The Forgotten War

Introduction

Would you open your Bibles and join me at Revelation 12:17? There we read:

And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

I hope that we know this text. Have you given thought to its ideas lately?

This single verse contains Satan (the dragon), the Seventh-day Adventist Church (the woman), a cataclysmic moral war (the great controversy between Christ and Satan), the remnant of her seed (God's obedient end-time people), the commandments of God (the Ten Commandment Law), and the gift of prophecy to build-up God's people (the testimony of Jesus through Ellen G. White). It occurs to me this day to say something concerning each part of this verse; for each part today is under attack from within and from without Adventism.

Perhaps you've come to share my conviction: it is late in the hour. Late for the church organization; late for God's people; late for the devil (whose time is short), and late for the world waxing old beneath our feet. Much remains to be done and we are forewarned that the final movements will be rapid ones. I wonder if we ever imagined what it would be like to live today, 7 July 2001, and what we would see around us. But here we are. We stand at the brink of the most awesome time an Adventist ever could lay eyes on. Oh, the end of the world would be interesting for every earthling for sure. But since we've been forewarned of the end and foretold as being key (and I mean key) players in that end, how bold and even awful it all appears to us!

In any case, I want to speak to you today in particular concerning some of the inside attacks. We're used to thinking in terms of attacks from outside. But today let's transcend that thinking and move outside the box. What might this verse have to say about attacks from the inside?

Satan's Teeth Are Being Pulled

We (as a church) apparently have little fear of Satan left, for in recent time sin is so rarely mentioned. Instead we speak (if we speak at all) of our "mistakes" and "failures." Friends, when sin isn't so bad, our Savior isn't so good. When you can reduce the black darkness of sin to a lighter shade of gray by changing what you call it, you've made sin less sinful. And when sin is made less sinful the author of sin is made less evil. And when Satan is made less evil, he's made more friendly, easier to understand; and we begin to think that perhaps, in some degree, his claims have some foundation in reality and we need to cut him at least a tiny sliver of slack, right?

Anything goes today, so long as it can be relabeled. Let someone "in authority" re-label it and now we can do it. Is it music? Is it a pagan holiday? Is it a spiritualistic sensual practice? Is it in any degree disobedience to God's law? No problem. Just find someone to give you the go ahead!

Its interesting though, isn't it, that in our text the dragon was what? "wroth" with the woman. He is angry. The Bible says he is going about like a roaring lion trying to scare us; and that he certainly is. He thinks he can terrify us into keeping quiet while he changes everything. He thinks he can shout us down and close our mouths by calling us names, labeling us as "legalists" if we teach obedience to God's law. Whereas the Bible presents Christ and the law in harmony, Satan would have us present a skewed Christ and lawlessness. God help us not to fall into that pit.

Jesus said what? "I have kept My Father's commandments" (John 15:10), and "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29). And Christ is our example too isn't He? (1 Peter 2:21). Jesus and the law go together. Satan and disobedience also go together. How he (Satan) longs to get the church to disobey. The intention of God is that His Word would be spoken, would wash us, would make sin more sinful to our beady eyes--not less. Too often those in harness in the pulpit have failed; they've removed his fangs and left us with the impression that sin is bad but not unlivable; that it's OK if you let Satan "gum" you (his teeth have been pulled, remember?). In eternity an entirely different picture than that will be confirmed. Only where will our people be standing?

The Church New-Modeled By Some, Cast Aside By Others

The next subject we come to in our text is the "Church," the woman. I want you to notice something here. Satan is still there and he is still angry, but there is a group of people with whom he is especially angry. And who is that?

Oh, it can't be the church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, for she has apostasized. Or so some say. Now stop and think about it; if the church organization to which we belong has laid her once-proud banner right down into the dust and become entirely immobilized, Satan should be dancing with glee, not frothing with anger. His triumph would be complete if he could point to a church of which nothing remained but wreckage.

