GYC 2010: No Turning Back

Adventist or Fragmentist: Avoiding Apostasy 101

David Shin

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

What lens are you using?: The key to avoiding apostasy

This message was presented at the GYC 2010 No Turning Back Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

I'd like to invite you, I'm going to start with a little bit of an introduction for today's topic and turn with me and your Bibles to a familiar passage that every Adventist holds dear.

It's found in Revelation chapter 12 verse 17.

And we know this well, and this is the concept that I believe establishes our identity as Adventists, as a Seventh-day Adventist church.

Revelation chapter 12, verse 17, and we know it very well.

It's heard in evangelistic seminars very often.

And the dragon was enraged with the woman and went to make war with the rest of her offspring or with the remnants who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.

We believe that we are the remnant church of Bible prophecy, amen?

I am a third-generation Seventh-day Adventist and I love this church, amen?

I hold this church very dear to my heart, and as a minister of the gospel, there is, I believe, on earth nothing more precious than God's church.

And we're going to be talking today about some, especially in the beginning of today's seminar, about some things that are happening within our church today that can be a little bit discouraging, but I want to, in the beginning, establish some basic guidelines from the Spirit of Prophecy that has really given me a lot of encouragement.

And this is from Signs of the Time, from the pen of inspiration.

It says, To God, the dearest object on earth is His what?

So we need to believe and we need to understand that our church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, is very dear to the heart of God.

The quotation actually goes on and says, it is the apple of God's eye.

And we must remember this when we're talking about God's church, that we're talking about a very precious entity here on earth.

With that in mind, I want us to think about, especially if you are a new convert, how many of you are new converts relatively within the last 5 years, 10 years or so?

I baptized someone recently and they were on fire, they heard the Adventist message, they joined the church, and it doesn't take long before they start seeing that God's church is not perfect.

You know, they look around at people in the beginning, they have rose-colored glasses, and they come in, praise the Lord, hallelujah, they get baptized, and then they spend a little bit of time in God's church and God's family and they look around and they're like oh no what in the world is going on here there there's some problems this person is a hypocrite and you're that people are and and they look around and and they start to get discouraged And this is a concept that has helped me to understand a little bit about God's church.

And there's 2 terms that Ellen White uses.

1 is the church militant, and the other 1 is the church triumphant.

And this is the concept that is portrayed in this quotation, Faith I Live By, 305, has God no living church?

He has a church, but the church, but it is the Church militant, not the Church triumphant.

Now she will go on to describe what she means by militant and triumphant.

We are sorry that there are defective members in the Church militant.

While the Lord brings into the church those who are truly converted, now listen to this, Satan at the same time brings persons who are not converted into its fellowship.

Right now, during the church militant, it is comprised of both converted and unconverted people.

While Christ is sowing the good seed, Satan is sowing the tares.

There are 2 opposing influences continually exerted on the members of the church.

1 influence is working for the purification of the church and the other for the corrupting of the people of God.

Now we're going to be talking a little bit about how we react to this concept of the church militant and there have been different groups that have reacted in various ways.

Now, I want us to note that, remember the parable of the wheat and the tares, that the disciples or the people in the parable said, why don't we take out the tares?

And we need to remember that it is not our mission as church members to be going around saying this person is a tear, he needs to be rooted out.

Remember I got to 1 of my church districts and there was a group of individuals that were on an extermination endeavor within the church.

They wanted to hijack the nominating committee and get in there and just just start doing a, how should I say, individual assassination of different individuals.

They need, They did not belong in the church.

We're told that that is not our mission and responsibility.

Ironically enough, I said, this is not our place, this is not what we're here for.

Now, I'm not talking about open sin, all right?

I'm not talking about individuals that have done something and we're not talking about church discipline.

And interestingly enough, these individuals left And it's crazy how sometimes revivals happen, because they left and our tithe and offering went up and our church membership increased.

And so we need to be careful of when we look at individuals and say, you know, I'm better than this person.

Sometimes the Lord wants to reveal some other things to us.

And so this is what we need to remember when we're talking about God's church.

It's the church militant as well as the church triumphant.

It's a mixture of both the wheat and the tares.

Now with that in mind, I want to talk a little bit from a historical perspective as to how we got to the place that we are today.

In my travels, you go to different parts of the country, even here in the United States, and there are different shades of Adventism.

I go to California and they say, oh, we're California Adventist.

And there's a certain stigma some people ascribe to certain brands of Adventism.

Then I go to the East Coast and they say, you know, we're East Coast Adventist, Midwest Adventist, or Michigan Conference Michigan Adventist.

And so even within our church, within our country, and then you go to parts of Western Europe, and Adventism is very different in Western Europe.

Australia, then you go to Africa, and so there's quite a bit of diversity even within the Adventist church.

And the question that I want to ask is why?

How did we get to the place where we have all these different labels and brands of Adventism?

And you go online and there's different, quote-unquote, progressive websites And they say that we are progressive Adventist.

And then other people say, I'm a conservative Adventist.

Now, I want to go back a little bit and come to a little bit of understanding as to how we got to the place that we are today.

And look at a little bit of our history and we know that in 1844...

I didn't have a chance to change this word because...

It's eschatological, just a fancy word that some theologians use to describe end time.

Okay, end time emphasis, end time beginning.

We know that in 1844, our church began with an end time message.

And if you ever ask yourself the question, why are Adventists always talking about Bible prophecy and end time events?

This is part of our identity when we look especially in Revelation chapter 12 verse 17.

So the Adventist church began with this very pinpointed Adventist or end time focus when we talk about 1844.

They believed that Jesus was coming very soon and that in 1844 began the beginning of what we know as the investigative judgment.

Now in 1888, something interesting happened in Minneapolis and soteriological, I can't even say that, but it's a salvation emphasis.

So eschatology has to do with end time, Soteriology has to do with salvation.

So we began with an end time emphasis, then we had a beginning, then we had a soteriological or salvation emphasis in 1888.

It was not as though we did not believe in righteousness in my faith in 1844.

But what had happened is that we had gotten to the place where our gospel, Ellen White says, was as dry as the hills of Giboa.

Not that Ellen White did not believe in justification by faith, but Jones and Wagner stood up in Minneapolis and Confirmed and emphasized a belief in the gospel in Righteousness by faith and so that's what happened in 1888 Now in 1960 something very interesting started happening within our church.

What you'll find is that Unfortunately, our church is not immune to what is happening in culture or what is happening in society.

What many times happens is that culture and society starts coming up with different ideas and then it's only a matter of time, it seems like that the church starts espousing some of these ideas.

And so, in 1960, there was a soteriological turn, And we started going the evangelical way.

I'll describe that a little bit more on another slide coming up.

And then we had the term conservative and liberal that started coming out.

And there began to be these divisions within the church, and some people said that they were more conservative and other people began to believe that they were more liberal.

Amnesia in Adventism: A close look at our face

I want to start off with a little bit of review from our last session before we get to the heart of today's presentation or this afternoon's presentation.

We started with a quotation in regards to God's church.

It says, to God, the dearest object on earth is His church.

And we also made the observation that this church is divided between 2 major groups.

We look at this quotation from Faith I Live By 305, has God no living church?

He has a church, but it is the church militant, not the church triumphant.

We are sorry that there are defective members while the Lord brings into the church those who are truly converted, Satan at the same time brings persons who are not converted into its fellowship.

There are 2 opposing influences continually exerting on the members of the church.

So we said that there's 2 groups, the church militant and the church triumphant, and these 2 are coexisting within the Adventist church.

We said that the church began with different beginnings.

1888, it had salvation emphasis, and then we said in 1960, it had the evangelical turn, and this is where we came up with the term liberal and conservative.

And then in 1990 we had the worship renewal within the church as well.

And we said that some things that have impacted our church was the university explosion taking place around the world.

Loma Linda and Andrews became universities.

In 1980, Andrews began doctoral programs and in 1990, you had a university explosion around the world.

And so we said that because of the universities and the doctoral programs, that questions were being asked that were not asked before, and so we had some questions that needed answering.

