Michigan Camp Meeting 2023: The Boldness of the Cross

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Religious Liberty Under Pressure

Joe Reeves

Disarming Prejudice

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Heavenly Father, thank you that we can be together this week.

We're here, Lord, setting aside other routines because we care about you.

We're here to fellowship with 1 another, but most of all with you.

And today as we look at this important topic we pray that we can track with where you want to take us.

If any of you think I got some jewelry on, yeah it's bright green here.

So this 1 here lets me into into kindergarten 1 to get my three-year-old daughter.

This 1 here gets me into kindergarten 2 to get my five-year-old son.

So my family's having a good time at camp meeting and we're so glad that we can be here to fellowship with my wife Ruthie who is helping in some of the children's divisions.

This morning we are looking at part 1 of religious liberty under pressure, and so I look forward to spending some time with you on this topic this morning and this week.

I want to bring you greetings from the General Conference and headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, where I just began work a few months ago as the lead editor for Inverse Young Adult Bible Study Guides.

Well, we've got here these, if you've ever seen these bright colored Sabbath school quarterlies, this is the church's publication.

It's translated right now in about 10 languages around the world.

And Inverse is an in-depth Bible study designed for young adults that your churches can use for a young adult Sabbath school.

They can be used in small group settings and Bible studies, and they're so popular that even some of the adult Sabbath schools use them once in a while, but we don't report about that, right?

And so I've had the privilege of taking responsibility of this publication, and we've got many exciting quarters coming up.

You can see about the publication on inversebible.org.

2 quarters a year, the Inverse Study Guide follows the same topic as the Adult Bible Study Guide.

And 2 quarters a year, it's a topic of special young adult interest.

Well, there's a topic of special young adult interest that we have coming up first quarter of next year, 2024.

And so it's going to press actually this week.

I was just doing some final edits on this quarter yesterday on my computer before it goes to press later this week.

So first quarter of 2024 is Jesus and Liberty and we're living in a time when there's a lot of questions about Jesus and liberty and religious liberty and what it means and how do we prepare and the various perspectives on it.

Adventists have long understood religious liberty to include the human right to have or adopt the religion of one's choice, to change religious belief according to conscience, to manifest one's religion individually or in community with fellow believers in worship, observance, practice, witness, and teaching subject to respect for the equivalent rights of others.

And that's from that Sunday Adventist church manual that I was just reading.

And Jesus is the perfect example of 1 who had the power to compel and the power to control, and yet always honored every individual's right to believe or to not believe, to follow or to not follow, to profess or not to profess.

And that's why Jesus is absolutely at the center of our understanding of what religious liberty means and how we honor religious liberty.

Jesus set the perfect example in honoring the rights of conscience and of individuals and winning with love and influence rather than weapons of force and coercion.

Last October I was invited to join this Interfaith Religious Liberty Panel where I was recently a pastor in Spokane, Washington.

And so I accepted the invitation to sit on this Religious Liberty panel.

It was a new event that was organized by the Church of Latter-day Saints.

Their conference president is there on the left side of the of the screen there.

Beside him is a pastor from a non-denominational church, and sitting in the middle there is a Roman Catholic priest and There I am sitting between him and a teacher from the Buddhist religion so I'm sitting between a Roman Catholic priest and a Buddhist the moderator they are standing there as a pastor from the Salvation Army and we're there in Spokane, Washington to talk about religious liberty and what it means to each of our faith groups.

Now religious liberty events are springing up in more and more places like this.

This is the first time that they had organized this event and they have organized a few since I moved out of town because I moved away from Spokane in November, so I participated in this just before my move.

And it's because there's an increasing interest in what it means to have religious liberty, what does separation of church and state mean, and I felt it a great honor to share with this diverse audience Seventh-day Adventist perspectives on religious liberty.

And as I did that, I was able to share at that table during this panel discussion 4 key ideas that I had the time to to share with them.

The first was that the church today needs to follow the example of Jesus in winning with love and influence rather than fighting with weapons of force and power.

Of course Jesus told Pilate when Pilate was pressing him, are you a king?

Well, Jesus did wear a crown, but when it came to these earthly kingdoms, it wasn't a crown of gold.

