Thank God for Dale’s Message
Pastor Dale, I am blessed by your messages and by Proclamation! I am sharing it with many, and it has created a storm in Ethiopia. Is there a way I can get some books like White Washed? You have inspired us, and we are encouraged to challenge our local pastors to give us answers for unanswered questions (if they have answers). May my God bless your ministry.
—VIA EMAIL, ADDIDS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
Where Does The Jesuit Fixation Come From?
I first want to say thank you to the Lord, that He led me to the ministry He put on you both to teach through podcasts. I am learning so much.
You make it so easy to comprehend God’s Word and are getting His true gospel out!
I have written you before as I am married to an Adventist. As a Christian who was raised in a Christian home and went to church on Sundays with no prophet—just God’s word—I still didn’t really understand what grace really meant, what Jesus’ death really meant, and what his Love for us really meant!
So, when I met my husband, I literally thought there were a lot of similarities between us in what we believed except that I knew we were not under the law, but I could never explain to him why.
I am not reaching out for more guidance as I have been listening and reading God’s word and taking LOTS of notes and praying, but as we sit and read the same scriptures and verses, I’m still so baffled how he sees things so opposite to the way I see Scripture, especially the New Testament.
We have read Hebrews and Galatians and more, and he really believes I’m deceived.
He first believes that Paul’s writings are confusing as Peter said. (Where is this idea in the Bible?)
He also says that Jesuits have come in and changed history to make us believe in Bible futurism, and he also says they have change God’s words biblically.
Why is he so fixated on these Jesuits? Why does he believe this conspiracy? Is this true? Have you come across this before??
I’m just needing A LOT of prayer; I’m finding this soo frustrating, and it’s making my heart heavy. I love my husband, but I can’t teach him. I just don’t know what to do or how to pray anymore or what to pray for!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: The underlying reason for your husband’s views that you describe is his Adventist great controversy worldview. He is repeating what Ellen White says in her book The Great Controversy, and historic Adventists believe, because of EGW, that the Jesuits are behind the efforts to convince Protestantism to “keep Sunday” and to suppress the fourth commandment. EGW teaches that worship on Sunday is a Catholic, papal deception, and the Jesuits have infiltrated Christianity to deceive Christians everywhere to adopt the Catholic false Sabbath.
Of course, these beliefs are not true, but Adventists who believe EGW and The Great Controversy deeply believe that the Jesuit conspiracy is alive and spreading. It causes Adventists to read Scripture and NOT to see what it actually says. Adventists are taught to read Scripture through the lens of EGWs interpretations and biases, so the Jesuit/Catholic “deception” is always in their minds. They read Scripture through the lens of EGWs worldview. Hence your husband’s belief that the Jesuits have changed history’s details and have changed biblical interpretations to deceive people into Sunday worship.
Of course, your husband is the one who is entrapped in a deception. It is profound and deep.
Adventists also love to misuse Peter’s words about Paul. Here is where your husband’s idea about Paul’s being “confusing” comes from:
Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability (2 Peter 3:14–17).
Notice that Peter does NOT call Paul “confusing”. He admits there are some things “hard to understand,” but he doesn’t say he cannot be understood. Rather, he says that “ignorant and unstable” people twist Paul’s words “to their own destruction”. It is people who dismiss Paul by calling him “confusing” who are twisting Paul and refusing to allow the Lord to reveal His truth through Paul’s words. Significantly, Peter identifies Paul’s writings as “Scripture” in this passage.
I really do not have a “magic bullet” for you, but I would keep praying that your husband will come to know and desire truth. You can also pray to know how to love your husband for God—how to be willing to respond to your husband without having answers but being willing to love him according to Scripture, allowing the Lord to minister to him through you as you love your husband for God. 2 Peter 3 remains a powerful passage for me, stating that wives who do not fear but who respect their husbands are Sarah’s daughters.
I understand the frustration and the despair.
I’m sorry that I have no better “answers”; just know that your husband is reflecting classic, historic Adventism as taught by EGW. It is her worldview he is repeating.
I pray that the Lord will break the spirit of Adventism in his heart and reveal the truth about the Lord Jesus to him!
Is An Adventist Translating For Wycliffe Without Being Checked For Accuracy?
