Church

Go Stand in the Temple

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Then the high priest rose up, and all those who [were] with him (which is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with indignation, and laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. But at night the angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, ‘Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.’” Acts 5:17–20.

When we think of the temple, we visualize, first of all, Solomon’s Temple. Though it was later destroyed by Babylon, Ellen White tells us that it was the most magnificent building the world had seen at that time. (See Review and Herald, October 19, 1905.)

Then we think of the second temple, which was rebuilt after the captivity. It was beautiful, but it did not compare with the original. This was the temple that Haggai the prophet prophesied about: “‘I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of all nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of host.” Haggai 2:7.

Desire of all Nations

This building, enlarged and rebuilt by Herod, was glorious, and as the prophet had promised, the Desire of all nations did come. He came as a baby to be dedicated there. We would expect that there would be a glorious celebration, but there was not anything like that. Those who were in charge of the affairs of the temple did not see or feel anything unusual. They saw only a husband and a wife, clothed in the garments commonly worn by the poorer people, bringing the offering of the turtle doves that was the offering prescribed for those who did not have money enough to bring something more. They concluded that it was a matter of no consequence, another poor child.

But the Lord of heaven was not going to let the event pass unnoticed. He caused someone to be there who was spiritually tuned in. Simeon, who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Lord’s Christ before he died, came in by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Seeing the baby, he knew He was the One. Although the priest giving the baby back into the arms of Joseph and Mary did not have any awareness of what was going on, Simeon did. Simeon took that baby and made a prophecy about it, while the priest looked on in wonder. (See Luke 2.)

So it is still. Events upon which the attention of all heaven is centered are undiscerned, and their very occurrence is unnoticed by religious leaders and worshippers in the house of God. What a tragic thing, but history does repeat itself.

Prophecy Fulfilled

The prophecy was fulfilled; the Desire of all nations did come. He went first of all to those who should have been foremost in recognizing Him, but something was wrong. They were not in harmony with the Spirit of God. They were desperately confused and did not know what was happening. Nevertheless, He came, fulfilling the promise and witnessing to the leaders of Israel. He witnessed to them several times and, of course, indirectly many times. Finally, He had to give up on the leaders of Israel, but He never gave up on the people. There seems to be a law of diminishing returns, a point beyond which the Lord recognizes that there is still a little bit of good being accomplished, but the evil being done is so much greater, that it does not justify the continuance of the system.

“The people whom God had called to be the pillar and ground of the truth had become representatives of Satan. They were doing the work that he desired them to do, taking a course to misrepresent the character of God, and cause the world to look upon Him as a tyrant. The very priests who ministered in the temple had lost sight of the significance of the service they performed. They had ceased to look beyond the symbol to the thing signified. In presenting the sacrificial offerings they were as actors in a play. The ordinances which God Himself had appointed were made the means of blinding the mind and hardening the heart. God could do no more for man through these channels. The whole system must be swept away.” The Desire of Ages, 36.

God Does not Give Up

But God does not give up on people, so though the priests had put the apostles in prison for preaching in the temple, the angel brought them right out the same door they went in and said, “Go back; go right back and stand in the temple and preach to the people all the words of this life.”

It was the time of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, probably one of the greatest occasions that drew people to the temple. They were gathered from far and near, and in the sheltered area in Solomon’s porch they gathered to hear messages from the apostles. God had to give up on the leaders of the church, but He did not give up on the people. This has been manifested ever so many times in the history of religion.

History Repeats

We read in The Great Controversy about the experience of Wycliffe. That very brilliant man took his message to the people. His work was not exceeded by those Reformers who followed him, even a hundred years later.

“Wycliffe, like his Master, preached the gospel to the poor. Not content with spreading the light in their humble homes in his own parish of Lutterworth, he determined that it should be carried to every part of England. To accomplish this he organized a body of preachers, simple, devout men, who loved the truth and desired nothing so much as to extend it.” The Great Controversy, 87.

These simple, humble preachers went with such success that the new faith was accepted by nearly one-half of the people of England. It is interesting to note that the organized church rose up against these humble ministers, these men called from their walks of life, charging them with heresy.

Have you ever noticed that no matter when in the history of religion that heresy appears and heretics embrace heresy, they invariably accuse the faithful of being the heretics!

Zwingli also took his message to the people. “Another class received with gladness the tidings of redemption through Christ. The observances enjoined by Rome had failed to bring peace of soul, and in faith they accepted the Saviour’s blood as their propitiation. These returned to their homes to reveal to others the precious light which they had received.” Ibid., 175.

Calvin took his message to the people. Of him we read, “His work began with the people at their homes. Surrounded by the members of the household, he read the Bible and opened the truths of salvation. Those who heard the message carried the good news to others, and soon the teacher passed beyond the city to the outlying towns and hamlets. To both the castle and the cabin he found entrance, and he went forward, laying the foundation of churches that were to yield fearless witnesses for the truth.” Ibid., 222.

Wesley preached at the entrances to coal mines, in the fields, and in the streets. All of the Reformers had to take their message to the people when they were forced to give up on the leaders of the church—a tragic situation but a constantly reoccurring thing.

In 1888 Ellen White did the same thing. She found such resistance among the leaders of the church to the message of righteousness by faith, that she and A. T. Jones, as well as others, took their message to the people. In response, in 1891 the leadership sent her to Australia to get rid of that problem. (See Manuscript Releases, vol. 7, 247; vol. 11, 231, 232; vol. 2, 150, 151.)

Lesson for Us

The lesson for us is that God never gives up on the people, and true reformers never give up on the people. True reformers may have to give up on the leaders but never on the people.

Right after the angel had brought the apostles out of the prisons, he said to them, “‘Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.’” Acts 5:20.

I think that three and a half years earlier the apostles would not have been able to handle that command; their childhood training would have been too strong. They would have said, “We cannot disobey the leaders of the church.” But after three and a half years, during which time they had seen the church leaders’ attitude of indifference harden into an attitude of opposition, then into an attitude of bitter hostility, finally ending in the crucifixion, they had no illusions about church leadership. They knew that church leadership can be led of God, but it does not necessarily have to be so. And so, without hesitation they made their decision: “‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’” Acts 5:29.

Our Work

May I suggest that our problem today is not greatly different. We have been told to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Added to that is the mandate to take the three angels’ messages to every nation, kindred, tribe, tongue and people. (See Matthew 16:14; Revelation 14:6.) This has been our all-encompassing concern, but in our time, we are seeing the uncaring indifference of church leaders hardening into opposition and open hostility. Now they are declaring that you and I are cancers in the body of the church, which must be cut out. So, we ought to lay aside all of our illusions, beloved, and look very carefully at this in the light of the question, What do we do under these circumstances?

We do not have to guess; we do not have to speculate; we are told very clearly what we should do. “‘The angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.’ We see here that the men in authority are not always to be obeyed even though they may profess to be teachers of Bible doctrine.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 69. [Emphasis supplied.]

What does “not always” mean? When is it all right not to obey the leaders of the church? “Because those who were once the depositaries of truth became unfaithful to their sacred trust, the Lord chose others who would receive the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and would advocate truths that were not in accordance with the ideas of the religious leaders.” Ibid., 69, 70.

That is pretty clear, isn’t it? When those who were once the depositaries of sacred truth become unfaithful to their sacred trust, they have no authority. Where there is no truth, there is no authority.

“Unless the truth is enthroned in the heart, and a thorough transition takes place from darkness to light, those who handle sacred responsibilities are ministers of darkness, blind leaders of the blind.” Ibid., 81.

O that God’s people would open their eyes! How many times I have tried to explain to people who question me that in the Seventh-day Adventist church today there are three groups of people. On the one side you have one group who know very well what they are doing; they are trying to change the doctrines and destroy the historic faith. On the other side is a group of people who know very well what they are doing; we call them Historic Adventists. They are trying very hard to resist and oppose those unauthorized, ungodly changes. But in the middle is the vast majority who does not know what is going on. O that God’s people would open their eyes!

Stand for Truth

“If a brother is teaching error, those who are in responsible positions ought to know it; and if he is teaching truth, they ought to take their stand at his side.” Ibid., 110. [Emphasis supplied.]

According to the apostle Paul in Galatians 1:6, the position of an apostle is not enough if that person is not preaching truth. He must preach the truth, and so must we.

In our time, those who have brought apostasy into the church are accusing the faithful of apostasy. When we say, “Would you please point out our heresy to us,” they respond, “We will not discuss theology with you; we are only here to talk about authority.”

“Then these leaders, in the blindness of their minds, give full sway to what is supposed to be righteous indignation against the ones who have set aside cherished fables. They act like men who have lost their reason.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 69, 70.

When they are looking at a problem, which is theological from the first word to the last, when they are looking at relationship in the church of tension and stress that is entirely theological, and they say that it has nothing to do with theology, have they not lost their reason? When they take heroes of the gospel of Christ and disfellowship them from the church, are they not acting like men who have lost their reason? When they accuse us of being the cancer in the body of Christ, when they exalt their rules above the Scriptures and above the Spirit of Prophecy, are they not acting like men bereft of reason? When they have taken the policy of credentials, which was established for the purpose of keeping falsehood out of the pulpit and keeping truth in, and prostituted and turned it around to keep falsehood in the pulpit and truth out, are they not acting like men who have lost their reason? But most of all, beloved, when they fantasize that they can destroy the historic faith of the Adventist people, have they not gone stark raving mad? God is going to protect His truth. This truth is going to survive.

In the fall of 1977, my wife and I took a public stand against apostasy at Loma Linda, California, and we were so alone. We thought that we would never again have fellowship with anyone else in the same frame of mind. But God is calling His people. When there is a crisis, God will raise up men and women to meet that crisis. This truth will survive! It will never be destroyed, because it is God’s truth!

The Cleansing of the Temple – Part II

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The Living Temple—The Church

Not only was the temple in Jerusalem representative of the temple of our hearts and minds, but it also represented the church. “The church of Christ is spoken of as a holy temple. Says the apostle, ‘Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.’ [Ephesians 2:19–22.]” Review and Herald, June 5, 1888. (See also 1 Corinthians 3:9–17; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Peter 2:1–10; Isaiah 28:16; Zechariah 6:12, 15.)

Living Stones

God had a plan for the earthly temple in Jerusalem, and He has a plan for the spiritual temple as well. Christ is represented as the chief Cornerstone, and “All the followers of Christ are represented as stones in the temple of God. Every stone, large or small, must be a living stone, emitting light and fitting into the place assigned it in the building of God. How thankful we should be that a way has been opened whereby we may each have a place in the spiritual temple!” Ibid.

“His church is to be a temple built after the divine similitude, and the angelic architect has brought his golden measuring rod from heaven, that every stone may be hewed and squared by the divine measurement and polished to shine as an emblem of heaven, radiating in all directions the bright, clear beams of the Sun of Righteousness.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 17.

“We want the cleaver of truth to do its work for us. We are taken from the quarry of the world. The material must not be a dead substance but living souls, and these souls must be brought out of the quarry of the world, where the hand of God can fit them for the temple in heaven. We are here as probationers, and we must pass under the hand of God. All rough edges and rough surfaces must be removed and we must be stones fitted for the building. We are brought into church capacity with defects of character, but we must not retain them. We must be fitted and squared for the building. We must be ‘laborers together with God,’ for we are ‘God’s husbandry,’ we are ‘God’s building.’ In view of this we must see that our temple is not defiled with sin. We should be lively stones, not dead ones, but live ones that will reflect the image of Christ. We must be worshipers in spirit and in truth.” Manuscript Releases, vol. 3, 231, 232.

We are each one a temple, a lively stone. All these lively stones together make up the spiritual temple, or the church. How does this temple fit together, or how is the church to work together? “The word of God represents the power of the Christian church to be an individual dependence upon Christ and unity between the members. The union between the members of the church and the leader is illustrated by a temple and its foundation. The whole weight of the temple rests upon the foundation, without which it could not stand. So the members of the church of Christ are to build upon Him; for He is the only true foundation.—Letter 20, 1896, p. 4, 5. (To Brethren Colcord, Daniells, and Faulkhead, August 25, 1896.)” Ibid., vol. 5, 374.

Christ the Center

The problem with the earthly temple and its services at the time of Christ was that He was no longer made the center of all its ceremonies and services. After the temple had been twice cleansed and twice again defied, after the divine presence had been rejected and refused, the temple was destroyed. Though at one time a place of habitation for the Most High, it was, after the rejection of Christ, no more than a building. Remember, it was the presence of Christ that made the temple sacred. (See The Desire of Ages, 161.) It was not the forms of ceremonies and services in themselves that were of merit and benefit; it was what they represented that was so important.

Jesus sought earnestly to teach this lesson to the Jews before it was forever too late. “Christ’s prediction regarding the destruction of the temple was a lesson on the purification of religion, by making of none effect forms and ceremonies. He announced Himself greater than the temple, and stood forth proclaiming, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ He was the one in whom all the Jewish ceremony and typical service was to find its fulfillment. He stood forth in the place of the temple; all the offices of the church centered in Himself alone.” Fundamentals of Christian Education, 399.

Human Authority in the Temple

If there is a conflict between the human keepers of the temple and Christ, who is the Christian to obey? There was a conflict in Christ’s day. The keepers of the temple laid many human restrictions and rules on the people. The authorities at the temple would not have wanted the people to read any literature, watch any videos or go to any meetings which were not approved by “properly constituted church authority.” But Christ set His followers free (see Matthew 12:1–8) from these rules and restrictions. It was not Christ’s will that any of His followers should ever again be subject to proscribed human rules of religion.

“The disciples were to teach what Christ had taught. That which He had spoken, not only in person, but through all the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament, is here included. Human teaching is shut out. There is no place for tradition, for man’s theories and conclusions, or for church legislation. No laws ordained by ecclesiastical authority are included in the commission. None of these are Christ’s servants to teach.” The Desire of Ages, 826.

Jesus came to set the captives free. In the church, during the time of the apostles, there was a constant effort to again bring men and women under the control of human religious rules and regulations. The apostle Paul was set for the defense of the gospel. (See Galatians 5 and Colossians 2.)

The exaltation of human authority until divine authority becomes secondary has been the curse of the professed church in all ages. The great apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2) was largely the result of exalting human authority until church legislation was considered more important, authoritative and dependable than the word of God.

This hypothesis is even substantiated by the Catholics themselves. The Archbishop of Reggio, at the Council of Trent, stated: “‘The Protestants claim to stand upon the written word only. They profess to hold the Scripture alone as the standard of faith. They justify their revolt by the plea that the Church has apostatized from the written word and follows tradition. Now the Protestants’ claim, that they stand upon the written word only, is not true. Their profession of holding the Scripture alone as the standard of faith, is false. PROOF: The written word explicitly enjoins the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath. They do not observe the seventh day, but reject it. If they do truly hold the Scripture alone as their standard, they would be observing the seventh day as is enjoined in the Scripture throughout. Yet they not only reject the observance of the Sabbath enjoined in the written word, but they have adopted and do practise the observance of Sunday, for which they have only the tradition of the Church. Consequently the claim of “Scripture alone as the standard,” fails; and the doctrine of “Scripture and tradition” as essential, is fully established, the Protestants themselves being judges.’” Editor’s Note, Rome’s Challenge, TEACH Services, Inc., Brushton, NY, 1995, 23.

There is every danger that Protestants, including Seventh-day Adventists, will in practice do the same thing as described above. While verbally denying it, they will be making church creeds, church manuals and policies until these are followed in place of the word of God. It was this very fear that caused our church leaders in 1883 to reject the idea of having a church manual. The very fact that we have a church manual today would, no doubt, be looked upon by our pioneers (who got along without one for nearly 100 years) as a mark of apostasy.

When the devil has been unsuccessful in getting the professed people of God to exalt church authority above the divine authority of God’s word, he has attempted to achieve the same result by a variant of the same false teaching. Men, who saw that the exaltation of church authority resulted in terrible abuses, went to the opposite extreme of saying that they would not counsel with their brethren at all, because they were taught directly by the Holy Spirit. This happened in the days of Luther. “Counterfeit holiness, spurious sanctification, is still doing its work of deception. Under various forms it exhibits the same spirit as in the days of Luther, diverting minds from the Scriptures and leading men to follow their own feelings and impressions rather than to yield obedience to the law of God. This is one of Satan’s most successful devices to cast reproach upon purity and truth.” The Great Controversy, 193.

They would accept no man’s say-so. Thus they were subject to no authority but their own minds. This reaction to the abuse of church authority has led to much fanaticism among Christians and has also led to the development of atheistic socialism.

God’s professed people today are still subject to these snares. The one extreme is the exaltation of human authority—an attempt to enforce the will of the clergy or church leaders upon all by means of what is commonly called “properly constituted church authority.”

From whom are we to obtain counsel? Only from those who give evidence of being led by the Holy Spirit. “God is dishonored and the gospel is betrayed when His servants depend on the counsel of men who are not under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” The Desire of Ages, 354.

“The greater the responsibilities placed upon the human agent, and the larger his opportunities to dictate and control, the more harm he is sure to do if he does not carefully follow the way of the Lord and labor in harmony with the decisions arrived at by the general body of believers in united council. . . .

