General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 59th Session

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General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Kwabena Donkor

Yes, Creation!

Evolutionary thought, Spiritualism and the End of Time

Lee Spencer

How Many Dinosaurs Were On the Ark?

Ariel Roth

Some scientific data that favors a recent creation

Stan Hudson

The Biblical creation is central to the local church

Greg King

Is Biblical Creation Passé?

Nikolaus Satelmajer

Rollin Shoemaker

Sabbath and Creation

Paleontology and the Bible: Science in action

John Baldwin

Why Does a Good Creator Permit Evil?

JoAnn Davidson

...and it WAS good

Jim Gibson

Lions in the Garden of Eden

Richard Davidson

Does Genesis Really Teach a Recent, Literal, Seven-Day Creation Week and a Global Flood?

Tim Standish

DNA and Design

Jacques Doukhan

Creation, the Heart of SDA Theology

How to share creation in outreach on secular campuses

Do millions of years solve the problem?

Ed Zinke

Theistic evolution and the end of Adventism

Ronny Nalin

Dealing with uncertainty

Ted N.C. Wilson

God’s Literal, Six-day, Recent Creation--The Church’s Position

Creation and Evolution: A brief history

Clifford Goldstein

Seventh-day Darwinians

Well, it's so, so good to be with you. I've been looking forward to joining you folks here in the Yes, creation presentations for a long time. Unfortunately, I've been tied up in a few other things for, for most of the time here, but it's good to be here right now. I'd like to give credit to my son, David, for quite a bit of the artwork that you will see in this presentation. And also I'd like to say that motivation for the presentation, I have seven grandchildren and my motivation is I want them to, to grow up in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and I want them to be committed to the Seventh Day Adventist message. And so hopefully this will contribute to that. But what is Adventism and how does Adventism relate to theistic evolution? Now, obviously in 20 minutes, we can't cover that topic in detail, but we can look at at least a few aspects as basically worldviews that are, that are worlds apart. You know, for some sympathy, Adventism is simply knowing the 28 fundamentals and they kind of feel, well, you know, if we take one out, it doesn't really matter. There's still 27 left, doesn't really affect the rest of the doctrines. And I think that's probably a short-sided view of seventh, the Adventism, because seventh, the Adventist doctrine is, is integrated, it's interrelated, and it all has scripture as its foundation. And if you begin to to tear one part of it apart, you begin to tear all of it apart. Let me give a quick illustration. Let's, let's assume that we're on the ocean front, beautiful Sandy beach in front of us. There's tiffs on each side of us. The waves are rolling in. The sun is, is say three-fourths down. It's glistening off of the waves. You can see it reflected in the sand as as is. It's refreshed by the waves. It's the water is splashing up on the cliffs on each side. Just a beautiful scene. I'm sure each of you would prefer to be there right now instead of listening to this presentation. But anyway, now let's change the scene. We're sitting in the same place, the same beach, the same cliffs, the same waves, but we take the sun out of the picture. You're looking at a completely different picture, aren't you? Well, that's what happens when you begin to take even one doctrine out of out of seventh, the Adventist theology. And we'll try to point out in just a few ways how that happens when you put the theistic evolution in place of a major doctrine of scripture. Seventh, the Adventism, obviously this isn't a all-inclusive statement, but it is a conversion to God and his worldview presented in the Bible. The Bible provides the foundational perspective from which we understand God, ourselves and our universe. This worldview challenges all other worldviews, including the Western worldview I should add. Now, what are some of the things that this worldview, where are some of the places where it is different from the secular worldview in which we live in our society? Well, one area is God's self revelation, absolutely central to the biblical worldview, is that God has revealed himself and that we can understand God and the world around us because of God's self revelation. God revealed himself to Adam and Eve explaining their environment. How else would they have known how to deal with the tree and the center of the garden? He revealed himself to pr, patriarchs, prophets who communicated his message to us in the Bible. He revealed himself on Mount Sinai in his own handwriting in Jesus Christ. The major issue in the great controversy, and I'm using that word broadly as well as speaking of the book, the great controversy is how do we relate to the word of God? Will we live by the word of God as Jesus did, or will we choose our own independent