Then we talked about the divisions within the Adventist church.

We said that there's biblical Adventists and they had the end time beginnings with the 1888 emphasis without the turns.

And I said that the average lay person sitting in the pew today I believe is a biblical Adventist today.

These are individuals that took the sociological turn, the salvation turn of the 1960s, and they're based in evangelical theology, reduction of Adventism to generic Christianity.

And so this is kind of a more evangelical Adventist.

Then you had the generic Adventist, the liberals, 1960s or theological turn plus the culture of the 1990s and the secularization of Adventism.

And these are more of what we'd call our progressive Adventists that believe that culture and our church should integrate a little bit more and that the church needs to be more relevant.

They believe that our doctrines were a starting point but that there needs to be a development in how our doctrines work.

They believe that the church is Babylon and they have independent home church movements, many times more critical of the church and focusing on the apostasy thereof.

And we talked about these different labels, moderate, liberal, conservative, right wing, left wing, extreme right, centrist, fanatic, and balanced.

And we'll be talking a little bit more about that later.

And this was the quotation that we talked about, the church may appear as about to fall, but it does not fall.

So we said stay on the ship even though it may seem a little shaky at points.

And so we said that 3 things that impact how we view scripture, morality, how we live, our experience, and our source.

Those are important considerations when we talk about how we view scripture.

Alright, so we come to today's presentation, the forgotten question of identity, why?

Now this is a fundamental question that I believe that every Adventist needs to ask themselves and that is Why you are an Adventist?

And these are some questions that we arrive at and these are some top 10 reasons why this person has chosen to be a Seventh-day Adventist and it's from a more progressive magazine.

And you'll notice the nature of these top 10 reasons.

These are top 10 reasons why this person is a Seventh-day Adventist.

And let's see if some of yours correlate with this.

Number 1, or number 10, I don't want to miss Sunday football games.

They're being a little bit facetious, but they're being truthful at the same time a little bit.

So, they go to church on Saturday, that way they get to watch football on Sunday.

The Pathfinder honor sash not yet filled.

Number 6, I still have a set of Bible story books and an Eric B.

Number 5, want to see how the great controversy turns out.

Number 4, that holistic thing, talking about our health message.

Number 2, I left out that magazine, all right, good.

Have a lifelong subscription to an Adventist magazine.

I just love being a part of a worldwide family.

Now, I will say that these reasons in and of themselves are not necessarily wrong.

I'd say most of them are okay, I think, right?

Now I want you to notice the nature of these, that most of them are cultural.

In other words, they like haystacks, they like veggie links, they like Adra, and they like potlucks and coming together with the Adventist community and so forth, and they like the cultural nuances of our church.

What do you do when these things disappear?

And so when we talk about this question of identity, There are certain groups within our church that believe that, hey, I appreciate the culture.

I've grown up fourth generation Adventist.

But these doctrines, let's change some of these doctrines.

And so this is kind of an undercurrent that's happening in some circles.

They appreciate the kind of the husk of Adventism, but they want to take away some of the things that are more core and central, at least what I believe is core and central.

And so, if you take away our doctrines and our beliefs and you hold on to these things, there's no reason why we can't just meld with the corpus of Christianity, except we eat veggie links, okay?

Now, I want to look at this, when we talk about this question of identity, This is a pie graph of our world population divided up by religious groups.

And so you see that Christianity is roughly a third, 33%.

This includes Orthodox, Catholics, Pentecostals, we're in there.

Then you have our next group, 21%, Islam, with their different subsets there.

Then you have This group right here, Chinese traditional, Buddhist, and then you have other.

And so this describes where our religions are today.

You have atheists, 1.1 billion, and they include secular non-religious agnostic atheists, Hindus 900 million, Chinese traditional 394 million, Buddhists 376 million, then you have the African traditional, 100 million and Sikhism, 23 million.

These are how you can break up Christians, 2.1 billion Christians, Roman Catholics, 1.1 billion and orthodox, 261 million and it goes down.

What every Adventist should know: The hinge that makes or breaks Adventism

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer this afternoon as we conclude our seminar.

