Episode 3
· 44:43
Hello everyone. I just want to thank you for joining us for, what is this, episode three of Reconstructing, and today we're going to take a deep dive into the topic of fundamentalism and how that played a pivotal influence in Adventism and how that would have some pretty long reaching consequences, for our denomination. So let's just dive right in. So what is fundamentalism? So fundamentalism is a collection of beliefs that can be categorized as inerrancy.
Orlando:So believing in that the bible is totally inerrant, believing in the virgin birth, believing in substitutionary atonement, believing in the bodily resurrection of Christ, and the authenticity of miracles recorded in the bible. Now this list of beliefs that I'm referring to comes from a collection of pamphlets known as the fundamentals, A Testimony to the Truth. And so these were published between 1910 to 1915 by the Testimony Publishing Company of Chicago. Now, it's not to say that people before this time didn't believe in these ideas because there are plenty of Christians who believed in this list. It's just that there were certain events in world history occurring at the time, that were kind of shaking people's beliefs.
Orlando:You had ideas such as modernism, which is a whole philosophy that we're not gonna get into today. Liberal theology was also another concept that was scaring some of the more conservative Christians. Fundamentalism and the tenets of fundamentalism were a reaction against some of these movements that were occurring, in Christianity. And I think it's also important to highlight that when these pamphlets were being published, that there were certain Adventists that really liked the idea of Christianity kind of going back to the basics, right? Like really like doubling down on the fundamentals, for lack of better words.
Orlando:However, the Christian world at large didn't really have this warm reception of Adventism. So it was, as Michael Campbell put it, a a one-sided love affair. Well, I think there was definitely a mixed reaction, especially considering historic Adventism, which really was against the idea of having this, you know, hard set, you know, list of beliefs. Right? You would have the pioneers saying the Bible is our only creed.
Orlando:And you'll still hear that today within Adventism. If you were to ask, some high ranking, clergy, they would say, yeah, the Bible is our only creed. And of course, you know, that begs the question, okay, well, where exactly does the fundamental beliefs, where do they fit in that? Like, are they a creed? So I think those are important questions that we're not necessarily going to get into now, but just something to to think about.
Orlando:So I guess this kind of takes us into the 1919 Bible Conference. There were a few different issues being discussed at this Adventist Bible Conference. And one of the issues was that of inspiration, namely inspiration of Ellen White. And the question was, how do we view the writings of Ellen White? Are they authoritative?
Nick:It wasn't like the party line was Mainline Adventists were all falling in line with this, and then there was nobody opposing this publicly. Right? Even, you know, we've seen the Adventist Church archives and we've seen the minutes from these general conference sessions, probably I remember one in like 2015 and talking about Ellen White and her writings. So it's encouraging to me to hear you say that way back in over a century ago now, in 1919, the church was grappling with this, trying to determine the nature of Ellen White's writings and their relationship to Ellen White.
Orlando:And I think it's even more encouraging to see the rank of the officials who were actually advocating for a more balanced view. AG Daniels, for example, he was the general conference president, and he was advocating for a balanced view regarding, her writings. And so in regard to if Ellen White's writings were authoritative, like an authoritative source for interpreting scripture, he said that the Bible explains itself and must be understood through itself without resorting to the testimonies to prove it.
Nick:Man, what a guy. Because that's that could not have been a better description of sola scriptura. You know, like, the Bible must be understood through itself. It interprets itself. It should not be interpreted, or we should not need the testimonies in order to interpret scripture.
Nick:I really appreciated the fact that even as high as the general conference president, these tenants, these fundamental, if you will, tenants of Protestantism were still ringing true back then, right? There was, still at least heard people advocating for true Protestantism.
Orlando:And I think it's also important to note that in this same conversation that he was having, he acknowledged that Ellen White's writings had been helpful in him, you know, elucidating scripture. So he wasn't saying, oh, you know, let's throw her away. But he was just rightly assessing what is more important. Like, how are we to truly understand scripture? And is there any sort of, like, outside influence that ought to govern how we understand scripture in the first place.
