“Nashville is marked as being destroyed by a nuclear weapon,” warned a full-page “paid advertisement” in the Nashville Tennessean on Sunday, June 21, 2020.
The ad claimed that the destruction would be caused by “Islam” detonating a nuclear device on July 18, 2020. How did the sponsors of the ad reach this remarkable conclusion? They claimed it was predicted in “Bible prophecy” and by the prophetess “Ellen G. White” whose warnings are being ignored by “the backslidden Seventh-day Adventist Church.”
The ad-sponsoring group calls itself “Future for America” and is led by Jeff Pippenger, who was previously dis-fellowshipped by a Seventh-day Adventist Church in Arkansas for his divisive views on prophecy, including promoting the false 2520 movement.
On June 22 (the day after the ad appeared), the response was swift. Multiple news outlets picked up the story, including the Religion News Service. Thankfully, most reports focused on the “Future for America” group without mentioning Seventh-day Adventists. In Tennessee, the advertisement was quickly labelled “hate speech,” and the unfortunate Tennessean employee who accepted it for publication lost his job.
The narrative quickly changed from an outlandish warning coupled to hard date-setting, to lack of political correctness. As to the prediction?
It didn’t happen.
What did happen is threefold.
The faith of the saints is now a little weaker, thanks to sensationalist attention seekers (SAS) who went out from us. Thank the Lord they left.
The SAS offshoots have made no apology for misleading millions of people, and causing many otherwise honest seekers of truth outside the Church to scoff at the Three Angels’ Messages and the writings of Ellen White. As is often the case with fanatics, they are not embarrassed by their own fanaticism.
This scenario has placed a sword in the hands of a mocking segment within the Adventist Church, reinforcing their ridicule of the SOP and our task to warn the world of looming judgment.
The prediction? It didn’t happen.
Damage to our solemn Message? It happened.
Who wins? Satan.
There is a day coming in which God will judge the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31).
This will happen.
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“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).