By Jude the Obscure on Saturday, January 22, 2000 - 10:39 pm:
This morning I woke up from a dream that scared me. Because I don’t know where it’s going to lead me. But it also thrilled me. Because I believe the Holy Spirit sent it to me, and I know I have to follow it. Here it is, somewhat elaborated in the telling:
I was living in an SDA ghetto. You know where some of these are: Walla Walla, Berrien Springs, Silver Spring, Loma Linda....
Only in my dream the denizens all lived in complexes of office/residence skyscrapers lining both sides of a single street. Another strange thing: Contrary to normal SDA behavior, in my dream they kept throwing furniture and books and children’s toys and even trash out into the street. The mountains of junk had grown so high that the street was hardly navigable. And to make matters worse, because I had raised some objections to this unsightly practice, nobody was speaking to me any more.
I decided I needed a break, and so I started to walk away from it all. On my excursion I chanced to meet someone calling himself Dale who was traveling with some members of a group that was calling itself the Former Adventist Fellowship.
When I described the junkyard that my street had become, they enigmatically paraphrased a Bible text: “They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20.)
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s buried treasure under all that junk,” they said.
“Buried treasure? What buried treasure?”
“The truth,” they said.
“Huh? I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“Come with us,” they said. “Let’s go treasure hunting.”
As we threaded our way through the mountains of junk, windows in the high-rises overhead began to open. Heads popped out. Mouths opened. “What are you doing down there?” “Keep out!” “Go home! You’re not wanted here!”
“I am home!” I yelled. “I live here!”
“You're no friend of Ellen White’s,” a voice shot back, “and so you're no friend of anyone here any more!”
At that a deafening roar emerged from hundreds, thousands, of windows on both sides of the street. I began dodging cans of Worthington Phonybaloney, Loma Linda Pseudoflesh and other containers of wannabe meat. Then came torrents of red books, whole sets of SDA Bible Commentaries, veggie-novels, Reviews, Quarterlies, videos of “Faith for Today,” “Voice of Prophecy,” “It Is Written,” “Quiet Hour,” “Net-90 Something,” “Amazing Facts”….
Followed by candles, candlesticks, lavers, packages of incense, altars, altar horns, veil curtains, arks, rods that had budded, tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments carved on them, showbread, tables of showbread, sheaves of grain, clay pots, bronze pots, bags of flour, bottles of anointing oil, tassels, breastplates, Urims, Thummims, tents of meeting, robes, sashes, ephods, holy tunics, shekels, even the partially burned carcasses of doves, rams, goats, bulls, and oxen -- all raining down from above. No pig carcasses, though.
To protect Dale while he worked I grabbed a discarded bedstead and held it against the hail as a shield over his body.
Suddenly he shouted, “I found one! I found one!” A huge grin spread over his face.
“Found what?” I yelled above the din.
“Look!” He was pointing at a bundle about the size of a man.
A thunderous chant emerged from the canyon walls: “Don’t dig them up! Don’t dig them up!” and “Keep them buried! Keep them buried!”
“It’s a body!” I gasped. It was wrapped up like a mummy in windings of historical cloth, the clothing of a woman.
“They’ve wound him up in the clothing of Ellen G. White,” Dale said.
I suddenly noticed the body begin to move, to struggle against the mummy windings.
“It’s alive!” I shouted. “It’s still alive!”
“Rebury him! Rebury him!” the crowd chanted.
Ignoring them we rapidly unwound the bindings. It was a man.
“Paul!” Dale shouted. Indeed, in my dream it was indeed the apostle -- still bound hand and foot with more strips of Ellen White’s clothing – her antique shawls and and sashes and scarves.
Using his pocketknife Dale carefully cut Paul free. Then he began to pull the stuffing out of Paul’s mouth. I looked at it. This time it wasn’t more of Ellen White’s historical clothing. Paul had been gagged with handkerchiefs – men’s white dress handkerchiefs. I looked at them.
Each was labeled with a different moniker: Dwight Nelson, Doug Bachelor, Des Ford, Bob Folkenberg, Neal Wilson....
Paul was a young man, much younger than I had thought, with a haircut and a trimmed beard -- in flagrant violation of Old Testament law (Leviticus 19:27). And he wore, not the rich robes of his Sanhedrin past, but coarse laborer’s clothing.
By now the roaring of the crowd was indecipherable.
I looked at the apostle. “What’s the truth about the Sabbath,” I asked.
“I never preached the Sabbath, not once in all my evangelistic efforts or missionary journeys, neither in Jerusalem, nor in Judea, nor in the uttermost parts of the earth. It’s true that a few Gentiles – an infinitesimal minority – were already keeping the Sabbath. But that’s only because they were already attending Sabbath services in the Jewish synagogues in every Gentile city. But they were but a trickle who were soon swept away with the mighty sea of new converts who had never heard of the Sabbath, and I saw no reason to tell them about it, much less teach them they had to keep it.”
“What day were they keeping?” I asked.
“Nearly all of them were getting up before sunrise on Sunday morning and worshipping Jesus. But they didn’t rest on Sunday. It wasn’t a Sabbath rest day from sundown Saturday night to sundown Sunday night for them.
"And many were worshipping God seven days a week, keeping all days holy.
“It was about that time that the Seventh-day Adventists began coming down from Mt. Sinai in the Wilderness of Sin,” he continued.
