Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Reformation & the Remnant: 500 Years of Protestant History & Liberty

Nicholas Miller

1. Why Listen to the Reformers

Why don't you join me with a word of prayer?

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your watch care over us.

We thank you for the great gift that we've been given in the freedoms that we have in this country, the lamp that the Statue of Liberty holds at the entrance to the harbor where many, many thousands and millions of people have come to enjoy the freedoms that have made America what it is today.

Those freedoms are under stress and strain and we're called to witness to them, but we're also called to witness to the greater freedom that Jesus Christ offers us.

And I pray that we may faithfully do that and appreciate that freedom in our own lives.

So, this has been a significant year this last year Many people the experts historians not Adventist evangelists, but others have said something Dramatic is happening in our world is happening in America, right?

That people have been very, very surprised and even shocked at the unfolding of events over the last 6 months.

And as an Adventist, I believe that these events have something of a prophetic significance to them.

I think we'd have to be blind not to see some level of that.

And so the contrast that we have in our country, whichever, wherever you are politically, I'm not into partisan presentations.

I talk about principles, not about political parties.

Whichever side of the political divide you're on, you have to admit that we've entered a new era of greater partisanship and disagreement and separation where we not only have different opinions but we're now developing different sets of facts, right?

That there's different news outlets depending on which ideology you're a part of and those different news outlets report different kinds of facts, different sets of facts.

And in a church that's committed to preaching the truth, it's a very disturbing time when no 1 can seem to agree on basic fundamental things like what a fact is.

And this year is also significant for another reason.

It's the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

500 years ago this year, this coming October is the actual date, October 31, Martin Luther hammered up his 95 theses, or at least had them printed in Wittenberg, challenging the salvation system of the Church of Rome, challenging the system of indulgences, and sparking what was really the greatest development change in the history of the West.

In fact, many historians who don't particularly, aren't Christians or believe in the Bible, will still acknowledge that the beginning of the modern West was probably somewhere in the early 16th century.

They may not choose this date particularly, but it's around this date.

And it's because what happened there fundamentally changed our view of how the individual should relate to the church and the state.

And I'm gonna get a little more into that in this presentation.

But I think part of the reason that we're having this conflict in our country is that we've forgotten our Protestant heritage.

Right, and we're splitting off to the left and off to the right.

So yeah, that's probably better for you too.

And we have a kind of hardcore skepticism, secularism on the left, that wants to overthrow religious freedom.

And on the right, in increasing response to that, we have perhaps an energized religious right that wants to institutionalize the Christian heritage of our country.

And both points of view seem to be overlooking what our true Protestant heritage teaches.

And I think it's in part, as a historian, It's in part due to the great historical amnesia that's overcome our country, right?

Reality television is about personal and characters and drama and a level of narcissism that's fascinating to watch but isn't really good for anyone and certainly doesn't tell you about history.

It's a good thing that our church is so different and is so united on everything and we're a haven of peace in an otherwise divided world?

Are we so different from the culture that surrounds us?

I don't know what your experience has been over the last year, but for me personally, I've been involved in some discussions in our church.

I was on the Theology of Ordination Study Committee over the last 2 or 3 years.

And it's just been a bit frustrating with the level of division, frankly, that we find in the church.

Irrespective of your view on the issue, you have to be discouraged by the intransience that seems to be found on both sides.

And we seem to be not, you know, as greater divisions appear politically, you'd like to be able to say, but my membership, my citizenship is in the heavenly kingdom in the church and that's where this haven is.

But the haven isn't as much of a haven as we would like, I think, if we're honest, right?

I think we're doing better than they are, but sometimes you wonder how, by how much.

And I think that there are 2 issues are not unrelated, right?

Is it possible that we also have forgotten something about our Protestant heritage, that we also are being tossed around by the secular ideologies that are pressing from the right and the left, and that if we had a clearer view of our Protestant heritage, that maybe we would find some of these issues more resolvable and maybe we would have a greater unity.

And I want to suggest to you that that's the case, and I want to suggest to you that it's very important that we do this, because can we really go to a divided world and say, We have the solution for your disunity and your fighting because we have such harmony here.

I'm not saying we shouldn't evangelize and we shouldn't do our best, but honestly, Why aren't people streaming into our church more than they are?

Because we're really not reflecting the kind of unity and harmony that would attract them, to be perfectly frank with you.

So we need to take a long, hard look at our history, and that's what I aim to do over the next 3 days.

And I'm gonna spend today talking about America and its heritage.

