disagree with some of your doctrines?

3. Can a person hold a leadership position (other than an adult Sabbath School Teacher) if they do not accept all traditional Adventist doctrines (such as the 28 fundamental beliefs)

4. Do you feel your church does well in establishing relationships?

5. What do you do to try and facilitate relationships between people attending your church?

6. When did you last give a sermon on creating friends either with people inside or outside the church?

7. Many SDA churches have a stand and greet other people before the service, have you ever had a meaningful conversation during this time period (not counting someone asking for a prayer request)?

8. Aside from music how are young people encouraged to participate in your church?

9. Does your church offer an accepting environment should a young person bring in a non-Adventist or non-Christian friend? How comfortable do you think they would feel?

10. Are you afraid of pluralism or encouraged by it as a way to build relationships and encourage thinking?

It's Okay Not to be a Seventh-day Adventist Part 5

This is the final segment in the review of It’s Okay not to be a Seventh-day Adventist. The book ends with much of the same antagonism and misinformation that it began with. It was set under the guise of Transitioning out of Adventism. Of course it would be irrational of me to think that something that began poorly was going to get better with more researched and honest information. But I do confess that I had some hope in that regard. As it stands I don’t think this book should be published or circulated regardless of the occasional good arguments used. The book should be revised but clearly the authors have no interest in doing that. They rather keep claiming that two dozen editors went though the book. Teresa wrote on Bill Cork’s blog :

We had almost two dozen copy editors and people who volunteered to help do “checks” on the book (many were SDA) who said the book was copiously documented–even when they disagreed with my conclusions.

You won’t find attributions to those people in the book, not even in the thanks section which makes me think that these were simply people who were asked to look over the manuscript. As some of you know if a friend asks you to do that you usually say nice things to them about how well they did, few people really spend much time critically analyzing such tasks. Before I get to the part of the book about Transitioning out I am going to cover a few more of those areas where a little research would have helped them and where even some of those copious notes are simply wrong. Yes I have done this before but these really demonstrate the writer’s attitude and sloppy methodology, and remember the authors claim that they aren’t sloppy or inaccurate that it is just over sensitive Adventists. The subject of transitioning out of Adventism is very important so I will deal with my thoughts on the subject in a forthcoming article. Before I move on I see Bill Cork had quite a dialog with Teresa on his blog. There we find that the authors transitioned into the Roman Catholic church.

On page 236-7 under the heading Theological Dissonance the authors write:

An example is the pro-life controversy. Many believe that speaking against abortion will lead to enacting laws to protect unborn humans. They fear that involvement in this political issue will break open the floodgates of morality legislation and lead to blue laws fulfilling the prophecy of their demise. Because this fear is so strong, all attempts at legislating morality are taken as a sign of the end and must be condemned. According to this thought pattern, all legislation that protects their beliefs (and them) is constitutional, but any attempt at laws to protect unborn children would be oppressive and conspiratorial.

So the General Conference has in the past been aligned with the pro-choice movement. 431 [footnote 431 states: George Reid, former head of the Biblical Research Institute, theological arm of the G.C. once told us that Adventists are pro-choice under certain guidelines. Some Adventist-run hospitals perform abortion-on demand.] They will agree that abortion is a terrible offense to God, but cannot agree that there should be laws against it in America. However if this line of reasoning is carried out thoughtfully, we shall reach a very ominous and confusing conclusion. Adventists believe that God would have us sacrifice the lives of unborn children in order to preserve their freedom to go to church on Saturday. It comes down to this – their lives or others’ lives. This is in direct opposition to scripture that says there is no greater love than this, that a man should give his life to save his brother.

Unless you have close connections to Adventism, this may be a difficult concept to grasp. Although there may be some legitimate arguments made against enacting legislation to regulate abortion, to Adventists the reasoning is purely self-centered. They place their potential suffering above all attempts at alleviating the suffering and wholesale slaughter of the unborn. This is but one of countless theological dichotomies Adventists find themselves in.

This is one of the clear examples where the authors inject their ideas into Adventism. The denomination has for many years published it official statement entitled Guidelines on Abortion you can read it here. What perhaps could George Reid have meant when he said Adventists are pro-choice under certain guidelines? If the authors had done their research they would have seen the following from the Guidelines on Abortion article:

4) The Church does not serve as conscience for individuals; however, it should provide moral guidance. Abortions for reasons of birth control, gender selection, or convenience are not condoned by the Church. Women, at times however, may face exceptional circumstances that present serious moral or medical dilemmas, such as significant threats to the pregnant woman's life, serious jeopardy to her health, severe congenital defects carefully diagnosed in the fetus, and pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. The final decision whether to terminate the pregnancy or not should be made by the pregnant woman after appropriate consultation. She should be aided in her decision by accurate information, biblical principles, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, these decisions are best made within the context of healthy family relationships.

Now I don’t care if the Beems agree or disagree with that statement the fact is abortion is not simply about some fear Adventists have of losing religious liberty. We have a whole statement on the subject yet the Beems offer us nothing, no statement to back up their assertion, nothing to corroborate their opinion. Note even a footnote to direct the reader to what the Adventist denomination actually says.

So is the above example just a chance mistake? Well let’s continue with the next paragraph and see if they become more accurate as they change subjects.

Page 237 under the heading Pride and Separatism:

Recently, SDA General Conference President Jan Paulsen used the idea of Adventism being the zenith of religious knowledge to encourage young people not to leave the church and equated it with abandoning Christ: “Just don’t walk away from it. For walking away, that is the worst possible thing you can do. Look, it’s Christ we are talking about. Don’t turn your back on Him. For if you do, all you are left with is Peter’s haunting question, ‘to whom can we then go?’”432

[Footnote 432 says: Newly re-elected Paulsen in his address to the assembly, General Conference 2005, St. Louis.]

First the footnote is wrong Paulsen was not the newly re-elected President, this is from the opening presentation given on the opening day. Second I can find nothing that indicates that Paulsen ever asserted that Adventism was the zenith of religious knowledge. Here is what the Adventist News Network reported on the speech (the words in red are those the Beem’s quoted):

But it was Pastor Paulsen's report that was the main feature of the evening. After paying tribute to his wife, Kari, for support during 50 years of marriage, the Paulsens presented stories of church members serving their communities in various parts of the globe. A question for church members, he said, was "is your city, your community, your country a better place because you [as an Adventist] are there?"

To the youth of the church - members between 15 and 30 - Paulsen said, "I want you to come in and to partner with the rest of us. I want to make room for you, for you have energies and ideas which no one can quite match. If you don't find the church interesting, you can make it interesting. Just don't walk away. That would be the worst possible thing you can do: It is Christ we are talking about. Don't turn your back on him, for if you do, all you then all you are left with is Peter's haunting question: "To whom shall we then go?" (John 6:68)

Lay members, youth and women each and all need "to claim and accept a much greater share of ownership in our church," Paulsen said. "The church is not defined by election nor is it by who pays your salary. The church is defined by faith. Do you have faith? OK, you're the church."

The Edge Blog reports what follows the reference to John 6:

"They [young people] represent in large measure the future of this church," he says. "There must be a more intentional dialogue with young people, and a greater recognition of the contribution that they can and do make within the church. I recognize that many, many of our young people feel distanced from the church—they feel as if they don't have a voice, they don't feel that they have been heard, they don't feel that they have been understood," says Pastor Paulsen. "But I want them to know that the church cannot be defined and cannot survive without them."

What a difference between the context of the speech and how it is presented in the Beem’s book. If Paulsen had actually said that Adventism was the zenith of religious knowledge I would be right with the authors. But that can’t be found, I don’t think they were at the G.C. session and again they offered nothing to support their statement. The book is largely a self indulgent vent against Adventism. I admit Adventism has a lot of problems, there are a lot of insensitive people and a lot of trivia in place of gospel and a lot people who would lie to get their way. But that is the same thing I could say of the authors of this book. Over these past 5 articles I trust I have offered sufficient evidence as to why I can make that statement.

I had hoped the book would offer some salient information about transitioning from the Adventist church but what it offers is not to relevant to my perspective. One paragraph I thought was interesting. On page 249 under heading We Are Family:

Don’t expect too much from other Christian denominations. They may have healthier theology, but they are just people with more foibles than merits – like all of us. Mainstream churches can be cold and unfriendly too. Go in with the idea that you are going to love them and accept them. These are the new brothers and sisters in Christ that God has given you. You are going to spend eternity with them, so enjoy getting to know them now. If you don’t learn to accept other Christians, you will end up in lonely isolation. Find a church that spiritually uplifts you in both worship and doctrine. They can be hard to find but don’t give up.

Before we think of transitioning out maybe we should think about what is happening in Christianity that makes finding a church so hard. Why are practically all the denominations shrinking? Why is Christianity which is built upon love and acceptance of God to the human race so filled with lack of love and lack of acceptance? Why is it that if I think about transitioning out of Adventism I can’t think of any church or denomination to go to.

