A wise choice of battles is a key ingredient of successful parenting. The same holds true for spiritual dilemmas in the broadest sense. Discerning true from false tests is a critical factor, and the way whereby it is done is the written counsel of God (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11).
Those who seek the total consecration of spiritual, mental, and physical powers to the work and purposes of God can find themselves lured into ill-chosen battles because of the admittedly rightful desire on their part to eschew compromise. But unless the Word of God is their supreme guide, cultural and other extra-Biblical elements can play as decisive a role in their religious life as with those for whom accommodation and laxity so often define one’s spiritual worldview.
False Tests Across the Decades
In Ellen White’s day, false tests were at times a problem among the striving faithful. The so-called “reform dress” was one of these. There were those who tried to revive and promote again a pattern of dress that had earlier been given by God to Ellen White as a means of addressing a particular challenge at a given time [1]. But when this issue was raised again in later years, Ellen White was clear that those raising it had “not been inspired by the Spirit of God” [2], and that “no one precise style has been given me as the exact rule to guide all in their dress” [3].
Most significantly perhaps, she wrote the following:
The Sabbath question is a test that will come to the whole world. We need nothing to come in now to make a test for God’s people that shall make more severe for them the test they already have. The enemy would be pleased to get up issues now to divert the minds of the people and get them into controversy over the subject of dress [4].
When one surveys the writings of Ellen White, it becomes clear that dress is not the only issue that can bring such diversion and needless controversy.
I was a junior in academy when the no-refined-foods, no-visible-fats diet was introduced to Adventism, largely inspired by the research of a non-Adventist nutritional guru who later committed suicide [5]. Unfortunately, certain hypersensitive consciences failed to apply the Berean test (Acts 17:11) to this new health agenda, and what seemed to take hold of too many minds was the false notion that “anything restrictive must be for my own good.” More recently, it was noted by a professor at one of our North American Adventist universities that staff members at a particular self-supporting institution of his acquaintance were required to abstain from all visible fats in their personal diet, presumably as a condition of employment at the institution in question [6].
If that isn’t a man-made test, I don’t know what is! Nothing in either Scripture or the Spirit of Prophecy writings requires anyone to abstain from the use of all visible fats in one’s diet. Nutritional fads come and go, but only the inspired counsel given to God’s people should be upheld as normative.
Another man-made test that comes to mind in our present context is the I Kissed Dating Good-bye approach to marriage preparation, now seriously discredited by the marital breakup and renunciation of Christianity by the movement’s founder [7]. Markers like these aren’t always identified by their advocates as tests, but unless discerning spiritual leaders explicitly identify such recommendations as of human origin, they can easily become “unwritten” tests so far as eligibility for leadership and other responsibilities are concerned.
One common denominator among the false tests here listed is lack of support from the inspired writings. Moreover, a recurrent reality in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is that whenever members seek spiritual enlightenment from beyond the borders of the Advent movement, they get into trouble. All too often such “enlightenment” becomes the newest frontier of piety, the “present truth” to which all must adhere if they expect to be found faithful at last. But the inspired warning still holds true that “before accepting any doctrine or precept, we should demand a plain ‘thus saith the Lord’ in its support” [8].
Contemporary False Tests
No false test has proved more divisive and diversionary in recent times than the effort by certain ones to label COVID vaccine and mask mandates, or other protocols relative to the COVID pandemic, as the trampling of conscientious rights and thus a likely lead-up to the eschatological Sabbath/Sunday crisis. As of this writing, the pandemic appears at last to be receding, this time hopefully for good. But the issues it has brought to the fore in contemporary Adventism remain very much with us, and must be wisely and thoughtfully addressed.
First and foremost, like the man-made tests cited earlier, resistance to the COVID pandemic protocols is not based on any inspired counsel, either from Scripture or the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy. The efforts by certain ones to include vaccines among the objectionable remedies warned against by the inspired pen, have been a total failure. Most assuredly prevention and natural methods should be primary in our preaching of the health message, but nothing found in the inspired writings militates in any way against recognition and acceptance of the overwhelming benefit brought to humanity by vaccines in modern and contemporary times.
In the absence of the knee-jerk, often mindless cultural and political polarization seen especially in America just now, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine the sort of controversy now witnessed in certain denominational circles over the COVID pandemic protocols. To see these cultural and political battle lines disrupting the unity of God’s church and distracting us from the proclamation of the three angels’ messages, is tragic and scandalous in the extreme. This is the worst possible consequence of man-made spiritual tests. The false bravery and pseudo-martyrdom these tests have fabricated will only serve to discredit the courage and consecration of the saints when confronted with real tests, whether now or in the future.
The Prophet’s Warning
The impact of false tests on the outcome of genuine tests is underscored in the following warning from the writings of Ellen White:
From the light given me of the Lord, men will arise speaking perverse things. Yes, already they have been working and speaking things which God has never revealed, bringing sacred truth upon a level with common things. Issues have been and will continue to be made of men’s conceited fallacies, not of truth. The devisings of men’s minds will invent tests that are no tests at all, that when the true test shall be made prominent, it shall be considered on a par with the man-made tests that have been of no value [9].
The people of God must reserve their spiritual energies, their willingness to be unpopular when principle demands it, for issues identified by the inspired pen as normative, as opposed to the fleeting diversions of man-made piety, culture, and politics, whatever label they happen to wear.
REFERENCES
1. Ellen G. White, Testimonies, vol. 1, p. 464.
2. ----quoted by D.E. Robinson, The Story of Our Health Message, p. 441.
3. ----Selected Messages, vol. 3, p. 254.
4. Ibid.
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Pritikin
6.https://www.audioverse.org/english/sermons/recordings/20158/revelations-final-generation.html
7. “Author Joshua Harris Kisses His Faith Goodbye: ‘I Am Not a Christian,’” CBN News, July 28, 2019 https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/entertainment/2019/july/author-joshua-harris-kisses-his-faith-goodbye-i-am-not-a-christian; https://www.instagram.com/p/B0CtVRingGj/?utm_source=ig_embed
8. White, The Great Controversy, p. 595.
9. ----Selected Messages, vol. 2, pp. 14-15.
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan