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I Know Something You Don't Know

Joe Reeves

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

04 Should Adventists Accept Government Money?

Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to continue journeying together and to study, and as we review how you've led your people in the past, give us wisdom for the future, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

It's an important question, There's a lot of tension, questions, accusations, those kinds of things.

And these things, when it comes to the area of religious liberty, It's not just problems in the world.

It's also a great concern inside the church.

Not everybody agrees on different things.

And so we have to address also inside church issues how we relate to religious liberty.

And I believe that the devil is very sly at dividing us on certain things to weaken our voice when it's really needed.

And that happened in the past, as I will show you, and it is going to happen again.

Okay, so today there are church members that are concerned about the church's tax exempt status.

In the USA, non-profit organizations such as churches are registered as a, you know the name, 501c3.

And that gives them tax-exempt status, meaning that people who donate to them receive a tax deductible.

Ministries such as GYC, they are under legal 501c3 and other ASI ministries, 501c3 so that those who donate can get tax deductions.

Some people believe that the church should surrender its tax-exempt status because it ties us too closely to the government Which compromises our mission?

Some people are concerned about Adventist hospitals receiving patients who are Paid by Medicare Medicaid, which is government money to help certain segments of the population with their medical bills.

Some people claim this compromises the mission of Adventist hospitals because of receiving this government money.

And recently, we've had the issue of ADRA.

Some people protest ADRA, which stands for Administrative Development and Relief Agency, receiving government funds.

ADRA has historically received government grants to help deliver food and other essential services to displaced people groups, refugees, or people from places where there is food insecurity due to natural disasters, poverty, or war.

Second term of the Trump administration has made drastically cut USAID funds in January.

It was all over the news, making many of these government grants no longer available to the Adventist Church or other churches or NGOs.

So should the church ever receive funds from the government?

This very topic was fiercely debated between the years 1893 and 1895.

There were strong voices on both sides of the debate.

And I will read you some of the quotes today from both sides.

And these questions were not quickly settled.

They featured prominently during the 1893 General Conference session held February 17 to March 6 of 1893 and The story is told in spirit prophecy councils relating to church-state relations section 7 titled tax exemptions grants and favors Unfortunately, and I need to talk to my friends at the LNG white estate about this but there is an excellent compilation on the LOI CD-ROM but it's not up there with the rest of the book so most of you don't know about it.

You have to scroll down to the reference section and when you scroll down to the reference section you can scroll down to a section called EGW Research Documents.

And there is a lot of gold in that section.

But in that section is a book titled Spirit of Prophecy Councils Relating to Church-State Relationships.

And I wish they would move that book up to where the rest of the books are so that more people would see this book and this book.

And maybe that's not the reason it's up there because it's not just a compilation.

It has quite a bit of history in it as well, which is where I take most of or all of what I'm sharing with you today.

So the quotes that I read to you are from this book, and you can access it on your own app, LNG White app, or on the software.

There were 2 important questions considered in the 1893 General Conference.

Question a had to do with the report that was presented that there was free land being offered to the Seventh-day Adventist Church by the government in South Africa the Cape Colony of British South Africa The General Conference Bulletin of 1893 recorded that brother Peter Wessels Some of you have heard him.

He's a important figure in The history of the Adventist Church in Africa.

He was at this session He spoke of Mashana land of the Kaffir country and of the interest which they felt that something should be done there.

Every denomination that will enter this land can get a free farm of 3, 000 acres.

It is a country toward which all eyes are being turned and the openings that are being made seemed like a light that was going before them, which they must follow with the truth.

I was reading from the general conference bulletin of 1893.

So should the church accept this free land grant from the government?

Would accepting this gift violate the principles of Separation of church and state which we hold so dear and there was strong opinions on both sides the same time another important Question was being considered at this 1893 general conference session this was question B According to the General Conference bulletin on February 28, the Committee on Resolutions presented a resolution against receiving any tax exemption or gifts from the government.

The resolution was debated and amended and edited several times over a period of 5 days and you can read about it in that book I'm not going to read to you the whole thing, but I'll read to you The final results on March 4 the committee brought the following Resolution and sorry, I don't have all these things on the screen But you can read them on your own and you can listen as I read them Where they this was a resolution that was brought to the 1893 general conference session and it said the following whereas in view of the separation which we believe should exist between the church and the state it is Inconsistent for the church to receive from the state procuratory gifts favors or exemptions therefore number 48 resolved that we repudiate the doctrine that church or other ecclesiastical property should be exempt from tax exemption and further number 49 resolved that we use our influence in securing the repeal of such legislation as grants this exemption So they resolved we are not going to accept tax exempt status for the Dime Tabernacle and Battle Creek, Michigan or other church entities, and we're not going to accept land grants in Africa.

