A little after 9 AM David looked at his watch. An airplane had just struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. From his viewpoint on the upper floors of the South Tower David could see black smoke pouring out of the impact area and drifting toward the east. Residents of the South Tower immediately began to evacuate the skyscraper as a precaution. But David calculated that it would take at least an hour to inch down to the ground in the already crowded stairwells of the South Tower. He hit the elevator button. The doors opened. People in the lobby behind him shook their heads.
David didn’t have time to explain. He thought, “If the ‘accident’ is really limited to the North Tower, the elevators in the south tower should be fully functional.” He got into the elevator with several others, but it remained half empty. As the elevator paused for a moment at the 78th floor, the second jetliner was about 60 seconds from impact. He called out to a woman friend and asked her to join him in the elevator.
“No,” she said, “I want to stay here and watch over the other people.”
David said, “Well, good luck to you.”
She responded, “Good luck to you, too.”
It was the last time he would ever see her. As the half-empty elevator’s doors closed, David would never forget the picture of all those faces looking at him. Back at his apartment, eleven blocks north of the World Trade Center, David watched the two smoldering towers. He didn’t realize that the wingtip of the second airplane had already ripped through the 78th floor elevator lobby, wreaking havoc among his former office mates. Although he had just come from the towers, it was hard to believe what he was seeing. Even as the South Tower came down, he turned his head to the left and watched the scene unfold simultaneously on the television, as if to verify that what he saw outside his window was really happening. Reality and fantasy seemed to have become one.
A short time later, and dazed with shock, Paul watched the screen of his television from the safety of Europe. Time and again CNN showed video of the second airliner approaching from the south and embedding itself completely into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, the tower David had just evacuated. Then the television began presenting more personal images. Men in white shirts and ties, carrying bags; girls in jeans; police in uniform; suddenly all were running away from the cyclone cloud of death, running for their lives, gasping for breath, terror in their eyes. Soon after came “images from hell.” A man in a business suit using his tie as a filter in order to breathe. A woman with earrings and pearls around her neck, and boots covered with dust, her mouth open– a dark gaping hole in her ashen face, hands spread apart, eyes terror-stricken. Dirty, bleeding survivors trudging toward where? Home? The company’s other office? A friend’s place?
What televisions could not share effectively were the sounds, the feel, the taste and the smell of September 11. The video clips shared insight into the screams and the cries of panic and terror that accompanied the collapse of the towers, but they could not share the deafening roar, the trembling of the ground, and above all the taste of death. Those who were there say that you could taste the air more easily than you could breathe it. Even weeks later the acrid smell emanating from Ground Zero was nauseating. And in the middle of it all, came the realization that the burning of human flesh was a part of the mix.
After the collapse of the two towers the “action” was largely over. So CNN kept showing the same video clips over and over. As reality began to sink in, Paul was particularly riveted by the image of the second plane approaching from the south, dipping its wings to the left at the last second, and disappearing into the South Tower. As Paul viewed the scene over and over again he sensed an urge within to reach out into the screen, grab hold of the plane and save the towers and their occupants. “Is that what God must be feeling?” he suddenly thought to himself. “Did God want to prevent this as much as I do? Was he unable to stop it? Did He decide not to intervene? Was He there at all?” Paul found his thoughts getting more and more confused.
While Paul’s view of God was thrown into confusion by the events of September 11, others found themselves seeking God for the first time. It was truly a day that changed the world. There was the sense that twenty or even a hundred years from now, we would look back on this event as one that fundamentally altered the way we look at the world, an event of epic proportions like Pearl Harbor, the Protestant Reformation, or the Russian Revolution. It has left us a world that is less predictable than its predecessor. We can never again feel as secure as we felt at the dawning of that day. The world is at war, but it’s a war unlike any war in history.
Three themes seem to be moving to the center of our consciousness: family, meaning, and making a difference in the world.
September 11 was a day that changed the world. In this book we will explore some of the changes in the military, political and economic landscape. We will peer, at times, into the murky glass of an uncertain future, trying to make sense of it all. We will discover the role the internet played in these changes. We will explore America’s frantic attempts to defend itself through high-tech weapons, electronic eavesdropping, a renewed interest in the dirty side of spying. We will strive to to understand the interplay between Christianity and Islam that seems to lie behind these events. We will explore the anatomy of a terrorist, the forces and ideas that could turn a mamma’s boy into a mass murderer in a few short years. We will also seek to understand the realities that drove Osama bin Laden into consummate hatred of America and its philosophy of life.
The Purpose of This Book (In digested blog form here)
Above all else we will explore the spiritual implications of this event and the changes it introduced into our world. September 11 changed the way millions of people viewed God and their relationship to Him. Many believers found themselves confused by His seeming absence in the face of enormous tragedy and pain. Many more, believers and unbelievers alike, found tokens of His presence in the midst of the tragedy. People began to find time for God in a world that seemed to have gone mad.
I am not talking about a rebirth of “religion” here. Suspicion of religion was not lessened by September 11. If anything the terrorist links to Islamic fundamentalism, and conservative Christian calls for revenge, raised fresh questions about the role of religion in building a just and peaceful society. At the same time, however, these events have highlighted the need for a higher Power and purpose for life. Any spiritual organization that wishes to meet that need, however, must take a careful look at its own motives and practices first. Like Judaism after the Holocaust, spiritual business as usual no longer seems appropriate. Flip and shallow answers are no longer welcome.
One more thing. I realize the peril of trying to put how I feel about September 11 into words. A New Yorker named Dan Fahrbach spoke at a memorial service a few days later. As I remember it he said something like, “We have used up all our big words on relatively small things. At a time like September 11 silence is unbearable, but speech is even worse. What happened cannot be described in words. But many people are discovering that there are words from long ago that speak for us. The pages of the Bible contain words that express the inexpressible. There are stories and sayings that draw out meaning at times and in places where no meaning seemed possible.”
