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Why Be a Seventh-day Adventist?
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California, USA
Delivery: 2006-04-01
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2006-04-06 07:09Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-ybsda.php
Today we rejoice. Another baptism! Both in this place and in others this Sabbath morning, people have chosen to join themselves in covenant relation with God and with this church and others as local expressions of His worldwide community. They sought answers regarding God, who He is, and themselves, who they are. And found them. In certain ways it is the end; like coming home for the first time. But it is also a beginning. Their quest and decision and God’s decision may provoke us afresh. Let us pause and ask ourselves the question: Why become and remain a Seventh-day Adventist? One talk offers us only moments to work with, but let’s see what happens.
What to Put First?
Which should we address first? The Bible part or the Messiah part? They go together. The foundation of our belief concerning Jesus as Messiah is found in the bedrock of the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, all 66 books. The Bible is our bedrock; the same Bible as used by all other Protestants. From Genesis to Revelation we accept the same books, and view them as authoritative and infallible. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God’s acts in history.
We believe what we believe, first, because we take the Bible very seriously. We are a Bible-based body of believers. Many other Christian groups grant the Bible little true authority. They give lip service, but turn more to church growth experts and social psychology than to biblical fidelity in order to gain and keep adherents. Not that there are not principles to be discovered in those areas; but keeping church members should not be a case of offering coupons and benefits. Joining a church is joining a family. You don’t decide whether you will or will not remain in the family on the basis of Aunt Betsy’s casserole. She is part of your family. When you join a church the dominant decision-making criteria to exercise is to measure that body on the basis of its fidelity to the Bible.
When you study that Bible, what do you find? Jesus. God, after creating the world for man, saw man choose rebellion against Him. Unless a ransom was found, the race would be lost. Jesus, one of the three persons of the Deity, volunteered to descend to earth, take a human body, live a life of obedience and successful resistance to sin as one of us, be tortured for us, and offer that life as sacrifice for us on His cross. As Christians we believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s long-ago promise in the garden of Eden to redeem man. We hold Jesus’ person and death and resurrection to have been literal, visible, physical. He was God but He became man also. He lived and died as a man, refusing during His earthly existence to access powers that were His by right, in order that He might leave behind an example for the common man, woman, boy, and girl.
Jesus is the center of our system of belief. He lives a lifelong obedience giving us an example, and dies on the cross in our place as our Substitute. Our claim to salvation is not our works wrought out on our own apart from God, but Christ’s life offered in place of our own for our sins.
In the end, every single belief held by Seventh-day Adventists flows, in one way or another, from these two cardinal points of faith: the Bible and Jesus.
A Distinct Identity
So far, so good, you say. That explains why one would become a Christian. But why be a Seventh-day Adventist?
Some may object to this question. Often it is said that the most important thing, is becoming a Christian, not defining oneself as a member of a specific denomination. Let’s just call ourselves “Christians,” some say, and leave it at that. But the word “Christian” has so much baggage attached to it. People might think of the pope, pedophile priests, Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, televangelist scandals, the inquisition, or the crusades. They might think of the steady movement by the Religious Right that would ultimately lead government into the enforcement of Christian dogma by the state, or of the attempts by the religious left to rewrite morality so that ordaining practicing gay clergy is understood to be God’s latest innovation. Are we certain we want to be identified with those things? One unfortunate effect of modern media is how it dramatically extends the reach of every satanic caricature.
When you go to buy a car, wouldn’t you be suspicious if the little chrome nameplate of the manufacturer had been removed, and the salesperson insisted, “What is important here is not who made the car, but that it is a car. Come now. There is no difference between a Kia and a BMW.”
Why does your bank teller hand you money through the window? Because she is able to identify you, and your name carries a certain amount of influence. There is a character attached to the person attached to the name. In real numbers, you have X dollars in the bank and a record of either paying or not paying your bills on time, and thus a credit rating attached to your name. You conduct the business of your life on the basis of your good name. Names matter.