Brothers and sisters, is God's Church in total wreckage today? Is the truth of God utterly shut out of her today? It's not so! Yes, there are wounds in our blessed Church; yes there is confusion and error running almost free in that place there or this place over here. But God has His 7000 who've not bowed the knee to Baal. And some of them, unless I miss my guess, are some of you. But you have persevered. This morning this valley--this valley--rings with the sound of the third angel's message! From this pulpit in a Conference Seventh-day Adventist Church God sends forth His law to the people.

I received an e-mail some nine months ago after something I had published on the Greatcontroversy.org website. Do you know what it said? In all earnestness this brother said, "I give you nine months at the most, then they'll fire you for sure." Well, they didn't fire me for sure. They asked us to come; they being this Conference. The fellow that wrote that to me is venturing on setting up a new church up there in his corner of the country back east. He's lost hope that God can use this organization. But our God foresaw all this confusion coming long before us, and He has His method of getting His Church right. You know what it is, don't you? It's the shaking.

And what an ideal solution it is too. He saw some would come forward to new-model His church. He saw them coming. He foresaw the day when every queer new innovation would be put into play by a people who had become confused about Jesus and confused about God's end-time message. But He's kept His hand in it all and He's kept His head;

So why are some of us losing ours?

It's a very poor time to abandon hope. Our God is in the process of delivering us. As He did His people in Egypt, He has heard our cry and He has come down--not is coming down but He has come down--to deliver us. What is the best day to live, to be a Seventh-day Adventist Christian? That's easy. Today! Today! God has not forsaken His people, for His people have not forsaken Him.

Great Controversy War Replaced By Different Motif

Our passage speaks of a war. The dragon "went to make war" it says. Shocking as it may seem, today a certain breed of Adventist has forgotten the war. We are plainly told in Great Controversy, (and we can spell it out from the Bible equally well), that the issue at the end of time is centered at the point of God's law. Surely you recall this from Great Controversy, p. 22: "The great sin of the Jews was their rejection of Christ; the great sin of the Christian world would be their rejection of the law of God, the foundation of His government in heaven and earth." Yet where today in the church is the emphasis on God's law? Just about the only time we hear about the law is when we are being reminded that we are not saved by our works.

Always they stand flogging this dead horse. But it's not because we are overworked, but because they are under-obedient.

A new paradigm is today replacing the great controversy war theme; and strangely enough the new theme is just it's opposite: peace. Unity with other non-SDA denominations--with people who not only don't have the same message but who (in so many cases) are the historical descendants of those who rejected this message from heaven and in so doing a century and a half ago joined themselves to Babylon. And who's version of salvation-understanding is prominently being taught in the church today? Theirs. A salvation plan bereft of any important place for God's law, empty of all but the most cursory obedience.

Don't misunderstand me here; I'm not for a moment suggesting that we are saved by our own obedience apart from God. But I am calling to your mind the fact that today the role of the law has gone through a strange shifting--here, in God's Church! It boggles the mind.

What has happened? We've become cloudy and confused and swept up in ill-founded enthusiasms. We've been scattered on the high hills. But God is a faithful Shepherd. Turn to Ezekiel 34:11-16 and hear His precious promise for Seventh-day Adventists today.

For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search My sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out My sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord GOD. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.

God will open the way for us again. He will recover His people. He will feed us now and prepare us for the final gauntlet through which we all must pass. The end is well on its way and our God will not and has not and won't forsake us. His mercy makes us the apple of His eye.

Yes, the war goes on and His faithfulness goes on. We may try to minimize the idea that the war between good and evil is raging and that the law is at its pivot. But it is still there. I will go so far as to say that the great controversy war theme is Seventh-day Adventism's key untapped weapon. No wonder then that from within it is weakened, hidden, down-played, and reworked. It points to God's law and that's out of vogue among some Adventists today. Which brings us to the next point.

Remnant, What Remnant?

