“And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, ‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God: I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.’
“So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.”
Revelation 3:14-17
How could a people or a church ever become so blind that they are actually naked and think they are clothed? They learned to depend upon their own works and their own righteousness rather than the righteousness of Christ. And, though they thought themselves clothed, their own righteousness could not clothe them.
Jesus spoke of a similar situation found in Luke 18:10–14.
“ ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
“ ‘The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.”
“ ‘And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
“ ‘I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.’ ”
A Man Chosen and Ordained of God
Saul knew he had been ordained by God to lead His church. When he went out to fight God’s battles, God fought for him. But when God told him to destroy the Amalekites, he failed to do as he had been told. He reasoned, “Let’s take these animals and show our appreciation and gratitude for God. Instead of just killing them and wasting them, we will sacrifice them to God.” Look, however, at God’s assessment of what had taken place.
“So Samuel said, ‘When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said to Samuel, ‘But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.’ So Samuel said: ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubborness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.’ ” 1 Samuel 15:17–23
Saul believed he was good, but in truth, he was blind. He thought he was clothed with righteousness, but he was absolutely naked. Look again at what verse 23 says. “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.” It is a solemn reality that the person God ordains for service, He can also remove. God ordained the children of Israel to be His people. Of them, He said, “Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (the Lord of hosts is His name): if those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever.” Jeremiah 31:35, 36. Even if the sun, moon, and stars should be removed, Israel would not be removed from being His people.
Man’s Reasoning
The children of Israel reasoned in Jesus’ day, that they were God’s people and nothing would change that. The tide still came in; the sun, moon, and stars still shone. But somehow, they forgot that what God establishes, He can also remove. Though God had established Saul, he also removed Him. As with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, God appointed them, but He also removed them. Thus, it was with the leadership in Jesus’ day, and thus it is today. When men begin to think that they are good because of position or works, they are absolutely blind.
There is no position or work in which we can engage that can make any one of us good. If there is any goodness in it, it is the goodness of Jesus that comes by faith in Him. But man believes that they can break the Sabbath and be held guiltless. The scribes and Pharisees believed they should not be found guilty when they lied and brought false charges against Jesus, because it would preserve the system for a good purpose.
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were in the holy service of God. They had come out of Egypt and gone through the Red Sea; they had eaten manna and drunk the water from the rock. More than that, some of these leaders, possibly even Korah, Dathan, and Abiram themselves, had gone up on Mt. Sinai with Moses. God chose them, through Moses, to be representatives for Him. Moses, on the other hand, was not a representative of leadership; he was a prophet. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, since they were elected and had all of the evidence of God’s leading, came to the place where they became good in their own eyes, believing they were rich and needed nothing. Sadly, however, they were miserable, poor, blind, and naked and weren’t even aware of their true condition. They believed they could do things that God had never given them permission to do.
Leadership—Right or Wrong
In AD 364, the Council of Nicea declared that the sanctity of the Sabbath had been changed from the seventh day to the first day of the week. They did not do this by God’s authority but by church authority and church decree. They did so because they were leaders of God’s church.
In the 1890s, Mrs. White shows us how people studied the Bible and seemed to twist everything to their own wishes. The leadership was likening itself to Moses, and anyone who believed contrary to them was like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.
In 1888, God chose A. T. Jones, E. J. Waggoner, and others to give the message of Christ our righteousness; but the leaders rejected the message because it did not go through them. What right do these people have to preach to the people something we have not sanctioned? Jones and Waggoner were not ordained by leadership. And the leadership’s authority was exercised against them. Read Mrs. White response.
“When you are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, you will see all that wickedness at Minneapolis as it is, as God looks upon it. If I never see you again in this world, be assured that I forgive you the sorrow and distress and burden of soul you have brought upon me without any cause. But for your soul’s sake, for the sake of Him who died for you, I want you to see and confess your errors. You did unite with those who resisted the Spirit of God. You had all the evidence that you needed that the Lord was working through Brethren Jones and Waggoner; but you did not receive the light; and after the feelings indulged, the words spoken against the truth, you did not feel ready to confess that you had done wrong, that these men had a message from God, and you had made light of both message and messengers.
“Never before have I seen among our people such firm self-complacency and unwillingness to accept and acknowledge light as was manifested at Minneapolis. I have been shown that not one of the company who cherished the spirit manifested at that meeting would again have clear light to discern the preciousness of the truth sent them from heaven until they humbled their pride and confessed that they were not actuated by the Spirit of God, but that their minds and hearts were filled with prejudice. The Lord desired to come near to them, to bless them and heal them of their backslidings, but they would not hearken. They were actuated by the same spirit that inspired Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Those men of Israel were determined to resist all evidence that would prove them to be wrong, and they went on and on in their course of disaffection until many were drawn away to unite with them.” The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, 1066, 1067. What a tragedy.
It is shocking that today’s church committees believe they have been vested with an authority that disregards God’s commandments and laws. Are we not coming to the place where we think that we can go against God’s counsels and make our own decisions? When we follow the practices and policies of the world instead of those laid down in the word of God, are we not committing the sin of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram?