Orlando:I did wanna highlight an another church administrator that was also at the bible conference. So, this this administrator's name was R.A. Underwood, and he noted that there were two problematic ways of viewing Ellen White's writings at the time. And so he said that there were those who placed the testimonies to be just the same as the bible. So that's the first view. And then the other view that he mentioned was that some had placed Ellen White's writings as a great telescope which magnified the word of God.
Orlando:And this was understood to mean that to have exalted Ellen White's writings above the Bible. And so I think it's encouraging to see not just A. G. Daniels, you know, general conference president, but another church administrator acknowledging these problematic ways of understanding the scope of Ellen White's writings. And bear in mind, the individuals who had more of a reasonable approach to understanding Ellen White, these were older individuals.
Orlando:These were people who had been around Ellen White, like they had hung out with her. They were familiar with the editorial process of her writings. And so in the 1919 bible conference, the individuals who believed in the verbal inspiration of Ellen White as well as the bible, these were younger people, people who were not personally acquainted with Ellen White. They were only acquainted with her via her writings.
Nick:Man, that's super important context. Like, they literally have firsthand experience with Ellen White. It's not like the the her legend and her canonization had years past her lifetime or decades past her lifetime, a century past her lifetime. You know what I mean? To solidify and become this, you know, living, breathing thing that it is today.
Nick:But you're talking about people who knew her, who spoke with her, who heard her speak, who are saying, are we sure about this, guys? Are we sure that this is kind of the understanding that we wanna have of her writings? And I think it's interesting to note that other other things are going on in 1919, that were really important as far as fundamentalism is concerned. But to give you some context as to why we're talking about 1919 is because we were both born after 1980. 1980 is a very important year, which we'll talk about in a second.
Nick:But because we were both born after 1980, our only experience in the Seventh day Adventist Church is post fundamental beliefs. Right? So after the church had an official worldwide church statement on these are the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh day Adventist church. Now those beliefs have been officially published, and I have the book right here, Seventh day Adventist believe. So I picked this guy up off of Amazon.
Nick:I'm sure you could just go to the Seventh day Adventist website and find the fundamental beliefs there. The reason why I got this is this more of like an expository work. It's not just like a list of here are our doctrines, right, or here are the fundamental beliefs, but it's like pages, like full blown chapters on really explaining what each fundamental belief is. So this book that I have right here was published by the Review and Herald. So it's the official Seventh day Adventist Church's Publishing Association.
Nick:And it was this most recent version was in 2018, the third edition. So this is pretty recent stuff that I have here. But when Orlando and I were first coming into the Seventh day Adventist Church since we were born in the nineties after and after all of this took place, we don't have a pre fundamental belief understanding of the Seventh day Adventist Church. This is our only context. So when we were prepping for this podcast, for this episode, we were like, okay, where did where did this whole thing start?
Nick:Because the the most important thing that we wanted to highlight today is the eighteenth fundamental belief of the Seventh day Adventist Church. And I'm gonna read a little quote here, chapter 18 or the eighteenth fundamental belief. It's the fundamental belief on the gift of prophecy. So what the official wording of that of the fundamental belief reads is, The Scriptures testify that one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is prophecy. But then it goes on to say, this gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church, and we believe that it was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G. White.
Nick:Her writings speak with prophetic authority and provide comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction to the church. They also make clear that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested. Was her name always on the fundamental beliefs that the Seventh day Adventist Church at some point decided that it was a good idea to say it's a fundamental belief of the Adventist church to believe that Ellen White spoke with prophetic authority or did that have a birth. Right?
Nick:So Orlando mentioned Michael Campbell. We we read a couple of his books, great books. 1919 is one that he referenced right here I have 1922, The Rise of Adventist Fundamentalism, and we'll put in the show notes too. But in the appendix of the book, he's referencing this progression of fundamental belief statements that the Seventh day Adventist Church came up with. And in 1919, they came up with a list of 27 fundamental beliefs, or actually back in 1919, just 20.
Nick:20 fundamental beliefs. And they titled this document A Sure Foundation. This was in August 1919. So just four months later, in December year, they came out with like a second statement called a statement of belief. So it was evolving a little bit instead of 20 fundamental beliefs, the second one had 22.
Nick:They expanded on it a little bit. Ellen White had already passed away at this point, and there's no mention of Ellen G. White in this list of fundamental beliefs. But then in 1920, so a couple months later, this is like the third thing they published. They published The Fundamentals of Christian Faith by F. M. Wilcox.
Nick:And then the last thing they published before 1980, which was like eleven years later in 1931, they published this pamphlet called the in the yearbook of the Seventh day Adventist denomination. And there's a section that it states all of our fundamental beliefs. And we'll put that in the show notes so that you can see the source material, the actual 1931 document.
Nick:So in 1980, and this is what we want to focus on, a lot was going on in the Adventist Church in 1980, but there was a general conference session that year. And that year is when the first official, official Seventh day Adventist fundamental beliefs list was compiled. It also happens to be the first time, as far as I know, where Ellen G. White's name appeared in the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh day Adventist church.
Orlando:We could highlight something in regard to that 1931 statement published by F. M. Wilcox. So yeah, that was a list that had been prompted by ministers out in Africa wanting to have just like a an authoritative list of what is it that the church actually believes. And F. M. Wilcox crafted up the statement.
Orlando:He shared it with another individual. And that statement became the de facto list of fundamental beliefs up until 1978 when Neil Wilson and some other individuals decided that this statement was not sufficient to adequately describe the beliefs of the Seventh day Adventist Church.
Nick:A lot was going on in the 1980s besides Ted or besides Neil Wilson saying that the church needed this official statement. Right? What other things that were going on in the church is in the 1980s, a Seventh day Adventist pastor by the name of Walter Rea. He was doing a lot of research on how Ellen White's books were written or compiled and edited. There was a lot of research done, and eventually it led to him publishing a book on his research on his like his findings were published in a book called The White Lie by Walter Rae.
Nick:I strongly recommend that you read this, but there's a lot of resources and things that he quoted in this book as to where he got his findings from. So around this time, Rae approached the Seventh day Adventist Church and said, hey, I found a bunch of stuff saying that Ellen White plagiarized a very large amount of her books, that some things that she claimed even she saw in vision or were given to her by God looked sneakily suspicious and that they looked very familiar to other things that were written by her contemporaries in the 1800s. Like one of them was Paradise Lost that was written in the 1800s that she could have had access to. So that's one thing that was happening is Walter Rae, doing a lot of research on to Ellen White in her writings. Then Desmond Ford, who was another Seventh day Adventist pastor, was also leading to some controversy in the church at this time.
Nick:And Orlando, do you want to tell us a little bit about Desmond Ford?
Orlando:Yep, the Desmond Ford crisis that oh, man, I don't even know where to begin. There are a lot of moving parts to that. But suffice it to say, Desmond Ford had some questions regarding the traditional interpretation of the 2300 day prophecy. And he had come to a conclusion that the way that the Adventist church had interpreted that prophecy was incorrect. Right?
Orlando:And there were some other things too, things regarding Ellen White, but suffice it to say, he was going against Seventh day Adventist orthodoxy in regard to prophetic interpretation. And so there was a series of meetings held at, was it Glacier View? And they discussed his findings, and there were some that kind of agreed with him, but many disagreed. But all were under the assumption that the meetings at Glacier View were not a trial of Desmond Ford's beliefs, but rather an exploration of his beliefs. But they ended up being a trial, and, it was stated that, you know, Desmond Ford was incorrect, and that eventually led to Desmond Ford being fired by the Seventh day Adventist Church.
Nick:Yeah. That's a good synopsis. And then besides Walter Rea besides Desmond Ford, there was a doctor Davenport scandal also happening in the seventies and eighties. So Doctor. Davenport, as far as I know, was a real estate guy that was buying up a bunch of like post offices among other things.
