Electric Fence

(Or, one Adventist’s poke in the eye of the howlers at Life Assurance Ministries)
Bruce N. Cameron, J.D.
Copr. 2008

Introduction: King Solomon complained in Ecclesiastes 1:10 “Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new?’” (NIV) It is hard to find new ideas and new thinking, particularly in the areas of law and theology.  Both “look back” to what has been written and previously decided to determine what is the right thing to do in the current situation.

Most of the time when I read attacks on observing the seventh day Sabbath, Solomon is right, they are simply a rehash of old theories which have always suffered from a wobbly Scriptural foundation.

Only Catholics have a consistent and logical theological base for their views on Sunday keeping.   If, as Catholics believe,  “the Church” holds “the keys” to the Kingdom of Heaven to the extent that decisions made here on earth are binding in heaven (see Matthew 16:18-19), then a Catholic would reasonably defer to the decision of the Catholic Church to change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

The problem for Protestants is that they do not accept that this kind of authority has been given to the Catholic Church – or even their own church for that matter.  Thus, if Protestants care about the authority of Scripture, they are stuck with trying to cobble together a defense of Sunday keeping from a few uncertain New Testament references.   Generally the best they can argue is that the specific day of worship does not matter.  The glaring omission from their arsenal of Scripture-based argument is any Bible text from either of the testaments which positively commands believers to worship on Sunday.  None exists.  Any argument that Christians have a positive obligation to worship on Sunday comes from extra-Biblical sources.  (Actually, most arguments I have read in favor of a positive obligation to worship on Sunday are based on Bible texts which mandate Saturday Sabbath worship!)

On the LAM: In recent years, a Protestant organization calling itself “Life Assurance Ministries” has been taking aim at the Seventh-day Adventist Church and some of it more prominent doctrines, including the seventh-day Sabbath.   The organization refers to itself in its publications as “LAM,” which always strikes me as “laugh out loud” funny.  Being “on the lam,” is an old phrase describing a criminal running away from the clutches of the law.  That seems a fair, but unwitting,  description of LAM: running away from the law of God.

LAM has a magazine entitled  Proclamation! which publishes letters to the editor. From time to time Adventists write to LAM to express their unhappiness with its attacks on the Adventist Church and its doctrines.  Most of the letters selected for publication from Adventists sound angry and twisted (or illiterate), which no doubt is one reason the LAM editor publishes them.

Not that I overly blame the angry and twisted Adventists who write.  Each edition of the publication contains stories of ex-Adventists who write as if leaving the Church is the functional equivalent of leaving an addiction to drugs or alcohol.   The Adventist Church gets painted as the “Great Satan” and Ellen White is its satanic prophet.  One reason I find the LAM acronym (as in “on the lam”) so humorous, is that I come away from reading Proclamation! with the impression that these “on the lam” people are by and large a humorless, mean-spirited crew.  Being funny when you have no intention of creating humor is the highest form of humor!

No animosity seems too low to publically vent in the LAM publication.   The current editor of Proclamation!  is a woman.  One edition published an attack on her husband’s ex-wife!  Worse, the attack article was written by the son of the ex-wife. If using your step son to take public shots at your husband’s ex-wife is suitable material for the publication, Adventists can hardly expect that LAM’s editor will show any discretion in publishing any real or perceived problems in the Adventist Church!

One of the truly humorous (and ironic) aspects of LAM is how oblivious it is to the way in which its rebellion against the Adventist Church frames its arguments.  One constant theme of its publication is that Adventists are arrogant in their thinking that they are the “remnant church.”   The obvious truth to those on (or in) the LAM is that God’s people are present in all of the churches.  Yet, the paper constantly publishes personal accounts of how those newly part of LAM have escaped Adventism and become converted.  I have no doubt that these new people are newly converted - but the “point” of all of these articles is that you cannot be a Christian and an Adventist.  You have to “come out” to be converted.  So much for LAM’s idea that God’s people are present in all churches.  It must be “all churches” other than the Adventist Church!