There was one noticeable area of Adventist theology that the book never mentioned, that is the idea of eternal torment in hell. If you don’t believe that doctrine you will find it very hard to transition out of the Adventist church. The book chapter 17, Conclusion on page 259 by saying:

Ellen was wrong. The great controversy between Christ and Satan was not how to rid the cosmos of sin. It was to reveal that Satan was a liar about God. God’s (sic) is not foremost a lawgiver. The mystery of iniquity, the mystery of redemption was to show that that (sic) God is love.

God is love but He is going to torment you in hell for all eternity, well at least that is what the Roman Catholic Church and most mainline denominations believe. So yes it is going to be hard to find a church where you can be uplifted in both worship and doctrines.

To transition or change that is the question that we will deal with in the next article and we will leave behind this book and once again try to use our God given intelligence for some useful task. Because frankly if it is hard to find a good Christian church something, is terribly wrong. Certainly God can save us in our numerous misunderstandings but maybe we could help God just a bit and be real ambassadors to help others rather than to be so concerned with losing or gaining our own salvation. I am with Jan Paulsen, you (we) are the church where ever you (we) are, so now what are you (we) going to do?

The following links will take you to the previous reviews.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Judged by the Ten Commandments connected to part 4

Part 4

Some Free Music

Many of you are probably saying to yourself, sure Ron sometimes reviews music but he never gives us any links to free music. Well talk to yourselves no more today I am going to give you two free CD’s worth of good music.

The first is Ross King’s latest CD brought to you by Noisetrade.com. Here you can find many artists who you can buy their music for whatever you want to pay or get free downloads for simply referring 5 email names.

https://www.noisetrade.com/rossking

I have liked Ross King for a while sort of a story teller singer with a voice similar to Chris Tomlin a nice album that I am sure many of you will like.

The second artist is a group called Ambright. They are a more rock and roll and aggressive sound than Ross King. But their music is very interesting and really quite good. You can hear samples on their myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/ambrightmusic and you can download their latest CD for free at http://www.volummonster.com/ simply type or paste the code "flicker" (without the quote marks)

I have used both these sites and they do not really spam you and both have a lot of good independent artists. Of course I only mention the best, the ones I really like but there is quite a bit for other tastes also. Give these two a try and let me know what you think or if you find any others you like.

Review It's Okay Not to be a Seventh-day Adventist part 4

I am going to entitle this as Part 4 of my Review of It’s Okay Not To Be A Seventh-day Adventist. This post however is a continuation of sorts of the article inspired by the book though not really a part of the review. That article was Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Judged by the ten commandments? In that article the book rightly criticized the Adventist statement which indicated we are judged by the 10 commandments. The book however a little latter basically does the same thing by saying in Chapter 11 - Pillar III Part 3 - the Law under the heading Mainstream Christianity and the Ten page 172:

“So the Ten Commandment are useful in today’s world.

Hanging them on the Supreme Court walls is beneficial because it reminds lawbreakers that a Supreme God will ultimately judge the evildoers. It also shows the believer the incredible things He overcame for us. Having tried to keep a law in the past, we understand our weakness. We now understand the generous gift of Christ. It gives us a reason to say thanks and to worship Him.”

Of course the Ten Commandments say nothing about God judging evildoers so the author’s statement is pretty questionable. But it shows that this idea of being judged by the 10 commandments is still very much a part of contemporary Christianity, not simply some Adventist delusion. It is in fact a Christian delusion based upon the Penal Atonement theory which aside from asserting that Christ paid our penalty Christ kept the law perfectly and applies it to our account. Thus we have kept the law perfectly so that we can be judged by the 10 commandments and any other law. Christians are fictionally viewed as perfect because they have accepted the gift of Christ, fictionally because in reality we know that we are not perfect at all and that we don’t keep the Ten either. But we say God does not see reality he sees the legal fiction. The evildoers of course can still be judged by the Ten Commandments because they have not been imputed with the perfect law keeping of Christ. For more on the problems of this view see the article Justification By Faith…No hiding From God

I won’t spend much time on the mid section of the book which goes over various pillars of the Adventist church and the author’s objections to those views. There are some worthy arguments made but unfortunately since the first part of the book was written in such a biased fashion and included too many factual errors it is doubtful many Adventists will get to this section of the book. I am pretty sure it is the most important section of the book however. But the arguments are their interpretation versus the traditional Adventist interpretation. As such I won’t spend anytime on what preference my interpretation is over theirs or over traditional Adventists. I began this review by saying the book needed to be revised. From my correspondence with the one of the author’s I don’t get the sense that the book was really ever intended for Adventists as much as for ex-Adventists and those already sure that Adventism is wrong. The funny thing is, that is probably a bigger market then trying to reach the Adventist market. Though my view is you should write to reach both markets by being as factual and objective as possible.

The last chapter is entitled “Transitioning Out” which deserves its own article and will conclude the review.

The following links will take you to the previous reviews.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Review George Knight's Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism

George Knight’s new book The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism;

derives from presentations that Knight gave before the “quinquennial ministerial council of the Pacific Union Conference in August 2007.” (page 106) The book begins with the proposition that Liberal Protestantism is neutering Christianity and Adventism. He notes that the mainline Protestant churches are in decline, those churches still growing are the churches with a strong and distinctive message. It is somewhat true as the following Review News article informs us:

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at 5.7 million U.S. members (1.56 percent increase) and the Church of God in Christ, with steady 5.5 million, round out the top five. Only the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Catholic Church, Southern Baptists, Mormons, the Assemblies of God (2.8 million) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1.4 million) reported increases; all others either posted declines or flat membership from 2005.”

See the 2004 report from the National Council of Churches

On page 17 Knight writes:

“The best example of religious neutering in the modern world is Protestant liberalism, which by the 1920s had divested itself of such "primitive" ideas as the virgin birth, Christ's resurrection, the substitutionary atonement, miracles, the Second Advent, creationism, and, of course, a divinely inspired Bible in the sense that it had information from beyond the human realm that could be obtained from no other source but divine revelation.”

The first thing I noticed here is that Knight is taking the position of Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism was a reaction to modernity and Biblical criticism AKA Higher Criticism. Although Knight does not go so far as the fundamentalists with inerrant and or infallible Bible concepts; he has listed the major beliefs of fundamentalism. Though as we look at the church growth rates it does appear that the more authoritarian denominations, the more certain a church is that they have it right the more likely they are to continue to grow in this time of overall Christian decreases across the Western World (AMEZC may be an exception). As we will see this is the Traditional Adventist viewpoint that Knight intends to present, traditional Adventist understanding of Daniel and Revelation is the cure to the neutering of Adventism and the main reason for the existence of the Adventist denomination.

At the beginning of Chapter 3 on page 53 Knight sums up his apocalyptic Adventism:

“This chapter will take a look at the big picture of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation that have made Adventism a vibrant movement. The first chapter focused on the fact that the book of Revelation centers on Christ as the slain Lamb and the victorious Lion of the tribe of Judah. Put the two symbols together and you have the core of the gospel— that Christ died for our sins, resurrected and has the keys to the grave, and will eventually return to put an end to sin and suffering. Take away any aspect of that picture and you have neutered the Christian/Adventist message. As we noted, the Lamb without the Lion is a partial gospel.

The second chapter examined the rise of Adventism as it related to the apocalyptic vision. We discovered that the Seventh-day Adventist pioneers had seen the big picture and put together a theological package whose logical force has driven Adventism to every corner of the earth.

In this third chapter we want in part to stand back with both eyes open to see if early Adventism's apocalyptic understanding has validity and relevance for the twenty-first century. I must admit that I was daunted by the challenge of this chapter and how to say what needs to be said in such a short space. After all, during the past 30 years we have seen a dismantling of the apocalyptic vision by Adventist thinkers on one side and defensive reactions on the other. And then we witness a never-ending parade of apocalyptic cranks whose special burden is to prove something unique or at least strange from the words of Revelation. I felt challenged to say the least.”

While Knight has spent the last 50 pages trying to bolster his case we see that by his own analysis he has produced very little. The first chapter is based upon Revelation Christ died for our sins and was resurrected and eventually will put an end to sin and suffering. Other then the emphasis of deriving this from the book of Revelation he has essentially described every Christian denomination and most all independent Christian churches.

The Second chapter which mostly goes over how Adventists interpreted Revelation to see their peculiar doctrines in verses such as Revelation 14 (e.g. Adventists doctrines revealed in the three angels messages); he sums up Adventist have become a worldwide church because of their doctrines. Well so have the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and all the mainline Protestant Denominations. The idea that just because you grow world wide that your beliefs are true is hardly reasonable. If it was than the Roman Catholic church which has the most adherents and is still growing as it is in the top five denominations in growth should be a major contender in the we have the truth category.

Based upon the unreasonable conclusion from chapter 2 Knight continues:

“And I still hold that conviction. To put it as frankly as possible, if Adventism's apocalyptic big picture isn't valid, the most sensible thing is to shut up shop, go home, and do something meaningful with our lives. If Adventism's big picture lacks meaning, I would like to suggest that the title for the next generation of Ph.D.s in Adventist studies be "Curators of Adventist Antiquities for Those Who Still Have Some Reason to Care."