Father in heaven, we Thank you so much for the Word of God and for the Adventist message.

And Father, this afternoon we pray that you would speak to each 1 of us as we delve into what is called the central pillar of the Adventist faith.

And as we talk about what every Adventist should know, we pray that all of us would take it to heart to know, to understand, and to be able to share this beautiful doctrine.

For we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

I want to do a little bit of review and go back to some of the concepts that we talked about in our previous seminars.

We said that to God the dearest object on earth is His church.

And we said that God regards His church with beautiful as the apple of His eye.

And then we also made the observation that even though this is God's church, that this church is a mixture of 2 different entities, what we call the church militant and the church triumphant.

We talked about individuals that get baptized into the Adventist church and they're euphoric and suddenly they start looking around and noticing that there's some flaws.

And this is what is described in Faith I Live By 305, has God no living church?

We are sorry that there are defective members.

While the Lord brings into the church those who are truly converted, Satan at the same time brings people or persons who are not converted into its fellowship.

And so within the church we have these 2 entities, the wheat and the tares.

And you remember in the parable Jesus said, do not let or do not pluck out the tares.

That's not our role to be going through the church and figuring out which one's a wheat and which one's a tare.

Jesus said let them grow together and it's God's role to separate them in the end of time.

And that's what we need to understand, that this is a church that is in progress and process.

And we said that our historical beginnings in the beginning began with eschatological beginnings in 1844 as an end time emphasis.

Then we had what we happened in 1888, salvation emphasis in Minneapolis.

Then In 1960, there was what we called going the evangelical way, the separation between conservative and liberal.

And in 1990, we had the cultural turn and the secularization of Adventism.

Now every group did not subscribe to each 1 of these turns, as we'll illustrate here later.

Then we noticed that there's something else happened in Adventism as well.

We had the birth of what we call the Adventist intellectual.

In 1960, Loma Linda and Andrews became universities.

In 1980, Andrews started doctoral programs, and in 1990, we had university explosions around the world.

And with the birth of the Adventist intellectual, there were questions asked, very difficult ones, and we had to come up with some answers to these difficult questions.

Then we talked a little bit about some of the theological divisions within the church, and we talked about this group called Biblical Adventists.

They had the end time beginning of 1844 or believed in 1844 as well as 1888.

Without the turns and I believe that the majority of Adventists today are what we would call Biblical Adventists.

They believe in the Bible, the literal nature of Scripture, as well as the spirit of prophecy.

And then you have what you call evangelical Adventists.

They took the soteriological turn of the 1960s, and it's basically evangelical theology, and it's a reduction of Adventism to generic Christianity.

They took the soteriological turn of the 1960s and the cultural turn of the 1990s, and this is what we would call the secularization of Adventism.

Our final group is what I call the separationist.

They believe that the church is Babylon, and many times they begin having independent or home church movements.

And so we talked a little bit about what is our response to the church militant and we talked about this concept that the church may appear as about to fall, but it does not fall.

And We said we need to stay on the boat, amen?

Even though there's some different things taking place within the church, we need to make sure that we stay on the ship and to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus.

Now, as we get to today's topic, what every Adventist should know, the hinge that makes or breaks Adventism.

You remember in our previous presentation, we talked about this concept of the sanctuary.

And this is an interesting quotation because it says, The subject of the sanctuary was the key which unlocked the mystery of the disappointment of 1844.

It said, 08.25 It opened to view a complete system of truth, Connected and harmonious, showing that God's hand had directed the great Advent movement and revealing the present duty as it brought to light the position and work of His people.

Incidentally, the notion of the sanctuary is what sets us apart from every other denomination in the world.

And as we discussed earlier, we talked about being balanced as a Christian and we addressed the issue that imbalance can be solved by patterning our life after the notion of the sanctuary.

And you remember we talked about this view of the sanctuary, it's a bird's eye view of the Mosaic tabernacle.

You have the courtyard here, the most holy place, or the holy place and the most holy place.

Back to Menu

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What lens are you using?: The key to avoiding apostasy

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What every Adventist should know: The hinge that makes or breaks Adventism

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