resources, rational, empirical, existential, financial, politically political, whatever they may be, as did eve. And so we have the example of Christ and the wilderness dealing with temptation, answering from the word of God, Eve in the garden of Eden, dealing with temptation, answering with empirical and philosophical arguments. Another T feature of Adventist worldview and biblical worldview is the God acts in history. And the beginning, God created, he created our environment and life on earth. In six days he interacted with Adam and Eve and Kane. He brought about the global flood and saved Noah and his family and the ark. He interacted with Abraham and destroyed Sodom and Gamora. He brought Israel through the Red Sea. He raised Moses taking him to heaven. He brought down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel. He became a babe in Bethlehem. He dwelt among us. He died in our place. He was resurrected on our behalf. All of this in fulfillment of prophecy, but which by the way is also often a different worldview than that of theistic evolution. His ministering for us in the heavenly sanctuary will busily personally come again to take us home with him. He will destroy sin and sinners. And then just as he created this earth, initially, he will recreate a new heaven and earth in which dwells righteousness. And so that's another difference. That is the God who acts decisively in our history. He also acts decisively in our personal lives. So he reveals himself in scripture. We can know him because he has revealed himself in scripture and he acts in history including our lives. There's another difference, an important difference. Ethics, the ethics of education. You know, Adventism is built in part upon a very strong educational system that was part of who we were very early in our history. Adventism strongly affirms the ethic of raising our children in harmony with an allegiance to God's word. This is the solemn responsibility of parents, fellow church members, teachers and church leaders. Theistic evolution comes out of a different worldview, comes out of the air of the enlightenment thinking, which gives its allegiance to freedom of thought, total, totally autonomous from God and his word, the Bible. And so freedom in a sense becomes God rather than the God who has revealed himself in the Bible. And for some, if God exists, God himself is subject to the principle of freedom rather than God having been the source of freedom. You know, many say God is a very big God and God provides an umbrella for all. And I agree God is a big God. God does provide an umbrella large enough to cover every group, whether it's Jew or Gentile, slave or free male or female educated or uneducated. God's umbrella covers all groups, but some are asking the church for an umbrella large enough to cover all of the gods. So we have God's acts in history. We have His self revelation. Coming back to the ethics, this is really a crucial difference in ethics and allegiance. Tears families apart churches and institutions and hinders the spread of the three angels messages that also SAPs the church of resources meant to strengthen it. There's also a difference in method and theology. And I'd like to to illustrate this in part by going through very quickly some of the basic, basic differences in method and theology that have taken place historically in the early church and in the Middle Ages, reality imposed meaning on the mind of man. And theologians accepted that concept of reality and used it in their process for doing theology. And so the Mind of Man was the film upon which the exterior world registered itself. But the formula was not just this external world that imposed itself through Aristotle and and Plato, but it was also the Bible. And would you all take a look at that and circle it, underline it, put a yellow marker through it, the Bible, and what reason tradition, church count, church councils the Pope, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That was absolutely drilled into my mind when I went to Catholic University to work on a degree. So the context and the method for studying the Bible came from the natural world, theistic synthesis because of time, I'll move through this quickly, but it's a complex system. Truth is truth wherever it may be found, rather than the Bible being the foundation of truth, man ultimately became the criterion for truth. And basically he had a synthesis which said, I'm going to take the natural world and the world of scripture, and I'm going to synthesize the two together, rather than allowing the Bible to be the foundational factor, even though he said the Bible was the foundational factor, his method did not allow it to be the Fi foundational factor. And so this method builds upon the rock and the sand. Remember Christ of Christ sell said, build upon the rock. This method builds upon the rock and the sand and what happens to the house. I don't know if you can see it from there, it kind of falls apart. The Protestant