In a world where shallow and confident answers have become suspect, the Bible is not afraid to ask the hard questions and explore dueling answers. The Bible portrays a God who is pleased when people care enough to shake their fist at him. He is a God who faced the agonizing death of His Son with purposeful silence. Such a God may be hard to understand, but He is never boring (even though some who worship Him may be). He may be hard to find at times, but when we find Him, He is worth the time we spent seeking Him. From my quest for God to yours, this book is about an experience that has never been more relevant than it is today, in the aftermath of September 11.
Category Archives: Current Events
Thoughts on “White Supremacy”
This is a work in progress. I can’t say I’ve thought it through enough yet, but I’d like to get feedback and I think it is potentially very important, so let me share what I am thinking. The fundamental foundation of geopolitics is the concept of “love of one’s own”. Every human being is born helpless and needs others to survive. A very precocious child might perhaps be able to take care of himself or herself by the age of eight, but for many years all humans are totally dependent on those close to them for survival. So “love of one’s own,” the immediate and extended family, is the glue that holds society together. As families interact with the wider world, this principle expands to include the village, the tribe, and at many points in history, the nation. Conflict among such entities is common to humanity. Abuse and attempts to dominate others are fairly universal. Hurt people hurt people. Injustice leads to more injustice. People and groups hurt other people and groups out of fear and the struggle for survival.
When people who look like me hear of things like the 1619 Project or they are accused of white supremacy, therefore, it is natural for them to feel mis-characterized or even discriminated against. After all, slavery of one kind or another has been the norm through most of human history, so why should the American slave-trade or the mistreatment of native Americans and others be treated as if it were uniquely evil? Isn’t one group dominating others the natural result of “love of one’s own?”
For me, the crucial piece that I believe helped me understand what is driving the current anti-Christian and anti-American trends in society is a fresh look at the history and philosophy of colonialism. There have been many empires in the past; the Roman Empire, the Greeks, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Mongols. Each of these felt that they were strong because they were superior to those they conquered (and their gods superior to the gods of others). But these were all relatively regional affairs, neighbors fighting neighbors. The European colonial project was the first time in recorded history of a truly world-wide attempt at dominance based on a sense of social and moral superiority. Europeans considered themselves superior because of their superior science, education, technology and, yes, religion. A sense of supremacy was grounded in a sense of superiority on many fronts. And the political side of the colonial project often went hand in hand with the mission to redeem the “benighted savages.” That project often was meant well. The “white man’s burden” was to lift up those who were inferior, those who had been been left behind on all these western advances in science and religion.
What is often overlooked in the history of Europe is that the sense of Euro-superiority was grounded in the blessings of the gospel. The gospel was so transformative over the centuries that if Jesus had never been born, it is likely that science, education, healthcare, freedom and equality under law, as we know them, would never have happened (for details on the above view the following: https://llu.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=e056aa66-ab73-48ec-abf8-ab69017a7fd0). Neither would the abolition of slavery have happened. It’s no wonder that Europeans felt “Enlightened.” But the gospel was not given to feed a sense of superiority. Pride and superiority are anathema to the gospel. In feeling and acting superior, Europeans were unfaithful to the gospel that had brought them so many blessings and so much prosperity. And like it or not, most of us born and raised in the European heritage were trained in a subtle sense of superiority. In most cases, I believe it was not intentional. It was much more caught than taught. But it was, nevertheless, very real.
What many people don’t realize is that the United States of America is the greatest and most powerful empire in recorded history. American economic and military might dominate every corner of the globe. I don’t get the sense that America ever intended to become an empire. It was the natural consequence of its economic heft and a vacuum in the world power dynamics after World War II and then the fall of the Soviet Union. So the American empire has unwittingly become the successor to the British Empire and the European project.
Please don’t misunderstand me here. I love my country and I love its Christian heritage. And it is a strength of that heritage that Americans are capable of critiquing their own history and their own “love of one’s own.” The American project is in many ways the best of all options in the course of human history, as Ellen White has pointed out in The Great Controversy. But it is for that very reason that the sins of slavery and the extermination of native peoples is all the more reprehensible. “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.” Luke 12:48, NKJV. That slavery and the lynching tree so often had the blessing of Protestant pulpits in the south is hard for me to grasp. How could those who were taught to love even their enemies do such things to their neighbors? It goes to show how a sense of superiority can distort one’s thinking. After all, many of the guards in Hitler’s concentration camps were committed Christians.
The term “White supremacy” comes across as rather harsh, especially when those being accused of this were neither slavemasters nor concentration camp guards. But it is a way of communicating that the legacy of the “Enlightenment” and colonialism continues to impact the world today. And I have experienced the reality of that. Wherever I travel in the world I get a deference that I don’t deserve, even when people don’t know me personally. It seems that many have been unconsciously trained to see me as superior, to put me on a pedestal, simply because of the color of my skin. And that is really not good for me, because it subtly encourages me to think of myself as superior. And that is contrary to the gospel, where we are all equal at the foot of the cross.
The sense of superiority (which often leads to a desire for supremacy) is a delusion brought on to the human race by sin. And that delusion has serious consequences for perpetrator as much as the victim. One of the consequences of a sense of superiority is performance addictions. If we think we are better than others, we are required to out-perform them. And that is a different kind of “white man’s burden,” often leading to burnout and despair. Whites are not inherently prone to sins distortions, nor are others immune to them. The distortions of sin are common to us all. But in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and colonialism, the world is still recovering from a global supremacy project grounded in such distorted thinking. I have been less aware of that reality than I should have been.