Here then is the purpose of Knight’s latest book. We see that chapter one is true of universal Christianity. Chapter two is the peculiar Adventist interpretations which like other churches grew into a world wide movement. But instead of critically looking at those issues that the pioneers produced he has largely assumed that they are true because the SDA church grew world wide and since based upon that extremely faulty position if you question those Adventist traditions there is no point in continuing to be an Adventist. It is rather like someone saying to Martin Luther quit your belly aching about the Roman Catholic churches abuses and leave. He had no place to go. I am much like him in I can’t see any place to go either so why not try and reform the church I am in? Apparently reformation is heresy to some; it was to the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Luther’s day and apparently it is heresy to the Adventist hierarchy today, George Knight and Clifford Goldstein being the most recent Adventist Apocalyptic bulldogs.

On page 55 we see that Knight has so completely discounted the idea that anything could be wrong with our apocalyptic tradition that such an idea is how the devil would attack us:

“But if I were the devil I would tempt Adventists and their preachers to be just nice evangelicals and forget about such nasty stuff as apocalyptic. And if that didn't work I would tempt them to beastly preaching that focused on the details and the esoteric and extremes. I would get them arguing over 666 and the identity of the 144,000. And if that didn't succeed, I would get them to focus on excitement and apocalyptic fear-mongering. And of course I would sow doubts in their minds about the validity of Adventism's basic apocalyptic understandings.”

Do you hear the old Roman Catholic leadership of Martin Luther’s day in that paragraph? How dare you young whippersnappers doubt our tradition! It is this questioning of our apocalyptic that is the neutering of Adventism for George Knight. Though he does include others; “We have a pretty smart devil. He has driven Adventists and their preachers off a balanced view of apocalyptic in almost every direction.” (page 55); those off balanced must be any view other then the traditional view.

Knight then goes one to explain how he dealt with the troubling parts of the Adventist Apocalyptic and came out the other side firmly holding to traditional Adventism. The first is the Historicist position which he finds as the only possibility because Daniel 2 goes from the time of Daniel and tells of the 4 kingdoms which takes us to the second coming. He seems to think that Rome is mentioned in there also, I have no idea why. The second on his list is the year day principle which he believes is true because years are used for the seventy week (sevens) prophecy of Daniel 9. Though Knight seems to forget that people were interpreting the verses as weeks (sevens) of years, far before anyone came up with the day for a year idea. (Joachim of Fiore {d. 1202} first introduced the year day principle, several early church fathers used years on the seventy sevens of Dan. 9, but it is a stretch to say that was year day principle as they did not have a day component, it is not something they endorsed)

His third point is that the little book unsealed in Rev 10 is Daniel. Which apparently was the great disappointment as God anticipated that before the book was unsealed people would make erroneous interpretations and when their errors did not come to pass they would be disappointed. As if the prediction of 1843, 1844 etc were the only time people erroneously predicted the second coming. Knight goes through a bunch of stuff on the 1260 day/years as if it proves some point. It does not other then he has accepted something that general Christianity accepted for a couple hundred years and when the theory always failed they gave it up. Now of course it is an important part of the Adventist apocalyptic. That morphs to point 4 which is Daniel 8:14 and the Investigative Judgment. Again asserting that day for a year is used in the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 even though it is not; there is no mention of day at all in that context. On page 69 he does differ from traditionalism by saying:

“Thus the Adventist understanding of a pre-Advent judgment is not the problem. Rather, it is the wrong use of Daniel 8:14 to prove a point that comes out of chapter 7.”

So he still believes in a pre-advent judgment which by the way so does all Christianity otherwise they would never talk about being saved as a current position. But that part of the big picture is largely forgotten in Adventist circles. We forget that God already knows who are His; that He has known since before the foundation of the world. But apparently Knight does not deviate significantly from the traditional apocalyptic. After all he just wants to say the better evidence is found elsewhere. On page 70 he does note that Adventist traditional emphasis on the pre advent judgment has been wrong, saying:

“The tragedy of Adventism is that we made the pre-Advent judgment a fearful thing built upon a less-than-biblical understanding of sin, law, perfection, and even judgment itself. Spiritual insecurity and lack of biblical assurance was the result. "God is out to get you" was the message in the era of bony fingers.”

He then moves on to the old excuse that the Judgment is not for God but for the universe:

“The judgment and the books of judgment are not for God but for the rest of the universe. It has to do with the justification of God, which is foundational to His justification of those humans who have accepted Christ into their hearts and lives (Rom. 3:25, 26; 1 John 1:9).”

Of course he does not explain why God would start such a show a hundred years ago and why not save the evidence for humans, the only beings we really know of beside fallen angels that question God. He then moves into the subject of the heavenly Sanctuary. On page 75 Knight writes:

“Let me repeat my main points as I sum up. First, we create problems in sanctuary theology by placing undue emphasis on sanctuary geography. Second, we are heading in the wrong direction when we read Hebrews as if it were either propounding Adventist theology or arguing against it. Hebrews has its own agenda. Third, it is wrong-headed to project chronology into Hebrews 9. Most of Adventism's difficulty with its sanctuary theology center on those three areas.”

So apparently it is okay for Knight to suggest and try and repair some of the Adventist apocalyptic problems. But the rest of us who see even bigger problems…well we can’t reform the apocalyptic because it is too important to Adventism. In other words this entire book is an endeavor to shore up a shaky part of Adventism and yet those who try to do that are neutering Adventism (excluding Knight). It is acceptable to do it in dribs and drabs dealing with some problems as long as we don’t touch other problems. Adventism can slowly change but let’s not take any big steps in the change process because a big change means we have been wrong, clearly Knight thinks we have been wrong and I think most of us know that. So why do we keep pretending that we are not wrong? Why assume that acknowledging errors is neutering Adventism? (The last two on his list are the Great Controversy and the Remnant neither of which is worth noting and he spends little space on them.)

His next chapter (ch.4) is about how bad things can happen and they can happen fast. Apparently the Adventist apocalyptic spends much of its time thinking about what bad things can happen and if you don’t think about them happening then you are neutering Adventism. Though Adventism can do nothing at all if the bad thing happens apparently we should feed on that fear and remember our hope in the Second coming.

Knight then presents one of Ellen White Shut door visions as her most remarkable:

“Ellen White's Most Remarkable Vision

That brings me to what I consider to be Ellen White's most remarkable prophecy. She made few actual prophecies regarding the future in her long ministry, but we find one of them in her first vision of December 1844.”

"While I was praying at the family altar," she recalled, "the Holy Ghost fell upon me. ... I raised my eyes, and saw a straight and narrow path, cast up high above the world. On this path the Advent people were traveling to the city, which was at the farther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the beginning of the path, which an angel told me was the midnight cry [i.e., the prophetic understanding that led to a fulfillment of prophecy in October 1844]. This light shone all along the path and gave light for their feet so that they might not stumble. If they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the city, they were safe. But soon some grew weary, and said the city was a great way off. . . . Others rashly denied the light behind them and said that it was not God that had led them out so far. The light behind them went out, leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and lost sight of the mark and of Jesus and fell off the path down into the dark and wicked world below." (Page 86)

The remarkable thing about this is that this was during Ellen White’s shut door period. If people did not accept Miller’s Midnight cry message of the return of Christ in 1844 the door was now shut on them. They are outside the possibility of salvation. In a couple years Ellen White outgrew that idea and that was the major emphasis for the spread of worldwide Adventism. The gospel message still had to be spread to the entire world and then the end could come.

What a lot of us see as important George Knight does not seem to understand. That is the need to see God as someone who is for us, someone who can be trusted and someone who loves us unfailingly. That is the gospel message of Jesus and the New Testament. That as the Protestant call says the plain things are the main things. That is very different from George Knight’s Adventist apocalyptic. Where peculiar understanding of Daniel and Revelation are are the main things; those two apocalyptic books which have found the least amount of agreement within Christianity through it entire history. I frankly don’t want to be part of a denomination which has taken the obscure things as their main things. If we want a distinctive then let us go with the love of God as revealed through Jesus Christ, not the kind of God who says obey me or I will kill you, not the kind of God who says someone has to die to pay your penalty but the kind of God who says come back to me and I will heal you. Let that be our Adventist Apocalyptic.

The need for Relationships and the church of refuge

Last week the Adventist Review had a pretty good article on dealing with young people in the church. The article entitled “Like Water Between Our Fingers” Here are a couple of quotes:

Reality says that one in every five Adventist churches in North America doesn’t have a single child or teenager—much less anyone my age. In fact, the median age in these churches is nearly 60—20 years older than the average American.²

Reality says that as a baptized Adventist since my midteens, there’s a 50 percent chance that I’ll drop out of the church completely by the time I’m 25.³

The fifth key—tied unequivocally to the other four—is quite simple, yet remains the single most important factor in retaining young adults and reclaiming those who have drifted away: whether with a middle-aged couple or spirited pastor, energetic peer or elderly grandma, if they are going to stay, young adults must have genuine relationships inside their church family.

