In early October, I received a phone call from one of our attorneys. He asked me to set aside a full day on my calendar the following week so he and I could deal with some very important issues in my case. He instructed me to tell my secretary not to allow any calls or any interruptions, as we would be working from nine o’clock until five o’clock. He informed me that he wanted no excuses, and since I have to follow his directions in everything concerning the lawsuit and the court, unless it goes against God, I agreed.
When I asked why he needed the whole day, he requested that I come to his office and pick up some tapes. “After you have listened to them, then you will know what this is about,” he told me.
He gave me five tapes. He said it was my homework. Beside my studies, my work and my visiting, I was to listen to these five tapes. We made an appointment for the following week, which would be a week before the trial, and I left with the tapes.
On the day of our meeting he arrived promptly and instructed me to help him bring in several boxes that he had in his truck. We carried seven boxes of documents into the office that he had been preparing for my trial.
“This is what I have been doing for six months,” he stated. “I want you to see that we have been doing our homework. However, if we are going to nail this case in our favor, the rest will depend on you.”
You know, I want the Lord’s will to be done. That is how simple it is. I feel this is the Lord’s cause, not my own, even though it has caused me a great deal of stress. I know if I am not depending wholly on the Lord, we will be nothing. We will be destroyed. But now, my attorney tells me that the outcome of the case will also depend on how I present myself in this trial.
We went into my office where we were to spend the whole day, and he sat down facing me across the table, looked me in the eye, and said, “Now, I want you to answer several questions for me.
- Is the Seventh-day Adventist faith, to you, a preference or a conviction?
- As a minister, is the name Seventh-day Adventist a preference or a conviction?
- Is the preaching, that you have been doing all this time since you have been in the Adventist Church, a preference or a conviction?”
I did not know where these questions were going, so right there in my office he gave me a little workshop on how the American Constitution works, or how the Supreme Court sees religious matters here in this country today.
“So far, he said, “I know what you have been preaching and what you believe and what the prophet says.” [When he says “What the prophet says” you know who he was talking about? Ellen G. White]. He said, “I know that the Prophet has been saying that every principle of the constitution is going to be destroyed in this country, and we might be seeing that happen very soon, but so far, the Supreme Court of the United States respects an individual’s religious convictions. So far, in this land of North America, the Supreme Court still holds respect for religious convictions.”
I believe this man is going to be a converted Seventh-day Adventist, sooner, maybe than we think. He has already read The Great Controversy. He asked for the Spirit of Prophecy books. He is reading Testimonies for the Church. And he has told me on more than one occasion that he can identify so well with my case because he belongs to, what the mother Jewish Church would call, an offshoot group. He preaches to that offshoot Jewish group every week.
He went on to explain to me the difference between a preference and a conviction. Every true man of God, every faithful man or woman of God since Abel, [the first man to die because he stood for the truth], took their religion as a conviction. Every one of them!
Look at Noah. It took a man of conviction to preach the message that he was preaching in his day. Especially when the whole world was against him. It took a man of religious convictions, not a man who took his religious experience as a preference.
You see, even the Supreme Court of this nation knows that a preference can be changed. If you have been taking your religion as a preference, or religious belief as a preference, that means that, in some given circumstances, you can change, you can compromise. But when you have a conviction, there is no compromise. There is no change. There is no giving up. When you have a conviction, you are willing to die. That is conviction! A conviction, according to the law of this land, is respected because you are willing to put your life into that conviction. If you are not willing to go that far, then you are taking your religious belief as a preference, not a conviction.
While my attorney was telling me all of this, I began to understand just a little, why Sister White said the majority will forsake us, and forsake the faith. Because Satan has already been trapping many of our brethren into compromising, or preaching a smooth message in place of the message that God has given us, just for the sake of peace, love and comfort.
In Daniel 3:1 it says, “Nebuchadnezzar, the king, made an image of gold.” Every Seventh-day Adventist is familiar with that image of gold. And every time we talk about it, or read about it, or hear about that image, what comes to our minds? The image of the beast that is to be formed in the last days.
We, as historic Seventh-day Adventists, believe that we are living precisely in that time. The Lord has been raising up men and women who are going to finish this work in righteousness in a short time! So we believe we are living in that time when the image of the beast is being formed. The only thing missing is to make the enforcement, to see the oven, the fire there in front of us.
