Thursday, March 10, 2016
Could it be wrong to proclaim Jesus. All?
I am a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, retired. And I sometimes have a love/hate connection with my church. No, I was not raised in the church. I was raised Lutheran, then I became a charismatic, Jesus freak in the 60s and 70s. In the mid-70s I joined the Adventist church and later became a pastor. But I have found it increasingly difficult to understand the rhetoric and the position that many Adventist take. Maybe that’s because I was a Jesus freak for quite a while and maybe still am.
For the last three years I have attended the One Project. This exciting, spiritually emphasizing, life enhancing experience happens for a weekend in early February. Last one I attended over 1000 people came. At the One Project is organized by Adventist pastor’s and it is a place where Jesus is emphasized, explained, lifted up, taught how to follow, given as an example, shown to be vital to a Christian spiritual life. And yet, many in the Adventist church criticize it as being New Age, immoral, heretical, and dangerous.
In order to appreciate this gathering one must be a gospel oriented, Christian Adventist. Unfortunately many Adventists are not gospel oriented. They appear to be last day events oriented, end of the world coming soon oriented, or Revelation 14 oriented. But they seem to forget that Revelation 14:6 talks about an Everlasting Gospel coming to the world. In fact, that’s the first thing that is spoken by the Angels. How can you be an Adventist (Adventist means coming of Christ) and not be a gospel oriented person?
Charles Scriven, in the fall issue, 2015 of “Spectrum” mentions that the Adventist Society for religious studies, when recommending to the General Conference about a new study on the doctrine of inspiration, rejected the idea that the centrality of Jesus in the Bible should be stated as important to the process of studying inspiration. If we understand that the Bible is God’s love letter to us and Jesus Christ is the one whom God has uses to show and demonstrate that love, wouldn’t it be important to recognize Scripture in the light of Christology? Apparently it was too controversial to include in the statement.
For me, I am thankful for the One Project. I have found it an experience of spiritual refreshment. I intend to continue encouraging people to put Jesus first in their lives every opportunity, pulpit or pen I am given. If we lose the centrality of Jesus in the Bible and in our lives we have lost something that is a focal point of the history of this world and our very destiny.
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