I walked down the steps into the baptismal tank. The water was chilly. Not only that, it nearly came up to my chin. The minister who reached out and took my hand was my dad. He let me stand on his foot and lifted my up a little so the water wouldn't be so deep. I was nervous and that with the chill made my teeth chatter.

Some say that children should not be baptized when they are so young. They say that the child doesn't understand what is happening. I suppose to some extent that is true. But then it's not that way only when you get baptized. What about when you are getting married? We didn't have a clue what it would mean when we answered in the affirmative that we would love, honor and cherish our spouse in good times and bad, in sickness and health, until death would one day separate us.

You may not have been baptized as a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church when you were nine like I was. You may have been 19, 39 or 59. But, it's not likely that you were baptized when you were 69, though there are people who are. I think, generally speaking, after a certain age a person gets to be pretty set in their ways and it is more and more difficult to change.

Now I am not saying that it is ever too late to give your life to Jesus, but we are definitely creatures of habit and the more we say no to God, all things being equal, the harder it becomes to say yes. I may be wrong, but I have wondered, when Jesus stands up and says, "He that is wicked, be wicked still, and he that is holy, be holy still," if it doesn't mean that at that point everyone has made up their minds and aren't going to change them.

This may be a valid conclusion because you must have noticed that people in the church these days seem to be getting more and more set in their beliefs. Those who have made a heart commitment to Jesus and to His Word are being settled into the truth so that they cannot be moved. At the same time there are those in the church who claim to have made a heart commitment to Jesus, but who seem to be having trouble with His Word. They too are being sealed. They used to be in the closet so to speak. They had a double life--a religious life and a secular life. In the case of these people, their secular life has bought out their religious life, and the new conglomerate decided to keep the name "born-again Christian." The result in the judgment is that they will be the ones that had a form of godliness but denied the power thereof.

There used to be a time in which we said that you could travel wherever in the world you liked and you could always recognize a Seventh-day Adventist when you saw one and that wherever you traveled in the world the Seventh-day Adventist churches were all the same.

This is definitely not true anymore. Not only can you generally not tell an Adventist from John Q. Public, but also Adventist churches are not necessarily the same. I guess I should not include the whole of a church in this respect. In every church God knows who are His. He said that His sheep hear His voice, but nevertheless there are churches that will not tolerate a minister who believes and teaches from the Spirit of Prophecy. There are churches where Jesus, John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul would not be invited to preach. Critics would say that they were too negative.

But I shouldn't just blame the people in the pews. There are ministers who will not share their pulpits with people who preach a traditional Adventist sermon. They have no trouble if the guest speaker quotes from Billy Graham, Chuck Swindoll, Max Lucado or the Reader's Digest, but a quotation from The Great Controversy is a no-no.

Listen to an email that my brother received from an evangelist friend of his.

(Email to my brother Duane)

"Just wanted you to know that we have accepted a call to pastor the Cartersville church in Georgia. It will be close to the academy and a good place for our little girl to go to school. As you know the conferences are having financial problems and Carolina had asked us to pastor a church here, but we feel impressed to move to Georgia. But we had already scheduled a meeting in Ohio.

"Thought you might be interested in hearing about what just happened to us there. (Carolina had been scheduling us to do one series of meetings out of state to relieve financial problems.) We had been invited to do a series of meetings in Mansfield. The pastor called me and told me he wanted the handbill to be about NASCAR. I told him that I had already done a NASCAR handbill and it didn't bring out that many visitors. I told him that I would do half NASCAR and half on Bible prophecy. He agreed and told me that his congregation used drums and asked if that would be a problem. I told him no - (we were bringing our own musician). We were greeted warmly by the pastor when we arrived on Friday night. We were scheduled to hold the meetings in a public high school beginning Sat. night.

"A Catholic priest didn't like the handbill which featured world leaders and wrote an article in the paper against the meetings. Then on Friday night the head of the public school board, called the pastor and said he didn't want us to meet in the school. Evidently the head elder was very good friends with this school leader, also a Catholic. The elder was a businessman and owned several businesses in Mansfield. The pastor and the elder caved in and cancelled the meetings. The pastor called us Sabbath morning and asked us to not come to church - to stay in our room. We were told that the meetings were canceled.

"I asked to talk to the church board - and the pastor arranged for me to come to the church about 1:30 on Sabbath afternoon. The board was there. They told us we were not asked to do a series of meetings which contained church doctrines. They only wanted the Love of Jesus. I told them every sermon I preached had the love of Jesus. They asked me what I preached about and I told them 'the three angels message.' They asked me 'what was that?'

"They told me that I could go to the school and send the people home who came. I went prepared to do that but a visitor (Baptist) called the mayor and the mayor said that we could meet in the park. By this time about 120 visitors had arrived and they requested for me to preach to them in the park. Brother, I had to do it. So I did. The SDA pastor never showed but one of his members did.

"The visitors asked if I would preach to them the next night and how could I refuse? Everyone had read the Catholic Priest article about us and knew what was happening - I did not refer to the SDA church at all. At this point I could truly say no one was sponsoring us.

"An SDA pastor about 10 miles out of town came to the meetings the second night. After he found out how the Celebration church caved, he asked us to take the visitors to his church. The third night the newspaper came out and so did 150 visitors!

"On Monday, I went to the conference office and asked the President what I should do with the 150 visitors since I had been told to go home. He told me to go home as the local church (who asked us to come) requested. The small church outside of town, could not afford to carry the financial burden of the meetings.

"We came home as the conference president requested, but the other SDA pastor convinced 80 visitors to come to his church and hear my tapes on audio. I left my musician with him who is also a very good Bible worker and we came home.

"Can you believe this? Is this not the most bizarre thing you have heard of? I asked the church board why they even requested me to come. They knew we were there for a whole month. They said they just didn't want any negative community spirit. They just wanted us to talk about NASCAR and love (for 24 nights!). Are we near the end or what?" - John Ernhardt

This experience shouldn't come as a surprise because because a study of the Old Testament seems to bear out that people tend to reflect their leaders.

Someone has said that a person's theology is a reflection of his or her personal morality. I believe this is true. This means that if we have sin in our lives, which we refuse to give up, we will be attracted to error like a bee is to honey. We will look for people who will preach something that makes us feel comfortable in our sin, or in any case, will give us the affirmation we need to continue in sin.

By the way, we hear so much these days about how important it is to affirm people. This is probably why, in the Old Testament, prophets had such a short shelf life. But we must never forget that through the ages the messages that God has generally sent through His messengers have been more concerned with truth than with self-esteem.

But back to the matter of a person's theology being a reflection of their personal morality. The church originally was to be the place where people came to have their life reformed from the inside out, but because of our refusal to repent, this generation now seems to be bringing the church down to the level of its lifestyle.

When I began this sermon I was recounting my baptism. Do you remember the circumstances surrounding you joining the church? I have heard of judges sentencing a person who has been convicted of doing something or the other, saying that that person had to put in so many hours of community service, but I don't remember ever hearing of a judge saying that part of someone's punishment was that they had to become members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Of course, in the Dark Ages when church and state were united, it would not be unusual for the magistrate to insist that a person practice the faith of the age, which was Roman Catholic. Those who refused were often burnt at the stake or worse.

By the way, I don't have anything against a person who decides they want to be a Catholic, but I have big problems with someone, including family members, who would say that you had to become a Catholic or even for that matter a Seventh-day Adventist.

When you became a Seventh-day Adventist, I think you must have done so because you chose to? Now I know that there are cases where there is social or family pressure to join the church. There can even be pressure from the minister or evangelist. I remember when I first began the ministry, it was not uncommon for many of our evangelists to have altar calls that would last for forty-five minutes. One of the basic arguments was, if you pass up this opportunity to become a member of the church and you are killed on the way home tonight, then it's curtains for you.

But, come on now, let's get real. We became members of the church for whatever reason because we wanted to. If we didn't want to for some reason, we decided not to, but at least there wasn't a police force or an army saying we had to. I am going to all of this trouble to say what I am about to say now, and that is, we joined this church because we wanted to.

Of course, we may not have known what we were getting into, like when we said "I do" when we got married. But even if we didn't understand all that it meant, we went ahead. I decided to be baptized when I was nine years old.

By the way, did you know that there are some these days who are trying to separate being baptized from becoming a member of the church? Personally, I have a problem with this concept. Some are saying that we should just baptize people and let them decide later whether they want to join the church or not. Now I suppose there may be some theologians who would say I am wrong, but I believe that the decision to be baptized has more to do with joining the church than anything else.

I say this because, if being immersed in a tank of water was a necessary ritual to be cleansed from our sins, then we would be like the Catholics who believe that in order to be saved you have to be sprinkled. My personal conviction is that when we accept the Lord Jesus Christ, and respond to His call to our hearts to repent from our sins, we pass from death to life and our names are written in the Lamb's book of life. What is baptism about then? I think that it has a lot of the same significance as does getting married instead of just living together.

When we get married, we stand before family and friends, in front of the minister, and pledge publicly what we have already decided in our hearts and have expressed to each other. But exchanging marriage vows in the presence of others is essential to sealing our commitment and is the difference between committing fornication and a union that God can bless.

In the same way, when we are immersed in the waters of baptism we are certifying before the body of Christ something that has already happened in our hearts, and by this rite we are expressing our desire to be a part of that body and accountable to it.

What I am saying is that I can't see how a person would ever want to be baptized into Jesus unless they were willing at the same time to be baptized into Christ's body, which is the church.

Just as the marriage ceremony is about accountability, so being a member of the body of Christ is about accountability, not only to God but to fellow believers as well.

The point is we chose to become members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We did this of our own free will, and in doing so we affirmed that we, first of all, believe the articles of faith espoused by this church, and secondly, that we will be accountable to the other members of the church to not only affirm but to implement in our lives these articles of faith.

