As Seventh-day Adventists (SDA) we have always defined ourselves as the remnant church, holding a unique insight into the last day events. However unfortunate was our origin in failed eschatology, our pioneers were led by the Holy Spirit to the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation which defined our missionary purpose of spreading the Everlasting Good News through the prism of the Three Angels Messages to the entire world.
Stories of the “Great Disappointment” have often been recounted with a twinge of embarrassment. Our faith has since recovered. Through social engagement and global contributions in Health Care and Education, we have shed our “cult” moniker and achieved recognition in mainstream Protestantism. Each successive step in our development has afforded us greater ability to be influencers and change agents in the world.
My greatest wish as an adolescent and a teenager was for our SDA faith to be more “normal” and similar to other churches, so that we would not appear so strange. Now 40 years later, I find my adolescent desires are nearly realized. Who would not argue that though we had a rocky beginning, our journey has successfully normalized our image and how much easier it is today to be an SDA. We are now able to define our faith without raising awareness of our uniqueness and purpose. We easily cohabitate within society.
Led by academic and theological enlightenment, we have boldly encouraged ecumenism at the religious, social, and political levels. We have promoted Social Justice by humanistic means, defined love for our fellow man by affirming members of the LGBTQ+ community, and finally cast aside the patriarchal, legalistic, and puritanical biblical tenets that have hampered our ability to advance the SDA image. Having decisively pierced the likeness of mainstream Protestantism, we are well poised to spread the Good News. Or are we?
It is human nature to perceive that God’s desire for us is a life abundant in health and prosperity, including career and financial achievements, a life far removed from social conflicts, struggles, turmoil, and disappointments. We want to be those eternal peacemakers, living a blessed life in religious, social, and political ecumenical harmony. Isn’t the history of God’s people a history of countless blessings?
Has our SDA culture forgotten the value of the wilderness? Do we scorn those circumstances where only through our relationship with, and reliance on, God we can persevere? Where challenges and disappointments accumulate to the point of physical and emotional breakdowns, where the darkness seems to overwhelm us until the light pierces the distress. God places his beloved within the wilderness in preparation and refinement of His mission.
The Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness in order to shed their secular, idolatrous culture of humanistic dependency and develop a relationship and reliance on God. John the Baptist spent his entire ministry in the wilderness. The one chosen to prepare a way for Christ, chose to operate in the wilderness versus bringing his message to the urban populace. Delivering his message in the wilderness, with a daily reliance on God for wisdom, guidance, and sustenance provided John the Baptist with the great spiritual clarity and capacity he needed.
Christ’s ministry also began with Him being led into the wilderness. Facing great physical challenges, Christ spent 40 days and nights in close communion with His Father. Though physically beaten by the effects of the wilderness, His resolve of purpose and mission was its strongest. There He was able to resist temptations that would have felled every human, even in His most physically vulnerable state.
The early Apostolic church endured constant persecution and progressed with divine appointment until its point of mainstream acceptance. Once Constantine ceased the persecution of Christians and the movement gained popularity, converts no longer faced torture or loss of life, but social acceptance and normalization. Ecumenism between pagans and Christians developed to create a compromising harmony of Christian observance on a Pagan holy day.
With popularity, the Christian church gained influence and political control. The church “fathers” began to interpret Bible passages in wildly “spiritual” and allegorical ways that had little relationship to the inspired text. This divination afforded the early church leadership the ability to promote the veneration of Mary, and her purported continuing motherly influence on Jesus. It gave them the biblically unmentioned state of purgatory and the purported ability of the deceased’s family to shorten their loved one’s stay therein by donating to the church. It created a human priesthood to take the place of our heavenly mediator and intercessor for the absolution of sin, and the capacity of a sinful human to achieve infallibility once inaugurated as Pope.
Shunning this biblical corruption, true Christians chose wilderness persecution over the popular church. Through the darkest hours of earth’s history, God moved among the hearts and minds of His followers and preserved the truth by daily nurturing their souls. Though He was with each believer through their perilous journeys, He often did not forestall their untimely ends. Christians willingly sacrificed their earthly bodies, allowing themselves to be burned, boiled, crushed, drowned, hanged, and impaled, to name but a few of the methods employed. Their eyes were on the eternal prize, and forfeiting their earthly bodies was a small sacrifice to make.
