18 October 2001 Editorial:
Deadly Age, Lucid Work

Larry Kirkpatrick

From time to time it is well to clear the air. Our goal -- that we would here provide a positive place on the web for the third angel's message -- needs to be understood within certain contexts.

The Bible says of the church, that it is to be "the pillar and ground of the truth." It is to be a marker-stone, a boundary line laid down upon a doomed world, a place where those seeking can go for food. God did not provide for His world a people who's highest aspirations were to be to stack cardboard all day; He made a people in whom He included conscience and a love for truth. We are worshipping beings, composed by our Creator to find our highest satisfaction in discovering and living by His moral principles. He has boundaries and an objective ethical order. We serve a personal God; therefore how He directs us to behave matters to us.

His divine mandate is that His church also be the ground of the truth -- a source-place, a keeping-place -- for truth. While these are her ontological realities, their practical translation is as simple as this: she is to function as a support structure for the implementation of God's ideas. What God desires His end-time people to live by and proclaim in His name, is to be sustained by the structures He has erected for those purposes. The church then, continuously hijacked throughout history by those pursuing their own agendas and their own ideas, is to, in the end, stand just as tall as it did in its biblical beginnings.

It is too late in the framework of closing events, we are told, to erect any new structure for this purpose. Were we not so told, well might we be justified in endeavoring to do just such a work. But no, God is firm -- the hour is late, and our energies must be directed to living and giving the third angel's message.

But any Adventist with almost any awareness of church history, both previous to and during, the time of Seventh-day Adventism, will be well aware that we have not cut a straight-furrow. Increasingly, some in leadership have trended to following their own ideas in ways that are inconsistent with our mission. We will find in our mission, for example, no mandate to sue other believers, or to register our name as a trademark, or to make sweeping and destructive mid-course theological mis-corrections such as to incorporate women's ordination or to retreat to the borders of pre-SDA Lutheranism in our youth publications, or to incorporate the sense-deadening poison of rock music into the worship of a holy God.

We will locate no justification for failing to plainly identify the antichrist powers of the first and second beasts of Revelation 13, or ever to find our identity in cozying up to the fallen churches that heaven has, in consequence of their rejection of His precious closing messages, declared fallen and rejected. We have never been incited by heaven to make concession about our clear biblical conceptions of Christ's humanity in order to dodge a "cult" label by the fallen churches either. We have never been called to exchange an SDA pulpit with a non-SDA. Our pulpits are to ring uncompromisingly with the third angel's message. Nothing else. An Adventist pulpit randomly handed-off to a greasy teller of stories who denies the validity of obedience to God's Ten Commandment law is one where a lot of deadening to the truth has probably already occurred, else such an exchange never would have happened.

If as a body we were all -- roughly at least -- on target, need for a site such as GreatControversy.org might not even exist. But in many cases we are far afield of heaven's patterns for us. Those of us who came into this church because of what it taught about our Lord Jesus and His close-out-the-world truths, will understandably be dismayed and incensed when the pillar and ground of the truth acts more and more as a provocateur for error and the destruction of souls. How can it be that advocates of Babylonian gospels would creep into positions where they could foist such upon the people of God, especially our youth? We have gone far along the track of truth, but someone it seems has sounded a retreat and is seeking to teach our young people something else than Adventism! For this reason, you find the materials we published today on Gracelink.

Readers should know that we do not rush joyfully into the publishing of articles such as this one. In this case in particular, we have spent nearly one and a half years looking over the materials, listening to our parishioners, discussing them with others who had concerns, and in making repeated attempt to help those leading in this work to change their approach. Repeated e-mails produced only canned responses showing that no one was listening. Those guiding the Gracelink project appear to be asleep at the switch, and materials of a similar nature just kept coming. So now we share our concerns publically and definitely.

So how can we be a positive place on the web for the third angel's message if we complain regularly about matters such as this? Who do we think we are representing?

We never said we were going to serve as a positive place on the web for those who would press in error destructive to souls. We never said we subscribed to the philosophy teaching that whatever the church does is automatically confirmed in heaven. Actually, the Bible teaches that whatever God's true servants do on earth is affirmed in heaven, but never that whatever is done on earth that takes the livery of heaven as mere cover is affirmed. The church is not free -- not to press forward according only to its own principles. It exists, functions, exercises authority, only as it truly harmonizes with heaven. Well has it been said that a drunk, taken and washed and dressed in clean clothes, apart from the converting power of God, remains a drunk still. Likewise, error, no matter how white and shining the robe dressed in, remains error. Heaven has no endorsement for such, none at all.

Yes, we are an issue-oriented website. But one of the ways that we are a positive place is in that we help others know that all is not lost, there are many of us -- very, very many -- out there. You and I are not alone in our convictions and our endeavor to live and proclaim the real thing in religion. Many take great encouragement to know that God will indeed have a people in the end, upholding His truth, in whom the church fulfills its purpose of being "the pillar and ground of truth." Here are just a couple of recent letters:

From New Mexico on Monday this week: "We have just become acquainted with your web site and are so pleased to hear you are standing up for what is right. We have told others about your site and will continue to do so. May God bless you and your work in great ways."

