From Gerry
I joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church on January 7, 1989, after spending two years trying to disprove the Advent Message. Fortunately, I failed.
I am thrilled to be a part of this Movement, grateful for the biblical truths that set me free from seven generations of various biblical misconceptions. I didn’t join this Church to fight, I joined it because I fell in love with the Advent Message. There is nothing else like it, anywhere.
The year was 2004. My wife and I began operating a free-of-charge counseling ministry out of our home.
We started this biblical counseling ministry after years of observing people in the Church and the world who were struggling in their marriages and didn’t know what to do about it. We had a desire to help them. So we said those two words to God — words that can get quickly you out of your comfort zone — “I’m available.”
What followed was 15-years of praying for wisdom, and calling out to God “How can we help this person/situation?” — applying the principles of the Bible to people’s lives in love. We welcomed a lot of dear people into our home (over 200 couples). They were Adventist, Baptist, Mennonite, Amish, Catholic, Lutheran, white, black, hispanic, oriental, pastors, laymen, you name it. Each couple/individual was unique in their struggles, and they all had a desire for freedom and tremendous potential for God.
I was also the founder of a company (WRi Applications Inc.) that I started in 1984. This company has two divisions:
Commercial / Industrial roofing
Spray foam Insulation
Our company was the first spray foam insulation contractor in the Ohio Miami Valley in 1985. We have been blessed in many ways over the years. Life was full and rewarding and I wasn’t looking for another venture. Fulcrum7 wasn’t even on the radar. However,
In 2009, I became aware of serious spiritual challenges going on in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Ohio. I knew Ohio had big problems, but I wasn’t motivated to get involved. I told a doctor friend from Dayton once, “It (Ohio) will probably have to crash and burn and then we can rebuild it.” A strange climate of spiritual experimentation was being promoted by the Conference President in Ohio, leading him to invite various speakers—some who were involved in occult spiritualism—to an Innovation Conference in Ohio (2005–2013). He wanted our pastors to learn from them. I found out about this from a pastor friend.
In 2010, a number of loyal Adventist laymen in Ohio got together and decided to resist what the Conference president was doing to Ohio. I was invited to be part of that group, and given the task of authoring a Statement of Concerns. After editorial tweaking, ten of us signed this Statement of Concerns and sent it to Ohio pastors and state-wide delegates of the upcoming 2010 Ohio Constituency meeting. When Steve and I pressed ‘send’ on that group email we knew that some people would never look at us the same again. It was a bombshell in Ohio. We spoke the truth in love, and spoke it nonetheless.
We also got a cheap temporary website, and on March 10, 2010 we posted the document on this website. Ohio constituents began reading it and circulating it to other people. It was difficult to get the word out; we had a whole volunteer team working to acquire emails for the Ohio pastors and delegates. We didn’t have anything like Fulcrum7.
A cluster of liberal Ohio pastors (of which we had a heavy infestation) formed a phalanx around the President to ‘protect him’ from being exposed. But the word was out, and the President narrowly escaped being voted out at the 2010 Constituency meeting. Instead of “considering his ways” after experiencing a vigorously contested reelection, he doubled down on his spiritualist Innovation Conference. We turned to the Columbia Union for help. Dave Weigley was not available to speak with us. Neville Harcombe was mostly unconcerned and provided no help. We also reached out to the NAD. No help there. To them, Ohio was an important vanguard in the attempt to force women’s ordination upon the Church, and they were being protected by the Union and the Division. We were on our own, poised between alienation and determination.
The only people who cared enough to listen were Mark Finley, the Conference President of a neighboring Conference, Paul Ratsara, and Joel Tomkins. Their willingness to listen and care about what was happening in Ohio Adventism meant a lot to thousands of people who felt trapped behind the destructive enemy lines of liberal Adventism. May God bless these men and their families.
This situation in Ohio taught us that we needed a more effective way to reach fellow Adventists. The NAD had a monopoly on Church publications within the Division. We needed a way around the Union and the Division; we needed a way to connect directly with the Adventist laity. I began to envision a website that would encourage Adventist grassroots members, and publish good articles that the Review would never publish. There was also a real need for honest news in the Church, exposing the liberal agendas that were taking our church in the wrong direction. Because of liberal takeover throughout much of western Adventism, a lot of members were standing on the shores of discouragement.
A Hostile Takeover
Over the last 25-years, a self-pronounced liberal wing of the Church has largely arrogated these entities:
* Adventist Education
* Adventist Health
* ADRA
* 93% of Youth Pastors in America
* All North American Union leadership
* Almost all Conferences
* Our major Publications
* The SDA Religious Liberty Department
* Our Seminary (Andrews)
* Our Colleges and Universities (except for a lone few)
* Media outlets (except for independent media like 3ABN and others).
I contacted Shane Hilde in January 2011 and asked him about using Educate Truth to expose what liberals were doing to the Church in North America. Nothing came of that, but the idea didn’t go away.
From Advindicate to Fulcrum7
In February 2012, I was invited to be on the writing staff of a new website called Advindicate, also started by Shane. As a writer, this was a perfect fit. We wrote about issues in the Church, and theological articles. David Read was also on the staff. I was soon asked to be president, and David became secretary. Along with Shane, we made a good team. We were having an effect on the Church.
Throughout 2015, David and I began to sense that we needed our own website, and events during the 2015 GC Session confirmed it. We wanted a better editorial process, a dedicated News section and an Apologetics section. An entrepreneur at heart, I had already purchased several domain names in March of 2015—Fulcrum7 was one of them. On September 30, 2015, David and I resigned from Advindicate to focus on a new, hopefully better, website. Enter Fulcrum7. We launched Fulcrum7 on January 1 of 2016. We were somewhat known entities, having each written over sixty articles for Advindicate, but now we were starting from scratch with zero viewers.
My goal was to equal Advindicate’s pageviews in two years, and double their size in three years. To our surprise, in our first year (2016) we equaled the pageviews of Advindicate. The second year, we tripled their pageviews. In our third year (2018), Fulcrum7 was seven times their size. Our site was growing at a meteoric rate. In four short years, Fulcrum7 has had 1,173,579 unique visitors.
The Name
People sometimes ask us: How did we choose the name? In 2012, David and I helped form a group called Adventists United for Biblical Truth (AUBT). The goal of this group was to push back against encroaching liberalism coming into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. One of the many suggestions for a website name was Fulcrum. The name Compass was eventually chosen, suggested by Roy Gane. David and I left that group amicably in January of 2015 when it became apparent that the mission of AUBT (now Compass Magazine) had shifted measurably from our original intent. We knew that the problems confronting our Church needed to be met with courage and clarity.
In March of 2015, I attempted to register the domain name Fulcrum (since I had always liked that name). It was taken. I checked other variations of the name—they were all taken too. So I added a number to the name: Fulcrum1. It was taken. I went down the line, Fulcrum2, Fulcrum3, Fulcrum4 etc....all taken. I came to Fulcrum7, and it was available. I jumped on it, thinking “This is perfect.” Seven is the number of the Sabbath day!
From David
Thank you, Gerry, for that excellent summary of our blogging history and motivations. Many of you know that I came to Adventist Church activism as a result of publishing a book on origins, and then discovering that Darwinism is entrenched in some corners of the church. That was surprising, but it was even more disappointing to learn that many of our ordained ministers and church officers and administrators were not particularly upset or bestirred about the Seventh-day Darwinians. For example, I learned that those who tried hardest to do something about the Darwinism at La Sierra were three female lay members of the LSU Board of Regents, not the union president and conference presidents who were ex officio members, that is, members by virtue of the church office they hold. (For their troubles, the three lay members were kicked off the board while the church officers did nothing.)
I was interested in origins because it is very obvious that everything flows from the Genesis narrative, and if the Bible’s story of the beginning of our race is false, then everything about the Christian religion is also false, including the idea that we have need of Redeemer because of Adam’s fall into sin, and that Jesus Christ is the second Adam, who overcame where the first Adam failed.
After having done this for awhile, I now believe that, while Satan desperately wants to shake our faith in the Genesis origins narrative, he’s not going to get much purchase on the Seventh-day Adventist denomination through Darwinism, the appeal of which is largely limited to scientists and other academics. The Sabbath is too powerful a reminder that God created our world in six days and rested on the seventh day; it is like a well-fortified Maginot line, bristling with guns pointed at the Darwinists. If I were Satan, I would not try a frontal assault on the creation story of Genesis chapter one.
