5 April 2001 Editorial:
The Adventists Go To Temple Square.
Pt 3 (of 3): Feelings at the Rotunda Room

Larry Kirkpatric

The two last stops on the Temple Square tour are the Mormon Tabernacle and the Visitor's Center/Rotunda Room.

The Tabernacle is a worship hall bearing some similarity to the old Chattaqua Festival-type structures. It has a large pipe organ and a dome-shape. The structure was constructed in 1874 and seats several thousand. It, unlike the Temple, is open to the public. The tour guides enjoy telling you how God still speaks to His people there through His living prophets (LDS Church Presidents). The entrance to the tabernacle houses a main literature depot for the LDS tour guides at the Square. Here they have books, literature, and various documents for use in interesting you in the LDS Church. All you have to do is ask.

After some words on the historic interest of the structure, you move to the final part of the exhibit: a visit to the newly remodeled north visitor's center, or at least a part of it (construction is underway, presumably to provide an optimum experience for the visitors expected from the 2002 Winter Olympics). You will visit the Rotunda room.

Entering at ground-level, you discover yourself in a large, rounded room. To the left, a ramp commences and climbs in a circle up to the next floor. As your group is conducted upwards, you look up and discover deep blue murals on the wall depicting planets and stars and clouds and such. When you arrive at the top you find yourself in a room with a large white statue of Jesus in its very center--the same image you'll see emphasized in LDS magazines and literature. Benches face the statue. When everyone is seated, a period of quiet is suggested. Finally, your guide nods to the missionary present and in charge of the rotunda room. Ours was a perky and very smiley blond young woman. Her words were few.

She said something on this line: "Welcome to the rotunda room. This is a place where we can focus on the peace that we feel here. I'd like to invite you to just sit quietly for a moment and listen to these encouraging words of Scripture." (Doubtless am reproducing her words inexactly, but it was something on that line.) Next, there is a very brief recitation of some Bible along with some LDS "Scripture" (Book of Mormon, etc.). It is a presentation in miniature of what we might call "the great controversy as understood by Mormons." As I recall it took only a few moments, so you'll understand that it was just a snippet of the picture.

After this brief audio event, the tour members (usually predominantly Mormons) move around and snap photographs. Finally, the group descends the circular ramp back to the ground floor, where a passage is read to you from the Book of Mormon, you are offered a free video explaining more about the LDS church if you'd like, and you are given a card to fill out and record your "thoughts and feelings" about the visit. You are asked if you would like a missionary to visit your home, etc. Everything ends on a friendly note.

In our case, we had actually joined our first tour as it neared its completion, so we took the next tour too and that was the one where it was just us three Adventists and the two missionaries. For us, the tour ended in the Tabernacle (I described the building last time).

As we sat there in the tabernacle, they shared how their "prophets" spoke there, or had spoken there, in General Conference sessions. They emphasized the reality of contemporary revelation. I spoke up and stated, "Oh, we believe in contemporary revelation. The Bible teaches it." Believe me, they were interested. I said that we believed that God still speaks through His prophets, and that we believed the He had bestowed on Mrs. Ellen G. White the gift of prophecy. At first they seemed surprised that we spoke of female prophets, but after a few examples were given, they were all for it. We had a fascinating discussion there which I cannot recall well enough to reproduce. But I urged them to read the most important book published in 1700 years, The Great Controversy. They didn't promise to read it, but said that it sounded very interesting and like a wonderful book. They gave us the cards there and we filled them out. Would I be willing to have the missionaries come and visit me? Yes indeed. Gave phone number and address. (We haven't heard from them yet.) So ended our afternoon at Temple Square.

Now--some closing detail and reflection. Again we--as a tour group--were urged to stop and feel and sense the "peace" of the place. Art in statuary and murals, in architecture and groundskeeping, and in musical background atmosphere--these varied elements were martialed, employed with care and attention to generate an ideal atmosphere for impressions. In case the idea that the place is saturated with "peace" doesn't occur to the vistor on one's own, the suggestion is provided for you--repeatedly and pleasantly. Is this done malevolently or to intentionally and insincerely manipulate the visitor? Not by the missionaries. I think at some level they realize it is there. Doubtless they are instructed in the importance of emphasizing these points. But do they do it to intentionally misguide you? I don't believe that for a moment. They are sincere. They are intentional in what they are doing, but they are sincerely trying to do what is right--to help you over into their epistemology--their "way of knowing."

While I haven't made prominent note of them, other points ought to be kept in mind. For example, throughout the Square we heard the gentle tones of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sounding over the PA. No, there were no drums, synthesizers, or electric guitar riffs. But the very friendly sound of the human voice. The Mormons do not appear to have opted in for the celebration-style "worship" apostasy some would have Adventists adopt (even though it would fit well with their way of knowing). They know it's out there too. They have, I am sure, chosen, knowingly and thoughtfully to leave it out of their work so far as I can tell. From time to time I've been in LDS worship services in different churches at different places in the United States, and I have yet to hear anything approaching the rock-and-roll centered sensual burlesque that is being gleefully indulged in increasing magnitude in the evangelical world.