From northern California also on Monday: "HOW WONDERFUL it is to find a web site like this one. Praise God someone is taking up the banner and moving forward against the Liberal ways. Not the brothers and sisters so wrongly lead, but the ways. I have been so concerned about this and it just seemed like no one that could make a difference in this movement did anything at all. The good brothers I have talked to about it tell me that we must be silent and let God work. We were told this would happen. But I can't see it. Sure, not to be silent rocks the cradle, but to be silent drowns the cradle (so to speak). HOW CAN WE GO ON SEEING THESE THINGS HAPPENING AND BE SILENT???? May God bless you in your work . . . May God be with us all."

This Sunday from Michigan: "Greetings Larry: I made connections with your page from your article in the Review email. I read 70% of your article. THUMBS UP! It is sad that so many of our people have lost faith in God's way to build a church and have resorted to Satan's easy road hoping that once we marry the pagans they will make good Israelites. . . . I take great consolation in knowing that the Lord is in control and that there are some even in our church that have not bowed the knee to Baal. Praise the Lord for His inspired writings! . . . . Thanks for putting your [i.e. Kevin Paulson's] rebuttal to Keaven's book on line."

We might add many more, from here in the USA and overseas. Nor is it all folk out in the boonies. Checking our logs shows that every week we get several hits from ALL of the SDA colleges in the USA and Canada. Just about everyone knows we are out here now. And they visit the site very regularly. The point is, for those loving the truth GreatControversy.org tends to be a very positive place. And that's just the way we would have it!

It is true -- as an issue-oriented site we will ruffle the feathers of the crows and vultures sometimes. But thankfully, God is using simple means to bring encouragement to the trenches. Some have thought that they stood alone, that they had no voice. But we do have a voice. We all are -- collectively -- to be watchmen on the wall. God grant us help with that. It will never be easy. I might also have shared with you e-mail coming in the last week making random accusations (ill founded) and calling us names. But some of that shows up now and then. We are never surprised by that.

Some have asked if we are not being disloyal to our employer by complaining of various things in a public way, and not going through channels. The truth is, we often do go "through channels." But those propounding error in our midst sometimes are in control of the channels too. We will not be silenced by their threats or labeling. It seems that if you can be effectively labeled, you can be neutralized, counted of no account; all they need do is link your name with some other group that has already undergone demonization and "wa la," no one needs to listen to you any more.

Well, we are always most loyal when we are responsible about the mission God has given our church. We are always most loyal when we identify error and take it down. We are always most loyal when we are most true to Jesus and His truth, which admits of no divided place. His truth only must stand, and the fact that we live in a divided, revolted world does not change the fact that He would make us into fortresses for truth on a globe gone astray and sometimes even a church.

I am employed by the church as an ordained pastor. Take heart. These are your tithe dollars at work (in a way; what I mean is that out of the reimbursement I receive from the holy tithe as my salary from the Conference, a portion of it is used to sustain this website). The end is not yet. There are many out there, seeking to be faithful, even in the ministry. Many of us have been fearful of speaking out. But God is working on hearts. Some are renewing their courage. They agree with you and I: we must be silent no longer.

Let me appeal to you to help out in whatever way you can. Among the ways you can help us is to write some positive book reviews that we can publish on-line here. I would like to publish book reviews of positive conservative works in particular, such as Zurcher's Touched With His Feelings, and Koranteng-Pipim's Must We Be Silent?. Surely there are others. And the books needn't be hot off the presses. We can use reviews of older material too. On occasion, we will also publish reviews like brother Kevin Paulson's look at Hayden's awful Lifestyles of the Remnant too. We do need to be informed about the latest trends in error and weirdness sometimes.

Another way you can help is, let's face it, financial. Beside the time and energy investment in this site, which are substantial, is our cost to run it. Personal checks to help the site are acceptable. If you've been with the site for awhile, you'll be aware that this topic is NEVER (until now) mentioned. However, I hope it is fair to remind you of this possibility once every year or two (something which I don't think we've ever done, nor my main thrust here).

This editorial marks the 81st we've published, one a week for the past 81 weeks. Almost every Sabbath we also publish a new truth-filled sermon. We have noted an interesting phenomenon. Every month we have several score thousand downloads, but something interesting has developed. Fridays are our biggest day. By means of e-mails sent to us, we have learned what is happening. On Friday people are downloading a lot of material off the website and handing it out or even preaching from it on Sabbath at church, often in diverse places such as China and elsewhere. What a thrill! What a work God is doing! And what a shame that some must come here for what they hunger, rather than get it in their own churches. God grant us faithful pastors and workers who will feed everyone with Jesus' truth and forsake mind-numbingly shallow stories and anecdotes so empty of spiritual nutriment.

The church -- if we stand our ground unflinchingly -- can still be the pillar and ground of the truth. The Lord will have His way. He who sits in the heaven's shall laugh. Let not a single reader lose heart, but God grant us thorough grace to stay the course and come out stronger than ever on the side of Jesus, who is coming very soon.

Pastor Larry Kirkpatrick is an ordained minister of the gospel. Since 1994 he has served in the American Southwest as pastor to several churches. He received his BA in Religion from Southern Adventist University in 1994 and a Master of Divinity from Andrews University in 1999 with a specialization in Adventist Studies. While in Michigan he was employed by the General Conference at the White Estate Berrien Springs branch office. More important than his scholastic preparation has been his immersion in the biblical and Spirit of Prophecy materials. He is author of the 2003 book Real Grace for Real People. Presently he serves as Pastor of the Mentone Church of Seventh-day Adventists, located near Loma Linda, California. Larry is married to Pamela. The couple presently live in Highland, California along with their two children, Etienne and Melinda.