The answer to white supremacy is not black supremacy or brown supremacy, it is the gospel. When we meet each other at the foot of the cross, we begin to see each other the way God sees us. The cross frees us from delusions of supremacy and its consequences. The cross frees us from the need to feel superior and from the need to live up to that feeling. The cross frees us from prejudice.
In Old Testament times Israel imbibed the delusion of superiority. They thought that God had chosen them because they were superior. But they were wrong. “The Lord did not set His affection upon you because you were more numerous than other people, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” Deut. 7:7. The call to Israel was not about them. They were called to connect the other nations to God (Exod 19:5-6). When they felt superior they neglected that mission and became the center of their own ambitions. Institutional Christianity has followed the same trajectory. I pray for a revival of primitive godliness that leads the church everywhere to repentance and authentic humility. In the meantime, let us right what wrongs we can in the circle of influence God has given each one of us.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (16): Summary and Conclusion
We began this series with the observation that many Seventh-day Adventists have a unique sign of the End that they feel uniquely prepares them to be ready for the return of Jesus. That sign is the passage of a national Sunday law in the Congress of the United States of America. Unlike many prophecies in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, this one is specific and measurable. If it happens or does not happen, we will all know. Members in far-flung parts of the world are probing both the news and underground “sources” to weigh the likelihood of such a law in the USA from year to year. This has been going on now for many decades, probably as much as a century. But is such an outcome in its Great Controversy context the absolute certainty that many deem it to be?
We examined the principles of prophetic interpretation that can be observed through the study of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible (for detail see The Deep Things of God, chapter two). These underline that prophecies regarding specific historical events are conditional. God meets people where they are. Prophecies are, therefore, couched in the language of the prophet’s time and place. The details are a natural extension of the prophet’s time and place. God does not always carry out every detail of prophetic predictions. Those awaiting a Sunday law in the US Congress are assuming that Ellen White’s historical predictions are different from those of the Bible, they are not conditional. They must be fulfilled in detail exactly as projected. But this assumption contradicts Ellen White’s own counsel: “. . . the promises and threatenings of God are alike conditional” (LDE 38). Conditionality warns us not to take the historical details of prophecy as absolute certainties ahead of time. Prophecy is best understood as or after it happens (John 13:19; 14:29).
We then examined Revelation 13, the passage in the Bible that is cited as evidence of such a Sunday law. We noted that Sunday laws at the end of time are a plausible reading of Revelation 13, but they are not the only possible reading of the mark of the beast passage. Seeing Sunday laws in Revelation 13 is exegetically defensible, but it is not exegetically compelling. The mark of the beast concept is open-ended enough to allow God the freedom to fulfill the prophecy in more than one way. So caution is advised in advance of the fulfillment. We should not close our understanding of a prediction before the fulfillment comes.
We then looked at Ellen White’s Sunday law statements in light of the history of her time. The idea of a national Sunday law in Congress was very relevant in the 1880s and her statements to that effect all occur around the year 1888, when there was a bill in the Senate to impose a national Sunday law. She makes no such statements in earlier years, but sees local laws as evidence of something bigger to come (the something to come is not specified). We noted that the conditions in the United States that made the the Senate bill plausible faded away in the decades that followed and have not returned. The United States no longer has a Protestant government, and the return of such would not be a natural extension of the current scene. So the expectation that the exact scenario of Great Controversy would be re-enacted in today’s world is unlikely. The constant expectation of a national Sunday law in the US Congress leads to speculation and conspiracy theories rather than sound biblical and historical study.
Sunday laws in our future remain, however, a viable reading of Revelation 13 and certainly of Great Controversy. But they may well come from a surprising direction. As an example of the possibilities I referenced Clifford Goldstein, who offers a path to international Sunday laws that would make sense in today’s world. All the world religions anticipate some future figure that will dramatically impact the course of history. For the Christians, his name is Jesus. For the Jews, he is the Messiah. For the Muslims, he is the Mahdi (although many Muslims also anticipate a major role for Jesus). For the Hindus, he is Kalki. For the Buddhists, he is Matreiya. Second Thessalonians (2:8-10) and Revelation (13:13-14; 16:13-14) anticipate a great end-time deception in which Satan impersonates Christ before the world (GC affirms this idea). His dazzling, end-time appearance could evoke the hopes and dreams of people of all faiths. Seizing upon these expectations, Satan could call the world to worship God on Sunday as a sign of loyalty to Jesus/Messiah/Mahdi/Kalki/Matreiya and the highest hopes of their faiths. Such an outcome would fulfill Great Controversy and Revelation 13, but in an unexpected way, something fulfilled prophecy in the Bible would lead us to expect.
My concern is that by focusing on a prediction that seems to specific and measurable as a national Sunday law in Congress, we could distract ourselves from the real thing when it happens. We need hearts that are open to revelation and open to the Holy Spirit as we navigate the challenging waters ahead. The desire for certainty causes us to focus on specific details rather than on understanding the larger picture of prophecy. That understanding is difficult work, but it will keep us safe in the perplexing times ahead of us. Prophecy was not given to satisfy our curiosity about the future, it was given to prepare our hearts to meet the one that we worship and adore. I suggest we prioritize that task.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (15): Undermining God’s Purpose for Prophecy
The evidence drawn from fulfilled prophecy in the Bible shows us that prophecy is given as a natural extension of the prophet’s time and place. God meets people where they are and the prophecy engages the world as the prophet experiences it. Because that world is in constant change, now more than ever, we can expect that some elements of a prophecy are not fulfilled, because the conditions for fulfillment have not been met. In the case of the expectation that national Sunday laws will some day be enacted in the US Congress, the conditions for that were very strong in the late 1880s, but none of those conditions were in place any longer by the time of World War I. If such Sunday laws do occur in our future, they would occur in a world that is vastly different than the one Ellen White was familiar with.
