8 February 2001 Editorial:
Adventists Left Behind

Pr. Larry Kirkpatrick

We're not up to date any more. Seventh-day Adventists, the most prophetic of prophetic peoples, have been left behind; With the "rapture" craze presently sweeping across the land due to the books, videos, and movies in the "Left Behind" marketing thrust, we have missed the boat. We could be in on the band-wagon, making merchandise of the gospel, preaching and teaching about this outlook on Bible prophecy, but we're not. But before we lambast ourselves for our short-sightedness, let's pause for a moment; before we join the herd, let's take stock. For I propose to you that it is a good thing that Adventists have been left behind.

For once--for once I say--we are not following the fad. Since the recent decades where we've hidden our candle, muted our message, and crept anxiously along the slime-trail of every new passing church growth fad, ever several years behind--for once we aren't (although we'll have to watch to make sure this is actually true) riding that wave. But we are now going to have to deal with it more than we ever have had too. Here now is a movie, a descendant of the Hal Lindsey DNA; it is tuned for the culture of this hour, clothed in the supposedly-Christian rock music of the present, vigorously marketed with all the latest techniques from websites to Walmart, and pitched with fervor by the true believers. You can buy the books, the posters, the Bibles (!), all set up to sell the underlying idea that prophecy should be interpreted by the futurist system. And that's not good. So we've steered clear of it. But its here--a direct challenge to what we believe at our core. Don't forget--we're Seventh-day Adventists. We're a people all about the second coming of Jesus.

But you say, what do you mean, a direct challenge to what we believe at our core? Yes, that's exactly what it is. See, all the teachings that underlie this point--the sanctuary teaching, the development of a people in whom the character of Christ is fully reproduced, the arrival of a final generation who's Spirit-filled lives vindicate the character of God and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit--all those teachings that have been called "non-essentials," "moot points," and the like in some official publications in recent decades--those teachings are at the core of why God raised up the Seventh-day Adventist movement. The second coming teaching as we've given it in recent years--largely apart from these prophetically founded under-girdings--is different. It lacks power. It has nothing to say about the vindication of God's character. Its just a passive event. We wait. Jesus comes. The war ends. Roll the credits.

I'll tell you why Adventists are left behind, not a part of this new fad. You may know that all, yes, all of the Protestant reformers--to a man--taught the historicist view of prophecy. They understood and presented what entity the antichrist power was, why it was antichrist, how prophecy unequivocally pointed to it, and what it would seek to do. God worked with these reformers and their descendants, He kept the reformation moving, expanding, working, increasing in knowledge. With the Advent movement of 1840s and 50s, the move of Christ from the holy place in the heavenly sanctuary to the most holy place of it brought to light the ark of God's covenant. In Revelation 11:19 the ark was revealed, and with a modicum of study we realized what was in that ark: God's law. Ten Commandments. Not nine. Ten. Including the Seventh day Sabbath.

Adventists are left behind because the Bible shows us that the final issue is a moral one--it involves God's law. And that law includes the Sabbath. We'll all, in the end, be sealed in our foreheads by God or marked there by the beast. We'll be morally in harmony with God or with the beast, i.e., really Satan who's behind the beast. We'll be obedient or disobedient. Our Lord gave us a hedge--His law. It is a protection of vast proportion. Unfortunately, the remainder of contemporary Protestantism (if it can even be called that anymore), has no such hedge. Now let's be realistic here. In order to sustain the observance of Sunday and the non-observance of the true seventh day Sabbath, contemporary Christendom has jettisoned the law. So, going in to the book of Revelation, it remains a bottom-line assumption that Christian believers in the end-time can have no real issue over God's law. It doesn't fit. The expectation is different.

It's not that popular Christianity is openly or knowingly for immorality; it's that issues of morality tend to be kept in isolated, disconnected bubbles. Homosexuality, pornography, evolution, abortion, etc.,--they're viewed as evil. But many other things accepted by the culture around us are fully ignored. Not so many years ago, many identifying themselves as Christian would have turned gray and ran if you proposed to them that they go to a rock concert, wear jewelry, or come under even the shadow of a movie-theater. Today, many calling themselves Christians regularly rent R-rated movies or even attend a theater to see one. Adventists, because of our realization that what sin is, what humanity Christ bore while walking this earth, and what righteousness by faith means in the end-time setting, are all deeply intertwined with God's project of perfectly reproducing the character of Christ in the last generation, see the moral issues on a far broader, connected, interlinked basis. We can't isolate morality here from morality there; we see it all as one texture. We know the Bible too well. At least well enough to realize that, "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10).

So Adventists have been left behind. And that's good. My fear? That's we may catch up. After all brethren and sister'n, if we think we can disconnect the second coming from the production of a last-generation of obedient, Jesus-reflecting Christians, then we've come full circle. Then we're teaching perhaps the shell of truth--we're presenting the details with some measure of accuracy, but leaving behind the meaning, the implications. Something very precious is at risk here. We aren't just a church that believes in the second coming of Jesus--we're a movement designed by God to usher that coming in through the production of a people the world has yet to see shine.

Yes. Adventists have stayed behind. The world has ventured on, Christendom has passed out into the inviting valley of Sodom. Fire and brimstone has been scheduled for those who obey not the gospel of Christ. But may God help those in Adventism we see skittering self-consciously away into the darkness, in the direction of Sodom. They may go, they may say they're giving this message, but whatever they may think they are doing, the authentic message will remain until it produces a people for our time. And that will never happen by laying down our banner, subsuming the implications of this message. Let us keep the second coming closely linked with the question why. Nothing less will do. In fact, nothing else is Adventist.