Far from detracting from Christ, when we state that we are Seventh-day Adventists, we are invoking the behavior and the Christian spirit of all Seventh-day Adventists. That means not only the bad examples, but the good ones. And there are a large, long-term group of good ones. Most of all of course, we feel we are identifying with where Christ has delivered His truth today. The Seventh-day Adventist sees himself as striving to enter in the narrow way (Matthew 7:13, 14), as following Jesus (Revelation 14:4), as accompanying the Lamb to Mt. Zion (Revelation 14:1). We want to be there because it is Jesus’ destination for us. So rather than hiding ourselves we are being straightforward. We have nothing to hide.
That does not mean that we always present ourself with our affiliation first. Today people start, not from a stance of trust, but of suspicion, toward anything savoring of organized institutions. So we may not always present the details up front, but if someone seeks more specific information I never hesitate to identify myself as a Seventh-day Adventist. There are prejudiced people who will prejudge us when they the name heaven has chosen. Fine. This is the real world. Deal with it. But we must not be ashamed of a name that heaven would use to convict others.
Former Adventists on the Rise
We live in a peculiar hour. There have never been so many members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the world, now somewhere around 15M. At the same time there are those who join the church later to leave it. In the Western world, some of those are actually leaving because they come to feel that the doctrinal positions of the church are wrong, are unbiblical, and that the demands God makes upon their lifestyle through the church are unduly burdensome.
The latter phenomenon is nothing new; there have always been those who at some point renounced earlier commitments and put their personal preference above God’s requirement. Then there is also the static introduced into the equation by the poor example of some members who join but never understand and whose unchristian behavior is misidentified as Adventism. While it is inevitable that some have from time to time tangled merely human requirements with truly spiritual ones, it is still true that someone else’s erroneous application of principle is no reason for you to leave behind God or His followers. But our culture is today mostly comfortable and untested. We suffer from the same failings as the place we were reared in. It is not surprising that some falter and relapse into the superficial life they had lived before coming to Christ.
But the former aspect is, in some respects, new. There have always been a few who left for doctrinal reasons; but today the few have become a trickle.
So. Are there cracks in the doctrinal foundation? Have you joined the church just when it is about to start taking on water and sinking?
War Against the Biblical Remnant
Consider a verse we know well. I think of it as the battle cry of Adventism: Revelation 12:17:
The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Most of us recall the classic biblical interpretation of this chapter. On the basis of prophetic symbolism, we interpret the dragon to mean Satan as a personal being. The woman, we understand to represent God’s church. The remnant of her seed we understand to mean the last portion of the church existing, the true church; a church that, like its first century counterpart, consists today of those who keep the commandments of God and submit to the testimony of Jesus.
Our foe is the dragon, Lucifer, covering cherub who turned and became Satan, the adversary, Apollyon, the Destroyer. Biting, snarling, striking, He had his shot at Christ, but Christ was triumphant. He lived without sinning and died an untainted sacrifice and ascended to heaven. And yet, remaining within Satan’s reach are Christ’s present followers. We are proxy flesh, extensions, as far as Satan is concerned, of our Lord. Satan can strike at Him by striking at us, Jesus’ followers. Our commitment to Christ represents all that Satan opposes.
His master mind is bent upon baiting and leading us to destruction. He tailors his deceptions to us. He sees where most often we have fallen, and finds new ways to package error so that we will think it is truth. Then he comes and dangles the delectable morsel before us. More persistent than any fisherman, more crafty, his special delight is confusing those who have once embraced present truth.
He comes with a purpose, to make war with us, with the remnant. This is his last intellectual challenge; one he pursues unwearyingly. Other groups long ago fell into compromise. But Seventh-day Adventists, embattled by many forces, even many mistakes of our own making, still represent the most serious resistance he encounters. Here is found a group resisting his supremacy. If he could blot them from the earth, his triumph would be complete. There is something vital here, and that is the very point. That is why his brow furrows, his attention locks. This embattled band of believers who would follow Christ all the way evokes Satan’s uttermost ire. His binoculars are focused on us.
