<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Being Adventist

Mark Howard

Born Adventist or Born Again?

The Debilitating Drudgery of Adventist Doctrine

The Terrifying Tyranny of Adventist Eschatology

So what I want to do this weekend is I want to talk, the series is called Being Adventist, and I'll tell you where I'm going with it after we pray.

So let me begin with a word of prayer, and then we'll dive into tonight's topic.

Gracious Father in heaven, I do thank you so much for your word of truth and Father, for your faithful people the world over, for those who have come tonight, for those who will be watching who couldn't be here, for those who will listen and tune into this later.

I pray that what's presented here may be something that would give us inspiration and also Lord clarity and purpose and resolve for the role you've called us to as a church at this time in Earth's history.

I pray that your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, would give us an understanding, not just a theoretical understanding, but a practical understanding in your truth, for we ask and pray it in Jesus name.

So, being Adventist, I initially, I put this series together, there's a few reasons why I chose to do what I'm doing this weekend.

And it's morphed quite a bit as I've processed it, and it may morph later on as well.

You're getting this kind of new thought process.

There are a few things that prompted what I'm sharing tonight.

Number 1, my own experience growing up in the church and out of the church.

If some of you have heard me speak before know that my mother and father were first generation Seventh-day Adventists.

They received Bible studies and came into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

My mom and dad got divorced and I moved in with my, well, I lived with my mom part of the time and my dad part of the time, but my mom and my stepdad ended up leaving the Seventh-day Adventist Church during the Desmond Ford crisis, and that was about the time I was 15 years old, all the way to the time I was about 26 years old.

And so I had that experience growing up in the church, going to Seventh-day Adventist church school.

My brother was in the academy, never went to academy, ended up going to public high school myself.

And so that time in the church and out of the church.

And that experience, you'll understand as I go a little bit further, my own experience in the church now to the church, why I chose to join the Adventist Church later on in my 20s, because I looked at other churches, and why I'm still here.

That's 1 of the reasons that prompted this evening's message.

The second thing is the narrative in the church for the last several decades, and this is my perspective, that has attributed all the current problems in the church to the once widely held belief system of traditional Adventism.

And I'll explain when that narrative is as we go on and you'll know more about what I'm talking about.

But that narrative, which I believe is a false narrative that's been carried on for decades and has done irreparable harm to our church is 1 of the reasons I'm speaking on what I'm speaking on this weekend.

And finally, the effect of this false narrative on my own grown children.

I have a son who is 25 years old and a daughter who is 18 years old.

It's like, wait a minute, where was the birthdays?

My son is in law school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

My daughter is in her freshman year at Southern Adventist University.

So they're grown up, they're out of the house now, and they're at a point in their life where they're really having to grapple with personal decisions.

And it's different growing up with a religious belief system.

And then when you've got to make it your own, there's some things.

And the effect of this false narrative on my own grown children and their or some of your generation.

Those are the things that have prompted what I'm sharing this evening.

So I want to start with what I'm calling a false narrative.

Pastor Cameron DeVager, who I work with, has called this narrative, this story, the Third Reich of Adventism.

This is the Adventism I've been hearing horror stories about since I was baptized in 1994.

To give a practical example, so you know a little bit about what I'm getting into here, I want to share a part of an article that was written by a prominent Adventist pastor who at the time of the article was the editor of the NAD Best Practices newsletter.

Best Practices was a newsletter for pastors.

I'm telling you that to say that to share a quote is like yeah some guy off on the fringe somewhere thought something sometime.

This is somebody who was writing regularly with this mindset to give pastors, Adventist pastors, the best practices for ministry.

When you're in that position, what you say has a widespread influence.

Okay, just to give you an idea, and so this is a piece of what he said in this particular blog article.

This is a blog article from Spectrum Magazine, October 2014.

Now he was responding to a book, and there's so much I can't say, just from a standpoint of time, but there was a book that was defending last-generation theology.

And last-generation theology, I've spoken here before, it's a term I don't like, It's a term coined by people who don't believe in whatever they're calling last generation theology.

And so when you have a title like that, and I've spoken on this before, there's all kinds of...

Once you affix a label to something, then there's all kinds of things that just kind of get sucked into that label.

And so then people say, hey, do you believe, and if you don't know the label, and somebody says, hey, do you believe that we can overcome sin before Jesus comes?

And you're like, well, yeah, I think that's what the Bible teaches.

