September - October 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel

The Death of Us All

by Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi

At the close of the 1900s, we face a starkly different future than Sabbatarians did at the beginning of the 1900s. Then, Seventh Day Baptists were much more numerous and influential in the US than they are today. Abram H. Lewis, the great Sabbatarian Baptist writer of the 19th Century, continued to write great Sabbatarian books up to his death in 1908. Ellen G. White, after some years in Australia raising up Sabbath-keepers down under, continued as spiritual leader of Seventh-day Adventists until her death in 1915. Adventists generally were optimistic in the year 1900. Their numbers were to explode during the 20th Century. A. N. Dugger was to lead a COG7 (Church of God- Seventh Day) surge in the 1920s. And, Sacred Name Sabbatarians were to see the birth of the Sacred Name Movement in the 1930s, led by Clarence O. Dodd. Optimism and positive faith in the future was the general attitude of Sabbath-keepers at the dawn of the 20th Century. Armed with the Sabbath and other Bible Truths, our spiritual ancestors were confident that Sabbath-keeping had a positive and growing future.

Now, at the close of the 20th Century and the beginning of the third millennium, honest Sabbatarians are worried and pessimistic for our future. Samuele Bacchiocchi's 1998 book, The Sabbath Under Crossfire, was written to fight back against a blitzkrieg attack on the validity of the Sabbath, coming from former Sabbath-keepers such as Ratzlaff, Tkach, and others. What a contrast to Spiritual Sabbathism, published in 1910, a couple years after Lewis' death. (Both books are available from the Bible Sabbath Association.) A relevant analysis is given by Bacchiocchi in Issue No. 22 of his "End Time Issues" Internet Newsletter. The full text is on the BSA website, www.bible-sabbath.org. (E-mail Dr. Bacchiocchi at SBacchio-cchi@csi.com. to join his mailing list.) We will here abbreviate his important points.

The Crisis Of Faith In Western Europe

The crisis of faith in Western European Protestant countries indicates that if Christ were to come back today He would find very little faith, especially in those countries that were the heartland of the Reformation, like Switzerland and Germany. If the Reformers, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, were to rise from their grave, they would be shocked to see that the reformatory movement and spiritual revival they began at great personal sacrifice, has long ended. Protestant cathedrals are silent monuments to a faith that has largely died. The spiritual descendents of the Reformers no longer PROTEST against theological heresies and moral abuses. Instead, they themselves reject today the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith and embrace the anti-Christian values and worldview of humanism, secularism, materialism, and agnosticism.

The principle of SOLA SCRIPTURA (only Scripture) has long been replaced in Protestant countries by that of SOLA CULTURA (only culture). The Biblical belief in God, has been substituted by the humanistic belief in oneself and in the human ability to construct a better tomorrow without the need of divine intervention. For most people living today in the Protestant European countries, God is dead, or if alive, He is irrelevant to their lives.

On my recent trip to Europe, I was briefed on the tragic religious situation by two SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) leaders of the German-Swiss Conference. They told of the prevailing secularistic, humanistic, and atheistic mentality of the people. The vast majority of Swiss have no interest in the Christian faith, because for them Christianity is a thing of the past.

During three interviews with the media, it became immediately evident that the concern of the brethren was justified. The two journalists and the radio-speaker who interviewed me, informed me that there is no interest for religion in their society. Contrary to America where all sorts of religious programs are aired both on radio and TV, especially on a Sunday morning, in Switzerland there are no religious evangelistic programs on radio or TV. The reason is that people are no longer interested in religion. Even the weekend edition of their newspapers, have no religion section-a feature so common in American newspapers. What is true for Switzerland is also true for Germany and for the Protestant countries of Northern Europe.

While most Catholics in Western Europe (including Switzerland and Germany) still hold to a superstitious form of religion, (though they may go to church only when they are hatched, matched, and dispatched), most Protestants have largely abandoned all forms of religion. They have adopted instead a secularistic, humanistic, and materialistic life-style, which leaves God completely out of the picture. The apostasy from the Christian faith is more evident in countries or sections, with a Protestant heritage, than in those with a Catholic culture.

Seventh-Day Adventists in Europe

On the positive side, I found that our members are eager to deepen their understanding and experience of Biblical truths. I received more book orders from 200 members in Zurich than I usually receive from 1000 members in America. Our people are eager to learn and experience more fully those vital Biblical truths which God has revealed for our Christian life today.

On the negative side, our SDA church in Western Europe has been slightly but consistently declining in membership during the past thirty years. Our members now are mostly older people. Young people are conspicuous for their absence. In Hamburg, I saw very few young faces in what is supposed to be the largest church in Germany.

In most Western European countries we have lost almost a whole generation of young people. Had our SDA church been able to retain our young people during the past 30 years, today our membership would be double the current one. The problem is not only the fact that church services do not appeal to the younger generation, but also that there are few church schools available for our youth, they are gradually closing down.

We face enormous challenges in Western Europe, both inside and outside our church. Inside, there is a need for a spiritual revival, a rekindling of the flame of faith and love. Outside, there is the challenge of reaching secularly minded and self-satisfied people who sense no need for God in their lives.

Crisis of Faith in Western Europe

Christ predicted an end time apostasy: "And then many will fall away, and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold" (Matthew 24:10-12; cf. 24:24). Paul recognized that the predicted end time apostasy was "already at work" (II Thessalonians 2:7) in his own time, but he makes it clear that "the apostasy," that is, the well-known pre-Advent rebellion, had not taken place yet.

Is the final, apocalyptic apostasy predicted by Jesus and Paul taking place in Christendom today? The tragic situation of the Christian church especially in Western Europe suggests that this end time sign is being fulfilled today in an unprecedented way. According to the WORLD CHRISTIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, in the Western world "net defections from Christianity - converts to other religions or to no religion - are now running to 1,820,500 former Christians a year."