Reviewing the biblical evidence on the mark of the beast (Rev 13:13-17), we concluded that there were four exegetical possibilities for fulfillment in the fact that the mark is contrasted with the seal of God and the Sabbath. It could reflect laws related to worship of another day (Sunday, for example). Two other options would be that every day is a Sabbath or no day is a Sabbath. The fourth option is laws forbidding Sabbath worship. All four of these options are exegetically defensible as ways to fulfill the text of Revelation 13. As we have seen, most statements on the topic by Ellen White see Sunday laws as the fulfillment of Revelation 13 but some statements portray Sunday laws as less of a threat and laws forbidding worship on the Sabbath as the greater threat. Statements regarding national Sunday laws in Congress are few and they are clustered in the period around 1888 where they are a logical extension of the situation in place at that point in time.
There are two ways to undermine God’s purpose for prophecy. One is to ignore the prophecies of the Bible and Ellen White. This is widely seen as a problem among students of the Bible. But another way to undermine the Bible is popular among enthusiasts of the Bible and, therefore, harder to see as a threat. It is to over-specify the details of a prophecy to the point where a particular scenario become fixed in people’s minds to the point that the fulfillment comes as a surprise and even a deception to the very ones anticipating it.
This happened in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were avid students of prophecy. We know this from books that exist to this day, like Fourth Ezra, Second Baruch and First (or Ethiopic) Enoch. These books reflect a mindset of deep consideration of the prophecies, leading to charting of events leading up to Messiah. Failing to understand how fulfilled prophecy works in the Bible, the Pharisees built up an expectation, based on study of the Bible, that caused them to reject Jesus when He came, because He did not fulfill their biblical expectations. This was a tragic error, and it could have been avoided by more attention to the conditionality of classical prophecy and the way prophecies are a natural extension of the prophet’s time and place. The messianic prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus, but in a way different from the way the Pharisees expected.
My concern is that Adventists could be making a similar mistake today in investing so much energy in the idea that a national Sunday law in the US Congress will be the specific trigger event of the end-time. This view is understandable as it gives us a measurable specific that is easily observed. But the conditions for such a law have passed and should it never happen exactly that way, some serious, sincere Adventist students of prophecy could miss the real thing when it happens, because their specific expectations are not met. More has changed in the world over the last hundred years than in the previous 6000. The expectation that this will have no impact at all on the way prophecy is fulfilled is uncertain at best. World wide Sunday legislation could still happen but fixing on that single detail (Congressional legislation) as the key could prove to be a major distraction when the time comes.
The final blog will offer a possible scenario for Sunday laws at the End and draw some conclusion on the matter.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (14): Ellen White, A Classical Prophet
One thing I have come to realize in recent discussions is that many people who read Ellen White treat her writings as if they were apocalyptic prophecy, and therefore not subject to the Bible’s principles for interpreting classical prophecy. There are visions she describes that remind one of Revelation 4-5 (heavenly journeys), but nothing like Daniel 2 or Jewish visions like 4 Ezra and 1 Enoch. Her work fits the pattern of classical prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Hosea. She addresses her immediate situation with passion and a desire for change on the part of her readers. When she projects into the future, it is never a detailed account of specific things beyond her time, but a natural extension of the world she is living in.
The important implication of this is that her predictions of the future, insofar as they concern human affairs, are conditional upon those affairs. This principle is stated unequivocally in Jeremiah 18:7-10: “If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. 9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.” This is God speaking directly and explaining how He operates (Jer 18:6). When speaking about the interactions among nations and powerful entities, God’s predictions are conditional upon the response of those nations and entities. To take such prophecies as outlining the future with absolute certainty is to take them too far. They may, in fact, be fulfilled in exact detail, but they also may not. God is not always predictable. As Ellen White herself frequently stated, “circumstances alter cases.”
In my research for this series I ran across a statement of Ellen White that shocked me. It was completely counter to the strong emphasis of Great Controversy on the topic. But when you note the date of the statement in light of the prophetic principles we outlined earlier, the statement makes perfect sense. “Then I saw the mother of harlots. . . . She has had her day and it is past, and her daughters, the Protestant sects, were next to come on the stage and act out the same mind that the mother had when she persecuted the saints.” MS 15, 1850. When she speaks of the “mother of harlots” she is clearly alluding to Revelation 17:4-5, which she applied consistently to the papacy. In her view, as of the year 1850, the papacy “has had her day and it is past.” Protestant America would play the role in the end-time that the papacy had played in the Middle Ages.
This statement makes perfect sense in 1850. The population of Catholics in the United States was about 5% in 1840. They were a small, insignificant player on the stage of American politics. But immigration from places like Ireland, Italy and Poland changed that dynamic in the decades that followed. By the year 1890, the proportion of Catholics in the US population had reached 17%. They could no longer be ignored. But in 1850 the papacy appeared to be a spent force, having just gone through the humiliating captivity of 1798. Since the demise of the “mother of harlots” is stated in Revelation 17:16, Ellen White may at that time have placed Revelation 17 in the past as Uriah Smith did. If the end had come in the 1850s, it appears that the papacy would not have played the role in the end-time that Great Controversy portrays for it in the 1880s. Her 1850 prediction is a natural extension of that time and place.
Another surprising statement comes from 1886, a little before the peak of Sunday agitation in Congress. “. . . the Christian world has sanctioned (Satan’s) efforts by adopting this child of the papacy– the Sunday institution. They have nourished it and continue to nourish it, until Protestantism shall give the hand of fellowship to the Roman power. Then there will be a law against the Sabbath of God’s creation. . . .” RH, March 9, 1886. In this statement, the key element is not so much a law requiring Sunday observance, but a law forbidding Sabbath observance. Here she follows the anti-Sabbath option for Revelation 13 that we have mentioned previously. This emphasis would increase in the 1890s and early 1900s as the drive to legislate national observance of Sunday lost steam. When local Sunday laws came to her attention, instead of telling people to resist them, she said use the day for missionary work. Don’t arouse the ire of neighbors and authorities by conspicuously doing manual labor on that day. It is no direct threat to your keeping of the Sabbath.