Well, you believe in last generation theology.

If you don't know any better, and then what happened is you just got lumped into this whole package of whatever.

I don't even like to use the term because I just don't like all the appendages that can be added to it.

But this particular, and this is 1 of the examples, so there was a book that was trying to defend last generation theology.

So this is a book review, I believe, an editorial that was written by this minister.

This is what he says in this little piece of a quote, ''The Seventh-day Adventist Church of my childhood was so legalistic that people were gasping for any breath of hope, that there was more to their faith than a lifetime of stern, joyless hypocrisy, died even darker with the terror of imminent eschatological collapse." In other words, last the events, it's my religious experience, it was joyless, it was so legalistic, there was no breath of hope.

And on top of that, There was all this talk about the end times Jesus coming and everybody's gonna get wiped out right imminent Eschatological end times last day what that means collapse And with no assurance of salvation at the end of it.

So all that you had to endure, and still there was no hope of salvation.

That was the Adventism he says I grew up with.

And he concludes by saying the old Adventism collapsed not because of questions on doctrine.

Oh, so the book was not, this book was not on last generation theology, but it was on questions on doctrine, some of the history there.

And so his response, of course, the implication, not the implication, the explicit statement in the, I guess the book itself was making the point that questions on doctrine made an impact in our theological teachings.

And his response is, something needed to because our teachings were so bad.

And this was the net effect of this is what I went through, this stern, legalistic, joyless experience.

Now I shared this particular quote, I could share a hundred like it.

I share this quote because it's representative of the narrative.

When I say the narrative, I'm talking about this picture that's painted of what Adventism was, and that was the picture right there.

And I share that quote not because it's isolated, but because it's representative.

Throughout my ministry, anytime I share a quote like this in a big crowd, inevitably somebody comes up and says, Pastor, that's just the way it is.

That's how it was when I grew up in the church.

And to this very day, as I've mentioned, this dark age of the church is cited as the reason for every problem that currently exists in the church.

So I don't want to, I'm not having a political discussion, But it's interesting to me today how every problem that exists has to be attributed to the last guy.

And the next guy always does that to the last guy.

But there are things in the Seventh-day Adventist church, it seems that every problem in the church, and maybe this is just more in the level of administration.

And when I say administration, I mean pastors, teachers, professors, theology professors, seminary, the bulk of it, in fact, the Seventh Avenue Seminary released a book called God's Character.

And, you know, they were rebutting what's called last generation theology.

It was an NAD personal ministries weekend.

And we were having a meeting and a guy came in and he held that book up, and he's like, everybody needs to get this book and read this book.

And what's funny to me is, in many of the chapters, when a person would say, you know, and there are a lot of straw men arguments in the book.

I hate to say it, but a person would say for proof, I know this is all true because and they would give their testimony of their experience growing up in the legalistic joyless church because of the our doctrines because of the way the church was you know so strict stringent about lifestyle issues and things like that And I always get that response that yes, that was my experience too from somebody.

And so this is the reason why the young people are out of the church today.

This is the reason why evangelism doesn't work today.

This is why our members have no assurance of salvation today This is why our schools are struggling for funds and enrollment today And any other challenge and every other challenge that exists in our church today is because of this third reich of adventism So here's my dilemma This era and and and just to be clear this is the You know this particular pastor who wrote the article, and many of those who, whether they be from the seminary or whatever, who have weighed in and said, yeah, this is what the church is like.

They're the generation that's in leadership in the church.

They're the generation who hold responsible offices in the NAD and the GC and what have you, many of them.

And as I said, it's the generation I grew up in.

Back to Menu

Series

Being Adventist

Born Adventist or Born Again?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Cycle of Evangelism

42m

From Laodicea to the 144,000

45m

GYC SE 2013: The Keys to Gotham City

The Waldensian Secret

40m

Life of the Apostle Paul

No Insignificant Grace - Part 1

37m

Plenary

Grow Grow Grow: A Living Parable

1h 14m

Bible As the Center of Academic Curricula

1. The Bible: The Basis for True Education

1h

The Inspired Word

The Inspired Word- Part 1

1h 15m

Division In the Home- A Divided House Is Not Able to Stand

23m

How Education Leads to Revolution

36m

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath - Part 2

28m

Preparing the Church for the Last Hour Mission

Preparing the Church for the Last Hour Mission Part - 2

1h 4m

What to Wear Oh What to Wear

46m

Sound Doctrine