“In his ministry, Paul was often compelled to stand alone. He was specially taught of God and dared make no concessions that would involve principle. At times the burden was heavy, but Paul stood firm for the right. He realized that the church must never be brought under the control of human power. The traditions and maxims of men must not take the place of revealed truth. The advance of the gospel message must not be hindered by the prejudices and preferences of men, whatever might be their position in the church.” The Acts of the Apostles, 199, 200.

In Jesus’ day, what was thought to be properly constituted church authority was made null and void by the teaching and practice of Jesus. (See Matthew 15:14; 16:10–23; Selected Messages, Book 1, 406.)

A Cleansing Again

Christ has promised to again cleanse the temple. We have learned that Christ does not cleanse the heart as He cleansed the earthly temple, but what about the spiritual temple, His church? “He will purify His church even as He purified the temple at the beginning and close of His ministry on earth” Last Day Events, 153.

There are some interesting things to note in the first cleansing of the earthly temple. First of all, when Christ came into the temple with His divine presence, who was it that fled? It was the priests, rulers, money-changers, and the crowd that fled. Christ had read the deceitfulness of their hearts. “They felt as if before the throne of the eternal Judge, with their sentence passed on them for time and for eternity.” The Desire of Ages, 162. They could not endure His presence, the divine, spotless Son of God. How sad it was. Jesus loved them. He longed to save them. “For a time they were convinced that Christ was a prophet; and many believed Him to be the Messiah. The Holy Spirit flashed into their minds the utterances of the prophets concerning Christ. Would they yield to this conviction? Repent they would not. . . . Because Christ discerned their thoughts they hated Him. . . . They determined to challenge Him as to the power by which He had driven them forth, and who gave Him this power.” Ibid.

The Majority

Yes, the priest and rulers fled. But they were not alone. The majority of the people went with them. Ellen White refers to them as “the crowd.” (See Ibid., 163.) When contrasted to the priests, she says, “The people were comparatively innocent.” Ibid., 164. “The sin of the desecration of the temple rested, in a great degree, upon the priests. It was by their arrangement that the court had been turned into a market place.” Ibid., 163, 164. But, please notice what it was that led the people to reject the Saviour. “With them the influence of the priests and rulers was paramount.” Ibid., 164.

Oh, friends, when will we ever learn not to put men in the place of God, whomever they may be or whatever position they might hold. The majority of the people in Jerusalem lost their salvation because they made flesh their arm. “They regarded Christ’s mission as an innovation, and questioned His right to interfere with what was permitted by the authorities of the temple. They were offended because the traffic had been interrupted, and they stifled the convictions of the Holy Spirit.” Ibid.

The Poor

Both the priests and the people rejected the pleadings of the Holy Spirit. Would there be any that would accept the working of the Holy Spirit upon the heart? “When they fled, the poor remained behind; and these were now looking to Jesus, whose countenance expressed His love and sympathy. With tears in His eyes, He said to the trembling ones around Him: Fear not; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me. For this cause came I into the world.” Ibid., 163.

It was a wonderful time for the poor. They had found a Friend in Jesus. They told Him all their sorrows and woes. They brought to Him their sick to be healed and their children to be blessed. “Hope and gladness filled their hearts. Peace came to their minds. They were restored soul and body, and they returned home, proclaiming everywhere the matchless love of Jesus.” Ibid.

Like Nicodemus (see John 3; The Desire of Ages, 176), the seeds of truth had been hidden in their hearts, and at the crucifixion they did not join with the maddened throng. After Jesus’ death, “They listened to the preaching of the apostles, and . . . became agents of God’s mercy, and instruments of His salvation.” Ibid.

The poor had accepted the working of the Holy Spirit upon their hearts, and if we are to accept the working of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts, we too must become poor—poor in spirit. Jesus said, “Blessed [are] the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3.

The Cleansing of the Review

It is an interesting fact that those who professed to be the people of God fled from His presence when He cleansed the earthly temple. Friends, we have just read that He is going to cleanse the spiritual temple (the church) as, or in the same way, He cleansed the earthly. How will it be today? The cleansing is going to happen, friends.

Of the fire at the Review office in Battle Creek, Michigan, Ellen White wrote, “Three nights before the Review office burned, I was in an agony that words cannot describe. I could not sleep. I walked the room, praying to God to have mercy upon His people. Then I seemed to be in the Review office with the men who have the management of the institution. I was trying to speak to them and thus to help them. One of authority arose and said, ‘You say, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we; therefore, we have authority to do this thing and that thing and the other thing. But the word of God forbids many of the things that you propose to do.’ At His first advent, Christ cleansed the Temple. Prior to His second advent He will again cleanse the temple. He was there cleansing the temple. Why? Because commercial work had been brought in, and God had been forgotten. With hurry here and hurry there and hurry somewhere else, there was no time to think of heaven. The principles of God’s law were presented, and I heard the question asked, ‘How much of the law have you obeyed?’ Then the word was spoken, ‘God will cleanse and purify His temple in His displeasure.’” The Publishing Ministry, 170, 171.

The cleansing of the Review office involved judgments from God. If God cleansed the Review by fire because of what was happening, then what are we to expect today? Inspiration tells us, “Brethren, God is in earnest with us. I want to tell you that if after the warnings given in these burnings the leaders of our people go right on, just as they have done in the past, exalting themselves, God will take the bodies next. Just as surely as He lives, He will speak to them in language that they cannot fail to understand.” Ibid., 171.

He Will Thoroughly Purge His Floor

“Just how soon this refining process will begin I [Ellen White] cannot say, but it will not be long deferred. He whose fan is in His hand will cleanse His temple of its moral defilement. He will thoroughly purge His floor.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 373.

Oh, friends, when Jesus comes to cleanse the temple, what will He find? Jesus cleansed the earthly temple two times before it was eventually destroyed, because it had been a means of blinding men’s eyes and of hardening their hearts. He cleansed the institutions at Battle Creek by fire more than once. Do we realize what is coming, friends?

It is Jesus’ plan to cleanse sin from the temple of our hearts and from our church. If we will not let go of sin, we must be destroyed with it. May God help us make the needful preparation, so when the cleansing comes, we will not be destroyed.

Stones to Remember, Part II

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Last month we learned that when Joshua led the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, God instructed that one man from each of the 12 tribes carry a stone from the midst of the Jordan River to the shore of Canaan. There an altar was to be built as a reminder of the Lord’s leading. (See Joshua 4:1–9.)

Every one of us should know that the Lord has been leading us. We should also know that the Lord has been leading in the second advent movement and in the revival and reformation movement in Adventism. If God is leading us, He will always, without fail, be leading us in harmony with His law.

After Ellen White died, in 1915, did the Lord continue to lead the advent movement? Yes! Is He going to lead us until the end? Yes! So, we need to study and to remember—just as the children of Israel put up a memorial when they went across the Jordan River—how the Lord has led us, not just up until 1915 but up to today.

In the development, in the understanding, and in the proclamation of the three angels’ messages, the Lord has been leading. We should know how the Lord has led, and we need to recognize how the devil has attacked and what the Lord has done in return. Our faith, as Adventists, must be grounded in the Bible.

Dropping the Bombshell!

In 1979 I was invited to teach health science, food and nutrition at Southwestern Adventist College in Keene, Texas. Prior to that time I had been a pastor for the Seventh-day Adventist Church and had worked in public evangelism. My family and I arrived in Keene during the summer of 1979 for the beginning of the 1979–1980 school year. At the beginning of the school year a bombshell dropped on Adventism that has had repercussions around the world, and we are still affected by it.

In California at Pacific Union College at that time was a visiting professor from Australia by the name of Dr. Desmond Ford. He gave a lecture at an Adventist Forum, the essence of which was that, as a church, we were mistaken in regard to what happened in 1844. He also espoused that we were mistaken in regard to our concept of the investigative judgment.

Although I was not on the Theology Department staff, I obviously was mingling with people from all of the departments. As we mingled, we talked about these things, and I found out something shocking.

I learned that the faculty was divided. Some of the faculty thought that Desmond Ford was right! Some of them thought that he was dead wrong. A flurry of publications began to be issued. Some people, whom I had always thought were pillars in the Adventist Church, our theologians, were writing things like, “We cannot find anything about the investigative judgment in the Bible.”

Our Doctrines Still Stand

I was amazed! I can find things about the investigative judgment in the Bible! For example: “I watched till thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of days was seated; his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire; a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. A thousand thousands ministered to him. Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. [That is a hundred million.] The court was seated [or the judgment was set in place] and the books were opened.” Daniel 7:9, 10.

These verses are talking about a court, or a judgment. Notice that in the last sentence it says, “and the books were opened.” I do not know how much more plain you could write it. If you have a judgment and books are being opened, some kind of investigation is occurring.

If you look at the context of these verses, they take place while the little horn power, the antichrist, is still in existence. This is not talking about after the millenium, or after Jesus comes, because when Jesus comes, the antichrist power is going to be destroyed. (See 11 Thessalonians 2.) This takes place before the antichrist power is destroyed—check the context in your Bible. This is talking about a judgment which includes an investigation. You do not have to be a scholar to understand this. It is in plain language.

Revelation 14:6, 7 talk about a judgment that takes place while the gospel is still being preached. Is the gospel going to be preached after Jesus comes? No, the gospel is all finished being preached before Jesus comes.

If you study Revelation 14:6, 7 carefully, you will see, from the context of the verses, that your conduct is going to make a difference in regard to the decision made in this judgment. It says, “The hour of his judgment is come” and for that reason you need to “fear God and to glorify him.” The Bible is very clear—there is a judgment that takes place in heaven before Jesus comes, while the antichrist power is still in the world and the gospel is still being preached.

But in 1979–1980, we started to have all of these things dropped on us. In fact, it was such a bombshell that it was decided that all the leaders in the Adventist Church would gather the next year at Glacier View Camp in Colorado to study out this topic. After this gathering, many more than before of the scholars in the Seventh-day Adventist Church were even more convinced that Desmond Ford was right. But they decided not to say anything about it, because they were afraid they would lose their jobs. Many of those people are still teaching our ministers.

Checking it Out

The people said, “Well you just do not know. You cannot tell from the Greek text in Hebrews that Jesus went into the holy place instead of the most holy place in 31 a.d.”

I decided to check this out further. I thought I already knew what was truth—I had been teaching it for many years. I thought all Adventists knew. But some of the leading scholars in our church said that we were wrong and that we had been wrong since the beginning of the church. It was time to do some very diligent study.

It was said that if you looked in the Greek text at Hebrews or if you looked in the Hebrew text at Daniel, you would find out that we were wrong. In the providence of God, I had studied Greek at Walla Walla College (College Place, Washington) and at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan. At the Berrien Springs Seminary I had also studied Hebrew. In fact, I often preach from my Hebrew Bible.

I bought a new Hebrew Bible and secured some new Greek Bibles, and I determined to check out this teaching. If we had been wrong in Adventism for almost 150 years, it was high time that we found out what the Bible really said. If you have studied the history of Adventism and know where we come from, you know that Seventh-day Adventists are Protestants. A Protestant is a person whose faith is anchored in the word of God. So if the word of God should prove us wrong, we would have to just accept that we were wrong.

I determined to check every word. I was going to check the declension of every single noun. I was going to check the conjugation of every single verb in these disputed passages and I was going to find out if we were wrong. And, of course, if we were wrong, we would have to change; we would have to acknowledge that we were wrong. I spent a number of years checking all of those things out very, very carefully.

Our Anchor Holds!

Since I was working at a college, I had access to the Baptist Seminary Library in Forth Worth, Texas, which provided me access to historical and lexical aids. I checked out everything, and I want to tell you, the Adventist message that our pioneers taught is solidly anchored in the Bible. There is no mistake in it!

I am not saying that we know everything. I am not claiming that we can explain every verse of Scripture, but the message that Adventists have proclaimed about 1844 and about the investigative judgment and about the sanctuary is anchored in the Bible. The more deeply we study into it, the more solid we will find it to be.

When I started to study in 1980, I spent so many hours in my Hebrew Bible that I got a magnifying glass so I could enlarge the words and make it easier to read. I went down Daniel 8 word-by-word-by-word, over and over again, because that was one of the most disputed passages. There were people saying that they did not think that this passage even applies to the papacy; they thought that it applies to Antiochus Epiphanies. That is what other Protestant churches teach! Now church leaders claimed that what we had been saying for over 100 years was wrong.

Even a Child Can Understand

Let me point out some things.

  1. In the first part of Daniel 8 is the description concerning the ram. It says, in the Hebrew language, that the ram became great.
  2. It also talks about a he-goat with a horn between the eyes and about the ways that the he-goat became very great. The ram became great; the he-goat became very great. Daniel 8 tells us as well that the ram represents the kings of Medo-Persia; the he-goat represents Greece, and the great horn represents the first king.
  3. It then talks about the little horn becoming exceedingly great. That is more than very great! In the Hebrew language, it is very explicit and very clear. You cannot make a mistake. The ram became great; the he-goat became very great, and the little horn became exceedingly great, greater than Alexander the Great. Was Antiochus Epiphanes greater than Alexander the Great? No! That would be like saying that your state governor is greater than the President of the United States. It makes no sense at all. The little horn in Daniel 7 and Daniel 8 is exactly what the Adventist pioneers said—the papacy!

The 2,300 days are exactly what our pioneers said also. You can follow word-by-word-by-word in the Hebrew text, and you do not have to take anything out of context. When I was challenged about this, and when I saw theologians in our church saying that we did not know what we were talking about, I realized that what they were saying would not only make Ellen White wrong, but it would make us all wrong in our beliefs. If they were right, we would have to change.

People did change as a result of this theology. One of them, the associate pastor of the church that I had attended in Loma Linda, California, became the pastor of a Sunday-keeping church. That is where this theology led him.

God has led in the second-advent movement! There is not one Adventist in a hundred who knows how deeply this message is laid. The foundation goes deep; it is on the Rock. You cannot overthrow it unless you overthrow the Bible.

We have nothing of which to be ashamed when we talk to any person of any religious persuasion concerning what we believe about the prophecies in Daniel 7, 8 and 9. If we have studied it carefully, we can go through the verses word-by-word-by-word, in context, and they all fit together.

I did the same type of study in the book of Hebrews. I looked at the conjugation of every verb, the declension of every noun, and looked at every single word. They say that you cannot determine that Jesus went into the holy place in 31 a.d., but you most certainly can! You do not have to look at the writings of Ellen White to prove it, either. You can find it right in the Bible.

The Bible Alone—Our Foundation Stone

Our faith is based in the Bible. We should be able to teach every doctrine of belief that we have right from that Book. Now, please do not misunderstand me. I believe that Ellen White is a prophet. I do not have any question about that. But you and I should be able to prove everything that we believe from the Bible alone.

Ellen White told us that we should be able to do that. (See Manuscricpt Releases, vol. 2, 96.) The Adventist message came out of the Bible. That is why you do not need to take anything out of context. You do not need to twist anything. You just need to look and see what it says and what is the weight of the evidence.

What was the bottom line in all those new teachings that came to be called the New Theology? It all led to denial of 1844, to denial of the investigative judgment, and to denial of the sanctuary message. The people who accepted those new teachings, have been led from one heresy to another. A theology student came to me one day when I was teaching at Southwestern Adventist College. He said, “I have a theology teacher who told us in class that we are going to sin until Jesus comes.” That is the end result of this theology. The fact of the matter is, friend, that many, many Seventh-day Adventists as well as other people are going to sin until Jesus comes, but then they are going to get burned up.

The reason there has been so much opposition against what Adventists teach about the sanctuary is because of the devil’s hatred of that doctrine. That doctrine will lead you to understand that you and I must be purified to be ready for Jesus to come. Oh, friends, you and I cannot go to the kingdom of heaven the way we are right now. We have to be purified. We have to be cleansed. Our sins have to be blotted out.

Purified and Cleansed

Are you praying about this every day? Do you want to be purified and cleansed? Do not try to find some new message. The Bible teaches the Adventist message. Maybe I should say it the other way around—the Adventist message comes out of the Bible. The sanctuary message comes out of the Bible. The fact that we must be purified comes out of the Bible.

John said, “Everyone who has this hope in him [Jesus] purifies himself, just as he is pure.” 1 John 3:3. Do not look for a different message. We have the truth! I am not boasting. We have the truth because God gave it to us. Our spiritual forefathers searched the Bible through, and the Lord, through the Spirit of Prophecy led them to understand what these words mean.

You can go to those original texts in Hebrew and Greek, and you will find that they teach Adventism. God has led us. The big question is, are you and I going to come into harmony with what God wants to do for us individually and for us as a movement?

Before the end of time, one of two things is going to happen to every single person in Adventism, and eventually to every single person in the world, because this is the way that God is leading. We know it is going to happen because prophecy says so. There is going to be one group of people, a smaller group, who will come into harmony with everything in the word of God, every word!

Living by Every Word

Jesus said we should live by every word (see Matthew 4:4); that means that every word is important. I want to be among that group. That is the whole aim of my life. Those people are going to be purified; the Lord is going to blot out their sins. He is going to clothe them with the righteousness of Jesus Christ and take them to heaven.

But there is going to be a much larger group of people in Adventism, as well as in the world, who are not going to become purified. If you believe the New Theology, then you believe that you are going to sin until Jesus comes. Ellen White says, “Success in any line demands a definite aim.” Education, 262. If you are not aiming to overcome sin, you are not going to do it.

Have you ever seen an alcoholic who just quit drinking without even trying? Have you ever seen a chain smoker suddenly quit, and it just happened? You see, those things do not just happen. They do not happen unless a person decides they are not going to do those things any more. They decide to change.

A person does not quit sinning unless they decide, either, but you are not going to decide to stop sinning if you do not think that it is possible to stop. That is what is wrong with so much religious teaching today. People are not taught that it is possible. Even some Seventh-day Adventist preachers are telling their congregations to just do the best they can.

Not Good Enough!

I believe that it is good to do the best you can in all your activities all the time. But if you are talking about sin, you had better not just talk about doing the best you can, because God requires that we come up to a standard which He has set.

God is leading a people into a path of purification and holiness. The evidence for it is strong. The evidence is overwhelming that this is true. We know that He is leading because the deeper we study the Bible, the more evidence we find that this is what it teaches.

When it is all over, there will be only two groups. In which of those two groups are you going to be? The devil is attacking; he is trying to trip you up with any kind of heresy or false teaching that he can foist on you. The Lord is leading a people, and if you are willing for Him to lead you, He said, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. (See Hebrews 13:5.)

If you depart from the truths of our church pioneers, it is because you choose to believe error. It is not because God or His message have changed. We see the evidence from history that He has led us up to this point and He is going to lead us into the kingdom.

Adventism and Spiritualism, Part I

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A question that is always on my mind is, How are we going to help God’s people to be prepared for the great crisis that is coming in the closing days of this world?

The story of the woman who was caught in adultery is recorded in John 8. Jesus told her not only that she was pardoned but that she was to go and sin no more. Then He stated: “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

The Jews did not like being told they were in the dark, and they started arguing with Jesus about it. Jesus explained to them, “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide [not remain] in darkness.” John 12:46. In other words, Jesus is telling the Jews, “You are in the dark, but if you will look to Me, you will come out of the dark, and you will have light.” Always remember that the experience of God’s people at the first advent is spoken of by Ellen White as a representation of the experience of God’s chosen people at the time of the second advent. (See The Great Controversy, 351.)

Earth Will be Dark

Now in the last days of the world’s history, the Bible predicts that the earth all over will be dark. “For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the Lord will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you.” Isaiah 60:2. What is this darkness that is going to cover the earth and the deep darkness the people? “So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Revelation 12:9. The devil deceives the whole world.

Revelation 16:13, 14 says, “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs [coming] out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, [which] go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” The earth is going to be filled with darkness, spiritual darkness, as a result of the deceptions of the devil. How much of the world does mystical Babylon cover? All of it. Revelation 18:23 talks about Babylon: “The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived.”

Do you believe we are living in the last days of this world’s history? If we are living in the last days, then what we just read in Revelation is happening, and we should be aware of it. What is the masterpiece of deception? “As spiritualism more closely imitates the nominal Christianity of the day, it has greater power to deceive and ensnare.” The Great Controversy, 588.

Last Great Deception

The last great deception is going to appear to be a Christian teaching, but it is actually going to come from the wrong spirit. Ellen White says, “Satan himself is converted, after the modern order of things. He will appear in the character of an angel of light. Through the agency of spiritualism, miracles will be wrought, the sick will be healed, and many undeniable wonders will be performed. And as the spirits will profess faith in the Bible, and manifest respect for the institutions of the church, their work will be accepted as a manifestation of divine power.” Ibid. The devil himself professes to be a Christian!

The spirits will be professed Christians. They will go to church. They will profess faith in Christ. But it is a deception, a masterful deception. “The line of distinction between professed Christians and the ungodly is now hardly distinguishable. Church members love what the world loves and are ready to join with them, and Satan determines to unite them in one body and thus strengthen his cause by sweeping all into the ranks of spiritualism.” Ibid.

Does the devil’s plan to sweep all people into the ranks of spiritualism include the Roman Catholics? How about the Protestant churches? Are they all going to be deceived?

“Protestants, having cast away the shield of truth, will also be deluded. Papists, Protestants, and worldlings [people who do not go to any church] will alike accept the form of godliness without the power, and they will see in this union a grand movement for the conversion of the world and the ushering in of the long-expected millennium.” Ibid., 588, 589.

The devil decides that through spiritualism he is going to get all people—the Roman Catholics, all the Protestant churches, and all the people who do not go to any church—and sweep them all into one big church. They are going to say, “This is the greatest religious revival there has ever been. We are now going to have the millennium of peace; the world is going to be converted. Christianity is finally going to triumph.”

When I first studied these things, 30 years ago, I thought that it referred to all the other churches and the worldlings, but not to the Seventh-day Adventists. However, I have found that Ellen White gives warning after warning to Seventh-day Adventists. Do not think that, because you are a Seventh-day Adventist, you cannot be taken in by spiritualism.

One Form of Spiritualism

Spiritualism has more than one form. There is one form of spiritualism by which Adventists cannot easily be deceived but by which most of the rest of the world can be. Most other churches do not understand what happens to a person when they die. They think that, when you die, you do not really die; there is some part of you that goes on living. If some part of you goes on living, why could not that part of you contact somebody who is still living in the world? Through that misunderstanding of death, the devil will deceive millions and millions of people.

The Bible says that the dead know not anything. (See Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6.) The dead are asleep; they are unconscious. That is how the Bible repeatedly describes death. Jesus spoke of death as a sleep in John 11:11–14. The dead are not up in heaven praising the Lord. “The dead do not praise the Lord, Nor any who go down into silence.” Psalm 115:17. The dead do not know anything, the Psalmist says. Their anger, their hatred, their love, their envy has all perished. Most Christians today do not know that.

So when an apparition comes to them and says, “I am the Virgin Mary, and I have a message for you from the throne of God,” they believe it. But friends, both Roman Catholics and Protestants have acknowledged for many years that Mary died. If Mary died, then she cannot be talking, because when a person dies, they cannot communicate with anybody until after they are resurrected. Job 7:9, 10 says, “. . . He who goes down to the grave does not come up. He shall never return to his house, Nor shall his place know him anymore.” How long will he be in that condition? Job 14:12 tells us: “Man lies down and does not rise. Till the heavens [are] no more, They will not awake Nor be roused from their sleep.” When are the heavens (and the earth) going to pass away? When Jesus comes. “‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’” Matthew 24:35.

So one way the devil deceives people through spiritualism is by appearing as someone who has died. Incidentally, the Virgin Mary apparitions are encouraging people to keep Sunday, which is directly contrary to the commandments. The message given is contrary to God’s law and the Bible tells us that if a spirit does not teach according to the law and to the testimony, there is no light in it. (See Isaiah 8:20.) Light and darkness.

Fundamental Lie

The foundation of spiritualism is the first lie that the devil told to Eve: “Then the serpent said to the woman [Eve], ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat it [the fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” Genesis 3:4, 5.

But after Eve ate of that fruit, did she have more light? No, she had less light, and her mind was darkened by sin. She with Adam had to leave the garden. That began the experience that the Bible calls the darkness, the blackness, the awfulness of sin.

That was just the first experience where something that was dark was called light. In Isaiah 5:20, it says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light.” There is a progression. First evil is called good and then good is called evil. That is the first step.

If you take something that is dark, and you call it light, eventually, your whole definition, your whole frame of reference will get all confused. That is the underlying principle of all spiritualistic teachings. You take something that is dark, and you call it light.

Spiritual Darkness

We need to understand what the Bible says about spiritual darkness and spiritual light. First, let us find out what spiritual darkness is. “The way of the wicked [is] like darkness; They do not know what makes them stumble.” Proverbs 4:19.

What causes wickedness? Sin. What is sin? Sin is the transgression of God’s law. (See 1 John 3:4.) If you are living a life in which you are breaking God’s law, you are in the dark—spiritually. You cannot see. Many people in this world are just going along, living in sin, and they are in the dark. They do not realize that, at the end of the line, they are going to be destroyed. They do not know, because they are in the dark. The devil has told them, “You can keep on sinning, keep on disobeying the law of God, and still live.” That is the basic, fundamental lie of spiritualism. That which is dark is called light.

Spiritual Light

By contrast, what does the Bible say is spiritual light? If you are in the dark, and you want to get out of the dark, then how do you turn on the light? “For the commandment [is] a lamp, and the law a light; Reproofs of instruction [are] the way of life.” Proverbs 6:23. Jesus said, “I have kept My Father’s commandments.” John 15:10. In the life of Jesus we have an example of perfectly keeping God’s law. If we look to Jesus and follow Him, we will be in the light.

The devil says you can break God’s law and live. The Bible says, if you break God’s law, the end result is going to be death. In Psalm 119:105 we read: “Your word [is] a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.” Psalm 119:130 says, “The entrance of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple.” The Bible, God’s word, is spiritual light, and if you follow it, you will be in the light.

Dark Called Light

The devil takes something that is dark and calls it light. People are fooled, and they say, “This is great light!” But it is dark. In Luke 22:53 Jesus said, about the devil, “When I was with you daily in the temple, you did not try to seize Me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” The devil is in charge of all the spiritual darkness. This is the darkness that is going to cover the whole world and the deep darkness that will be upon the people. It is the deception that you can sin and still live.

What does the devil do with this darkness? 2 Corinthians 11:14 says, “And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.” He is really the prince of the power of darkness, but he transforms himself, and he puts a label on himself, and he says, “I am an angel of light.” People today are fooled, just like Eve was fooled. And we read in the book of Revelation that this deception is going to cover the entire world. All nations are going to be deceived by these sorceries.

We have now covered the foundation principles of spiritualism. People like it when you just talk about foundation principles—it does not get too close to home. But friends, that is not good enough for today. We have to understand how these principles of light and darkness get worked out in our lives, in our families, and in our churches. Otherwise we are going to be deceived by spiritualism.

Warnings for Adventists

Almost one-fourth of volume 8 of Testimonies for the Church is warnings to Seventh-day Adventists against spiritualism. The book Ministry of Healing contains over 60 pages of the same warnings. There are other scattered references throughout the writings of Ellen White. Are Seventh-day Adventists in any danger of spiritualism? Evidently. You see, we thought we were not in any danger because of our understanding of the state of the dead. We just assumed we were okay.

But when you are dealing with somebody who is a master at taking darkness and calling it light, unless you know and understand the principles from God’s word, you will be deceived and not even know it.

Come Out of Babylon

What are some of the practical ways that this works out so that people take darkness, and want to be in the dark; they do not want to be in the light? If you want to be in the dark instead of being in the light of God’s word, the devil is influencing your mind, and you probably do not even know it. Revelation 18:1 says, “After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated . . . .” Is this light or dark? This is light. It is such a great light that the whole world is lighted up.

This angel is telling the world, “You are in the dark, and if you do not get out of there, you are going to burn up.” Verse 4 says, “And I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her [Babylon], my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.” If you are in the dark, you think you can go on sinning and still have eternal life. But the Bible says, if you do not come out of there, if you keep sinning, you are going to go to eternal destruction. If you do not quit, you are going to endure the seven last plagues. This is the light, and this light is going to cover the earth.

The word that is translated angel, the Greek word angelos, means messenger. When God sends an angel from heaven, how is that angel going to speak? It will speak through men, through human messengers. So if you are on the earth in the last days and the Lord chooses to speak through you, what message are you going to give to the people who are in Babylon all over the world? You are going to tell them to come out, because if they stay in Babylon and share in her sins, keep on sinning, they are going to suffer the seven last plagues. The whole world is deceived, according to Revelation 18:23, by this sorcery that you can keep sinning. It is the darkness that is called light.

If somebody starts preaching this message, to come out of Babylon and to keep God’s commandments and quit sinning, are they preaching light or darkness? They are preaching light.

The Devil’s Response

If you were the devil, what would you do about it? The devil wants to keep people in the dark and tell them that the darkness is light, so the devil would want to stop that preaching. He gets representatives in Babylon to complain about the people being brought out of the darkness. He gets them to say, “We want them to stay where they are. We want them to stay in the church where they are. We want them to stay in the darkness.”

Who does the devil use to try to stop the people who are preaching the light and to keep the people in darkness? In New Guinea the people that the devil used were the Seventh-day Adventists! It was a Seventh-day Adventist church organization that came to the street preachers and said, “Stop preaching this.”

Spiritualism in Adventism

When you have somebody preaching the light and somebody else is trying to keep the people in the dark, they are under the control of supernatural forces of evil. And the church organization in New Guinea, which is under the control of the church organization in Australia, which is under the control of the church organization in Maryland, tried to stop the preaching of the light!

When things like that are going on, there is spiritualism right in the Adventist Church, because they are trying to put out the light and turn on the dark. You think that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is not in danger of spiritualism? The whole organization is permeated by the influence of demons that are trying to stop the preaching of the three angels’ messages all over the world. I just gave you an example in New Guinea.

Have no Fellowship

In Ephesians 5:11 we read: “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose [them].” 1 Corinthians 5:11–13 says, “But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother [that is a member of the church], who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what [have] I [to do] with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside [that is outside the church], God judges. Therefore, [put away from yourselves the evil person].”

The Apostle Paul is telling us that if the Spirit of God is in the church and there is light in the church, to not have any fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Expose them if somebody continues in sin. Now we are not talking about somebody who slips and falls into sin and repents and wants to come back to the Lord. We are talking about the person who insists on living a life of sin, like the man in 1 Corin-thians 5 who decided he was going to live with his father’s wife.

He says, “Put those people out of the church.” Do you believe what the Bible says? The Bible says you are not to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness in the church. If somebody refuses to keep the law of God, and they are living in open sin, they are to be disfellowshiped. You are not to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

What does the devil say; what does the devil do? Remember he is the master of darkness, of wickedness, of sin. The wicked are the people who are living in sin, but the devil calls it light. He says, “Just accept everybody together.” He uses the parable of the wheat and the tares to persuade people on this point. (See Matthew 13.) A tare represents somebody whose heart is not right, but on the outside they are living according to the commandments.

The devil uses and misrepresents this parable to try to convince people that they have to let all the sin stay in the church. Do you know what will happen to the church if you allow sin in it? This is what has happened in Adventism, and it is the result of spiritualism. It is spiritualism that teaches people to have the darkness and light mingled all together. If you took half a cup of sewer water and half a cup of pure water and poured it together, would you be willing to drink half of it? Well, that is what spiritualism teaches. Just mingle it all together.

The Bible says, do not have anything to do with it. What will happen if you do? “Your glorying [is] not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” 1 Corinthians 5:6. What will happen to the church? It will ruin the whole church if any open sin is allowed in. It is calling darkness light to allow people living in open sin in the church. It is the result of spiritualism, and it completely wrecks the church.

Do you know what the devil also does, in addition to saying to people to let all the sin in the church? If there is a preacher who says, “I do not believe we should have this sin in the church,” the devil will have all those people who do not want sin in the church disfellowshiped.

That, my friends, in a simple sense is what happened in Hungary. Over 1,000 people were disfellow-shiped in Hungary because there were a few preachers who said, “There is open sin in the leadership of the church here, and it needs to be dealt with.” The response was: “We are not going to deal with that. We are going to deal with you and get you out.” What did they do? They put darkness for light. That is a spiritualistic teaching. That is the way the devil gets control of the professed people of God. It is happening all over the world.

People say, “Just preach love. Do not deal with these things.” When you turn on the light, people want to stay in the dark. It is an evidence that evil spirits are at work in our churches all over the world, because we are putting darkness for light.

In 2 Corinthians 6:14 we read: “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness?” If you put darkness for light, you are just going to be in the dark, and you are going to eternal destruction.

What About You?

The Lord says, “Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, And you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Corinthians 6:17, 18. The world says, “Let us get everyone together. Get all the people who are living in all kinds of sin and let them all come together into one great, big church.” God says, “Get out from that. Righteousness does not have any fellowship with lawlessness. Light does not have any fellowship with darkness. Get out from that and be separate. If you do, you will be my child, and I will be your Father.”

Where are you headed, friend? Are you with the mass of people in this world who are breaking God’s law? It is called light, but it is really darkness, the Bible says. Or are you willing to come out and be separate and say, “Lord, I am going to follow you all the way. Whatever you want me to do, that is what I am going to do. And whatever you do not want me to do, that is what I will not do.” Come out from the darkness. Choose to follow the light. You cannot mix light and darkness. You cannot mix obedience and disobedience. As soon as you mix them, it is disobedience. As soon as you mix it, it is dark.

Do you want to be one of those who is not having fellowship with lawlessness and darkness and unrighteousness? Do you want to say, “Lord, I am willing to be separate. I am willing to be all by myself, if I have to.” There are a lot of God’s people all over the world by themselves right now. But they are acknowledged as God’s children, because they will not join with the wickedness. Do you want to be one of them? It is a big group, but they are mostly separated right now. You will find out, at the end of the world, that it is a huge group.