As you look at all the statements Ellen White makes regarding Sunday laws, the key statements regarding Sunday legislation in Congress are clustered in the year 1888, when that was a live and national issue. As you observe the trend of her statements over seventy years, it fits the pattern of the classical prophet: speaking directly and prophetically to the living issues of her time. As with Scripture, this in no way diminishes the value of such prophecies for today. It simply impacts the way that we read them and apply them today.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (13): The World of Ellen White
The world that Ellen White experienced in the 1880s was soon to change dramatically. Proestantism remained a major, if not dominant, force in American politics for a number of decades. But after the failure of national Sunday legislation in the period of 1888-1890, Catholicism retreated from being a major player in the American political scene until Vatican II and the rise of John F. Kennedy in the late 1950s. And while spiritualism has remained at the fringes of American consciousness, its role in the public square rapidly diminished after 1890. With Ellen White’s death, a new threat to the American way of life became increasingly powerful, the rise of secularism/liberalism. It offered a direct threat to the “Protestant government” of the United States that was largely taken for granted when Great Controversy was first written. Protestantism fought back during the Liberalism/Fundamental controversy, but the Scopes trial in the 1920s and the collapse of Prohibition in the early 1930s signaled the death knell of Protestant dominance in American politics. The three main threats to the American way of life in the 1880s were now supplanted by a much greater threat, that the Christian values upon which America was founded would be totally set aside in favor of a pluralistic, secular order.
Another major feature of Ellen White’s world was colonialism. Virtually the entire world was either ruled by nominally Christian powers like England, France, Spain and Germany, or deeply influenced by the economic and political power these European nations wielded. The concept of an international Sunday law was very conceivable in the colonial era. But the colonial era began to unravel in the wake of World War II, and European dominance of Africa and Asia had almost totally evaporated by the early 1960s. The world today is a very different world than the world of Ellen White in the late Nineteenth Century. And that is a serious problem for anyone who wishes to project the details of her world into the Twenty-First Century. God meets people where they are. It is reasonable to expect that a prophetic voice arising today would say at least some things that would surprise us.
The scenario Ellen White projects in Great Controversy is deeply embedded in the very specific politics and issues of the 1880s and a little after. It addresses the very things the nation at large was discussing and includes all the major political players of the time. It is not the story of some far future for the United States of America, that story is a natural extension of Ellen White’s time and place. I remind you of her own statements in that regard. What she wrote about in GC concerned “movements now in progress” (GC 573). “In the events now taking place is seen a rapid advance toward the fulfillment of the prediction. . . .” (GC 579). What she was describing was a “soon-coming conflict” (GC 592). In fact, “The decree. . . . has already gone forth” (7 SDABC 976). And it would be enforced by “a Protestant government” (RH, December 18, 1888). The world has changed massively in the last 125 years. Like the writers of the New Testament, Ellen White did not perceive the long period of time that would come after her. In fact, there is very little in her writings that directly describes the world in which we live.
Like the biblical prophets, when Ellen White describes the future it is in the language, time, place, and circumstances of the time in which she wrote. This is illustrated by the fact that language about a national Sunday law in Congress only appears in the immediate context of a bill in the Senate to establish a national Sunday law. Before that she speaks in very general terms about Sunday legislation, language appropriate to a time in which there were many local Sunday laws, but no push for a national one. As noted earlier, there were seven editions of the Great Controversy vision and she updated each edition to reflect the changes in the world current in that time. This is exactly the pattern that you find when you look at the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible.
You will look in vain for any clear description in Ellen White’s writings of the world in which we live. There has been more change in the last hundred years than in the previous 6000, but you wouldn’t detect that in any detail in her writings. Yet you won’t find any explicit descriptions of nuclear war or nuclear power. There is no mention of computers, the internet, or cell phones. There is no mention of space travel by human means. There is no description of Communism, the two world wars, or Islamic terrorism. There is no specific description of an America that is becoming increasingly secular or post-modern. This is exactly what you would expect on the basis of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible. Prophecy was not given to satisfy our curiosity about the future. It was given to teach us how to live today. When we use prophecy for other purposes, things inevitably go wrong.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (12): Ellen White and Prophetic Principles
The standard assumption among many Adventists is that every single prediction made by Ellen White must be fulfilled at some point in the future, without conditions. This position is similar to that the Pharisees applied to the Old Testament in Jesus’ day. We all know how that worked out. Considering both the principles of prophetic interpretation of the Bible and the realities of history since the 1880s, I would suggest we exercise a little caution before uncritically embracing the standard assumptions about future Sunday laws in the United States and elsewhere. If Ellen White were alive today, there is at least a chance that her depiction of the End would be somewhat different than it was in the 1880s. Let’s look at the evidence for that caution.
First of all, an unconditional approach to Ellen White’s predictions is contrary to the evidence of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible. We noticed there that (2) God is not always predictable, that (4) God meets people where they are, that (6) God uses the language of the prophet’s past and present to describe the future, and that (7) fulfillments of prophecy are best understand as or after the fulfillment. I would argue that an appropriate interpretation of Ellen White’s unfulfilled prophecies would be and should be very much in line with the biblical evidence.