You may have noticed through these three articles (The Adventists Visit Temple Square, Pt. 1, Pt. 2, and this one), that I have repeatedly brought out this issue of our "way of knowing." And last of all I can tell you that the portion of the tour devoted to the Tabernacle and the Rotunda room were pointedly designed to bring the visitor toward it. I want to comment at greater length then here on this point exactly.

Already I have noted in those previous articles the sharp differences between the SDA way of knowing and the LDS. Already I have noted that the newer style-Adventism promoted by some of our colleagues is antithetical to the Adventist way of knowing and bears an ever increasing similarity to the LDS way of knowing. I have noted that the prophetic mention by Ellen G. White that an attempt would be made to change our religion strikingly matches what would happen were we to change our epistemology (way of knowing). Let's take this a step further.

Question: What would happen to Seventh-day Adventism were we to abandon our way of knowing? And how could this heinous outcome be achieved?

The answer must be built on reality. And reality is that (a), as long as our people are affixed to the authority of Scripture it can never happen, (b) as long as our people believe in the legitimacy of the gift of the Spirit of prophecy as expressed through Ellen G. White and her writings, it can never happen. Therefore, (c) it is imperative that whatever means available be used to both, capture the minds of the youth with a different way of knowing, a different set of ideas, and also that whatever organs the "church" (here read as that specific group among us bent on new-modeling Adventism--by no means the whole of leadership) has be used to continually press in an adjusted Adventist idea-set. The churches educational institutions (particularly theological), its presses and its ministry must, so far as possible, be led to embrace a revised "way of knowing." The most effective witness is the one who is thoroughly self-convinced of the wrong idea and can promote it with all the sincerity they are capable of. Just as our Mormon friends press in the Mormon epistemology without meaning us the slightest bit of harm, so those who think to save Adventism from her (supposedly) embarrassing past must promote their more "mature" Adventism.

The problem is, for years and years we have allowed them to do so. We've sought to be nice, to be trusting, to think no evil. But in he meantime they have been doing neuro-surgery upon us. I'm told that the brain has no sense of feeling. It is encased in bone and skin and there are sensing-nerves out there in the casing, but not inside. After all, the brain isn't supposed to need to sense in the same way inside of the skull. Thus, after numbing the external tissues and cutting the requisite hole in the skull, an operation on the brain can proceed while the patient is fully conscious and he wonÕt feel a thing.

Well friends, I think an operation has been underway for a long time, and all the while we have been carrying on random discussions with the doctor. But it has been he wielding the scalpel. How greatly have you and I already been influenced by the new feeling-centered Adventism? Are the teachers in our Sabbath-school section thoughtful and aware Adventists? How much of the feeling-centered Sabbath-school materials have they taught your kids because they were following along with the common material? Friend, what is the last great achievement of the enemy? "The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God."¹

Context? The context of that Ellen White statement comes from what some for awhile had thought were prophetic visions by Anna Garmire. Mrs. White saw that they were false, a mingling of truth with error. She cautioned that spurious visions would become prominent in the future, and that all was to be brought to the Bible for measurement. The new Adventist "way of knowing" I have spoken of does not come to us dressed as a prophetic vision in the same sense as what Ellen White experienced. It is more a new pair of glasses through with to read/interpret Adventism, and it comes to us from a certain group of the educated among us. But if we question the application of the warning against "the very last deception of Satan," consider the following lines taken from the next page of the same document:

There is nothing more detrimental to the soul's interest, its purity, its true and holy conceptions of God, and of sacred and eternal things, than constantly giving heed to and exalting that which is not from God."²

The new, feeling-based paradigm for knowing now foisted upon us by some is incompatible with Adventism. It removes the authority of Scripture by subtle means and replaces it with mere human expertise and authority. We are asked what we "feel" rather than what we "think." Is everyone going with this trend a malevolent proponent of purposefully changing Adventism? Not at all. Most are probably sincere. Is "feeling" legitimate? Sure. But it is never to be our test of truth; never are we to train our members to put their internal feelings above the external testimony of Scripture.

The "feelings in the rotunda room" are an important reminder to SDAs that our way of knowing is different. The Bible says "great peace have those who love Thy law," not "great peace have those who making feeling their law."³

Adventism is now in the rotunda room. It is being asked to feel and not to think. It is being groomed to make worship a sensual thing rather than the response of obedience. We are in a strange place, my brothers and sisters. What will we do as a people?

I know but one answer. Hear it O Israel:

Give me the Bible, star of gladness gleaming, to cheer the wanderer, lone and tempest tossed. No storm can hide that peaceful radiance beaming, since Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Give me the Bible, holy message shining, Thy light shall guide me in the narrow way. Precept and promise, law and love combining, 'Till night shall vanish in eternal day."⁴

1. Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, book 2, p. 78.
2. Ibid., pp. 78-79.
3. Psalm 119:165.
4. Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, #272, Give Me the Bible.

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