by Patricio Menéndez

Many people have said that grave mistakes have been made in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. These mistakes are documented to have been made intentionally and for less than pure motives to the very highest levels of church leadership.

Does this mean that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is doomed to die a tortured, shameful, death? Can none of those decisions made or positions taken be reversed? Cannot the damage be undone?

I suppose that a relevant question is, Is there enough worth saving in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to prolong it’s existence?

There are many who would love to see nothing more than the ultimate disgrace and complete demise of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

As it stands and exists today I and many others cannot see it surviving. It has done and is doing everything it has accused “other churches” of doing.

Unless every Seventh-day Adventist from the lowliest to the highest status are willing to bow their heads and admit that great errors in policy and theology have been made nothing can be corrected. The only thing stopping the Seventh-day Adventist Church from reaching its fullest potential is pride. Is pride, the refusal to admit mistakes, the teaching and example of Jesus Christ?

The very first step that must be taken is to put all the cards on the table and publicly and openly deal with the massive amount of known and well documented problems with Ellen White. For more than 100 years that has been a constant, ever present nightmare for the church. Every year, the information age brings new discrepancies to light, adding to the embarrassment, adding to the shame and making the Seventh-day Adventist Church and it’s members look ever more deluded in the eyes of the world. It is often harder to see problems from the inside. The Seventh-day Adventist Church can no longer just keep hiding from reality. It is no longer an option.

No one denies that Ellen White made a big impact on the early Seventh-day Adventist Church. No one claims that Ellen White set out to intentionally lead the Seventh-day Adventist Church into false hope and belief. There are many truly inspired/inspirational Christian writers in this world, that does not make them all prophets.

Until the Seventh-day Adventist Church is at least willing to confront these long overdue issues the wound will continue to fester, and the infection continue to grow worse. The rate of attrition will continue to rise and the hemorrhaging of theologians and scholars will continue accelerating unabated. That is definitely NOT how to grow a denomination! Refusing to admit that problems exist and refusing to deal with them openly and honestly is not in the best interests of any group, social, political, or religious. Just as refusing honesty and openness in a marriage relationship destroys the unity and precedes ruin, so in any group religious or otherwise refusing to honestly and openly discuss and work out problems results in alienation and ruin. There are no exceptions.

It would be better to go public and split the Seventh-day Adventist Church in two so that at least those seeking truth can finally be a part of a denomination headed in the right direction. Let the “old guard” keep their “traditions of men” and let them take them to their graves. Let those who see the potential of the Biblical teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to lighten the world for Christ have a chance to go back to where the pride of man led to decisions made for preservation of power rather than truth so that the right path can finally be taken and the light that has been hid for over 100 years be made to shine.

The only teachings unique to Adventism are the unbiblical teachings of Ellen White. Every other doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is taught by some other denomination, Sabbath keeping or otherwise. What sets the Seventh-day Adventist Church apart from the rest is its comprehensive collection of true Biblical teachings. As stated earlier they are all scattered hither and yon in other churches but uniquely present as a cohesive whole in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. That is something worth salvaging. That is something worth fighting for.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church started with a few people who were seeking God’s face in truth and humility. Pride and the refusal to admit when mistakes were made played a major part in the road that lead to the increasing crisis facing the Seventh-day Adventist Church today. It would be a tragedy of eternal proportions if that same pride ultimately led to the demise of what was poised to be the greatest spiritual revolution since Martin Luther.