The “mirror image” fallacy of believing you cannot be a Christian outside the Adventist Church, is the fallacy that only those who have left the Adventist Church (and gone on the LAM) are Christians!  It is like a former victim of racial discrimination now discriminating on the basis of race.  If LAM wants Adventists to “grow up” and recognize that sincere followers of Christ exist outside the Adventist Church, then LAM needs to grow up (mature as Christians) and realize that sincere followers of Christ also exist inside the Adventist Church.

The real controversy between LAM and the Adventist Church - which all of its “I came out of the Great Satan” articles obscure - is not who is a follower of Christ. Rather, it is who best understands the will of Christ.

In addition to publishing articles about how some ex-Adventists have wriggled out of the grasp of that “Great Satan” which we call Adventism, LAM also publishes in its magazine what passes for scholarly theological argument.  These are generally written by ex-Adventist pastors and college teachers.   Defying the wisdom of Solomon, LAM makes what I believe is a new attack on the seventh-day Sabbath.  I doubt this argument is original to LAM, but it was only 10-15 years ago that I first started seeing this line of argument.   LAM is part of a contemporary movement making this new attack on Sabbath-keeping. To my knowledge, none of the historic books or articles in support of Sunday-keeping contain this argument.

LAM Logic: The December, 2005 publication of LAM’s magazine printed a couple of well-stated arguments from Adventists in favor of seventh-day Sabbath keeping which were followed by LAM’s rebuttal based in part on its “new” argument against the Sabbath.   To help set up a discussion of LAM’s attack on the Sabbath, what follows are the two letters to the editor written by (what must certainly be) Adventists followed by the LAM rebuttal.

The Adventist letters:
With each issue of Proclamation! I scan for any comments dealing with Sabbath in Eden.  You are very silent on this topic. Neither Dale Ratzlaff nor Proclamation! has answered the fact that the Sabbath was made before any law or covenant.  Genesis 2:2 & 3 says God rested from His work and made the Sabbath holy. He obviously told Adam and Eve what He had done, or how would we know about it today? The Sabbath was created for perfect sinless mankind.  Why should God destroy or change what was perfect?

McGregor Wright wants to nail this perfect Sabbath to the cross???…Sabbath is not a law but a perfect and changeless INSTITUTION.  Eden gave us two institutions, marriage and the Sabbath. God later surrounded these institutions with protective laws …. If the Sabbath was an Eden law and it was nailed to the cross, was marriage in Eden a law that was also nailed to the cross?  Are you opening a new twist on gay theology?…

Thanks for your efforts, Colleen and Richard. You are a good ‘wordsmith’ and produce an artistic journal, but until you answer the above, I can only feel great sorrow for your chosen blindness. Satan is blessing your efforts.

Elizabeth Iskander, MD

The second letter to the editor:

Thank you very much for sending me your Proclamation! magazine. We go through every article, including the letters, with a [fine] toothed comb, analyzing them and comparing them to the Bible ….  It seems like the old worn-out Protestant arguments are repeated time after time.  Nevertheless, it has been very useful to us, as it has helped us to affirm and to appreciate more our belief in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Just as an example, I would like to mention your editor’s note to the letter ‘Nothing to say” in your September/October, 2005 issue. You say: “Nowhere does the Bible command people to keep the Sabbath because it is a memorial to creation.”  It seems to me that you are blinded by your ideology, as you just have to read the fourth commandment to see that verse 11 starts with the word “for,” with gives us the reason why God asks us to ‘remember the Sabbath day,’ (‘for in six days God created heaven and earth….’)

You also conveniently forgot that in Genesis 2:3, it says that ‘God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because (here we have the reason for the blessing and sanctification) in it, He rested from all of His work which God had created and made.’ ….

The truth is that the Sabbath was given to mankind, regardless of race or nationality…

Thank you for your magazine that helps me see in a very distinct way your errors, as I contrast them with the beauty of the Bible and the truths of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Please keep them coming.

I hope that when you publish this letter, you also print my name.  I’m not ashamed of my name or my beliefs.

Antonio Romero

LAM responded:
Editor’s note: Genesis 2:2-3 states that God blessed the seventh day because on that day He “ceased”or”rested”from all his work. His work was completely done, and just as Christ completed His work on the cross, so on the seventh day of creation week, God ceased His work of creation. He might just as well have said, as did Jesus,”It Is Finished.” He and Adam and Eve were in complete oneness. His blessing the seventh day was (1) without evening and morning, unlike the previous six days, and (2) was not a command. It was simply God “ceasing,” not”observing a day.” He was done. He was at rest; Adam and Eve were created and entered that rest with God.

The Levitical Sabbath was a reminder not of creation—God’s working—but of His rest. It was a reminder of the unbroken existence Adam and Eve and God enjoyed after His finished work. It was never about the six days, per se—it was always about God’s finished work—His “ceasing” and rest.

The Levitical Sabbath also looked ahead to the again finished work of God after Jesus shed His blood of the eternal covenant. Again mankind would be able to enter His rest and live in unbroken communion with Him—a communion that had not been possible since Eve ate the forbidden fruit. The Sabbath looked back at God’s once finished work and oneness with humanity, and it foreshadowed the again finished work of God and oneness with humanity after the cross.

God didn’t ask any human to DO anything at the end of creation related to the Sabbath. His rest simply WAS. Just as Adam and Eve did nothing to enter the sacredness of the seventh day (which was timeless—without evening and morning), so we do nothing to enter God’s rest TODAY (Hebrews 4:7) except surrender to Jesus. We again enter the holiness of God’s presence. The ‘institution” of Sabbath at creation was never about “observance” or “holy time.” Always it was about God’s finished work providing the means of God’s people entering the holiness of intimate relationship with Him through no work of their own.

Exodus 16 preceded Sinai by about one month. God gave Israel the symbols of the Bread of Life and His rest simultaneously. They were inseparable. Gathering the manna—the shadow of the Bread of Life—meant also observing the shadow of His rest every seventh day. Both were shadows of the coming Christ (see Colossians 2:16-17).

One month later at Sinai, God made the Sabbath the symbol of His covenant with the nation of Israel.  Until Jesus came, that day would remind them that, originally God created men to live in complete rest with and in Him, and again, they would be able to enter that rest when the Messiah came.

The entire point of salvation is entering God’s rest through His finished work—by no work or observance of our own.  The Sabbath was a reminder of that salvation rest.  Now that we have the reality in the finished work of Jesus and in our birth from above, we have no more need of the day of reminder.  We now have Jesus Himself!

The shadow or reality—it’s an eternal choice.

6 Proclamation! 17-18 (November/December 2005)

Since I did not want LAM to be able to suggest that I was “unfair,” I reproduced the entire response to the two Adventist letters.  It is the end of the response that contains the “punch line:” at the cross we entered into a new time of “rest,” described in Hebrews 4, in which all of our days are  “Sabbath time,” therefore eliminating the need for a weekly day of worship.  As LAM said in the quote above: “we have no more need of the day of reminder.”

The logical conclusion to be reached from this is that unless we attended daily Mass (as some Catholics do), we would have no need to worship weekly.

Thus, we see the clash between Adventists and those on the LAM.  Adventists say that the Sabbath’s position as a day of rest memorializing God’s authority as the Creator began at Creation, was reaffirmed at Sinai in the Ten Commandments, and then reaffirmed again at the crucifixion when Jesus rested in the grave on the Sabbath.  LAM responds that any importance that the weekly Sabbath might have had before the cross, ended at the cross because at that point Christians entered into the new spiritual “day” (age) of Sabbath rest.  We now all live each day in the “Sabbath.”

