Office of General Counsel
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, Maryland 20904
Dear Walter Carson,
I have been shown a copy of your letter to the Rogue Valley Historic Seventh-day Adventist Church dated November 6, 1996. In this letter you requested that they abandon the name Seventh-day Adventist and discontinue using this name in any further communications.
Do you not see this request as restricting religious liberty? When, in His earthly ministry, did Jesus restrict anyone from teaching and healing in His name even though He did not agree with them? In Luke 9:49, 50 John and the other disciples forbade someone who was casting out demons in Jesus' name. "But Jesus said unto him," verse 50, "Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side." In other words, "Don't stop him because eventually his fruits will be shown and he will reveal his true character, so he cannot hurt us." Is this the General Conference's attitude about "offshoot movements"? It cannot be because they are persecuting people that "preach in their name". The Conference is depending upon the arm of civil power and not Jesus to uphold their creeds and dictates. As Ben Franklin said in years past, "When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that it's professors are obliged to call for the help of civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
The Adventist Church keeps talking about the coming persecution that will test every man and woman. How will they be persecuted if their jobs are protected by law and their "name" is protected by civil powers? Where is their faith in Jesus? They have but one faith and it is in the world and of the world.
Ellen G. White, one of the early founders of the Advent movement says, "No semblance of nearness to God, no assertion of connection with Him, will be accepted from those who persist in dishonoring Him by leaning upon the arm of worldly power. Today God's word to His people is: 'Come out from among them and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. . . .'" RH August 4, 1904.
Ellen White also says, "Christ was a Seventh-day Adventist, to all intents and purposes." MM p. 49. If Christ so long ago, when the General Conference had never existed, was indeed a Seventh-day Adventist, then this fact puts to shame the trademark law. He was never a member of the General Conference. Says Jesus, "Not every one that says unto Me, 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the wilil of My Father in heaven." Matt. 7:21. Notice, "he who does the WILL OF MY FATHER IN HEAVEN", not he who does the will of the General Conference Association!
Ellen White indicates that those who keep the commandments of God are not to be called Babylon. (2SM p.68.) This would imply that the church which does not keep the commandments is Babylon. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists does not keep God's commands. By taking people to court and restricting religious liberty they commit murder against their brethren and do not love their brethren as themselves.
Please heed this warning from God to you.
J.H.