Jones believed that Resolution 49 was too weak and moved the following as an amendment to the 49th Resolution, resolved that we decidedly protest against any such exemption.

He wanted the Sentinel and the religious liberty experts in the church to vocally protest that there be any tax exemption given to the church or any church.

This amendment was amended, then carried, and the resolution as amended was adopted.

So that was our official position in 1893.

This action threw our legal people into perplexity.

Henry expressed that right at that very time There was a state representative in Michigan working diligently to obtain tax exempt status for our orphanage, for our health institutes, and other humanitarian organizations, such as our retirement centers.

Elder Henry wanted to know if the state representative needed to be instructed to stop working on obtaining tax exempt status for our institutions in Battle Creek.

It's interesting reading these old general conferences because when you go to a general conference today, It's a little annoying and trying your patience when all the amendments and if any of you have ever watched a general conference session it tries your patience.

Well it was the same back then and so they recorded, even though it's not electronically recorded, it's all on paper, all these amendments going back and forth, speeches debating.

Prescott, Henry, Uriah Smith, AT Jones, and GC Tenney was appointed to consider the matter because now should we stop the Michigan legislator from helping our orphanage, our health institutes from getting tax-gib status?

Prescott brought back the report from the Committee of 5, and this was reported in session, that matters in which the taxation of such institutions do occupy this disputed territory is involved, orphanages, houses for the aged persons, hospitals, etc.

We leave to the action of the legislator without any protest against their taxation or any request for exemption.

So they were wavering and they said, okay, we're not accepting tax exempt status for the church, but when it comes to tax exempt status for hospitals, orphanages, we're not going to say anything.

We'll let the legislator decide, Because we can't decide ourselves if we think it's a good idea or bad thing So we're not going to advocate in favor of it or against it the 1893 General Conference bulletin notes that after some debate this resolution was adopted with only 2 dissenting votes.

By the way, at that general conference in 1893, there were 130 delegates in Battle Creek, Michigan.

So the church was in a very unsettled state.

They had voted that the church not accept tax-exempt status, but they also voted to be silent about whether institutions such as hospitals and orphanages should receive tax-exempt status.

They decided not to take a position about that and to let the legislator decide.

Meanwhile the General Conference decided to send, remember what the other problem was?

Question A, the land grant in South Africa.

The General conference decided to send at least 5 people to South Africa and accept 6, 000 acres from the British South African company, they reasoned it was okay to listen to this, they reasoned it was okay to accept this gift since it was technically a company and not a government.

Although not everybody agreed with that conclusion, which is an interesting conclusion if you studied the history of the British Empire and colonization.

It was a company, but it was used to advance the British Empire.

And so it was a reason for some, but some saw through it and they said, no, that's not true.

Anyways, the general conference president, O.A.

Olson, visited South Africa later that year in the month of October in South Africa, he learned that the British South African company withdrew their offer for their land grant.

However, Cecil Rhodes of Rhodesia, premier of Cape Colony, made a bigger offer to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

12000 acres of land to start a mission in Mashonah land.

12, 000 acres were selected and it became the site of the Tzoluzi mission.

The land grant was not secured immediately and the next year in 1894, A.T.

Jones, the editor of the American Sentinel, began publishing articles against the church receiving this large land grant which created division and turmoil in the church.

The American Sentinel had already protested against the Catholic Church receiving a small plot of land in Washington DC for free.

And now they wrote, the Sentinel has protested and and will continue to protest against all such donations whether land or of money and whether made by the government of the United States, or by the governor of Mashonaland.

For if the principle is worth anything, it is just as good in the wilds of Africa as on the plains of our own fair West, or in the alleys of our capital city." And that was November 1, 1894.

1 week later, and by the way, the American Sentinel was not, it was published by the church, But it was for the public.

And so the public were seeing the Adventists were disagreeing with themselves in our papers and were conflicted about whether to receive this land grant.

1 week later, on November 8, the General Conference president, Elder O.A.

I have noticed, he said, that the American Sentinel has taken the position that this is all wrong.

That is, that it is not right for us or any of us, anyone else, to receive any such favor from this company.

Sometimes I begin to think that there may be a possibility that we will go too far in some things.

You can see that the church was extremely stressed out about these questions in 1894.

