Arithmetic may have been from “worldly” sources but society generally was more conservative at the time. Today one has to be aware of special agendas being promoted in textbooks such as the two mother or two father agenda as well as other left leaning agendas. From what I see there is a textbook battle raging in Texas now. That’s another subject.

Although we can produce teacher materials that will “teach around evolution,” the students and parents are still receiving the textbooks and are reading the material as factual.

And so, Blackmer says, we must instead produce our own textbooks. Excellent! Praise God!

It was about 1988 or so that I was taking a course from afar on the NT. The textbook taught as fact that Matthew didn’t write Matthew, Mark didn’t write Mark, and Paul shouldn’t have been so hard on homosexuals. The course required digesting the textbook, writing out quiz questions for the chapters read. No material was provided by the teacher to balance out the textbook.

I still maintain that a course taught in such a way is neither Christian education nor Adventist education. I asked the teacher for a different textbook. It was then explained to me why that textbook was used, and it was then suggested that if I still didn’t want to use that textbook, I could drop the class, which I did.

I refuse to take such a class from an Adventist institution.

The evil seeds planted in the student’s mind may sprout and bear evil fruit years later, as Sister White point blank told us.

One of the most avid anti-Ellen White critics out there, who fortunately has decided to devote his energies toward something more uplifting, and thus I don’t know whether he really is still a critic, told me the following after I found out that he had attended the same school from which I was taking that NT course: He had taken that course too, and it had made him ill. Whether that class contributed to his later apostasy I cannot say for sure, but the circumstances sound pretty suspicious.

Thus, it is possible that God will hold that class’s teacher accountable to some extent for the many apostasies that have occurred over the years because of the influence of that critic. Many evangelists and pastors have prepared interests for baptism, or have baptized folks, only to see them disappear due to that critic’s influence.

Blackmer presents a different scenario than the above, where he maintains that even if balancing material is provided by the teacher, the textbook is still a problem. Praise God for this position taken by those responsible for these things. May we support their endeavors with our prayers and offerings and encouragement. The producing of such textbooks has eternal consequences, and the influence of the one reading the textbook will affect so many for good instead of for evil.