Monthly Archives: October 2018

I may not be good enough, but God is!

Lately I have spent considerable time studying the topic of the so-called Last Generation Theology. According to the supporters of this theory there will be only a small group of Adventist believers ready for Christ’ s coming. And this “last generation” must be perfect. In my recent book IN ALL HUMILITY: Saying “No” to Last Generation Theology, I explain why this view is not just wrong but also very dangerous.

The thought that ultimately just a very small minority of the people (also of those who confess to believe in Christ) is a persistent idea which makes many Adventists believers unsure or even desperate. How much hope can they have in the light of the statement by Ellen G. White that only one in twenty will be saved? Many keep asking themselves the question: “Will I belong to that “remnant” (see Rev. 12:17) that will be acceptable to the Lord? Will I ever be good enough to one day receive eternal life?

I have become ever more convinced of the fact that we must present the gospel as “good news”. There is salvation for whoever believes (Rom. 10:9). It is God’s greatest desire that all would enter his kingdom (1 Tim. 2:3, 4). This had led some to believe  that a God of love will not allow anyone to be lost. I find this view, that is known as universalism, very attractive. It seems to fit a lot better with a God of love than the idea that there will be an eternally burning hell fire. Fortunately, soon after their origin Adventists understood that there is no biblical ground for the idea that the “wicked” will suffer never-ending torture. However, it is clear that there have always been (and still are) people who consciously refuse the accept the offer of eternal life.

The Bible texts that speak of a “remnant” that will be saved should not blind us to the many Bible words which proclaim the good news that God’s house has many “mansions” (John. 14:2). However, living in one of these many “mansions” requires a personal decision. The statements about the “remnant” assure us that there have always been (and there will always be) people who make this good choice. Even though it may seem that in this world  faith is on its way out, we have the good news that God’s enterprise is not a lost cause. On the contrary. There will eventually be a multitude that no one can count (Rev. 7:9) and a enormous crowd from “all tribes and peoples, and from every tongue and nation” (Rev. 5:9) that will enter God’s new world.

This enormous multitude is als described in Rev. 7:4-8 in terms of the 144.000. This is a symbolic label for God’s people in all its completeness. The number is based on units of 12 and 10. Twelve is the number of God’s people and ten is the number of completeness! In other words: No one—absolutely no one—of those whom God counts as His, will go missing. This makes me think of the words of that beautiful English hymn: “There is a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea.” Many Adventist have not yet fully understood this. When push comes to shove, it does not depend on whether I am good enough, but on the certainty that God is good enough!

 

Will time do its work?

A few days ago my wife said to me: “Why, for a change, don’t you write this week a “pleasant” blog rather than all the time commenting on the situation in the church? Perhaps this advice was appropriate, but I should mention that she also very closely follows what is happening in the church, locally and world-wide, and in most cases shares my opinion.  I will, however, do my very best to honor her request next week, but his week’s events in Battle Creek do require some comments.

To be honest: I do wonder from time to time whether expressing my opinions on church matters does make much difference. I realize that I am mostly preaching to the choir. Of course, there are always some readers who simply want to discover what terrible heresy my newest blog contains, with a view to immediately airing this on their favorite websites (which I do not visit). From time to time people send me a message to inform me that someone said something negative about me on such and such a site, but I have ceased to worry about that long ago. The vast majority of my faithful readers are at the same spiritual wavelength where I am, and have the same concerns about their church. All the time readers assure me that my blogs and other writings encourage them. Together with other similar voices this keeps them going. They are happy to discover that there are others who think like they do, and dare to say so.

I must, however, admit that at times I find it difficult to remain optimistic. Watching last Sunday, until way past midnight (Dutch time), the live stream of the debate about the proposed measures against the “con-compliant” leaders and rebellious unions/conferences, and seeing the results of the vote, I wondered more strongly than ever before whether this is still my church. The next day I asked myself whether I should perhaps re-read my latest book FACING DOUBT: A book for Adventist believers ‘on the margins. In this book I try to encourage people who are ‘on the margins’ of the church to stay with the church, in spite of many negative experiences! Perhaps the book can also encourage me.

In the past few days a flood of communications have made it clear that the session of the Annual Council did not solve anything, but possibly further hardened the standpoints. There is no doubt that also in the coming period a good number of conferences and unions will insist on treating their female pastors in the same way as they treat their male colleagues. I hope (and this hope is, I think, justified), that their number will increase, in spite of the threats from the GC.

It seems undesirable that the protests against the decisions of the General Conference take the form of withholding funds that would normally be sent to the GC. Abuse of power from the side of the top of the church’s structure must not be answered with another kind of display of power: money. Loyalty towards the organization remains important, but when in certain instances the denomination’s structure totally ignores the conscience of constitutionally elected leaders of conferences and other organizations, it is justified (or even obligatory) to disobey GC policies and to deviate from GC approaches, regardless of the consequences.

Could it be that time will have to do its work? As the decades went by many ideas and practices have gradually changed without deliberations and decisions at the highest level. (A clear example is how the  church’s attitude towards military service and the bearing of weapons has shifted, without any formal decision by an Annual Council or a GC session.) This led to increased diversity in the church but did not endanger its fundamental unity. I would wish that the topic of ordaining female pastors would no longer appear on the agenda of GC meetings and that the church would simply accept how things in this regard will develop in the coming years. Is this realistic? Perhaps not so. very realistic, but it seems to me that the church has no other option if we want to stay together and not each time see a sharp divide between winners and losers.

In the meantime I have the privilege of focusing for a few days on something totally different. Last Tuesday my wife and I flew to California, where next Sunday I will officiate at the wedding of good friends. In addition, it will be great to see many friends and colleagues around Loma Linda and to relax for a few days after some very hectic months.