Nick:And he had gotten a bunch of the Adventist Church leadership to invest in his real estate options because, you know, akin to investing in the stock market and purchasing stocks and bonds, can invest in real estate. And this was something that a bunch of the Adventist church members and leaders started doing. They started investing with Dr. Davenport. And why this was a huge scandal is because something to the tune of 21,000,000 US dollars had been lost in Seventh day Adventist members money.
Nick:And there was a document that was leaked. And Walter Rea talks about this in his book, there's a document that was leaked that showed who was donating to Doctor. Davenport kind of how much money they had invested with him. And some of the people that were on that list that had invested in this, basically, this Ponzi scheme, they were in the president's executive advisory committee, the committee that overs oversaw things like the Walter Rae study when they were looking into what he had said, and they basically did the same thing and kicked him out of the church. Right?
Nick:So there was a whole lot of things going on in the 1980s. So what Orlando and I said was, we we really need to figure out a way to find out what the heck was going on in the 1980s because neither one of us was alive in the 1980s. And the pieces that we can start putting together look pretty serious. So we're like, man, we really we have to dig around and find some sources do the best we can to find what the heck was going on. So what we had done this was like, man, probably like two years ago, when we first started this search was, we had found that the Seventh day Adventist Church posted their archives or their meeting minutes online.
Nick:I'm going to share the actual website to our into our show notes there so that you can see it. So we found the Office of Archive Statistics and Research for the Seventh day Adventist Church. And apparently they've been posting their meeting minutes from like forever. Like if you go to general conference session, minutes and transcripts, it goes all the way back to, like, there's this huge lump sum of twenty years from 1863. That was the first year that the Seventh day Adventist Church became a denomination, like I mentioned earlier.
Nick:So Orlando and I, when we first saw this, like, two years ago, we were like, wow, we have we've hit the mother lode. We have stumbled upon the singularity here. And then we started going through everything, command find, using using our computer technology of the day to find all of the mentors of Ellen White throughout like a hundred years of church minutes. And we dug through all of this. So we revisited this because we wanted to see specifically what happened in 1980.
Nick:But what do you see? Or should I say, what do you not see when you start looking at these categories? You see General Conference session minutes 1863 to 1888, 1818 1903 1905 2000. So there is a seventy five year gap in the archives. And of course, the really interesting year 1980 happens to be a part of that seventy five year gap.
Nick:So at this point, we're like, man, where are those minutes? Because how these used to look like, like I said, every five years, the Seventh day Adventist World Church meets and they vote on things. And they have like business meetings, policy changes, etc. So one of the things this is what they look like just to show you real quick. You can see actual transcripts, meaning minutes of what the people were saying at these sessions.
Nick:So we're like, man, how do we get our hold of the transcripts from 1980? And they're nowhere to be found. So then we then ran into this periodical section. And they have like this huge database of all of the Adventist periodicals from like forever ago. And we knew that there was something in the Adventist review, but we couldn't even find it here.
Nick:So after Googling it, we realized that the missing minutes, the last years of archival data was published. They were published in the Adventist Review. And when these general conference sessions would happen, the Adventist Review, which is an Adventist periodical Adventist magazine, would put together these general conference bulletins where they would publish basically what happened that day at the general conference. So the Adventist Review put out a series of bulletins, specifically general conference bulletin number five, six, seven, eight, in 1980 that cover what was going on in the 1980 General Conference, especially in regards to the fundamental beliefs and how they added Ellen White's name to it. So at this point is when it gets real interesting.
Nick:So I'm gonna share all of those in the show notes so that you can go straight to the source material and see the Adventist review periodicals from that time.
Orlando:Yeah. So let's dive into this story as to how this desire for a new or revamped statement of beliefs came to be. So in 1978, the General Conference appointed an ad hoc committee referred to as Adventist Church Manual Revision: Fundamental Beliefs. And the members of this ad hoc committee were all located at the General Conference headquarters in Washington, DC, with W. Duncan Eva, who was the General Conference Vice President as the Chairman.