Do not accept or believe the devil’s lie. Watch. The labels have been switched. Darkness is not light, no matter how many times the devil says it is. God says, “Be separate. Come out, and I will be a Father to you and you will be My child, really, not just by profession, but in reality.”

The spirits of devils are at work in Adventist families and churches today. But Jesus said, “He that follows Me will not stay in darkness, but he will have the light of life.” John 8:12.

To be continued . . .

Contending Churches

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Toward the close of Jesus’ earthly ministry, He cleansed the temple and reminded the leaders of the church, “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21:13). We can remember that at the beginning of His earthly ministry, Christ had done a similar work, “… Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise” (John 2:16). Notice carefully that in both instances Jesus used the possessive pronoun “My,” “My house,” “My Father’s house.”

However, in the closing days of His ministry Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He no longer said that the Jewish Church was His or His Father’s house but instead that it was the house of the Jews and their leaders! “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:37, 38). Why was this so? What had happened?

“Israel as a nation had divorced herself from God. The natural branches of the olive tree were broken off. … Hitherto He had called the temple ‘My house’ or ‘My Father’s house,’ but now, as the Son of God should pass out from those walls, God’s presence would be withdrawn forever from the temple built to His glory. Henceforth its ceremonies would be meaningless, its services a mockery.” The Desire of Ages, 620.

Consequently, Jesus established His off-shoot church, the Christian church, the Apostolic church, the Early church. The servant of the Lord wrote the following: “The Jewish leaders thought themselves too wise to need instruction, too righteous to need salvation, too highly honored to need the honor that comes from Christ. The Saviour turned from them to entrust to others the privileges they had abused and the work they had slighted. God’s glory must be revealed, His word established. Christ’s kingdom must be set up in the world. The salvation of God must be made known in the cities of the wilderness; and the disciples were called to do the work that the Jewish leaders had failed to do.” The Acts of the Apostles, 16.

Yet, in spite of the fact that Jesus separated Himself from the then established church and organized His self-supporting church, this action did not abate the wrath of the priests and rulers of Judaism. They did everything in their power to destroy this new church.

That which the Hebrew people were taught, which they had forgotten and failed to practice, was displayed in the life of Jesus while He was among them. His life and teachings formed the bedrock of His new off-shoot church and yet it was not really new.

“In His wandering throughout the country, He urged the people to mend their manner of life. In the spirit of the ancient prophets of Israel, He inveighed (protested) against the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and the stranglehold which formalism seemed in His eyes to be establishing on religion. He taught the fatherhood of God and human brotherhood, the infinite capacity of repentance to secure forgiveness of sin, the possibility of holiness even for the humblest and least learned, the certainty of life everlasting for those whose faith was complete and unquestioning, the equality of the powerful and lowly before the Divine throne.” History of the Jewish People, Cecil Roth, 142.

The author further states, “When He perished upon the cross, it was to be imagined that His influence would die with Him, as was the case with so many of His contemporaries.” Ibid.

 But the resurrection morning made all the difference for His followers. It validated the reality of His new church. Judaism as God’s true church had faded away in the distant past, and confirmed that there is no other name given among men whereby sinners must be saved but by the name of the risen Lord!

We see that, from its inception, the larger population of Christ’s self-supporting Christian church, was predominantly Jewish. Hence Jewish teachings dominated the Jesus movement. While the term, “Jewish Christianity” carries other meanings, the more significant definition refers to the earliest levels of the Christian church, where Christians were those who had been born Jews but had come to accept Jesus as the Messiah/Christ.

Notice carefully that in order for these Jews to receive salvation they had to separate themselves from apostate Judaism, which had been left desolate, and join the new movement. This church was not an entirely new religion but a reshaping of the old Jewish religious system.

The famous historian Augustus Neander wrote, “Christianity was the new creation which had its germ in Judaism. In common with Judaism, it possessed not only the character of a revealed religion, as opposed to the religion of nature in heathenism, but also the basis of a theocracy, and yet it was something entirely new. It was in short a principle which aimed at the transformation of all that existed. The least among those who shared in this new creation was to be greater than the greatest among the prophets. It was at once the dissolution and fulfillment of Judaism. … It would be requisite to see how, while Judaism was to meet with its fulfillment in Christianity, at the same time the distinct religious principle which Judaism had till now maintained was to be dissolved. Christianity must be rightly understood, both in its close connection with the preparatory elements of Judaism, and also in its opposition to the same.” Neander’s Church History, vol. 1, 469, 470.

Because there were two contending church groups, each saying that they were the True Church, the great struggle for many New Testament Jews was to decide which group was in truth God’s church. Yet, it should not have been that difficult to decide, because one group was a fully established, well-recognized church system while the other was just an up-start. In the minds of both the leaders and the people of Judaism, the Jewish church was the “true church” of God and nothing would ever change that fact! The question that they had to answer was, What do we do about this “off-shoot” group? We will annihilate it!

Yet, within the sphere of this new church there were plans for great expansion. Jesus was working silently to help those who were truly sincere to identify His church and decide accordingly. In the providence of God, a Jewish tent-maker named Saul of Tarsus was selected, chosen for this great work of further laying deep the roots of Christianity in the then known world.

Ellen White wrote concerning Saul, “Saul of Tarsus was a Jew, not only by descent, but by the stronger ties of lifelong training, patriotic devotion, and religious faith. Though a Roman citizen, born in a Gentile city, he was educated in Jerusalem by the most eminent of the rabbis, and diligently instructed in all the laws and traditions of the Fathers. Thus he shared, to the fullest extent, the hopes and aspirations, the lofty pride and unyielding prejudice, of his nation. He declares himself to have been ‘a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless’ (Philippians 3:5, 6). He was regarded by the Jewish leaders as a young man of great promise, and high hopes were cherished concerning him as an able and zealous defender of the ancient faith.” Sketches from the Life of Paul, 10.

This man was bitterly opposed to the off-shoot church because he, like many of his contemporaries, was affected by the false teaching which asserted that Judaism was the source and dispenser of salvation. Saul firmly believed that God was obligated to the Jewish people, as well as to their religious system, Judaism. It was a repugnant thought, as far as Saul was concerned that God would reject Judaism and raise up another church to carry on His biddings. Ellen White informs us that “In common with his nation, Saul had cherished the hope of a Messiah who should reign as a temporal prince, to break from the neck of Israel the Roman yoke, and exalt her to the throne of universal empire. He had no personal knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth or of His mission, but he readily imbibed the scorn and hatred of the rabbis toward One who was so far from fulfilling their ambitious hopes; and after the death of Christ, he eagerly joined with priests and rulers in the persecution of His followers as a proscribed and hated sect.” Ibid.

The Holy Scripture states, “And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do” (Acts 9:1–6).

The book, The Acts of the Apostles, pages 123 and 124, brings to our attention this fact: “The news of Paul’s conversion had come to the Jews as a great surprise. He who had journeyed to Damascus ‘with authority and commission from the chief priests’ (Acts 26:12) to apprehend and persecute the believers was now preaching the gospel of a crucified and risen Saviour, strengthening the hands of those who were already its disciples, and continually bringing in new converts to the faith he had once so bitterly opposed.”

It took a direct encounter with Jesus to unshackle Paul’s mind from the false teaching that Judaism was the source of salvation. “With his burning faith, his unquenchable courage, his strong personal fascination, he was an incomparable propagandist. Few Jews have ever influenced the world to the same extent. It was due to him probably more than to any other person that Christianity assumed the form that we now know it, and ultimately swept the world. Paul undertook a succession of missionary journeys to win disciples for the new cause.” History of the Jewish People, 143, 144.

Inspiration tells us that “This wonderful conversion of Saul demonstrates in a startling manner the miraculous power of Christ in convicting the mind and heart of man.” Sketches from the Life of Paul, 27.

As we delve deeper into Paul’s experience, it is quite evident that there was a significant change which took place in Paul’s life. Therefore we need to ask this question: What was Paul converted from and what was he converted to? The answer is clear. After encountering Jesus Christ, the Founder of His new church, Paul gave up Judaism entirely and became a committed member of His self-supporting church and a dedicated follower of Christ. Though it is impossible to state exactly what happened, the central feature of Paul’s conversion was certainly his vision of the risen and exalted Christ. It convinced him that Jesus was risen from the dead and exalted as Lord in heaven, as the Christians claimed. It also was proof that Jesus had been crucified wrongfully. Hence the curse, “… he that is hanged is accursed of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23) did not apply, and His death could be understood as a sacrifice on behalf of humanity.

As an adherent of this unpopular and unrecognized church, Paul was determined to undo the damages he had done to it by putting all his energies to work to further establish the Christian church. Wherever he went to preach the gospel of Christ, he went with the express purpose of establishing self-supporting churches to the honor of Christ. Dr. Philip Schaff records that “The Pauline epistles are pastoral addresses to congregations of his own founding except that of Rome.” History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, 750.

Ellen White also tells us, “It is recorded that Paul labored a year and six months in Corinth. His efforts, however, were not exclusively confined to that city, but he availed himself of the easy communication by land and water with adjacent cities, and labored among them both by letter and personal effort. He made Corinth his headquarters, and his long tarry and successful ministry there gave him influence abroad as well as at home. Several churches were thus raised up under the effort of the apostle and his co-laborers.” Sketches from the Life of Paul, 109.

The apostle Paul established self-supporting churches in Phrygia, Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Ephesus, Colossae, and Corinth (Acts 15:36–Acts 18).

The question may be asked, Why is it that Paul and his associates had to separate themselves from the established church and raise up self-supporting congregations? Certainly there were occasions when the apostle and his associates were allowed to speak in the synagogues, but the Jewish priests and leaders were moved by envy and jealousy which led them to oppose the teachings of the apostles and shut them out of the synagogues (Acts 13:14–46).

Ellen White wrote, “The synagogues were closed against the apostles; but private houses were thrown open for their use, and public buildings of the Gentiles were also used in which to preach the word of God.” Sketches from the Life of Paul, 51. (See examples of house churches in the New Testament: Acts 8:3; Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2.)

Another question we may ask is, Did the leaders of these new churches have the authority to raise up self-supporting congregations? Yes, “To the early church had been entrusted a constantly enlarging work—that of establishing centers of light and blessing wherever there were honest souls willing to give themselves to the service of Christ.” The Acts of the Apostles, 90.

Inspiration informs us that, “The Jewish leaders had supposed that the work of Christ would end with Him; that when His voice was no longer heard, the excitement would die out, and the people would return to the doctrines and traditions of men. But instead of this, they witnessed the marvelous scenes of the day of Pentecost. The disciples, endowed with a power and energy hitherto unknown, preached Christ to the vast multitude that from all parts of the world assembled at the feast. Signs and wonders confirmed their words; and in the very stronghold of Judaism, thousands openly declared their faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified malefactor, as the promised Messiah.” Sketches from the Life of Paul, 10, 11.

The Scriptures reveal that after the ascension of Christ, the early Christian church grew rapidly and the members of this off-shoot church enjoyed great success. The believers were united (Acts 2:1; Acts 5:12). Multitudes were added to the church daily (Acts 5:14). The Holy Spirit was present both in the lives of the members and in the administration of the church (Acts 2:4; Acts 8:29; Acts 6:1–7; Acts 9:31).

The words of Doctor Luke sum it up correctly, “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold” (Acts 4:32–34). 

“And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:46, 47).

In Testimonies, vol. 5, 166, we read, “In the early church Christianity was taught in its purity; its precepts were given by the voice of inspiration; its ordinances were uncorrupted by the device of men. The church revealed the spirit of Christ and appeared beautiful in its simplicity. Its adorning was the holy principles and exemplary lives of its members. Multitudes were won to Christ, not by display or learning, but by the power of God which attended the plain preaching of His word.”

As we have seen, the Jewish church made a fatal mistake by believing and teaching that their church organization was “the true vine.” Consequently, they rejected the Founder of the church who had declared, “… upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Sadly, this is the very same mistake that the Seventh-day Adventist Church organization is making today!

If you and I were living during the time of the early church we would understand even better the animosity that was cherished by the priests, leaders, and members of Judaism towards the off-shoot churches raised up by Jesus and His followers. The one consuming desire of the leaders of the established church system was to destroy all the new churches by whatever means possible, because as they saw them, they were but a farce, a counterfeit, a nuisance. As a matter of fact, the highest honor that a Jew could do to his church organization would be to covertly destabilize and destroy these fanatical, heretical groups. The question therefore that I would like us to ponder is, Is it any different in our day?

The Jewish leaders and their followers did not cease their diabolical purpose during the ministry of Paul. As they saw the success of these new churches led by Paul and the other apostles, it was their settled desire to destroy these leaders just as they had hoped that by crucifying Jesus, by smiting the Shepherd, the sheep would scatter. The Bible tells us, “Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also” (Acts 12:1–3).

The apostle Paul did not understand the psychology of the church system he belonged to. While he was a member, he joined in their destructive work of harming Jesus’ new church, believing he was doing the Lord’s biddings (Acts 9:1, 2). He was an accomplice in the stoning of Stephen, a mighty leader of Jesus’ self-supporting church (Acts 7:58). When Paul finally separated from Judaism, he not only witnessed the animosity and hatred of the Jewish priests, leaders, and people towards the church that Jesus had established, but also towards himself. At times the priests and leaders would relentlessly pursue and do great harm to both its leaders and members. At other times they would prevail upon the civic leaders/officers and citizens to incite them to offend the church of Jesus Christ. (See Acts 9:22, 23; Acts 14:19; Acts 17:5; Acts 21:27–35; Acts 23:12; 2 Corinthians 11:24–26.)

It was Paul who wrote these words: “And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Hebrews 11:36–38).

God’s message to our brothers and sisters in the SDA church organization is found in Mark 9:38–41 and The Desire of Ages, 437, 438. “And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in My name, that can lightly speak evil of Me. For he that is not against us is on our part. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in My name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward” (Mark 9:38–41).

“James and John had thought that in checking this man they had had in view their Lord’s honor; they began to see that they were jealous for their own. They acknowledged their error, and accepted the reproof of Jesus, ‘Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in My name, that can lightly speak evil of Me’ (Mark 9:39). None who showed themselves in any way friendly to Christ were to be repulsed. There were many who had been deeply moved by the character and the work of Christ, and whose hearts were opening to Him in faith; and the disciples, who could not read motives, must be careful not to discourage these souls. When Jesus was no longer personally among them, and the work was left in their hands, they must not indulge a narrow, exclusive spirit, but manifest the same far-reaching sympathy which they had seen in their Master.

“The fact that one does not in all things conform to our personal ideas or opinions will not justify us in forbidding him to labor for God. Christ is the Great Teacher; we are not to judge or to command, but in humility each is to sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn of Him. Every soul whom God has made willing is a channel through which Christ will reveal His pardoning love. How careful we should be lest we discourage one of God’s light bearers, and thus intercept the rays that He would have shine to the world!” The Desire of Ages, 437, 438.

 Pastor Ivan Plummer ministers through the Emmanuel Seventh Day Church Ministries in Bronx, New York. He may be contacted by telephone at: 718-882-3900.

Adventism and Spiritualism, Part II

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For many years we, as Seventh-day Adventists, have thought that we were not susceptible to the dangers of spiritualism because of our understanding from the Bible on the state of the dead. We thought that when apparitions came we would not be deceived by spiritualism, but when we look at Ellen White’s writings, she gives warning after warning to Adventists about being deceived and caught up in spiritualistic teachings. God would not send us all of these warnings if there were no danger.

At the time the majority of these warnings were given, there was a leader in our medical work by the name of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. It was through a book he wrote, called The Living Temple, that Adventism was introduced to some new ideas about the nature of God. Concerning these new ideas, Ellen White started to write testimony after testimony. If you read these counsels, recorded in Testimonies, vol. 8, 255–335, she quotes one Scripture after another that show God is not like what John Harvey Kellogg was saying. She says that Dr. Kellogg’s ideas about the nature of God would lead into spiritualism.

I had always thought spiritualism was when you had apparitions of the Virgin Mary or of the apostles, or when somebody that was dead came to talk to you. But Ellen White described the new theories about the nature of God as spiritualistic teachings. (See Battle Creek Letters, 103, 104.)

In Part 1 we saw that Satan’s masterpiece of deception, by which he will deceive the whole world, is spiritualism, which involves much more than just apparitions. We will hear, as we draw near the end of time, about all of the different apostles appearing to people, and Ellen White says that when they appear they will teach things contrary to what they wrote in the Bible. At that time, if you know what the Bible says and your confidence is in the Bible, you will be secure. If you do not know what the Bible says, you will be swept off your feet.

We also learned in Part 1 what the big lie is that underlies spiritualism—that you can sin without dying. Another way to state it is that you put darkness in place of light. You call it light, but it is really darkness, and spiritual darkness is that you can live in evil and wickedness and yet have eternal life. As we look around, we see many instances in which darkness is placed for light—and we call the darkness light.

If a priest gets in trouble because he is a pedophile or a homosexual, what happens? Is he removed from the church? No, he is transferred to duties somewhere else. If a minister commits adultery, is his ministerial license withdrawn and his name removed from the church books? No, usually he is transferred to another church in another conference. By these actions, all of the sin is allowed into the church, which destroys the church, and that is exactly what the devil has in mind.

