Stephen
Terry, Director
;
The
Seal of God and Mark of the Beast: Part 2
Commentary
for the June 17, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"When
he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been
slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They
called out in a loud voice, 'How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you
judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?'" Revelation 6:9-10,
NIV
When a small child suffers an
injury, it is of catastrophic importance. A train wreck could cost the lives of
dozens only a few miles away, and the child will not care. What relates to his
immediate pain is all important. Whether a kiss or a bandage, the relief provided
by either is what is sought. Any other interests are secondary. Even dealing with
the cause of the injury is secondary until the child is comforted and placid.
Even religious denominations
function in this manner. Suffering the devastation of the Great Disappointment
of 1844, we began casting about for something, anything that would comfort our
anguish. There were no Seventh-day Adventists yet. The church did not officially
incorporate until almost two decades later. There were only people who were
fixated on the pain they were experiencing and seeking to comfort one another.
This caused them to entertain errors they might not have otherwise. One of
those errors was the Seven-year Delay Theory which predicted that Jesus would come
physically in October 1851 instead of 1844. Of course, that did not happen.
Another error was the Shut Door
Theory. That belief was based on the idea that something important did happen
in October 1844 and a line of demarcation was put in place between those who
were saved and the lost with no hope of salvation for the lost after that date.
Evangelism therefore was pointless. Again, this was determined to be erroneous,
and the church eventually accepted the need to evangelize prior to the Parousia.
A third error, more pernicious
than the others because of its greater staying power, is the Investigative
Judgment Doctrine. This found its genesis in an idea proposed by Hiram Edson in
October 1844. He stated that instead of Jesus returning then, he entered a
judgment phase in the Holy of Holies in the heavenly sanctuary. Like a kiss on
an owie, this simplistic response brought comfort to
many who felt certain that October 1844 held cosmic significance despite the
disappointment. Unfortunately, it ushered in a far greater heresy than the Adventist
founders could have anticipated. This was because judgment was to begin with
the house of God.[i] What happens then when that
is completed at some unknown time and judgment moves on to the rest? The answer
proposed by some was that one must be perfect from the point of judgment. Since
no one knew when that moment would occur, the emphasis became on achieving
perfection as soon as possible. Those not a part of the household of faith were
not spared this fear either. They were faced with the same problem when Jesus
was to cease that intercession and come for his people. Their time without an
intercessor would be shorter, but still required perfection all the same.
Seventh-day Adventism has struggled with this thread of perfectionism for
several generations. Rather than question the Investigative Judgment foundation
it is based upon, we entertain the schizophrenia that purports to rely solely
on the grace of Christ, while shuddering in fear that the imperfection of our
works will betray us into perdition. The reluctance to examine the roots of
that perfectionism has even gone so far as the defrocking of those ordained
individuals who might venture so much as a timid, "Why?" There is a great fear
that such a question risks toppling the entire edifice
of denominational dogmatics. As a result, we have continued to build ever more
intricate and contrived theological structures that are indeed threatened by
collision with sounder theology. We expend ever more energy and resources
directed at thwarting those who would shake the tree whose limb we are so precariously
perched upon. And of course, due to this heretical perfectionism, our theology
must be assumed to be perfect as well. Anyone who dares suggest otherwise will
find themselves in company with Jesus, whom the perfectionist Pharisees claimed
was working on behalf of the Devil. Jesus referred to pharisaical blindness, an
inability to see their true spiritual state because of their perfectionist pretensions.[ii]
We have added to this
self-deception by considering ourselves a prophetic movement of destiny, a remnant
called forth to judge the sins of the world through our example of
perfectionist obedience to the decalogue. We create intricate histories to
support our "historicist" prophetic interpretations as opposed to those of preterists
or futurists. As part of this historicist approach which denies any sort of
earlier complete fulfillment of prophecy, we are led to believe that religious
persecution that led to the loss of thousands of Waldensian
and Huguenot lives in the 16th century was of far greater importance
to the writers of the books of Daniel and Revelation than the deaths of over
six million Jews slaughtered in the religious persecution of the 20th
century. The arrogance of such a position is astonishing, especially when it is
constructed to excuse the Millerite error regarding October 1844.
There is a saying that hindsight
is always 20/20. Nothing exemplifies that more than the historicist perspective
of Adventist theology. For example, although no one apparently saw it ahead of
time. Looking back for a period of 1260 days that could be interpreted
prophetically as years,[iii]
it was discovered that in 533, the pagan emperor Justinian issued a decree to
put the Pope in charge in Rome. But if we use that 533 date and add 1260 to it,
we come up with nothing that suits our purpose. So, then we tweak it as only
hindsight allows us to do and point out that the Pope was not really in charge
until five years later. Moving the date like that, we then add 1260 to 538 and
come up with 1798, the year the Pope of that time was arrested by Napoleon. The
magic of adjusting the dates a little and applying the idea that each day
prophetically equals a year allows us to trot out a horse of a different color
than the preterists would present. But it doesn't make us right any more than
the Pharisees were right in their ideas of who and what the Messiah would be.
They also based their opinions on self-serving proof texting. Religion for them
and us is more about being right than being saved.
Despite Jesus telling us that no
man knows the day or the hour of the Parousia, in the past, we have set the
date for his return in 1844 and 1851 and failed in both predictions. Unwilling
to admit our failure, we set about proving that we were right, nonetheless. We
strove to advance the heresy of perfectionism to hide our shame. We buried the
freedom of Pauline theology in Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians and replaced it
with an emphasis on perfect works to vindicate our theological constructs with the
Jacobine theology of the Epistle of James. We have also ferreted out perfectionism
from the Epistle to the Hebrews despite both epistles, James
and Hebrews, being of questionable authorship.
People tend to do bizarre and
extreme things to hide their shame. When John the Baptist pointed out the shame
of Herod stealing his brother's wife, Herod imprisoned him and eventually
beheaded him. Although he sought to hide his shame by such actions, history
preserved the record of that cruelty and perpetuated the shame that might
otherwise have been forgotten. Like Herod, we are troubled by the shame of
1844, but rather than confess the error, like a poker player, we have chosen to
double down on our bet continually since then. That process always leads to the
gambler's devastation and greater shame than admitting the first loss and walking
away from the pretension that somehow they can make up for the loss some other
way than admitting the error.
The sad corollary to all of this
is the effect it has on the average Seventh-day Adventist church member. As we
have created ever more contrived dogmatics, members are less and less able to
articulate those theologies and have defaulted understanding to an elite corps
of apologists who echo official perspectives on dogma in denominational
publications. Not surprisingly, some of those chart a
different course when they are no longer on the denominational payroll and
constrained to not bite the hand that feeds them. It is easier to deny that the
emperor is naked when the well-being of your family and the future of your
position are at stake. But for those on the outside of such employment looking
in, the view is as readily discernible as to the child who proclaimed the truth
about the emperor's nakedness. Heresy, even a perfectionist one, does not make
a good suit.