Anyone who takes a look at early SDA publications finds teachings that were called “central pillars” that were stated that to remove them would be to destroy the Seventh-day Adventist church. Those teachings are no longer taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Seventh-day Adventist Church has continued to exist. There was no public admission of error just a slight of hand and a silent backing away from these first false teachings. That did not destroy the church and I can see no reason why any open admission of wrong would really have any lasting negative impact on the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The idea that for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to publicly admit that based on the incredibly vast amount of evidence against Ellen White that she is not and never was a prophet would destroy the church is nonsense. That is a fear tactic by the administration to protect its power. On the contrary I believe that if such a pronouncement by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists would cause millions members, pastors, and theologians who have left the Seventh-day Adventist Church to return. The evidence is that the majority who leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church do not leave over doctrinal issues but the arrogance and legalistic lunacy of the plagiarized teachings of Ellen White. I would suggest that a return to Biblical truth would cause more people to re-join the Seventh-day Adventist Church than to leave it.

That same deep and systematic study of the Bible to learn what is true that flamed the reformation rather than constantly struggling to find texts that can be intentionally taken out of context or intentionally mis-translated or intentionally mis-interpreted to support some un-biblical doctrine is what is needed today. The plethora of reference and study materials available to everyone today means that anyone can sit down at a computer and within minutes see that what they had been told was absolute inspired truth is just so much rubbish. In Ellen White’s day, very, very, very, few people had access to the enormous amount of Biblical information that we have today. Even if you are low income and can’t afford to buy a library full of expensive books there are innumerable commentaries, theological dictionaries, concordances, lexicons, etc., etc. readily available on inexpensive CDROM for the home computer or on-line. With more than a dozen versions of the Bible in searchable databases, you can learn what the Bible really says. You can be a good “Berean”. This is the information age and you just can’t hide false teachings under the guise of religious superiority any longer. The Berean mentality cannot be forced to blindly accept what is fed to it. Those days are over and it is time for the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to recognize that.

In frustration with the lumbering bureaucracy of the Seventh-day Adventist Church leadership a few churches have “split” away to try to bring the old traditions into their generation age in the same manner that Jesus did. They are meeting with the same response too. Truth is progressive. Understanding grows. The approach to truth and it’s implementation changes slightly with each progressing generation. Each generation of Rabbis of old reinterpreted the “Law and the Prophets” to make it relevant to that generation. That in no way changed or made light of “the truth”.

As Rick Warren stated in his book “The Purpose Driven Church” you do not have to take away Biblical truth to attract members. You do not have to water down the teachings of Jesus to make religion palatable.

Many people are truly seeking God’s will and are not afraid to step out in faith to follow the teachings of the Rabbi of Galilee.

Bringing Jesus’ teachings into the 21st century does not change them. It does not weaken the perfect law of God. If you study the teachings and parables of Jesus you find that He put a lot of “modern” twists to the old teachings. He was profoundly radical and unafraid to challenge the old ways of thinking or looking at the old teachings. The teachings of Paul were a serious change of direction from the previous generations. The fundamental principles never changed but the interpretation underwent a huge re-think. Did it blow the church apart or benefit it? Was John afraid to speak up about his revolutionary views on the nature of Christ? Don’t forget that he did not have the benefit of looking nearly 2000 years into the future to see where his and the other disciples ideas would end up. None of the disciples were executed because they conservatively defended the status quo.

I believe that this is applicable to the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They are supposed to be elected to lead the march forward not staunchly defend the status quo of the past in order to maintain their prestige.

There are really only two options for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It can either keep struggling along crippled with a monkey on it’s back that grows bigger and heavier with each passing generation till the weight of that monkey finally crushes the church, or, it can do what it has done in the past and let go its “central pillars” that have proven to be false to pursue the teachings of the Bible with renewed vigor. It would be better for the world at large and our own selves in our day to first admit the errors and then let them go.

It would be a shame for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to stick to its arrogant human pride refusing to admit its error and die, the world losing the one church with such a complete set of truths. Pride is the one and only thing stopping it from admitting and correcting its mistakes! Such a tragic demise does NOT have to happen, it does NOT have to be inevitable!! This tragedy can be prevented. This church can be resuscitated. This church can be brought back from the brink. This church can get back on track, “better late than never”.

Sola Scriptura!!

Pat

© 2005 Patricio Menéndez