reformation came with a completely different slogan. It is the Bible Bible. What alone do you see the difference between that the Bible and the church, the Bible and reason, the Bible and the Pope versus the Bible alone. And so the Bible provided the worldview, the context for studying the Bible itself. Now after the reformation, so, so the reformation built upon the rock alone, the reformation started with the biblical worldview, and then the study of the natural world and the study of scripture itself took place within the nat, the the view of scripture itself. In other words, the Bible was its own interpreter. Now that didn't put an X through reason, didn't put an X through the natural world. In fact, even even God could have spoken through the Pope. It's just that the Bible was the basis for determining when and where and how God has spoken in other areas. The Bible was the basis for understanding the natural world. When we come to modernism, there are many different philosophies, but this will illustrate some for some science, provides the lens for understanding reality. Remember the reformation? How did you understand reality through the lens of the Bible? That's right. So for some science is the lens for understanding reality and truth. For others, you have to turn to the interiority of humankind to understand the natural world. And so here the lens is the mind of man, or it could be, you know, the psyche of man, or it could be so many different things that the nat, that the modern world has looked at. And so the modern world for biblical critical studies, instead of starting with scripture as the building block for their method for studying scripture, they started with the natural world order, which provides the context for the study of scripture. You have psychology, history, religion, science, sociology, literary methods, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. These give you a worldview. And the Bible must be encompassed within that worldview. It's encapsulated within that worldview, and it's studied within that worldview. And so here, not only are they attempting to build upon pong, the rock in the sand, they're actually building upon the sand and the sand. Because what happens is that they reinterpret scripture from the standpoint of the contemporary world, and then they look at the contemporary world and they attempt to synthesize the two. And so you really have, you know, the foundation of the natural world and then the foundation of the natural world. And then the Bible filtered through the natural world. And so they're building upon the sand and the sand. Now, post-modernism came along and said, well, you know what? There isn't any absolute truth. And so there are many lenses and there are many answers, and it basically depends upon you. And so if you want to know God, you must look at man, see the theologian staring in the mirror and labeling that God. Now the Seventh Adventist Church was built on that of the reformation, that the Bible and the Bible alone is the foundation. Remember, that doesn't put an X through other methods of knowing. It just simply says that the Bible is the foundation for our knowledge. Another point that is that theistic evolution impacts basically every doctrine of the Seventh Adventist Church. And instead of pointing out how it impacts each of these, we'll just simply list them. The nature of God. You have a different concept of God, the nature of scripture, the nature of prophecy, nature of humanity, the foundation of morality, the nature of sins soteriology, the nature of Christ, the resurrection of Christ. By the way, even the bodily resurrection of Christ is not in our statement of belief. And the reason is, is because individuals committed to theistic evolution were involved in the writing of the statement of belief. And they would not allow bodily resurrected into the statement of belief. Now, we would've gotten it from the floor, but it never got through the politics that brought it to the floor, the judgment, the second coming, the new Earth. All of these are impacted. Now, I wonder, does it matter what you think of God? You know, we can just all believe in God, right? Okay, well, does it matter who you think your spouse is? You know, how about that for your spouse, or how about that? It matters what you think of your spouse, right? It matters what we think of God, which God represents the God of the Bible. And so is God a master computer. See chance, the universe as a whole, the God of pantheism, the God of polytheism, or the God of the Bible. If you start with the natural world, you have no tools by which to answer that question. In fact, one of my professors at Catholic University, after studying the history of the met of the arguments for the existence of God, you know, going clear back to the early church up to the contemporary period, he said, you know what? We have become so smart that we can raise the question, does God exist that we cannot answer that question? Now, Roman