Is this LAM argument that a weekly Sabbath worship rests on the junk heap of history the actual conclusion of the LAM people?  Quite the contrary,  LAM constantly refers to weekly worship on Sunday.  It promotes weekly worship - on Sunday.  How does that make any common sense or Bible sense?  If we have entered that phase in time when weekly worship is “out the window,” then what are they doing worshiping once a week? The only “common” sense is that everyone else worships on Sunday - but, all of these other Sunday worshipers must have missed the key LAM argument that worship is no longer a weekly event.  We are now in the Sabbath age of rest and worship.

Perhaps the most “common” of senses for those on the LAM leading a church is the need to collect money from the faithful, which would be greatly complicated if you had one continuous Sabbath instead of a weekly event.  I certainly do not understand what motivates the disjunct between LAM’s theory and practice.

LAM interprets the historical Sabbath of the Bible like some amorphous, boundary-less “rest.”  That is not the picture of the historical Sabbath and nothing in Hebrews modifies the importance of the historical Sabbath.

Acknowledging the Obvious: Instead, the historical Sabbath is best pictured as a celebration. In Genesis 1:31-2:3 we find that God creates the Sabbath and then asks humans to celebrate that event. God creates, and man celebrates his transformation from dirt to a living human being.

In Exodus 31:12-13 we find that God says to His people, “I am making you holy. Remember this by observing my Sabbath.”  God again creates, and man celebrates his transformation from a dirty soul to a holy being.

In Deuteronomy 5:12-15 we find God telling His people: “Celebrate My Sabbaths because I freed you from slavery in Egypt.”  God took slaves and made free men and women out of them. Once again we see that God creates, and man celebrates his transformation from a slave to a free human.

This is the historical, Biblical, pattern of God’s work.  God creates something wonderful for humans and He instructs them to remember what He has done by celebrating it on the Sabbath.

With the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we are indeed, as LAM suggests, entering into the great time of rest which will culminate with Jesus’ Second Coming and our life eternal with Him. What is the obvious, reasonable reaction to this fabulous blessing?  This creation on our behalf? This work done on our behalf by our Savior?

“LAM logic” says “forget about the Sabbath.  This is a discard of the past.”

The student of the Bible, on the other hand, sees that at the cross Jesus re-created us, freed us from slavery to sin and covered our sins with His blood, so that we could be holy beings acceptable to a Holy God.  This bundles together all of the historical Biblical reasons why God told His people in the past to celebrate the Sabbath.  Since God commanded a Sabbath celebration for all of these individual acts in the past (Creation, forgiveness from sin, freedom from slavery), the obvious logical response to entering into His great (post-resurrection) time of rest is to celebrate it by observing His seventh-day Sabbath!

What better way to remember and celebrate the Sabbath rest described in the book of Hebrews than to celebrate on Sabbath!

Perhaps an extreme hypothetical will help make this more clear.  Let’s assume that LAM preaches (as it surely believes) that animal sacrifices are no longer necessary because Jesus has fulfilled the Old Testament sacrificial system.  Although our God was sacrificed once for all times (Hebrews 9:24-28), a truth which LAM prominently proclaims, for some reason LAM still clings to animal sacrifices - except that it sacrifices eagles to memorialize Jesus ascending into heaven.  No Bible text anywhere suggests that eagles should be sacrificed, but LAM thinks this has great symbolic meaning.  Can you see the inconsistency in this extreme hypothetical?

If a weekly Sabbath is a thing of the past because we have entered the rest of the “Sabbath age,” then those on the LAM should stop worshiping on a weekly basis!  If those on the LAM are going to worship on a weekly basis, they should at least follow what God said about it: worship on Saturday.   What person who still believed in animal sacrifices would choose an eagle as opposed to a lamb (or some other animal approved by God)?

Why is it that LAM has such a problem recognizing the obvious logic of this?  Why would our perpetual “Sabbath rest” LAM brothers and sisters be celebrating on Sunday instead of the Sabbath?  It must relate back to their chosen name: LAM. They are on the run away from the will of God.

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