Adventism
The Adventist Church began with a deliberate and foretold wilderness experience (Rev 10:10). To have the remnant faith increase in popularity for ecumenical purposes could once again pollute the truth. Only those of ardent conviction would choose to face persecution, including public ridicule and physical violence. The Remnant Church foundation had to be laid by “forefathers” willing to sacrifice all in service to God. Only under such dedication and conviction was the investigative judgement revealed—placing Adventism at the tip of the spear for End Time biblical prophecy.
Fast forward 180 years and the SDA church now covers the globe. The faith is represented in nearly every country (212 and counting). It has one of the most well-developed primary, secondary, and tertiary educational systems (8,500 plus institutions), and highly developed and respected Health Care systems. Its ability to reach, care for, and educate humanity is astonishing, considering its relatively small size. There is no denying that the SDA church grew by God’s favor.
For many, the historical growth of the SDA world church embodies two foundational biblical principles.
The first is: Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
The second: You shall know them by their fruits.
The early pioneers sought God’s leading in their lives. Though they were far from perfect, and there are plenty of stories of strife, the fruits of the Spirit are self-evident in the annals of SDA church history.
For millennia, God has advanced His promise of a returning Kingdom through people dedicated to serving God in the face of great obstacles. Humans, though sinful and fallen, have defied great odds of adversity, when seeking first to serve God’s kingdom. Their fruits bear out God’s drawing near to them. Though the success manifested from the fruits of the Spirit may appear to be varied by earthly standards, the historical journey reveals the miraculous blessings that met biblical pioneers as they ventured forth in faith.
Does the SDA church still accept that their spiritual journey is in traverse of the wilderness? Are we scared to venture into the wilderness by voicing opposition to societal norms, for they might estrange us from our modern comforts? Debauched cultural norms give us the opportunity to differentiate ourselves from the crowd, not to self-aggrandize but to affirm Bible truth about right and wrong upon the world stage. As we fast approach further End Time events, do we believe Satan will march down the middle of the street and cry out, “it’s time to adopt Sunday Laws and focus our attack on the SDA?” Do we believe that the opportunity to stand for our beliefs will be obvious and defining?
Wilderness experiences have become synonymous with injustice. We cannot deny the existence of “man’s inhumanity to man,” but do we stop and ponder that the God of the universe, Who holds all power and resources, allows for us to endure these circumstances (Isaiah 43:19; 1 Cor. 10:13)? Often in our struggles against oppression and hatred we are afforded the closest relationship with our Maker and Redeemer (2 Cor. 12:9-11). Should we focus on our fear and fight societal imposition and the weaponizing of communal exclusion?
Each movement that advanced God’s Kingdom eventually ran their course and lost their purpose. The Jews missed the coming of the Messiah. The Early Christian church became corrupted. The Reformers, though enduring significant persecution could only return the Church partially to God’s plan before they grew cold and refused to advance further.
Adventism came into existence to spread the Everlasting Gospel through the prism of the Three Angels Messages, and prepare a people to keep the commandments of God and embrace the faith of Jesus, but it is not a foregone conclusion that we will stay faithful to the end. God never removes human freedom. Our faith is built on sola scriptura, standing firm in the face of secular social influences and resisting internal efforts to culturally condition our faith. If we fail in this, could not God raise up another movement?
To draw near to God is to be “faithful in very little”, for you can’t be faithful in much without first being faithful in very little (Luke 16:10). The fruits of the Spirit draw people’s attention away from themselves and towards God.
How shall we recognize the Remnant? The biblical Remnant is identified by the fruits that come from drawing near to God (James 4:8).
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find Me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11-13).
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Daniel Bacchiocchi is an architect and president of Bacchiocchi Construction Services, Inc. He lives with his wife Michelle in Berrien Springs, MI.