The Village Seventh-day Adventist Church in Berrien Springs conducted its annual Religious Liberty Sabbath on January 15th, 2022. Brother Conrad Vine delivered a presentation titled “An Appeal to The Adventist Nobility.” The title is reminiscent of Martin Luther’s Appeal to the German Nobility that helped inspire the Reformation.

We believe that this presentation stands as one of the most profound calls to repentance heard in our church in the last forty years, since possibly Robert Pierson’s October 15, 1978 message to Annual Council, and also Ted Wilson’s 2010 Sabbath address to the General Conference Session in Atlanta.

Sermon Introduction

(Begins at 3:48)

He opened with Lamentations chapter 3.

“For all the Adventist members who have lost their jobs because of the General Conference’s position on vaccines, this sermon is for you. For our church leaders, I respectfully say this sermon is for you as well.”

He gets email every day from people (as we do) who are about to lose their jobs and feel abandoned and/or betrayed by the church. Countless Adventists around the world are told that the Church’s position on vaccines is X, and that precludes religious waivers. To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the heart of Denmark.”

Letter From an Adventist in Canada.

This is what her employer said:

“According to the statement reaffirming the Adventist Church’s response to Covid 19 issued by the General Conference administration and other bodies of the Church, the SDA Church encourages members to consider responsible immunization. In fact, the statement says “The SDA church in consultation with the health ministries and public affairs and religious liberties departments of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is convinced that the Covid vaccination programs are generally being carried out are important for the health and safety of our members and the larger community. Therefore claims of religious liberty are not used appropriately in objecting to government mandates or employer programs designed to protect the health and safety of their communities.”

Conclusion of Employer,

“I have reviewed your request and supporting information. You have not articulated a sincerely-held religious belief that would prevent you from complying with the University’s mandatory vaccination program. On this basis, your request is denied and you are expected to comply with the mandatory vaccination program.”

This is happening all over the world. Students are being denied access to college, people are losing their jobs etc. Employers are quoting from the Adventist Church’s website, and using it against its own members.

Not only are we experiencing division in our world, we are experiencing division in our own church. How did we get here and how do we respond?

Leading questions, drawn from a former member of the British Parliament:

What authority do you have?
Who gave it to you?
In whose interests do you use it?
To whom are you accountable?
How do we get rid of you?

The Institutional Perspective

This vaccine statement was voted by ADCOM on April 15th 2015. Long before Covid.

Liberty of Conscience Document

Last year, over twenty-four thousand people signed a Liberty of Conscience Document, asking the Seventh-day Adventist Church to protect the religious liberty of its members and support those who have a religious or spiritual objection to forced COVID vaccinations. Among the signatories were 4,018 medical professionals and 1851 pastors from over 130 countries. This document asked the SDA Church to take back their position on vaccinations.

Reaffirmation Statement

In response to the Liberty of Conscience Document, the General Conference, on October 25th, issued a Reaffirmation Statement. This statement was voted on by the General Conference administration, the GC Health Ministries departments, the PARL department, General Conference Office of Legal Counsel, and Loma Linda University Health.

In March 2021, the NAD issued a Statement on vaccines, which was essentially a reiteration of the 2015 Vaccination statement. We can put the NAD statement aside—as we know from the Women’s Ordination Issues, Divisions do not have the authority to make theological decisions themselves. The NAD has no right to be making any theological statements. That brings us to a question. What authority do the aforementioned bodies have to issue these statements?

If they don’t have the authority to issues these statements, they need to be revoked.

ADCOM

ADCOM does not have any inherent authority; any authority they have is delegated to it by the lay members of the world church when we vote on the General Conference Working Policy at the General Conference Session.

Overview of SDA Church Structure

The Seventh-day Adventist Church line of authority goes like this.

Local Church. Local churches elect delegates to the conference constituency meeting. These delegates elect the officers of the conference and the conference executive committee. A majority of members on the conference constituency and the executive committee are laymen (non-employees of the church). That’s important. A majority of people on the executive committee are not church employees with a vested interest. They are laymen like you and I. Unfortunately, the farther up the ladder of church structure that you go, there is less and less lay member involvement on executive committees.
The conference executive committee elects delegates to the Union executive committee. Often there is a majority of church employees on these committees, though some unions vary.
Division executive committees tend have more church employees than lay members.
The Union sends delegates to the General Conference Session. At the General Conference Session, lay member delegates are about 16-17%. The rest are church employees, ex-officio and otherwise.
The General Conference Executive Committee of 350 is composed primarily of church employees, with a couple lay members from each division. That computes to about 6% of lay member representation. Lay member involvement diminishes as you move higher up.

In between General Conference Sessions (which occur every five years), how does the Church make decisions?

The General Conference Executive Committee meets twice a year: April and October. They have the authority to make decisions in between General Conference Sessions. In matters of high significance, GCEXCOM will often refer the issue to a General Conference Session (such as the women’s ordination question).

In between bi-annual GCEXCOM meetings, ADCOM makes non-theological administrative decisions. ADCOM is 46 members made up entirely of church employees, such as GC presidential, secretariat, treasury, plus department heads and institutional leaders and a few invitees. They meet every Tuesday at the General Conference.