It was a crown of thorns, and that crown of thorns was a mightier weapon than all the swords and Jesus told Pilate in John 18 36 that if my kingdom were of this world my servants would what they would fight and they would they would swing the sword And so there's a strong distinction between the tools that the state uses and the tools that the church uses that Jesus instituted in the New Testament.

And secondly, I shared with this panel that today there is a temptation for government agencies to lower the priority on religious liberty, perhaps below other liberties that are considered when they're in conflict.

And I shared the story of Jim and Gail Blaze, who are a Seventh-day Adventist couple, living not too far from where I was a pastor in Spokane, Washington.

This story was featured in Liberty magazine on a video that they produced last year.

When they went to adopt their own grandchild, because of some struggles in the home, they were adopting their own grandchild.

When it came to the last interview that they were having with this state agency, Child Protective Services, and the question came up, what if your granddaughter wants to become a grandson?

And they said, well, we will continue to love no matter what.

However, if it's before she's an adult and she's making her own decisions, we're probably not going to support that.

And that question right there was enough to prevent the grandparents from adopting her own granddaughter.

Unfortunately, there was agencies that got involved in that situation, and that case was not won.

And so in Scenarios like this, we are feeling the grip of competing ideologies in this country and as secularism especially expressed through the LGBT agenda comes in conflict with families like the Blaise family we can see the temptation for government agencies to lower the priority of religious liberty.

I also shared with that panel during the few brief moments I had to speak a few times that the Seventh-day Adventist Church adheres strongly to the doctrine of separation of church and state, following the tradition of Pastor Roger Williams, who was a governor and a pastor, became a Baptist, founded the state of Rhode Island.

When he came to Massachusetts Bay, part of the Puritan community, they invited him to preach in the church.

But when he taught, The separation of church and state, that was too radical, and they banished him in the middle of winter.

And he survived because of friends that he had made among the native tribes around, and that's how he survived the winter.

When he got a charter from the King of England to establish the state of Rhode Island.

The state of Rhode Island was the first state that did not have a state-sponsored religion.

In Massachusetts it was required to attend church on Sunday.

There was punishments, there was fines for not attending church, for not paying tithes and offerings, and many other things that we can dive into later this week.

Pastor Roger Williams believed in the 2 tables of the law, that our accountability regarding the first table of the 10 Commandments, which have to do with our love to God, we are not accountable to the government or to worldly authorities, but we are only accountable to God.

And when it comes to our neighbor-to-neighbor relationships, as expressed in the last 6 commandments, the second table of the law, that's where the government has some, provides some accountability for people and their responsibilities towards neighbors.

And the Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very robust history of advocating and defending for the separation of church and state that we came to honor in the United States, which we will talk about more.

But the fourth thing that I shared with this panel last October with this diverse audience is that, and before I explain that, when I did speak about Roger Williams and the separation of church and state, that's where the moderator interrupted me and he said, now when you speak about separation of church and state, you're talking about the state staying out of church.

You're not talking about the church staying out of state, right?

And now that's really where, perhaps, the real rub is.

When you say separation of church and state, you're saying the state staying out of church.

You're not saying the church staying out of state.

And I explained that actually I believe in a double wall.

And that when you look into history, there are times when you can see that the Pope was telling the emperors what to do.

And there were other centuries where the emperor was telling the Pope what to do.

And whether you're looking at the centuries where the Pope was telling the emperor what to do, or whether you're looking at the centuries where the emperor was telling the Pope what to do, either one's a problem.

There's a certain degree of separation that needs to be honored for there to be the kind of society that promotes peace and happiness.

And so in my last point with them, I shared that Christians around the world right now are feeling wounded and hurt, especially after the isolation caused from COVID-19 and various mandates and requirements that were passed to varying degrees in different states and in different countries and in places where Christianity was was lowered below the priority of say taverns or casinos You can't be surprised when Christians are angry and upset and they're rising up and they're ready to change it.

But my concern is that Christians rise up with an overreaction and I explain that I believe that religious tyranny is just as bad if not worse than secular tyranny.

When you look in the past 200 years of this world's history, it has suffered predominantly from secular tyranny, especially in the form of communism and these totalitarian states around the world.

Some of them are religious tyranny, especially in the case of some exhibitions of Islam.

