What Is It to Be a Seventh-day Adventist?
By George I. Butler
WE are living in an age when things religious are getting sadly mixed, and spiritual issues are very poorly defined. Within a lifetime, great changes have occurred. Persons of a mature age can recall the time when to be accepted as a member of the Presbyterian Church it would be necessary personally to subscribe to all the doctrines of the creed. One must believe the Calvinistic theology as a whole. To be a Baptist, close-communion was insisted upon, and immersion was especially important. So of other churches. But we have reached an age when doctrines are practically relegated to the rear. If a man is prominent, and is received in the highly respected social circle, what he believes or does not believe is not considered of great importance. The custom is common for members of one church, if moving to another place, to become members of a different denomination with a very different creed, and not much is said about particular beliefs if the candidate is a respectable citizen. Free and open communion is now generally adhered to. Little is made of doctrine. The denominational standard is lowered, and if one's life is above reproach, and if he is liberal in helping with his means, he is regarded as a very desirable candidate. What does this change signify?—It means that doctrine is considered of small importance. Is it really immaterial what we believe? Is it a matter of no importance whether we believe what the Bible teaches or not, if we are only good citizens, and lead respectable lives in the community? The practice which leads to such conclusions virtually means that the Bible is no standard of authority after all. The true believer takes the Bible as his book of authority, to be his guide in all matters pertaining to his eternal welfare. While the tendency of fellowshipping anything if only one is a kind, civil man, largely regardless of his belief, is proving to be very popular, a denomination is making strong headway, and rapidly advancing in strength and numbers, which makes doctrine very important. Seventh-day Adventists, whose advancement has been an increase of one hundred per cent every ten years, since the beginning of their work, doubling up each decade for some fifty or sixty years, attaches great importance to what one believes. Why?—Because what the Bible teaches is important. The Bible is God's message to mankind. It teaches what God regards as essential to salvation. Seventh-day Adventists recognize this fact. While they wish to be kind, generous, and helpful to all, whether believers or unbelievers, they can not associate in fellowship with those who transgress or disbelieve the great truths which God has taught in his Word. They expect to be judged by that Word in the last day. Actions speak louder than words. To associate in Christian fellowship and communion with those who disbelieve and disobey the important truths of the Word of God would justly be considered as saying by our actions that we consider those truths as matters of no importance. More than this, it would say that the very truths which have made us a peculiar people were immaterial. Why, then, should we go forth and proclaim them at so much cost of labor and sacrifice? When we get ready to imitate the course taken by other denominations, our message is gone, and our reason for existing as a denomination is virtually set aside as of no importance. Could we accept those who had no faith in the nearness of Christ's second advent?—Not unless we said in substance that there was no good reason why we preached that doctrine, and that it was not essential. Could we accept as members those who habitually break the8Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and thus trample on the law of God?—Not unless we practically ignore our allegiance to that law. Could we receive into our membership those who believe in the immortality of the soul and the whole brood of false doctrines growing out of that great root of error?—Certainly not. Could we affiliate in full fellowship with those who neglect, oppose, and treat with hatred and contempt those agencies which have been most potent, under God, in leading, guiding, and bringing this great movement up to its present standing of success?—To do so would be to undermine, confuse, disintegrate, and wreck this work of some sixty years' standing, which we firmly believe is the final message of mercy to a perishing world. We might present similar results concerning the rejection of various other truths embraced in what we call the system of present truth, now going to the world under the labors of Seventh-day Adventists. God has given us a glorious message to proclaim in the last days of time. In its acceptance or rejection is involved the salvation or the ruin of the souls of men. If this is not a God-given message, we are the most deluded people on earth. If it is, this is the grandest and most important movement on earth to-day. Genuine Seventh-day Adventists have no doubts of the truthfulness of this latter statement. In the proclamation of this truth our souls are enlisted, our lives, our property, our all; we are willing to risk everything on this issue. Because of this, many think us bigoted, narrow, sectarian. In the same sense, Noah, Moses, John the Baptist, and Christ himself were narrow. “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life,” and “wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction.” To be a genuine Seventh-day Adventist is to believe the doctrines held and practised by this people.