Orlando:Right, so maybe a few months later, then we have Duncan Eva who distributed the committee's preliminary draft of the fundamental beliefs to general conference officers, division presidents, and union presidents in North America. And so in a letter that Eva wrote, he said that there were formal and substantive changes in the 1931 statement. And he also said that before a new statement would be submitted to the full church manual committee, it would be presented to certain professors at the seminary whom they would meet with later that year. So shortly after that, you have the Andrews president at the time, Joseph Smoot, who informed nine of the professors at the Seventh day Adventist Seminary that they would be a part of this special meeting where they would discuss the the components of these, you know, newly newly adjusted fundamental beliefs. Now I think it's interesting that when these individuals were given these documents, that they were put in folders or in envelopes or stated confidential and intended for those to whom it was sent.
Orlando:It was not to be copied or duplicated, in any way. And I think that's something pretty interesting to note.
Nick:And honestly, I don't really know what I was expecting as to like what the process of making this happen was, but I certainly was not expecting a committee of just like a handful of people drafting like the entire statement themselves and including the secretary of the White Estate, the guy in charge of the White Estate being one of them, and then just distributing the draft to leaders in the North American division. I thought I was under the impression that it would be more like once we actually got to the 1980 General Conference session itself, that we could discuss this. And there was some more discussion, but it was just kind of surprising to me when I first saw this and saw that it was like a committee of a handful of people in DC that cranked out this thing and started disseminating the documents, right?
Orlando:And I know that the Adventist church likes to pride itself as being a worldwide denomination, right? That's one of the things that Adventists really pride themselves in. You know, we're all about diversity. And I think it's interesting that the main people who were a part of the compilation and perhaps the the subcommittees who were able to give their opinions were all based in North America.
Nick:Yeah. So when we first read this, we originally stumbled upon this Spectrum Magazine article that Orlando was referencing just now. And we're like, okay, this sounds pretty crazy. Can we find the meeting minutes from the actual 1980 conference session so that we could try to get closer to the source material versus seeing something that someone else was commenting on that actual source material. So we found the Adventist Review General Conference bulletin number eight, where they talked about the actual fundamental beliefs session where they were discussing it when they were going to go vote on it.
Nick:And like Orlando said, after they wrote this out, and they were disseminating it to the North American offices in this confidential packet, they started sending the draft of the fundamental beliefs to delegates all over the world in the Adventist World Church in order to have them review the fundamental belief statement, and just be prepared to discuss it at the general conference session. They weren't expecting a bunch of delegates from all over the world to show up there and see it for the first time, but they kind of wanted to prepare them. And that makes sense to me, you know, if you're gonna vote on something, you want to have some sort of understanding of what we're talking about, or we're going to discuss, so that people that people can prepare for it and prepare statements in response to this draft. What was really interesting that happened in 1980 is found in the meeting minutes for the 1980 session. And I'm going to share this on my screen here so that those watching it on YouTube can see the actual source material.
Nick:But then you can also go to the show notes to see it yourself. But what I thought was really interesting is after they disseminated all of the paperwork, they arrived in 1980. They were ready to start discussing this. So this section here, just like I showed you in the more modern versions, you have each each speaker and the in the transcript of what they were saying.
Nick:So N.R. Dower here was saying that he sat on the church manual committee through the years that he has been with the ministerial association, and he knows something of the tremendous burdens that have been placed upon that committee. The great desire is to express clearly and without any softening of positions the fundamental teachings of the church. So he's basically introducing this concept to the 1980 General Conference saying, Hey, this was kind of the purpose of us drafting this statement. The purpose was so that we can express clearly the beliefs and the teachings of the SDA church.