But when you go back to the last 2, 000 years of history since the time of Jesus, religious tyranny has, Secular tyranny has killed its thousands, but religious tyranny has killed its 10 thousands.

And when you look into the centuries of the Dark Ages, we have this scenario of religious tyranny.

And that's the part of the event that the newspaper quoted me in, 1 of the publications in Spokane, and explaining my concern about an overreaction against secularism and developing a religious tyranny in response.

This topic is an important topic for Adventists.

For Adventists, we believe that this is going to be a topic of increasing interest when it comes into the public sphere.

This will be a topic, religious liberty, that becomes a topic of discussion between neighbors, a topic of discussion between co-workers.

And so it behooves us more than ever that we dig down and we establish the biblical foundations for what religious liberty means and what it doesn't mean and that we know how to defend our beliefs.

I believe, according to our scenarios of prophecy, that Seventh-day Adventists will be 1 of the last Christian churches still standing for separation of church and state.

A Crown of Thorns

Heavenly Father, we begin this day with you.

And I pray as we read the scriptures from the Gospels and a few other places this morning, that your Holy Spirit would speak words to each person in this audience beyond what I say, and that we might feel the full weight of understanding of the Scriptures and of the example of Jesus.

Jesus came into this world in a very challenging time politically, internationally, and when it came to fundamental individual rights and religious liberty.

There are many religious liberty challenges during the time of Jesus.

It was a topic of discussion at picnics and at feast of tabernacles and traveling and wherever they went, the burden of this yoke of bondage that they were under was quite heavy.

And if you've read Josephus or other Jewish historians, you'll know that Ellen White was not wrong when she says in desire of ages page 30 the Romans claimed The right of appointing and removing the high priest and the office was often secured by fraud Bribery and even murder Does that sound like a breach of religious freedom to you?

If the government claimed the right to choose the pastor in your church or to choose your conference president, would you feel like you had religious liberty?

And so they were under a heavy yoke, bondage, not just when it came to civil rights and civil liberties, but also religious rights and religious liberties.

This is the Ark of Titus in Rome on the screen, built in 80, 81.

And it was the, kind of the first of its type.

There are many other triumphal arks that were built to that similar design such as Arc de Triomphe in Paris years later but this arc is almost 2, 000 years old and it was built by the Emperor whose brother Titus had conquered Jerusalem in the year 70 and on the walls of this you can see their engravings of their march as they took their captives out of Jerusalem and they broke down the temple they not only took slaves and they not only took people but they desecrated the temple and they took the articles of the temple and you can see there the lampstand known as the menorah which is often since been used as a symbol of Jewish nationality.

And they brought these symbols from the sanctuary, these articles straight from the sanctuary and marched into Rome and their march of triumph.

And this this total debacle that happened when Rome smashed Jerusalem was something that was simmering.

It was something that was building for decades and for years.

It was already very rough in the time of Jesus.

Jerusalem had not been destroyed yet in the time of Jesus, but the political landscape was being set.

The tense tension was already there and already felt of the corrupt global elites of the Roman Empire, they were ready for Jesus, they were ready for a Messiah.

They were eager for Jesus to stand up for their rights and to deliver them from the intolerable government overreach which they were enduring and the authoritarian control and rule that they were living under.

And yet for many, Jesus, They waited and they waited for how many years?

3 and a half years until they got tired because the the things that they were expecting Jesus to stand up for and to address in these religious liberty topics that divided the people and the the disciples themselves, Jesus somehow afforded to keep his silence on these topics.

Jesus was rejected by many, not only because of the things that he said, but because of the things that he said, but because of the things that he did not say.

The audience was required him to say certain things that he did not address or enter into the fray on these obvious topics, these obvious breaches of liberty.

And so after 3 and a half years, the strain was too much for many, and especially after 3 years, many walked with him no more because of the disappointment of Jesus.

Now I don't have this verse on the screen but why don't you look at John chapter 8 and where Jesus saw problems all around and all the people saw problems all around and the disciples saw problems all around but where the disciples only saw political solutions Jesus only saw spiritual solutions Jesus was not willing to spend his time Advancing political solutions to spiritual problems Now he came to give freedom.

He came to set them free, to deliver the captives, to break the bondage of yoke, and all of these things.

