The above title is a play on the title of a popular book circulated in Adventism years ago called Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. But unlike Mr. Chiniquy’s exposure of the downsides of the Roman Catholic Church, I am not writing an expose of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, nor announcing my departure. This article, unlike others I have written, is more a testimony than a theological dissertation.
My Testimony in Brief
You can read my testimony on this website as to how I came into the Seventh-day Adventist Church [1]. I joined the church at a very interesting time in its history. Within I would say a few months, if not weeks, of my baptism, in 1980, one Desmond Ford of the South Pacific Division (then the Australasian Division) presented his thesis against the classic Adventist sanctuary doctrine to the church at Glacier View. Not only was it an interesting time, but an interesting place as well. I have spent all my church life in the South Pacific Division, about three years of it in Australia and the rest in New Zealand.
Because Ford trained our pastors and administrators, we have had a different experience with the results of his teachings than the rest of the Adventist world. The majority of our local pastors and administrators were in favor of his teachings. This impacted how they reacted with the rest of the denomination. It divided the churches of the South Pacific Division, and many members left the church to either form parachurch organizations, to join other denominations, or to drift into the secular world.
However, when I came into the church, many Adventists of my parents’ generation were still living, those born in the 1920s. In my early Adventist days, such persons offered great inspiration and support. Many of them had the Christlike characters that Last Generation Theology anticipates. That is, they believed the truth and upheld it, but in a gracious and gentle manner. Such saints were not necessarily the majority, but enough for a proof of concept. Besides being drawn into the church by the writings of Ellen White, I believe I have inherited a faith passed on by the Adventists of that generation. They were like spiritual parents to me.
Alas, as those old saints have passed on, a malaise has set into the churches of our part to the world. A sermon by the late Roger Coon [2] outlines, from the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, that just before Jesus comes such a malaise would come upon the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Elder Coon gives four reasons for this, two of which come to mind now: apostasy and worldliness. I have seen both mature during my forty-five years in the denomination. These heresies and the pull of the world seem to have progressively affected the generations that have followed those of the 1920s.
On the other hand, I have seen revival among a very few Seventh-day Adventists a bit younger than me, those born in the 1960s. As head elder of an Auckland Seventh-day Adventist Church about 14 years ago, I was privileged to work with a pastor born in the 1960s, who brought revival and growth to this church with his sermons based on the doctrines held dear to that 1920s generation that had sustained the work of the church up until the 1980s. I occasionally sat in on pastors’ cluster meeting with him where I met some ministers of similar mind who were born in the 1970s. I currently work with a head elder who is carrying on the work which began with those revivals. In one of my churches, I came across a young man (born in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s), an aircraft pilot by occupation who had studied himself into the church and who was alive to our inheritance as a denomination committed to the truth as it is in Jesus. Alas, though, the number of revived young Adventists here is very small. Once again, more a proof of concept.
Roger Coon’s sermon speaks of how this will be the state of the Seventh-day Adventist Church just before Jesus comes. In other words, this condition in God’s end-time church is as much a sign of the soon coming of Jesus as are the recent events in America regarding a closer union with the Papacy and the developing union between church and state.
Elder Coon’s sermon goes on to state that the latter rain will fall on God’s people who are not of this fold at the moment, and will bring large numbers of them into the Seventh-day Adventist church to finish the work. It will also fall on the remnant of the Remnant, who stay inside the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It is very clear from the inspired witness that the latter rain will not fall on those who leave to form para-churches.
Conclusion
So in summary, while the state of the churches here has tended to be a drain on my faith, it has also been sustained by the proof of concept I have seen in those younger people who are carrying the torch, as it were, in the midst of worldliness and apostasy. They and the “more sure word of prophecy” (II Peter 1:19) that depicts this state of the Remnant Church, as well as the latest developments in America, has sustained my faith that this is the Remnant Church of Bible prophecy, and that what brought me into it 45 years ago was nothing close to “cunningly devised fables” (II Peter 1:16).
REFERENCES
1. https://advindicate.com/articles/2020/6/12/costa-draft-1-327gd-mpree-hegrg-ydj5j-87n6b
2. https://youtu.be/zs0ISv5K2_Q
Tony Rigden, a former atheist/deist, came into the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1980 as the result of a miraculous conversion and the reading of the book The Great Controversy by Ellen G White. He has since been a regular Sabbath School teacher, very part-time lay preacher, elder and briefly head elder. Formerly an electronics technician and computer programmer, Tony is currently still part-time programming but mostly retired. Former hobbies included diving and private flying. Currently he is a volunteer guard (train conductor) for one of New Zealand's leading vintage railways.