The idea that no matter how bad a sinner someone is, even if they are living in open sin, it is all right, is one of the things going on in the ecumenical movement that has even affected Adventism. Jesus loves you; He died to save you. That is true, but the problem, the darkness is the idea that Jesus will save you while you are living in sin. Jesus will not save you while you are living in sin! If you are living in sin, you are lost, no matter how many times you go to church, no matter how much you pray, no matter how often you study your Bible. If you are living in disobedience to God’s commandments, you are lost. (See The Great Controversy, 461–478.)

Remember, what underlies all spiritualism is that you put darkness in the place of light; you label it light, but it is actually darkness.

Should we be Separate

Who is in the dark? Revelation 16:10 says, “His kingdom [Babylon] was full of darkness.” Babylon includes the churches that rejected the truth during the Dark Ages plus those churches that rejected the warning of the coming judgment and of Christ’s soon coming in the 1840s. (See The Great Controversy, 382, 383, 389.) Should we join Babylon, that is, join the darkness, or should we be separate?

The Bible says, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” 2 Corinthians 6:14. What communion is there with light and darkness? There is none! Paul says, Do not have any fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. (Ephesians 5:11.)

When God first called Saul on the Damascus Road and Jesus appeared to him, one of the very first things Jesus said to him concerned this whole issue of light and darkness and the power of the devil. (See Acts 26.) Paul, in recounting his conversion experience to King Agrippa, told how the Lord met him on the road to Damascus and said, “I will . . . send you, to open their eyes, [in order] to turn [them] from darkness to light, and [from] the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.” Verses 17, 18.

Are these Gentiles, these heathens who are in the dark, saved? No, they are lost. The ecumenical movement thinks that we will just take in everybody, but they are still lost; they are still in the dark. If they are going to be saved, we have to show them the way so God can turn them from the darkness to the light, from the power of Satan to the power of God. They have to repent and be converted.

Would you conclude that we should be separate from the darkness? Yes, we should be separate. If you join up with the darkness, the devil has control of your mind—you have yielded to spiritualistic powers.

Joining Babylon

When the Seventh-day Adventist hospitals in the Denver, Colorado, metropolitan area were relinquished to the Catholic’s hospital organization several years ago, what were they joining? Were they joining Zion or Babylon? They were joining up with Babylon; they were joining up with darkness. If you join up with darkness, what is going to happen to you? You are going to be in the dark; the powers of devils will control you.

Why do we have an independent Seventh-day Adventist Church in Zaire? Because, the general conference and the unions and divisions over there said that they were going to join with the Sunday-keeping churches. There are almost 70 churches joined together, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church is number 42 of these Sunday-keeping churches. That is Babylon, and we are joining up with it! What does that tell you? That tells you that the devil has gotten control of the minds of leaders in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

“Oh,” someone may say, “certainly that is not true!” But it has happened. We cannot deny it. I want to show you something encouraging—God foresaw this. God foresaw that at the end of time we, as Seventh-day Adventists, would face a situation where the leaders of the church were going to come under the control of the devil.

“In His Word the Lord declared what He would do for Israel if they would obey His voice. But the leaders of the people yielded to the temptations of Satan, and God could not give them the blessings He designed them to have, because they did not obey His voice but listened to the voice and policy of Lucifer.” Manuscript Releases, vol. 13, 379. Since the leaders of Israel did not obey God’s voice, He could not do for them what He wanted to do. They were listening to the voice and policy of the devil. That is spiritualism! When the devil is talking to you and you are listening, you are under the control of spiritualism.

Mrs. White continues, “This experience will be repeated in the last years of the history of the people of God who have been established by His grace and power.” Ibid. Are we in the last years? Yes, we are. Then it is time for this experience to be repeated.

Who are the people of God in these last days that have been established by His grace and power? It is the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist structure. This church, the Seventh-day Adventist world-wide church—the general conference, the divisions, the unions, and the conferences—was established by the grace and power of God. But she says that the same things are going to happen as happened with the leaders of Israel—the leaders are going to listen to the voice and policy of Lucifer. That, friends, is spiritualism.

“Men whom He has greatly honored [men who, in the past, the Holy Spirit has used; people whom we have looked up to because they have led many souls to the Lord; they have preached the Three Angels’ Messages] will in the closing scenes of this earth’s history pattern after ancient Israel.” Ibid. We are in that time.

When Spiritualism Takes Control

When spiritualism takes control in a family or in a church, what happens? We know that, at first, the devil puts darkness for light. But there is a second stage—you take light and you call it darkness. In the first stage you call darkness light, what is sin is accounted as right, but eventually it turns around and what is good is accounted for wrong. Ellen White says that right now in the United States the churches think good of all evil. Eventually, she says, they are going to think evil of all good. (See The Great Controversy, 556, 557.)

How does God try to save these deceived people? He sends them a messenger, and if someone is deceived, God might give them a very plain, pointed message, because God always tells the truth; He does not play around. We are talking about eternal life and eternal death. Paul says whatever reveals it, that is light. (See Ephesians 5.) When people see what is really going on, they see that they are headed straight to hell-fire, and unless they get turned around and start walking according to God’s commandments, they will lose their soul.

Then the devil gets people to call light darkness. God’s messenger, who comes with a message of truth and light, is berated. People are told not to listen to him/her because he/she is a fanatic, and they will be deceived. When God sends a messenger with light, the devil tries to get that message interpreted as darkness, so God has to send a very plain and pointed message.

About God’s messengers today, Ellen White says, “Those who have been thrust out to bear a plain, pointed testimony, in the fear of God to reprove wrong, to labor with all their energies to build up God’s people, and to establish them upon important points of present truth, have too often received censure instead of sympathy and help, while those who, like yourself, have taken a noncommittal position, are thought to be devoted, and to have a mild spirit.” Testimonies, vol. 1, 321.

If someone just gives a smooth, mild message, they are accepted by men, but they are not accepted by God. Mrs. White says: “God does not thus regard them. The forerunner of Christ’s first advent was a very plain-spoken man. He rebuked sin, and called things by their right names.” Ibid. See, if you are calling things by their right names, you call light, light; you call darkness, darkness, and you call sin, sin. If you cover it up, if you say we just have to put up with it and learn how to get along, that is calling things by the wrong names.

She continues, “He laid the ax at the root of the tree. He thus addressed one class of professed converts who came to be baptized of him in Jordan: ‘O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. . . . And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.’ [Matthew 3:7, 8, 10.]

“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.” Ibid. John the Baptist was talking to the general conference leadership of his day, and he said, “You are a bunch of poisonous snakes and I will not baptize you.” Just preach love, people say, do not rock the boat, but it is better to be in trouble with men than it is to be in trouble with the God of heaven.

It is necessary to separate from the darkness. You cannot be part of it. If you are listening to preaching or teaching and you see that something is being said that is contrary to God’s Word, you better get out of there, because if you keep listening to it you will be deceived and you will not even know it. Ellen White tells us that these people who are deceived by the devil will boast, and you will not find anyone as self-confident as they are about the truth; they are sure that they know the truth and that everything is all right with them, but they are deceived. (See The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 406; Testimonies, vol. 1, 650.)

Spiritualistic Religion

Spiritualistic religion is going to take over the entire world just before Jesus comes. Except for those that are saved, the whole world will be part of it. All of the churches—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, and people who do not even go to church—are all going to be part of this great movement. We need to understand some of the characteristics of this religion that is going to take over the world.

Ellen White, talking about spiritualistic religion, wrote: “You may be sure that pure and undefiled religion is not a sensational religion.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 295. What is sensational religion and how does it come into the church? The dictionary defines sensational as “something that tends to arouse a quick, intense interest, curiosity, or emotional reaction.” It really reaches out and grabs you.

Emotional

One of the first things to do when trying to develop an emotional religion is to change the music within the church services to a music that has stronger beats and more volume. That has come into Adventism, and practically every other denomination, in the last few years.

That is not all. Have you ever heard a preacher who, with almost every sentence, is so emotional, so choked up, he can hardly speak? Even if it is not an emotional sentence he is choked up, and soon people are wiping their eyes, and they can hardly sit still because it is so emotional. That is sensational religion. Ellen White warned our ministers against having anything to do with that kind of preaching or delivery, anything theatrical, anything to arouse emotional reactions in people. (See Testimonies, vol. 5, 301.)

The gospel has the emotion built in. You do not need to try to get people worked up with emotion; the gospel has all the emotion in itself. But an emotional religion, where the people are stirred up by the manner of delivery and by a preacher who is all choked up with emotion, that is an emotional or sensational religion. Anytime you see that in a church, you had better get out, because if you stay there, your emotions are going to be affected and you will be caught up in sensational religion. That is one of the ways the devil gets into the church.

You can introduce the sensation of emotion into the church, and you do not have to have an apparition of the Virgin Mary; you do not have to have séances; you just have to get the people’s emotions worked up and then you have them in a state of mind where they can be influenced to do almost anything. When people’s emotions are all worked up, they will do things they would never do if their minds were calm and if they were thinking rationally, and that is the whole point.

Emotional religion is one of the characteristics of spiritualistic religion. If it comes into your church, you either have to get it out, or you have to get out, because the devil is taking over the church.

Sensuality

Another characteristic of spiritualistic religion destroys the spirituality in the family, and nobody knows that anything is going on. The preacher, the elders, the deacons, and sometimes the spouse does not even know, yet spirituality is being destroyed from within through spiritualism. This is very common, and if it is in your life, you must get it out or it will destroy you. A lot of people think, “Oh, that is just something I am thinking in my mind, and no one else knows.” Ellen White says that the devil knows, because he is the one who put it in your mind. Here is what happens in people’s minds. Ellen White in addressing a man who was a minister, said, “You have been represented to me as being in great peril. Satan is on your track, and at times he has whispered to you pleasing fables and has shown you charming pictures of one whom he represents as a more suitable companion for you than the wife of your youth, the mother of your children.” This man is in contact with the devil, but he does not know it. The devil is whispering pleasing fables to him, and not only that, the devil is giving him some imagination. Here is a married man, and the devil is putting pleasing pictures in his mind about some other woman, and he is imagining things about her. If you asked him if he were a spiritualist, he would tell you he does not have anything to do with it, but he does. He is in contact with the devil, and the devil is putting pictures in his mind.

Continuing on, Ellen White tells how the devil is teaching him: “The enemy of souls has gained much when he can lead the imagination of one of Jehovah’s chosen watchmen to dwell upon the possibilities of association, in the world to come, with some woman whom he loves, and of there raising up a family.” So what was this minister imagining? He thought, “Well, I cannot leave my wife now, but I would like to be with this other woman in heaven.” Ellen White says, “We need no such pleasing pictures. All such views originate in the mind of the tempter.” Medical Ministry, 100, 101. This man was in contact with spiritualism. His Christianity was being destroyed through his imagination. He was taking a head-trip with a woman other than his wife.

“It is presented to me that spiritual fables are taking many captive. Their minds are sensual, and, unless a change comes, this will prove their ruin. To all who are indulging these unholy fancies I would say, Stop; for Christ’s sake, stop right where you are. You are on forbidden ground. Repent, I entreat of you and be converted.” Ibid.

“You are on forbidden ground.” Why? Because in your mind you are indulging in imaginations that are unholy, and if you keep on, it will wreck your marriage; you could easily end up in the divorce court. This is one of the most common ways that divorce occurs. First someone takes a head-trip, and after they do that for a few months, or years, it becomes reality, and Ellen White says that originates with the devil. That is part of spiritualism; you do not have to go to a séance; the devil is putting pictures in your mind. You are in grave danger of being influenced by the devil!

Clean up the Inside

There are other statements in the inspired writings about sensuality and how the devil attempts to gain control of the human mind through spiritualism, but I want to share a very encouraging statement about what we are supposed to do when we are up against something like this. “Minds that have been given up to loose thought need to change. . . . Man’s great danger is in being self-deceived, indulging self-sufficiency, and thus separating from God, the source of his strength. Our natural tendencies, unless corrected by the Holy Spirit of God, have in them the seeds of moral death. [You cannot just go on and do what comes naturally, because your natural tendencies are evil.] Unless we become vitally connected with God, we cannot resist the unhallowed effects of self-love, self-indulgence, and temptation to sin.

“In order to receive help from Christ, we must realize our need.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 315, 316. What is our need? If we are not going to be taken control of by the devil, we must learn to control our mind, our thoughts, and our imaginations. That is how the devil first gets control of people. I am not just talking about sexual passions, but appetite is also involved in control of the mind. “We must have a true knowledge of ourselves. It is only he who knows himself to be a sinner that Christ can save. Only as we see our utter helplessness and renounce all self-trust, shall we lay hold on divine power.

“It is not only at the beginning of the Christian life that this renunciation of self is to be made. At every advance step heavenward it is to be renewed. All our good works are dependent on a power outside of ourselves; therefore there needs to be a continual reaching out of the heart after God, a constant, earnest confession of sin and humbling of the soul before Him. Perils surround us; and we are safe only as we feel our weakness and cling with the grasp of faith to our mighty Deliverer.” Ibid., 316.

We have felt that we are secure because we know the state of the dead, and we do not realize that the devil, through spiritualism, has many other ways beside apparitions to get control of the human mind. The devil is trying to get our minds focused upon sensual gratification so we will lose control of our thoughts. When that happens, he’s got us; we are lost—unless we are converted, and lay hold of the power of Christ and say, Lord, I am absolutely helpless, but I am putting my trust in you, and I pray that you will come into my heart and mind and give me control of my mind again. How often do we have to do this? Ellen White says at every advanced step we have to put our trust in Jesus and ask Him to work this miracle within, because otherwise we are utterly helpless and the devil will take control of the mind. (See The Upward Look, 296.)

Ellen White said there will be people who come up to the day of judgment and it will be revealed that because of the secret thoughts of their hearts they will be lost. (See A Solemn Appeal, 80.) They might have professed to be Christians, but their mind was not purified. The devil had control inside. We are not saved on the outside until we are saved on the inside. Jesus said to the Pharisees, You make the outside clean but the inside is full of all kinds of corruption. Clean the inside up first. (Matthew 23:25, 26.) God wants to clean us up on the inside. When we are clean on the inside so that the devil does not have control of our mind, when we are not under the power of spiritualism, then we will be able to get cleaned up on the outside.

Do you want to be delivered from the power of the devil, the power of darkness? If you call upon Jesus and put your trust in Him, He will deliver you!

The Jewish Rejection of Christ

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This article will be a disturbing study to many Seventh-day Adventists because of what it reveals. The subject is the rejection by the Jews of Jesus when He came to this earth as a babe. I want to be sure that we understand its application to the last days.

We are going to study history, but we are not just studying history. We are studying history that prophecy has told us is going to be repeated. I have learned that God’s people are very poor at understanding prophecy when they see it being fulfilled. We are not too bad at understanding prophecy that has been fulfilled in the past, because we can read a history book and compare history with the prophecy. We can go back and forth and see that the history book confirms what a prophet said 2,500 years before.

Such a comparison can be done with the history of the Messiah. We can look at the history and the prophecies and ask why the Jews rejected Jesus. They had been expecting the Messiah to come for over 1,000 years. They were preaching about it every week in the synagogue. They were all expecting it to happen. They were talking about it, they had been studying about it, and every Jewish boy, ever since he could remember, had been told about the wonderful things that were going to happen when the Messiah came. Yet, when He came, they rejected Him.

The Jewish people did not recognize that they were rejecting the Messiah. They said, “The Messiah has not yet come. We are expecting the Messiah to come, and we want the Messiah to come, but that event is in the future; it is not right now.” One of the great dangers of God’s people today is that when prophecy is fulfilled right in front of our eyes, we will not recognize it. We will say, “No, that is not it. It is coming in the future.”

I get telephone calls and letters from people all of the time who agree that the Lord is going to purify the church, but they are talking about the future. Friends, that is a terrible mistake. God is purifying His church right now, in front of us. While they are looking for something to start, it is going to all be over, and they will not even know it. Ellen White indicated that it had started in her day, and that was over 100 years ago. We need to ask the Lord to open our eyes so that we will be able to understand what is happening in the spiritual world right in front of us.

Devil in Control

Ellen White writes, “We want to understand the time in which we live. We do not half understand it. We do not half take it in. My heart trembles in me when I think of what a foe we have to meet, and how poorly we are prepared to meet him. The trials of the children of Israel, and their attitude just before the first coming of Christ, have been presented before me again and again to illustrate the position of the people of God in their experience before the second coming of Christ—how the enemy sought every occasion to take control of the minds of the Jews, and today he is seeking to blind the minds of God’s servants, that they may not be able to discern the precious truth.” Selected Messages, Book 1, 406.

She said that the devil had been trying to take control of the minds of the Jews. Was he very successful? Yes, he was. Then let me ask you another question: Those Jews, of whom the devil was able to take control of their minds, did they know that the devil was in control? No, they did not. And she said, to illustrate the position of the people of God in their experience before the Second Coming, the Lord showed her over and over that the devil would try to do the same thing again.

