3. The Seventh Day Adventist Dilemma

The sabbath day question was from a man in the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church.
One of the first things that happened in my quest was playing an old vinyl record by Sally Hilder: All My Friends Are Sinners. I love the lyric and music and vocals for Sally. The album is dated around 1979. She is from Sydney but what I didn't know until I did a google search, found she was from a SDA youth fellowship and church. I think the producer and others were from the church but in time become disenchanted and never attended after some time. One comment I saw was the SDA church was responsible for spawning more than 200 different denominations! the problem kept on being what rules to follow from the bible.

What is moral?
This is the core of every religion's proposition. But the New Testament does not ask this question. The closest equivalent was "Whats the most important command?" "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" but a set of rules are not the answer. What? no rules!

For nearly 1500 years Israel (sons of Jacob) had the Law of God, written on tablets of stone in the ark of the covenant, written by the 'finger of God'. There were 1300 rules /laws in the Torah (5 books of Moses) they could never fully comply with. Multiple prophets were raised to restore right worship of God. If the history of Israel teaches us anything, it is: sin is not arrested by rules, they could never keep all the rules! 100% Compliance (God minimum standard) is IMPOSSIBLE. Rules had a function, people missed it. They thought Law was there best-est buddy, but Law was armed with a curse and people miss it, even today with Paul's repeated explanations people fall into a delusional state saying: I keep the 10 commandments. Paul said they had a ministry but it only brought condemnation, judgement, death. Right living is not a clear path...there has to be another way.

God's promise to Abraham, required a steward called LAW to bring Gods people to Messiah.

Paul goes to great lengths repeatedly to say that Laws were to wake men up to sin but there is no law, no morality that could give eternal life. A different arrangement, a new covenant, was the solution. The covenant was clearly planned before the creation of the world and it involved the indwelling of Gods Spirit in men.

Now the problem with the various christian based religions is their distinctive is the arbitrary set of Mosaic Laws /rules they say are still alive and active and imperative to make you 'suitable' for God.

It is all based on the false notion of "Moral Law", ie the idea that within Moses Law are scattered intermittently with laws that actually can never be ignored, in fact if you ignor them you do so at your PERIL, i.e. rejection by God; they are imperatives.

Herein lies the problem, which of the 1300 Mosaic (and Abrahamic -circumcision/tithe) laws are 'moral'. No religion has tabled a comprehensive list of moral, civil, ceremonial laws within Moses, they never have, they never will. What laws you choose then becomes your 'trademark'!!! Then on top of that, religion has gone a step further, and decided some "moral" laws are forgivable and won't stop entry to heaven but then others are worse and they will stop you going to heaven, a tangled web of confusion. The Gospel of Grace is lost in the imaginary legal minefield, literally minefield, because if you are not 'in christ' and you use the 'Im a good person line' with God you are using the law as if it is going to help you, it bears a curse, any failure at ANY point of the law, makes you guilty of breaching ALL the law, there is NO grading by the curve.

What do SDA's use as 'moral' law? Well this is their biggest problem. They are responsible for spawning over 200 brands of christianity and its all because the rule list changes. Most denominations have arbitrarily decided that the 10 commandments mentioned by Paul being part of an old covenant, and has been superceded by a far far superior covenant are unanimously invoked as "moral", something that is doubly wrong (resurrect something superceded and to establish a GOLDEN law that rules ....and we know Law is not KING.

The problem this raises is, it becomes a crime to worship God on a Sunday, the first day of the week, and anything that disturbs 7th day observance is now severely scorned, in fact its "IMMORAL" and there is no hope for you. This is compounded by determining which activities keep you fenced withing this morality issue and you are back to mortal or temporal 'wrongs', and confusion becomes king again, left always looking over their shoulder to determine if they are still compliant with a law. Its a constant and a fearful thing. Law WILL kill you.

Why do Reformation loving, Spirit loving SDA's worried about the Law of Moses? In a word "MORALITY". What rules should I follow? Why are rules somehow a concern? Thomas Aquina is the answer. He said that men must follow certain rules. Those rules are in Moses. But the cross of christ is known to do away with the Law of Moses, what rules then abide? Well the answer came in saying Moses rules actually came in 3 flavours: Ceremonial, Civil and Moral and its the moral rules that were not addressed by the cross of christ, or so its claimed.

This construct is completely spurious and is the source of the greatest confusion in christian circles. What laws are 'moral' becomes completely at the discretion of who has a 'new' agenda that needs distinguishing attributes to make them somehow different, somehow 'better' than those who don't share that agenda. ...we are 'better' because we observe extra rules!!..completely misconstruing the purpose of the law, the work of christ, and promotes division instead of unity.

The dilemma for my SDA friends is their core belief: "Moral Law", is a Roman Catholic dogma and they pride themselves to be strong Reformation teachers. The reformation brought focus back to the person and work of Christ who brought a new Coventant that faaaaaarrrrr exceeded the Law of Moses 2 Corinthians 3:7 "Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory,...⁸will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? ⁹If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!" .....then what are they still doing in Moses????????????x10,000,000!!!!.....then I realise 99% of protestants are absolutely well entrenched there as well!! "Moral law" this, "morality" that and the confusion about rules goes on unabated. There is a ministry of the Spirit that brings life UNLIKE Moses, ah ha! the key ...a ministry that brings righteousness instead of death, condemnation and I say, confusion!....shouldn't that be a special ministry!!!!!!

As Paul says, nothing matters other than the cross of christ, any teaching NOT built on HIM and His DEATH is establishing another foundation. ...typically this involves new people who have new rules/laws that make you "more acceptable" to God and puts people under condemnation and fear. There is another way.