23 August 2001 Editorial:
Traditional Seventh-day Adventism Revisited

Who really are the "traditional" Seventh-day Adventists?

If you believe in the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy, the investigative judgment, and the gospel as our pioneers knew it; if you circulate from time to time to the liberal Adventist websites, or should you manage to read one of those froggish books of a new order, you may find yourself being designated as a TSDA (traditional Seventh-day Adventist). Our better-educated, more intelligent, more erudite counterparts--having risen above such myths have convinced themselves that because they have a place in academia, because they teach in our schools and universities, because they populate our Adventist centers and edit our official publications--they have determined that they too have a legitimate perspective in Adventism. They base this theory on the fact that they hold membership or position in the church. They stand ready to lead the vanguard, to disabuse us of the childish immaturity of those early years and writings, and bring us along to their safe haven. They design to deliver us from the bondage of believing in an Adventism comparable to that which our pioneers knew that we might embrace instead their rather thoroughly preened belief-set.

They would strip away the investigative judgment, every vestige of character perfection, victory over sin, any place at all for Ellen White as an inspired or authoritative prophet, and bring us through a voyage to their fantasy island. Cheap grace, rewards for intellectual acuity, and accolades for zealous pursuit of worldly worship styles fill their vision for our future.

Is there such a thing as a TSDA? If there is, then the non-traditional Seventh-day Adventist must also be a Seventh-day Adventist--just one of a different stripe. We must ask ourselves whether truly it may be said that the modern variants are Seventh-day Adventist in nature.

While we must admit that all tradition is not automatically bad, let us acknowledge that the intent of such a designation for us is to cast us as throw-backs and hold-outs, detrimental dinosaurs retarding the progress towards the liberal utopia. Traditionalism is associated negatively with a lack of newness or freshness, a stale adherence to long-term viewpoints and disproven ideas. Is this what we are? Are you and I retarding this cause because we refuse all that is new?

There is another perspective to hear. Try this on for size:

The issue is not new light versus old light, because the liberals tell us that what our pioneers had was not light in any form. It is their liberal version of what truth is versus God's version of what truth is. This is the axis. A "conservative" Adventist, or as we're currently branded, a "TSDA" is a bad guy. He's one who refuses the new light. But the baseline issue facing every religious group is, "what is your source of authority?" Our choice as a people has ever been to let the revelations of God lead us. Whether in Scripture or Ellen G. White writings, the issue to us is, what does God say?

Now then, is what God is going to say to us ever going to be stale or unhelpful? Will it be embarrassing to Him? Will it need a thoroughgoing correction later on down the road, or even replacement? Will it be deftly blasted aside by the butter-knife of contemporary scholarship? I think not. God's revelation is always fresh, ever-harmonizing with that revelation having come before it in point of time. We are seeking to hear the Word of the Lord. So we are--by them--called TSDAs. But what they are actually accusing us of is really an attempt to be faithful to the revelation we have received.

What they characterize as our fearful and hidebound propensities are rather our cleavage to the essence of heaven's last-day movement. To be conservative is not necessarily to be hidebound and closed. It means to retain that which is sound, which we have received--to stay with the essence. To be conservative need not mean one refuses new light; it may simply imply that one compares purported new light to the purported old. But God's light is still shining. There may be new light, but there is never old light. The old light is still shining in this moment. It is yet new. And yet there may be more. But we persist in our conviction that new light will never contradict the light that has come before.

The pioneer Adventists were a very open people, else never would they have received the truths of the heavenly sanctuary and the transition in heaven in 1844 by Jesus our High Priest; never would they have laid hold of the Sabbath; they'd have refused the truth about the state of man in death or the realization of a more biblical concept on what hell actually was. The things that set them at odds with their neighbors might much more readily have been ignored in favor of the traditions of Sunday observance, hell, immortal soul, and so on. How much easier it would have been for them to simply continue in obeisance to the Roman Church by their acceptance of so many of her doctrines so subtly bequeathed upon them through Protestantism. Our people were very nontraditional. They were rebels in their day, and they followed the truth of God, no matter how it put them at odds with the accepted, the world-compatible, the "traditions" current in their own day.

On the other hand--let us wonder about who is in fact more traditional. What about the liberals in Adventism? Are they bending over backwards to receive light from heaven, the light given before and given now? Are they really progressive, or regressive? Do they propose that we keep the essence, the willingness to follow where revelation leads, or do they seek to retreat from the progress made, to return to some form of belief from before 1844? When they propose the removal or radical redefinition of the investigative judgment and the sanctuary teaching, are they not saying that our origin was a mistake, that our hope is built on nothingness rather than nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness?

When they seek to throw out these things and remove from the plan of simply seeking to live out what God has revealed, then they are the traditionalists, they are the status-quosians. They want to blend in with the surrounding world. They forsake the essence of God's things for their embracing of the world's things. But the applause so treasured is passing chaff to the lasting wheat.

So if the liberals are actually those lacking the essence, actually being traditional, then what and who are they? Are they Seventh-day Adventist in nature? Are they a legitimately named variant on Seventh-day Adventism?

They are not. They lack the essence. They lack the distinctives. They lack God's guidance. They are not our counterpart. They are aliens to the commonwealth of God, destructive agents misled and misleading others. They went out from us because they were not really of us. And now they are calling us "Traditional Seventh-day Adventists."

Let us insist on a correction. We are Seventh-day Adventists. The teachings we hold are simply our following-out the implications of the revelation God has granted us. To be SDA, one has, above all, to be willing to do that. Since they are not willing, they are not Adventist. Mind you, they can start their own denomination, have their own services, have their own belief statements, write their own books and publish their own magazines and websites. They can have "Adventist" in their name. But let everyone be fully persuaded in their own mind: all that counts in the end will be what is finally real.

The fictions will be washed away, the poisons will be expunged, the strange advanced theories will be swept aside in the furnace as the sanctuary is cleansed. May you and I never loose sight of who and what we are. May we grant no place for the destructive plan that would grant validity to this alien force and its influence. Stand fast. Everything that can be shaken will be and is. Coming up we face the borderline when many, many shall go out from us. How important then that we defy the characterization of ourselves as TSDAs and follow the Lamb wherever He goes, laying aside the sins that so easily beset us and letting our Lord shine upon His faithful. Let us arise and shine for our light is come, although it seems the hour of the power of darkness.

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