There's a Reason German Adventists' Resistance During World War II Isn't Well-Known

 During World War Two, while most of Europe looked away, a secret network of Seventh-day Adventist Christians built one of the most sophisticated escape routes in occupied Europe—and almost no one knows about it. The Dutch-Paris line saved over 1,000 Jewish lives by hiding refugees in church basements, forging documents in Adventist print shops, and guiding families through frozen Alpine passes into Switzerland. This is the untold story of ordinary believers who chose faith over fear, risking torture and execution to stand between the Gestapo and its victims.  

Adventist Churches in Germany appeared to some to be less than openly resistant to Nazi outrages. I had even heard it said that some pastors said they compromised because they thought it was important that the Adventist churches remained open or they couldn't do their good works. What we did not know until fairly recently and for some reason was not talked about in SDA circles was that Adventists were actively working to smuggle Jews out of Germany to escape the holocaust. God bless them.  

This documentary is not created by Adventist, but by historians.

The Seventh-day Adventists Who Hid Jews: The Untold Story of the "Dutch-Paris" Rescue Line

 

Can You Feel It. Have We Reached a Turning Point?

 

One of the last pictures of Charlie Kirk

 

Something Wicked This Way Comes 

A conservative Christian friend castigated a liberal friend on a recent post by another dear friend who regurgitated the progressive talking points of the left against recently assassinated Christian activist, Charlie Kirk. The fellow she decried as not a Christian is also on my friend friend list. He and I have some real go-rounds and his friends, some of them are downright communists and crawl all over me should I dare speak like a conservative Christian..

 

That said, my friend almost invariably states his case pretty politely and then lets me state mine. We go back and forth, but if I am to understand and communicate effectively with my opponents, I must first come to understand where they are coming from. It makes me a much better communicator that way. I can tell I'm communicating effectively too when I state my case politely without name-calling and my harshest opponents collapse into the sort of "You, oh yeah, so's your mama!" level of playground debate. Charlie Kirk was very good at that sort of debate and he too brought that nastiness out in young liberals when he dialogued with them. He was unfailingly kind, but he did not budge on principle. 

 

Personally, I think the fact that his book explaining why the Christian church should not neglect the seventh day Biblical Sabbath is coming out in December and that the book was a big part of the reason Satan inspired his assassination. But God has worked things together for good. Charlie's book "God Said Stop!" is already a bestseller two and a half months before it comes out December 9th. He was dialoguing with Adventist organizations with regard to the Sabbath truth. There was a major conference last March on the Sabbath by Wisdom's Pearls that included conservative sabbatarian churches and speakers like Ben Carson, Paul Kelly, Danny Shelton and Charlie Kirk. It was, I think, a blooming of the fig trees announcing the coming of summer that Jesus told us to watch out for. 

 

But when Amazing Facts and 3ABN wrote articles sympathetic to Charlie Kirk and decrying his assassination, it was so upsetting to the president of the Central States Conference, that he issued a statement on behalf of the church, calling for the denomination to sever ties with 3ABN and Amazing Facts, two of the most powerful ministries in spreading the Gospel we have. Earlier, Elder Josiah called for Ben Carson to be "traded" and that whoever we take in his place should receive full membership and privileges. The official statement he released on behalf of the church through the Central States Conference was right off the DNC talking points list. 

 

To demonize a man who was a partner with us in spreading the 3 Angels Message, is wildly inappropriate for an Adventist church leader. And the vile talk about Charlie, the lies about what he believed and said, are coming from an ideology that denies God, advocates unity by subsuming everyone into one big collective run by all the self-identified smart people on the left. The ideology he seems to be espousing advocates giving power to government leaders to decide what we may say, where we may work, how we may worship and what we are allowed to believe. These people are ready to do away with the first and second amendments in favor of Marxist style global socialism, ironically called "progressive" by the adherents.

