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Copyrighting the name
Seventh-day Adventist
By S. J. Crafts.
So let me inquire: can Divine inspiration be copyrighted? If God is the Author of it, who will say "It is mine, and I wish to deny others the use of it"?
Who will say such a thing?
There are many in the church who express this sentiment. But of course the church has no authority or power to enforce this kind of denial. So what shall we do? Shall we reach out to the state – the civil powers – so that the will of the church might be enforced? Does this sound familiar? Strangely ominous perhaps? (It ought to.) In making such an approach to the state, we do as the drunken harlots (the apostate churches) have done before us.
But why shall we seek to join their number, to eat and drink with them? (Matthew 24:48-51)
Shall we sit at the table of harlots, eating bread leavened with hypocrisy, concocting an adulterous wine of doctrines, so that we might appeal to the state for civil legislation? Will we go to these lengths to bar the way against certain groups who incorporate the words "Seventh-day Adventist" into their names?
This is an alarming prospect. May such an endeavour be far from us.
But no! The fermented, rotten wine is in our cups already, and we have swallowed it down. We do not seem to realise that it is "the wine of the condemned", and that unless we put it away, a drunken stupor and tragedy await our people. (Amos 2:8, Matthew 24:51.)
All the doctrines we create or adopt, inasmuch as they justify our going to the state, will mock us. They will surely deride us as fools.
But why shall we be made fools by the self-justifications we put in our mouths? Why will we justify ourselves for going to the state to get the "justice" we want? (Can the world, who does not know God, dispense true justice?)
Is the wine of the harlot’s "fornication" (her mingling with the state) so sweet to our taste? So tempting to us? (Revelation 14:8, James 4:4.)
We believe there is one God. And in this we do well.
Do we also believe there is
only "one Lawgiver" to be courted by the church, and
that He is God? (James 2:19, 4:12) Our works testify to our unbelief in this regard, seeing
that we have dared to seek the favours of the state in their
courts. (See 1 Corinthians 6:1.)
Is the church to "fear God" for nothing? No, there is every reason to regard the word of God with great respect -- to feel the weight of every prohibition and counsel of God. But if we go on, we will be too muddled to even care. (Ezekiel 22:26.) It is a foolish man that says, "So what difference does it make if we get our justice from God or from the courts, anyway!’.
Oh, that our ministers would teach the fact that there is indeed a difference. (Ezekiel 44:23)
But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, "My lord delays His coming"; and shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looks not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [Back]
And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.
Matthew 24:50-51
The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looks not for Him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [Back]
And there followed another angel, saying, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication."
James 4:4
You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. [Back]
You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
James 4:12
There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who are you that judge another? [Back]
Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? [Back]
Her priests have violated My law, and have profaned My holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the [spiritually] unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. [Back]
And they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean [practices]. [Back]
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