But it was a different kind than what they were expecting, what they needed, what they wanted, the whole thing.

It's expressed clearly here in John chapter 8 and as you see Jesus Dialoguing with these Jews and his Pharisees and and others that are around then Jesus in John 8 verse 31 said to those Jews who believed him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed.

And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you what?

He came to set them free, but it was a different kind of freedom than what they thought they needed.

They answered him and said, we are Abraham's descendants and have never been in bondage to anyone.

Jesus answered them, most assuredly I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin and a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.

Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free and be free, free, free.

Did we read that word 3 times there before?

Actually, in those in those verses, Jesus came to give them freedom, but they were not willing to acknowledge that they needed the kind of freedom that he gave because why he probably would have loved to give them some religious freedom and some political freedom.

He was not willing to be sucked into that vortex until they dealt with the much larger Freedom of soul and from sin that they really needed am I right or wrong?

And so here's jesus And They're on 2 completely different pages when they're using this word free because while their primary enemy was the Romans who were subjecting them by unjust laws and there was abuse, there was injustice, and they thought the great enemy was Rome.

But Jesus was coming to tell them that their worst enemy was themselves.

And that the biggest threat and their greatest bondage was in their own heart and it was the situation of sin.

1 of the defining moments of Jesus ministry is in Luke chapter 5.

This was a turning point, at least for his disciples.

His disciples were absolutely stunned when Jesus did what none of them expected him to do.

They're waiting for him to break the silence on the injustices of Rome.

But here we go, Jesus who always does what we don't expect.

In Luke 5, verse 27, after these things, he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office.

And he said to me, said to him, follow me.

So he left all, rose up and followed him.

Now the discussions that the other disciples were having all along, in their travels and in their meals, all of a sudden there was an awkward silence.

They couldn't talk about those things anymore unless they were going to split their own group.

Because now Jesus had invited this globalist Roman collaborator right into the inner circle of the discipleship team.

Of course, Jesus had already had Simon the Zealot, who was a Jewish nationalist, a proud activist.

He was defending the national honor of Israel.

And most of the disciples politically aligned with Simon the Zealot.

They had great sympathy for wanting to restore the national honor, the state rights of Israel and free them from these tyrannical colonizers, the Romans.

And now, and now Jesus calls 1 of these greedy betrayers of the Jewish nation who is collaborating with the dirty Romans.

You can see why in the next verse, in verse 29, it says, then Levi gave him a great feast in his own house and there was a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them.

And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against his disciples saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

Nothing that Jesus was doing was making sense in their framework.

The actions of Jesus and his words challenged their framework.

Do you realize that when they ask Jesus, why are you eating with tax collectors, they're asking Jesus, why are you eating with 1 of your own disciples?

They're asking the other disciples, why did you accept this betrayer into your circle?

I mean, these words are divisive right among the disciples.

You see that when Jesus called 1 of the collaborators of the global elites to work with the Nationalists and the Patriots on his discipleship team.

It's as if Jesus intentionally designed his discipleship team to be polarized, politically, nationally, philosophically, so that Jesus might show the world that his disciples were united by something far greater than nationalism or politics, Amen?

Why else did Jesus say, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, by your love for 1 another.

It's because he called disciples that had a very difficult time loving each other.

It took a miracle for these disciples to love 1 another.

He did not call disciples that naturally had any affection for each other.

The world could see that if this group were to be united, there was the divine touch from above.

Because the things that divided the world at that time and it was very divisive during the time of Jesus the whole world could see things that divided the world was not going to divide his disciples though there was people from all sides in the discipleship team Do you think I'm exaggerating this or overstating this this morning?

I'm not the first 1 that's thought of this, commented on this.

Desire of Ages 273, the calling of Matthew to be 1 of Christ's disciples excited great indignation.

So rather than me exaggerating this, maybe I haven't described it powerfully enough.

This is why the calling of Matthew was a turning point in how people viewed Jesus.

The American Experiment

This morning, we need to buckle our seat belts.

We're looking at the American experiment.

First half of the presentation this morning is going to be a Bible study looking at the various forms of government throughout sacred history and what God has established under the new covenant.

And then we're going to look at the history of America and the separation of church and state and why we embraced that doctrine here on this soil.