By What Authority

Why did the Jews reject Jesus? In John 2:13–22 we read about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It is at the Passover time, 28 A.D. Jesus began His ministry as the Messiah by cleansing the temple. Verse 18 reads, “So the Jews answered and said to Him, ‘What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?’ ”

In Matthew we see some of the reasons they were asking for a sign. Let us see if this sounds familiar to anybody. “Now when He came into the temple [this is the time after He had just cleansed the temple the second time, at the close of His ministry], the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?’ ” Matthew 21:23.

To understand the significance of the question they were asking, you have to understand the system with which they were working. These people believed that they were God’s people, God’s church, His children. They had a worldwide representative body that they called the Sanhedrin. It is equivalent to what we call the General Conference today. This was a group of 70 individuals which, they said, had been duly appointed by God. They could prove it by the Scriptures.

“So the Lord said to Moses: ‘Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you. Then I will come down and will talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that [is] upon you and will put [the same] upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear [it] yourself alone.’ ” Numbers 11:16, 17.

The Lord directed Moses to choose 70 of the elders of the people. He said He would put His spirit on these people. Now, obviously the time came when those people died, right? And after they died they selected other elders. And then after they died, they selected other elders, and they kept doing that. In Christ’s day they still had this group of 70. They said:

  • This group of 70, the Sanhedrin, is the group that is duly appointed. God directed us through Moses to have this group of people as the elders of His people.
  • These are the duly appointed leaders of God’s people.
  • These men are representatives from all parts of the field.
  • These men have been ordained since the days of Moses that they should represent the Lord to His people and that they should have divine authority. It is the responsibility of these men to plan for the prosperity and the advancement of God’s work.
  • This is the highest authority God has on earth and this authority must be respected.

Individual Responsibility

In the days of Christ, before you could be a teacher or a preacher and talk to God’s people and be known as an instructor, you needed to have authorization from this group. We have a modern name for it; today we call it credentials.

Jesus and John the Baptist did not have these credentials. You see, in order to get these credentials, you had to go through their school system and neither Jesus nor John the Baptist had done this. That is why, in Matthew 21:23 and in John 2, the question is being asked, Who gave you authority to do this? The Sanhedrin had not given authority, and the people thought that if the Sanhedrin had not given authority, then you were like what we would call an offshoot. So they accused both Jesus and John the Baptist of taking something upon their own individual responsibility.

Have you ever heard that you are not supposed to work on your own individual responsibility? that you are to be appointed and directed by the church? The Jews rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus; because they had not gone through their school system; they had not received the proper theological training, and therefore, they did not have any credentials. They were taking upon their individual responsibility when they should have not done anything except as they were directed through the Sanhedrin. They had a total misconception in those days about who the church was. That is what led to that kind of thinking.

John the Baptist talked very plain and straight to them. “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.’ ” Matthew 3:7.

Harmony With the Law

We know that the Judgment is not based on profession but on character. The Judgment is not based on who your father is or to what organization or group you belong. Oh, no. In the Judgment the question is not going to be, Did you belong to this church organization or that organization? Ellen White says that God is only going to ask one question on the Day of Judgment: Did this person keep My law or not? That is it, because that reveals the character. (See The Signs of the Times, May 19, 1887.)

Abraham’s Children

The Jews did not understand this. They said, “We are God’s people.” How did they know that they were God’s people? Because, they said, “We are Abraham’s children.” They had all been circumcised. They were all Abraham’s children, but notice what John the Baptist had to say about this. He does not call them Abraham’s children. He calls them a brood of poisonous snakes, and in verse 8 he says, “Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance.” In other words, your life, your character has to be in harmony with what you say you are doing. You say you are repenting of your sins, well, your life has to be in harmony with that repentance. “And do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as [our] father.’ ” Matthew 3:9. That is what they were saying: “We are God’s people because Abraham is our father; we are the children of Israel; we are God’s chosen people.” John the Baptist told them that profession was worthless. He told them that unless their lives were in harmony with the Law of God, they were not God’s people. (See The Desire of Ages, 107.)

That was pretty strong, because they had been taught ever since they were little children that they were God’s chosen people because they were Abraham’s children. You know, you tend to believe something if you have been taught it ever since you were a little child, if you learned it from your mother’s knee.

You can see why John the Baptist was not very popular with the leaders. It was not just because he called them a bunch of poisonous snakes; it was because He was attacking something that they had cherished as a belief ever since they could remember. He was attacking one of their most fundamental beliefs—that they were Abraham’s children, God’s people.

John the Baptist said, No, that is not true. Profession is worthless unless your character backs up your profession. Unless your character is in harmony with God’s Law, you are not His people. It was a shock! They knew they were not obeying the Law of God. They knew that there was a prophecy, but they said, “We are God’s people because we are Abraham’s children.” They believed that, when the Messiah came, He would purify the church. He would straighten out the Sanhedrin. So they said, “Even though things are bad, we are just praying, hoping, and waiting. The Messiah is coming, and when the Messiah comes, He will purify the church.” Now let me ask you something. When the Messiah came, did He purify the church?

Church Purified

Whether you believe He purified the church or not depends upon who the church is in your thinking.

You see, if you believe that the church is those people who are Abraham’s children—the Sanhedrin, Caiaphas and company, and all of those in that whole group,—if that is who you believe the church is, then it did not get purified. The question is, Is that really the church?

Did the true church actually get purified? Yes, it did. Who is the church? That is not difficult. The Bible tells us in Colossians 1 who and what the church is. It says that the church is the body of Christ. How many heads does the body have? One! The Bible is very clear about that in Ephesians 1. The church has one head. There are beasts in the Bible that have seven heads, four heads, and all sorts of things, but the church has just one head.

When Jesus was here in the flesh, who was the head of the church? He was! There are many people who believe that Caiaphas was the head of the church when Jesus was here. Who you believe to be the head of the church has all kinds of implications. Because of the Jew’s belief about who and what the church is, they believed that Jesus and John the Baptist were tearing down the church.

Ellen White says, “Though He was the Prince of Peace, His coming must be as the unsheathing of a sword. The kingdom He had come to establish was the opposite of that which the Jews desired. He who was the foundation of the ritual and economy of Israel would be looked upon as its enemy and destroyer. He who had proclaimed the law upon Sinai would be condemned as a transgressor. He who had come to break the power of Satan would be denounced as Beelzebub.” The Desire of Ages, 111.

With all of the miracles that Jesus performed, with all of His preaching and teaching, and with the character that He brought, why was it that He could not turn the Jewish nation around? It was because of their understanding of the Scriptures!

Scriptures “Prove” Error

Do you realize that they used the Scriptures to prove that Jesus was not the Messiah? There were hundreds of Scriptures that they used. We will read only two, so you can get a feel for the way they developed Bible studies to prove to the Jewish people that Jesus was not the Messiah. These Bible studies were very effective.

You need to understand, friends, that there is a right way and a wrong way to use inspired writings. You can prove error from the Bible and from the Spirit of Prophecy. It has happened many times, and it will continue to happen. That is one of the reasons Ellen White counsels us that before we ever study the Bible, we should pray. (See The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 350.) We should say, Lord, help me to understand truth so that the devil does not work on my mind and wrest the Scripture so that the very Word of truth is taken to teach error.

“He [that is the Messiah] shall have dominion also from sea to sea, And from the River to the ends of the earth.” Psalm 72:8. The Jews would read that Scripture and ask, “Is this Jesus of Nazareth? Does He reign from sea to sea? Does His dominion go to the ends of the earth?” Everybody would see the answer was No. The Romans were ruling the world then. Jesus was not ruling to the ends of the earth. So, they reasoned, that proves that He is not the Messiah.

Another text they used says, “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.’ Thus says the Lord: ‘If heaven above can be measured, And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel For all that they have done, says the Lord.’ ” Jeremiah 31:35–37.

They would read this Scripture and say, “This Jesus and John the Baptist are preaching against the Sanhedrin and against the church organization, and if they get their way, they are going to destroy our nation.” That is what Caiaphas said. (See John 11.) They would ask, “Is the sun still up there? Is the moon still up there? Are the stars still up there?” Well, yes. “Then, Israel is still God’s people.”

Character Counts

Now I want you to see how much different their idea was than Jesus’ ideas. Jesus, just like John the Baptist, showed them that it was character that counted. Character is always what has counted in God’s sight.

In John 8:37, 38 is recorded Jesus’ words: “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.” Jesus tells them, My Father and your father are not the same.

They said, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus immediately denied that in verse 39: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.” In other words, If Abraham were your father, you would manifest the character of Abraham. Jesus denied their allegation. He acknowledged in verse 37 that Abraham was their father according to the flesh, but He denied in verse 39 that Abraham was their father spiritually.

He said, Abraham is not really your father. He proved to them that they were doing something completely contrary to what Abraham would ever do. In verse 41 He said, “You do the deeds of your father.” Your character shows who your spiritual father is. That was too much. They got sarcastic.

All of His life Jesus was accused of being a product of fornication and of being an illegitimate son. The Jews never accepted the fact of the virgin birth, because if they had, they would have had to acknowledge that He was the Messiah. So they said, “We have not been born of fornication. We have one Father, God.” Verse 41. They did have some standards and rules. You could not be born of fornication and be part of the Sanhedrin. Jesus immediately replied, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. . . . Your father is the devil.” Verses 42, 44.

He hit them right between the eyes! My Father is God, but your father is the devil. You say that God is your Father, but it is not true. The devil is your father. How did Jesus know that the devil was their father? “You are of [your] father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and [does not] stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own [resources], for he is a liar and the father of it.” Verse 44. How do you tell who your father is? Your character tells.

Of the Devil

The devil was a liar and a murderer, Jesus says, from the beginning. He told them they were lying and murdering, plotting His murder. That proved that the devil was their father. Or as the same writer says in 1 John 3:8, “He who sins is of the devil.”

Oh, no, we say, we are Christians. That is not what the Bible says. No matter what we profess, if we are living in sin, the Bible says our father, our spiritual father, is the devil. In fact, John is so strong about this in 1 John 3:4–10, that he says, If you really are converted, if you are born again, you will not sin. And if you are sinning, you are of the devil.

So why did the church in Jesus’ day reject Him? Why did they reject the Messiah? Oh, it was because of all these theological theories that they had built up directly from the Old Testament. Even in the face of miracles and everything else, they said, “The miracles have to be from the devil, because He could not be the right one. We can prove it from the Bible.”

The same thing is happening today. People say to me, “We just have to wait. God is going to purify the church someday, and then we will finish the work.” Let me tell you something, God will have the work all finished while these people are waiting for the purifying to happen.

The evidence right now is that God is getting ready to finish His work all over the world. And the most wonderful experience that you and I can have is if we could just be a little part of it.

[Bible texts quoted are literal translation.]

One Hundredth Anniversary of Apostasy

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April 2003 marks the one hundredth anniversary of one of the most historic General Conference meetings ever held by the Seventh-day Adventists. Some people believe that the reason we are still here in this world is because of mistakes that were made in the 1903 General Conference. Other people believe that the 1903 General Conference paved the way for the very rapid finishing of God’s work in the world.

1901 General Conference

In order to understand what happened in the 1903 General Conference, we must first go back to the 1901 General Conference. We find at this Conference that the problems, which had developed up to that point, had been of long duration, as exhibited in a speech given by Ellen White on April 3, 1901:

“I feel a special interest in the movements and decisions that shall be made at this Conference regarding the things that should have been done years ago, and especially ten years ago, when we were assembled in Conference, and the Spirit and power of God came into our meeting, testifying that God was ready to work for this people if they would come into working order.”

Notice that already in 1901 action was ten years late! We should have come into a working order in 1891, so the Lord could use us as a people to finish His work in 1891, but it is obvious from Mrs. White’s statement that we did not do so. She goes on to talk about how certain leaders brought in elements of unbelief, and she said, concerning this General Conference in 1891, “It [the light God had given] was assented to, but no special change was made to bring about such a condition of things that the power of God could be revealed among his people.”

“Year after year,” she said, “the same acknowledgment was made, but the principles which exalt a people were not woven into the work. God gave them clear light as to what they should do, and what they should not do, but they departed from that light, and it is a marvel to me that we stand in as much prosperity as we do today.” She went on to talk about organization and about God’s Commandments. Concerning God’s Commandments, she said, “They are the wall which is built round his [God’s] people. There is to be no departure from his principles, no bringing in of worldly policy principles. No worldly customs or practices are to be brought in for this people who are to be representatives of Christ to follow. When we keep the commandments of God, we are in touch with God, and he is connected with us.” And then, after she had quoted from the first chapter of 1 Peter, she continued: “We are living in the last time. We are standing as it were on the very borders of the final conflict.” She quotes from 1 Peter again and then says, “Every soul in every Conference in every part of the Lord’s vineyard, has the privilege of knowing the truth. But truth is not truth to those who do not practice it. Truth is only truth to you when you live it in the daily life, showing the world what those people must be who are at last saved. . . .

“Why, I ask you, are men who have not brought self into subjection allowed to stand in important positions of truth and handle sacred things? They have grown to the stature of men, but they have brought with them their childish tendencies. God does not want any such thing. He has made provision for all to have in them the grace of Christ. No others will enter heaven. There has been one rebellion there, and there will not be another. We have been given an opportunity to get rid of every kind of rebellion.”

Then Mrs. White goes on to quote from 1 Peter and make the following comments: ” ‘As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.’ When you leave this meeting and go to your homes, be quick to hear and slow to speak. Keep yourselves under subjection to the Spirit of God. At the last Conference which I attended here, there was gossiping and controversy in every house. If the people had prayed instead of gossiping, if they had talked with God, the condition of things would have been very different.

“Many of you have been educating yourselves to talk with human beings instead of talking with God. You have built up barriers against the principles which should have been carried into every part of the Lord’s vineyard. . . .

“It only takes a word to fire up a man who has not made a practice of talking with God. This spirit is as contagious as the leprosy. One and another catch it, and thus dissension and strife and commotion are brought in. God is not in any of this work. Brethren, before we have finished, we shall know whether or not God is handling this Conference.

“Now, whatever the work done by men in responsible positions, its character will be testified to by its fruits. In the office of publication, the light that God has given me for years is that those in positions of responsibility there are to gather in the youth, to talk to them, to train them for the Lord’s service. Do not indulge a spirit of combativeness. Keep the unsanctified tongues under control. Do not blame and censure. Act just as you would want the overseers to act toward you were you in the position of these young people. . . .

“The men who have woven their own human passions into life and character, who have nurtured self all the way along, are not to think that they are qualified to deal with human minds. God wants every person to begin at home, and there live the Christ-life. . . .

“That these men should stand in a sacred place, to be as the voice of God to the people, as we once believed the General Conference to be,—that is past. What we want now is a reorganization. We want to begin at the foundation, and to build upon a different principle.”

Further down in this speech, she says, “There are those who always take a negative position. This counts nothing toward building up the work.” Then she says later, “We talk of the Holy Ghost; we preach of the Holy Ghost; but we need to understand better what the office of the Holy Ghost is. We need to understand that we must co-operate with God in every sense or God can not co-operate with us. . . .

“According to the light that has been given me—and just how it is to be accomplished I cannot say—greater strength must be brought into the managing force of the Conference. But this will not be done by intrusting responsibilities to men who have had light poured upon them year after year for the last ten or fifteen years, and yet have not heeded the light that God has given them. The word of God is to be our guide. Have you given heed to the Word? The Testimonies are not by any means to take the place of the Word. They are to bring you to that neglected Word, that you may eat the words of Christ, that you may feed upon them.”

She goes on: “The men that have long stood in positions of trust while disregarding the light that God has given, are not to be depended upon. God wants them to be removed. . . . Some have served on committees here and committees there, and have felt free to dictate just what the committee should say and do, claiming that those who did not carry out these ideas were sinning against Christ. When the power of God is manifest in the church and in the management of the various departments of his work, when it is evident that the managers are themselves controlled by the Holy Spirit of God, then it is time to consider that you are safe in accepting what they may say, under God. But you must know that you are guided by the principles of the Word of the living God. The Great General of armies, the Captain of the Lord’s host, is our leader.”

No Kingly Power

Mrs. White talks about the children of Israel desiring to have a king so that they could be like the other nations, and then says, “Now I want to say, God has not put any kingly power in our ranks to control this or that branch of the work. The work has been greatly restricted by the efforts to control it in every line.” She said later in the speech, “The time has come when this people are to be born again. Those that have never been born again, and those that have forgotten that they were purged from their old sins, and can not see afar off, and have practiced their old habits of talking, prejudicing others, hindering the work, and being generally in the way of its advancement, would better be converted. God wants you to be converted, and may he help, that this work may go forward. He is a power for his people when they come into order. There must be a renovation, a reorganization; a power and strength must be brought into the committees that are necessary.”

She goes on to say something very interesting: “Let me tell you that the sick will be healed when you have faith to come to God in the right way,” and she talked about medical missionary work.

At the close of this speech she says, “God help us to restrain our tongues. The voice is a precious talent, and it is to be used to a purpose. It is not lent to you that you may swear; but every one who gives way to an unholy temper might just as well swear. God help us to submit to Jesus Christ, and to have his power right here and now.”

Not in God’s Order

It is evident, from just a casual reading of this speech that Ellen White gave at the 1901 General Conference, that a crisis had been reached in our work. The work of Seventh-day Adventists had become centralized, with a few people in Battle Creek attempting to manage the work all over the world.

A couple of days later, on April 5, 1901, Ellen White said the following at this General Conference: “I am thankful that there is to be a time when the mists will be cleared away. I hope that this time has begun here. We want the mists here to be cleared away. I want to say that from the light given to me by God, there should have been years ago organizations such as are now proposed. When we first met in Conference, it was thought that the General Conference should extend over the whole world. But this is not in God’s order.”

She later on in these remarks gave an illustration of what she was talking about: “While on my journey to Battle Creek, as I have visited different places, I at Los Angeles, asked, Why do you not do this? and Why do you not do that? And the response has been, ‘That is what we want to do, but we must first get the consent of the Board, the members of which are in Oakland.’ But I asked, have you not men here with common sense. If you have not, then by all means transport them. You show great deficiency by having your Board hundreds of miles away. That is not the wisdom of God. There are men right where you are who have minds, who have judgment, who need to exercise their brains, who need to be learning how to do things, how to take up aggressive work, how to annex new territory. They are not to be dependent on a Conference at Battle Creek or a Board at Oakland.”

Later on she says, “The workers in the South are not to depend upon the Conference at Battle Creek. They are to hang their helpless souls on Jesus Christ.”

She said, “We want to understand that there are no gods in our Conference. There are to be no kings here, and no kings in any Conference that is formed. ‘All ye are brethren.’ [Matthew 23:8.]”

Bind Us Together

But she said later that “New conferences must be formed. It was in the order of God that the Union Conference was organized in Australasia. The Lord God of Israel will link us all together. The organizing of new Conferences is not to separate us. It is to bind us together.”

Toward the end of these remarks she said, “No man is to say, ‘I am a god, and you must do as I say.’ From the beginning to the end this is wrong. There is to be an individual work. God says, ‘Let him take hold of my strength that he may make peace with me, and he shall make peace with me.’ [Isaiah 27:5.]

“Remember that God can give wisdom to those who handle his work. It is not necessary to send thousands of miles to Battle Creek for advice, and then have to wait weeks before an answer can be received. Those who are right on the ground are to decide what shall be done. You know what you have to wrestle with, but those who are thousands of miles away do not know.

“It is best for us to put our trust in the God of Israel.”

An Apostolic Organization

Clear back in 1896, Ellen White had written: “It is not wise to choose one man as president of the General Conference.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 342.

In the General Conference Bulletin from 1897 it was voted that: “The presidency of the General Conference Association, the presidency of the Mission Board, and the presidency of the General Conference work in North America, be placed on three different men.”

In other words, in the 1901 plan of reorganization, the leadership was to look to Christ. He was to be the Head of the church, and those human leaders of large conferences and various institutions were to stand as equals under Christ. We were to have an apostolic form of church government.

New Testament church organization does not work until after Pentecost, until a group of people have had an experience of receiving the Holy Spirit. This 1901 reorganization plan could only be put into effect as the church had a Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, this did not occur.

What Might Have Been

On January 5, 1903, Ellen White wrote what she had seen and heard while in vision. A few brief excerpts are given here: “One day at noon I was writing of the work that might have been done at the last General Conference if the men in positions of trust had followed the will and way of God. Those who have had great light have not walked in the light. The meeting was closed, and the break was not made. Men did not humble themselves before the Lord as they should have done, and the Holy Spirit was not imparted.

“I had written thus far when I lost consciousness, and I seemed to be witnessing a scene in Battle Creek.”

She then described the scene, revealed to her, in some detail: “The speaker turned to those who had been praying, and said: ‘We have something to do. We must confess our sins, and humble our hearts before God.’ He made heartbroken confessions and then stepped up to several of the brethren, one after another, and extended his hand, asking forgiveness. Those to whom he spoke sprang to their feet, making confession and asking forgiveness, and they fell upon one another’s necks, weeping. The spirit of confession spread through the entire congregation. It was a Pentecostal season. God’s praises were sung, and far into the night, until nearly morning, the work was carried on. . . .

“No one seemed to be too proud to make heartfelt confession, and those who led in this work were the ones who had influence, but had not before had courage to confess their sins. . . .

“Then I aroused from my unconsciousness, and for a while could not think where I was. My pen was still in my hand. The words were spoken to me: ‘This might have been. All this the Lord was waiting to do for His people. All heaven was waiting to be gracious.’ I thought of where we might have been had thorough work been done at the last General Conference, and agony of disappointment came over me as I realized that what I had witnessed was not a reality.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 104–106.

So we see from the Pen of Inspiration that the reorganization plan in 1901, which required New Testament church organization,—the apostolic plan for church organization, which could only take place through the operation of the Holy Spirit,—did not take place, because we did not have the needed outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which comes only as a result of confession of sins and making things right. Without the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the church drifted back into control by human agencies. Consequently, the church leaders felt that they were losing control and that something would have to be done to bring the work into harmony and control. So plans were made by some church leaders to have another reorganization at the General Conference in 1903.

Let us now review what happened at the General Conference in 1903.

Minority Position

We go directly to a speech made in the afternoon of April 9, 1903, by A. T. Jones. He said, “There has been presented to this Conference for adoption a constitution, when we already have one, and I have not heard a single word as to why the one we have is so altogether defective that we have got to have a new one, and it be so open on its face that everybody shall simply say, Amen, and let it go.”

At this same meeting P. T. Magan made the following comments: “I am conscientiously opposed to the proposed new constitution. I have always felt that the hardest place that any man could be put in in this life is to have to stand conscientiously opposed to what the majority of his brethren believe to be right. . . . The minority report expresses in a word the feelings which actuated the minority in making the report, because we believe that the constitution proposed by the majority of the committee appears to us to be so subversive of the principles of organization given to us at the General Conferences of 1897 and 1901. Those principles were given to us by the Spirit of God. In my judgment, and in the judgment of the minority of the committee, this constitution is absolutely subversive of those principles.

“Further, the proposed new constitution reverses the reformatory steps that were taken, and the principles which were given, and which were adopted as the principles of reorganization, at the General Conferences of 1897 and 1901, and which were incorporated in the constitution of 1901.

Papal Principles

“Now I am not here for a moment,” Magan continued, “to state that the constitution of 1901 is a perfect one. To my mind, in many respects, it is very imperfect. To my mind, in many respects, it is very clumsily drawn. But I have learned this, that all reforms come gradually, and in that constitution, clumsy though you may call it, defective though you may mark it, there are principles of reformation and reorganization for the head of this work which are right; and those principles are absolutely subverted and swept aside in the proposed new constitution.”

Then he says, “I want to say to you that any man who has ever read ‘Neander’s History of the Christian Church,’ Mosheim’s, or any of the other of the great church historians,—any man who has ever read those histories can come to no other conclusion but that the principles which are to be brought in through this proposed constitution, and in the way in which they are brought in, are the same principles, and introduced in precisely the same way, as they were hundreds of years ago when the Papacy was made.” Then he says, “I say that, as far as the head of the thing is concerned, as far as the general administration of things is concerned, though not couched in the same words, though not hedged about with the same identical language, they are precisely the same principles which governed us up to two years ago, and that the moment you vote this constitution, which I do now believe you are ready to do, yet, when you understand this, the moment you vote it you vote yourselves right back where we were two years ago and before it.

“Another point: It is a fact which I do not believe anyone in this house will deny, but that for many years every General Conference that we have come to has been more or less of a crisis over the question of the progress of the General Conference and the General Conference administration. Beginning with the General Conference at Oakland, fifteen or sixteen years ago, whenever it was, and passing through Minneapolis down through one or two Conferences at Battle Creek to the General Conference held at College View, and then to the last General Conference held in Battle Creek, every one we have come up to has involved, to a greater or less extent, a crisis over this question.” Then he says, “The adoption of this [new constitution] means the rejection of the principles of organization given us by the Spirit of God two years ago, and the discussion of each provision of this, and of the major provisions of this will abundantly reveal that that is so, when read in connection with the writings given at that time, and with the discussions of that period.”

Then A. T. Jones added: “I believe, with the minority report, that this proposed constitution is subversive of the principles of organization given to us at the General Conference of 1897 and that of 1901. I believe that it reverses the reformatory steps that were taken, and the principles which were given and adopted as the principles of reorganization of the General Conferences of 1897 and 1901, and are embodied in the present constitution, and this is stated.”

Later on in his speech Jones quoted the following from the Spirit of Prophecy: “Then follow the words ‘These principles are so foreign to God’s principles that God cannot bless those who work upon them. What must be done is to bring in other minds. Those who have been at work in the same channels for years have been discouraged and confused. We cannot entrust to such as these the tremendous responsibilities which are now to be handled.’ [The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, vol. 4, 1728.] Two years ago we were called away from following wrong principles that were followed before 1901. The constitution proposed to-day simply carries us back to these wrong principles.”

Spirit of Papacy

At this same meeting, A. T. Jones also made another speech, which contained the following statement: “When we get our organization to that point where it shall be Christian and Scriptural, elders of every church and the members put their faith in God, and call these elders when they are sick, we shall have the presence and the power of God in our organization, and Christ will have a chance to be the Head. So much for the church organization. Then a number of churches of this kind organize themselves into a conference, and that conference is to govern itself, and not the churches. Self-government is in the conference, and self-governing conference committees. But the trouble has been to get them back to this old order of things, that the conference committees wanted to control the churches and everybody in them, and then the General Conference wanted to control the conferences, and everybody in the world. Nothing could be done on the other side of the earth unless they must first write to Battle Creek and get permission of the General Conference committee. You know it went that way. But God called us away from that.”

After some short dialogue with a couple of individuals, A.T. Jones went on with his speech and made the following comments: “Another thing: Brother Magan said something about church history. Please remember that was the first organization of the church. The elders met as equals. One was chosen chairman, and simply making the chairmanship perpetual is what bred the Papacy. That is the historical truth. It is proper to have a presiding officer, proper to have a chairman of the meeting, but when you perpetuate that thing, and that officer begins to claim it as his right, and, if you don’t elect him chairman next time, feels that you have dropped him, and so on, you have the spirit of the Papacy. . . . The making of that chairmanship perpetual is what bred that which is to-day the Papacy.”

Weighed in the Balances

Now we have just reviewed a few brief remarks, given at the 1903 General Conference, which were made by those in the minority position. Of course, the minority never carries the vote, and at the 1903 General Conference the reorganization of 1901 was rejected. A new constitution was set in place, which restored the work, or brought it back, to the same position it was before 1901. This took place in the first several days of April in 1903.

Just a few days after this Conference, on April 21, 1903, Ellen White penned the following words, as she was shown in vision: “Our position in the world is not what it should be. . . .

“In the balances of the sanctuary the Seventh-day Adventist church is to be weighed. . . .

“One who sees beneath the surface, who reads the hearts of all men, says of those who have had great light: ‘They are not afflicted and astonished because of their moral and spiritual condition.’ ‘Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before Mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.’ ‘God shall send them strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie,’ ‘because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,’ ‘but had pleasure in unrighteous-ness.’ Isaiah 66:3, 4; 2 Thessalonians 2:11, 10, 12.

“The heavenly Teacher inquired: ‘What stronger delusion can beguile the mind than the pretense that you are building on the right foundation and that God accepts your works, when in reality you are working out many things according to worldly policy and are sinning against Jehovah? Oh, it is a great deception, a fascinating delusion, that takes possession of minds when men who have once known the truth, mistake the form of godliness for the spirit and power thereof; when they suppose that they are rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing, while in reality they are in need of everything.’ . . .

“Unless there is thorough repentance, unless men humble their hearts by confession and receive the truth as it is in Jesus, they will never enter heaven. When purification shall take place in our ranks, we shall no longer rest at ease, boasting of being rich and increased with goods, in need of nothing.

“Who can truthfully say: ‘Our gold is tried in the fire, our garments are unspotted by the world’? [See Revelation 3:18.] I saw our Instructor pointing to the garments of so-called righteousness. Stripping them off, He laid bare the defilement beneath. Then He said to me: ‘Can you not see how they have pretentiously covered up their defilement and rottenness of character? “How is the faithful city become an harlot!” [Isaiah 1:21.] My Father’s house is made a house of merchandise, a place whence the divine presence and glory have departed! For this cause there is weakness, and strength is lacking.’

“Unless the church, which is now being leavened with her own backsliding, shall repent and be converted, she will eat of the fruit of her own doing, until she shall abhor herself.” Testimonies, vol. 8, 247–250.

Conclusion

In 1903, we backslid; we went not forward but backward, back to the old ways that the Lord had told us we were to come out from. We went back to a form of church organization very similar to that form of church organization that eventually resulted in the Papacy. Several of our leading men, those in the minority committee who made the minority report, recognized this very thing, as has been documented in this article.

We are now at the one hundredth anniversary of this great apostasy where the Seventh-day Adventist Church went back into an apostate form of church government directly contrary to the counsels of the Spirit of Prophecy. A form of church government which eventually led in the past to that which we call today the Papacy.

How shall we relate to these things? Some people say if we would go back to the form of church organization that we had in 1901, then the Lord could finish the work very quickly. We will address some of these issues in future articles.

Editors Note: Unless otherwise cited, all references are taken from The General Conference Bulletin, Leaves of Autumn Books, Inc., Payson, AZ.

Pastor Grosboll is Director of Steps to Life Ministry and pastors the Prairie Meadows Church in Wichita, Kansas.

Four Old Things, Part I

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This is a true story that happened to one of the most famous and out-standing sales trainers in the United States a few years ago. This man travels all over, teaching salesmen how to sell and how to be more successful. In a seminar on sales, the basic things of salesmanship are given, then some other things may be covered, but the basics are always provided first. Sometimes, after a person has been selling for a long time, they will say, “I don’t need to study that anymore. I know the basics already.”

In writing about his experience in one of the sales meetings, this trainer mentioned how people who are already in sales usually will not come to the seminar, but he noticed this one man who came to the seminar every year. He asked the man, “Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do? I notice that you come to the seminar every year; are there any of your colleagues with you?”

“No,” the man replied, “I am here all by myself.” He explained that his colleagues could not be convinced that they needed to come to the seminar. The man who was speaking revealed that he was the top producer in his organization, and he felt the need to attend; the rest of the salesmen did not. He continued, “I feel the need at least every year to review the basics about salesmanship.” You know, people who forget the basics, even when they have a lot of experience, make a lot of crazy mistakes.

Jesus, speaking to His disciples, said, “Do you understand all of these things? They say to Him, Yes. And He says to them, On account of this, every scribe who has been instructed in the things of the kingdom of the heavens is like a man who is a householder which brings out of his treasure things new and old.” Matthew 13:51, 52. As human beings, we have a natural tendency to want to hear the new, and that is not wrong, but sometimes we need to hear the old. We need to be sure that we do not forget the old things.

Who are you?

Who are you? How do you define yourself? If you are a Christian, if you believe the Bible, when someone asks who you are, the first thing that might come to your mind is what Genesis says. God and the Son had a conversation, and they said, “Let us make man in our own image and in our own likeness: . . . and so they created both male and female; they created man in the image of God.” Genesis 1:26, 27. Does it make a difference in your whole view of the universe and of yourself whether or not you think you are the son of God or the son of a monkey? Yes, it makes all the difference in the world. You see, in our educational system today, the children are being taught that they descended from animals. No wonder, then, that they act like animals!

More than this, it is not just that you have been created in the image of God, but if asked who you are, one of the answers that may come to mind is that you are a Christian. What is a Christian? A Christian is one who is Christ-like, who is following Jesus. Christians overcome the world. (See 1 John 5:4.) If you say that you are of Him, then you have to walk the way He walked, as John said. (See 1 John 2:6.)

In the Christian church, around the beginning of the fourth century, some people belonged to what they called the church universal—that is the Catholic Church. There arose a controversy between them and another group that were called the Donatists. The Donatists were a very interesting group of Christian people. The controversy with the Catholic Church centered on the point that the Donatists did not believe that the church should be associated with the state. They believed in separation of church and state, and they told the Catholic Church that they should not be using the Roman Government to try to get their way. The Catholic Church was in cahoots with the Roman Government of that day, and they actually arranged for the Roman Government to put pressure on the Donatists and to tell them that they could not call themselves Christians. You are Donatists, they said; you are not Christians. That has happened thousands of times since then, clear down to the present day.

Warning of Apostasy

As time went on, the early church fell away from the truth. This action was predicted in the New Testament. The New Testament writers repeatedly reminded the early church that the church was going to go into a terrible apostasy after the apostles’ death. Over and over again they repeated this warning. Peter told them point blank—all of 11 Peter is about the fact that apostasy was coming into the church after Peter died. In Acts 20, Paul told the elders from Ephesus the very same thing. After his departure, he said, grievous wolves are going to come in and not spare the flock.