It’s all about relationships.

In his analysis of reasons why young Adventists drop out of church, Roger Dudley found that one “major theme shared by dropouts was that they felt unaccepted.”⁶ Further-more, a study by Rainer and Rainer of 1,000 young adults who left the church yielded the second highest motivation for leaving: “church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical.”⁷

I point this out because I have battled and lost on this issue in my local church. I addressed the issue with the young people’s ministry people as well as the head elder and received nothing from them. The answer it seems in the traditional Adventist world is to ignore these things and they will go away. Indeed they do go away our young people leave the church.

Since most of our local churches are like mine and they think that traditional doctrines are more important than relationships the above article introduced an idea called Church of Refuge. Here is another quote from the article:

The mission of COR is to “help churches provide meaningful and relevant young adult ministry with the goal of keeping Adventist young adults in the church while also reaching out to those who are not currently participating in an Adventist congregation.”¹¹ This support ministry is dedicated to helping Adventist churches better meet the all-around needs of young adults.

“Churches of Refuge care about the spiritual needs of young adults,” said Ron Whitehead, executive director for the Center for Youth Evangelism. “But they also care about their physical and social well-being.”

Are there Adventist churches ready to open themselves to relationships? We can hope. However checking out the Church of Refuge Website I don’t see any churches listed yet. Hopefully that is because it is a new program. Possibly the call of a church wide organization can cause some churches to do what all churches should be doing. My experience says it won’t but then sometimes I am too cynical. If my cynicism had not be proven correct so many times maybe I could outgrow it.

Judged by the ten commandments?

I was about to continue my review of the book It is "Okay not to be a Seventh-day Adventist" when I read this part from the book where the authors talk about the Pillars of Adventist beliefs. I was not originally going to say much about this section of the book because it is just one interpretation over another interpretation. Not much point in that unless they provide something new and startling that we have never heard before. In the section on the Investigative Judgment the authors write:

Seventh-day Adventists Believe… records that obedience to the law is vital to our salvation, sets the standard for righteousness and that we will be judged by them. The footnote is to page 237 of Seventh–day Adventists believe.

Here is what the book Seventh–day Adventists believe…says writing about the 10 commandments in the chapter on the Law of God:

It Functions as the Standard of Judgement. Like God, His "commandments are righteousness" (Ps. 119-172). The law, therefore, sets the standard of righteousness. Each of us will be judged by these righteous principles, not by our consciences. "Fear God and keep His commandments," Scripture says, ". . . for God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil" (Eccl. 12:13, 14; cf. James 2:12).

Human consciences vary. Some consciences are "weak," while others are "defiled," "evil," or "seared with a hot iron" (1 Cor. 8:7, 12; Titus 1:15; Heb. 10:22; 1 Tim. 4:2). Like a watch, however well they may work, they must be "set" by some accurate standard to be of value. Our consciences tell us that we must do right, but they do not tell us what is right. Only consciences set by God's great standard—His law—can keep us from straying into sin.9 http://www.sdanet.org/atissue/books/27/27-18.htm

There are so many things wrong with this quote, more then just the absurdity of saying “Commandments are righteousness” and references a bit more then 50 Psalms chapters. But if you are judged by the 10 commandments than you are not saved by faith. The law points out your sin but if it is to be used to judge you then you will fail, we all fail. Now the book acknowledges the idea that it leads us to see our sinful condition by saying:

It Points Out Sin. Without the Ten Commandments people cannot see clearly God's holiness, their own guilt, or their need to repent. When they do not know that they are in violation of God's law, they do not sense their lostness or their need of the atoning blood of Christ.

To help people see their true condition, the law functions like a mirror (see James 1:23-25). Those who "look" into it see their own character defects in contrast to God's righteous character. Thus the moral law demonstrates that all the world is guilty before God (Rom. 3:19), making everyone fully accountable to Him.

"Through the law we become conscious of sin" (Rom. 3:20, NIV) because "sin is the transgression of the law" (1 John 3:4, KJV). Indeed, Paul said, "I would not have known sin except through the law" (Rom. 7:7).

238

Convicting sinners of their sin, it helps them realize that they are condemned under the judgment of God's wrath and that they are facing the penalty of eternal death. It brings them to a sense of their utter helplessness.

Pretty depressing isn’t it they tell you that you are judged by the 10 commandments and that all the world is guilty and under the wrath of God facing the penalty of eternal death. Did you notice that they did not put any text in there to support the idea that we are under the wrath of God facing the penalty of eternal death. Obviously the Bible never says that but it is a common Christian belief. At least the wrath of God part, not the idea that we are judged by the 10 commandments.

I would guess they are not referring to God’s judgment of salvation, I am sure somewhere in the book they will acknowledge we are saved by grace through faith and not by works. So putting the best spin on the above quote we would have to say that they mean we are all judged to be sinners by the law of God. Of course then we would have to ignore the part of the quote that says: Scripture says, ". . . for God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil" (Eccl. 12:13, 14; cf. James 2:12).

Interestingly they use Ecclesiastes which has no concept of a judgment after life, no concept of life after death though it appears to open inquiry in that regard. Then they cross reference James and misapply the royal law with the 10 commandments.

James 2:12-13 NIV Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

That royal law being:

James 2:8 NIV If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right.

James 2:13 is saying that God judges using the royal law, thus mercy triumphs over judgment.

I actually doubt there are very many Adventists who think they are to be judged by the 10 commandments. But I may be wrong that book was written in 1980 or ‘81 and I don’t recall any articles about this section of the book or any discussions on the idea of being judged by the 10 commandments. Well aside from the Last Generation theology perfect generation folks. But their theology is so weird it makes no sense anyway.

All Christians are prophets

This is how our lesson study guide begins for the week of Feb. 15 2009:

Memory Text: “Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:20, 21, NKJV).

All through the Bible, a theme recurs: God talks to people through His prophets, and the people either accept or reject what’s being said. Of course, by rejecting the words of the prophets, they’re not rejecting the prophets; they’re rejecting the One who sent them.

It’s a very serious thing, then, to claim to speak in the name of God. If you claim it, and are, then you are a mouthpiece for the Creator of the universe, no small responsibility. People have been delegated authority to speak for the boss of the company, or the president or prime minister—but to speak for the Lord? That’s heavy. Unfortunately, much of biblical history is a story of God speaking through His prophets and of people rejecting what was said. How careful we need be not to make the same mistake today.

What strikes me about this is how they have taken the New Testament statement on prophets and applied it to Old Testament prophets. I think that perhaps they are right and also wrong. Right in that the text used is applicable to everyone. Read the text :

(1 Th 5:16-22 NIV) Be joyful always; 17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not put out the Spirit's fire; 20 do not treat prophecies with contempt. 21 Test everything. Hold on to the good. 22 Avoid every kind of evil.

God communicates with His followers but they have to test what they think God reveals to themselves and others. It is common sense isn’t it? Wrong however in assuming the ultimate authority of prophets. The lesson goes on to say that Moses was God’s spokesman as if God was speaking to Aaron and Pharaoh. This is very similar to the New Testament where Paul says:

(2 Cor 5:20 NIV) We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

The prophets are God’s ambassadors; Christ’s followers are God’s ambassadors. We are just as much prophets as Moses and Elijah, but of course we don’t live under a Theocracy where a prophet acts as a ruler who sets up kings and declares what to do in a battle with an enemy nation. Time and circumstances change and we simply cannot carry forward into our time the things of thousands of years ago.

So let’s say a prophet receives a message from God, does it have to be new and original to him or can God give multiple times the same message to prophets. Well that is pretty easily answered because the Old Testament is filled with prophecy which are basically the same thing that Moses first gave. Repent and follow God or trouble will follow. So prophecy does not have to be novel. Can a prophecy be derived from something previously said by God? Again I think the Old Testament has frequently shown to have prophets using what other prophets have said and applying the message to their times.

So far we have seen prophets to be simply followers of God, the messages are pretty straight forward in that they usually relate to obedience to some command or other that God through some other prophet had given. For the most part dealing with the nation of Israel with the later prophets dealing a lot more with ideas such as justice and mercy, yet they were still centered upon the nation. So it was not too hard to test these prophets; as they were pretty consistent in telling people to return to God in one way or another. If as in Jeremiah you have a prophet going about saying how well you all are doing and how pleased God is with you, you probably don’t have a real prophet, probably not someone who really is a follower of God. Now back to Paul:

(1 Cor 14:29-33 NIV) Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

The spirit of the prophets appears to be what the intent of the prophet is. That is he/she is in control of the things he/she does and says. What is there motivation is probably as important as what they said. John says:

(1 John 4:1 NIV) Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

So not everyone who claims to be a prophet is one and not everyone who claims to be a follower of God is a follower of God. We have to test not only what they say but their motivation. So clearly the idea of the authority of a prophet is becoming pretty dicey. We can’t simply trust them we have to test them carefully. We are no longer dealing with a nation and what happens to a nation but to people living out in multitudes of nations. The common factor is that they are followers of God not because they are part of a chosen nation for some specific purpose.