When I read this story, I become more convinced that if we do not have a true conviction of our religious belief, then we are going to give up. We are going to give up because Satan knows our weak point, and he is going to work hard on that point; whether it be appetite, worldliness, or sins that have been cherished in our lives. We have to pray to the Lord to show us what our weak point is, because Satan knows it and he is going to work hard on that.
We see in the Story in Daniel 3:6 that the order went out, “and whoso fall not down and worshipeth shall in the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” Even the enemies of these three faithful Hebrews, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, knew their religious beliefs and principles. That tells me that they were not afraid to expose their religious belief. They were not hiding. They did not say, “Well, we can bow down here, because God knows what is really in our hearts, and He knows we really only worship Him.”
My Jewish attorney revealed to me something of the Jewish mentality. Back in the days of the Inquisition when the Roman Catholic came to the Jew and said, “Are you a Roman Catholic?” The Jews reasoned in their minds this way; “If I say no, they are going to kill me. They are going to burn me. But if I say, yes, the Lord God will forgive me on the Day of Atonement.” That is their mentality. Once every year they can ask God for forgiveness for all of their sins and be forgiven, even if they have renounced Him. That means that they have no convictions.
But these three faithful, godly men, they were not afraid. They lived their faith openly before their enemies, and they did not try to conceal their faith. I can identify with that.
The day came, and when it did, these three men did not know that God was going to deliver them. Perhaps the king thought he could scare them a little bit so maybe they would start shaking and come back and say, “You know what? We have changed; we are going to make a reformation in our beliefs. We are going to see if we can give up a little for the sake of unity. It looks like we are the only ones in the whole Kingdom that are causing trouble. So since we know the Lord loves us, we will kneel down.” But they did not say that, did they? “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.’” [Daniel 3:16, 17]. What an example of conviction we find here. “We don’t need time to think it over, O King! We can answer you right now!” They would say the same thing to the Pope if they were living today!
That is the kind of conviction that is needed in the ranks of God’s people today. A true conviction of our religious beliefs, a conviction that can only come through the Holy Spirit. So far, I am tempted to think that we have been taking our religious experience as a preference. I have heard brethren of mine say, “Look, I like to go to this big church. To me I feel so good with my family there. You should see how we clap and rejoice. We do not have to worry about this persecution thing that you have been preaching about. We feel so happy!” This is preference, not conviction.
I have been in several countries where this same kind of thing is taking place. Many Adventist churches in North America are starting to have Sunday worship. “It is a good way to witness to our Catholic brethren,” they say. They use a little quote from Sister White that says we have to be careful, not to defile the Sunday law when it comes. But she also said that we should not give the slightest appearance that we are worshipping that day [Sunday]. You see how Satan is already working in our people’s minds?
But in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego we do not see this kind of a wavering. Instead of waiting, trying to deceive the king into thinking that they might need some time to think about it, they said, “Do you know what, king? We are not careful to answer you. Right now we can answer to you. “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace.” Daniel 3:17.
King, you go ahead and do it! But our God can deliver us. “But even if our God does not deliver us, we are not going to worship the image.” [Daniel 3:18]. That is true conviction. That is a million dollar verse! They were not sure God would deliver them, but even if He did not, they were so convicted of their beliefs that they were not going to serve the king or his gods in any way!
Are we ready for these things? If we are not ready to say, “O King, we will not serve thy gods,” very soon it might be too late. We need to search our souls to discover what Babylonian gods we are still serving today.
In these last days we also have seen a king in the earth being raised up for many years, like every other king of this earth. We see the image, but we also see a faithful group of men and women, similar to these three Hebrew men, who are going to be standing up for the truth, whether God delivers them or not.
“Christ is coming the second time, with power unto salvation. To prepare human beings for this event, He has sent the First, Second, and Third Angels’ Messages. These angels represent those who receive the truth, and with power open the gospel to the world.” Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, 978, 979. They do not just receive the truth, they are not going to hide this truth among themselves, but they are going to make the truth a part of them. So much a part of them that nobody is ever going to hide it under any circumstances, even up to death if it is possible.
Revelation 14:6 says, “I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven.” Now we read that the angel represents those who receive and proclaim those three angels’ messages. Is that not true? So this angel was flying in the midst of heaven. Why flying? Because one of the things that we see here is the speed with which the work was going to be carried on.
This angel is flying in the midst of heaven. Why in the “midst” of heaven. I see, brothers and sisters, the Bible telling us not only the speed with which the work will go forward, but also the experience of those men and women who are going to be involved in that work. Their experience is not going to be an earthly, or worldly experience, it is going to be a heavenly experience.
