Electric Fence

by Bruce N. Cameron, J.D.

Copr. 2008

Introduction: If you are already familiar with the Electric Fence, skip this introduction.  If not, give me a few moments to explain this unique blog.  This blog has one purpose: to defend Seventh-day Adventists against the attacks of an organization called “Life Assurance Ministries” (variously referred to here as “LAM,” “lammers,” “wolves,” “whiners,” or “howlers.”) LAM publishes a bi-monthly journal called Proclamation! and its principle purpose seems to be to paint the Adventist Church as the “Great Satan,” and suggest that members should leave the Adventist Church as quickly as possible.  If you want more details, read my entry “Why the Electric Fence?”

Each issue of Proclamation! has a section called “Stories of Faith,” in which it recounts why some poor sap left the Adventist Church and joined the lammers.  (By the way, “on the lam” is an old term for someone who is a fugitive from the law - an apt description of the lammers.) The lammers purpose in these stories is to explain why you, too, should leave the Adventist Church.

Beginning in 2008, each time Proclamation! issues one of these new stories, I intend to “take on” the story.   I’ve been a regular reader of Proclamation! for a number of years now.  (They “spammed” me onto their mailing list.)  As far as I’m concerned, these howlers would throw the Church (if not their mothers) under the train.  Proclamation! has a real hard edge to it.  I’m a lawyer and a litigator, and “brass knuckles” debate is nothing new to me.  You will see a hard edge in this blog that you see nowhere else in my Internet Bible studies because I normally do not believe in taking brass knuckles to fellow believers.  What I am concerned about, and I apologize in advance if I give any offense to the reader, is separating the wolves (for which verbal brass knuckles are permitted) from the poor saps who are featured in each Proclamation!  “Story of Faith.”  I’m sure those people who leave the Adventist Church are sincere, if confused.  They are not the target of this blog, even if it might seem that way.  The target of this blog is the editors and managers of LAM who offer up these poor saps up as an example of why you should leave the Adventist Church.  Okay, are we clear?  I’m not out to insult those poor souls who left the Church, this blog is to explain why their reasons for leaving were illogical, and (when applicable) irrational.

This month Electric Fence takes on the story of why Brian Cain left the Adventist Church.  Read on.

Rebuilding the Foundation of My Faith: The Brian Cain Story

This month’s exciting account of why good Christians should leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church recites the departure story of Brian Cain, a third generation Adventist.

According to Proclamation!, what really began the separation between Cain and the Church was the “misguided … Adventist error” of an Adventist minister refusing to marry Cain to his non-Adventist girlfriend.  The lammers are absolutely outraged! As Proclamation! reports: “How could two Christians be unequally yoked?”  My first reaction is to mark down one point for our side because the Proclamation! question seems to admit that Adventists are Christians.  My second reaction is “Don’t these guys proofread their articles for glaring logical errors?”

How could two Christians be unequally yoked?  Well, for a starter, what if they worship on different days of the week?  Duh!  Since the picture of Cain and his wife show they are very young, the ordinary expectation is that they will have children.  What day of the week will the children go to church?  Does Cain care about attending church by himself?  Does he care if he never attends church with his wife and children?   If Cain was, say, 65 years-old, I suppose he could get married to a Sunday-keeper on the agreement they would attend church Saturday and Sunday.  What else have they got to do in their retirement years?  (Hopefully, the answer is “A lot,” but that is a different subject.)  But, for a young couple starting out in life, spending two mornings a week in church does not seem a likely solution.   There is after all, lawn mowing, vacuuming, clothes and car washing to consider.

We read that Cain is “furious” with the Church for refusing to marry him to a Sunday-keeper.  Perhaps hoping that the average Proclamation! reader has a very short attention span (likely true), one paragraph after Cain’s reported furor over this “Adventist error” we read “the division in our marriage grew daily.”   Why? Because his wife was, four years later, not an Adventist.  Well now, maybe this “Adventist error” was not such an error after all!  Being unequally yoked by marrying a non-Adventist, according to Cain’s admission, was creating a “division,” “brokenness” and “split” in his marriage.  Well, well, well.  Who could have predicted that?  Turns out the Adventist pastor who refused to marry them was a prophet!

Then there was this other little problem.  Turns out that Cain and his wife worked for Loma Linda University Medical Center.  What was the problem?  “The pressure soon became too much for my wife.  She could not stand under the unrelenting strain of the law.”  Really?  What kind of a shop does LLLUMC run?  Does everyone have to attend night law school?  Is the “law” the Ten Commandments?  Maybe she was staying up too late at night watching “Boston Legal.” The article never says what kind of work they did at LLUMC, but it appears they were nurses, they certainly were not chaplains.   Do the nurses at LLUMC have to memorize the Ten Commandments?  How about sections of the Bible?   Clearly, this “pressure of the law” strain is pure nonsense - a creation of the LAM howlers.

Ultimately, the obvious “unequally yoked” problem gets resolved.  Cain and his wife start attending church – on Sunday.  What a surprise!  Cain notes that sitting in the pew on Sunday “the messages were not all that different from what I believed from the Adventist church” - but, he reports he had a “filter over my ears and mind.”  Filter?  Is Cain talking about something like unfiltered Marlboros?   No, it turns out the “filter” is Ellen G. White. So, what, exactly, is Ellen White filtering for Mr. Cain?  The story is not all that clear, but it appears that with the help of Ellen White Mr. Cain had previously believed that when Jesus lived on this earth He could sin.  Now, with the “filter” removed, Cain now understood “Jesus wasn’t sinless because He kept the law. He was sinless because He did not have a sinful nature.”

I guess it would be too much trouble for Cain to actually cite where the Adventists teach or Ellen White wrote that Jesus had a sinful nature.   I guess just imagining these things is good enough for lammers.  Or wait, maybe the wolves are arguing that Jesus did not keep the law?  Surely that could not be the case, because that would take them quite decidedly out of the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy.

So, what is the lammers’ point? What reason did Cain actually leave the Adventist Church (other than he married a Sunday-keeper against the advice of his pastor)?   What is the critical error of the Adventist Church that has Cain and the Proclamation! lammers arguing that we should also leave the Adventist fold?

We are told that Cain’s reason for leaving the Adventist Church was the “false foundation upon which I had built my life” and a “giant neon sign, The Great Controversy blaz[ing] in [Cain’s] head.”   I suppose that if one had a giant neon sign blazing in your head on any subject, that might constitute sufficient reason for leaving the Church – or at least visiting your favorite neurosurgeon.  I’ve been an Adventist Lay Pastor for a couple of decades - even baptized a member.  Never in any baptism, when the convert dipped under the water,  did we insert a sign in their mind, neon or otherwise.  My guess is this is a problem unique to Mr. Cain.  But, what is this “false foundation?”

It appears that Proclamation! is arguing that Jesus could not have sinned because He did not have a sinful nature.  You don’t have to be much of a Bible student to see the error in that statement. Adam and Eve were not born with a sinful nature and they managed to sin.  Obviously, the fact that Jesus did not have a sinful nature did not mean He could not have sinned. If Jesus had no option to sin, I’m sure Satan would have been yelling out “foul” to all the rest of us who understand Romans 5 to say that Jesus stood in the stead of Adam and succeeded in living a sinless life where Adam (and Eve) failed.

I suspect the lammers’ real point is we should not think that obeying the law has any relevance to the Christian walk at all. (Now you know why I say the chose the right name - LAM - since they are running away from the law.)  What does the Bible say about the Christian and our obligation towards the law of God?  John tells us not to let anyone “lead you astray” on this point (he was doubtess talking about the wolves at LAM, among others):

1 John 3:7-10
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
(from New International Version)

Are we sinless? No! (At least I admit I’m not.) Is holiness our aim?  You bet it is!

Cain missed the boat by leaving the Adventist Church.  Where have I heard about another Cain who was not overly concerned about obedience?  Wait, let me think……

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