 

How can we associate ourselves with THAT! Are there extremists on the right? You bet. When the Democrat State Senator and husband and dog were assassinated months ago by a radical lunatic, both 3ABN and Amazing Facts decried that political violence, though it was perpetrated against politicians who had little or no sympathy with the beliefs of fundamental Bible-believing Christians like us. The man who killed her was as insane as the kid who shot Charlie Kirk. Neither assassin got any sympathy from 3ABN or Amazing Facts, but the CSC president only dumped his load of bile on Charlie Kirk. Obviously, his politics entered into his behavior in a big way. Cryston Josiah, who lists himself in the CSC "statement" as President of the Central States Conference of Seventh-day Adventist, seems to be new to the job as their website still lists him as the secretary. I have trouble believing that the majority of the 9,000+ members of the states covered by the conference - Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and San Juan County in New Mexico are on board with Mr. Josiah's obvious leftist bias.After all most of those states voted for Trump in the last election.

 

I believe we have reached a turning point in the rapid final events EGW predicted for the last days. We're seeing voices proclaiming the 3 angels' message rising up around us and joining us in spreading the Gospel. God has told us that should we neglect to warn the world, the rocks would cry out. Who would have predicted that the Sabbath Truth would be so powerfully put before so many millions? Yet, God works all things together for those who love Him and are called according to his purpose. In a recent study, Seventh-day Adventists came out as the fastest growing Christian denomination at a time when even the Baptists are in decline.

Remember always, Satan is a liar from the beginning. He's so good at it that he has convinced millions of Christian ministers that "you shall be like gods" was the first lie he told Eve. It wasn't. The first lie he told her was, "Thou shalt not surely die.' And he's still selling that whopper throughout Christendom with the immortality of the soul doctrine and the corresponding idea of an ever-burning hell; an idea that has blackened God's reputation as a loving God for centuries on centuries. And this despite the fact that Jesus clearly said God could destroy, not only the body, but also the soul in hell. Tell a lie big enough and often enough, and people will come to believe it without questioning. Paul said the wages of sin is death, but Lucifer redefined death to preserve his first lie. Solomon described death as "knowing not anything." And everybody's favorite Bible verse, John 3:16 very clearly states that eternal life is the gift of God. Without His gift we don't have eternal life. But because the eternal punishment in hell story is so frightening, it doesn't occur to most of us that our souls are not immortal. That would require us to accept that we are not immortal godlings after all.

And for Adventist who are persuaded that we should be insular and reject any dialogue with other Christians, please remember what Jesus said about that:

• “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
• “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,
• for whoever is not against us is for us.
• Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.
  Mark 9: 39-41
  

Adventist Woman Led the Way for Rosa Parks a Decade Earlier

Bet You Didn't Know This:

By Source, Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31871975

In 1944, A twenty-seven year old Seventh-Day Adventist black woman, Irene Morgan, made the gutsy decision to refuse to leave the "white" section of an Interstate bus and was arrested in Virginia under state segregation laws eleven years before Rosa Parks' famous refusal to give up her seat on an Alabama local bus. She was a little more spirited than Rosa however. She kicked the Sheriff in the groin when he tried to arrest her!

 

She landed two highly skilled lawyers on her defense team, one of whom was no less than future Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall. Irene won her case before the Supreme Court. In 1946 in a landmark decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia law was unconstitutional, as the Commerce clause protected interstate traffic. 

 

Irene's stubborn singular defense of her rights strengthened the WWII era U.S. anti-discrimination law prohibiting segregation on all interstate transportation and influenced public opinion against Southern racist segregation laws. Unlike Rosa, whose protest was part of a planned challenge of the segregation laws, Irene simply stood up for herself all on her own. With Irene, the NAACP was running along behind her shouting, "Wait for me I'm your leader!"

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Morgan
2. "Morgan v. Virginia (1946)". www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.
3. Lamb, Yvonne S. "Irene M. Kirkaldy; Case Spurred Freedom Rides," The Washington Post, 13 Aug. 2007: n. pag. Print. 
4. "Morgan v. Commonwealth (June 6, 1945)". www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.

 © 2017 by Tom King

The Lesson of the Bears and the Boys

My pastor's weekly newsletter this week was about the story of Elisha and the boys who taunted him and were subsequently killed by a couple of angry she-bears.  The original Hebrew, as Pastor Stephan points out, more than likely isn't talking about what we would consider children these days. The bears didn't brutalize a T-ball team. The word translated as boys in this story refers in other places in the Old Testament to young men. The Israelites considered anyone under 30 to be not an "adult" but a young male, not yet an adult. Essentially, a boy! And we all have been treated lately to the sort of orchestrated violence young people can get up to when incited by media and ideological party leaders.

