"BORDERLAND"

"My message to you is: No longer consent to listen without protest to the perversion of truth." Selected Messages Book 1, Pg. 196

To aid in the understanding of the concepts in this article, I would invite you to have a look at the illustration here:

(Download a PDF Illustration)

Man was created a free agent subject only to the will of his creator. The Law of the Universe is at once so simple and so sublime—‘Created beings owe all to their Creator therefore they are to love, obey and serve Him absolutely and totally, and as soon as more than one created being exists, they are to respect and love each other as the property of the Creator and interact only in accordance with the Creator’s wishes.

Jesus made it simpler: "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." Luke 10:27

Notice this from a man whose books of history I highly recommend:

"It is also the simple dictate of reason that, since these have all been created, and in their existence owe all to the Creator, this existence with all its accompaniments in the exercise of abilities and powers should be ever held strictly in accordance with the will and design of the Creator; because it is still further the simple dictate of reason that the Creator could never have designed that the existence, the faculties, or the powers of any creature should be exercised contrary to His will or outside of His design. Therefore it is the simplest, plainest dictate of reason that this original and ultimate government, which is self-government, is self-government under God, with God, and in God. And this is truly the truest self-government." A. T. Jones ‘Government, History, and the Bible’.

As soon as the fall into sin occurred, man began to want to stand in the place of God to his fellow beings. But that free spirit in man and the Grace of God allowing him to still have the ability to choose whom he would serve, made it a hard job for any dictator to establish a kingdom. We don’t have too much information about before the flood but we do know that afterwards prospective kings discovered that the way to get people to co-operate and allow themselves to be ruled, outside of constantly standing there with a sword, was to somehow convince them that you were either a god yourself or had been delegated by God, or a god to rule.

So we see Nimrod declare himself the sun god, and his wife, Semiramis, later his widow, sure caught onto the idea quickly. She took every opportunity to convince the people she was a goddess and her illegitimate child Tammuz, the reincarnation of the sun god. It seems it is to her ingenuity that we owe most of the ideas and concepts of all the pagan and apostate religions.

It is here that we see something amazing happen, people got divided into 2 classes; those who are endowed by birth or training to have understanding of the deep mysteries of god, and the ordinary people, who are subject to the gods, and those who represent them and work for them.

It is interesting that as this rapidly got established and accepted, there came about two divisions in pagan religion; the priests and leaders, who were all really sorcerers and witches—Satan worshippers—were taught the ‘mysteries’. This was largely priest-craft and how to control, manipulate, fool and scare the common people. They learned mind manipulation and worked in league with demons, which often were the power behind their apparent abilities to perform magic; much of the time it was just tricks and slight of hand—demons are fickle in their co-operation with humans.

They really were Luciferians—Illuminati—the enlightened ones, but the religion they would teach the people, was entirely different that what they believed themselves. They were adept at making up stories and passing them on to the people as the wishes and commands of the gods. Whatever would best serve their purpose to control, and enslave the populace, and fleece them of means and goods, was taught the people.

The king found it best to always be considered either a god himself or the son of a god, and the priests and magicians worked with him on this idea, that is why you see all the magicians and ‘wise-men’—those who knew the ‘mysteries’—clustered around the kings of old. It was so much easier to control the people, if you once got them to believe that you had control over their eternal destinies. Men will fight against his fellow man for his God-given freedom, but who can fight against what you have been convinced is God himself?

So this is where the idea of Clergy being separate and above Laity came from; the dark and dusky annals of heathen devil worship. But you say, what about Moses? Didn’t the idea really come from there? No way! Moses was a servant to the people. As a prophet, God gave him direction and counsel to pass on to the people. This is different from the heathen priests because they really knew they were liars and cheats, and they did not believe themselves the religion they taught the people.

To understand this, you must look back to our Law of the Universe; 1: Total subjection to the Creator; 2: Respect our fellow beings as equals and relate to them as the Creator requires. I fear too many of us are influenced more by Hollywood in our ideas of Moses, than by the Word of God! Moses, we are told, was the meekest of men. He was no fiery-eyed fanatical dictator. He was a humble servant of God and patiently worked for the blessing and spiritual advancement of the people of Israel.

