XXXIX - 2(06)

“Watchman,

what of the night?”

"The hour has come, the hour is striking and striking at you,
the hour and the end!"          Eze. 7:6 (Moffatt)

ADVENTIST AFFIRM

Editor's Preface

The Fall 2005 issue of Adventists Affirm was well above average. Certain essays were not only informative but timely. We selected three and reproduced them in this issue of WWN, almost in their entirety. Most of the essays should be a "must" reading for every professed Adventist, whether in the church structure, or an independent. The editor, Jerry A. Stevens, a retired General Conference worker, who qualifies himself simply as a "Ponderer of our Changing Times," chose with a few exceptions excellent and qualified men to address the current trends in the steady regression of personal liberty as the United States moves toward the fulfillment of the prophecy given to John on Patmos concerning her.

Three individuals chosen to write the essays received their Juris Doctoral degrees from Georgetown University and the University of San Diego, both Roman Catholic schools of higher learning. One became deeply involved with the University publications while in attendance. The Church does not need Jesuit infiltration when it employs such graduates of their schools to represent it to the United States government.

"The papacy is just what prophecy declared that she would be, the apostasy of the latter times... Shall this power, whose record for a thousand years is written in the blood of saints, be now acknowledged as a part of the church of Christ?"

(GC. p. 571)

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"Adventists Affirm"

A group of Adventist scholars and ministers of the Church organized themselves, a number of years ago, into an "independent" ministry within the structure itself. Their publication, Adventists Affirm "is dedicated to upholding the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and supporting its leadership in upholding those beliefs." Further, "the intent is to: affirm the fundamental beliefs of the church as confessed in the [Statement of] 'Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists.'" One problem is the fact that the leadership of this group has failed to take in the whole picture against the backdrop of events within the Church since 1950.

However, the current publication of Adventists Affirm (Vol. 19, #3) is a "must" on the reading list of every Seventh-day Adventist, whether in the structure or out of the structure. This is not saying that every article is in the "must" category, and we shall note why, conscious of the fact that we are making an evaluation based on inadequate data in the publication itself.

In this issue of WWN, we shall take excerpts from several essays appearing in the current issue of Adventists Affirm, that is, as space permits.

Article: The Papacy and American Politics

Author: G. Edward Reid, Stewardship Director of the North American Division of the Adventist Church

Since the birth of the United States there has been a desire on the part of the Holy See to exchange ambassadors. Accordingly, the timing was calculated. The result is prophetic. The consequences are serious. On January 10, 1984, upon orders of United States President Ronald Reagan and the "Holy See, the central government of the Roman Catholic Church, represented by "The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II," full diplomatic relations were established between these two entities.

"This cordial and cooperative framework did not always exist. In fact it took 208 years for the United States to enter into full diplomatic relations with the oldest international personality in the community of nations" (Thomas P. Melady, The Ambassador's Story – The United States and the Vatican in World Affairs, p. 41).

In the first few weeks after his election in November 1980, President Reagan appointed William Wilson, his friend from California, as his personal representative to the Vatican. Then something happened that changed the course of history in this regard. President Reagan had a private meeting with the pope in the Vatican on June 7, 1982. Many modern historians use this date as the beginning of the "Holy Alliance" between the U.S. and the Vatican....

Following this historic meeting with the pope, in the last year of his first term as President of the United States, Ronald Reagan initiated a process for doing what had never been done before – sending a full "ambassador," not just to the Vatican City State but to the "Holy See" – the central government of the Roman Catholic Church!

President Reagan's staff, aware of what had happened to potential "ambassadors" in the past, made an extensive study of the subject. This review included looking at section 2, article 2 of the Constitution that defines the president's authority to nominate diplomatic officials, and the responsibility of the Senate to give its consent. The staff felt convinced that they could defend the proposed ambassadorship with their interpretation of the Constitution. In addition, though the legal situation had not changed (Congress had passed a law in 1868 that had prohibited funding for an embassy to the Vatican), the domestic political climate had changed significantly! Popular Protestant evangelist Billy Graham had stated publicly that he saw a difference in the national Protestant attitude. There

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would be some opposition, but not of the magnitude of 30 years before.

Ambassador Melady states, "Once he [Reagan] was convinced that the nomination of an ambassador to the Holy See was constitutional and in the national interest of the country, President Reagan approved a move to void the 1868 law which prohibited the expenditure of public funds for an embassy to the Vatican. This action was successful. The relative ease with which this action took place reassured the Reagan White House about proceeding with their project" (Melady, p. 52).