The way this story is written, the confrontation of Elijah by the youthful servants of Baal (it's likely that's who they were) suggests there were more than 42 of them, probably sent by the priests of  Baal to spread disinformation about Elijah's translation to discredit the story. Their manner suggests an imminent attack on Elisha was planned. Certainly the story was going around that Elijah was actually dead and that his going up to Heaven was a lie perpetrated by Elisha. Facebook isn't the first spreader of disinformation. It was in the interest of the pro-Baal party to spread this sort of gossip. Later their descendants, the pro-Sanhedrin party of Israel in Jesus' time, repeatedly spread lies about Christ, attempted to stone, throw off a cliff and arrest Him for disagreeing with their dogma. It's no surprise that their cultural ancestors (the "boys" in this story) would have been gathered to do harm to Elisha and to shut up the man who opposed the Baal narrative of the day. The bears were simply God's security team protecting Elisha, whose work was not yet completed in Israel.

Jesus said we would recognize the signs of his imminent return in the same way that leaves in Spring speak of the coming Summer. One can hardly look around, watch the news, hear the taunts of today's version of those young men in the story, and not see evidence of the soon-coming Savior. The young men have been gathered. Google Seventh-day Adventist and you'll see page after page of anti-Adventist web pages. Entire websites are dedicated to opposing Adventism. I saw one "pastor" ranting about how horrible SDAs are. He proposed that Adventist Christians should be knocked in the head until they come to their senses. He flat out recommends that SDA's be physically prevented from buying or selling until we cease spreading our lies, by law if necessary. It was pretty stunning hearing a self-proclaimed Christian pastor saying it straight out like that.

The devil is among us like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It is hardly surprising that the church is being attacked from without and within. Only by knowing God and Jesus whom He has sent, is there any safety in this momentous age. But God is working among all those children of His. There is a growing division in the Catholic church over the direction their socialist pope is leading them.  Among Protestants as well Bible believing church members are beginning to oppose their church's progressive leadership. Those who prefer to get their theology straight from the Word are going back to the Bible to investigate whether their shepherds are leading them astray or not. 

In this day and age, many Christian leaders wonder after the Beast, seeking to gather their power and lead their followers to join the popular herd without challenging the non Biblical traditions Christianity has accumulated over the centuries. Satan has worked so very hard for millennia to embed false teachings in churches, the culture, the media and governments. 

At the same time, we see Christians waking up and questioning things they've long been told and which are generally believed without question. It seems the Holy Spirit is moving God's scattered flock to go back to the Bible to check out some things they've been told about God that don't jibe with the God of Love they have come to know. I recently came upon an Assemblies of God pastor who has published the Bible with the books in their original order. To my surprise, Pastor Coulter talks about the ever-burning hell idea being false doctrine. Other whole churches worldwide are accepting the Sabbath truth. Amazing Facts director, Doug Batchelor, recently was invited to preach in the largest Christian church in India (if not the world). We hear many reports of whole churches on studying the issue, returning to worship on the 7th day Sabbath, led by faithful Christian pastors.

We're in the sheep and goats time of history that Jesus told us about. The polarization of political parties usually leads to sharp disagreements and violence, especially if their followers suddenly begin thinking for themselves, asking awkward questions, and (to the horror of the leader class), choosing another path. At the same time, apostate church leaders, who hold to a kind of "divine right of kings" with regard to their own authority, will gather loyal followers and encourage them to taunt anyone who deviates from the accepted convoluted pack of lies Satan and his minions have for so long perpetrated on the Christian world.

And one need not study for very long before you find that what you read in Scripture is on many points at variance from what you hear from the mainstream pulpits of the land. When Bible students take a hard look at doctrines like the immortality of the soul, ever-burning hell, transfer of sanctity of the 7th day Sabbath to Sunday, and priestly authority to forgive sins, and they find truths that have long believed without question are not truth at all. It makes a lot of people who have taken the name of Christ and claim to speak for him, exceedingly angry when their authority to, as Revelation puts it, 'to change times and laws.' When you realize that the idea of an immortal soul actually negates John 3:16, it shocks you to the core. The most quoted verse in Scripture, says God grants eternal life to 'whosoever believeth in him' receives eternal life', and does not to those who do not believe. 

