It has been said that there are some 2,000 different Christian denominations. I doubt that these would be main-line denominations. But there are at least 2,000 groupings of churches.

The interesting thing is, these Christian churches claim to be just that--Christian. Somewhere in the mix they may also claim to follow the Bible or at least their own authorized version, as in the case of Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Bible plus their own supposedly inspired founder and prophet, as in the case of the Mormons.

Speaking of Jehovah's Witnesses, someone once told me about the day several of them knocked on the door of the evangelist E. E. Cleveland. They announced that they were Jehovah's Witnesses. "So am I," said Brother Cleveland, "Come on in."

"Where is your hall?" one of them asked the evangelist.

"It is at the corner of 5th and Popular," he replied.

"I didn't know we had a hall there," said one of his visitors.

"You may not know about it," replied the preacher, "but Jehovah does!"

There is an old song that declares, "Everybody talkin' 'bout heaven ain't going there." In the same way, every church or denomination who says they are Christian are not necessarily so.

One of these organizations is our clean-living, committed friends, the Mormons. However, a doctrine that teaches that Jesus and Satan are brothers, that Jesus used to be what you are and one day you will be what he is, and that in the end everyone will be saved, including the Devil, cannot be considered Christian.

But we should really not be surprised. Jesus Himself said it would be this way. He said many would come in His name.

This is why it is very important that we are not mislead when someone claims to be a Christian. I suppose it could be said that just before the close of probation the Devil finally claims to become a Christian. Scripture says he becomes, as it were, an angel of light. We understand that one of his final deceptions before the coming of Jesus is to appear to be Jesus Himself.

Most of us are pretty clear when someone tells us they are a Buddhist, Hindu, or Spiritualist. But things begin to get a little murky when a person claims that he or she is a Christian. And it can really be a problem if the person is a member of our own church.

The Bible teaches that in the end time men and women would depart from the faith and would begin to believe seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils" (I Tim. 4:1).

This means that conditions would be such that the evil spirits could access people, and this could occur in places other than a Hindu temple or during a séance.

The text explicitly says that some shall depart from the faith. But notice, it doesn't say they would stop coming to church, at least not at first.

If we learn one thing from history, it is that the Devil's number one objective is to corrupt and finally overthrow the true faith.

On various occasions Jesus warns His listeners to be careful not to be deceived. The point He was making was that in this battle between good and evil, we are not safe even if we are in the fort.

In the early days of America, the settlers would build a fort around their villages. As long as a person was inside the fort and the enemy was on the outside, that person was safe. There is an ancient story of a war between the Greeks and the Trojans. They fought and fought, but the battle didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Things were pretty much at a standoff until the Greeks built a huge hollow horse and filled it with soldiers. Then they pretended to sail away.

Seeing the horse, the Trojans figured they had won the war by default and that the horse was intended to be a souvenir of their victory. So they opened the gates and pulled it into the city. That night the soldiers who were in the horse jumped out and opened the city gates. End of story.

The Devil is like a virus insofar as his strategy is concerned. Now you see him, now you don't. He will make a noise in the east and strike in the west.

These days he might seem to be into salvation, but his purpose is to undermine the faith. When what we thought was true turns out to be a lie, it is in effect building our faith on the sand. And Jesus said when we do that, and the storms come, we will be certain to collapse.

My state of Florida is what might be called a bull's eye for hurricanes. Any hurricane that is worth its salt dreams of doing what its role model, Hurricane Andrew, did. Hurricane Andrew was, by the way, the largest natural disaster to hit our country. Being involved in disaster relief, I immediately drove down from Orlando to South Florida, arriving a few hours after the storm had left. Until my dying day I will never forget the devastation I saw in the days and weeks that followed.

Though we know that the Devil's ultimate plan before Jesus comes will be to physically destroy the people of God, his greatest achievement will be a nearly total success at making truth look like error and error become nearly universally accepted as truth. Scripture says he goes out to deceive the kings of the earth.

"For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty" (Revelation 16:14).

The death decree is "cut and dried" as far as I am concerned. It is not complicated or difficult to believe. However, what we should fear is the deception that comes beforehand that prepares the world for the decree. Often we are more concerned with saving our bodies than we are with guarding our souls from those things, which, if we buy into them, will cause us to lose both body and soul.

Jesus Himself sets our priority when He counsels us "...not to fear him which would kill the body, but rather him which has the ability to destroy both body and soul in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

History is the story of the struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness. At least historically that is the way things have been. Something new has come into the picture in recent years. For lack of a better word, I will describe it as "accommodation." By that I mean it now seems as though good and evil have somehow decided that they can co-exist. There is no need for a struggle.

This phenomenon has been made possible by two factors: 1) Good has been convinced that it must be compassionate, accepting, and non-judgmental, and 2) Evil has decided that it will loose nothing if it covers itself with a thin skin of truth.

I have come to believe that in the short term evil is stronger then truth. By that I mean, when error paints itself with a veneer of truth, it becomes more credible; while truth, when it becomes contaminated with error, is not truth anymore.

It used to be that our own church was a refuge from error. We referred to ourselves as having "The Truth." We took comfort from the fact that, if you went to one Adventist church, you had been to them all.

It wasn't that we were perfect. We didn't even always practice what we preached. By the way, I do not believe there is anything wrong in preaching and believing the truth as long as we at least try to practice what we preach.

Someone once defined hypocrisy to me. He said hypocrisy is not "not practicing what we preach," but pretending to be what we never intend to be. Did you follow that?

We weren't perfect in the past, but we knew what was right, and even those who were not living up to the standards admitted it.

Things have changed in the last forty years. We have come to a time in which not only are we not living up to what was always termed "The Truth," but when seemingly objective truth is seen as judgmental, not accepting, Pharisaical, or even hypocritical.

Truth is now being seen as something in the eye of the beholder; or in other words, truth for each individual is seen as a personal preference. As they say, whatever floats your boat.

In the past those who didn't agree with what the church taught or who didn't live up to the standards kept themselves in what might be called "the closet." Perhaps that was better than what we have now. Nowadays those who don't believe in the doctrines of the church are prominent and active.

Maybe this is a result of living in a free country. Our country is a wonderful place because it has a Constitution, which, by the way, is the oldest constitution in the world. This Constitution guarantees the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizens.

But in the spiritual realm, the rules are not the same. The Bible is not about man-made human rights, but about who God is and how He expects us, having been created by Him, to live.

While God guarantees us the freedom of choice, the options are not infinite but only two--obey and live or disobey and die. The death of Christ was not to set us free to do as we please, but it was to break the power of selfishness so that we could once again be free to do as He has commanded us to do.

All of this means that the church, though established and run using certain democratic principles, is not a democracy, but a monarchy in which those who are the members agree that they have as their objective to do the will of the Almighty.

Of course, here is where the plot thickens, because as I said at the beginning, the 2,000 or so different Christian denominations all claim to represent the will of God. This can't be true, because their respective teachings are often 180 degrees out of sync with each other.

Christianity as a whole has many ways of interpreting itself. The question for us is: "Shall we, as Seventh-day Adventists, have 2,000 different ways of interpreting what it means to be an Adventist?"

Back in the old days, before a person was baptized, they had to stand in front of the church and take what was then called the "Baptismal Vow."

I haven't seen that done in a long time. Perhaps this is now accomplished one on one. Perhaps there was some merit about the old way. Standing in front of the entire church body and vowing before God and the congregation that you believe in the tenants of this Church was important.

It was about accountability. Accountability is something that seems to be missing these days. The prevailing attitude is "Who cares?" I do what I want; you do what you want. That might have been OK at Woodstock, but it is not, nor ever was, what the church should be about.

Just as the marriage vow in the presence of God and the witness is about accountability, so the baptismal vow and baptism by immersion are about accountability. The message is that we have died to self and selfishness and are now agreeing to be accountable to God and His Word; and, inasmuch as Christ's bride is the church, we are becoming accountable to the body of Christ.

Some couples these days are changing the marriage vows--if you can call them vows--from " . . . until death do us part" to " . . . as long as love shall last." To use the word "vow" to describe that kind of a deal is almost an oxymoron.

For a person who has been taught to love himself first, that vow might not last very long. An individual who has only so much love to give may discover there is not enough to go around for anyone but himself. Once, when I was listening to a religious radio station, a singer was singing a song about "the greatest love in the world." Now, don't jump to conclusions too fast. The song was not about God's love for us, or our love for Him, or even about our love for our neighbor. The greatest love in the world, according to that song, is one's love for himself.

Getting back to the matter of marriage vows, I have heard of marriages that are called "open marriages." Apparently this means that are no strings attached. By strings, we mean loyalty or the need to be faithful only to one's mate.

That such marriages exist shouldn't come as a surprise, because Scripture says that the last days would be dangerous, because men and women would be lovers of themselves. The text continues with a litany of what might be called the fruit of self love. It says they will be "...covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful and unholy" (ll Tim 3:2 f).

But that's not all, it gets even worse. It says they are "without natural affection" (this could be referring to the homosexual lifestyle), truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good."

It is not over yet. The text continues, "traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God" (sounds like some of the television shows Christians ought not to be watching).

But what you see is not what you get, because the text says that these people will have a form of godliness, but in fact deny the power thereof.

Speaking of denying the power of God--there was a booth at a large Adventist convocation not long ago, offering support for parents of gays and lesbians. The folk operating the booth have great compassion for parents of children who had gone astray in this way. In fact, they themselves have a son who is gay.

I stopped by the booth and shared with them that I knew first hand the pain of having an erring child. One of my children was once a drug addict and an alcoholic. I remember the day I took him to the emergency room. The doctor on duty at the time confessed he had a son who was an addict and was in prison at that moment. He said he was glad his boy was in jail, because at least he was safe for the present. Then, bless his heart, turning to my son he called him by name and said, "Only Jesus can set you free." He was right, of course, and Jesus has set my boy free.

I believe the Bible and the power of God when the Bible says that there is no temptation taken you but that He can, by His power, break the chains of the habit or tendency and will, in spite of a weakness or propensity to evil--I say, in spite of a weakness or propensity to evil--provide a way of escape.

We may have to bear the burden of our temptation until this mortal puts on immorality, but we don't have to live under it or be enslaved by it. The cross of Christ guarantees it, "Sin shall not have dominion over you."

Accommodating sin is a sad commentary of our age, not only in society where you might expect it, but now even in the church. We are trying to have our cake and eat it, too. In this case, the cake is sin. Scripture doesn't call sin "cake," but it more aptly describes those who, for whatever reason, deny the power of God in their lives as a dog returning to his vomit.

So it turns out we don't take vows seriously anymore; and if we do, we either change the wording to fit any inevitability or we don't take the vows at all, like the couple who live together without being married. They want to have all the benefits but no accountability.

In the church and in the kingdom of God there are benefits, of course. But the benefits are contingent on accountability, which is another way of saying responsibility.

Yet, sadly, we have reached the point in many places where what the church is to you is only what you yourself have declared that it will be; and if anyone dares to disagree, they are either Pharisees, judgmental, not compassionate, hypocritical, or all of the above.

I do not deny individual liberty of religious morals. The dilemma is, can two walk together except they be agreed as to where they are going? Even more importantly, shall two walk together if they are in fact not even on the same road?

If you work for a company, be it a bank or a roofing company, there are policies you must adhere to. Another word for policy is "rules." I have yet to hear of a serious company that is growing and making a profit, yet where everyone does as they jolly well please. It may not appear that way, but even the clowns at the circus are following an organized routine.

Without a doubt, most of us love our church and wish only the best for it and what it represents. There may be some among us who feel otherwise, but supposing we are all men and women of good will. Even so, if things continue the way they seem to be going, how long can we endure united? Our church seems to be becoming a do-it-yourself, have-it-your-way fellowship.

Is it possible for us to be a viable entity when we no longer believe the same 27 doctrinal beliefs? Or if we say we do believe but then have 10,000 ways of interpreting what they mean?

Shall we just get used to it, institutionalize our diversity of doctrinal interpretation, and simply celebrate our differences? If an army fought its battles in a non-united manner, would not their declared enemy easily win?

Don't we understand? Are we blind to the past as well as to the present? History illustrates that when unity is lost, the mission is soon forgotten.

Someone may suggest, "But can't we continue to be united and just agree to disagree?" There would be others who say, "But life is about relationships. Can't we just love each other and forget about the details?" We might wish it were that easy.

Many a couple that decide to get married say they love each other. No matter that they don't have the same core goals and values. So after the honeymoon is over and real life sets in, the lifestyle differences begin to be noticed; and as time goes on and basic disagreements continue, love begins to wane.

But someone may say, "Unity is not necessary. To keep love alive, all you have to do is compromise." There can be no doubt that marriage requires compromise and a spirit of "give and take." Yet in the things that have do with faith and morals, can there be accommodation and compromise?

While in the areas of faith and morals there should be no compromise, there can be room for growth. Even in the area of truth, no one can claim that he or she has all the truth or even completely understands how to consistently apply the truth they may hold dear.

There can be no doubt we all have a blind side. God has not committed truth to one person or even to two. Truth, to be appreciated in its real beauty, must be seen and appreciated from the perceptive of many. Yet there is always the danger that the cause of truth, as it is interpreted and applied by many, may begin to fray at the edges. Instead of our going back to the core to discover the basic truth, the frayed edge begins to be seen as the core.

Much of the diversity of ideology that has come into the church in the last 30 years is the result of the loss of confidence in what we call objective truth.

In this case we are talking about the Scriptures. To open the door for this to happen, it was necessary first to re-interpret the Scriptures as we have known them. As Seventh-day Adventists we had agreed that, in these last days, God in His providence had intervened on behalf of His people by sending a prophetic gift.

The gift of prophecy, which was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G. White, was never meant to add to the Bible, be better than the Bible, or in place of the Bible. It was an inspired commentary or interpretation of the Bible. Remember what I said at the beginning--that there are some 2,000 Christian organizations that claim to have the truth but don't agree with each other. In other words, it's a jungle out there.

So in His providence, God saw fit to explain what the Bible means and how it is to be applied in the context of the last days. As a result of this intervention, the Seventh-day Adventist Church came into being.

Back to the current problem of diversity of beliefs. One of the first beliefs to take a hit had to be the gift of prophecy. At the beginning, it was the Spirit of Prophecy that gave us our unity. To allow for a "whatever you believe is true" ambience to arrive, one had to break the influence of the writings of Mrs. White in the church. To a large extent, in the last 25 years, this has been accomplished. When the Spirit of Prophecy is relegated to the role of being "your favorite author," this then opens the door for yourself or your favorite guru to become your trusted authority.

It may be that any more when we become members of the church by baptism, we are acknowledging that we have decided to make this our church home, because for the time being, at least, it meets our needs, and we can live with it as long as it doesn't get too personal.

Being an Adventist should be not only about the way we believe, but it should also convert into the way we live. But little by little being an Adventist, for many, is becoming less and less about the way we live, and more and more like the popular culture around us. And inasmuch as our theology is ultimately a reflection of our personal morality, our theology is being changed to reflect the reality of our lives.

Hypocrisy is not just the failure to practice what we preach, it is also what happens when we begin to preach what we practice.

Shall we solve our problem of disagreement by simply agreeing to disagree? I say no. To do so will spell the end of our church as we know it.

Our unity, in matters having to do with faith and morals, can never be based on compromise or give and take. A person persuaded against his will is of the same opinion still.

The solution to the problem is found in returning to the Word of God as the only rule of faith and doctrine. I am sorry to say that we are increasingly, both corporately and individually, abandoning the Bible as our standard of faith and lifestyle.

Though I am not sure that it was ever meant to be that Mrs. White's shopping list of things to get at the store was to be considered divine revelation, or even if she might not have always practiced in her personal life what she counseled others to do, does this make her ministry invalid or uninspired?

I respect Billy Graham, Chuck Swindoll and Max Lucado. But when it comes to applying Biblical principles and interpreting last day prophecies, I will cast my lot any day with the inspired writings of Ellen G. White.

Shall we agree to disagree? Again, I say no. I plead with you, no. We must not. Rather, we must return to the Word, not only intellectually, but also practically. The Word of God must again be seen as the only thing that can bring us safely through. As darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people, the Word of God must be that which serves as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

Shall we continue on the road to diversify of faith and doctrine? No. We cannot. We must not. To do so is to sign our own death warrant as a people. We must not tarry. Time is running out. Together as a church we must, in the words of the ancient prophet, "Seek ye the LORD while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon" (Isaiah 55:6,7).