I run a window cleaning company all summer long and have a large contract with an assisted living/nursing/medical facility. I’m in about 400 residences throughout the summer and meet some amazing people from incredible backgrounds. I started this job five years ago, and I had a conversation a few years ago with one couple about being Adventist (after seeing literature around their home).
It appears that there is a second Adventist couple in this facility, and after completing their window cleaning this year, the wife asked if I’d like to see what she was working on on the computer. She was translating the Bible into a Sudanese dialect (if I remember correctly). Having come a long way in my view of Scripture, my guard immediately went up when I saw an Adventist translating, as I now know that a comma here or a phrase reworded there can completely change the meaning of the Word.
I asked, “Who edits your translation once you’re done?”, to which she replied that nobody looks at her work—it’s just taken to be correct and passed on to the local people. I didn’t like the sound of that and asked who they were working through to create the translation. I was told that they were working with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Am I wrong to be concerned?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I share your concern about the Adventist translating the Bible into a Sudanese dialect. If she is translating it and then having it reviewed by others, that might not be a bad thing. Yet the way she described it is odd. We have a friend who has written for Proclamation!, Wes Ringer, who is living in the Sudan and is working with Wycliff Bible Translators. He works with several people there who know the language well—and some are not Christians but are Muslims or other languages—yet he reviews all translations. The translations go through careful reviews and edits so they are as accurate as possible. So, to hear that a local woman is translating for Wycliffe and it’s never reviewed just doesn’t sound right. It concerns me as well as to how she is using her work and who is reading it—and WHAT they are reading!
May I pass your email on to Wes? I’d love to hear his response to this situation!
Wes Ringer’s Response: I thank you for your concerns about this Seventh-day Adventist woman from Sudan translating God’s Word into her mother tongue. I have worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators since 2005 with languages from Sudan. In 2011 South Sudan became an independent country from the southern one-third of Sudan. I live in South Sudan and work with the languages of South Sudan, but I still have contact with those who are translating God’s Word in the languages of Sudan. Would you please ask this woman the name of her language and where in Sudan or South Sudan that it is spoken. Then I would be able to find out what Bible translation organization is working with that language, or if the Seventh-day Adventist Church doing this translation on their own.
A few years ago, two Seventh-day Adventist young men from the Dinka Rek community of South Sudan translated the whole Bible in Dinka Rek while they were students in the US and contacted Wycliffe Bible Translators, wanting them to publish their Bible. Wycliffe had already published the Dinka Rek New Testament in 2008, working with translators from the Catholic Church. Since then Wycliffe has worked both with the Catholic and Episcopal churches to begin translating the Old Testament into Dinka Rek.
Wycliffe contacted me, and I met with one of them who had moved back to South Sudan, but I found that the other one still living in the US was unwilling to allow their translation to be community-checked by believers from their Dinka Rek community, or to work with the Catholic and Episcopal Churches which are the largest denominations among the Dinka Rek, or to allow their translation to be consultant-checked by Wycliffe consultants. As a result, Wycliffe has refused to publish their Bible.
Anyone is free to translate the Bible into their own language, and if they raise the funds they could publish it as well, but most churches here would not accept or use such a translation, as they want a recognized Bible translation organization like Wycliffe Bible Translators or the United Bible Societies to consultant-check God’s Word before it would be used in churches from that language community.
Wycliffe is committed to help in the translation of God’s Word so that it will be accurate to the original Hebrew or Greek text, so it will read naturally, and that the meaning will be clear in the local language. Being consultant-checked by Wycliffe also means the translation will be accepted for use by all believers from that language group.
In some of the languages of South Sudan the believers are almost all Catholic, Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, so the translators come from these denominations. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is quite small here in South Sudan. Presently I know of one translator in one of the languages we are working with who is a Seventh-day Adventist. We are happy to have him work with translators from other churches as we want Seventh-day Advents also to read and understand God’s Word well.
Although English is used in schools here, even our translators will often not understand certain words when they read translations from English Bibles. That is why I and other consultants who know the Hebrew and Greek text and the English translations well consultant-check the work that they do.
I pray a blessing on your life as you continue your walk as a disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ,
PS: I am thankful for the struggles that I went through because of certain Adventist doctrines after coming to know Jesus as my Savior and Lord, because these struggles pushed me deeply into God’s word and motivated me to begin to learn the Greek New Testament in 1994.
—WES
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