At the end of time what do we find in this text? God differentiates His people. He says that He has a people, at the end, called to operate as no less than the completers of the gospel. They are called "the remnant of her seed." Now who was the seed of the woman? The woman represents the church, and the remnant is the last portion of God's true church. But the seed of the woman is also Christ as the descendant of Eve, the Redeemer who came to crush Satan under His feet (Genesis 3:15). Jesus gave His followers the authority to crush serpents under their feet (Luke 10:19). In Romans 16:20, we are commanded to crush Satan under our feet. Is it not apparent that if Christ, the Seed and descendant of the woman crushed Satan under His feet at the cross for our redemption, His people at the end will again crush Satan under their feet for the winning of the great controversy?

But we notice that in the halls of the confused among us, there is no talk of crushing Satan under our feet at the end of time. There is no talk of a unique mission, of victory over sin, of a special mandate for God's people. Biblical teachings of an investigative judgment, of a people in whom heaven reproduces the character of Christ, of character perfection, are laughed at, denied, set aside, and explained away. No devil nor sin is crushed under the feet of a unique end-time people who are the seed of the woman in this strange new and false version of Adventism.

Any distance between ourselves and other churches is minimized, if not utterly swept away. Friends, any statement of faith that leaves out the investigative judgment, or modifies it in such a way as to replace it with a smoothed-out revision, is an apostate statement of faith. You can't take the investigative judgment out of Adventism any more than you can remove the remnant of her seed at the end of time. These teachings are of God; they are not for us to play with us or pick and choose. Remnant, what remnant? they ask. If you have to ask, then you have to study again.

The Commandments of God Watered-Down

Satan went to make war with God's people because they were and are at war with him. Because they obey God's law. And the law is the very point of dispute. Who else--what other people--are out there upholding the Ten Commandments of God, the transcript, the concisely written description, of what Jesus is like?

You know, in one place under the Spirit of God Mrs. White made this prediction: that a time would come when "Books of a new order would be written. A system of intellectual philosophy would be introduced. The founders of this system would go into the cities, and do a wonderful work. The Sabbath of course, would be lightly regarded, as also the God who created it" (Selected Messages, bk. 1, pp. 204-205). What is that a prediction of? Of a time when even Adventists--even Adventists--would begin to falter, to lighten up on their connection with Christ, for they would begin to, in their evangelistic work, "lightly regard" obedience to the seventh day Sabbath of God's holy law.

"Well now, aren't you getting off-track there pastor? I thought you were talking about the law being watered-down, and here you go off on a tangent about this oft-rehashed Ellen White statement." OK. Now mark this down and mark is down well; hang it up on your refrigerator with a magnet or something; make sure you get this: Satan's object is always, always, always, to attack God's law. It may come in whatever pleasing garb, but every deception, every sophistry and attack is founded on leading God's people into disobedience to His law. Is that hard to get?

Why, let us ask, would Satan cause "books of a new order" to be written? To embark on a plan to systematically undermine and destroy the theological foundations of those who believe in Jesus, that's why. The purpose of such books of a new order is to lead us to disobey God's law, to turn from Jesus.

Why, let me ask, would Satan introduce a "system of intellectual philosophy"? It's because he can't hit God's law head-on; he has to do it adroitly. He has to do it with finesse. He wants to appeal to the degreed-mind, he wants to make the ivory-towered places in Adventism purr like a kitten while he surgically snips the vas deferens. Make no mistake: his demon eye has been fixed firmly upon Adventist educational centers since the first. Just here is another facet to the counsel of God that we not gather up in Jerusalem centers, in Adventist ghettos and centers. But here we are. And what else can we call some of the things heard in these parts but manifestations of a "system of intellectual philosophy" substituting for the authentic message of Jesus for these last days? The end result: disobedience by God's people.