What is God’s plan of government? It is self-government under God. It is total obedience to the Creator and unselfish co-operation and service among the created ones. Each one is to answer personally to the Lord, not only for his own soul, but for how he relates to his fellows.

So what in the sight of God is a leader or minister to be? What did Jesus say?

"But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Matthew 23:8-11.

But people need to have someone to tell them what to do, don’t they? No, they are to learn what God wants them to do, and when people come into co-operation with God’s will through His revealed Word, there is perfect co-operation and unity.

The concept of the world is, that people need these ‘superior beings’ as their guides and rulers, to act like ‘parents’ and command the people, and the people are taught to look to them as a condescending benefactor. But did God intend that most of the people be infantile and mindlessly in subservience to a few leaders? No, He wants each soul to reach its potential as a son or daughter of God.

"And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve." Luke 22:25, 26

God’s goal is for all to know Him, obey Him and stand equally before Him as His children, not children of a human being in the spiritual sense. Therefore the purpose of leadership among God’s people is for helping one another to know God; never to dictate or lord it over God’s heritage. Advice and counsel based on God’s word is acceptable and valuable, but the minute you take the word of a human being in place of the Word of God, you have made a god of that person!

What is authority among God’s people? There is only one source of authority and that is the inspired Word of God. If I walk up to you today and I say, ‘Thou shalt not steal!’ does my word have authority? YES! Why? Because I am passing on to you the Word of God, and that’s where all authority resides. So when I say to my family, "Thou shalt not steal!" this has authority, not mine, but God’s. And note that God is the one to enforce it, not me. If you defy what I say in this matter, you have to take that up with Him!

But what happens when I say to you, "I demand you to obey and do whatever I tell you because I am your spiritual leader"? Well, right there I have usurped the place of God, and if you go along with this farce, you are an idolater. Well, I say to you, "I was elected by a majority in the church, therefore you have to obey me." Does the majority have authority? No, only God’s Word has authority, so the majority cannot bestow on me what it doesn’t even have to start with. God did not invent democracy.

Friends, the ‘leaders’ and ‘ministers’ among God’s people, only have authority as long as they are passing on to you the Word of God, and obeying it themselves—other that that; they have no authority at all. Their purpose is to assist and encourage you to greater faith in God and more spiritual independence to learn to seek God for yourself and follow His will for your life. Each one of us is to be a learner in the School of Christ.

Because this is a fallen world and most people have no interest in God and obeying Him, there is another level of government that exists, that is civil government. God allows it, as it is necessary for life to go on in any reasonable way here on earth. Even a dictatorship is preferable to anarchy. So God directs us to respect the earthly authorities BUT—and this is a big but—only when their commands and demands do NOT cross over into man’s duty to his God.

So if the government says you must all paint your houses white, I should obey it and do so; but when the government says you are to worship the king, the pope or the sun, then I must not, dare not obey it.

Satan loves a hierarchy; it is the easiest way for him to control large amounts of people. It is the easiest way for people to control one another, and so we almost think of it as normal and desirable, especially if we are high up in it. But it is not God’s will that His people be governed by a spiritual hierarchy, as it is anathema to character development and growth in grace.

In the apostolic days the people were brethren, equal with one another. Through the gifts of the Holy Spirit certain of them would be found to have abilities given to be a blessing to the group. Some were found to excel in ability to teach, or preach and when the group was aware, and could see that this was so, sometimes they would add their agreement to what God had already done, by setting that person aside to do the job God had so obviously given them to do.

Let us now take a look at the development of the Advent people in the Great Advent awakening. As we pointed out before, the little group that survived the Great Disappointment were seeking to come to a complete knowledge of God’s revealed will for man and to bring their lives into harmony with that knowledge. God blessed their efforts by bestowing the Gift of the Spirit of Prophecy among them. Remember, the people didn’t decide to elect someone and get God to give them a gift, it is always God’s choice who the Holy Spirit decides to give a gift to, and often it is just the dead opposite from how people would have thought it should be.