Mrs. White says that God will not hear the prayers of those who go against what the Bible strictly prohibits and condemns. When we do this, are we not committing the sin of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? It is sin for anyone to decide that they are so good that they do not need to follow God exactly.
An Unnoticed Invasion
In Jesus’ day, the Jews had been sending their most promising young men to Alexandria in Egypt to attend the universities of Greece. Of course, they remained Jews, members of God’s true church; but they learned and brought home the Greek philosophy which is the basis of higher education.
The Greeks believed that the way to be truly educated was to reject everything until it could be proven. Incorporating that philosophy with the word of God is disastrous because the word of God must be studied by faith, not doubt.
I spoke with an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister, an educator at one of our colleges, teaching according to the principles of Greek philosophy. He asked his students how they could know that God had really created the world in seven days. I asked him, “Why are you instilling doubt about the study of the Bible in your students’ minds?” He said, “I believe that the way we are educated is to doubt everything. That is the way we learn. This is true faith. Faith is when you doubt so much that you come to doubt your doubts and that is faith.”
I don’t know about you, but that hardly makes any sense at all. When this system of doubt is applied to the word of God, it destroys faith. You cannot study God’s word except by faith (Romans 10:17).
In Jesus’ day, the Jew who was not educated was looked down upon because it was the duty of Jewish parents to see that their children had a Christian education. The educational system, however, had been taken over by the Sadducees who, all the while claiming to be followers of God, rejected much of the Old Testament. What they could not prove, they reasoned away. It is interesting that there is not a single record of a Sadducee being converted or having accepted Jesus as his Saviour.
This liberal Greek philosophy is a deadly disease, causing people to doubt the word of God, placing human reason and logic above it. But a group of conservative Pharisees stood up, stating they did not believe this liberal philosophy. They believed the word of God simply because God said it. However, they became so conservative that they began to look at themselves as good people because they were doing everything the Bible said.
As time went on, they began to confuse conservatism with structuralism and to place more and more faith in a structured system, worshiping the church rather than God. In fact, the church was so sacred and so important that if anyone suggested that the church would be destroyed or said that the temple would be destroyed, as Jesus said it would be, that person was worthy of death and they sought to kill him because he was blaspheming God. Any criticism of the structure became criticism of God in their minds, so anyone who suggested that the system would be destroyed was executed.
How interesting it is that the Pharisees were the ones who became the bitterest enemies of Jesus, much more so than the Sadducees. In their minds, anything that did not go through the structure was wrong and was not of God.
John the Baptist was given the Elijah message to bring to the people in his day. (See Matthew 3:7–10.) This message was meant to prepare a people for Jesus’ first coming as well as His second coming.
“In this fearful time, just before Christ is to come the second time, God’s faithful preachers will have to bear a still more pointed testimony than was borne by John the Baptist. A responsible, important work is before them; and those who speak smooth things, God will not acknowledge as His shepherds. A fearful woe is upon them.” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 1, 321
As Saul so sadly learned, what God ordains, He can also remove.
John the Baptist told the people of his day that God could raise up stones to make a church (Matthew 3:9), and God did it. He took the stony hearts of the Gentiles and fashioned them into the true church of Israel in the New Testament. Paul says in Galatians 3, Ephesians 2, and Romans 2, that the Gentiles had now become His true church. The church survived, but it was made up of different people.
John the Baptist said, “And do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father [we are the church].’ … And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 3:9
A Message of Love
Friend, the truth is going through. The movement God ordained for the last day, His true Seventh-day Adventist people will go through. God promised it would. The church is more than structure. In Jesus’ day, the church was so structuralized that God could not reach it through the system. He had to send John the Baptist as a minister independent of the system. Jesus was also an independent minister. But never having been sanctioned or ordained by the church, His people did not recognize Him as their Saviour.
It is interesting to note that even among those who were in an independent ministry, pride and self-sufficiency often came in. We find it in Peter and John. They, thankfully, eventually overcame these sinful traits. But not so with Judas. A member of Jesus’ independent ministry, the spirit of pride and self-sufficiency led him to betray his Master, the One who loved him the most, who gave him every opportunity to repent, and in the end, died for him even though he refused the gift.
The prevailing problem in Christ’s church in the last days, a problem that has been in His church throughout the ages, is self-righteousness, leading the way for error into the Christian church. The belief in their own righteousness makes a person feel so righteous that they no longer feel the need to obey God, believing that they know what is right and can decide for themselves what is right or wrong. That was Satan’s argument among the angels in heaven and it was his temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” Genesis 3:5. Eve would be so wise and so good that she would know for herself what she should or should not do.
God calls out a message of love to His church today. He says, “I love you too much to let you go. If you will accept Me as your Lord and Saviour, if you will simply come and follow Me, I will give you righteousness as a free gift of salvation. I will give you the power to obey every precept from a heart of love.” Salvation, righteousness, forgiveness, the power to obey—none of these are earned. They are gifts given to us by God Himself when we come to Him with contrition of heart, true repentance, and a willingness to be transformed into His image. All this is a gift to the obedient.
Pastor Marshall Grosboll, with his wife Lillian, founded Steps to Life. In July 1991, Pastor Marshall and his family met with tragedy as they were returning home from a camp meeting in Washington State, when the airplane he was piloting went down, killing all on board.