As well as the General Conference President, the General Conference President wasn't sure which way to go himself.

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

We've been studying religious liberty in this room, at this seminar, and so glad to have you join us this morning.

I work for the Saba School of Personal Ministries Department of the General Conference.

I do not work for religious liberty, never have.

Religious liberty, we have been considering yesterday here in this seminar.

We looked first of all what will cause the next civil war.

We studied from Revelation chapter 11, the story of the French Revolution, the roots of communism, the atheistic powers and secular tyranny that has been a religious threat in many parts of the world.

And we look next to Revelation chapter 13 and apostate Protestantism, which revealed that the final blow that goes back and forth, the final blow will come from religious tyranny.

And in America, that will be promoted by apostate Protestantism.

I'll show you a few things on the Roman Catholic front as well this morning.

And so we also looked at 8 top arguments that Christian nationalists use in saying from the Bible and from American history that Christians should be the favored religion and they should rule Adventists has stood up against that since the 1880s and I read a little quote probably the shortest quote I used all day yesterday Was 1 sentence from the first edition of the American Sentinel, January 1886, which says there is no such thing as a Christian nation on Earth.

And today, I think that Adventists are getting misaligned with with parroting what we're listening to on our podcasts, on our audio books and news commentators.

I tried yesterday and I'll do maybe some this morning.

I tried to show you on the screen where to find the resources that I've been reading from because there's a lot of religious liberty questions.

I covered just a handful in this seminar but there's many many more questions that we didn't have time to address And so you need to be reading from our books Adventist History and you need to be understanding the Adventist position because it's very different than the evangelical position on religious liberty.

This is because Bible prophecy reveals that there will be tyranny at the end of the world.

And most of the Christian world, when they read about the beast from Revelation, they say, Aha, there's Islam, there's atheism, there's the globalists, there's everything.

And Adventists come along and say, No, this represents Christianity, an apostate form of Christianity that will bring the final tyranny.

In the history of Christianity we have some dark chapters.

When the Christian world started taking power in Rome, political power, and starting with Constantine, and really reaching a major climax with Justinian in the 6th century, and in the age of Justinian there was a lot of persecution and they were persecuting all religions.

You know, they burned the library in Athens so it was against the pagans.

Pagans were persecuted, Zoroastrians, but do you know who got the worst persecution?

So, anybody that studies the history of Justinian, the worst persecution was Christian on Christian.

When you want to promote or favor Christianity, well, which version of Christianity?

And then you start persecuting other forms of Christians.

And that happened all throughout the history of Europe.

John Calvin himself set up a theocracy in Geneva, Switzerland, burned Michael Cervetus to the stake for teaching against the Trinity.

And then the Puritans, they set up their theocracy in Massachusetts and other colonies in the United States.

They came to America looking for freedom, for themselves and for nobody else.

And that's a lot of people's version of religious freedom.

Religious freedom for me, but not for thee.

Adventists believe in religious freedom for everybody.

And Roger Williams, you know, if you go to Geneva, Switzerland, have you ever seen that wall?

They have the 4 big ones right in the middle.

And did you know that there's an American along that wall?

And the Europeans realized that in the story of the Protestant Reformation, there's 1 American who deserves mention and it's a statue of Roger Williams.

And Roger Williams' statue was there in the Protestant wall in Geneva, recognized as really ultimately carrying the idea of the Protestant Reformation.

And that is that if we're going to provide religious liberty for all, if we're going to stop this persecution, we have to apply it evenly.

When he arrived in Massachusetts, he was in trouble right away because he was preaching that the government should only deal with the second table of the law, the last 6 commandments.

The first 4 commandments, that was off limits for the government, including the Sabbath and including blasphemy laws.

We'll deal with that a little bit this morning.

But all across the colonies in America were blasphemy laws, not in Rhode Island.

So Adventists stand in a very unique position right now, but it's very tempting for you to forget about Adventist history and to be listening to what everybody else is saying right now and for Adventists to be what everyone else is being.

And if we do that, then listen, if Adventists don't stand for religious liberty for everybody, then who will?

If Adventists don't, don't stand in the place that God has put us, then who will?

By the way, I have read Roger Williams' most prominent book, The Bloody Tenet, that he wrote.

And it's called The Bloody Tenet of Persecution.

The reason that he believed in religious liberty, there are several reasons, but let me tell you a few.

He believed in religious liberty because he saw the religious persecution in Europe and because he was a student of Bible prophecy.