The founders of the system would go into the cities we were told, and do what? Repudiate Adventism? Not at all. Rather, they would go and "do a wonderful work." What did the Bible say about Christianity in the last days? That it would parade a "form of godliness" yet deny the power of godliness (2 Timothy 3:5). And this pseudo-Adventism goes into the cities and does "a wonderful work" and what? "Wins souls," right? Yes! The revised Adventism predicted for our time was foretold as an evangelistic work. But the result is a people who break the law of God and are lost. For we are plainly told that the outcome of this "wonderful" work is the sabbath being "lightly regarded, as also the God who created it." And what kind of evangelistic work is it that has that result? A work which gives lip service to God but has no standards and ceases to properly instruct those baptized in the Scriptures of the living God and the testimonies of His Spirit.

The Testimony of Jesus Being Made of None Effect

And that leads us to the last part of Revelation 12:17 (but not the last part of heaven's message this day). We live presently in a time when forces are in play and steadily working to make the testimony of the Spirit of God of none effect. Already they have accomplished much of that work.

You do know how that statement goes, don't you? "The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God" Selected Messages, Bk. 1, p. 48. What does it say? "Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God's remnant people in the true testimony." Nor is that the merely true testimony in general, but we all know that what is here spoken of is the confidence of God's people in the life and writings, the inspired prophetic ministry, of Mrs. Ellen G. White?

When, after all, has there been such a time as today, when from within, from among the Advent people, so many have arisen to question and cavil and cast doubts about the veracity of the writings of Ellen White? And when have so many been so susceptible to these destructive enterprises as at the present time, when fewer and fewer among us are reading and studying the Bible, weighing and applying the counsels so mercifully granted us, to our own lives? We are making Satan's task easier. And he is laughing all the way to your guillotine. Our embarrassing new weakness in Scripture has made us as a people less capable of discerning the working of the Spirit of God; and therefore our doubts about Ellen White are magnified.

Oh yes. Today Revelation 12:17 is fulfilling right before our widened-eyes. Somehow we always thought this verse was about the attacks upon God's people from outside of the Church. But it has been closer than we ever thought. From the inside a cancer is metastasizing. And because it causes so much pain our fellow believers scattered round' about are applying the morphine of rock music and the current wave of plastic gimmickry to deaden the pain and block the light shed so precisely upon our departures from truth. But there is one more point for us to share here today; one more yet closer-cutting truth to bear . . .

You see, our Scripture said that "the dragon was wroth with the woman." And we read through the specifications of this verse, and at the end we saw that those whom he went to make war with had the "testimony of Jesus." Now I said that the testimony of Jesus, in particular, is the Spirit of Prophecy, that is, the prophetic gift manifested, as we hold, in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen G. White. But the testimony of Jesus is even more than this. It includes our very personal, very literal testimony of Jesus itself; what we as a people have to say about Him.

Think about it. Why, after all, are His law and His counsel at issue anyway? Because He uses His word to make His people like Himself. What then are His people saying about His Son? What is this other testimony of Jesus?

The Other Testimony of Jesus

It has been said that Jesus is "the friend of sinners." But what so many have failed to see (or perhaps not wanted to see) is that this is because He heals them so that they become former sinners. I have sinned. You have sinned. We all stand in need of salvation. We have been sinners. We neither deny the radical impact of the fall upon humankind, nor refuse the radical impact of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives now. What Christ has done and is still doing makes the change possible.

But the gospel is larger, may I say, than the cross. Well-meaning people will go to 1 Corinthians 15:1, 3-4 and say this is the gospel: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures." That is, some wish to make the gospel into something altogether external to us. Christ died in our place and was resurrected, and this is the gospel.

That is part of the gospel; it speaks of facts near the core of the gospel. I utterly refuse to accept a gospel lacking that; it would be a crime. But that--standing alone--is not the gospel. The same author, Paul, under the inspiration of the same Spirit, the Holy Spirit, elsewhere speaks of the gospel as "the power of God unto salvation" for all who will believe (Romans 1:16). You see, power here is dunamis, strength, and salvation is soterion, a Greek word meaning not merely to save, but to heal. That is, the gospel is God's strength to heal.