A parallel is found in militant Islam versus the West. Al Qaeda is not directing its main batteries against Canada. Al Qaeda directs its ideological war in this hemisphere against the United States, against the dominant cultural force in the West. If we can be brought down, everything else they desire can be accomplished.
There is an impassible gulf between worldviews. We believe that God gives to every man, woman, and child an inalienable (i.e. cannot be taken away) right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the worldview of radical Islam is that all should come under sway of a new global caliphate, a fascism disguised as theocracy, in which the same intolerance will reign, and conversion to Christianity would lead to a death sentence. Can two such mutually exclusive views ever make peace? Am I ready to trust a neighbor who desires to subjugate me, put my daughters in burkas, and be Holy Spirit for my conscience?
People are dying every day precisely because killing makes headlines. The goal of militant Islam, which cannot win on the battlefield against the armies of the West, is to play with the Western mind, so frustrating and confusing us that we lose our nerve. In other words, they are trying to deceive us into so misunderstanding ourselves that we fall easy prey to their devices.
Likewise, Satan can tempt us but he cannot compel us. If we sin it is our own choice.
And when it comes to ideological systems offered up in contrast or replacement of Seventh-day Adventism, again, he can present shiny, apparently new vistas to us. But it is our choice whether we embrace them. Sadly, we seem to spend more energy polishing the new vistas than examining our own foundations. If we studied more closely, we would better understand the biblical foundations of our faith, and the illusory superiority of the shiny “new” evangelical vistas would be seen for what they are.
Cracks in the Foundation?
Are there cracks in the doctrinal foundation of Seventh-day Adventists? We have a list, you know, of 28 specific points of belief. And we could invest continuous energy in perfecting those 28 statements. But it is that which is behind them that is the true essence. If you want to know what we believe you need to look at what the Bible teaches. You can explore the four main branches of monotheism in the world (Judaism, Islam, Western, and Eastern Christianity), and you can explore them closely. You can examine other teachings, like Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology. For years I have carefully explored, not only Seventh-day Adventist Christianity, but various variants of monotheistic belief.
Let me tell you, the world needs you to be a Seventh-day Adventist. God seeks to pass the torch from generation to generation. Truth never stops burning. The Holy Spirit keeps on searching for those through whom Heaven’s plan can reach fruition, through whom His harvest may be gathered. The world needs you to receive the torch, connect the circuit, bring God’s truth at last to fruition in this place. Noah was the salt that held back the flood in his day; through God’s grace we can be the salt that holds back the fire in ours. He wants to use us. The chase for Bible truth must be kept alive, the chase for lives changed by the gospel, operative. God brought you to the kingdom for such a time as this (Esther 4:14). Just when confusion blockades the way home to Jesus, here we are, pointing the way.
The doctrinal foundations of our faith are its chief recommendation. We present ourselves as a biblically based movement and we agree—unequivocally—to be evaluated on that very basis. This movement is either of God or of Satan. It either leads to the true Word and the True Savior, or to destruction.
Is our doctrinal standpoint different than that of others? It better be. In a day when Christians are seeking signs and wonders from the charismatic third wave, and Protestantism evaporates while the strong current sets in toward Rome, here we stand. Our views are different. Test us. Examine closely the Jesus we claim to follow. Let the Bible be your measure. But check yourself closely too to see whether you are truly in the faith or not. Tradition and ideas have great power to discolor and distort. Satan has been relentless and so few come to the quest for truth with anything more accurate than the bent notions of a theological roadmap from a house of carnival mirrors.
How many who reject the Seventh-day Adventist today understand the differences between Western and Eastern Christianity, or have any depth of background behind the trends and the theology that have shaped contemporary evangelicalism, or how many could even defend their belief in Jesus as Messiah from the Hebrew Scriptures alone, or can explain on what basis they reject Islam? No matter how limited their personal understanding of the ideas and trends that have shaped the ideological landscape of contemporary world, they profess to be so very certain that Seventh-day Adventists are wrong. Knowledge itself carries no merit toward our salvation, but if one is going to make a claim with any definiteness, one wants to know whence it arises—from real knowledge, or only a burning in the bosom?
