Who but a Seventh-day Adventist?

This September I will become 71. (How did I get to be the same age as old people?) At Annual Council last October I was reappointed editor of the Adult Bible Study Guide—my last hurrah. If in 2030 I don’t have enough sense to bow out, Annual Council 2030 ought to throw me out (and surely will, too).

I came to the General Conference, then still in Takoma Park, in 1984—so 42 years here, and counting. And why not? The General Conference (GC) has been wonderful to me, better than I deserve. And yet, as thankful as I am to the GC, I am more so to the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a whole, and to Seventh-day Adventists in particular.

Why?

Because Seventh-day Adventists, and Seventh-day Adventists alone, have nurtured, sustained, and promoted the truths that I love so much and that have saved me from ruin now and from condemnation and annihilation later. I shudder to think of what awaited me had not the Lord Jesus—using the Seventh-day Adventist Church—upended my existence deeper than bone. I am so thankful.

Sure, I might have learned from other Christians about Jesus’ atoning death, and that “a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:28). But that truth could have come twisted with such regalia as “limited atonement.” You know, Jesus died for the elect only; everyone else, well, tough luck, you burn in hell—and for eternity, too. Or I could have been taught the delightful delusion of “once saved, always saved.” Or universalism (make room, folks, Adolf is going to be there).

Meanwhile, who else but Seventh-day Adventists would have taught me the gospel in the context of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16; Dan. 8:14)? This truth shows that—though we will be judged by works (Ps. 62:12; Prov. 24:12; Eccl. 12:14; Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:5-10; 2 Cor. 5:10; Rev. 22:12)—Christ as our high priest intercedes for us. His righteousness alone, the “righteousness of God” Himself (2 Cor. 5:21), covering us now and in the judgment—when we need it the most. (After all, your own righteousness isn’t going to cut it, is it?)

And though, yes, some (few) Christians understand the state of the dead, who but you, the Adventists, would have taught me that the dead sleep until, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:52), we rise to immortality? And how thankful I am to have been spared the sick insanity (which other Christians feverishly cling to) of eternal torment in hell. And while the Christian world falls prey to near-death delusions, my understanding of the Word (thanks to Adventists) protects me from this über-demonic expression of modern spiritualism.

I shudder to think of what awaited me had not the Lord Jesus—using the Seventh-day Adventist Church—upended my existence deeper than bone.

Meanwhile, before my own new birth, who but a Seventh-day Adventist would have handed me a copy of The Great Controversy—just as I was walking to a library in order to start studying the occult and spiritualism? Within 15 minutes I had, literally, in one hand (for the first time in my life) a book on the occult and, literally, in the other (for the first time, too) The Great Controversy. Thank you so much!

And, yes, who but the Adventists have kept the remarkable corpus of Ellen G. White’s work, translated into more than 150 languages, alive, impacting millions of lives all over the world, mine included?

I could go on (and will). While millions of conservative Christians (the liberals are still debating whether Jesus was bodily, or just “spiritually,” resurrected) interpret every battle in the Middle East through prophecies in Ezekiel or Zechariah et al., the Adventists, and Adventists alone (because most Christians have abandoned historicism), taught me to see the historical and chronological progression of the four world empires—Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome, followed by God’s eternal kingdom (Dan. 2; 7; 8). So, instead of waiting for the secret rapture, or for a rebuilt Jerusalem temple, I am watching Rome—the final earthly power that in all three chapters (Daniel 2; 7; 8) arises after ancient Greece and exists until supernaturally destroyed at “the time of the end” (Dan. 8:17)—the power that reappears in Revelation 12-14 in the context of the yet-to-come mark of the beast.

What more can I say? I have not touched the seventh-day Sabbath, all but lost to Christianity; or the health message, unknown among most churches; or the six-day creation, deemed even among many conservative evangelicals as more myth than history. All these truths I have learned from Adventists, and I can’t thank you enough.

Of course, everything is not perfect among us. Are you kidding? In 1994 I wrote The Remnant (recently reissued by Pacific Press), which argued that all through biblical history God had a remnant, people with more light and more truth than the surrounding nations, even if way too many among the remnant were never sanctified by that truth—or even worked against it. How little has, unfortunately, changed.

The point? Seventh-day Adventists, and Seventh-day Adventists alone, taught me the truths that I love; truths that have radically changed my life. If I had 100 more (lives, that is), I couldn’t give back to the Adventists what they, what you, have given me.

And I am eternally grateful.