14 March 2001 Editorial:
Seventh-day Adventism: Still the Best Message Going

Larry Kirkpatrick

Seventh-day Adventism is the best message going. Still Bible-based, still centered on Jesus, still a prophetic movement, and still the Elijah message for the end of time. Of course it's under attack by forces both internal as well as outside of the church structure.

What did we expect?

History is being made. We ride the swirling vortex of a vast sea-change. Absolutes, meaningfulness, any and all boundaries--these are the prey for a new way of thinking. The postmodernist mind refuses to rent space to a movement such as ours. We are ideological throwbacks; or so it seems to the promoters of the new thinking.

But in some respects postmodernism is already very old; for it echoes again the mindset of those living at the time of the flood. Then as now, the bulk of humanity went along with the flow until swept away in judgment; only a few were willing to obey and follow God.

When the evidence was so strong that God existed, still the antediluvians insisted on revising the forms of worship, recasting God as He was into gods as they preferred--manipulable, unmeddlesome, made in their own image. The garden of Eden persisted upon the earth--you could go there, to its gates where the cherub with the flaming sword still guarded the entrance. Society was spiritual. It just wasn't godly.

Noah called his generation back to the true faith, to the worship of the one true God. His was an Elijah message before Elijah, and he was an Elijah before Elijah. But few responded to his pleading. And then judgment came, he was saved in the ark and the new modelers of his day were slain.

How much better had they been converted. But they were so full of their wonderful new plans that Noah was written-off. And that was that.

Reconstructing that scene doesn't overly task the imagination. There must have been some who thought the Noah was a positive danger to religion in general, a fanatic, a Pharisee, a legalist, a bad influence on their kids. The general population knew him only as a crank and an eccentric; the local oddity of a discredited religion from the past with a "narrow" black and white way of thinking. But he gave his warning whether they would hear or whether they would forebear. It was still what it was: a message to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the children back to the fathers; to restore the true religion of the true God; to say righteousness is righteousness and sin is sin; to reinforce the boundary lines of morality in a world wherein men took for themselves wives of whomever they chose. Does that sound kind of like today to you?

But it was still the best message going. It was still the truth in a culture that refused the very idea of truth. They didn't get it. But not because the message was hard to understand, or cruel in itself, or poorly expressed by someone who didn't appeal to "the youth culture." It wasn't because Noah's music wasn't up-to-date, or because he lacked a puppet ministry, or because he refused to rake leaves on the Sabbath. It was because they didn't want to get it. They wanted to keep their ideas which had become idols.

And even though God only found Noah and his family to be true worshippers, that didn't stop His Spirit from striving with the lost. It didn't stop Noah from being a "preacher of righteousness." Nor did God commission Noah to build two arks, one for the old-style worshippers and one for the new. One truth. One ark. One message. One movement. One God. It was the best message going. A cargo-hold full of antediluvian-attracting gimmicks wasn't needed.

Just the truth.

Nor did Noah come in with great swelling figures in the baptism column. But he did the work God had given him to do.

I suppose that we need to be more like Noah. Sure, we'll do new and innovative things. Don't you think Noah did? But he didn't do stupid things or ungodly things. He didn't bend with the whims of his hearers, or round the corners of the truth or build a "celebration" ark alongside the "traditional" ark. He didn't have to. It was and is the best message going.

It points us to Jesus and life-change. It is a positive message: Jesus is coming again! It is a timely message. It is a message that puts a positive hedge of protection around people. Its what the world needs now. God said so.

How fortunate we are to have the help of Bible history. If we take it to heart, we needn't put the work behind by years and years in making the kind of mistakes we would otherwise be so likely to make. We must take the message and go forward. And if others are off caught in the slime pits of their own devising, then we must realize that false methods will come to nothing and we must do the work. We must give the best message going.

And there's nothing I'd rather do anyway!