Catholics, they are experts at philosophical arguments for the existence of God. And yet that was his conclusion. Who do we worship? The active revealing God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the gods of Ahab, Ishtar, and Jezebel who do not respond, speak or act the God of the Red Sea or the God of the Reed Sea. Did you know there's a Reed Sea? Some theologians say that God did not take Israel through the Red Sea, that he took them through the Reed Sea. And so it wasn't really that much of a miracle after all, the God who bodily resurrected Jesus Christ or the God of a spirit manifestation or a continuing influence or a continuing influence in the body of the church or something like that, do we worship the God of the Greeks and their wisdom, the God of the Jews and their signs, their empirical evidence, or the God who reveals himself through the power of His word. And so here we have a picture of God, and obviously this is not all inclusive, but a God of love, a creator, lot of truth, savior, personal God, judge, all, all powerful, self-revealing. But you know, I'm not so sure about this idea that he's my judge or that he's all powerful or that he is the foundation of truth or that he's self-revealing, or I don't know, this idea that he's greater. Yeah, maybe in some sense. So we'll take that out, you know, at what point does it begin to become idolatry? When we begin to tinker with who God is and the way he is revealed himself, my personal savior? You know, I don't know. I, I think I can save myself personal God. What happens when we begin to destroy the image of God as revealed in scripture? And so many say we have a big God. He has a big umbrella, a big umbrella, large enough for everyone as and as we pointed out earlier, yes indeed, for every class of humanity on earth, he has an umbrella. Large enough. Some are asking the church for an umbrella large enough to cover all of the gods. You know, sometimes it's tempting to compromise. I'd like to know how many of you saw the game between the Redskins and the White Sox? None of you saw the game? Why not? Yeah, here's soccer and golf, right? How do you synthesize those two, those two games? You know, you play one or the other, on which field are you gonna play? Who's gonna umpire? What ball are you gonna use? What are the rules of the game? And so on and so forth. And so we are talking about worldviews that are just as far apart, and there is no synthesis between them. Either you accept the word of God and operate by the word of God, or you operate by other principles. Adventist will cease to exist if it rejects the God who reveals himself to us in the Bible, in Jesus Christ, if it rejects his activity and history is revealed in the Bible and Jesus Christ. If it accepts the ethic of the era of the Enlightenment and post-modernism, it rejects the literal intent of, of the authority of author of scripture. If it reinterprets biblical doctrines to fit the designer gods of the contemporary age, it will be the end of Adventism as a biblical worldview. If accepts the worldview of mechanistic or theistic evolution, the three angels message the full message of the Bible with its power to convert minds and to take the gospel to the world. And so today, we must choose whether we will worship, serve and proclaim the God of the Bible or the designer gods of our age, the gods that we can mani, manipulate, and control. You know, the word of God is powerful. That's one thing that our secular age does not understand and will not accept. The word of God is powerful. And some people try to use the power of science in place of the, of the power of the Word of God. The Word of God is capable of converting not only the heart, but also the mind. And if when the mind is converted, when we accept the fullness of God's word and the power of God's word, and our lives and our minds, then we can understand and accept and live within the world as God has revealed himself and the world to us.

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Series

Yes, Creation!

Theistic evolution and the end of Adventism

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

Evolutionary thought, Spiritualism and the End of Time

How Many Dinosaurs Were On the Ark?

Some scientific data that favors a recent creation

The Biblical creation is central to the local church

Is Biblical Creation Passé?

Sabbath and Creation

Paleontology and the Bible: Science in action

Why Does a Good Creator Permit Evil?

...and it WAS good

Lions in the Garden of Eden

Does Genesis Really Teach a Recent, Literal, Seven-Day Creation Week and a Global Flood?

DNA and Design

Creation, the Heart of SDA Theology

How to share creation in outreach on secular campuses

Do millions of years solve the problem?

Theistic evolution and the end of Adventism

Dealing with uncertainty

God’s Literal, Six-day, Recent Creation--The Church’s Position

Creation and Evolution: A brief history

Seventh-day Darwinians

Sound Doctrine