Martin Luther wrote:

But why does he say: “We have a sure prophetic Word”? Answer: I believe indeed that henceforth we shall not have prophets like those the Jews had in times past in the Old Testament. But a prophet must really be one who preaches about Jesus Christ. Therefore although many prophets in the Old Testament foretold future things, they really came, and were sent by God, to proclaim the Christ. Now those who believe in Christ are all prophets; for they have the real and chief qualification prophets should have, even though they do not all have the gift of foretelling the future. For just as through faith we are brothers of the Lord Christ, kings, and priests, so we are also all prophets through Christ. For we can all state what pertains to salvation, God's glory, and a Christian life. In addition, we can also talk about future events insofar as it is necessary for us to know about them. For example, we can say that the Last Day will come and that we will rise from the dead. Furthermore, we understand all Scripture. Paul also speaks about this in 1 Cor. 14:31: “For you can all prophesy one by one.”⁴ [Martin Luther, (1999, c1967). Vol. 30: Luther's works, vol. 30 : The Catholic Epistles (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works (vol. 30, page 164). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.]

So we being good protestants can agree with Luther here, the importance of a prophet is to be declaring Jesus Christ. What about this predicting stuff. Were the Old Testament prophets particularly good at it? No, they did not even predict the coming of the Messiah so anyone could really notice it. There are scores of unfulfilled predictive prophecies in the Old Testament. So we say they are conditional prophecies designed to lure the nation into following God which of course as all the other prophets reiterated the nation did not follow God. So we end up with prophecies that did not come to pass and it is highly likely that God knew they would never come to pass. We see this in the New Testament where the Apostles clearly thought and taught the soon return of Christ. No doubt for the purpose of making the expectation of something better in life more immediate. Because saying that in 2000-4000 years Jesus would return would put a heavy damper on the idea of spreading the gospel. Of course one of the techniques people use to attempt to shore up the Old Testament unfulfilled prophecies is to move the fulfillment to some time yet in the future.

All in all with predictive prophecy which can be conditional or can be transferred way beyond what it originally appeared to suggest there is very little one can do to test it. We end up with saying here is a prediction that did not come true thus they are not a prophet, we can do that with a modern authoritative prophet such as Ellen White but it can be done with Isaiah or Ezekiel also. But we have to do it with the Old Testament Prophets because we are still reasonably instructed that we have to test all prophets. Just because something is in the Bible does not make it true, does not make it the express instructions of God or a correct understanding of God.

Adventists I think are currently at the crossroads in understanding both how to interpret the Bible and how do deal with the prophecies of God. We made the fundamentalist mistake of making Ellen White an authoritative Old Testament prophet of the nineteenth century. It has proven to be a disaster for our church; it keeps our church stuck in nineteenth century eschatology and a self importance based upon wrongly interpreting the Bible from Miller to the SDA formation. Maybe all we had to do was open our minds to what a prophet is they way Martin Luther describes it; someone who directs the attention of others to Jesus Christ because that is where the authority is not in the prophet.

Another SDA Prophet?

My last post dealt with how the Adventist church has removed any semblance of reason when they purport to analyze Ellen White as a prophet. It is rather telling that in the last weeks lesson they address the fulfillment of prophecy yet don’t give a single prophecy that Ellen White gave that was fulfilled and address a false prediction explained away by saying it was conditional and that God would have come if people did what they were supposed to do; in essence making the testing of a prophet meaningless. So what is the effect of the traditional Adventist teaching doing to traditional Adventists?

I just saw some discussion of a new prophet in the Adventist church someone named Ernie Knoll. He as a website entitled 4hispeople.com On the site is a commission of anonymous people who as an anonymous group sought to investigate whether Knoll was a prophet or not. Here are a few excerpts with a few comments I inserted in red:

With this document we want to share the united opinion of many who have studied and compared the dreams of Ernie Knoll against the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. However, a little background on who we are and the process is in order.

Does the Bible ever suggest that we test a prophet by the writings of Ellen White (Spirit of Prophecy being the euphemism for EGW’s writings)? Hardly but what this so called commission has done is to elevate EGW to the level of the Bible.

It was also decided as we studied to keep our findings to our self as to not promote a fore or against decision. As time went and additional dreams came we decided to broaden our group study. Invitations were sent out to 'select' individuals to participate in an in depth study of the dreams. The stipulation was set forth that the invited individual would remain anonymous along with the rest of the established group and that their name would never be shared.

Did you get that “never be shared” we have a truly forever and always anonymous select commission. Sounds promising doesn’t it?

As the group grew the group moved to an email discussion in a closed online forum. The men in this now large study group are made up of the following individuals. Active and retired pastors from the General Conference. Select leaders from different Unions. Active and retired pastors from select Seventh-Day Adventist churches. Active and retired teachers and professors from different academies, colleges and universities. Literature evangelists. Attorneys from private as well as firm based. Select ardent students of the Bible. It was this large group that we began an ardent and exhaustive study of the dreams of Brother Ernie Knoll.

Did you catch that part? “The men” only men are involved, and now it is a large group of ardent students of the Bible cowering in a group who is promised they will remain anonymous. You get the feeling right away that you can trust this group don’t you?

We set forth to either prove or disprove these messages. They were either from God or from Satan. It was decided early on that we would not rush forward with our findings. We have seen many others who have done this and we as a group will address these as well.

Either God or Satan, no other possibility, similar to claims by EGW that her writing are either inspired by God or Satan. She can’t fit any opinions in there, none of her own thoughts…well that is until people start looking at comments about amalgamation of man and beast and coal fired volcanoes etc. Anyway this group of anonymous people or person because how do we know there is really more than one person involved, is not going to rush their anonymous findings.

They begin the test by tracking down the person who was a former prostitute who life was changed. They tracked her down and witness some prophetic miracles and conclude:

At the end of the meeting Candace requested that the three pastors never disclose where she lives nor her real name. On behalf of the group that sent the three pastors a request was made that she not disclose the names of the three pastors.

Impressive the anonymous commission tracks her down and she requests to be anonymous and the three pastors who visit her remain anonymous. How convenient, but apparently very convincing to the commission of anonymous Adventist leaders both former and current.

They then deal with some critics of Knoll:

…Not long after this comment Brother Wohlberg states that 1^st John 4 1-3 is not a valid test. The entire study group had a problem with this comment from brother Wolhberg. Another item was the fact that he denies that Jesus came in the flesh as Adam after sin without the propensity to sin. This setup another red flag to the study group as to the validity of his thinking. When we studied in the April 12, 2008 dream titled Love and Rebuke, we quickly realized that this was addressing Steve Wolhberg and White Horse Media.

That verse is summed up:

(1 John 4:2 NIV) This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

It can hardly be a valid test if anyone accepts that even the Devil can appear as an angel of light, funny also because Adventist history says the Pope is anti-Christ yet they all agree that Jesus came in the flesh. It might work as a test to winnow down the possible prophets if they did not Believe Jesus Christ came in the flesh but not much else. Then we see the thinking of the group because they can’t trust Wolhberg because he does not believe in their Post lapsarian view. So now we can see what kind of people make up this select group of ardent and anonymous students of the Bible. They then interpret a really vague dream as a prophecy of financial trouble to Steve Wolhberg’s ministry. As if there is not enough ministries out there in fear of loss of funds.

I will let those of you read the Great Commission Council findings (yes that is really what they call themselves) and you can see the type of strangeness that traditional Adventism can produce. By the way this all seems to be summed up in the need for Adventist to read the old book by Joe Crews "Creeping Compromise". Only now it is directly a message from God. I think that is one of the books my church has in the foyer. One of those books of the last generation perfectionists who are a bane to the Adventist church, the predecessor of Doug Batchelor.

Garbage in Garbage out!

Ellen White Food for worms, is it conditional

I am going to interrupt the review of the book previously mentioned because this weeks Lesson Study Guide is designed to counter the type of criticism mentioned in my last post review of It’s Okay Not To Be A Seventh-day Adventist. Specifically I will deal with February 3 lesson because unlike many other lessons in our history this lesson deals with a specific statement of Ellen White which many cite as a false prophecy. Here is what the lesson says:

The fulfillment of most prophecies (exceptions are the end-time prophecies of Daniel and Revelation) is dependent on the actions and attitudes of the people concerned. Jonah made the clear-cut statement, given him from God, that in 40 days Nineveh would be “overturned” (Jonah 3:4, NIV). Yet, it never happened. Was Jonah a false prophet? Of course not. Instead, the prophecy was conditional; its fulfillment depended upon how the people responded to the message God had given them.

This principle may explain why a particular prophecy made by Ellen White in 1856 did not come to pass. In 1856, Mrs. White declared: “I was shown the company present at the Conference. Said the angel: ‘Some food for worms, some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus.’ ”—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 131, 132.

All who were alive way back then are now, of course, dead. How do we explain this? The answer is conditional prophecy. We must remember that she was told God’s kingdom could have come in her lifetime. In 1896 she wrote: “If those who claimed to have a living experience in the things of God had done their appointed work as the Lord ordained, the whole world would have been warned ere this, and the Lord Jesus would have come in power and great glory.”—Review and Herald, Oct. 6, 1896.