In vision, Sister White was looking for God’s people all over the earth. She could not see them. But the angel said, “No, look above.” This will be the experience of the people who have a true conviction of their religious beliefs in their hearts, an experience that God has for us today.
I see one thing in prophecy; I see that when these nations will unite and establish the Sunday law, trouble is going to come. That is what we see in prophecy. We are seeing strange things going on.
In The Great Controversy, there is a chapter called “The Final Warning,” Please allow me to review a few things from this chapter with you.
“Heretofore those who presented the truths of the Third Angel’s Message have often been regarded as mere alarmists. Their predictions that religious intolerance would gain control of the United States, that church and state would unite to persecute those who keep the commandments of God, have been pronounced groundless and absurd. It has been confidently declared that this land could never become other than what it has been—the defender of religious freedom. But as the question of enforcing Sunday observance is widely agitated, the event so long doubted and disbelieved is seen to be approaching, and the Third Angel’s Message will produce an influence which it could not have had before.” The Great Controversy, 605, 606.
When the Sunday law is widely agitated, then we are going to see how a wise God has raised up the Seventh-day Adventist people, and why it is so important to keep in the mind of the people of every generation, this issue of Sunday observance being enforced.
“God has sent His servants to rebuke sin, both in the world and in the church. But the people desire smooth things spoken to them.…As the controversy extends into new fields, and the minds of the people are called to God’s downtrodden law, Satan is astir. The power attending the message will only madden those who oppose it.” Ibid. 608
Oh yes, every time we put one of our ads in the paper, we get many, many letters, mad, even cursing us. But brothers and sisters, just because we do not want those people to get mad, are we are going to hide the message, the truth? No!
God gives a special truth for the people in an emergency. Who dare refuse to publish it? God has been giving this message, the last message that mankind is going to have before His coming. The Three Angels’ Message, while Satan has been making us believe that, instead of asking for the power of the Holy Spirit to finish this work, we can just entertain ourselves in the ecumenical movement, in Celebration and so on. I sometimes think we are more willing to identify ourselves with the Roman Catholic Church than God’s people.
“The Lord gives a special truth for the people in an emergency. Who dare refuse to publish it? He commands His servants to present the last invitation of mercy to the world. They cannot remain silent, except at the peril of their souls” Ibid, 609.
Yet Satan has made us believe that if we preach this message we do not have love, instead we have hate. He twists everything around. But we must speak the truth, not fearing the consequences. Mrs. White writes, “Christ’s ambassadors have nothing to do with consequences. They must perform their duty and leave results with God. Ibid., 609, 610.
One of the dear men from the General Conference told me, “Oh, but you do not understand. That book, The Great Controversy, was written for the last century, not for now.”
You mean those truths were relevant for the 1800s, but not now? So now God has changed? He will create a new book, The Great Controversy for Today? No!
The Papacy, the beast, and Satan’s agents are all getting angry, but God is able to deliver us. Recently I went to a Seventh-day Adventist Church, and I noticed that the board outside was blank. When I asked why they did not have the name of the church on the board, the brother bowed his head. He said, “We had a sign there identifying our church as a Seventh-day Adventist Church, but since we heard about your lawsuit, we had to take it down.” I felt like I was living in the dark ages when people were hiding from the Roman Catholics! When people who revealed the conviction of their faith would be burned at the stake. That is how far our institution has gone in playing God. People are afraid, just like the Protestants were afraid of the Roman Catholic Church. I tell you this so you can see how far we have gone in this business of suing and threatening.
The Papacy is no longer hiding their plans. In the October 28 Florida Catholic, it says that they are going to meet with about twenty religious leaders at the Vatican at the end of the year. They are making plans! They are uniting. If Satan’s people are getting together, uniting, should not God’s people be united? This is of great importance! God’s people must press together, as Sister White says. The messages of Revelation 14 were given because the principles of the churches have become corrupted. Revelation 18 explains the condition that they are in. The whole world is guilty of receiving the mark of the beast. But— the prophet sees a company who are not worshipping the beast and who are not receiving the mark in their foreheads or in their hands. “Here is the patience of the saints,” he declares, “here are those who keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 12:17.
May the Lord give us the faith of Jesus. Then this whole problem of unity among ministries and God’s people is going to be a problem of the past. Satan has been uniting his army already. It is going to be only a small company that will be willing, with conviction in their heart, to follow the Light wherever it takes them.