Here is ADCOM’s authority.

1. The ADCOM has delegated authority & power to act in administrative matters pertaining to the internal operations of the GC and its employees.

2. They have no authority to determine theological / spiritual matters for all members worldwide. Therefore the 2015 statement on vaccinations was an overreach of their authority.

Theological matters up to and including the voting of new Fundamental Beliefs must occur at the GC in full session, with a generous number of lay-representatives casting the votes.

“…the definition of denominational beliefs is entrusted to the general Conference in full session” (GCWPM, B.05 #6).

Ramifications

The 2015 vaccine Statement Every person on the ADCOM Committee who voted on the 2015 Vaccine Statement is a church employee, paid for by tithe or other sources of income. There is not a single lay member on that ADCOM Committee. They have a conflict of interest when they vote their statements, more about that later. They also have no authority to determine theological or spiritual matters for all members worldwide. When this committee voted this statement in 2015 they committed what’s known as an ultra vires act (acting or going beyond their delegated powers).
The 2021 Reaffirmation Statement This document is a reaction to the Liberty of Conscience Document and it’s 24,206 signatories, 4,019 of whom are medical professionals, and 1,855 of whom are pastors. In this Reaffirmation Statement the church hardened its position. Notice,

“…we have no religious of faith-based reason not to encourage our adherents to responsibly participate in protective and preventative immunization programs.”

This is a theological statement. This also is what’s known as an ultra vires act (acting or going beyond one's legal power or authority). This statement is also being used to deny religious exemptions to Seventh-day Adventist members. Another excerpt in the Reaffirmation Statement,

“Therefore, claims of religious liberty are not used appropriately in objecting to government mandates of employer programs to protect the health and safety of their communities.”

This statement was made by a combination of General Conference administrators, the Biblical Research Institute, The General Conference Health Ministries Department, the PARL (Public affairs and religious liberty department, General Office of Legal Counsel, and Loma Linda University Health.

Nowhere, in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has the General Conference in full Session ever authorized this group to make such a statement. It would be like me and three or four people in the audience issuing statements on behalf of the World Church. This is a theological statement that effectively denies religious waivers for members worldwide, and it is put together by a group of people (a constellation of departments) who were never tasked or granted authority to make such a statement. Nowhere.

Regardless of how finely worded, this Reaffirmation Statement is illegitimate, and like the 2015 Vaccine Statement needs to be revoked immediately.

This past week, the Supreme Court held that OSHA did not have the proper authority to issue the Biden Mandate, and by the same token, we the members of the Adventist church have never delegated the authority for this Reaffirmation Statement group to make a theological statement such as this to deny religious exemptions for our members around the world.

Furthermore, our SDA system of representative government requires a majority of lay representation at the field level, the conference level, the union level and GC representative forums. And as far as I can figure out, everybody who voted for this (holds up 2015 Statement) and everybody who voted for this (Reaffirmation Document) were paid up church employees. As we are going to see shortly, they were operating under a profound financial conflict of interest. There was no lay representation in making a decision where church employees could not lose their jobs but Adventists all around the world will lose their jobs. There is something wrong with this.

There is something that is profoundly wrong with a system that publishes in the Adventist Review statements that call for the appropriate exclusion of members from employment and social engagement while simultaneously demanding that those members return their tithe. Something is rotten in the heart of Denmark.

Every day that these two statements are out there on the church website, members around the world are paying a terrible price. I believe the GC is honor bound to withdraw the statements, apologize, and make restitution to church members who have lost their jobs when these statements were used against them.

Holy Spirit

This statement denies you and I the ability to affirm the convictions of the Holy Spirit regarding vaccines in our lives. It is a de facto denial of the right of the Holy Spirit to speak to you on the matter. This is the theological impact of this Reaffirmation Statement.

The proclamation of the Everlasting gospel in Revelation 14 assumes that despite diametric disagreements with the dominant narrative of our fallen world, despite social isolation, the demands and dogmas of the mainstream media, economic exclusion, employment mandates and ultimately the death penalty, earth’s inhabitants retain the freedom of conscience needed to respond to the call, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come.”

We rely on the freedom of conscience to the very end for the proclamation of the three angels messages. We must not deny freedom of conscience before that final crisis arrives. Your conscience is a God-given inner faculty by which the Holy Spirit brings awareness of the morality of actions thoughts and decisions.

“..who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them ) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel” (Romans 2:15-16).

“I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 9:1).

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron….” (1 Timothy 4:1-2).

Through our conscience, the Holy Spirit reveals God’s will for us as individuals and a community of faith. The only way to be free from it is to kill, or sear it. We must also be consistent.

It isn’t right to say I don’t want to take the vaccine because it isn’t proven and may be harmful to my body, while eating Twinkies™ and drinking Coco-Cola all day long. We must take our bodies seriously—as the temple of the Holy Spirit. W e must be consistent and honest in how we respond to the Holy Spirit.

The Fundamental Beliefs

The fundamental beliefs of the church are voted by representatives of our church from all around the world, including input from a significant number of lay representatives. The Fundamental Beliefs override these two vaccine statements of the General Conference.