Let’s look briefly at the context of her most specific statements regarding the national Sunday law in the late 1880s. At that time, both SDAs and many other Americans see three great threats in the public square. The first was the fear of Protestant apostasy; that Protestantism in America would lose focus on the principles of the Reformation, which also undergirded the founding principles of the American nation. The second major threat was the rise of Roman Catholicism in the United States. In 1840 Catholics made up about 5% of the US population. By the mid-1880s, due to massive immigration from places like Ireland, Italy and Poland, Catholics made up 17% of the US population and Catholicism was flexing its political muscles in the US for the first time. This alarmed both Protestants and Adventists. The love for bars and carnivals that Catholics brought with them from Europe caused many to feel that the social order was being undermined. The third major threat was the rise of spiritualism as a major influence in the political discourse of the time. Ellen White’s famous statement about “reaching hands across the gulf” names all three of these threats (GC 588). A union of these three forces was seen as the greatest threat to both Adventism and the American republic.
Protestantism reacted to these developments in two ways, one more popular than the other with Adventists. First was the drive to ban the production and sale of alcohol in the United States, a movement that came later to be called Prohibition. Ellen White found common cause with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union on this issue and she sometimes spoke at their rallies. But the WCTU and other Protestant entities also saw Sunday legislation as a way to preserve America’s character as a Protestant nation. They sensed that the country was changing and felt that Sunday laws was a way to hold back the tide. Ellen White’s most famous statements on Sunday laws were written in the midst of the above developments. Thus, they are to be understood in the light of the biblical principles outlined at the beginning. God was using Ellen White’s past and present language and experiences to paint a picture of the future. Her outline of that future was, therefore, a natural extension of her time and place. Her visions met her squarely where she was. Given how much the world has changed in the last 130 years, it would be surprising if the outcome of the end-time turned out to be more predictable than the prophecies fulfilled in Bible times. “The promises and threatenings of God are alike conditional.” LDE 38.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (11): The Key Statements of Ellen White II
Ellen White returns to the issue of Sunday laws at the end of time on page 592 of The Great Controversy: “The dignitaries of church and state will unite to bribe, persuade, or compel all classes to honor the Sunday. The lack of divine authority will be supplied by oppressive enactments. Political corruption is destroying love of justice and regard for truth; and even in free America, rulers and legislators, in order to secure public favor, will yield to the popular demand for a law enforcing Sunday observance. Liberty of conscience, which has cost so great a sacrifice, will no longer be respected. In the soon-coming conflict. . . (Rev 12:17).” This statement is less specific than the previous one. In GC 592 Ellen White foresees church and state working together in America toward universal observance of Sunday. This observance will be supported by “oppressive enactments” in the plural. But her use of the singular in “a law enforcing Sunday observance” is compatible with the previous idea of national legislation. In this passage she once again underlines her understanding that this is a “soon-coming conflict,” and this time supports the term “conflict” with a quotation of Revelation 12:17.
A brief statement on this topic was included in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary: “The decree enforcing the worship of this day is to go forth to all the world. In a limited degree, it has already gone forth. In several places the civil power is speaking with the voice of a dragon, just as the heathen king spoke to the Hebrew captives.” There are two elements here that are not in The Great Controversy. First, she states that the decree enforcing worship of Sunday is to be worldwide, not just in the United States. Second, even that development was already in progress at the time she wrote this statement. It was a live development in the time when she was living.
The final statement I will share with you here is the most specific of all. It was included in the Review and Herald toward the close of 1888. “When our nation, in its legislative councils, shall enact laws to bind the consciences of men in regard to their religious privileges, enforcing Sunday observance, and bringing oppressive power to bear against those who keep the seventh-day Sabbath, the law of God will, to all intents and purposes, be made void in our land; and national apostasy will be followed by national ruin. . . . If, in our land of boasted freedom, a Protestant government should sacrifice every principle which enters into its Constitution, and propagate papal falsehood and delusion, well may we plead, “It is time for thee, Lord, to work, for they have made void thy law.” The United States, in its legislative councils (the House of Representatives and the Senate), will enact laws to enforce Sunday observance. Such a possibility was right before her at that time, in Senator Blair’s bill. But she makes one additional comment that will prove interesting. In her understanding, this legislation will be the action of a “Protestant government,” which was also a reality in her day.
This is a summary of, in my view, the five most pertinent statements regarding the subject at hand. Will these predictions necessarily be fulfilled simply because she said so? From a believer’s perspective that would be the simplest answer. But the scholar raises the uncomfortable point, do the biblical principles regarding fulfilled prophecy suggest some caution in drawing that conclusion? Stay tuned.
Sunday Laws and Bible Prophecy (9): The Principles and Ellen White
As we get into the key statements of Ellen White on national Sunday law legislation in the USA at the End, we must keep in mind that it is an unfulfilled prophecy. Human beings have an extremely poor record when it comes to predicting future events on the basis of unfulfilled prophecy. To improve on that dismal record, it is critical to keep in mind the biblical evidence regarding fulfilled prophecies. In the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible we have a record of how God moves from prediction to fulfillment. These fulfilled prophecies pointed us to a number of principles that can help us avoid the mistakes of the past when it comes to prophecies that are not yet fulfilled.
The most important of those principles for our purpose are principles 2, 4 and 6. I will review them briefly here. Principle 2 states that God is not always predictable. The fulfillment is often somewhat of a surprise when it comes. God does not fulfill every detail of His predictions for a number of reasons. The most important one is that most prophecies are conditional (Jer 18:7-10, LDE 38—Ellen White says there that “all God’s promises and threatenings” are conditional). Whenever a prophet speaks of political events on earth those prophecies are conditional, because fulfillment depends on the behavior of the nations or entities involved. If an ungodly entity repents, God will not perform the doom He had promised. If a godly entity falls into apostasy, God will not fulfill the positive promises He has made.