Protestant Reformation

As time went on, people who were studying the Bible saw such a discrepancy between what the Bible said and what the church was doing that they said to the people in the church that they were not the church but were idolaters. The whole world became a spiritual battlefield for hundreds of years. Eventually, well over a thousand years later, we see the development of the Protestant Reformation, which took place over a 200-year period. When we study the Protestant Reformation, we usually start at the days of Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century, but Ellen White says that John Wycliffe was the morning star of the Reformation, and he lived in the fourteenth century. (See The Great Controversy, 80.)

I not only call myself a Christian, I call myself a Protestant. Are you a Protestant? What does a Protestant believe? A Protestant is someone who protests the apostasy. That is how they got the name Protestant—they protested the apostasy.

In the Protestant Reformation, there were three major beliefs that they could not harmonize with the Catholic Church.

Priesthood of Believers

The New Testament writer who explains most fully the concept of the priesthood of believers is Peter, the man whom Catholics say was the first pope. The priesthood of believers is the idea that Christ is our great High Priest, and we do not have to go through a human priest to talk with Him, because we are all priests. Peter distinctly taught that.

If that is the case, then when I have done something wrong, I do not have to practice auricular confession. Auricular confession is the idea that you must go to a human priest and confess your sins. The early Reformers said that did not have to be done. They taught that the people could go directly to the Lord and confess their sins.

You may not know this, but auricular confession is one of the great power structures on which the Roman Catholic Church is built. The Roman Catholic Church today has more and better intelligence as to what is going on in every country of the world than any secular government. How? Because of auricular confession.

Protestants do not believe in auricular confession. We believe in the priesthood of believers. We are all priests, and we go to Jesus directly as our great High Priest.

Sola Scriptura

Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase that means Scripture alone; in other words, the Bible and the Bible only is our foundation of faith. The Protestant Reformation gave the Bible back to the common man. When people read the Bible before that time, they found so much that was different from what the Roman Catholic Church taught, that they accused the papacy, the church, of being an adulterer. The Catholic Church teaches that the Bible and tradition are the foundation of the Christian faith. But they essentially exalt tradition above the Bible. The church had to take the Bibles away from the people, or its foundation would have been destroyed.

When the Bible began to be printed, one of the vicars in London said, We will either have to destroy the printing press, or it will destroy us. But the Protestant Reformation gave the Bible back to the people in their own language. They determined that they would not have Bibles just in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, but that they would have Bibles in English and in German, and they translated the Bible in all of the different languages.

Sola Scriptura is still one of the basic differences between Protestants and Catholics. I have a very interesting Roman Catholic book, printed in 1999, which lists 21 points against Sola Scriptura. Unfortunately, most Adventists, even historic Adventists, do not know how to refute this book. We need to know why we believe in the principle of Sola Scriptura, which is the principle that the Bible, all by itself, can bring us to spiritual perfection and prepare us for the kingdom of heaven. From 11 Timothy 3:15 we know that the Holy Scriptures “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” The Roman Catholic book attempts to attack our position on this passage of Scripture, but the text still says the same thing. After being attacked, it is good to check to see if the Scriptures say exactly what we thought they said. This is how 11 Timothy continues: “Every Scripture is God-breathed [that is, given by inspiration of God] and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for discipline in righteousness, in order that the man of God might be complete, thoroughly furnished [or fully equipped] for every good work.” Verses 16, 17. So the Protestant Reformation gave the Bible back to the people. Without it we have no foundation.

Sola Fide

There is another principle in Latin, Sola Fide, which means by faith alone—we are saved by grace through faith alone. That was a major battlefield of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers showed from Scripture that the seven sacraments and the various penances, fastings, pilgrimages, and other good works that the Catholic Church taught as necessary for salvation actually hold no merit with God. We are saved by faith in the blood of Christ, not by any good works we can do.

Sectarianism

I am still a Protestant. Not only a Christian, but also a Protestant. And I am not only a Protestant Christian; I am a Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

Have you ever heard anyone say to someone else, “You are not a Seventh-day Adventist”? That happened to one of my church members. An Adventist pastor said to her, “You are not a Seventh-day Adventist.”

She said to him, “Show me what there is in the doctrinal beliefs, in the baptismal vows, that I do not believe. I am a Seventh-day Adventist. I have been a Seventh-day Adventist since before you were born.”

The pastor said, “No, you’re not an Adventist.”

“Why then do you say that I am not an Adventist?” He reasoned that she did not belong to the same church organization to which he belonged.

Do you know, that is exactly the same thing that was going on in the early fourth century when the Catholic Church said to the Donatists, You do not have the right to call yourself a Christian. Why did they tell them that? Because the Donatists did not belong to their church organization. I do not know why it took me so long to get this figured out, but I was reading my Bible a few years ago and all of a sudden Mark 9:38 jumped out at me, and I said, Of course, why didn’t I know that all along! It says, “And John gave answer to Him, ‘Teacher, we saw a certain person casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.’ ”

There are some churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, that make a big thing about whether or not your church is apostolic. Was this church the apostolic church? Yes, this was the 12 apostles themselves. They saw this person casting out demons in Christ’s name and they told the man not to do it, that he was not part of them, that he did not have permission to work miracles because he did not belong to the right church! He was not part of the right organization. Jesus did not agree with them. “Jesus said, ‘Do not forbid him, for no one is able to do a miracle in my name and then is able quickly to speak against me or to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is on our side.’ ” Verses 39, 40.

That is what we call sectarianism—if you do not belong to our church organization then you are wrong; then you don’t have permission; you cannot call yourself a Christian; you cannot call yourself a Seventh-day Adventist; you cannot do this; and you cannot do that. The disciples had that problem, but the Lord corrected it. The Lord would still like to correct this problem.

What Name?

If you do not know who you are, the devil is going to blow you away with the storm that is coming. You need to know who and what a Seventh-day Adventist really is. You see, before the end, the devil might put all kinds of names on us, just like he put all kinds of names on Jesus. Jesus was called “that deceiver” (Matthew 27:63); they said “He is working miracles by Beelzebub” (Luke 11:15–19), and Jesus told His disciples, “If they call the Master of the house Beelzebub, what are they going to do to His followers?” (Matthew 10:25.) So they might call us all sorts of things. No matter what name they put on you, who you are is determined by what is inside.

Where are you from?

From where do you come? The people in the world say that we come from a church that started in 1863. “My church is 2,000 years old,” they say. Well, my church is 6,000 years old! Yes, we come from the Adventist movement; we still believe what the pioneer Adventist preachers taught and preached; we still believe what Ellen White wrote; but from where did they come? At that time, that was the extent of the development of the Protestant Reformation. You see, the Protestant Reformation kept going on after the sixteenth century reformers died. The Protestant Reformation eventually developed into the Second Advent Movement. We are the outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation, and the Protestant Reformation is the outgrowth of what the Waldenses taught and of what the people of God taught all the way back to the apostles. You see, the thing that determines whether or not you are apostolic is what you are teaching. It is not whether you can say you can trace the head of your church back so many years.

The Jews could trace their church all the way back to Abraham, and they told Jesus, “ ‘Abraham is our father.’ [We know where we come from.] Jesus said to them, ‘If you were the children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham, but now you seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth, which I have heard from God. This Abraham did not do. You do the works of your father.’ Therefore they said to him, ‘We have not been born out of fornication; we have one father, even God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God was your father, you would love me, for I came out from God, neither did I come from myself, but he sent me. Why do you not know my speech? Because you are not able to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you wish to do. That one was a murderer from the beginning and did not abide in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie he speaks of his own, because he is a liar and the father of it.’ ” John 8:39–44. Jesus was teaching that our character shows where we come from. They said that they came from Abraham, but Jesus said, No, you did not; you came from the devil because you have the same character as the devil.

It is your character that determines your lineage, where you are from. The apostle John expressed it this way: “He who sins is of the devil.” 1 John 3:8. If I am living in sin, where am I from? Who is my spiritual father? The devil! Where is your lineage? There will be a group of people in the last days whose lineage will go all the way back to the beginning of time, and they will be called the sons of God, the children of God, because they keep the commandments of God and they accept and follow the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 12:17). Friends, I want to be in that little group. Over and over again we are told that this will just be a little group. Jesus said it, and the apostles said it. Almost all of the world will be deceived, but there will be a little group who will be saved.

Where are you going?

What is your future? The Bible does not teach that we are all going to the same place. It does not even teach that all Christians are going to the same place. Are all Protestants going to the same place? No, they are not. Are all Seventh-day Adventists going to the same place? No, they are not. Ellen White says, “I was shown the startling fact that but a small portion of those who now profess the truth will be sanctified by it and be saved.” Testimonies, vol. 1, 608. Startling statement!

Where are you going? “Well,” someone says, “I go to the right church!” Does that make you go to the right place? No. “I belong to the right church organization!” Does that make you go to the right place? No. “Oh, but I believe the right doctrines.” Does that make you go to the right place? No. Well, where are you going, and how do you know you are going to get there? Ellen White said that she saw in vision that many of those who were on the broad road had written on their garments that they were dead to the world and that they were headed to the New Jerusalem, but they were on the broad road. Ibid., 128. Scripture says, “Enter in through the narrow gate, because wide is the gate and spacious [or broad] is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are which enter in through it. Because narrow is the gate and restricted is the way which leads to life, and few there are who find it.” Matthew 7:13, 14. “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens; but the one who does the will of My Father who is in the heavens. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? And in Your name we cast out demons. And in Your name we did many powerful works [miracles]. Then I will confess to them, Never, at any time, did I know you: depart from Me, you who work lawlessness.” Verses 21–23. They thought they were going to heaven, but when they got to the end, they discovered that was not where they were going.

Do you know for sure where you are going? Are you praying to the Lord that you will not be deceived and have some kind of pretend religion? What determines where you are going? Your character determines your destiny. Jesus taught that over and over. The people who are not saved are the people who practice lawlessness.

[Bible texts quoted are literal translation.]

To be continued . . .

Pastor Grosboll is Director of Steps to Life Ministry and pastors the Prairie Meadows Church in Wichita, Kansas.

Good Men — Good Church

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“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Revelation 3:14–17.

Self-Dependence

How could a people or a church ever become so blind that they are actually naked yet think they are clothed? It is because they have learned to depend upon their own works and their own righteousness rather than the righteousness of Christ. And, though they think they are clothed, their own righteousness cannot clothe them.

It is a situation similar to the one Jesus spoke of in Luke 18:10–13: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector [or publican]. 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!’ ”

Today, Pharisees are looked down upon; but back in Jesus’ day, they were respected. Publicans, on the other hand, were the worst of people in the eyes of the Jews. They did not respect God’s church, and the Jews considered them to be collaborating with the Romans. Yet Jesus said, “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.” Verse 14.

God Ordains and Removes

I have often studied with sadness the history of Saul. Here was a man who was chosen and ordained of God. He knew that 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 was told. (See 1 Samuel 15.) 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 stubbornness [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 thought he was so good, but he was blind. He thought he was clothed with righteousness, but he was absolutely naked. Verse 23 is a solemn reality that whom God ordains for service, He can remove, and what He has ordained 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.

The children of Israel reasoned in Jesus’ day, “We are God’s people; nothing can change that. The tide is still coming in; there are still the sun, moon, and stars.” 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, though God appointed them, He also removed them. (See Numbers 16:27–32.) 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 not a 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 men have come to the place where they believe that they can break the Sabbath and be held guiltless. They believe that they can lie and bear false charges as the scribes and Pharisees did against Jesus in His day in order to preserve the system, because it is for a good purpose, and somehow still be guiltless.

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. They thought that they were rich and had need of nothing and knew not that they were miserable, poor, blind, and naked. (Revelation 3:17.) They came to the place where they thought that they could do things that God had never given them permission to do.

By Church Authority

In 364 a.d., 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 the church.

It has interested me how people study the Bible and seem to twist everything to their own wishes. That was taking place in Ellen White’s day in the 1890s. The leadership was likening themselves to Moses, and anyone who did not go along with them was like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. You see, in 1888, God had chosen Jones and Waggoner and others to give the message of Christ our righteousness, but the leaders said, “Listen, this message did not go through us. What right do these people have to preach? They are not ordained by us; they have not come through our authority. We are the leaders of God’s church.” Do you know what Ellen White says about that? “They were actuated by the same spirit that inspired Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.” The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, vol. 3, 1067. This is just one place where she says that the leaders were likened to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

I have been shocked by the way committees of the church today can somehow come to believe that they have been vested with authority to disregard God’s commandments and laws. When we suppose that we can overlook all of God’s counsels on competitive sports and introduce intercollegiate sports into our schools, are we not committing the sin of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? 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? “Korah would not have taken the course he did had he known that all the directions and reproofs communicated to Israel were from God. But he might have known this. God had given overwhelming evidence that He was leading Israel.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 404, 405. When the church fights the very ministries that God has called into existence, is it not committing the sin of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? That is the sin of the papacy, and dear friend, it is becoming the sin of the church today. It is the sin of anyone who decides that they are so good that they do not need to follow God exactly; they can make their own decisions in life.

Greek Philosophy

In Jesus’ day, the church of God had been sending some of their promising young men to the universities of Greece, especially down to Alexandria, Egypt. Of course, they remained members of God’s professed church, but they learned and brought into it the Greek philosophy, which is the basis of higher education.

The Greeks had come to the place where they believed that the way to be truly educated was to reject everything until it has been proved. When you incorporate that philosophy with the Word of God, it is disastrous, because the Word of God must be studied by faith, not by doubt. I talked with an educator at one of the denomination’s colleges, an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister, teaching according to the principles of Greek philosophy. He was asking people how they could know that God had really created the world in seven days. I asked him, “How can you instill this doubt into 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.”

When this system of doubt is applied to the Word of God, it destroys faith. You cannot study God’s Word except by faith.

In Jesus’ day, the Jew who was not educated was looked down upon as being a heathen, because everyone was supposed to have a Christian education; that was a duty of a Jewish parent. The educational system, however, had been taken over by a group of liberals called the Sadducees. They rejected much that was in the Old Testament, although they claimed to be true followers of God. What could not be proved, they reasoned away.

You know, it is interesting that there is not a record of a single Sadducee being converted or accepting Jesus as his Saviour. It is a deadly disease, this liberal philosophy that causes people to doubt the Word of God and put human reason and human logic above the Word. But in reaction to the Sadducees came a group of conservative people who said, “We do not believe in this liberal philosophy that puts logic above the Word. We believe the Word simply because God says it.” They were called the Pharisees, but sadly, 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 structure and in a system rather than in God. They began to worship the church instead of God. In fact, the church was so sacred and so important that if anyone suggested that it would be destroyed or 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 they killed the person who said that the church would be destroyed.

Do you know what is interesting? 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.

Truth will go Through

The Elijah message was the message that John the Baptist had to bring to the people in his day. (See Matthew 3:7–10). It is interesting that this same message that was to prepare a people before Jesus’ first coming is the same message that is to be brought back to the church today before Jesus’ second coming. Ellen White says, “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, 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 children to make a church out of the stones, 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 the true church of Israel. The church survived, but it was made up of different people. John the Baptist said “Do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as [our] father.’ [We are the church!] . . . Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree [not just the trees in John the Baptist’s day but every tree from Saul’s day until Jesus’ second coming] which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 3:9, 10.

The truth will go through; the movement will go through; God’s true Seventh-day Adventist people, the movement that He has ordained for these last days, are going through. God promised it would go through. This is the last church, but the church is more than a structure. The structure is only an aspect of the church. God can raise up children to this church from the stones.

Independent Ministry

God says that every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down. In Jesus’ day, the church had become so structuralized that God could not reach it through the system. God had to send John the Baptist as an independent minister, independent of the system. When Jesus came down, He also came as an independent minister. He was never sanctioned or ordained by the church. The church never laid their hands upon Him, and they did not recognize Him.

It is interesting to note that even among those who were in independent ministry, pride and self-sufficiency often came in. We find it in Peter and John. They, thankfully, eventually overcame. But this became the spirit of Judas, and he betrayed Jesus from the independent ministry, from the self-supporting work, even from His own group.

Jesus said that the prevailing problem with the church in the last days would be the problem that has been with the church in all ages—self-righteousness. That is what has brought in all of the errors of the Christian church. It is that righteousness that makes a person so righteous that they no longer need to obey God, and they can decide for themselves what is right or wrong. That was the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. “God knows that in the day you eat this fruit, that you will be so wise and so good that you will know yourself what you should do and what you should not do.” Self-righteousness, the fig leaves of self-righteousness.

God has a message to the church today. It is called the Elijah message—the Laodicean message. It is a message of love. God 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; you will not have to earn it. I will give it to you as a free gift, and then you can obey Me because you love Me. I will give you the power to obey every precept from a heart of love.” You will no longer try to find out how little you can do to get to heaven. No! You will have salvation because God has given it to you, and you will be doing everything you can do, because you love Him. None of it will earn you a place in heaven; that was earned on the cross of Calvary 2,000 years ago. Praise the Lord! But it is a gift to the obedient.

Reprinted from LandMarks, June 1994.

Pastor Marshall Grosboll, with his wife Lillian, founded Steps to Life Ministry. 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.