In the last volume of the Testimonies for the Church, published in 1909, she wrote, “If every soldier of Christ had done his duty, if every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. While men have slept, Satan has stolen a march upon us.”—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9, p. 29. If we apply the principle of conditionality to her 1856 vision, the problem disappears. See also Friday’s lesson.

First of all does overturned in Jonah 3:4 mean destroyed? If we look up the word overturned in a lexicon we see this definition:

Definition

1. to turn, overthrow, overturn
1. (Qal)
1. to overturn, overthrow
2. to turn, turn about, turn over, turn around
3. to change, transform
2. (Niphal)
1. to turn oneself, turn, turn back
2. to change oneself
3. to be perverse
4. to be turned, be turned over, be changed, be turned against
5. to be reversed
6. to be overturned, be overthrown
7. to be upturned
3. (Hithpael)
1. to transform oneself
2. to turn this way and that, turn every way
4. (Hophal) to turn on someone

So even if Jonah thought, or hoped Nineveh would be destroyed; to turn away, turn from, to change or reverse their course are all legitimate meanings for the word used. Jonah may have thought his prophecy failed but that would only be if a certain meaning is used to the exclusion of other meanings. The story is pretty clear that Jonah wanting the city to be destroyed even if God did not. There are also the other problems with the book of Jonah used to compare to Ellen White’s food for worms quote. First there are only 8 words recorded of Jonah’s message. If we assume that those were the only 8 words then we have a problem logically because why would anyone listen to a stranger in town repeating those words. At some point you would have to assume he identifies who he is and who his God is. The other problem with using Jonah as a comparison is that there is a pretty even split between Biblical scholars whether the book is supposed to be literal history or an analogy; a parable to demonstrate the grace of God over the nation of Israel’s tendency to self importance. Since there has never been any evidence that Nineveh worshiped the God of Israel I tend to think it is meant as a parable.

Next there is the possibility of conditional prophecies, but they are not all conditional and simply saying the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are not conditional because they say so is pretty poor reasoning. In any case the verse which is most applicable to Jonah’s prophecy is found in Jeremiah as the lesson study guide mentioned:

Jeremiah 18:6-10 (New International Version)

6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

Is that applicable to Ellen White statement where she said:

I was shown the company present at the Conference. Said (132) the angel: "Some food for worms, [SISTER CLARISSA M. BONFOEY, WHO FELL ASLEEP IN Jesus ONLY THREE DAYS AFTER THIS VISION WAS GIVEN, WAS PRESENT IN USUAL HEALTH, AND WAS DEEPLY IMPRESSED THAT SHE WAS ONE WHO WOULD GO INTO THE GRAVE, AND STATED HER CONVICTIONS TO OTHERS.] some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus." {1T 131.3}

Solemn words were these, spoken by the angel. I asked the angel why so few were interested in their eternal welfare, so few preparing for their last change. Said he: "Earth attracts them, its treasures seem of worth to them." They find enough to engross the mind, and have no time to prepare for heaven. Satan is ever ready to plunge them deeper and deeper into difficulty; as soon as one perplexity and trouble is off the mind, he begets within them an unholy desire for more of the things of earth; and thus their time passes, and, when it is too late, they see that they have gained nothing substantial. They have grasped at shadows and lost eternal life. Such will have no excuse. {Vol 1 Testimonies to the Church p. 132.1}

Clearly the angel gives no conditions in fact Ellen White asks the angel why people are not preparing for their last change and makes it clear there is no excuse if they are not ready and lose eternal life. It is quite the opposite of a conditional prophecy. The lady mentioned here and in Ellen White’s book “Spiritual Gifts” certainly did not think it was conditional as Ellen White writes:

Sr. Bonfoey remarked to a sister as we left the meeting-house, "I feel impressed that I am one that will soon be food for worms.” The conference closed Monday. Thursday Sr. B. sat at the table with us apparently well. She then went to the Office as usual, to help get off the paper. In about two hours I was sent for. Sr. B. had been suddenly taken very ill. My health had been very poor, yet I hastened to suffering Clara. In a few hours she seemed some better. The next morning we had her brought home in a large chair, and she was laid upon her own bed from which she was never to rise. Her symptoms became alarming, and we had fears that a tumor, which had troubled her for nearly ten years, had broken inwardly. It was so, and mortification was doing its work. {Vol 2 Spiritual Gifts p. 208.2}

Jeremiah’s statement is specifically for a “nation or kingdom” Ellen White is addressing a group of people at a conference, not even the SDA church because they did not exist yet. Jeremiah also says that if someone prophesies something good then you really know they are true because it is too easy to prophecy troubles:

(Jeremiah 28:8 NIV) From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms 9. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the LORD only if his prediction comes true."

Ellen White’s food for worms prophecy also includes the very best news; “translated at the coming of Jesus”. Ellen White’s statement fails to meet any of the conditions of Jeremiah’s statements.

What about the method the Lesson Study guide uses, it is the same method the White Estate uses when it quotes Ellen White’s explanation that if people had done their duty Christ would have returned before the time she made the statement. How would we verify the accuracy of that statement? If we allowed that type of reasoning then it would be impossible to ever show anyone to be a false prophet. All that so called prophet would have to do is give an excuse why their prophecy did not occur (the excuse being in the form of another prophetic statement). Rather like the Jehovah’s Witnesses saying that Armageddon and the consummation of the age would occur in 1914. When Armageddon did not occur it became the invisible return of Christ and began to rule in heaven. Click here for more.

There is no doubt if Jeremiah’s conflict with the false prophet Hananiah had used the rules as interpreted by the Lesson Study guide above prophets would have lost all meaning as what they said could or could not happen and their would be no consequence either way. Any so called prophet can prophesy their way out of any failed prophesies.

Ultimately it makes prophecy meaningless and testing of prophets worthless.

Review It's Ok Not to be a Seventh-day Adventist part 3

Before I begin my review of Chapter 5 on Ellen White from “The Untold History Its Okay Not to Be A Seventh-day Adventist The Doctrine that Attempts to Repair the Temple Veil” I would like to address something Teresa Beem said in the comments of the previous blog review segment. She commented:

“Remember our audience and I think it will help you understand why we wrote as we did. Many, many former SDAs and general Christians believe the SDA church to be a dangerous cult. We were severely reprimanded by many readers for "concealing" the devilish doctrines of Adventism and not telling the FULL truth of its horrors. We do not share that opinion, but tried very hard to remain objective to both our SDA readership, our former SDA readership and those very few who have never studied Adventism (especially those who consider it a looney cult). I think in the end, you will have to admit that anyone reading the book who believes SDAs to be looney fringe cult will be very disappointed that the book did not support that view.”

So far most of my complaints have been about factual errors. From my perspective if you write a book it should be of factual use to any reader, not made to appeal to a certain reader who already believes a particular point of view. Most people who use the term “dangerous cult” are speaking about a cult that ingests poison or separates by mind control family members. The others who use “dangerous cult” are the judgmental types who believe if you don’t believe as they believe on religious issues you will be lost, as if their ideas dictate who God saves or loses. So my perspective, I will have to grant is different than the authors. That I have higher standards of how a book should impart knowledge is neither here nor there, if a book says it is giving us the untold history I want that history to be accurate and not be simply an untold history because it never really happened.

As I begin my review on the Ellen White section I will begin by mentioning something that I learned from the book and relayed recently on the Spectrum blog. A footnote in chapter 4 gave us a portion of the following Ellen White quote:

Examination of Candidates The test of discipleship is not brought to bear as closely as it should be upon those who present themselves for baptism. It should be understood whether they are simply taking the name of Seventh-day Adventists, or whether they are taking their stand on the Lord's side, to come out from the world and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing. Before baptism there should be a thorough inquiry as to the experience of the candidates. Let this inquiry be made, not in a cold and distant way, but kindly, tenderly, pointing the new converts to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Bring the requirements of the gospel to bear upon the candidates for baptism.

One of the points upon which those newly come to the faith will need instruction is the subject of dress. Let the new converts be faithfully dealt with. Are they vain in dress? Do they cherish pride of heart? The idolatry of dress is a moral disease. It must not be taken over into the new life. In most cases, submission to the gospel requirements will demand a decided change in the dress. (Testimonies to the Church Vol. 6 1900 page 95)

Like most Adventists I have wondered why we have baptismal vows other then belief in God and acceptance of Christ. Well there it is Ellen White’s instructions though I doubt any of you have ever been examined about your dress. It was indeed a big deal to Ellen White, not to many people today but it presents the precedence that some pastors use to refuse to baptize people till they stop smoking etc. (Later on page 95 there is a little more on Ellen White and Baptism in the book ) the book said:

“The remnant held high standards for admittance. You must place church membership before almost anything else in life.” (page 59)

As you can see with Ellen White’s quote it is not simply church membership. Ellen White certainly espoused the puritan characteristics applying the meaning to simply church membership is slightly myopic. Her view was that you had to do those things to be part of God’s kingdom whether an Adventist or not. It is a type of legalism and that is how this information could have been used, benefiting both Adventists and non Adventists but it is simply used to show that Adventists had high standards. Something you would find in most 1800’s writers such as D.L. Moody etc.