If humans cannot surely die (remember that quote from a certain snake in a garden), it means God no longer gives eternal life to those who believe in Jesus nor even has the power to do so. That ought to raise questions about a lot of things you have believed that are standard doctrines in the church. Mainstream Christian religion claims the soul is immortal. Therefore, if everyone good or bad, believer or unbeliever is by nature already immortal as mainstream religion claims, then God,since He cannot kill an immortal soul as this doctrine claims, can only burn people in the lake of fire forever.  If souls are immortal by nature, the God cannot kill an immortal soul, even a sinful one who rejects God's grace. If this doctrine is true, then, logically, this means God cannot end any soul's suffering, even if He wanted to. He can only punish.

So that means God is NOT omnipotent at the very least or, at worst, He really enjoys watching folks suffer for a lifetime of what are in most cases a lot of relatively petty sins against the punishment being meted out. God, then is pretty harsh, not the God of love at all. Then there is Hollywood theology that portrays a kind of Christian reincarnation where you die, become an angel and then get sent back to Earth to have another go at it. If you want your congregations to believe all that, then you best keep your folks away from the Bible. 

A retired pastor once told me, "I believe in science and the Bible equally." A pretty convenient belief system. That way it leaves room for him to believe the same stuff all the regular folk do and it becomes an easy road from there down to "Well the Bible is so full of flaws, there's no need to take any of it literally other than as occasionally good advice."

Those who love power have a tendency to become cruel and desperate as that power slips through their fingers. See Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of the world's despotic rulers for examples. The death toll in the 20th century alone is in the hundreds of millions at the hands of atheist and pseudo-religious governments. We are seeing that now as the venom against God's children gets more and more poisonous. Remember, we are up against the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. 

It's good to remember that God will send along she-bears to protect His servants when He needs to.  She bears are pretty fearsome when it comes defending their cubs.

Yours in Christ,
Tom King
© 2024

Elemental Spiritual Forces Threaten

 

In Colossians 2:8, Paul warns against "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world." When we rely on these beliefs, cooked up out of our own fears, desires and prejudices instead of upon Christ as revealed through the scriptures, we set ourselves up to eventually create our own versions of a religion, one without any reliance on objective truth, but instead upon something they like to call "my truth."

I think this was the thing also that Ellen White warned us about when she cautioned against the rising influence of spiritualism. Here Paul warned us particularly against "elemental spiritual forces". The spiritualism we've been warned against is more than just some ghosts knocking on walls while little girls hold seances. Spiritualism, while it does range from Ouija boards to communicating with the dead, spiritualism as a whole believes that we have immortal souls that know more than we are aware of. and deceptive philosophy. Satan seeks to confuse us. Encyclopedia Britannica defines spiritualism as philosophy that embraces ideas including "the immortality of the soul, or the immateriality of the intellect and will. Less obviously, it includes belief in such ideas as finite cosmic forces or a universal mind, provided that they transcend the limits of gross Materialistic interpretation. Spiritualism as such says nothing about matter, the nature of a supreme being or a universal force, or the precise nature of spiritual reality itself." This leaves all kind of room for the "spiritual" man to find his own truth within himself. As a result, the spiritualist does not have to submit himself to any external law, truth or instruction that does not emanate from within himself. This allows one to toss aside any uncomfortable restriction on one's behavior that doesn't feel compatible with your own truth which you have discovered within yourself. It also allow you to jettison any commandments or Biblical advice you don't particularly feel comfortable with.

This current so-called spiritual movement tends to rejects "religion" in favor of being "spiritual" not religious. It has many of the trappings of Lucifer's plan for ruling as the Prince of this world. If it doesn't reject religion outright, it seeks to water it down to allow room for "spiritual" Christians (if they still retain the Christian identity at all), to believe whatever suits them. It's frequently called "my truth" by people who say they are "spiritual not religious." Spiritualism doesn't necessarily achieve this level of self-enlightenment all at once, but it certainly trends that way if taken to its logical ends.

