The Religious Liberty Challenge for Adventists

With the first annual "Ten Commandments Day" planned for May 7, evangelical groups are campaigning to force the Ten Commandments back into public places as the American standard for living and governing. Why are Adventists so cautious about these and other similar movements? Read on.

Ellen White warns that "In order for the United States to form an image of the beast, the religious power must so control the civil government that the authority of the state will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends" (italics supplied, The Great Controversy, p. 443).

Adventists support the United States Constitution which provides safeguards protecting freedom of religion regardless of majority consensus or sentiment. These safeguards are in danger of being removed by Catholic and evangelical zealots.

Adventists believe that while Christians should be at the forefront in promoting Bible-based moral values, they should speak out against judicial or legislative efforts to mandate or define the human relationship to God and worship as contained in the first four commandments.

Pope Benedict XVI has publicly stated that Christians in America, and most specifically Catholics, are now in a position to dramatically influence U.S. domestic and foreign policy to reflect the divine commands of God.

Conservative Evangelicals and Catholics make up roughly 60 percent of the voting electorate in the United States and are rapidly building unity, not on the basis of biblical doctrine, but on the basis of shared moral, social and political values.

Best-selling Christian pastor/author Rick Warren contends that America is on the verge of a third Great Awakening. The question is, what kind of awakening?—a truly spiritual revival, or a move towards establishing religious values through political means?

Bible prophecies have been given to us so we will not be deceived by otherwise sincere men and women who seek through traditional moral, social and political methods to save mankind by establishing what they believe to be Christ's millennial kingdom on earth.

Featured in: March 2006

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