A Positive View of Man
One reason to be a Seventh-day Adventist is because of its biblical, positive view of man. Few ideas have greater power over one’s view of life and its possibilities than one’s concept of human possibility. Popular culture around us has a shaping influence and so does the religion all around us, the things we view, the things we read, the things we hear.
Many Christians are strong proponents of a very negativistic view of man. At the Fall, they teach that man was totally depraved. Human potential was vitiated. The way some would present it, hardly anything remains in us even to redeem. Then there are other views to influence us as well, ideas that, in contrast, are naively optimistic with reference to our nature.
But the truth lands you soberly between too sour and too sweet. Man was created as an extraordinary kind of being and with a love for morality (Genesis 1:26, 27, 31; Ecclesiastes 7:29). After the Fall, man is born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil, soon made worse by our choices to sin. But even man fallen retains some of the image divinely originally traced in him; God continues to draw, and fallen man continues to long for goodness (John 6:44; 12:32; Romans 2:4; Matthew 7:9-11; Luke 11:11-13) even as he inclines to evil. Still the gospel is the power of God to salvation; still, for fallen man, complete victory over sin is possible through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Still Jesus is the ligth that lighteth every man (John 1:4, 9), that is, every man can be “lit” if he is only willing to be. Still, he who wants to do truth can come to the light of truth (John 3:20, 21).
Many churches will talk about victory over sin. But only Seventh-day Adventism talks about a sealing, close of probation (Revelation 7:1-3; 22:11, 12), and a life of complete overcoming in the conflict with sin during that time. That is the theological fail-safe. We actually believe that Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is able to keep us from falling (Philippians 4:13; Jude 24).
Seventh-day Adventism helps us to navigate the world. We understand the Great Controversy theme, and everything is mapped on that basis. The Bible outlines a conflict between God’s government and Satan’s. Good and evil are matched in a once for all battle. Satan has had 6000 years to hang himself by his own rope, and really, he’s already done that. The great controversy war is recapitulated time after time throughout the Bible, whether it is the conflict between Satan and God over Job, or over the Hebrews in the wilderness, or the outline as given in Revelation 12. The last piece of evidence is being wrought out in us in the last moment of time, and on God’s side of the story.
Can He be a fair and a just God, and still save us who have rebelled, chosen sin, and now accept His gift of salvation and turning and transformation and have determined to follow Jesus all the way (Romans 3:26)? Will the lives of God’s witnesses in the time of apocalypse (Revelation 12:11) demonstrate that He loves and transforms us, or that His gospel is mostly talk, and that after 6000 years the evidence to back up the talk is still lacking? The mission of this church is big because God’s vision for her is big.
Remnant Militant, Remnant Triumphant
People don’t join the Seventh-day Adventist Church because here is where they discovered Weetabix or haystacks or rice milk, or because we have the best of this or the best of that. Yes, in Seventh-day Adventism you should find the friendliest people, the most unity, the least gossip, the most doctrinal certainty, the steadiest husbands, wives, grandparents, and children. You should find the best Christian schools, the most helpful books, pulpit preaching that challenges you and makes your heart leap with love for God and commitment to His purpose for us at this time. Every fellowship meal, every church event, should be representative of the best God has to offer through this vessel. Probably, you will find only part of this.
The glow of the specialness that God has led you to will be jolted at some point when someone you regarded as a saint on earth has a frazzled day and says or does something unchristlike. But you must learn to forgive. Strive in the grace of God to be the best example you can. Learn to pray for yourself and for others, so that as we grow our spiritual lapses will become fewer, the glory for God increased.
We don’t join this church because it has the best pews or the best music; we join this church for one reason. Your Seventh-day Adventist Church should be the most powerful force to facilitate preparation for translation you can find. You should be a member so that your opportunities to be prepared and to prepare others for the return of Jesus Christ, are optimized.
And if, in your SDA church, you feel that, in these respects it is lacking, then rather than disappearing from there and making it a darker place, you should try to stay by and bring it closer to God’s ideal. Remain and be an influence for that congregation in that community so that that Seventh-day Adventist church becomes a place where people are being prepared for translation—to meet Jesus in peace upon His return.
Sometimes we think we can stay in our former church in our former denomination, and if we just hang on a little longer, we will be able to bring our friends and even the pastor and the church over into present truth. Don’t fool yourself. It happens. Very infrequently. The social factors, the frailty of our humanity and of our psyche, the pressures that gather about us, make it supremely more probable that instead we will be pulled down beneath the deadly undertow of error.
Maybe you will have an opportunity to work for the salvation of others there someday. But today your soul is on the line, your eternity is hanging in the balance, your trends are being settled, so you choose to follow God all the way. Place yourself where God can work more decidedly upon you, where His truth can have a home. There is a time for battle and a time for training for battle, a time of dangerous infancy and a time of informed maturity. Be wise and be led of Jesus.
When you notice that people are leaving the church and writing books and setting up attack websites against their former faith, realize that Seventh-day Adventists are not alone in being so assailed. People are doing this today who are leaving a variety of groups. This is not just happening to Mormonism or to the Watchtower, but even to Baptist churches.
It seems to be a part of the age in which we live that some are so sure that they are so right that they feel they must publish their discoveries of error. One who has abandoned a “cause” often has not abandoned the idea of causes, and will manufacture a cause of their own if that is the what their personality profile craves. We do not say that the idea of causes should be abandoned, but that Jesus Christ and His gospel is our cause and anything else is just a styrofoam substitute. We are wary of flip-floppers because of the vast space separating the flip and the flop. If one was so certain before, has determined he was wrong, and now is so certain he is right, then on what basis should I trust his definiteness this time over his definiteness last time?
Our commitment to serve God as His church causes ex-Adventists to feel a certain angst. If we are right, they are wrong. Only the most regressed of them are beyond some inner uncertainty. They experience a recurring thought that perhaps they were mistaken in leaving.
They ask themselves if they have made a wrong choice. When you read what they say, it seems apparent that some of them had emotional issues before ever setting foot in an Adventist church. But no matter how fast you run, you can never get away from yourself. These same folks will march into a Sunday church with the same emotional problems and after 18 months may realize that they feel the same kind of grim discontent there that they felt before leaving the Seventh-day Adventist Church. So when they left Adventism, was it really because of bad doctrine, or did it have something to do with other unresolved personal issues?
Again, others who leave us have no emotionally based reason. They have simply become confused. For whatever reason, they may have lacked a real Christian experience while they walked in our halls. Because our God is a God of love who relentlessly seeks, He never gave up on them when they left. In connection with some life event, eventually they surrender anew, or even for the first time, to Christ. And their present acquaintances, full of sincerity even if not settled in present truth, are used of God to nurture the precious heart. So they become connected to a non-Seventh-day Adventist church.
But the truth is still the truth. It has not changed in 6000 years and it has not changed in our day for them either. God’s character does not change; His love is perfect, His mercy as perfect as His justice. He still seeks all categories of the lost: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal, and the legalistic but unimaginative brother (Luke 15). Journeys, for many “former Adventists” have not ended. A home awaits them in the Third Angel’s Message still. Let us be kinder, quicker to receive them than they have been to be fair to us. Jesus reaches out to them still.
Ellen G. White
Some seem to get a thrill out of attempting to slice and dice the writings of Ellen G. White. They will cut and blur and then focus on subdivided little snippets and scraps, attempting to make her writings appear as obscure and strange as possible. Rarely is the context of her broader message explored.
In a sense, the attack websites on the internet actually have it right when they lay into Ellen White with their rabid attempts to discredit. Where they get it wrong is in failing to recognize that her writings in their breadth merely echo the basic shape of a positive, biblical, progressive, preserving, transformative faith.
Those who form their opinion about Seventh-day Adventists on the basis of a narrow collection of Ellen White quotations without their context, will have a much different opinion than those who read those statements in their own juices. Don’t read a slap-dash set of quotations from Mrs. White, but sit down and start with the first page and read a whole book through, front to back, like The Desire of Ages. If you hand-wrote wrote 100,000 pages plus, on far ranging and diverse topics, over a six or seven decade span, as did Ellen White, I dare say I could snip here and snip there and make your views look ludicrous, whether your expressions were inspired or not.
Although we do not base our viewpoints on her writings, because of the large acceptance they have within the church, they represent the most universally “Adventist” denominational snapshots of our views. If you want to attack Adventism, or anything else, you want to attack its foundations. The problem then is that Mrs. White is in company with the Bible. She is expressing the views she expresses because that is what is consonant with the Bible. In attacking her expressions of truth, one at the same time attacks the revealed, biblical position of truth as well. Yes, it makes sense to attempt destroy the foundations of that which you oppose. But when you are going up against God’s truth itself, destiny does not favor you.
If I could pick just one ambassador for the church, and say, look at this Christian’s life, read this church member’s books, I would pick Ellen White. I would prove my faith from the Bible. But in terms of contemporary writing, I would ask Mrs. white to represent us.
Miscellaneous Caveats
There are some strange ideas that get passed around. Do Seventh-day Adventists believe that only they will be saved? Not true. In fact, no Seventh-day Adventist has a lock on salvation because he is Adventist. We believe that those who accept God will be saved. Doubtless, the vast throng of the saved will consist mostly of those who have never been Seventh-day Adventists.
Do Seventh-day Adventists believe that they are the only true Christians and are they triumphalistic? Not at all. We believe that God has called us into being to fulfill a special purpose in living and giving His message for this time. We respect the experience of other believers in God all around us. While God does not have several separate systems of salvation, He does meet people where they are. Then He knows what to reveal to them and when, and He, not we, know their heart’s reaction to His truth.
Do Seventh-day Adventists really attend more funerals than other Christians? This one is probably true, since statistics show that Seventh-day Adventists who observe health reform tend to live 7-10 years longer than the rest of the population. The additional 7-10 years can be thought of in the opposite way as well; those who do not practice the principles of health reform on average live 7-10 years less. Mathematically, this translates into more funerals. Wouldn’t it be strange if Satan led us to embrace a false prophet who taught us how to live longer because of better health principles than God gave to His people?
God’s Truth Standeth Sure
So what about the question of doctrinal uncertainty? Is this church built upon a platform of false theology? How would you know? How shall we address questions that arise in us about our faith?
Keep in mind that it is not just you and it is not just Adventism. Everywhere where there is a spiritual flame, from time to time there will arise questions and apparently legitimate concerns. But legitimate concerns will more often arise through personal study and meditation. The rise from the fact of your spiritual life; they are healthy! Your God knows all about them and if you exercise a living faith in Him, He will bring you through to the place of answers.
But be more careful if your questions are spawned by popular books or websites and if someone else has done the thinking that raised the concerns. It is true that certain doctrinal questions have been raised in the midst of Adventism this past half century. I am talking about certain questions concerning the role the Investigative Judgment and the heavenly sanctuary and the Spirit of Prophecy writings and church standards.
While the pioneers were alive, questions in these areas were sometimes raised, but with nowhere near the same vigor. Not only did a new generation arise who knew not the early Adventist Josephs, but who went out and partook of the “higher education” offered by the god of Ekron. They brought back their shiny new PhDs, sometimes with an attitude. They came to us with staple-guns and duct tape from Babylon and began to remodel. Now, if something is broken it should be fixed; but these as often sought to dismantle as to repair. So how does one determine whether they were right or wrong?
Well, don’t begin with an attitude of doubt. Don’t start by going out and acquiring a shelf full of literature written by the X-ies. Rather, here is what you do. First, you need to persist, always, in reading and studying your Bible. Those are two different things. Keep reading, keep filling in the background so that you are steadily developing your own informal mental concordance. And keep studying. You did not join this church to sit back for the ride. You are preparing for eternity and preparing for eternity means studying for yourself, having a real, personal experience with the Lord God. You just keep studying.
First, always first, is the Bible. Some of your study will be topical. You will chase an idea all the way through the Bible. Other times, your study will mean a deep, relentless pursuit of God’s truth in terms of extended passages of Scripture. Either way, you will labor to understand truth in proper context. Remember, this study of God’s biblical Word should never cease. On the day Jesus returns in the sky, that very day you should have, as all other days before, been studying your Bible.
Another part of your study is the Spirit of Prophecy writings. Here is where many of us make a mistake. We get busy and slip into this microwave Christianity line that so many others are into, and we start taking shortcuts. God never intended for His Seventh-day Adventist Church to be an inwardly-turned group that spends 95% of its energy reading Ellen White. We are not a cult, but that would be a way to become one. If you lived in Ezekiel’s day and spent 95% of your energy reading Ezekiel, you would lose your way and become the Ezekiel cult. Or if you lived in John the Baptist’s day and spent 95% of your time processing the sayings of John the Baptist, you would be on your way to forming a John the Baptist cult. Now we all know that Ezekiel and John the Baptist were true prophets of God and spoke truth. But God gave us a whole truckload of truth: 66 books in the Bible and thousands more pages through Ellen White. Balance will come with a wide ranging reading and study of inspired writings. It is true, there will be particular points of necessity and interest. It was well in the days of Noah to pay close attention to his message. But let’s read roundly in the inspired sources. Then God will give us the best experience. Then we will shine for Jesus.
Jerusalem, Gateway of Peace, or Babylon, Gateway of the Gods
Jesus told us what we faced (Matthew 7:13, 14). Wide is the way that leads to destruction and many take their spiritual pilgrimage down that easy road. On that pathway the name of Christ is heard boisterously again and again. But there are few boundaries, few standards, and less truth. The atmosphere is more like a party in the parking lot, the preacher a performer, the platform more like a stage, the congregation more like an audience. Something plastic permeates the atmosphere.
But Jesus told us the way to His Father’s house was narrow. Then He said, “Follow Me,” and He was on His way! He was blazing the trail to the New Jerusalem, His Father’s city of peace. There is a fork in the road, said Jesus. And down the other, the wider pathway, is heard the siren call of Babylon. The city was named for Babel, a word meaning “Gate of the gods.” One religion is God’s religion; the other is man’s religion. Jesus marked out the way of salvation, of faith, grace, redemption through Heaven’s plan and through our Father’s Son. Christ’s blood pleads today in our behalf.
The other road is lined with fads, spiritual pick-pockets, snake-oil, neon, popularity, the doctrines and commandments of men (Matthew 15:13). The path is obstructed by crowds, music is loud with an unholy edge, theology is tweaked, just enough to subtly mislead. The preaching is as sure and definite as men can make it, but the Holy Spirit of God is not in it. It is the way that leads to destruction.
In this troubled hour our God is calling for faithful workers, humble servants, men and women willing to burn with His Spirit’s fire; willing to live by His present truth, willing to die to self, willing to listen for His voice midst the din and the clanging of tinkling cymbals. He is looking for those ready to put away childish things and study deeply and follow where He the Lamb is leading (Revelation 14:4). His is the gate to God, not the gate of the gods.
We are far from perfect; we have not arrived; we are still growing; we are still stumbling. But God calls to us again and reminds us that the seeker of God may fall seven times, but in the strength of his Father he rises again (Proverbs 24:16). You and I need to stand up wherever we are. We need to rise again. For Jesus. We want to be what He asks us to be for the approaching midnight hour. No matter where, in the frailty of our humanity, we are inclined to drift, let us lay firm hold upon Him and stand with Him for His truth, on the day He has made, and prepare for His soon return, His appearing, His advent in the sky. Let us give ourselves to Him, belong to Him afresh, starting today, from today to eternity.
When you see the footsteps of Jesus, take the path of present truth. Take it with Him; He still knows where He is going. He wants His people to know where they are going. This is why He wants them to be Seventh-day Adventists. GCO
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