Principle 4 is that God meets people where they are. That means that prophecies contain elements that are particularly focused on the time and place of the prophet. Prophecies need to be read in the light of the original context in which they were given. Principle 6 is related to principle 4. It states that God uses the language of the prophet’s present and past to describe the prophet’s future. That means that prophecy is always a natural extension of that prophet’s time and place. So another reason God is not always predictable is because the language, time, place and circumstances of the original prediction can change enough over time that the outcome will not be exactly as expected. This is evidenced over and over in the Old Testament prophets, with Isaiah 11:15-16 being the most dramatic case, as noted in earlier blogs in this series.
Many Seventh-day Adventists treat the predictions of Ellen White as if they were exempt from these biblical patterns. Anything she says about the future is fixed and unchangeable simply because she said it. But that kind of position on inspiration not only fails to account for the biblical evidence listed above, it places Ellen White’s inspiration in jeopardy. The classical case is her statement in 1856 that some people then present would be translated alive when Jesus returns (Life Sketches, 321). If one sees Ellen White’s predictions as fixed and unconditional, this calls her inspiration and truthfulness into question. But anyone familiar with the patterns of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible would immediately think of Jonah. Prophecies (such as the timing of the Second Coming) that are subject to human response are conditional, even if the conditions are not stated. Her inspiration is not in question should every detail of a prediction not be fulfilled to the letter. With that in mind we are ready to review her key statements regarding a national Sunday law in the US Congress at the end of time.
Does God answer only trivial prayers?
Recently wildfires raged in the relatively Adventist communities of Angwin, Deer Park and St. Helena, California. These communities include Pacific Union College, St. Helena Adventist Hospital, Deer Park Elementary School, and Elmshaven, the last home of Ellen G. White, Adventist visionary and one of the church’s founders. General Conference president, Ted Wilson, tweeted his concern and particularly requested prayer that Elmshaven would be spared from the flames on account of its historical and spiritual value. With the exception of a couple of secondary buildings at the elementary school and the hospital area church, the above institutions were spared. The Ellen G. White Estate in Silver Spring, Maryland tweeted its gratitude for the “miracle” that flames burned all around Elmshaven, but did not harm the property itself.
We, of course, do not know for sure whether the survival of Elmshaven was due to direct divine intervention, but it is certainly a possibility. But many Adventists expressed outrage at this claim in the face of so many Adventists losing their homes in the area. At the time of writing, no member has lost their life, but the loss of property is reported to be significant. The claim that God has acted to spare a historical building while not acting in response to many heartfelt prayers elsewhere was painful to many. What do we make of this reality? Did God answer only a relatively trivial prayer? Was Elmshaven spared primarily because of the courageous work of many firefighters? Or was this a coincidence that should simply have been accepted as such? It is hard to know. But it is likely that many members in the area, praying out of genuine need, were questioning why their prayers were not answered.
A young pastor in his first month of ministry re-connected with a newly baptized member of his church at camp meeting. She had walked in the door of the church without warning a few months before. Being raised in a broken, alcoholic Adventist home, she was not a novice to the Adventist Church, but had had no connection with it for a number of years. As her life apart from God spiraled into chaos she remembered church as a child being a relatively safe and happy place. So one day, in a place far from home, she had made the decision to return.
A couple of weeks before camp meeting, the young pastor was assigned to the church as an intern pastor and got to witness Susan’s baptism. So when she approached him at camp meeting with a request to talk, it was not a surprise. They walked down to the boat dock at the camp and sat down to talk. After some generalities, she suddenly turned the subject to her baptism.
“I need to be baptized again,” Susan said.
“Why would you say that?” the young pastor replied.
“Because there are things in my past I didn’t tell the senior pastor,” she responded.
Realizing that this was not a conversation to have in a public place, the young pastor suggested that they walk down a nearby trail along the wooded shores of the lake to a large rock where they could be away from prying ears. In years past he had actually built that trail as a teen-age summer camp worker. When they arrived at the rock she began a tale of woe; there were many things that she had done and that had been done to her. Whether or not she need to be baptized again, it was clear that she had rejoined the church, but had no idea about personal salvation or a living relationship with God.
While he had had college training in theology, the young pastor had never led anyone to Christ. In his mind he turned over the various strategies that he had learned in class and in church seminars. Doing the best he could to lay out a biblical approach to connecting with God he led her into the “sinner’s prayer.”
When they were done, Susan said, “That’s it?”
“That’s it, God loves us and is very merciful. He accepts every sincere soul that reaches out to him. He has cleaned the slate and this is the first day of the rest of your life, a life of walking with God,” he assured her.
Susan did not seem sure whether to believe him or not. Just then, they were startled by a sudden clap of thunder. This was unexpected. It had been a sunny and pleasant day up to that point. A moment later a total downpour ensued. Susan and the young pastor retreated under the largest available tree, but it was to no avail. In a couple of minutes they were totally soaked. But instead of being miserable, Susan’s face was shining with joy.
She looked at the young pastor and said, with delight, “I’m being baptized again!” Any doubts she may have had a moment before were gone. The arrival of the rain shower was just the sign she need to truly believe.
What do you make of a story like that? I know that it is true, because I was that young pastor and that was my first “lead someone to Christ moment”. Did God actually bring about that rain shower or was it just a coincidence? When I think about all He would have had to do in order to make that happen, one wonders why He would do it for a relatively trivial result. And what about all the people who might have been inconvenienced by rain shower? Which brings me to the question that is also the title of this blog: “Does God Answer Only Trivial Prayers?”
The Bible tells us that our God is a God of love (John 3:16; 1 John 4:8, etc.). He is more willing to give good gifts to His “children” than even the most loving earthly father is (Matt 7:7-11). To put it in other words, God enjoys showering His beloved ones with little gifts. Just to say “I love you.” And I believe He loves to do this in some of the most personal and practical ways imaginable. Perhaps you’ve just lost hope of finding a parking spot in time to meet a critical appointment. You send up a desperate prayer and suddenly a space appears. A worried mother wonders where her boy is and sends up a quick prayer. Just then the phone rings and she discovers all is well. Or you survive a harrowing experience and discover later that several friends felt impressed to pray for you at exactly that time. Millions of believers around the world have experiences just like this every day. It is reasonable to suggest from this that God is real and that He loves to make His presence known to those who are open to it.
But just now the skeptic in you is saying, Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that God manages the comings and goings in every parking lot around the world just in case one of His followers needs a spot at the last minute? If prayer is sometimes timed to remarkable events, what about all the times when people pray and “nothing” happens? What about all the real heartaches in this world that are met with silence? What about women who are raped and their cries for help go unheeded? What about men who contract terminal cancer in the prime of their life and feel as if their prayers go no higher than the ceiling? What about parents who pray for wayward children and go to their graves without a clear response from God?
These objections have serious weight. Believers often fail to realize how trivial their experience of God’s presence may seem to others who have suffered deeply in this life. Our glib expressions of how God is working in our everyday lives can be like a knife in the heart to someone experiencing the absence of God. We must never forget that the absence of God in everyday experience can seem the norm to most people. It is even something Jesus experienced when He was on the cross (see Matt 27:46 and parallels). In spite of the deep intimacy with God that characterized every day of Jesus’ ministry, in the 24 hours before His death Jesus experienced increasing darkness to the point where He could no longer see the Father’s reconciling face. The withdrawal of a sense of God’s approving presence caused Jesus the deepest anguish (see Desire of Ages, page 753). To experience the silence of God, then, is no indication that a person is actually forsaken by God or is an incorrigible sinner. But at times like that it can feel as if God answers only trivial prayers.
The story of Job may also be instructive here. Job’s experience makes it clear that there is no answer to most of the specific objections raised above, at least in this life. The tragedies in Job’s life were certainly unexplainable in earthly terms. They came from “nowhere” and made no sense to him. They had to do with complexities in the larger universe that Job never came to understand. The fascinating thing is that even when God came down in person to talk with Job about these issues (Job 38:1 – 41:34), He never mentions the real reason for Job’s suffering, a reason the reader of the story is allowed into (1:6-12; 2:1-7).
From the book of Job we discern that there is a cosmic conflict in the universe that affects all that we do and all that we experience. God’s actions are sometimes limited by larger considerations in that conflict, things we may never understand until eternity. Perhaps God’s intervention in Job’s situation would have upset the whole space-time continuum of the universe in a way even quantum physicists could not understand. In other words, God cannot explain what we cannot understand. What we do understand is that larger divine interventions can change things in a way that causes collateral damage at unspecified times in the future. Major actions of God have ripple effects in the lives of many people and their descendants over decades and even centuries. As those ripples play out in the course of history, they can have consequences that we cannot foresee but God in His infinite wisdom can. He may understand that the good we hope God will do in the present could cause even greater harm than His silence in answer to our prayers.
There is an interesting biblical illustration of this. It is the story of Hezekiah as told in Isaiah 36-39. Hezekiah was one of the most faithful kings in the history of Judah (2 Kings 18:5-6; 2 Chr 31:20-21). He was faithful to God in his personal life and devotions. He expanded the borders of the country. He restored the temple that had fallen into ruins. He restored the priests and Levites to their regular services. He restored the feast days. He removed the rival altars around Jerusalem. He ordered the “high places” of rival worship all around the country to be destroyed. He destroyed the idols and images that the people had come to rely on. His prayers protected Jerusalem when it was surrounding by overwhelming Assyrian forces. It would be understandable, therefore, for people to think that Hezekiah’s premature death would be a tragic thing for the nation and a mistake for God to allow. I can almost see the ancient bloggers and pundits questioning God’s character in relation to this development. But it was not to be.
When the time came for Hezekiah to die, he pleaded bitterly with God on the grounds of his lifelong faithfulness (Isa 38:1-3). If anyone ever were deserving of a positive answer to prayer, it would be Hezekiah. And God came through for him in stunning fashion. God not only granted him an extension of fifteen years of life (38:5), he provided assurance that this would happen through a major astronomical token (38:7-8– how Hezekiah came to have this experience is not explained). Everyone seemed to have gotten what they wanted from God. Yet during those extra years two things happened that undid all the good that Hezekiah had done during his lifetime; the visit of the Babylonian envoys (39:1-8) and the birth of his son, who became the evil king Manasseh (2 Kings 21:1-9). In the context of the cosmic conflict between God and Satan major interventions in people’s lives are very complicated. The ramifications are usually way beyond our understanding.
Having said this, I still want to argue that a believer’s experience in a parking lot is not necessarily imaginary. I cannot explain the timing and the effort involved in God’s actions. But I do believe that God would answer every prayer in a positive manner if pleasing us were the only consideration. If finding someone a parking space or timing a phone call will not upset the space-time continuum of the universe, why wouldn’t a loving God intervene? If a woman makes a full commitment to Jesus just as a rain shower happens to be passing, why wouldn’t God arrange that if the stakes were low enough? I guess what I am saying is that the lower the ultimate stakes, the lower the potential consequences of any particular divine intervention, the more likely that a loving God can use the circumstances of life as a token of his love. We serve a God who delights to please His children whenever so doing would not cause harm to anyone.
Having said that, those of us who have experienced this kind of intimacy from God need to be careful when and how we share such experiences with others. Our well-intentioned testimony can do harm even when God’s gift did not. While we should rightly acknowledge the small tokens of God’s favor in our lives and rejoice over them in the right circumstances, we need to also be aware of how often our testimonies cause pain.