The total number of apostasies, however, is much higher if the meaning of "apostasy" is broadened to include not only formal defectors from the Christian faith but also nominal Christians who may go to church few times during their lifetime because they view religion primarily as a cultural heritage, which does not really affect their moral values, world view, and life-style.

Causes of the Crisis of Faith

What are the causes for the crisis of faith that is so evident especially in Western Europe today? How could the heartland of the German and Swiss Reformation have largely relegated their Protestant religious heritage to the point of becoming even hostile to the Christian faith and values? Most significant is the influence of the "Enlightenment" intellectual movement that climaxed in eighteenth century Germany, emphasizing the sufficiency of human reason and rejection of Catholic and Protestant teachings, treating them as spiritual darkness that has deprived humanity of its rational faculties.

The higher critical method of interpreting the Bible largely consists in the denial of the supernatural in the Bible. This resulted in the rejection of such fundamental Biblical teachings as a fiat creation, the Fall, the Deity of Christ, His atonement and resurrection, the occurrence of miracles, and the Second Advent.

Erosion of Moral Values

The liberal and humanistic theologies of our time contribute also to the erosion of fundamental moral values. When belief in God and in His revelation is abandoned, all moral values become relative, because there is no longer a normative divine revelation to guide us in distinguishing right from wrong.

Immoral connotations of illicit sexual acts are being eliminated through the introduction of new "softer" terms. Fornication is now referred to as "premarital sex," with the accent on the "pre" rather than on the "marital." Adultery is now called "extramarital sex," implying an additional experience, like an extra-professional activity. Homosexuality has been "softened" to "gay."

Decline in Church Attendance

The negative influence of the liberal and humanistic theologies of our time is most evident in Western Europe in the decline in church attendance. While in America about 45 per cent of Christians attend church on Sunday, in Western European countries church attendance runs between 2 to 10 per cent. In Switzerland, Germany, and Italy where I lectured a few days ago, church attendance runs at about 5 per cent.

Could there be a correlation between the decline in church attendance, the prevailing skepticism about God, and the abandonment of the Sabbath? In his Pastoral Letter DIES DOMINI Pope John Paul II speaks of the Sabbath commandment as being "a defining and indelible expression of our relationship with God." He acknowledges that the Sabbath defines our faith by inviting us to worship God as our Creator, Redeemer and ultimate Restorer. The Pope then takes the liberty to make Sunday the Biblical Sabbath - which lacks both Biblical and historical support.

Could the faithful observance of the Sabbath have prevented the crisis of faith so prevalent in Western Europe today and gradually reaching the American shores? YES. Why? Because the Sabbath summons us weekly to remember what we easily forget, namely, that God is the perfect Creator of the heaven, the earth, and all the forms of life.

To celebrate the Sabbath means to confess our belief in God as the perfect Creator. It means to recognize that the existence of this world itself is an absolute gift from God. George Elliott writes that "Against atheism, which denies the existence of a personal God; against materialism, which denies that this visible universe has its roots in the unseen; and against secularism, which denies the need to worship, the Sabbath is an eternal witness. It symbolically commemorates that creative power which spoke all things into being, the wisdom which ordered their adaptations and harmony, and the love which made, as well as pronounced, all 'very good.' It is set as the perpetual guardian of man against that spiritual infirmity which has everywhere led him to a denial of the God who made him, or to the degradation of that God into a creature made with his own hands," [The Abiding Sabbath (New York 1884), pp. 17-18.]

God established the seventh-day Sabbath to safeguard His creatures from the disaster of self-worship. The abandonment of the Sabbath has contributed to the removal of this safeguard and to the spiritual disaster we face today.

The Feminist Subversion

Christians need to take a Biblical stand against the feminist subversion of the Biblical teachings regarding marriage, family, divorce, sexual morality, homosexuality, and role distinctions. Both male-female equality and role distinctions, properly defined, are part of God's creational design for the harmonious functioning of humanity. God created man and woman perfectly equal in their moral worth and spiritual status, but clearly distinct in their biological and functional roles. Simply stated, in the partnership of two spiritually equal human beings, man and woman, God created man to function in the servant headship role of husband/father, and women in the submissive role of wife/mother. These distinctive roles apply equally to the home and to the church, because from a biblical perspective the church is an extended spiritual family, often referred to as "the household of God" (Ephesians 2:19; I Timothy 3:15; I Peter 4:17; Galatians 6:10).

The denial of role distinctions, which is gaining ground even in the Seventh-day Adventist church as attested by my book, Women In Ministry, can have tragic consequences for human life and society. With almost "prophetic" insight Francis Schaeffer states: "If we accept the idea of equality without distinctions, we logically must accept the ideas of abortion and homosexuality. For if there are no significant distinctions between men and women, then certainly we cannot condemn homosexual relationships. And if there are no significant distinctions, this fiction can be maintained only by the use of abortion-on-demand as a means of coping with the most profound evidence that distinctions really exist."

Conclusion

While Bacchiocchi shows the causes of the crisis of faith in Western Europe, it would behoove us to realize that America and the rest of the world is not far behind. Those same causes are working their damage elsewhere. There is a crisis of faith in the Sabbatarian community as well. What can we do about this alarming trend, which, if it continues, will see the demise of Sabbatarians? We can promote the Sabbath and Sabbatarian groups who present the Almighty's Truth in a positive way. Most of all, we must have a youth orientation. The Sabbath was designed for families to be happy together on God's day of rest and worship. Continued laxity and giving in to humanism and secularism will result in the death of us all.

TSS

September - October 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel