Ken, people are not saved by their works. Not …

Comment on Hope? Slim to none by David Read.

Ken, people are not saved by their works. Not even Mother Theresa will be saved by her works, if she is saved. The idea that the judgment consists of scales weighing good works on one side, and sins on the other side, is a thoroughly non-Christian concept.

None of us is “good enough” to be saved. Rom. 3:23. No one can be saved by keeping the law. Rom 3:20. We are all dependent upon the grace of God manifest in the sinless life and atoning death of Christ. Rom 3:22-26. We can be saved only through faith in Christ. Eph. 2:6-9. Genuine faith always leads to the doing of good works (James 2:14-17), but those works do not save (Gal. 2:16). Only Jesus saves. Gal. 2:21, 3:11 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. Acts 4:12.

David Read Also Commented

Hope? Slim to none
“What you will find difficult to break through in the minds of most people who attend any church is this. They can not and in some cases, will not consider the idea that loyalty to ‘their church’ is not, ipso facto, loyalty to Christ.”

Bill, that’s an interesting point, and also another point of paradoxical convergence between extreme conservatives and extreme liberals. I have often advised “Seventh-day Darwinians” to leave Adventism and join one of the churches–which include Catholicism and most of the mainline Protestant denominations–that have already made their peace with Darwinism. These churches still contain many sweet Christian people, and it ought to be much easier for Seventh-day Darwinians to join in fellowship those whom they have already joined in faith, rather than to try to get Darwinism accepted in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in which they have not only the straightforward reading of Scripture to contend with, but also the prophetic witness of Ellen White.

When I urge this, people typically react as if I had gone just as far beyond the pale of acceptable discourse as if I had urged them to cook and eat their children. Obviously, at some level, they have deeply imbibed the idea that their soul’s salvation is dependent upon them continuing to identify with the Adventist Church. In essence, they believe that their sole (and soul) safety depends upon being a member of a church with the name “Seventh-day Adventist” even as they publicly and categorically reject the very doctrines that give meaning to that name, and that alone justify the continued existence of our church as a separate denomination.

I can only conclude that somewhere along the way, they came to believe the bleakest, most extreme evaluation of the non-Adventist churches, and that that belief subconsciously rules them, overruling a more rational or reason-based evaluation of what would be an appropriate Christian fellowship for them.


Hope? Slim to none
“By the way, does anyone see the spirit of Rome here in the way these administrators hope to resolve this issue?” — Bill

Funny you should mention that, Bill, because I found this statement by Larry Blackmer, quoted in the Review, to be strange and a little spooky:

“We’re pleased to see the dialogue move to a new and constructive level,” says Larry Blackmer, vice-president for education for the North American Division. “When you’re trying to build a bridge, you pay special honor to those who help engineer the foundations and the architecture that will support future traffic, and we consider this development one that has considerable positive potential.

It is strange because the dialogue isn’t moving to a new and constructive level. The Darwinist professor are proposing to do just exactly what they have been doing all along: teaching Darwinism as truth, and if anyone asks about it, admit that the church believes—by faith alone—something very different.

The stuff about building bridges I find a bit spooky, because the term “pontiff” literally means “bridge builder.”

Anyone who is not actually a civil engineer and is obsessively concerned about bridge-building may be running for pope.


Hope? Slim to none
Bill, you’re right that the heresy of Seventh-day Darwinism isn’t subtle at all. But no other error cold be more destructive to a church that was established primarily to call Christians to worship on the day that God hallowed as a memorial to his creation of the world.

Ellen White tells us that the Sabbath will be a testing truth in the time of the end. I think this is because it is so clear cut. Unlike some other doctrines, the Sabbath doctrine has no complex moving parts. It is based upon a very clear “thus saith the Lord: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

For the same reason, the SDA Church should be very clear in its internal governance on this issue. If you teach against a creation in six literal days, you are undercutting the Sabbath, and our church was established in large measure to bring the Sabbath truth to the world’s attention. This is not something that the church can afford to tolerate or coddle.

That is why I’m puzzled by the NAD statement that seems to be saying that it is okay to teach Darwinism as scientific truth, and that all we need are bridges of communication. “What we have here is a failure to communicate,” someone once said. But when you have Darwinist professors openly proselytizing for Darwinism at Adventist colleges, and the only NAD response is “we need more communication,” then NAD is sending the wrong message.


Recent Comments by David Read

LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: I do not agree that science must be naturalistic, but if that is your bottom line, it will not trouble me much where it concerns most day-to-day science–the study of current, repeating phenomena. But a rigid naturalism applied to origins morphs into philosophical atheism. Hence, mainstream origins science is not science but atheistic apologetics. This is what should not be done at an Adventist school, but sadly what has been the rule at La Sierra.


Dr. Paul Cameron and the God of the Gaps
@Pauluc: The Adventist doctrine of creation is that God created the world in six days and rested on the Seventh day and hallowed it. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11) Do you believe that doctrine? It won’t do to say that you accept some vague “Christian doctrine of creation.” The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very specific mission to call people back to the worship of the creator God, on the day that He hallowed at the creation.

You say you believe that the “core doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,” but what was Jesus Christ incarnated to do? Wasn’t his mission to redeem fallen humanity, to be the second Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed? And doesn’t your view of origins make nonsense of a perfect creation, a literal Adam who fell, and the need for redemption because of Adam’s sin? You seem to want to gloss over all the very profound differences you have not only with Seventh-day Adventist dcotrine, but with the most basic reasons that Seventh-day Adventism exists.

The syncretistic hodgepodge religion you’ve created for yourself, combining elements of a biblical world view (the incarnation) and elements of a pagan worldview (a self-created creation) is not Adventism. It is anti-Seventh-day Adventism.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Holly Pham: Holly, I will try, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: Since no creationist could land a job as chairman of a biology department at a public university, it seems entirely appropriate that no Darwinist should be given the chairmanship of a biology department of a Seventh-day Adventist college.

The SDA educational system doesn’t exist to expensively duplicate the public university system. It exists to provide a uniquely biblical and Seventh-day Adventist education to interested young people. If mainstream origins science is correct in its assumptions and conclusions about our origins, the entire enterprise of Seventh-day Adventism is an utterly foolish waste of time. So at Adventist institutions, our professors should assume that Darwinistic science is false, and that creationistic science is true (just the reverse of how it is done at public universities), and proceed accordingly.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@gene fortner: What I like about your list of topics, Gene, is that it points out that many disciplines are implicated in the necessary change of worldview. It isn’t just biology and geology, although those are the main ones. History, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines should also be approached from a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview should pervade the entire curriculum.