Electric Fence

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 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 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 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 attorney William F. Ziprick left the Adventist Church.  Read on.

Finally Forever in Jesus: The Bill Ziprick Story

The lammers over at Proclamation! have a real prize this time!  They claim a lawyer who says he was “involved at the highest level of the General Conference of the Adventist Church.”   A Church insider who rejected the Church!

Well, let’s dissect this lawyer’s story a little bit.  His article ends with a partial recitation of the conflicts with Church doctrine, but that is not what caused him to leave.  Instead, what caused him to leave was a commuting issue!

Lawyer Ziprick writes that he and his wife relocated 45 minutes away from Loma Linda and he commuted back and forth to work each day.  That tells us that his law office was in the Loma Linda area.  Instead of commuting to his old church in which he was comfortable with “good preachers, schools and a social networking system,” he joined a small local church near his new home.

The new, small church was a disaster, with “vicious” things going on, a split in the church, and the local conference intervening to try to straighten things out.  Ziprick and his family had a terrible time in the new church.

Ask yourself what you would do in such a situation.  Every day you commute to work.  Why not do the same on Sabbath and attend a church where you find “good preachers,” and good friends? Would that be such a burden?

Let’s assume you decide it is too much of a burden, would a situation like the one described by Mr. Ziprick tell you something bad about the Adventist Church?  In the Adventist centers he is perfectly comfortable.  In the small church, where higher church leadership thinks there is a problem and intervenes, Mr. Ziprick notices that there is a defect in Adventism.   If you had a bushel of apples, and you picked up a rotten one, would you assume that apples are a bad fruit?  Or, would you look at the rest of the apples and decide the rotten one was not a proper representative of apples in general?  This seems such obvious logic that you wonder how a lawyer (of all people) could get it wrong.

At this point, lawyer Ziprick and his family decide that they can no longer attend the “bad apple” local church.   The obvious answer is to commute 45 minutes back to their old church.  But, do they do that?  No. He admits that they do not attend church at all for “many months.”  This is Southern California.  Even if you were not willing to drive 45 minutes to your old church, surely you could find an acceptable Adventist Church within a reasonable drive.

Instead, Ziprick and his family start attending a non-Adventist church.  He recounts how the Christians in the non-Adventist church were friendly and the pastor cited Bible references that were really in the Bible. (They checked!)  Wonder why Ziprick wasn’t looking for horns, pitchforks and torture chambers when worshiping with non-Adventists!

This is another one of the Lammers’ attacks.  They not only attack the doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but they describe Adventists as thinking that their fellow Christians are charlatans and devil-worshipers.  As a Seventh-day Adventist, I believe that my fellow Christians (in non-Adventist churches) are filled with the love of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit and concerned about understanding and obeying God’s will.  Period.  I’m sure there are slackers in other churches, just like there are slackers in the Adventist Church.  What makes the difference between the Baptists and me is that I am more in agreement with the doctrines of the Adventists than I am with the doctrines of the Baptists.  That is why Baptists are not Lutherans or Episcopalians.  It is not because Baptists think Lutherans and Episcopalians wear horns and lie about the contents of the Bible!

The final chapter of lawyer Ziprick’s story deals with how he represented the Adventist Church leadership and they were difficult clients.  He reports, “after almost 20 years of my working with the church brethren, that professional relationship came to an end.”   He does not say who decided to terminate the relationship, but I will tell you that as a general rule, law firms do not “fire” large institutional clients.  He ends the paragraph about losing the Church as his client with the sentence “God had fully awakened me and made it clear that it was really time to leave the Adventist church.”

I think that brings us to the heart of the Ziprick story.  He had an unpleasant experience in a small Adventist church which causes him to leave that congregation.  Around the same time his professional relationship with the Adventist Church comes to an end.  Since he reports a “significant part” of his legal work was representing a church institution, no doubt the end of that relationship is a significant blow to the firm’s income.

What is your guess – does lawyer Ziprick leave the Adventist Church because of a disagreement over doctrines (doctrines that he was comfortable with for decades), or does he leave it because of hurt feelings?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.