“Unlike me, they began preaching the Sabbath: If you loved Jesus, they told the Gentiles, you’d keep ALL of his commandments, including the fourth. The problem with their 'reasoning' was that when Jesus said, 'Keep my commandments,' he meant exactly that, HIS commandments: Love one another, love your neighbor as yourself, love your enemies, as well as the moral features of the incomplete and inferior Ten Commandments, such as, “Don’t murder or steal or lie or cheat or covet or commit adultery.
“And this is exactly what I taught the Gentiles who were flooding into the church. I never taught anybody to keep the Sabbath or to observe any of the other ceremonial aspects of the law, such as circumcision or the differences between so-called clean and unclean foods.”
“I told these Adventists that all these things were intended to teach us to accept Jesus Christ when he came. But now that he was here, these things had passed into insignificance, passed away really, because they had all been fulfilled, right down to the last jot and tittle.
"I told them specifically that the Sabbath was only a shadow pointing to Jesus. And we followed that shadow until we found him. But once we found him, the one who cast the shadow, it lost all its importance, except as a bygone historical relic. It had served its purpose well. It was time to give it a rest. Jesus Christ was now our true Sabbath rest.
“That’s when the Adventists gagged me, tied my hands and feet, wound me up in Ellen White’s clothing like a mummy, and buried me under a mountain of her books, not to mention SDA Bible commentaries, church manuals, Reviews, Quarterlies, and innumerable video tapes – and all because they couldn’t force me to preach their false Sabbath doctrine to the Gentiles.”
By now the roar of the crowd was so deafening that Paul’s voice was being drowned out. I glanced over at the other members of the Former Adventist Fellowship. They had been busy uncovering Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, James, Jude and even the writer of Hebrews. All were vigorously agreeing with Paul.
That’s when it hit me: Where was John? John was still missing! The FAF members were standing around shaking their heads. What had happened to John? How could they have missed him, the "beloved disciple"?
Suddenly I had an idea. Maybe he wasn’t in the street at all. Maybe the Adventists were keeping him hidden somewhere else, a special place. Maybe they were so frightened of what he might say -- in case the New Testament writers should ever be uncovered and freed -- that they had taken the extra precaution to imprison him in a special hiding place.
Maybe John had a secret weapon that would utterly demolish the last of the Adventists’ arguments. Maybe he was, after all was said and done, the most dangerous apostle of all, more dangerous even than Paul!
A thrill shot up my spine. I would find him!
Where was he hidden? Maybe in the “holy of holies.” And where might that be? Most likely the Ellen G. White vault in the basement of the SDA Theological Seminary skyscraper. It was possible. Why not give it a try?
The building was right on the street, after all, and in all the clamor and hubbub the front door had been left unguarded and was in fact hanging wide open!
Trying to appear nonchalant I edged my way over. No security guard in sight. I slipped inside. It was dark as midnight. But with my pocket flashlight I was able to make my way downstairs to the entrance of the EGW vault. Again, no security guard. He must be outside enjoying the jeering throng, I thought. Maybe there was something providential about my idea.
I reached the area of prisoners cells and switched on the wall light. There he was – John the “son of thunder,” the disciple whom Jesus loved, not young like Paul, but aged – behind bars, handcuffed, and blinking in the light. He recognized me instantly as a friend and smiled graciously. “There are keys in a box on the wall above the security guard’s desk,” he said.
Quickly I had the cage door open and his handcuffs and anklecuffs off. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s the secret that will free the Adventist people from their bondage?"
It’s simple,” he smiled. “Jesus broke the Sabbath.”
“No!” I said. “He only broke the rules the Pharisees had added.”
“No, He broke the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments. And he encouraged, and even ordered, others to do so. I was there. I know.”
“When?”
“When we were reaping and thrashing grain on the Sabbath, and when Jesus ordered the invalid of 38 years to carry his bedroll on the Sabbath.”
“Oh!” I said. “You’re right about that. I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before. But wasn’t he just showing people how to keep the day better?"
John smiled. "Not at all! I wrote it all down as plainly as I could: Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at work to this very day, and I, too, am working.' For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. I don’t know how I could have made myself any clearer.
“Yet to this very day,” John continued, “Seventh-day Adventists fail to grasp either concept. They interpret the phrase ‘Son of God as meaning ‘inferior to God’ or ‘less than God.’ They call him ‘our elder brother.’ I've never used that term. They even put him on a par with Satan, as though they were co-equal contestants in the battle of Armageddon in the strangely-termed ‘Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan.’ This is a false doctrine, of course. Jesus Christ is the one who SUMMONS Satan to the battle. Jesus Christ is himself soveriegn God. They just can't seem to let Jesus be God with powers to restate the law."
“Would you come with me, John?” I asked. “There are so many Adventists who need to be freed from their chains of unbelief!”
“Of course,” he said. “This is the reason you have been used by God to free me.”
Again a thrill shot through my body. “Used by God!” John had just said so! “Used by God!”
When we reached the outside in the absolutely brilliant sunshine of the noon sun at zenith -- with all shadows gone -- and the Adventists saw us, the wrath of their roaring knew no bounds. But there was nothing they could do any more, because so many of them were braking ranks and gathering around to hear what the New Testament writers were saying and had really been saying all along.
And so we led a great host of captive Adventists free, led them out of their ghetto, all praising God and saying, “Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest! And peace on earth! Goodwill toward all people! For the gospel lives anew!”
And that's how I came to awake from my dream both scared and thrilled.
Therefore, go not gentle into SDA night,
Rage against the dying of the gospel light,
Jude the Obscure courtesy of formeradventist.com