He has an address to Parliament in the first few pages of the Bloody Tenet.

He quotes from Daniel 7 and quotes from Revelation 13.

Daniel and Revelation multiple times in his book.

And he concluded, along with the other Protestant reformers, that the papacy was the Antichrist.

And because of his study of Bible prophecy, he knew that what they had done in uniting church and state was wrong and we had to establish a new form of government.

In other words, Roger Williams understood his moment because of Bible prophecy.

And because of studying the little horn, the beasts of revelation and that this Antichrist was a persecuting power, he understood that there needed to be a separation of church and state.

And in his book he said that there was the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world and there needed to be a hedge in between.

And that would later be called the separation of church and state.

And that was started with Roger Williams.

So and then yesterday we looked at, lastly, should the church accept government money?

Now, we saw that in Adventist history that when there were Sunday laws, when there was the National Reformed Association and things were really picking up on the religious liberty front in America in the 1880s and 1890s, that religious liberty fanaticism came into the church at the same time.

And people started inside the church attacking each other on this issue of religious liberty.

And that there was a controversy that was for 2 years very strong in the church about whether the church should accept tax exemption or government grants.

And this was between General Conference Session of 1893 and also 1895.

And we saw that at the end of that, the Council of Ellen White redirected the church from the direction that we established during those 2 years.

We took resolutions and voted in general conference session that we would not accept tax exempt status or we would not accept any grants from the government.

And when Ellen White's letters from Australia, she wrote a 14 page letter in 1895.

It arrived after the session in Battle Creek.

And her letter says that the religious liberty cause is sickening because there was undiscerning things that were happening and that we needed to be able to work with the people in government.

We needed to be able to accept favors because Cecil Rhodes from the Cape colony, the British colony in South Africa, was offering the Adventist Church 12, 000 acres for free and the General Conference had voted not to accept that gift.

They sent a letter to South Africa, it reached there too late and the missionaries had already accepted the gift.

But Alan White said that we needed to accept it and we needed to accept our tax exempt status.

A lot of people don't know these things which is why they need to be shared and you can read the whole story if you weren't here yesterday.

On your Ellen White CD-ROM, and if you scroll down to research documents under go down below her books there's a lot of research documents and there is a document called Spirit of Prophecy Councils relating to church-state relationships.

You go to chapter 7 and it has the whole story of what happened with our tax-exempt status and the story of South Africa between 1893 and 1895.

Let's have a word of prayer before we continue.

Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this opportunity to understand our history, our position, the prophecies that you have entrusted us.

Help us to have our eyes open and to be fully committed to you.

There are many resources that you can use to become better educated on the topic of religious liberty.

All of the editions of Liberty Magazine are on their website, but you can subscribe and get it in your mail as well.

And I will be quoting in a few minutes from a Liberty magazine last year the New Catholic Radicals and some incredible information in that edition and every every 2 months they have some Important updates on Supreme Court cases and other other developments.

They also have a podcast on YouTube and such called Just Liberty, hosted by Alan Rynok and Bettina Kraus.

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

Sebastien Braxton

Felecia Lee

Jonathan Walter

Hope Channel

08 Jesus is Different

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves with Inverse.

Hello, my name is Joe and welcome to Inverse.

On Inverse we love studying the Bible and we have our Bibles opened right here with friends.

And at Inverse we are studying the Bible.

If you don't know, it's not about apologizing.

It's about explaining and knowing the reasons for your faith and for your beliefs.

Christian apologetics is defending the Christian faith and answering tough questions.

So we try to ask really hard questions on this panel and see if we can make each other stumble.

And thanks for joining us wherever you're watching from.

You can read our Bible study guides on inversebible.org and you will love going to Apologetics on that website and our previous Bible studies as well.

Our programs are on hopetv.org forward slash inverse.

And so today and on this episode, we are going to read the words of Jesus and we're going to think about who he is.

And I'm going to invite Jonathan to open us with prayer.

Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity we have to study the Bible.

Thank you for how you've led in our lives, how you've led us through this program.

And in this arc that we are in right now, apologetics, we just ask that you will help us to understand why we believe what we believe or why someone should believe in Christianity.

I pray that you will bless us now and be with us through spirit in Jesus name we pray.

We are in the Gospel of John today, chapter 14.

Presenter

Joe Reeves

85 Teachings

Essential Joe Reeves

04 Should Adventists Accept Government Money?

41m

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

50m

Recent

08 Jesus is Different

28m

07 Jesus and Islam

29m

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

50m

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