A flawed defense

A few days ago Adventist News Network(ANN), the official news channel of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, released a remarkable statement. Its heading was: “Questions regarding the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its leadership.”  It was, of course, no coincidence that this publication occurs just prior to the beginning of the Annual Council, the annual meeting of the denomination’s full executive committee, with representatives from all around the world. But it was rather surprising to see that the top leadership of the church apparently felt the need to publicly defend itself against a torrent of criticisms and accusations about its leadership style that is widely seen as less than democratic, top-down, and bureaucratic. The document strongly denies that the leaders exercise a kind of “kingly” power and are turning the system of church governance from a bottom-up democratic organization into a hierarchy in which all authority flows from the top downwards, and in which total “compliance” is required from all the constituent entities and their leaders.

On the surface many may find the document quite convincing (which is, of course, the intention), but closer analysis shows that problems are downplayed, important issues are ignored or misinterpreted, and that the concerns that have been expressed by so many unions and prominent church leaders are not taken seriously or, at least, not understood.

I was, particularly, struck by the way in which the Adventist process of defining doctrine was described in this GC statement.  I am quoting a few lines where a comparison is made with the Roman Catholic process of making doctrinal decisions.

The papacy is a system of centralized, top-down authority centered in an infallible pope and his cardinals. But in the Adventist Church authority flows in both directions, from the bottom-up and the top-down, through representatives who include at all committee levels women as well as men, and lay members as well as pastors. 

In the Catholic Church, decisions on doctrine are decreed by the pope and the top theologians of the church. In contrast, within the Adventist Church, the statement of 28 Fundamental Beliefs simply summarizes what members, based on their own Bible study, already believe. Only the largest and most representative gathering of leaders and lay members at the General Conference Session held every five years can modify this statement of beliefs, the Church Manual, and certain GC policies, because they affect every level of the church. . . .

This paragraph paints a picture that differs significantly from reality. The description of the process by which the Roman Catholic Church defines doctrine is a caricature of reality. For one thing: it fails to mention the important role of major church councils. But more worrisome is the description of how our own church defines or re-defines fundamental beliefs.  To say that the Fundamental Beliefs simply summarize what members, based on their own Bible study, already believe, is a far cry from what actually happens. If we just look at the latest revision of our Fundamental Beliefs in San Antonio in 2015, these re-statements were most definitely not a “summary” of what the members “already believe”. The changes were forced upon the church by the denomination’s top leadership, with little or no input from any prominent theologians, apart from some members of the Biblical Research Institute (that falls under the supervision of the General Conference).

I do not know who was responsible for drafting this recent defensive statement of ANN. We must assume that it was initiated and controlled by the GC leadership. Every organization has, of course, the right, to defend itself when it feels it is unfairly attacked. But when this is done with very questionable arguments, this adds to the rather widespread uneasiness about how the General Conference operates, rather than allaying the grave concerns of a vast number of church members around the world.

 

A decisive moment in the history of Adventism

Adventist historian George R. Knight[1]believes we have reached a defining moment in the history of Adventism. What does the future hold? Will we still be a church in which power flows from the bottom upward, or will we have to accept that a hierarchy of power dictates in detail from above what all members of the church worldwide must believe, and which rules and regulations each denominational entity and institution must obey? Will we still strive for unity in diversity, or will uniformity be imposed by a control system that takes punitive measures against all who are considered to be out of line?

I find it increasingly difficult to understand how things got out of hand in the way they did. The decades of discussions about the ordination of women pastors had at long last led to a majority view that there are no real biblical objections against WO. This at least was the outcome of the TOSC process, even though the GC decided to discard the work of this 100-plus member committee. Nonetheless, the GC session of 2015 was asked to vote on a motion to allow world division to agree with the ordination of female pastors in their territory, if they felt the time to do so had come. This was, in fact, a further recognition of the fact that there were no real theological objections. There would, of course, never have been a proposal to give divisions the option to discard the Sabbath or to go their own way with regard to some other crucial issue. However, no such theological objection seems to have existed with regard to the ordination of women.

We know what was decided in San Antonio in 2015. The process was highly flawed and many delegates voted against the motion because they had not fully understood its intent. A few unions felt (and feel) that the ordination of their female pastors is a matter of conscience and that they therefore can no longer discriminate on the basis of gender. I can somewhat understand that the leaders of the General Conference find this rather difficult to deal with. But I completely fail to understand their continued attempts to place these unions and their leaders in the dock and enforce compliance. It is extremely unfortunate that the matter has degenerated into an ugly power struggle. And in recent months further oil has been poured on the fire by devising a system of ‘compliance committees’ that looks very much like a kind of inquisition.

Never before has there been so much open protest prior to an important meeting of church officials as we currently see. Publications and open letters from a number of unions plead with the members of the GC executive committee, that is to meet within days from now, to stop the unfortunate process that has been initiated.

Wherever I have been in the past months and have spoken with church leaders and members, I have met with the same question: “What do you think will happen at the meeting in Battle Creek?” I can only say that I do not know how things will go, but I fervently hope that everything will end well. I am not about to leave my church. But I have lost much of my respect for some of the top church leaders and I am deeply disappointed at recent developments. I agree with a retired church leader who recently told me: “The church did survive the Folkenberg debacle and I trust that, with God’s help, the church will also find a way to survive the Wilson debacle.”  Together with many others I hope and pray that the church will emerge without further damage from the current crisis rather than sink into an ever deeper ecclesial quickmire.

 

[1]See his recent publications and a recent interview: https://spectrummagazine.org/interviews/2018/most-serious-issue-church-has-ever-faced-interview-george-r-knight