It wouldn’t be first time that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was denigrated by a beast, and likely won’t be the last.
In an obvious smear effort against conservatives in general and the Adventist Church in particular, the Daily Beast just published an article in which they compared the QAnon movement to the Millerite movement.
Some Facts About The QAnon Movement
QAnon followers embrace an intertwined series of conspiracy beliefs based on web postings from individual “Q” (a designation within the U.S. Department of Energy denoting the highest levels of security clearance) who claims to have inside knowledge.
QAnon is in essence a conspiracy theory that essentially alleges the world is run by a Satanic cabal of left-wing cannibalistic pedophiles and child traffickers. The “cabal” is all-encompassing and controls every aspect of liberal politics, global infrastructure, higher education, popular culture, mass media and worldwide charitable organizations. Anyone and everyone who isn’t a Q believer is part of the cabal.
QAnon people are extremely flexible about what they’re willing to believe on any given day. They latch onto new conspiracies like a magnet dragged through a pile of iron filings, grabbing hold of anything that passes close enough. It doesn’t matter if the meme they’re sharing today contradicts the meme they posted yesterday—somehow, they simultaneously believe both of them at once.
Many of their most deeply held beliefs have their roots in possibly manipulated text images on the internet. They will believe most everything they are told, as long as it’s coming from a well-known, Q-friendly figure. In other words, QAnons are a lot like social justice warriors, but with more tin foil.
So why is the Daily Beast reaching back to the Great Disappointment to find something to compare with Q? And why drag William Miller into your diatribe? It’s part of a pattern that we have seen over the last 3-years.
Lately, the media shoots at anyone conservative with sneers about QAnon. Public concerns about leftism, socialism, militant homosexuality, and the normalization of BLM/Antifa violence is usually accompanied by references to QAnon, as if only conspiracy theorists could possibly object to these things. Accusing every opposition as a right-wing conspiracy sums up a poisoned marketplace of ideas in which nothing is so bad that it can’t be made good by associating it with the other side. “The only reason you don’t like bad things is because of your infantile biblical tribalism.”
Listen to this.
You would think that three false prophecies, collectively known as the Great Disappointment, would be the end of the Millerites. To be sure, some members did leave to join the Shakers, but others began to reinterpret the prophecies about the end of days. One group began to argue that they were only partly wrong. The prophecies weren’t about the Second Coming and end of the world but, rather, about the cleansing of a heavenly sanctuary. It wasn’t an earthly event, it was a heavenly one, and this explained why, to us mere humans, it might appear that nothing had happened. It was out of this group that the Seventh Day Adventist Church arose. Today the Seventh Day Adventist Church has between 20-25 million members. They are, according to Christianity Today, “the fifth largest Christian communion worldwide.”
Ironically, the prophecies in Daniel that formed the basis for the Millerite (and many other!) prophecies about the end of the world were themselves the product of dashed expectations. Though it is set in the sixth century B.C., Daniel was written during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes IV (175-164 B.C.). At the time Judeans were wrestling with the Antiochus’s attempts to eradicate Jewish customs and traditions like Sabbath observance, circumcision, and dietary laws. As a response to this crisis the book contains a series of prophecies about what would happen at the end of time. The dates are very specific and, after the first date for the restoration of the Temple given in Dan. 8:12 passed without incident, a later author was forced to add a second prophecy (Daniel 12:11-12) to account for the mistake.
While it might seem that the moral of this story is ‘be vague about your prophecies,’ the book of Daniel is in our Bibles and the Seventh Day Adventist Church is a major denomination in Christianity. The initial prophecies weren’t strictly accurate, but the movements they generated pivoted and flourished.
Social psychologists call this phenomenon cognitive dissonance.
There you have it.
Compulsive conspiracy theorists suffering from cognitive dissonance are just like early Adventists. It’s an effort to shame the SDA Church and deepen the inferiority complex that some of us already have for our Message. Sharing Bible truth? Tin foil stuff Teach the Three Angels’ Messages? Conspiracy kooks! Distributing the encouraging & impelling Spirit of Prophecy books? Contraband. And they are just getting started.
On October 15, 2020, CNN published a similar hit piece comparing the QAnon movement with the Millerite movement.
On January 14, 2020, the Catholic Herald listed Ellen White as their heretic of the week. And what does the Roman Catholic Church do with heretics? Ask William Tyndale.
This is the new world that the enemies of God have cooked up for you, one in which Bible truth is the enemy of common belief. If you question or expose these desperate seekers of power that are hijacking the world with alarming rapidity, you must be shamed into silence.
One thing is clear, dear ones: These cultural Marxists are not your friends.
The Lord is (John 15:15).
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“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).