I'm going to be sharing with you some thoughts from a brand new book that literally came out last week.

In fact, I first put my hands on a copy on Friday, 500 Years of Protest and Liberty from Martin Luther to Modern Civil Rights.

And it's based on a, I've been writing articles for Liberty Magazine for 25 years about America and Protestantism and history.

And I approached them about doing a special version collection of those for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and then I spent the last 6 months writing commentary on the latest developments.

This goes up to the election of Donald Trump.

And it basically asks the question, you realize that more than 80% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.

And it raises the question as to whether Martin Luther's Reformation, does the arc of that reformation, the line of it, the progress of it go from Martin Luther to modern civil rights, maybe Martin Luther King Jr.

And the growth of civil liberties for minorities and other religious groups, which is 1 possible way of looking at it, or another way of looking at it is, does it go from Martin Luther to the populism and nationalism of Donald Trump?

It's a very fair question that you have to look at history closely to try to find the answer.

And this book is especially written for non-Adventists because it deals, many of the articles were for Liberty Magazine and the stuff that I wrote more recently, I had a non-Adventist audience in mind.

It's being advertised in Christianity Today, sojourners on their websites, on some other non-Adventist but Christian outlets, to try to bring the Adventist historic and prophetic perspective to the larger mainstream Christian audience.

You know, we're gonna have to do that at some point.

We do well at talking to ourselves, you know, setting our foundations even deeper.

But this is a book that it should be available in the ABCs.

And I was told that a copy was given away earlier today, so it sounds like they have a few in, so look for it there first.

I do have some extra copies with me, but I'm not gonna sell those until they sell all out at the ABC, because I wanna support their business and their shop over there.

But if they run out, and I'm also doing volume discounts on these, if you want to study, have a religious liberty and history study group at your church, I'm gonna do 50% off if you buy 10 so that you can do study groups and I've got some with me to do that.

So I'll talk about that book here in the next couple of minutes.

Tomorrow I'm going to start on this book, The Reformation and the Remnant, which is also about the Protestant Reformation, but this is written especially for Adventists What can we learn from the Reformers that will help us be more united in our church, right?

There's there's the most extreme voices in a variety of debates whether it be ordination or creation or the sanctuary, sort of seem to keep everyone's attention, but there's a broad, vast, I would call it biblically balanced heritage that we have that the loud voices often cause us to overlook.

And it's kind of a book of Adventist hot potatoes with a wide variety of topics from Sunday laws and last day events, ordination, creation, the various other things, but looked at through the prism of church history and the reformers and what can they tell us.

So without further ado, let's begin talking about this question, how to make America great again.

This was a campaign slogan I think we heard, right?

And while it was maybe used in a partisan way, hopefully the general idea is something we can all agree on, right?

Don't we want to make America great again?

And I think it's, you know, I put again in brackets because I think we need to acknowledge that for some people, some groups of people, America really has never been truly great.

Founding fathers in the Constitution, when we had slavery.

America wasn't great if you were an African American.

Then we had the Civil War and that was better, but we had segregation as a legal matter for another hundred years.

We've had the conflicts we've had for the last 30 or 40, even after formal segregation ended.

We just had a case, a criminal decision that, not guilty.

Another young black man shot in his car with no apparent reason for doing so.

And whatever your race or nationality, you have to feel badly when these kinds of misunderstandings keep on happening.

And they're happening in a certain direction, right?

I haven't seen a lot of videos with white young men being shot by police.

So there is something that our society is certainly wrestling with.

2. The Reformers and the Word of God

But I want to focus more on this question then about why we actually study church history.

I think a little bit we're influenced maybe a lot by Ellen White, right, the great controversy.

She took church history seriously, so we know something about it and we think it's important.

But she herself would say we should have more of a reason for doing something, we should have a biblical reason for doing something, not just because she said so.

She didn't view herself as the source of church doctrine.

She was a guide to what the Bible taught.

And I think when we start looking at this topic, we discover that there are 2 extremes, 2 extremes.

1 says we should look at all other sources of authority, and then maybe the Bible, but really human reason is more important.

But there's another extreme that we've experienced in 20th century America, which says, the only thing you should study is the Bible and nothing else.

And you might, there's a phrase that I've, that some people use for that, rather than sola scriptura, it's solo scriptura, solo scriptura.

Sola Scriptura in the Latin means by Scripture alone, and it implies that by Scripture alone means that truths and information from elsewhere are measured by Scripture alone, right?

It is the sole ultimate authority, but it doesn't mean there aren't other sources of information.

And I think that the reason that we study scripture, If you remember, Dr.

Waleen was talking about different kinds of readings, reader-centered approaches to interpretation, reading the text through certain lenses.

And you know, the reality is, whenever we read any text, we always read it through lenses, even if you don't have to wear reading glasses like I do.

You have the lenses of the time and the place that you're living, right?

You realize you don't read the Bible in the original language, do you?

You read a translation of the Bible, and every translation is an interpretation.

And there's a couple of good examples from the Bible just to, we have to do at least 2 things when we read the Bible.

We have to interpret it, and I thought I'd bring up this old chestnut from Luke where Christ on the cross says to the good thief, truly I say to you, is the comma there, or is it today, comma, you shall be with me in paradise, right?

He's either saying I say unto you today, you shall be with me in paradise, or I say unto you, today, you shall be with me in Paradise.

Now which reading is the correct reading?

If you limit yourself to just that sentence, you can't actually tell, it's ambiguous.

There isn't punctuation in the original Greek, right?

How do we come to the interpretation we come to?

Because we read the larger context, and I think 1 of the good arguments is when Mary tries to detain him after the resurrection, he says, I have not yet ascended to my father, right?

And so we use this larger context to go back to this particular text to come to, but there's an interpretation that needs to happen, right?

And if we're not familiar with that other story or we're not thinking about it, we may not come to the right interpretation.

Then there's beyond interpretation is translation.

Now in our Western society, that makes sense.

We understand that bread is a staple, right?

We still eat quite a bit of bread these days.

It means you're not wasting your money, you're buying something that's essential to your life.

But what if you're from Japan or China, right?

The bread of life, They're not even sure what bread is.

So if Christ was speaking then, and maybe if you were translating the Bible, you would want to say something like, I am the rice of life, which gives the clearer idea of a staple of diet that is vital to life.

The problem with culture is that it's a little bit like being a fish in a fish tank.

Have you ever wondered if fish know that they're wet?

Or it's something they've been in all their lives, they're not really conscious of it, they just experience it and they don't really know it unless they fall out of a fish tank onto the dry ground and then they become aware of it.

If you've ever traveled overseas in a developing world country, if you've traveled, if you've worked for the church overseas, you might suddenly realize what a kind of individualistic way of life we have here in the West and how we interpret the Bible in a very individualistic way, whereas if you go to South America or Asia, you realize how much more important the community is.

And so there's a strength in the world church.

When we study the Bible together across cultures, we can become more aware of where we are reading our culture into the Bible rather than actually finding biblical principles.

And we can help our friends and neighbors in the church do the same thing.

And maybe between the individualism of North America and the communitarianism of a place like China or Japan, maybe there's somewhere in the middle that's actually best, Right?

Both the individual is important and the community is important.

Of course, the postmodern dilemma is that language is so relative that we don't even really understand each other and all communication breaks down.

But the Bible has given us a promise that God sends the Holy Spirit and that we can meaningfully, even if we don't perfectly understand the Bible, we can understand it sufficiently well to know the way of salvation, right?

That even the simple person need not err from the way of salvation.

When the spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth.

Does the Holy Spirit ever use other people to guide you into an understanding of biblical truth?

Has anyone ever studied and come to the understanding of the 28 fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church entirely 100% on their own?

Or have you had some influence from a pastor or a teacher or an evangelist, a Bible worker?

Parents, teachers, pastors, all helping form.

Now does that mean that they were the spiritual authority in your lives?

Maybe when you were 7 or 8 or 9 or 10, but at some point, you get old enough and the authority is the Bible.

But they show you, like the comma in the book of Luke that I shared with you and in the story about Mary.

Once I share that story with you or with someone, they can see that perhaps the better interpretation is with the comma after today.

But it's Not that I am now their spiritual authority, it's that I am bearing witness to a way of understanding the Bible.

And the Bible itself seems to teach this.

Where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Is God not with you when you're on your own?

But there seems to be a special sense in which God guides us into biblical understanding.

The context of this passage, if you remember Matthew 18, is church discipline, which involves taking biblical standards and applying them in the real world.

And so there's this sense where God can help us understand and apply the Bible more accurately, more fully, when we are studying with a group, because our various minds will help each other see these possibilities of interpretation that maybe others don't see.

Philip in the Ethiopian eunuch, he was reading Isaiah, right, and he was just not understanding it.

