The Confessing Seventh-day Adventist

An Adventist Zionist wrote:The SDA Church isn't defending atrocities---Read it correctly---Shubert.

“The government accepts us as one of the Christian communities in the country,” said Richard Elofer, president of the Adventist Church there and pastor of the Jerusalem congregation. “I know that they know us, we don’t hesitate to communicate with them, and every year I am invited by the president of the state to attend a reception for the [leaders] of the Christian communities.”

Israeli media—not often a friend of Christian churches operating and evangelizing in the country—had very positive things to say about the Seventh-day Adventist Church when its publishing house, “Chaim Veshalom,” or, “Life and Peace,” opened in Jerusalem in 2003. The nation’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, published a highly favorable report.

The article stressed the industry, honesty, temperate lifestyle, and Sabbathkeeping of Adventist believers, with one Israeli employer, identified only as “Eli,” saying, “They’re very neat and well-groomed. They don’t smoke, they don’t drink. They are excellent, diligent workers and completely honest. I trust them with my eyes closed. I bring them to a work site and don’t have to come back to check on them. Their word is golden.”

Elofer asks believers to keep an open mind about today’s Israel: “We would like our Adventist brethren to cease to see Israel as the ‘black sheep’ of the Middle East,” he told the Review.

“Maybe it is not the case in the United States, but recently a survey has been done in all the European countries, asking the question ‘Who is the biggest threat for the peace of the world?’ The majority of the people answered ‘Israel,’ not Iran, not terrorism, not [Osama] bin Laden, but Israel. This answer demonstrates a very high level of anti-Semitism, because rationally Israel is threatening no one, just defending [itself] against dozens of Muslim countries around who would like to see only one thing, its destruction,” Elofer said.

“Among Christians, probably the religious community who has a closer theological connection with Jewish biblical thinking [than any other] is the Adventist Church, and we should always be willing to extend the arm of fellowship to our Jewish friends,” Rodríguez said. But, he added, “political concerns should not be part of that agenda, so that motivation comes to play a significant role in this.”