Satan keeps coming back to the same plan with the same beliefs about obedience to self and to heavy handed government and it always results in a whole lot of death. God tends to get left out or gets used as an impersonal rubber stamp for whatever the ruling class is up to. Marxism is just the latest Satanic deceptive philosophy to be embraced by the powerful special (rich) folk of the world. Before we had "I'm spiritual" we had the divine right of kings, emperors, caliphs, etc..We peons knew our place and deferred to the special ruling class and were proud to do so. We were mightily deceived to accept our low station with a kind of pride. A few special powerful leaders always make the decisions and discipline the collective, the masses, the proletariat, peons, the workers, the plebs, the rabble, the great unwashed, riffraff, Labor, the proles or, my favorite, the hoi poloi and usually they discipline harshly.

Recent attempts to blend Marx's philosophy with spiritualism as its being worked out in contemporary philosophy, dwell on the problems of labor, the unconscious, artificial intelligence, and depression. By summoning up the idea of an immortal soul, Marxist/spiritualist apologists conceive of a kind of secret human being that dwells inside the body of any species (a Buddhist/Hindu idea) and thus is detached from “man” in its traditional sense. This allows us to disengage the human body from "spirit". No longer is the soul to be attached to individual humans, the body isn't absolutely necessary since the soul exists as this impersonal essence defined by an ambiguous concept of labor (regular raggedy folks). This convoluted philosophy supposes that this soul or essence is both alienated from things like religion and emancipated from reliance on anything outside the self like instruction from some arbitrary "God". Marxism it is posited, provides a way to achieve an Earthly Utopia without having to bother God for instruction about how to do that. Friedrich Nietzsche a cheerful Marxist and inspiration for the German Nazis, went so far as to proclaim "God is dead." What he meant was that we no longer need God because we are spiritual beings and everything we need is in our own immortal essence. It also allowed the Nazis to decide that murdering 15 million people didn't make much difference as their essences would simply go elsewhere so they wouldn't interfere with the establishment of the Third Reich's plans for an Aryan Utopia.

This kind of philosophy supports Satan's contention at the beginning of the Great Controversy that he had a better idea for how to govern humans so that he keeps all that free choice controlled. If we are paying attention it's not hard to spot cloven hoofprints all over this sort of spiritual Marxism. And always it winds up that a whole bunch of uncooperative human weeds need to be pulled up and incinerated.

Not religion but politics and progressive spiritualism is the hallmark of Satan's plans for ruling the Earth. Even religion, when co-opted for Satan's purpose, is at its heart political and involves a tyrannical powerful ruler or ruling class lording over the people who are assumed to be incapable (too stupid) to manage their own affairs. Sadly, many who claim to have once been among God's chosen people find themselves drifting away from the church. By adopting a more convenient sort of religion,  their advanced spiritual philosophy allows them to set themselves up in these last days as arbiters of their own more comfortable truth. But don't call this belief system a religion even though it is. That would hurt their feelings.

And since these spiritualists no longer need organized religion, spiritualism provides them an alternative to "assembling themselves together" in congregations of believers. The spiritual often prefer instead, things like going out into nature and being spiritual; getting in touch with the elemental spiritual forces that come from their own understanding rather than the Word of God. Or they can gather in chat rooms with other enlightened spiritual folk and discuss how this ever-shifting philosophy so admirably adapts itself to whatever new notion springs up among them.

 The deception is pernicious, pervasive and deadly. It allows the spiritual person to join a herd of fellow humans who are okay with infanticide, sexual perversion, and rejection of inconvenient Biblical commandments. "We don't do commandments anymore. What's the point?

Accordingly, we no longer need to be saved by God's grace, but are emancipated from all that by our own righteousness and superior philosophy." It soon follows, as one retired pastor told me that the spiritual man holds science and scripture as equals. The trouble is, that increasingly for my spiritual friends, science begins to weigh more heavily on their personal truth scales, especially the "science" that justifies the whole reliance on "my truth" rather than upon God's truth.

It explains why in the last days many of the brightest lights among us will go out; the victims of their own brilliance unsupported by a reliance upon God's Word. Beware for the devil our adversary prowls among us seeking whom he may devour.

