Seventh-day Adventists are Nonconformists

CTC · Site Admin Joined: 06 Apr 2002 Posts: 121

"Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity."
-- Eric Hoffer

Ross · Seventh-day Adventist Joined: 07 Jan 2004 Posts: 45

Dear Brethren,

In the wider world there are many non conformists who merely go it alone.

The first S.D.A. minister I ever knowingly met, told me that he was brought up in the Methodist Church though his father never bothered to attend church. Asked one day by the family minister why he didn't attend church he answered, "I get more from my Bible."

There is an example of a non-comformist who travelled alone. The church he had been raised in finally failed to feed him; he began to realize that and took evasive action.

This very same thing one can find in every street, in every City, Town. or Hamlet in every Country.

Just because people come to the realisation that something is wrong, that fact does not necessarily supply the next move to be taken.

A couple of years ago, two young women walked into an evangelistic programme run by an elderly Independent minister. They were so impressed with the message that they began to study Adventism and finally joined the Church. The message they gave us was:-

We were raised in the Catholic Church. We found there was something wrong with it, but didn't know what it was until we listened to those sermons and did the studies. Then, and only then, did the penny drop and we were able to pull out. They of course became non-comformists.

We can look back on the lives and adventures of John Wesley and his Colleagues. Just street preaching made them non-comformists, as did the actions of John Bunyan who did a lot of jail time for his independent views.

Of course S.D.A.s are/were nonconformists in more areas than any of the early Protestants i.e. you will attend an awful lot of Communion Services in the Anglican Church before you ever see a foot washing service not because it is wrong, but because it supposedly destroys the dignity of the service. I suspect that was why Peter objected to it.

However, the Anglican Heirarchy converted it to handing out a few - very few, coins of the realm by the head of that Church on Maunday Thursday to poor people. This, in some way, supposedly made up for the lack of the real obedience by the masses.

However, the claim that "non-comformists travel in groups" has rermarkably little going for it since supposed conformists do the same by and large.

My main problem is just this:- When two ministers separated by only about six months feel free to strike at a local church with a papal interdict - locking a church to prevent the worship of our God, instructing the flock to attend the local Salvation Army or Baptist Church instead, or just go somewhere else, and find that we do, are we then declared non-comformists?

Is it true that if the minister closes the church, no one has any right to worship our God?

To my mind the whole thing is just laughable. They refuse to listen to us, is there some reason for us to take them seriously? I think not, but it is true that we should take appropriate action on our own behalf.

It was back in 1957 that the Evangelics told our G.C. that they were the bosses and it was the serfs duty to obey. When I saw that report I was upset for I realised that this too would come to pass. It has.
Sincerely,
Ross
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R.R. Pollock