Melady adds these very significant statements: "On January 10, 1984, President Reagan announced the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See. ... The announcement gave full recognition to the unique international sovereign role of the pope and his government, not only in Vatican City State but throughout the world where the pope and his government exercised their spiritual and political authority. There was no equivocation. The United States was extending full recognition for the first time to the government of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

"The announcement implied the acceptance of the international law principle that the Holy See is a bona fide international personality. Thus the announcement by President Reagan acknowledged the papacy as a religious organ with international rights and duties. This was not a qualified recognition of Vatican City State. In previous times it would have caused a firestorm of protest. But it immediately became evident, both in tone and substance, that there had been a major change in domestic U.S. political opinion" (Melady, pp. 50, 53).

To the average Protestant layman the term "Holy See" has no meaning whatsoever. It is probably not even in common usage among Catholic laymen. The reason for this uncertainty is the unusual "nature of the beast." It would be best, I believe, to get the definition from someone who ought to know. Back again to Thomas Patrick Melady, a Roman Catholic career diplomat and formerly the official Ambassador of the United States of America to the Holy See. His explanation is as follows: The government of the United States has diplomatic relations with the government of the Roman Catholic Church; that is, the Holy See.

"The Holy See is the composite of the authority, jurisdiction, and sovereignty vested in and exercised by the pope and his advisors in the temporal and spiritual direction and guidance of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world. The Holy See, consequently, is a moral entity; in modern terms, it is the central government of the Roman Catholic Church" (Melady, p. 178).

Article: Why We Must Be Vigilant NOW

Author: Melissa Reid, Marketing Director, Liberty Magazine

I have just begun my third year as marketing director for Liberty magazine....

When people ask if I like my job, I say "Yes!" and I do. I explain to them how I've always been interested in the United States legal system in general and religious liberty specifically; and that my first elementary school report I recall writing was on Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; ...

What I don't usually include is the admission that "I like my job because it is important. It matters! But it does! Not so much my job uniquely, but the Public Affairs & Religious Liberty office of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a whole. This department matters because religious freedom - Liberty magazine's subtitle and mission – is about people fighting for the right to serve the God they love, as their hearts and the Holy Spirit dictates.

By fighting to maintain the wall of separation between church and state, we ensure our freedom to worship as we believe, to practice our faith in the manner

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in which God has ordained. Liberty's editor, Lincoln Steed, calls our publication "a Christian champion of rights of conscience," and while our publication is celebrating its 100th year of continuous publication this year, I can't imagine a time in America's history when a mouthpiece such as ours has been more critical.

In the last few years we have seen emotionally volatile issues such as same-sex marriage, the public display of the Ten Commandments on government property, and the recent federal judicial nominations bring right-wing religionists into the political arena with full force. And while their agenda may appear to speak to concerns we also have, we cannot support them, as their ultimate goal is church and state collusion.

The September-October issue of Liberty featured an article by Rob Boston, which told of the April 7-8 Washington D.C. meeting for the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Reformation, at which Texas minister, Rick Scarborough, called Supreme Justice Anthony Kennedy "the poster boy for impeachment," due to his votes to support legal abortion, in favor of gay rights, and against government sponsored school prayer. To Scarborough and other conference attendees, these issues define national character, and any judge who does not produce rulings that please the religious right should be impeached, plain and simple.

Probably the nation's most renowned evangelical leader, Dr. James Dobson, is best known for his Christian counsel on matters like marriage and child rearing, and as founder of Focus on the Family, the non-profit evangelical ministry he began in 1977. During the last presidential election, however, Dobson took a very prominent role – he established "a sister ministry" lobbying organization, Focus on the Family Action, and endorsed his first political candidate, George W. Bush.

Shortly after President Bush was re-elected, Dobson told The Denver Post, "If the Republicans do what they have done in the past, which is to say, 'Thanks so much for putting us in power, now we don't want to talk to you any more,' they will pay a severe price in four years and maybe two."

Since the 2004 election, Dr. Dobson has leapt full-fledged into the nation's political fray. In a letter earlier this year to millions of his constituents, Dobson promised "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist jurists" or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees.

Dobson worked vigilantly for the defeat of Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, after the minority leader led Democrats in their attempt to block ten of President Bush's judicial nominees, and warned his colleagues in the Senate, "especially those representing 'red' states. Many of them will be in the ‘bull's-eye' the next time they seek re-election." When Pennsylvania Senator Arlin Specter suggested that judicial nominees bent on overturning Roe v. Wade would be difficult to confirm, Dobson called Specter a "problem" during an interview on a television program, and claimed "he must be derailed."

"I can't go back, nor do I want to," Dr. Dobson said about his new level of direct partisan engagement in a January 2005 New York Times interview. "I will probably endorse more candidates. This is a new day. I just feel a real need to make use of this visibility."

So why should this concern us as Seventh-day Adventist Christians? Why should we not rejoice at an influential evangelical's efforts to bring values back to a morally debased America? Because of our knowledge of Revelation 13, we know where this path leads! We know the way the story ends, and the clues to the dramatic conclusion are becoming less and less subtle.

According to the Focus on the Family Web site at the "Restore the Foundation" rally on the steps of the State judicial building in Montgomery, Alabama, Dobson expressed

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this opinion on a matter we hold dear: "The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. Liberals have had to contrive the basis for these things, and then talk about them as though they were ensconced in the writings of our forefathers. USA Today published an entire article this morning extolling the separation of church and state talking about how the Constitution supports it, but the concept is not there. They and the liberal elites have interpreted the clause to justify the removal of references to God in the public square."

This is not the way God works! He does not force or mandate us to love Him, to serve Him. The Desire of Ages states: "Not by the decisions of courts or legislative assemblies, not by the patronage of worldly great men is the Kingdom of Christ established, but by the implanting of Christ's nature in humanity through the work of the Holy Spirit. 'As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' John 1:12, 13. Here is the only power that can work for the uplifting of mankind. And the human agency for the accomplishment of this work is the teaching and practicing of the Word of God" (pp. 509, 510).

In the May/June issue of Liberty, which dealt exclusively with the cultural outcry over the government display of the Ten Commandments, Alan Reinach reiterated this idea: "The state alone cannot give us hearts to love God or to love one another. Our real need is not for public monuments in honor of commandments that no one really tries to keep. We need the law written in our hearts."

Comments:

Ms. Reid states the issue clearly and forthrightly. As a follower of Christ, no one can condone abortion, same sex marriages and other issues which reflect a morally debased America. Neither can a Christian support the concept that the union of church and state is the right form of government. She stated why – "Because of our knowledge of Revelation 13, we know where this path leads."

A century ago, there was agitation for the enactment of "Sunday Laws." This cause was backed by the WCTU – Women's Christian Temperance Union. Thus to oppose such legislation appeared to be supporting "drinking" with the resulting drunkenness and its effects upon the family. Knowing full well the significance and meaning of the prophecy of Revelation 13, we dare not back the religious right's agenda, and condone the union of church and state or anyone adhering to that position. It is ludicrous to seek to erect in stone a monument to the Ten Commandments, and then not keep them and seek to enact legislation contrary to them. As Ms. Reid quotes Alan Reinach – the only solution is the law to be written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Article: Prophecy Validated by Events

Author: Edwin de Kock, MA, Writing Professor (ret.) University of Texas-Pan American; Author, Christ and Antichrist in Prophecy and History

Any non-Adventist who happened to open the May 1851 issue of the Review & Herald could have been pardoned for guffawing at that article by a youthful J. N. Andrews identifying the two-horned beast of Revelation 13:11-17 as the United States. What a crackpot he was! For nothing in American society or world affairs suggested the vaguest possibility of such a development. Especially silly would have been the idea of cooperation between Protestants and Catholics. Nevertheless, "on the strength of prophecy alone" he maintained "that the enforcement of Sunday as the Sabbath would be the point on which the union of church and state would finally be founded in this nation."

At that very time in both the leading political parties, a virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movement was gathering momentum like a hurricane, which threatened to sweep it into national office. It had massive support for candidates favourable

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to its cause. In angry reaction to the Irish that were pouring into this country, its members at first observed considerable secrecy and often answered questions by saying, "I know nothing!" For this, they soon earned for themselves the sobriquet of Know-nothings. In 1854 ... these people organized themselves as the American Party. In the same year, some of its members "stole and destroyed the block of granite contributed by Pope Pius IX for the Washington Monument." They reached the zenith of their power in the 1856 presidential election....

From the earliest period and for many generations, the Protestants who settled in what would later become the United States of America resolutely rejected popery. Even Maryland, founded by Catholics, soon had a Protestant majority. This general situation persisted for a hundred and seventy years or more. At the time of the Revolution only about one percent of the people of the American colonies were Catholic....

Soon additional Catholics began to swell its numbers, first a trickle and then a tide. By 1835, this was noted by Noah Webster, famous for his American Dictionary and also a farsighted man who frequently amazed his friends with accurate predictions about the future. Of Romanism he said, "The latter evil is alarming, and (it) is not improbable that the inquisition may, at some future time, be established in the West." For the rest of the 19th century, however, Catholicism in America was organizationally weak. ... Even in 1948, the papacy laid claim to the allegiance of only 26 million U.S. members. ... Today some 40% of Christians in the United States are said to belong to the Roman Church, which makes it the single largest ecclesiastical system in the country.

Let us also note that in the 19th century America was not a super power. Andrews and those who accepted his explanation were simply interpreting prophecy with faith in the Bible. They could not turn the page of the future to see beyond their century and read about the unprecedented position that the United States would come to occupy in the twentieth century after World War I. This is a vital factor for evaluating the Adventist view of the two-horned beast.

When Benjamin Franklin, "the father of the Yankees," was born in 1706 - precisely a century after the settlement of Jamestown –"the British North American colonies contained 350,000 persons clustering along the Atlantic seacoast and the broad tidewater rivers." To be frank, at that time they were, in the eyes of the mother country, small potatoes: "Almost any tiny sugar island in the West Indies or steaming slave castle on the Guinea Coast was worth more to Britain than any of the mainland colonies." Nevertheless by 1790, Franklin's death year, the United States was already a full-fledged country, with more than four million inhabitants. But still that did not make it a world power. To realize this, we only need to consider that the Revolution, freeing it from British domination, could not have been won without foreign allies and especially the French navy.

Today the United States, with almost 300 million residents, has a population of seventy-five times as in Benjamin Franklin's time and sits athwart a continent. A map by Guy Fleming that superimposes its territory – excluding Alaska – on the Roman Empire in Hadrian's day reveals a similar size. But the might of America is almost unimaginably greater. It seems as though it may soon be able to impose its will on our entire planet. But a hundred and fifty or even a hundred years ago this was still unthinkable.

NOTE: Professor de Kock's article contains several sections more which space prevents us from including in this issue. Due to their importance, we shall make them a part of the March issue of WWN.

NOTE: You may obtain a copy of this issue of Adventists Affirm as well as other issues by writing to P. 0. Box 36, Berrien Springs, MI 49103. The subscription price is $15.00/year.(This may no longer be available).

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Other Essays

Among the other essays of note in the current issue of Adventists Affirm is one authored by Gregory W. Hamilton, president of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association. He draws the picture of the war on terrorism as a clash of civilizations. He quotes Franklin Graham in The Name: "Christianity and Islam are eternal enemies locked in a classical struggle that will end with the Second Coming of Christ." Then Graham adds: "The war against terrorism is just another conflict between evil and The Name," meaning Jesus. On this Hamilton comments: "Franklin Graham may be rather blunt in his assessment, but he is at least partly right. There is a fundamental theological competition between Christianity and Islam, a spiritual struggle over the path to salvation of men's souls. What Graham and many Christians do not realize is that Muslims and Christians alike are preparing to receive a counterfeit Jesus. Both expect this Jesus to establish a millennial reign of peace on Earth" (pp. 46, 47).

Another Essayist, Alan J. Reinach, Director of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the Pacific Union Conference wrote insightfully: "Just as the Reformation discovery of the Gospel of justification by faith was linked to developing concepts of liberty of conscience, so, too, in the end of time the religious oppression associated with the 'mark of the beast' results from a repudiation of the Gospel. True Biblical worship cannot be compelled because it is the voluntary response of the soul toward a loving Creator. 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' James Madison expressed this premise in his Memorial and Remonstrance: religious practice `... can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.'

"Revelation 17 portrays the church as a harlot because she trades intimacy with her divine lover, Jesus Christ, for the power of the kings of the earth. This is spoken of, prophetically, as her adultery. It is especially critical for those who agree with the church's political agenda to recognize the prophetic danger of the pursuit of political power. Those who are most sympathetic to the pro-life and pro-family agenda of the church are most susceptible of being deceived. The pursuit of political power is a direct result of the corruption of the Gospel. Only the genuine Gospel has the power to transform lives. The church responds to moral and social decay by a renewed emphasis on political power because she has lost her spiritual power. The source of spiritual power is found in the Gospel and in the sanctuary" (p. 61).

Note: Three of the other selected essayists received their J.D. (Juris Doctor) degrees from Roman Catholic Universities, Georgetown, and San Diego. One, Dr. James Standish, son of Pr. Russell Standish, was deeply involved in Georgetown University activities both as president of a university forum, and editor of a school journal (See page 38). Now he represents the Seventh-day Adventist Church to the U.S. government and serves as Executive Director of the North American Religious Liberty Association. He that has eyes to read, let him read and take note.