(c) 2024 by Tom King

 

 

No Wonder Adventists Back Then Were Spooked

Rev.Samuel Walter Gamble known
for research in the ancient
literature, enabling him to
reproduce the long lost Hebrew
calendar, upon which he bases
arguments to prove that
Sunday and not Saturday was
the "ancient and true Sabbath."
            - Who's Who circa 1920
 

I found a book published in 1900 and now residing in the Library of Congress by Samuel Walter Gamble, field secretary of the American Sabbath Union (later the Lord's Day Alliance) that purports to prove that the Sabbath is really actually on Sunday. It comes up near the top of the list when you do a search in Google images for the word "sabbath".This poor man, a valiant defender of laws making working on Sunday a crime in the United States, spent 18 years trying to prove his case by studying ancient calendars. He based his research on the assumption that God's people couldn't count to 7, and that God basically gave the Hebrews the wrong date for Sabbath when he gave them the 10 commandments.

He further assumes that despite the Biblical genealogies that go all the way back to creation, that the true Sabbath was "lost" after the flood and no one kept it. Also, because the seventh-day Sabbath couldn't occur on the same date every month, Gamble believes that the Jews and the string of God's followers chronicled in scripture all the way back to Adam, couldn't possibly have counted up to 7 days in order to keep the same Sabbath every week. They could only have done that if the Sabbath was on a fixed date, he says. Thus the Sabbath wandered around all over the calendar and can't be assumed to have occurred every seventh day.

Odd that Gamble seemed unaware that Sunday comes on different dates every month nowadays, but he'd rather we not look too closely at that. Flaws in the argument notwithstanding, Gamble and the American Sabbath Union prevailed in inspiring some pretty strict Sunday laws for some time, toughening up, if not national, then state Sunday laws. They were

Wilbur F Crafts
ASU Founder

 especially successful in the South. It should be noted that more than one Adventist farmer did jail time for working his fields on Sunday around that time, despite having rested the previous day and having attended church services that Saturday. Mr. Gamble heartily approved of this level of enforcement. Aggressive Adventist activists opposed ASU founder Wilbur F. Craft's efforts to promote the Blair Amendment (a national Sunday law) and the Breckinridge Bill (limited to Washington DC). Prominent SDA preacher A.T. Jones and Wilbur Craft got into a series of running conflicts that led in part to both men leaving their respective organizations.

Gamble says that Jesus fixed the problem of everyone worshiping on the wrong day by rising on the first day which was "really" the seventh day and that (reading the mind of Jesus who never said any such thing) Christ intended for the Sabbath to be on the first day of the week all along. He closes his eyes to the fact that Christ, Himself, kept the so-called Jewish Sabbath during his ministry and his apostles did the same afterward during theirs. Also, it's significant that after his crucifixion, Jesus rested in the grave from his labors from Friday to Sunday, only rising from the dead after the hours of the Sabbath had passed. The Sabbath, He had said, was made for man, but apparently Jesus kept it holy Himself.

A.T. Jones - Minister
and SDA Activist

Gamble has no problem with Roman Emperor Constantine, himself a major sun-worshiper, changing the Sabbath to "the venerable day of the sun" (Constantine's own words) in order to make the Pagans more comfortable joining the Catholic and coincidentally Roman State Church. The Vatican quickly held a counsel that accepted the change in order to ingratiate itself with the emperor and to pack the cathedral pews a little tighter with new pagan converts and their money. Apparently, that was not problematic for Gamble.

The author, an ASU officer at the time, was busily trying to shore up the nation's restrictive national Sunday laws. As part of his argument for tougher Sunday laws, Gamble claimed that if Seventh-Day Adventists were to succeed in getting the national Sunday laws of the day repealed, that all workers would suddenly be required to work 7 day weeks. Without the force of a national law requiring all workers to rest on Sunday, Gamble warned Congress that America's churches would be soon abandoned.He also claimed, again without evidence, that it had been "proved" that workers only live 12 years when working 7 days a week and that therefore Adventists would be responsible for the mass slaughter of millions of working fathers far earlier than what God intended.

Talk about logical gymnastics trying to prove that a largely Catholic Christian tradition, established on the Roman Church's own hook without scriptural authority was correct. He would have us believe that the ten commandments are flawed or at least the 4th one is. Given that, apparently, God didn't even know when Sabbath was supposed to be, then Gamble believes that the unbroken keeping of the 7th day Sabbath by Jews is, according to Gamble, impossible and irrelevant anyway. How could anyone have been expected to keep the 7th day Sabbath if it changed dates every month instead of being only on fixed calendar dates.