Instead, I’d go around Genesis One and hit Genesis two, particularly the story of how Eve was created out of Adam and for Adam to be his helpmate. I’d attack sexual bifurcation and sex role differentiation. If Satan can get us to ignore the sex roles prescribed for men and women in the home and church, he can undermine our belief in the Genesis narrative just as effectively as Darwinism does. And, again, if we lose faith in the Genesis narrative, the whole structure of Christianity collapses like a house of cards. This is where the battle lies in today’s SDA Church.
On the issue of personal attacks, they don’t bother me much. Criticism, even sharp criticism, goes with the territory of writing anything for public consumption. Although some of it is pretty sad: Phillip Brantley was my roommate for two years in the late 1980s, and I was a groomsman in his wedding. I would have hoped he knew me better, or at least valued our friendship more.
I do solicit your prayers in one respect. I tend to be by nature a pessimist. It is easy for me to look at the current state of the church on the issue of female ordination—which I believe is a wedge to liberalize and destroy the church—and see all the Conference and Union presidents who favor it, and think that all is lost. Humanly speaking, things don’t look good. I need to be reminded to see with spiritual eyes; I need to be reminded, like Elisha’s servant, that “those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Pray that my eyes will be opened.
Our Goals
Provide a place where Adventists can have their articles read by people all around the world. There are a lot of good stories and conservative supportive articles out there that never get heard. The Review wouldn’t publish them. We do, in the process encouraging thousands of members around the world. Our site has had over 1.1 million unique visitors in four short years, and is growing rapidly.
Inform church members around the world with Adventist news. Many of the problems in our Church flourish because they happen behind a veil. Our task is pull that veil back once in a while, allowing light into the dark corners of Adventism. This brings a much-needed measure of accountability into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
There are many articles that we wish we didn’t have to publish, but people need to know where their church is being taken if we have any hope of turning the ship around. We have hope, and I know you do too.
We support the mission and ministry of the Adventist Church, from an upbeat conservative perspective. We aren’t disturbed by doctrine, like most liberals are.
As long as liberals/leftists are working to destroy the beliefs and doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church from within, we will be here exposing and resisting them. Please pray that we will do this work in the right spirit (Ephesians 4:15).
Enemies
We get a lot of positive emails at Fulcrum7 and some impressive hate mail. Any person, organization or group that rejects political correctness will have their enemies, and the occasional stalker. First, you get called a legalist, then a homophobe, then a misogynist, and then a racist. Racist is the go-to invective nowadays—they’ll probably find a new one in five years.
Here’s some of our favorite hate mails that were publicly posted on Facebook:
"You can keep your pathetic little website to yourself and the low lives that moderate it. You’re all going to hell and you deserve it." Thanks, we love you too! (this was from an open homosexual).
David’s response: “Phil, I'm still trying to make the SPLC's hate list. Give me a little more time. I'll get there.”
Here’s one of our more enthusiastic stalkers:
According to this disgruntled individual, Fulcrum7 is “a racist and nationalistic government which places extreme right-wing political beliefs over the Bible etc…”. Huh?
As to his claim about speaking with the editor, this is an outright falsehood. As a Christian brother, weary of his penchant for stalking on Facebook, I offered to speak with this individual over the phone in the Fall of 2019 to hear his concerns. He was—of course—not willing.
The part about us working for another “magazine” and being kicked out is so untrue it’s almost humorous. This individual is making it up as he goes. While we do observe and sometimes write about national civic issues that negatively affect us as Christians, on numerous occasions I have publicly called for Adventists to avoid politics altogether. His untrue accusations about us have all the emotional IQ of a toddler screaming that his sandwich isn't cut in the right shape.
What could be more heart-warming than a Christmas blessing from your most persistent stalker? I hope he found time to spend with his family, between directing vitriol at us again. :)
Accolades:
Elders Wagoner & Read - the value of your website cannot be measured. I come, read, and sometimes comment. So many of us readers live in sold out, ugly, vindictive conferences that discouragement could easily overtake us except that we still have the ability to verify - through F7 and like sites - a large swath of NAD is still faithful. Thank you both for consistently bearing the torch. Your sister and fellow comrade - Sybil Naumer
Close
You are the reason that Fulcrum7 exists.
In you there are great stories, testimonies and articles that might otherwise never be heard. Fulcrum7 publishes those articles to a worldwide audience, in the process encouraging fellow believers all around the world. Your news items help us remain accountable to each other, and most of all—to our Father (Galatians 6:1-2; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
Read your Bibles, walk with the King, and be a blessing!
From all of us at Fulcrum7.
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“For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12).