The first part of chapter 5 is mostly history on Ellen White, childhood, marriage, children, and illness. Nothing new there, not terribly useful unless one wants to apply subjective psychoanalysis to her. The authors write on page 84:

During Ellen’s final years, serious doubts arose about the Testimonies. Adventists became more and more convinced that her visions were not from the Lord. From her house in California she defended herself: "For 60 years I have been in communication with heavenly messengers, and I have been constantly learning in reference to divine things."199 However, the Adventist leadership began to back down as to the extent of the inspiration of Ellen’s writings. She had written earlier in her life that every word was from God. Now the denomination was promoting a kinder, gentler Ellen whose visions were not to be taken so literally and were now considered concept-inspired.

Did you notice the reference to the sentence in bold above? If that had been the case then When Walter Rea’s book the White Lie came out in the early 1980’s the church would have had no rebuttal at all. The plagiarism that Canright wrote about in the 1880’s would have devastated the church and Ellen White. So here we see something of amazing importance claimed with not a single footnote or quote to back it up. There is no case even in her insistence upon it all being from God that that she indicates every word was from God. That is pretty much a claim to verbal inspiration. Certainly something that some Adventist did believe just as some Christians believe it for the Bible but it is not that easy to pin such an idea as directly from Ellen White. Again in an objective book make the case, use the quotes and draw your conclusions.

Chapter 6 deals with analyzing Ellen Whites writings. I liked the section going over Ellen Whites failed prophecies. It is cursory and certainly more should have been added. Some material such as referring to letters from a friend saying that Ellen predicted certain dates for the second coming are not overly credible, as they may just be repeating what the other Adventist predictions were and assigning them to Ellen White. In any case to be objective we really need to go by what she wrote rather than one person’s recollection.

There is a section on Ellen White saying not to say “I am saved”, not terribly important as it is/was a common Arminian view. Of course if you believe you can lose your salvation it is not terribly useful to say you are saved. This is a big thing for Calvinists but not for Arminian Christians.

I read an individual’s review on Amazon.com which mentioned this section of the book where the authors state on page 96:

Spiritual Gifts is Ellen White's account of the fall of Satan to the close of the millennium 241 Volume 1 records that Satan was "driven from heaven.... Then he repented and wished to be reinstated again in heaven”242 Ellen claims God refused. So Satan and deceived angels "repented, wept and implored to be taken back into the favor of God. But no, their sin, their hate, their envy and jealousy, had been so great that God could not blot it out." She asserts that it was only after Satan realized God would not be moved and he would not be taken back that Satan's "malice and hatred began to be manifest."243 To her Satan was in reality a repentant victim and God's mercy was not big enough to cover his sin.

While this entire account is fiction, it is not Biblically derived and as such should be held to be extremely questionable the authors make a good point one that reading this section of Ellen White should really bother Adventists. Ellen White wrote:

After Satan was shut out of heaven, with those who fell with him, he realized that he had lost all the purity and glory of heaven forever. Then he repented and wished to be reinstated again in heaven. He was willing to take his proper place, or any place that might be assigned him. But no, heaven must not be placed in jeopardy All heaven might be marred should he be taken back; for sin originated with him, and the seeds of rebellion were within him. Satan had obtained followers, those who sympathized with him in his rebellion. He and his followers repented, wept and implored to be taken back into the favor of God. But no, their sin, their hate , their envy and jealousy, had been so great that God could not blot it out. It must remain to receive its final punishment. (Spiritual Gifts Vol. 1 page 19)

The problem here though is that as the authors do point out Ellen White wrote so much that you can often find duplicates and slightly different versions in many places in her writings. So which part is correct are we supposed to somehow combine them to create harmony out of conflicting details? We do that with the Bible but the Bible, as with the gospels, is taken from different people, we really should not have to do that with the works of one author. In this case the reviewer on Amazon.com is a bit wrong. In this case Ellen White is woefully wrong, notice the final sentence in this parallel quote from Ellen White in the Signs of the Times 1879 -01-16.007:

“ Satan trembled as he viewed his work. He was alone, in meditation upon the past, the present, and the future. His mighty frame shook as with a tempest. An angel from Heaven was passing. Satan called him, and intreated an interview with Christ. This was granted. He then related to him that he repented of his rebellion, and wished again to enjoy the favor of God. He was willing to take the place which had been assigned him, and be under Christ's command. The Son of God wept at Satan's woe, but told him, as the mind of the Father, that this could never be. Heaven must not be placed in jeopardy. The peace of Heaven would be marred, should he be received back; for sin originated with him; the seeds of rebellion were still within him. He had no occasion for his course, and he had not only hopelessly ruined himself, but the host of angels also, who would still have been happy in Heaven had he remained steadfast. The law of God could condemn, but could not pardon.”

A couple of chapters on Ellen White are really easy pickings in my opinion: the fatal flaw of Adventism. In this particular statement however we see not only Ellen White’s absurd view about what happened in heaven but we see the absurd view that predominates Christianity; the Penal Substitutionary view of the Atonement. God could not forgive, someone had to die, so that God’s law could be satisfied, even if the penalty was paid by God through His innocent Son (literally God Himself in my view). The idea that God can’t forgive hid behind the excuse of a “law” as if the law is somehow outside of God. Just think how quickly any Christian would see a statement as false if it said: “God could condemn but could not pardon”.

Review It's Ok Not to be a Seventh-day Adventist part 2

It's Ok Not to be a Seventh-Day Adventist by Teresa and Arthur Beem review Part 2. Part 1 follows this article, again it is a blog thing, If you want to begin with part 1 click here or page down to the next article which is part 1.

Most all books that write about Adventism begin with William Miller and the Millerites. They are an important link in the beginning of Adventism. The book delve into the history of Miller and the Millerites in chapters 2-4. The history while short is written in an interesting manner which is important because it appears to me many people pay little attention to history. History tells us a lot about ourselves as well as our forefathers. In this case the 1800’s spirit of revival and fanaticism which was present in much of America as well as England. The book relates some of the fanaticism of Millerites, the behavior that got many of them kicked out of their respective churches and it covers the heartbreaking results of the great disappointment, the insanity and suicides and the animosity that people felt toward the deceived Millerites before and after 1844.

Unfortunately the authors again lose objectivity when relating the historical information, choosing to ignore the actual feelings of the Millerites and ignoring why they did what they did. That is just as important when dealing with history as the dates and names of people. Here the book falls short. The books states in chapter 2 page 36:

Each church service they disrupted to spread their message of “repent for the hour of Judgement [sic] is at hand” brought expulsion and new cries of victimhood. Millerites saw themselves as “saints” and the masses who rejected them “manifested the spirit of Satan in their opposition to the message” They claimed the reason the mockers and scoffers rejected their message was because “Evil angels urged them on to harden their hearts and to reject every ray of light from heaven, that they might be fastened in the snare of Satan” 60 [ Footnote to Ellen White Early Writings page 238]

The Millerites exhibited little of the love or spiritual fruits for which an authentic movement of God is to be recognized. The midnight cry was to them, God “separating a people from the world , to purify, make white and try, and thus make them ready for the coming of the Lord” 61 Yet in their proclamation of Judgment to the world, they gave Jesus Christ and his gospel peripheral treatment.

That would have been a good place to use all of Ellen White’s quote to show how it was their pious concern to live holy lives for God that lead them to make the harsher statements. How things connect to the gospel is always a very subjective thing. You can make most anything fit into what you think the gospel is. To say that the idea of judgment has nothing to do with the gospel is not very accurate to the Biblical literature. The writer cannot simply ignore the Methodist, the Puritan traditions the proceeded the Millerites and expect that those ideas were not somehow incorporated into the actions of the Millerites when they review their history. Even with the call to repentance in the first paragraph it is clear that they were trying to convey their understanding of the gospel as well as the necessity for repentance to meet their Lord. When looking at the history it is also important to realize that this was predominately a Christian country most people where raised in Christian homes with some knowledge of Christian concepts, it may have only been cultural but it was not the great melting pot of religion that we see in America today. There were certainly pockets of non Christian religions, such as Native Americans and immigrant Chinese but the Millerites did not seem to calculate past their local situations. They did not seem to think about the vast world and how Christianity had not penetrated large areas yet.

Chapter 3 “1844: Look Up For Your Redemption Draweth Nigh” recounts the devastation of the Great Disappointment. The chapter is pretty good again however like the previous chapter on William Miller the authors seem to hold Miller as a prophet or at least that his calculation of the return of Christ was a prophecy. Page 49 begins:

“Was Miller Another Jonah?