He went on to claim that the worst of it was that if the Sunday Laws were repealed millions would no longer come to his revival meetings and be saved.

 

And this silly book is enshrined in the Library of Congress, digitized and published online. Interestingly, Gamble acknowledges a debt to the Reverend D.M. Canright. Canright picked up the title "Reverend" when he left the SDA church to become a Baptist preacher. He left because, as he put it to a colleague, "I could be a great and popular preacher if this (SDA) message were not so unpopular." Coincidentally, Canright left shortly after Ellen White told him he was too long-winded and should pare his Sabbath sermons down from 2-3 hours to 20 or 30 minutes.

Gamble could have benefited from the same counsel. It seems this convoluted and often incomprehensible book was designed deliberately in order to encourage people to try to read it and then to give up in confusion. Nobody wants to admit they can't understand what the man is trying to say. So, many readers, looking for some comforting argument that means they don't have to make any big and uncomfortable life changes, decide that this guy must know what he's talking about.

Little hint: he doesn't.

(C) 2024 by Tom King

Angels Dressed as Soldiers

 

These guys look like they're ready to suit up and drop onto the battlefield.

Angels are described in the book Early Writings thus. "The company of guardian angels around them had been doubled, and they were clothed with an armor from their head to their feet." Not exactly the effeminate angels of Renaissance Christian art. Angels as described in the Old Testament could appear as nonthreatening, but usually they had to reassure those to whom they appeared, saying, "Fear not!"

And angels pop up all over the place in scripture and in stories throughout Christian history. I have seen the working of angels, but they remained out of my sight. A friend at camp almost ran over me and a canoe load of kids with a motorboat he was unfamiliar with. I watched in shock as the boat did an impossible 180 degree turn as the boat, bow high was coming down on us. It turned so fast the spring loaded ladder on the back of the boat knifed through the air where my head had been a second before. I felt it brush my hair as I was looking over the side watching the boat's propeller pass underneath the canoe. The way Jack (the boat driver) and I figured it, his angel got on one end of the boat and mine got on the other and spun it around. Whatever they did, that boat was moving fast and it suddenly disobeyed the laws of physics. And I'd just missed by a fraction of an inch, being knocked off the canoe on top of a spinning propeller. Jack and I spent the next hour in a lengthy prayer of thanksgiving.

A missionary friend of mine told a story about a South American Adventist school where angels did make themselves visible to the enemy. Local communist guerrillas decided the school was counter-revolutionary and must be eliminated. The principle did not know anything about it. He went to the store in town one morning for supplies. When he went up to the counter the store proprietor seemed shocked to see him.  

"Where did you get the soldiers?" the man asked as he rang up the supplies.

"What soldiers?" asked the principal.

"The ones that were standing guard around the school last night!" The store owner proceeded to tell him why he'd asked.  The guerrillas it seems had chosen the previous night to attack the school. Of course, word got around the close-knit community and everyone expected to hear bad news about the school in the morning. The attack never happened. Word came back that when the guerrillas reached the school, they found it surrounded by tough-looking heavily armed soldiers. The guerrillas quickly decided that in the interest of their personal survival, attacking the school was a very bad idea.

The principal was shocked himself; he'd never seen any soldiers at the school that night. Certainly no one from the government or the military had offered to help or had even warned him of the attack. He returned to the school with a glad heart and brought together the children and the teachers to pray and give thanks for the angel "soldiers" who had camped round about them that they might fear no evil.

We shall see greater miracles than these in the coming days. We are told that we often entertain angels unaware. Angels have often stood guard over us to save us from dangers of which we were not even aware. I've had more than my share of what had to be angelic intervention over my life. I once got smacked in the chest by a 3 foot wide boulder from above while rock climbing along the Trinity River. Had to have had help hanging on to the tree root I found myself dangling from when my head cleared. God only knows what other stupid things my guardian angel has saved me from.

 In these last days we may go about God's work without fear. Whatever happens, we may be assured of God's deliverance no matter what. Some of us may sleep, but we all shall be changed in the moment in the twinkling of an eye. Knowing God sees the end from the beginning and makes sure that whatever happens we will surely be going home with Him, we may face whatever the armies of evil throw at us with confidence.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

 

© 2023 by Tom King