And so these are things that are very very important and relevant to each person in this room because each 1 of us need to be in a position to Have a Bible study with the neighbor or another Christian as there becomes fewer and fewer Christians who believe in the separation of church and state and why we believe not just in a philosophical or legal basis But why we believe on a moral Christian basis in the separation of church and state, and why we believe, not just on a philosophical or legal basis, but why we believe on a moral Christian basis in the separation of church and state is going to become very, very important to us and our history as well.

So if you bow your heads at the beginning, let's ask for God's help.

Heavenly Father, thank you that we can assemble here in this room this morning.

We are glad for the freedom to be able to discuss and to review and to worship.

And we're not interested in just information or just history this morning.

As we were reminded yesterday that many people at the first coming of Jesus misinterpreted the scriptures and missed the Messiah because of national pride.

And as we read how that will happen again, we pray that we might have attitudes and we might have humility to understand properly and see things the way that you do.

The government that God set up in the beginning of scripture in Israel was a theocratical form of government.

Daniels didn't do too bad of a job defining it in Liberty Magazine back in 1917 when he wrote, Theocracy is a form of government in which all the affairs of men, whether temporal or spiritual, civil or religious, are united under the control of God.

And when you look at what God set up in the Old Testament through his servant Moses, when he instituted the Levitical priesthood, you can see that there was barely any distinction between the leaders of church and the leaders of governments.

The priesthood had both religious responsibility and civil responsibility.

They were both pastors and they were civil judges.

And so imagine if everything today was combined in 1 person, if in your town, the pastor was also the judge and dealt with all the civil cases as well.

That's how it was when God set up the theocracy.

It says in Deuteronomy 21 in verse 5, "'Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, "'for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to him, "'to bless in the name of the Lord.

"'By their word, every controversy "'and every assault shall be settled.'" And so God instituted this theocracy.

The government of Israel was merely an extension of the government of heaven.

It was based on God's laws and God's laws were enforced as they are in the final judgment.

This is why in the first 5 books of the Bible You can see that under ancient Israel's theocracy, Sabbath breaking, cursing parents, sexual sins, communicating with the dead, disregarding annual feasts, blasphemy, idolatry, were all punishable by death.

And they were all under the category of capital punishment this was a foreshadowing of the final judgment when all of those things will yes be punishable by death and the final judgment that you read about in Revelation 20 and in the last book of the Bible.

So in the laws in the book of Moses it makes no distinction between government and church.

The Levitical priesthood exercised both religious and civil authority, enforcing both religious and civil laws.

Centuries later, when Israel clamored for a king and God conceded to that arrangement and that request, that demand, and he set it up through the throne of David.

Begin with King Saul, but God rejected that throne, and then he anointed David in his place.

And when David passed his throne or his kingdom to his son Solomon, you can see that this throne is not actually David's throne.

As the Bible says in 1 Chronicles 29 and verse 33, then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord, not the throne of David, but the throne of the Lord as king instead of David, his father, and prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.

And so the throne in Jerusalem in Scripture is an extension of the throne in heaven or the throne in the New Jerusalem.

It was really God that was ruling in Israel through the Levitical priesthood or in later on through the Davidic Kings.

But as time went on these delegated authorities that God placed there abused their authority and their power And so God eventually removes it.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Ezekiel 21 and you can see where God is judging the throne of David.

It's been many generations since David by this time.

Series

Religious Liberty Under Pressure

The American Experiment

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

His Invitation

04 Reconciliation, Unity, and Latter Rain Power

1h 1m

Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

01 Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

59m

The Godhead

The Godhead Part 4

58m

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

03 Evolving Evolution and Creation’s Case

53m

Religious Liberty Under Pressure

Disarming Prejudice

54m

End-Time Events & Religious Liberty Implications

The False Prophet Speaks As a Dragon: Revelation 13

1h 1m

Established in the Present Truth

Sound Doctrine

58m

Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

06 Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

1h 1m

Norman McNulty Weekend

01 Prophetic Peril in America

48m

Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

03 Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

1h 1m

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

05 Answering the Atheist: The Top 5 Objections

1h 8m

Emmanuel Core Workout

Sanctuary Part 5c

59m

Sound Doctrine