Nick:And in response to what was written, he says that they have come up with some very excellent statements that I wholeheartedly endorse in the interest of making sure this statement is clear to our people, as well as to the people of the world. And then he goes on to say, I would like to urge that we incorporate in this statement some thoughts expressed by the servant of the Lord. Now here's where it gets juicy. So these are some of the delegates speaking, some of the people that have voting power to vote on whether or not the statement should be adopted by the world church, they could speak and redact some things or revise some things. So this is one of the first delegates.
Nick:And this is what he says. In The Netherlands, we studied and discussed those fundamental beliefs many hours. So this is them commenting in response to the document they're about to vote on. And this is the kicker here. Is this the same text we received there?
Nick:It is very difficult for me to understand what is going on now because there appears to be many differences. I don't recognize the context and contents of certain theological terms in this manuscript. So to summarize, after this document was drafted, sent to the whole world church delegates, they had time to prepare, then they all show up to the general conference session. They look at it and they're like, wait a minute. This is not the same document that you sent us.
Nick:The wording in this fundamental belief statement that we're about to vote on, that we're about to discuss as a world church, as delegates from representatives from the world church, this is not what you showed us. This is not what we prepared. This is not what we studied. The responses that we brought here are not in response to this document. He literally said, is this even the same text we received?
Nick:What am I even looking at here? So let's just process this for a second. Orlando, when when you first came across this, what was your reaction? Like, what do you think about all this?
Orlando:Yeah. I was definitely shook. And, you know, the question on my mind was why? Why were the delegates given a certain version of the fundamental beliefs? And why was there a very different one presented at the general conference session of nineteen eighty?
Orlando:Because the text was sent out six weeks before, the session, if I'm not mistaken. And so why the change?
Nick:Yeah. Then the Spectrum Magazine article that we were quoting said that those who had been involved in formulating the earlier draft, they're looking at this new version, and they said that it was quote, disastrous in form, if not content. Gone was the balance, the beauty and the sensitivity to words. Clumsy rhetoric prevailed. By the time that they got this new document, it says that three of the sections had been completely rewritten, and one of them was more than twice its original length.
Nick:So that delegate wasn't kidding when he said, what am I looking at here? Because this thing was very different than the original version. And according to this article here, and this is where I wish that I had the original version of that document that was sent to the delegates. But according to the article here, there were some things that were changed. The Lord's Supper was called this blessed ordinance instead of this experience of community.
Nick:And here's the kicker. Added were phrases saying that the writings of Ellen White are a continuing source of truth. So these delegates had the rug pulled from under them because they were prepared for something completely different. They had studied a different statement of fundamental beliefs. Now they're giving a new text that it's a hot mess.
Nick:It's been changed. It's some parts are twice its length. Some parts are completely rewritten. And Ellen White's name appears here in the new version. And all along, I'm thinking, man, this must have been something that the whole church, you know, voted to add.
Nick:But this basically was put on their laps, and they're like, do you vote to adopt this yes or no kind of a deal. Right? And if we go back to that bulletin where it tells us what was going on, let me share that again. Because right after the delegate said, what the heck am I looking at here? The next person to speak was Neil Wilson, the president, then president of the world church, the father of the current president of the world church.
Nick:And he says, I realize that this is a hazard of such an undertaking. Some of these statements will not look the same after our discussions here either. In other words, don't worry that this is a hot freaking mess and a bunch of it was changed and a bunch of things were added and that you're not even prepared to talk about the version of it that you see today. Because I'm sure that once we're done discussing, it's not gonna be the same in form anyways. It's like, wow, Neil, like, is that supposed to be a satisfactory rebuttal to somebody saying, this is not even what we prepared for?
Nick:Like, was that supposed to be like, oh, that's the last word from the president. Let's go on and vote. And then we saw that Ted Wilson, the current president of the Seventh day Adventist Church, was one of the delegates at the conference, at the general conference in 1980. In other words, the father of the current president, who was the then president, brought this up. They wanted to revise the fundamental beliefs.
Nick:And then one of the people that had the power to vote on this was his son, Ted Wilson, who was then 30 years old at the time, who is now the president of the Seventh day Adventist World Church.