Some would have us think "power" here rises from a different Greek word meaning "authority," as in declarative authority. Some would have us think of soterion here as salvation in a forensic, legal sense, as "acquittal." How comfortable and how well this would all fit with the very legally-centered western European Roman Catholic conceptions of salvation.

But the gospel is larger than the cross. Salvation is more than a mere external declaration removed across the sky from us by countless light-years of distance and processed by some bored, bureaucratic angelic legal-clerk somewhere. A legal declaration of justification is included, but only because the gospel of God is really the strength of God to heal applied to a people. Heaven is watching the experiment. Can God do it? they ask. Is heaven reconciling a lost world to God? with the universe?

Well is it said that "The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought" (Steps to Christ, p. 43). Every life is a battlefield. Every heart under this ceiling is potential prey for the destroyer. But every heart here is also potential evidence of the power of the cross to change people now. Really, everything boils down to this one question: can fallen humans obey? The answer is our testimony of Jesus.

Namely, can we do in our flesh what Jesus did in His flesh? Can we, by means of the same power by which Jesus lived, live as Jesus lived?

Does your life--does mine--demonstrate to the watching universe the power of the risen Christ? The same power by which the world was created pure and sinless--is that power at work inside of you and of me to make us pure and sinless? Is salvation just at the cross or something happening in heaven now and in my heart right now? Is the teaching that in 1844 Jesus entered the most holy place and raced toward closure in heaven really what saith the Bible, or just a mirage and really God left his people here without a clue about what's going on up there?

The practical end result of the making of none effect the testimony of God is the neutralization of the power of the gospel unto salvation. It means a final and abject failure by God to follow through, to produce a people who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth (Revelation 14:4). If Satan can prevail--if He can stop God in His tracks through us, God's end-time people--Satan thinks he can still win the great controversy.

Is Jesus altogether lovely? Or does righteousness lack appeal, even to God's people? Are we thoroughly converted, or can we draw much closer than we have?

I hold that the answer to that string of all those questions I've just asked you, is yes. Because of Jesus we are Christians. Because of Jesus we have this hope. Because of Jesus we are called into battle. Because of Jesus we here all are placed into play, into the war, right here, in the Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Conclusion: We Shall Forget the War No More

Perhaps this day--perhaps some--have caught sight of something we haven't seen before, or at least in awhile. Where there is no vision, the people perish; conversely, where there is vision, the people thrive. Jesus has a vision for us. "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).

This one verse we've looked at, Revelation 12:17, so systematically surfacing the participants and the issues at the end of time, reveals not only what attacks Satan would make on the truth from the outside, but in particular the places where, from the inside we would find ourselves under siege. That day clearly has arrived. Have you heard the line about the little boy who came running to his parents with the revealing gripe, "he hit me back"? After starting the fight, he was surprised when his victim hit him back! Friends, we are not called to lay down and watch what we believe further and further eroded. We must contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). This is in the order of God.

Some of us may have forgotten the war, but our God never has. Jesus, looking down at the scars in His hands, at the eternal reminder borne that He was wounded in the house of His friends, still intercedes in heaven. Still His warning goes out to the angels who hold the winds at the four corners of the earth, Wait! "Until we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads" (Revelation 7:3).

During WWII as the war in the Pacific waxed strong, General Douglass Macarthur at one time was forced to withdraw his forces from the Philippines. But in withdrawing to fight another day, he declared "I will return." Seventh-day Adventists who love the third angel's message--to whom this Christ-filled message means more than our lives--have been embattled in recent years. Looking back from today we see that indeed, in many ways the final developments have already been rapid ones. It's as if truth-loving Adventists have seemingly had to withdraw for awhile, to regroup, and to carry forward the message so as to fight another day. While no one ever on our behalf uttered "we will return," let me here today say "We are now here. And if anyone wants to take away from us our Jesus and His truth, they will have to pry Him away from our cold, dead fingers. The line is drawn. We will fight the last battle right where we stand. May we fulfill our Lord's desire here, in this place, and see Him come in glory while we are here, in this place, with our own eyes. We will not forget the war anymore."