Philip comes along and tells him the story of Jesus and opens his eyes.

No, it's still the Bible, but there's this witness to the truth.

Priscilla and Aquila teaching Apollos the way of God more perfectly.

And this is a great story, because does Christ reveal who he is?

Because he doesn't even himself want to be the authority in making the disciples understand this.

He wants them to see the authority of scripture.

And so he explains it to them so they can see the authority coming from scripture and then he reveals himself.

So the question is, if we believe this is true, that the Holy Spirit uses other people in the church to help us understand scripture, why do we just study with other Christians who happen to be alive?

Lewis called chronological snobbery the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age, and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited or irrelevant.

So we often ignore the past because we know the present is so much better, right?

So what could they possibly know in the past about like relationships and spiritual virtues and is it possible that in the technology age and the information age, wisdom is often overlooked.

I think there's good arguments to be made that actually wisdom was more appreciated in times past.

And so really, and if you think about it, The further someone is away from our culture, the more of a perspective on our culture we receive.

Right, so if I come up from Berrien Springs to the upper part of Michigan here, Edgemoor, wherever we are, then we may have had some different experiences that we can share, but if I speak to someone from South America, I'm gonna get an even bigger assessment of my perspectives.

Now think if I take someone out of our time and place, like Martin Luther from 500 years ago, suddenly I'm speaking to a person who has a very different view of the world, who can maybe tell me something about the materialistic assumptions, the individualistic, the commercialized, industrialized assumptions of my age that you and I share that we can't really help each other see because we're so embedded in it, but they can.

And so it can be a powerful, powerful thing.

3. The Reformers and Current Issues

I've been enjoying this CAM meeting very much.

And a number of you have spoken to me about how nicely many of the meetings are tying together.

There's a number of different meetings about reading scripture and how to read scripture.

And I feel like a number of us are speaking to a similar topic, but we're not just duplicating each other, we're complementing each other, right?

And giving different aspects of a similar truth.

Waleen's seminar, and he happens to be in the back here today.

I was able to attend his this morning and I enjoyed it very much.

And in fact, there was a point that he made in particular that caused me to make a new slide in my presentation here.

In fact, I'm going to open with that point because those of you who were here yesterday, remember that I've talked about, and Dr.

Wallena has talked about the different lenses that special interest and ideological groups have read the scriptures through.

And what lenses do we read it through as Christians?

And the question is, we need to make sure these lenses are consistent with the teachings of the word of God, right?

We develop our hermeneutic and our view of the world from scripture and from talking with other Christians and what God reveals in nature to some degree, but Scripture is always the ultimate authority in that.

And of course, we've talked about how in the 20th century, we've encountered 2 kinds of secular forces.

Well, it's actually 1 secular force, modernism, that has led, ironically enough, even though we think of liberals and fundamentalists as being dire enemies, not agreeing on anything, underneath it all, their epistemology, their view of truth is very similar.

They have a need for absolute certainty, right, in some objective sense, and the liberals find it internally and the fundamentalists find it in purely propositional truths and we can see from Ellen White and the pioneers that they didn't want to choose between those 2 things.

They said propositional truth is important and experience is important and to have a certainty you need a combination of the 2.

You need evidence that you then combine with the experience that God gives you, right?

And if you could have a certainty that was absolutely demonstrable and verifiable in some scientific way, where would the need be for faith?

The whole idea of faith is that you're believing in something that you can't absolutely, fully demonstrate.

There's a very famous Ellen White quote, and I think I left it out, but I have it in the book, that God gives us abundant evidence to support the Bible, history, prophecy, but it's not demonstration.

There's room for us to doubt if we want to choose to doubt.

She says no, because there's another evidence, and that is the evidence of experience.

When we test God's word and we rely on it with our lives, then the darkness of any doubts we have can disappear in the experience that God gives us.

Waleen made this morning illustrated this very nicely.

So the discussion between Eve and the serpent.

I think yesterday we talked a little bit about how during the time of Christ he actually experienced the same conflict between fundamentalists and liberals that we do, right?

They were the fundamentalists, you know, the absolute letter of the law, and they put burdens on people's backs that were too heavy to carry.

The Sadducees, who didn't believe in resurrection or the angels.

And the little colloquy at the tree made me realize that in fact the same thing existed in the Garden of Eden.

What was Eve doing when she said, you shall not eat from the tree or touch it?

Series

The Reformation & the Remnant: 500 Years of Protestant History & Liberty

1. Why Listen to the Reformers

Transcript

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