Stephen
Terry, Director
Mission
to the Unreached: Part 2
Commentary
for the December 16, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"Jesus
went through all the towns and villages. He taught in their synagogues. He
preached the good news of the kingdom. And he healed every illness and
sickness. When he saw the crowds, he felt deep concern for them. They were
treated badly and were helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then Jesus said
to his disciples, 'The harvest is huge. But there are only a few workers.'"
Matthew 9:35-37, NIV
When I was pastoring in the
Pacific Northwest and in the Midwest, I always placed a high emphasis on winning
members to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. After all, we teach that we are
the Remnant Church, the final, faithful church for the End Times. The church
that will greet Jesus with open arms when he returns to take his people home to
heaven where we will live for a thousand years before returning to a newly
recreated Earth. It only made sense then that everyone should want to join that
church to prepare. But why that church and not others?
The Remnant Church is identified
in the King James Version of the Bible in Revelation as those who keep the
commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.[i],[ii] In
the minds of the denomination's founders this provided a distinct demarcation
between those headed for salvation and those not. The commandments of God were
equated with the Decalogue, and while other denominations continued to urge a
morality aligned with those precepts, they did not see any import in the
commandment regarding the Sabbath. Therefore, this became an important thrust
for evangelism. While most of Christianity has substituted Sunday for the
biblical Sabbath despite no biblical command to do so, this is seen by Adventists
as a Babylonian attempt to confuse and mislead the people of God. A key part of
evangelism then is to pull people out of that confusion, out of Babylon, to be
saved.[iii]
Another key element of
Seventh-day Adventism is the acceptance of the prophetic role of Ellen White.
This is based on the idea that the "testimony of Jesus" in Revelation is the "spirit
of prophecy" in Revelation 19:10.[iv] For
this reason, the many writings of Ellen White are often referred to
collectively as the Spirit of Prophecy. What exactly that means has never been
completely settled within the denomination. A strong current of Fundamentalism
has existed within Adventism that swept through church beginning a few years after
Ellen White's death and is still seeking control of the denomination into the
present.[v] The
key elements of that Fundamentalism are a belief in an inerrant Bible, usually
referring to the King James Version, and a related inerrancy of Ellen White and
her writings. Both shibboleths are under increasing challenge as unsupportable.
Fundamentalists tend to brush the challenges off as End Times apostasy. But the
inability to face the challenges academically has resulted in a growing
progressive element within the denomination that sees the failure to recognize
these problems as disingenuous at best and outright deception at worst.
But this only sets the stage for
a more profound problem with Adventist evangelism. Because we differentiate
ourselves from other denominations in this way the result is that we target our
evangelism at members in those denominations to "come out of Babylon" and unite
with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We have not been very successful at
drawing them from established relationships with those other denominations by
being more loving, because we often are not. We have a lot of work to do in
that area. Instead, we drive them through fear of eternal loss for not keeping
the biblical Sabbath. Of course, we have our "Twenty-Eight Fundamental Beliefs"
based initially on a belief statement voted in Dallas, Texas at a General
Conference session over forty years ago, but it is the Sabbath that is the
driving wedge to separate these sheep from their current flocks. While every
denomination, every church, has members who are disgruntled for various
reasons, some of those who joined the Adventist church were strong supporters
of the churches they were in before. As a result, Adventists developed the
reputation of being "sheep stealers." When I was pastoring in the Midwest, I
was having dinner one evening with my wife in a restaurant in Kansas, and we
could overhear a conversation from another booth talking about "those sheep
stealing Adventists!" I don't know if they were aware of our presence, but it
was eye opening to hear my denomination being seen from that perspective. Many
years later, I understand how they may have felt.
One of the things that surprised
me while doing evangelism and personal Bible studies with individuals and
families was that even after acknowledging that the arguments for becoming Adventist
were sound, they still chose to remain with their current church family in
another denomination. This puzzled me until I learned why. We have a greater emphasis within Adventism on
being right as opposed to being loving. We see evangelism as a debate to be won
rather than winning hearts through love. That is how I initially became an
Adventist over fifty years ago. Those studying with me won the argument as to
who was right. Naturally, as a young pastor, I set out to do the same. It has
taken me that half century to learn better. The church's relationship to Christ
is often described as a marriage. Imagine if every marriage that took place was
a matter of winning an argument instead of a matter of the heart. Doubtless,
some marriages are driven by fear rather than love. "I am pregnant, so we need
to get married." Or "I am getting older. I need to get married before it is too
late." Or "We need to get married because neither of us has enough financial
support to have the lifestyle we want alone." While these are all arguments for
getting married, they can all be gateways to being trapped in a loveless
marriage. The same can happen to our relationship with God. We join a church because
that church has won the argument for our loyalty, but the love is not there. We
remain because we do not know anything better. Won by argument, we continue
until a better argument comes along. If a church is not loving, if a church
does not mentor members into a loving relationship with God, if a church does
not model that love to those outside the church as well as those within, we
should not be surprised that sheep stray, drawn by loving kindness they have
not experienced before.
Lest it be thought that I am
saying this in defense of Adventist sheep stealing, it is not. In most cases
those sheep are still stuck in the better argument stage of their relationship with
their church and are straying because an Adventist evangelist is winning that argument.
But sheep stray from Adventist pastures also, because they found that love does
not come with winning the debate. Instead of the loving showers of blessing one
might expect from a loving God, they find a pastor dwelling on the same idea of
winning the argument with sermons as dry as the hills of Gilboa, preaching to
hearts hardened by battle and debate instead of softened by love. An internet
acronym is FOMO. It means Fear of Missing Out. We fear anything that might
cause us to miss out on heaven. So, we retreat into our denominational enclaves
seeking safety from a world filled with threats. Instead of asking ourselves
what is the loving thing, we ask what is the safe thing? When we do that, we
declare by our example that God is not loving. God is not able to protect us.
Therefore, he probably won't protect you either. Be afraid.
The best argument for evangelism
is a loving Christian. When we walk by on the other side as the priest and the Levite
did in the "Parable of the Good Samaritan" for fear of what might happen if we
get involved, our faith becomes only an outward show and not a matter of the
heart. No doubt, the priest and Levite could give many arguments why one should
follow their teachings, but their fear betrayed their lack of love. Love and
fear cannot coexist.[vi] The entire Bible is simply
a choice that began in Eden. Which version of God will you live by? At the Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the serpent presented to Eve the idea that God
was withholding from them their full potential. Because of that fear, Eve
imbibed, and Adam, through his fear that God would cause him to lose Eve, also
tasted. To compound their error, they blamed God for creating the situation. We
still make that choice every day. Do we choose the loving character of God that
John the Apostle shared with us in his gospel and epistles, or do we choose the
fearful character of God that is portrayed in parts of the Bible instead? Where
there is fear there is manipulation. While love is an action, fear is a
reaction. We all might ask, when we are not loving, what fear is driving our
lack of love? What would be the loving alternative?
Sheep will follow a loving
voice. If we wish to avoid the loss of sheep from the flock, we might ask
ourselves if the image of God we present is loving in character, or through our
fear, do we model an angry God, ready with retribution? If the latter is true
with us, the fearful flock will stray. If we really want to be a spiritual
mentor to others, and if God is love, we will love them out of their fear and
into the loving embrace of a relationship with God. It is the only thing that
will save them and us both.