12 July 2001 Editorial:
Ecumenism or Adventism

Larry Kirkpatrick

"And his deadly wound was healed: And all the world wondered after the beast." Revelation 13:3 reminds us that the final ecumenical movements set in motion by the beast occur after the healing of the deadly wound sustained by the Papacy. Since the deadly wound came in 1798, we expect it after. The Oxford Movement of the 1844 era was one of the first moves by Protestants back toward the Roman Catholic Church. What has come to pass since then, even since Vatican II in the 1960's, is astonishing. If all we saw were random Protestants and evangelicals involved in the tide going out toward Rome again, we'd have little to be surprised about. But there is more. Adventists themselves are becoming ever more favorable to ecumenical overtures. It's time we had a talk.

Ecumenism and Adventism are mutually exclusive ideas. Let me explain why.

Ecumenicalism comes from the Greek word meaning house, dwelling, or inhabited world. It traces back to the stem word oikos, meaning house. This meaning is exactly what it stands for in Scripture. We see it in the word in Revelation 18:2 (katoikaytayrion, translated "habitation," here as in a religious system that through its connection with the secular kingdoms of this world has become a dwelling place for devils. The words "hold" and "cage" in the same verse parallel it with the meaning of "prison." Now notice that while Revelation speaks of the Whore and her daughters (Revelation 17:5), in eighteen of Revelation the whole brood is spoken of, is viewed as, a whole. That is, the mother of harlots (the Roman Catholic Church) and the daughters (apostate Protestantism) do, in the end, willingly acknowledge their family relation and are viewed in the apocalypse as one entity in essence.

At the end of time that religious system collapses under the final judgments of God. That conglomeration of varied religious structures who, in the end, refuse to come out of her and truly be separate, are consumed in the same judgments for they are found guilty of the same sins. For hundreds of years the Papacy has been anxious to bring the religious bodies related to her back in under her one roof. But it has been in just the most recent decades some of the strongest moves have come. One by one the descendant religious bodies are lining up and heading home to mama church and papa Pope. And they are being welcomed.

Yes, as these bodies have refused to jettison the unscriptural teachings of Roman Catholicism, they have been forced to more closely embrace them. And finally they loose sight of why they had become separate anyway. The roadmap back home to Babylon is well a well-marked and a well-worn path. It's not hard to find.

We are shocked though when Seventh-day Adventists embark on that road. How could this be? Have we become utterly Parkinsonized as far as our denominational memory goes, forgetting who and what we are? God has called us to finish His reformation, and we are sipping tea at the table of Rome!

In recent years Adventists have been participants in various pan-denominational bodies. We've joined in a dialogue here and a meeting there. Representatives of our Church have signed a paper here and written a paper there. We've become chummy with the varied ministers in our territory--and when you do that it is harder to see them as members of the Babylonian family. And it becomes almost repelling to us to give the second angel's message that Babylon has experienced a devastating moral fall by its persistent adherence to the commandments of man in place of the commandments of God.

No, this is not hate-speech, but if it is that's O.K. We love Catholics and Protestants, even recognize that many of them are fellow travelers simply not yet "in the know." We appreciate the individuals and would never wish to offend a one. But we cannot have a part in their illegitimate religious organizations. Then we would partake of her sins and her plagues in the end. Such is not for us. God has warned us and helped us not to go there. I sure hope we don't.

While the ecumenical "movement" has a goal of uniting the various religious organizations together in a manner indifferent to truth, Seventh-day Adventism proposes that the followers of God should unite to proclaim God's ideas. God's ideas only will unite us. A vast gulf separates ecumenism and Adventism.

Even were we to become enamored of the ecumenical way, who would speak for us, represent us to these other bodies? An interesting question in light of the engulfing polarization in God's Church caused by the co-mingling of conflicting ideologies. Jesus said "all ye are brethren." But this brotherhood transcends any organizational list or chart or hierarchy. We presume that one bearing a title speaks in some respect with the support of the organization that sustains them.

But this begs the question in many ways. Really, Seventh-day Adventism is a movement more than a Church, and therefore whoever speaks for it would speak primarily with the interests of the movement in mind, whereas were one's point of view more that SDAism is a Church, one would speak more from an organizational perspective. Titles sustain authority in an organization, while the articulation of ideas is authoritative in a movement.

There is a difference between doctrines and ideas and organizations. In theory the SDA Church organization is a support structure for the implementation of God's ideas.

On the question of ecumenism then must approach like this: In general we may say that non-SDA movement organizations are support structures for the implementation of religious ideas separate from and almost always mutually exclusive of those of God. The meaning of ecumenism from the Greek word has much to do with getting everything in under one roof. But since our ideas and theirs are mutually exclusive, they shouldn't be all in under one roof. We are plainly told in the Spirit of Prophecy that organizations that are not giving the third angel's message today are under the control of Satan "as a body." Since we are under the control of God as a body and they are under the control of Satan as a body, dialogue becomes a considerable concern, for but little common ground can be carved out between absolute light and absolute darkness.

The fact that Seventh-day Adventism is really more a movement than a church is attested by the situation in the former Soviet Union, where there were two separate SDA Churches, one underground and the other above and "officially" recognized by the state yet restricted? What of the situation in a place like China where again, an underground SDA Church exists striving to be faithful to the message at risk of life while the "officially recognized" Adventist Church is blended by the state into the blandly conglomerate "Three Self" Church? Dare we think or ask which body is the real Adventist Church there, and which may have a biblically-challenged connection with the state?

We may not have sought out such situations as our preferred ones, but there they are. Let's not shift topics, but shall we not ask ourselves whether in such cases Seventh-day Adventism is more "church" or "movement"? Men and women of conscience will often risk their lives for religious ideas, but less so for compromised structures. We will be much less interested in getting all in under one roof with every other religious organization when we stop and engage the gray matter: our mandate is to live and give God's ideas to the world. We are movement first and a church only second.

We can readily and gladly embrace dialogue with individuals who are open to becoming a part of God's end-time remnant movement. However, other organizational structures represent competitors in a fundamental way--alternative presenters of alternative interpretations of truth deadly in their outcome. They cannot and will not harmonize with the third angel's message as given in Scripture and amplified in the Spirit of Prophecy.

For these reasons we conclude that ecumenical dialogue with entities bent on pushing their stylistic innovations as truth, that fundamentally contradict the work of Adventism, are to be minimized as unhelpful, dangerous, and poor uses of the talents granted us of God.