Fundamental belief 22

This fundamental belief, along with 1 Corinthians 6:19 affirms that we are to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to produce Christlike purity and health in our lives. What we allow into our bodies is a matter of conscience guided by the Holy Spirit, therefore because it is a matter of conscience, must be considered a matter of religious liberty by the Religious Liberty Department of the Church.

Questions.

Why would you seek God’s will if the choice has already been made by ADCOM?
Conviction by Whom? By the Holy Spirit.

The Reaffirmation Statement goes on to say,

“Claims of religious Liberty are not used appropriately in objecting to government mandates or employer programs…”

How do they come to that conclusion? On one hand they encourage prayer to God and asking the Spirit to guide you, then they say you cannot use religious liberty to refuse a certain vaccination. There is a complete disconnect within this statement.

The preamble of the Reaffirmation Statement sharply disagrees with its own conclusion at the end. If yielding to the covid vaxxine mandate is a matter of conscience as the statement affirms, then it is automatically a religious liberty issue.

We have heard from our religious leaders for two years, “This is not a religious liberty issue”, but the GC’s own Reaffirmation Statement affirms that it is a matter about which you should pray and ask for guidance from the Holy Spirit. Therefore it IS a religious liberty issue.

We have been effectively abandoned by our religious liberty hierarchy who simply don’t want to deal with the social pushback of standing up for Adventists who have religious objections.

The General Conference Working Policy makes this statement:

The GC claims that the PARL works for the religious liberties of individual church members. No it doesn’t.

For the last two years we have been told that forced vaccination is not a religious liberty matter. We are thinking people out here, and we can read the documents and the signs of the times.

The GC Working Policy clearly states that the job of PARL is to protect your conscience. If you are not willing to stand up for the religious convictions of your members, step aside and let people stand up who will.

Jesus taught us to ask for the Holy Spirit, but He did not teach us that we can schedule the convicting power of the Holy Spirit for a more convenient time in history. The fact that secular employees and the GC leadership are painting the vaccine mandates as merely an employment issue is utterly irrelevant. We are accountable to God not for how we respond to these statements (holds up 2015 vaccine Statement and 2021 Reaffirmation Statement) that were made by committees that were never authorized to make such statements. We are accountable to God for how we respond to the moving of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts and minds.

We are not anti-vax or pro vax. We are pro-acting according to your conscience in this matter. We are not to unite with secular rulers to dictate in matters of conscience. The Holy Spirit cannot be controlled, scheduled, or denied access by public religious liberty leaders. The Holy Spirit certainly cannot be scheduled by the ADCOM department. To think in this way is actually blasphemy, for we will be determining how and when God has permission to act through His Holy Spirit in our lives.

Financial Component

It is amazing, giving our eschatology in the role of America crushing conscience in the End Time, how much we are in bed with the second beast of Revaltion

Friends, this goes way beyond the Covid question.

As America drifts before our eyes from the land of the free and the home of the brave into the prophesied totalitarian second beast of Revelation 13, how long can we honestly feast on federal funds? When you feast on federal funds, you dance to the federal tune.

As America drifts and becomes the totalitarian second beast of Revelation, how long can we remain an honest prophetic voice to our society while we are financially dependent on the funding from that second beast? Our dependence upon federal funding keeps our tithe going to the NAD, it drives documents like this (holds of documents) that is hurting Adventists around the rest of the world.

Adventists in Canada, Australia, and Europe, are losing their jobs because of these statements. We are allowing the second beast of Revelation to drive our policy-making in a way that tramples upon the consciences of our members worldwide. Something is rotten in the heart of Denmark.

To argue that federal funding in the US is not influencing our refusal to recognize the spirit-led convictions and religious exemption requests of Adventists from Covid vaccination mandates is profoundly naive.

When the financial needs of the institutional church for funding from the second beast of revelation cause the institutional church to deny the consciences of individual members, we are crossing a red line.

The Working Policy was voted by the members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

These two statements (2015, 2021) were not voted by the members. We need to uphold the statements that were voted on by Church members, not the statements voted by a small group who are essentially living off of federally funded tithe.

When we align ourselves institutionally with federal mandates and the second beast over the consciences of our members, we are perilously close to losing our raison d'etre as God’s end time movement.

I say these things in love. For every member who has lost their job, this sermon is for you. For every member who is feeling pressured to take the vaccine and suffer side effects that no one cares about, this sermon is for you. And for every member who is struggling whether to take the Covid vaccine or not, and your employer has denied you access to exemptions because of these two statements, this sermon is for you. You are not alone. There is a worldwide movement of Adventists who stand with you and are praying for you.”

What is Needed?

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“Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth.

Their conscientious scruples will be pronounced obstinacy, stubbornness, and contempt of authority. They will be accused of disaffection toward the government. Ministers who deny the obligation of the divine law will present from the pulpit the duty of yielding obedience to the civil authorities as ordained of God.

In legislative halls and courts of justice, commandment keepers will be misrepresented and condemned. A false coloring will be given to their words; the worst construction will be put upon their motives” (GC 592.1).