Adventists argue that Miller’s prophecy about 1844 was like Jonah’s.101 It was a conditional prophecy; its fulfillment resting on the obedience or disobedience of its audience. But are the two scenarios alike? A comparison shows that Miller denied God had commanded him to preach; Jonah was commanded. Nineveh was spared because of the genuine repentance; the relieved people glorified God. When the people of God repented and listened to Miller, there was only tragedy and disappointment—loss of faith, even suicides. Why would God punish those who had sincerely turned to Him and given all for Him? Miller’s prophecy did not bring glory to God.”

If your like me (someone who grew up as an Adventist) this is the first time you have heard that Miller’s 1844 return of Christ was a conditional prophecy. That is simply not what Adventism teaches. They teach that Miller was right on the date wrong on what was to happen on that date. (interrelates to the Investigative Judgment doctrine). The footnote above is to James White’s book Life Incidents page 188-9. And it does not equate Miller’s 1844 as a prophecy to Jonah. It says:

"And we as much believe that we have done the will of God in thus sounding the alarm, as we believe that Jonah did when he entered into Nineveh a day's journey, and cried, saying, `Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.' Nineveh was not then overthrown; nor has the Lord yet wrought deliverance in the earth, nor the inhabitants of the world fallen.

… "So we believe that this last cry has been a test; and that with our views of duty, we should as much have sinned against God, had we refrained from giving that message, as Jonah did when `he rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord;' that we should as much have sinned, had we refused to give heed to it, as the Ninevites would in refusing to repent at his preaching; and that all who are angry that we have preached a time which has not been realized, are as guilty as Jonah was when he was angry and prayed the Lord to take his life from him, because God had spared that great city."

To James White it is the test of doing what he believes God wanted them to do that is the same, not that Miller is to be compared to a prophet. In some fairness against the many times the book refers to Miller’s interpretation of Daniel and Revelation passages to calculate the Second Coming as a prophecy the book notes that is not how Miller thought. In Chapter 4 “The Remnant Spark Reawakened” page 54 they write:

“Miller publicly admitted that they had been wrong about the prophecy….”I readily confess I was misled in my calculation…” But Miller’s confession was tainted with blame on others:

I confess I have been thus mistaken as to the definite time; but what of that?...I was deceived in the number and character of those who, without study, argument or reason, rejected the (to me at least) glorious news of the coming Savior…I am thankful to God, although much and sorely disappointed, that I never pretended to be divinely inspired. 120

Miller seemed rather cavalier even though his message had cause [sic] widespread despair, death and destruction. He attempted to preach afterward on the soon coming judgement, [sic] but his health failed rapidly. He rejected what became of his movement as it morphed into the different Advent sects, one being the Seventh-day Adventists. He rejoined the Baptist church and died in 1848, just four years after his failed prophecy.”

Here even though the authors are quoting from Miller where he states he was not divinely inspired they twice call Miller’s message a prophecy. Miller was trying to interpret the Bible prophecies he was not making a prophecy. His prediction was based upon the interpretation he made of the Bible passages it was not however a prophecy as in a God given message. The book is amazingly negligent in not recognizing the lasting change that Miller’s message did for Christianity. It moved the majority of Christian denominations away from the post millennial view to the pre millennial view of the Second Coming. A massive shift from the idea that the world would get better and better till it had a 1000 year reign of Christianities dominance and prosperity at the end of which Christ would return. To the view that Christ could return at any time to rescue His people. The immanent return which now is held by most fundamentalist and Evangelical churches. Certainly not solely due to Miller, but a convergence of thought between Edward Irving in England and Miller’s Preaching in the U.S certainly popularized the concept once again. It is to that immanent second coming that Miller’s quote above is addressing. What the authors see as blame for others is his concern against the post millennial view which he thinks violates scripture. What Miller actually says without the ellipses follows, the material in red is what is quoted in Beem’s book:

During the warm months he attempted no public labors; and his pen, even, seems to have lain idle. The next communication received from him was published in the Advent Herald of September 9, 1846, as follows:

"DEAR READER:- Permit me to address you once more, by calling your attention to the great events which the word of God declares are soon to come to pass, that I may faithfully perform my duty; and that you may be able to answer, in that way which will be satisfactory to your own soul, in the day when God shall judge the secret thoughts of men by Jesus Christ.

"In my former communications to you on this subject, - which is near my heart, fills my soul at times with indescribable joy and consolation, and is big with the hope of soon, very soon, coming into possession of immortality and eternal life, - I readily confess I was misled in my calculations; not by the word of God, nor by the established principles of interpretation I adopted, but by the authorities which I followed in history and chronology, and which have been generally considered worthy of the fullest confidence. And I fear many of you have been blinded to your own interest, which may be of eternal consequences to you, by hasty expressions of full confidence in these authors, before I had carefully and more extensively examined the subject to which I had, in the simplicity of my heart, called your candid and serious attention.

"The testimony of historians, as to the dates of events, cannot affect the testimony of the word of God, that, at certain periods from these events, his promises shall be fulfilled. They may fail, but his word cannot fail. I confess I have been thus mistaken as to the definite time; but what of that? Will you or any man dare to take the ground that, because Mr. Miller or any other man made a mistake, the word of God is not true? No, no. There would be nothing in that worthy of being called an argument.

"But, above all things else, I was deceived in the number and character of those who, without study, argument, or reason, rejected the (to me at least) glorious news of the coming Saviour. Neither did I suppose that a man or woman could have been found on the habitable earth, who loved the Lord Jesus Christ and believed the Bible, that would reject the Second Advent or the redemption of the body; the final salvation of the soul, or the inheritance of eternal life, at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Yet facts warrant me to say, I find more than one-half who profess Christianity denying one or more of these fundamental pillars of the Christian hope.

"I am thankful to God, although much and sorely disappointed, that I never pretended to be divinely inspired, but always directed you to the same source from which I obtained all the information I then had and now possess on this glorious and heart-cheering subject. [You will notice in Beem’s quote they end the sentence after inspired.] Let me, then, exhort you, kind reader, by the value of truth, by the worth of your own soul, and the love of life everlasting, to examine your Bible on the coming of Christ, the redemption of the body, the salvation of your soul, and the everlasting inheritance. Lay by all prejudice, all opinions not founded on the plain and clear declarations of God's word; keep close to that rule which will thoroughly furnish you, and make you perfect in every good work; examine for yourselves; let no man deceive you in these days of deception, when the devil has come, deceiving, if possible, the very elect. Now is the time for you to exercise the `sober second thought;' a good time for you to come over on the side of truth, to choose the good, and refuse the evil. I beseech you do not say, `Nay, I will not examine!' Do not say, `I am well enough off, and I have got the truth!' Perhaps you have; if so, it will not hurt you to reexamine, for every reexamination only makes the truth the brighter, our evidence more clear, and our love for the truth more fervent; it helps to establish our faith and hope, and keeps us from wavering. (Sylvester Bliss, Memoirs of William Miller page 350-51)

One sentence and two partial sentences from three separate paragraphs; placed together, used to pretend that Miller was cavalier and blaming others. These are critical errors in judgment by the authors, quotes need to be used in context, and the use of ellipses should not be to avoid important parts of the original author’s intent but used to avoid having to include extraneous material. Certainly you don’t put a period where the original was just a comma and not indicate that the sentence in fact continues. The authors follow the above quote by mentioning that according to a letter to the editor of a Newspaper that Miller was charged with financial misconduct. Really a letter to the editor? Might be an interesting bit of trivia but letters to editors are notoriously irresponsible, as much today as they were in the 1800’s. If space is so important to the authors of this book, they should give better context of quoted material and less space to rumors.

As someone who has done some research on just when did the Adventist coin and start accepting the idea of the Investigative Judgment I was disappointed that this book does not deal with the concept very well. Many Adventist know that James White did not accept the doctrine for years yet the book makes it appear as though it was instantly accepted. The book writes on page 56:

“Hiram began spreading the “Sanctuary Doctrine” and an expansion of it called the “Investigative Judgment” in his Adventist magazine Day Dawn. In it, he more fully explained that Christ’s atonement on the cross had not been complete. Christ’s second step to our salvation was that He was to review the records in heaven, located in the holy of holies, and begin the process of judging mankind. In 1844, Christ started the judgment of the godly dead and was working up to those living in the present. “

No footnote is provided to this statement or any quote from Edson’s Day Dawn magazine. Which leaves us with very little written material on the origin and incorporation of this peculiar Adventist doctrine. The best I have seen was an article from the Adventist Review that was printed in the appendix of Dr. Desmond Ford’s dissertation Daniel 8:14, the Day of Atonement, and the Investigative Judgment You can read the document posted on a discussion forum here. Some good research would have been very welcome in Beem’s book, unfortunately little is supplied and what there is, I think is is questionable on this issue.

The next section will deal with the chapter on Ellen White. As the reader can tell I have already noted enough problems with this book to cause most Adventists to reject it out of hand. I hate to see that happen but I am certain it will if the book continues to be published and distributed without revision. I am sure this is not the kind of review the authors expected from me but I hope that they will consider my comments carefully. I understand the need to write persuasively but more important than being persuasive is being truthful and accurate. When a writer has some important things to say it is important that they don’t allow poor research and/or documentation to poison their work.