July/August 2008 Proclamation! – Phillip, We Never Knew Thee!
Saturday, October 25th, 2008Introduction: 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 principal 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 soul 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 unfortunates 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 Phillip E. Harris, Jr. left the Adventist Church. Read on.
I am in the arms of Jesus: The Phil Harris Story
At what segment of the Adventist audience is Proclamation! directed? Those with no common sense? Those totally bereft of logic? If so, I worry about why I got spammed onto its list!
The Phil Harris Story is “exhibit A” for the argument that these stories are directed towards those with seriously impaired reasoning. A comparable logical argument to the Phil Harris story would be this:
I had bunions on my feet.
I stopped believing in Ellen White and the Investigative Judgment.
My bunions disappeared
Ergo, believing in Ellen White and the IJ causes bunions.
The connection between Phil Harris and the Adventist Church is so slim, it is hard to understand why the lammers thought he should serve as an example of why Adventists should leave the Church. He seems to have hardly known the Church.
Phil Harris’s connection to the Adventist Church is as follows:
1. Genetic: his relatives were Adventists.
2. Geographic: he knows where Ellen White lived.
3. Educational: He spent a total of four years in an Adventist elementary school; and,
4. Brief: He once visited a “very deadening” Adventist church.
Let’s explore these in greater detail. We are told that Phil is a “fourth-generation” Adventist. His grandparents were medical missionaries to China “sent … by Ellen G. White herself.” It appears that somehow core Adventist doctrines got lost by the following generations. Phil reports the tragic loss of his four year-old brother, but writes that as a young boy he was “assured that [his brother] was in heaven and safe in the arms of Jesus.” Since the rest of this entire issue of Proclamation! is devoted to explaining why the Adventist doctrine of “soul sleep” is wrong, some relative at Phil’s home had already gotten off the Adventist theological track while he was still a young boy.
Phil reports that he spent first, third, eighth and ninth grades in Adventist schools. This is hardly a compelling argument for a vigorous Adventist upbringing. In any event, Phil reports that he departed the Church at the age of sixteen. While it does not seem that Phil had much of a connection to Adventism, he did know where Ellen White lived. Surely that is worth something.
The point of these stories is to give us Adventists reasons to bolt from the Church. So, why did sixteen year-old Phil leave? What reasons does he give that we should emulate? He was told by a visiting Adventist preacher that “90% of us were going to hell.” Phil does not say who “us” was. If he is referring to his last year in an Adventist school – ninth grade – then Phil seems a little old. More likely Phil heard this at church. Which, explains why this preacher was “visiting.” It seems unlikely that an Adventist minister would tell his own Adventist congregation that 90% of them were going to hell – unless, of course, that minister had been reading Proclamation!
In any event, Phil weighed his odds, decided that they were not good, and left the Church. His article speculates that this 90-10 ratio came from Ellen White who wrote “not one in twenty whose names are registered upon the church books are prepared to close their earthly history.” Leaving to one side that a less than one-in-twenty ratio is less than 5%, not 10%, I’m not clear on what Ellen White is saying. I’m not prepared to close my earthly history, but I do believe I’m saved.
There are, of course, the words of Jesus on the subject: Matthew 7:13-14:
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (NIV)
Jesus, unlike the visiting preacher, did not put a percentage on the subject. What kind of percentages would be a fair conclusion from the Bible? Certainly not 50% If that were true, Jesus would have said “There are two alternative paths.” How would you rate “small and narrow” compared to “broad?” “Many” as opposed to “few?” A 75-25 split seems too generous for “many and few.” How about 80-20? If the visiting Adventist preacher based his comments only on the Bible, suggested that 80% were going to hell, would Phil have stayed in the Church? I’m doubtful.
At that point in his young life Phil is out the door of Adventism and (apparently) out the door of Christianity as well. As the title of this section says, “Phil, we never knew thee!”
Later in life, while in the Marines, Phil meets a Christian who introduces Phil to his wife. The Christian has a positive influence in bringing Phil back to Christianity and helping him to meet a Christian girl. Phil marries the Christian girl and they attend a small Christian church. At some point Phil and his wife try visiting an Adventist Church, but find it “very deadening.” Whether Phil is harking back to the discouraging statistics which caused him to leave the Church years before, or whether he is referring to the sound qualities of the building, or something else is not clear.
This visit to an Adventist church is important to Phil’s life we are told, because at this point he puts “Adventist doctrine to the test of Scripture.” Somehow, I’m doubtful. Doubt, turns to a chuckle when I read Phil’s next words, “Having been well-trained in Adventist theology, I believed that that the investigative judgment was their unique core doctrine that I needed to test.”
When, precisely, was Phil “well-trained” in Adventist theology? Was it his theology classes in First grade? Third grade? I suppose it would be more likely the deep theological classes he took in eighth and ninth grades! Or, maybe it was that relative of his who taught him that his departed brother was immediately taken to heaven upon death.
I would like to take a survey of Adventist ninth graders and find out how many of them are up to speed on the “core doctrine” of the investigative judgment! This is just one of those places where I suspect the Proclamation! editors did a little editing of Phil’s comments. The odds of Phil, based on his four years in an Adventist grade school, decades later being able to explain the investigative judgment, much less testing it are, well, significantly lower than his odds of getting into heaven.
What aspect of the investigative judgment caused Phil to break with the Church? Apparently the teaching that the Leviticus 16 “Scapegoat” is Satan, rather than Jesus. From this he decided that Ellen White was a heretic and a false prophet. I guess when you are armed with an elementary education in theology goat identification takes on a lot of importance. That non-Adventist theologians reasonably differ on the meaning of the Scapegoat appears to have escaped the notice of Phil and the LAM editors. The Wycliffe Bible commentary says about the Scapegoat (azazel) “it seems clear from the references in this chapter that it was some sort of demon who represented to the Jewish people that which was opposed to Jehovah.” The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge says regarding the name of the Scapegoat “other learned men think it was the name of the devil.” Thus, non-Adventist theological minds differ on the identity of the Scapegoat.
But, goat misidentification was enough for Phil to be out (assuming he was ever in) the Adventist Church and sufficient for him to conclude that Ellen White was a fraud - something which put her, according to him, “in a bad light.”
According to Phil’s story, thereafter he was not only out of Adventism for good, he was also out of Christianity and separated from his wife. Mysteriously, Phil suggests that Ellen White had something to do with all of this and that when he released Ellen White his wife called and wanted to reconcile with him. What do you think? Do you think Phil’s wife returned when he got goat identification right? Think Ellen White had anything to do with his marriage? Na, I don’t think the two had any relationship either. But, the editors at Proclamation!, ever anxious to toss a rock or two at Ellen White or the Adventist Church, seem to want us to think there was some sort of connection.
My view of Phil is that he is a simple Christian who knows little about the Adventist Church. I’m glad that he is back in the fellowship of Christians, but to suggest that his story gives any Adventist a reason to leave is quite a stretch.