We see that very few of the spokespersons God raised up and sent with messages to the people, were accepted by the people. As Jesus said, "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?" John 5:43, 44. People love leaders from among their own selves, but few want the authority that comes from God and His Holy Word.

When the little flock from 1844 had grown to the place where a certain amount of organization was needed to facilitate the work, a system was to be used that would allow the people to select from among them those who had shown evidence that the Holy Spirit was with them and they were godly persons. Then these were to come together and with much prayer and study seek to make decisions to further the work of God in the earth. Their guide was to be always the Inspired Word of God in the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, and their aim only the glory of God in His people. Although there were places where voting was used, and this was never in matters of doctrine, it was not a democratic system but a theocratic system. God’s Word was the one and only authority and men only held authority as they themselves harmonized with those Words.

It is sad that this was very short lived among us and sadly as the group grew, there arose a strife among us as to who should be the greatest. There came a time when it seemed that the only way to go on was to have some sort of organization; "Like ancient Israel the church has dishonored her God by departing from the light, neglecting her duties… Pride, the love of pleasure, and sin have been cherished, and Christ has departed. His Spirit has been quenched in the church. Satan works side by side with professed Christians; yet they are so destitute of spiritual discernment that they do not detect him." Testimonies, vol. 2, 441, 442. 1868.

Christ HAS departed! Why? Because men chose their own ways and wanted a ‘king’ over them. He is now outside knocking to get in. Each of us as individuals have to decide if we will let Him into rule in our hearts or just follow the leaders.

The only purpose and even excuse for an organization among the people of God is to facilitate the work of God and assist and serve the people of God, in God’s ways and according to God’s will. As soon as it steps outside of this and begins to serve itself, it has become what Jesus described in the parable;

"Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. … But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth 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 looketh 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." Matthew 24:45-51

What was the reason the Lord set up a ‘ruler’? To see to it that the servants would all get their food, and whatever help they needed, to continue doing the Lord’s work until He returned. But here we see a change occurring—the ‘ruler’ begins to usurp the place of the Lord and to demand from the other servants what which is only rightfully deserved by the Lord. He even takes it on himself to smite his fellow servants, in other words he brings them under discipline to himself; something he has no right to do, because they all have their tasks assigned by the Lord. This is wrong and would still be wrong even if the servants got together and elected a ‘ruler’ for themselves, because only the Lord has that authority, not the servants.

The difference between organization and church is that God established the church on a solid immovable platform, which you cannot change by majority vote or any other way because God built it. We will talk more about this in the next article of this series.

It took a while for the movement to deteriorate to the point where now we have the same division between laity and clergy that is seen in the apostate churches and paganism, but we have it now and all the evils connected with it.

The people now look to the ‘clergy’ as ones that have special knowledge and connection with God that the ordinary folk do not and cannot have, and so must be obeyed and looked up to, as a child to their parent. They must be sought out for advice in all matters, because after all, they are the mediators between God and the people. AND they are themselves controlled by a rigid hierarchy and dare not take a step without approval of the next level up.

Oh, how easy it is now for the devil to lead this ‘organization’ right into Egypt and don’t think he isn’t doing it! As soon as a ‘Thus sayeth the LORD’ is replaced by a ‘thus voteth the committee’, or a ‘thus sayeth the conference leader or the pastor’; we are adrift without a chart or compass. Oh, what will it take for our people to SEE that God has not died and left His authority to men! Neither has He delegated that authority—it is all right there in His Word in the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy—the ONLY real authority on earth, friends.

So when you see something from the Spirit of Prophecy or the Bible and it hits you with the need for repentance and a dramatic change in your life, and you run to your pastor and tell him your concerns, and he sooths you with smooth sayings to tickle your ears; what have you done?? You have placed him between you and God, you are an idolater and he is an antichrist!

Friends, the job of the pastors is to assist the people to do what God lays on the people’s heart to do by the Holy Spirit, the conferences are to assist the individual churches to carry out what the Holy Spirit has laid on them to do, and so on. The church of God has only one head; that is Jesus Christ and His delegate is the Holy Spirit.

What are we seeing now? I had a friend who is now asleep in Jesus. She and a group of elderly ladies got together and prayed to find out what they could do to further God’s work and get the message to the people. They were impressed to obtain a bunch of Great Controversy books and to place an ad in a local paper with a little coupon that people could send in and ask for a copy of this book.

These dear people pooled their means and bought what was needed, the books, the envelopes to mail them, and the postage, and proceeded to place the tasteful add in the paper. BUT the pastor found out what they were doing and instantly stepped in and ordered them to cease and desist. I was with this dear sister a few weeks before her death, and she showed me the books neatly piled on her shelf and the little stack of envelopes with them. She was very sad about it and didn’t know what to do.

DID this pastor have the right to do what he did? No! In the sight of God he was stepping in between the Holy Spirit and the people He was directing. That pastor will have to answer for every soul that might have learned the final message for these last days from those books. Unless he humbles his heart and repents of usurping the place of God, he will have a terrible account to render! And the people are not guiltless either, as they knew it was God who had guided them in their plans and as soon as they allowed this pastor to step in, they became idolaters.

I was in a small church out west for a while and there I saw stacks of lovely paperback copies of Great Controversy books, and remember friend, the Great Controversy IS Adventism’s message to the world and it IS our mission to spread it everywhere! Somebody had been impressed by the Holy Spirit to purchase these books to distribute to the people, and leadership had stepped in and forbade it. There they stood, gathering dust on a church bookshelf. I approached the one in charge and asked for some of them so I could give them out. I was refused. I even offered to buy them, but I was not allowed, in fact the church rulers seemed terrified lest these books with our true message should escape and be read by the people!

I know of an incident where ‘lay people’ in a foreign land had pooled resources to purchase a lot of these truth-filled books and the head elder under the direction of the pastor BURNED those books! I hope he has repented of this in sackcloth and ashes, friends, what a terrible account to have to answer for.

Brothers and sisters, if you have extra copies of Great controversy, Desire of Ages or other precious Spirit of Prophecy books sitting at home or in your churches, you had better get them out to the people, where they can do the work God wants them to do, and you had better do it soon, because the time will come when horded books like that, which could have done a work for God, while mercy still lingered, will burn your flesh like fire!

A group of people began to hold a spiritual meeting in a private home with the purpose to study together and pray for spiritual growth and understanding. This was not at a time when any meeting was in the local church nor was it in the church building. The group were having a lovely spiritual fellowship singing hymns and reading the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy and praying for one another. It was only the 3^rd time when a knock came to the door and there was the pastor, who you must realize lived in another city a long way away and only came to the church every couple of weeks or so. But someone had warned him about what was happening, and he was there, with no invitation, intending to take over or break up the meetings.

He was not allowed to take over, so he started to try and provoke a quarrel with one of the brothers there, and when that brother still quietly refused to bow to his authority, this church leader began railing on him with red-faced anger. It is sad to report the meetings came to an end, because the dear elderly lady, whose house was being used, was so upset by the horrible attitude of this ‘pastor’, that she felt she had to prevent it from happening again in her home.

Well you might say that this is only an isolated incident—no, sadly it is par for the course now. If Conference pastors can’t run the show and rule, they will ruin if they can. Do they have this right? If you believe they do, then you also believe the pope has the right to tell you what day to worship on, and you might as well forget about being a Seventh-day Adventist!

Brothers and sisters, we are answerable to God for what we do and nobody can answer to God for you. Anyone who ventures to step in and advise or order a person in their spiritual duties in any way, had better make very sure that they are using the Word of God and ONLY the Word of God to do it with, because if you are NOT–you are stepping in where no man has any right to be—between another soul and God. You will have to answer for that person’s soul before God!

And if you allow a human being to step in between you and God’s inspired counsel, you are an idolater and no idolater shall inherit the kingdom. These things are scary, friends, and it is time we woke up and stopped playing our little fantasy games with one another. Hierarchy is spiritualism and has no place among Gods people. The division between clergy and laity is spiritualism and has no place among God’s people. There is NO real authority outside of God’s inspired Word and you’d better make it YOUR business to know what it teaches because all will be judged by it!

By Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits,　we read these words, "...we should always be ready to accept this principal: I will believe that the white that I see is black, if the hierarchical Church defines it as such." The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, p. 141