Orlando:Oh, it's levels of irony. That's for sure. And I just wonder, like, where between the time that the document that was sent to the delegates, between the time that they were discussing it, Who conducted the changes? Like, who was responsible? And maybe that's something we can look into a little bit further, but who changed it?
Orlando:And the better question is, why? Like, one could assert, you know, if we put our put our tinfoil hats on, that there's a conspiracy afoot. I just think it's so fascinating that there appears to be a group of individuals in the general conference who wanted to insert Ellen White's name into our fundamental beliefs. And for me, I find that to be particularly concerning, especially in light of the previous lists of fundamental beliefs for the Adventist church. It, You know, like we've reviewed before, some of them would reference the gift of prophecy.
Orlando:Other times it would refer to just spiritual gifts. But not once was Ellen White's name mentioned. And it's not that I have a problem with Ellen White. It's that I have a problem with the general conference or particularly members of the general conference who have an agenda and who want to include her name in the fundamental beliefs. I mean, Nick, what do you think the implications are of something like that?
Nick:Yeah. The implications, which is what we're gonna talk about in the next episode, which is the final episode on this series on Ellen White, is it then leaves us to grapple with what should our relationship be with the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh day Adventist Church. That's a you know, it's as simple as that. Do I look at this book? And do I say, this is a spark notes, cliff notes, whatever you want to call it descriptive text, merely summarizing what we believe to non Adventists who are researching the denomination or wanting to learn about Adventism for the first time?
Nick:Or is this an edict, a test of fellowship that says in order to be a Seventh day Adventist, we must believe these things. It doesn't help that we do have extremists in the church that would hold to these as being an authoritative test of fellowship. Right? And I think that those are the implications. But the final thing that I was gonna talk to you about, because it's in relation to what you just said, was after all this was done, after the damage was done and they changed this, they made an official statement of fundamental beliefs, the same session in 1980, or maybe I shouldn't say the same session, but the same general conference in 1980.
Nick:They also voted to add something to the church manual. And here is what they added to the church manual. This subheading here safeguarding unity of the church. It's almost like somebody thought, what we just added and we pulled the rug from under the delegates and surprised everybody, people might have a problem with this. People might not like this very much.
Nick:So how do we put in a little loophole here to to make sure that we don't get opposition? And it says here safeguarding unity of the church, church manual edition. So they voted to add the following to the church manual. Christians should make every effort to avoid tendencies that would divide them and bring dishonor to their cause. It is the purpose of God that his children shall blend in unity.
Nick:Do they not expect to live together in the same heaven? Those who refuse to work in harmony greatly dishonor God. And that's from Auntie Ellen and Ellen G. White, then the church should discourage every action that would threaten harmony among its members and should consistently encourage unity. So this was this edition was voted literally the same general conference that the fundamental beliefs were created to which I ask, are we encouraging unity?
Nick:Or are we encouraging compliance? Are we saying we should not fight one another because it looks bad to Christ, right? Or is the Seventh day Adventist church leadership in the 80s establishing the mechanisms of authority, right? Are they establishing the mechanisms of power by which they can continuously cling on to that power. And when you combine the fact that they added Ellen White to the fundamental beliefs, they added this to the church manual saying we should consistently encourage unity.
Nick:And then in 1946, I believe, like I said, they had said the only way to change anything is in a church conference session every five years where members from all over the world get to vote. They essentially built this system that now makes it impossible to remove Ellen White's name from the fundamental beliefs because the only way to do it is in a world church session every five years. People all over the world are voting for it. Oh, and by the way, how do we remove something that we say we believe in fundamentally? And how do we speak out against it when we should consistently encourage unity?
Nick:And I think that's really the crux of it all. And that's really what we want to talk about in our final episode of this series. So in the last episode, we're going to cover Ellen White versus Sola Scriptura. Are the fundamental beliefs an edict or a summary? How do we relate to all this?
Nick:Is the Seventh Day Adventist Church Protestant or not?
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