Here is where things begin to get a little sticky. Something new seems to be going on. I shouldn't say that it is new inasmuch as there is nothing new under the sun. But it may be new to us as a denomination. What is happening is where in times past, when a person no longer believed or practiced the articles of faith as practiced by this church, they probably quit coming to services and over the course of time disappeared from the church. This still happens, of course, but now there is a new element, and that is, an increasing number of members have quit believing in the articles of faith of our church. But instead of disappearing, they stay and are engaged in a concerted program to remodel the church to fit their designer faith, and lack of what, up to now, was considered the Christian lifestyle.

Now I believe that a person has a perfect right to belong to a denomination or community church that reflects their faith and lifestyle, but I believe it is unethical when a person, for whatever reason, no longer believes in the life and lifestyle of a particular church to dedicate their time and talents to try to change the doctrines of the church to fit their own point of view.

I once received a call from a man who basically wanted to tell me that he thought our church had too many doctrines. I don't know what his problem was, but after talking with him for a while I suggested that he might be happier if he could find a denomination or a community church that more closely conformed with his own beliefs. He said no, he preferred to stay in our church and try to change it to fit his own beliefs.

Friend, while I believe in religious liberty, I think a person, of whatever persuasion, should be ethical. By that I mean that if I go to work for a company which, of course, is by choice, I believe that I have the ethical responsibility to respect company policies, and if the time should come in which I can no longer support its policies, it is time for me to move on.

I don't believe that belonging to any denomination is a basic human right; it is a human choice. When I join a church I do so with my eyes wide open and, as I mentioned earlier, when I requested to be a part of the membership of this church, I by my baptism into the body, indicated that I would support its articles of faith and its ecclesiastical practice. When I no longer do so, I believe the time has come for me to move on to greener pastures.

A couple of years ago I was the speaker for a young man who was being ordained to the gospel ministry. You may not agree with me, but I said to him and to those present that, if the day should ever come in which he no longer believed in the articles of faith of this church, he should do the ethical thing and resign from its ministry. I think that this applies to teachers as well. When a teacher is no longer able, for conscience reason or whatever, to teach our young people the Adventist faith, it is time for them to do the ethical thing and that is to resign. I recognize that some will say that this denies academic freedom, and so it does. Being that what it may, I don't believe that a person should be a teacher in a Church institution of learning, be it pre-kinder or university level, when they no longer are teaching the principles of the faith that they by their own choice agreed to espouse. And if that time should come, it is time for them to do the ethical thing, and that is, find work that fits their worldview.

The doctrines that are being challenged in some of our schools and colleges as well as universities are not about how we shall dot i's and cross t's. The issues we are talking about are bearing wall issues. We are talking about things like whether or not the first eleven chapters of Genesis are true, and that includes the creation week and the account of a worldwide flood. We are also talking about the ministry of Mrs. Ellen G. White, which has long been settled as being that of the prophetic gift exercised in the remnant church.

By the way, while she was still alive, Mrs. White herself predicted that in the last days the Spirit of Prophecy would be made of none effect, and for all practical purposes in North America, Western Europe and Australia, this prophecy has largely come to pass

I am now going to express a conviction that I have and that is this. In view of what is happening in some places, it seems evident that there is a program that is ideologically coordinated to redo the church as we have known it. If the trend is successful, the result will be to eliminate or hollow out those doctrines that make us uniquely Seventh-day Adventists.

Some years ago I was in the Hartfield Airport in Atlanta, GA. I was going to catch a flight to Chattanooga, TN. Among those who were waiting to take the flight, I recognized a religious TV personality named John Ankerberg. Years before, he, together with a man who I believe was Walter Martin, held an interview with one of our church leaders. The interview, which nearly became a massacre, didn't go well for our side. Through the years I had thought about this and wished that our side had made a better showing.

Anyway, when I saw Mr. Ankerberg, I approached him and introduced myself as an Adventist minister, and immediately referenced the interview/debate, and expressed that I thought we might have had someone else represent us that would have been able to stand up to him. He asked who that might have been and I gave him a name.

When I had replied he said, "I have two questions for you. One is, what is the current Seventh-day Adventist belief about Mrs. White, and the other, what is the church's current belief concerning the investigative judgment?" As an answer to the first question I asked him one, and that is, didn't he believe in the gift of prophecy in the New Testament church. He replied that he did. And to the other question, I asked him didn't he believe when Jesus comes He will know who he is coming to save. He said he believed in that, too, though, obviously he didn't agree with our church on the particulars of either issue.

The reason that I am telling you this, friends, is that these are the two doctrines of our church that our supposed evangelical friends want to see us denounce and throw out the window. They know that if they can encourage us to do away with these unique doctrines, then we will in effect have been defanged and our unique mission to the world will have been emasculated.

You are probably aware that fairly recently another organization has come into being that claims that it is the same cart only it has new wheels. Its name is Mission Catalyst. This organization represents itself as being committed to the doctrines of this church and its mission of reaching the lost.

The focus of this organization seems to be an issue of money, and those who are marketing the idea do not believe that the major portion of the tithes and offerings should be sent to the conference, the union and the General Conference. As you know, our churches have traditionally sent 100% of the tithe that is received to the conference and then the conference sends just short, I believe, of fifty percent to the union. From there the union sends a certain percentage to the General Conference.

The new organization proposes to form churches which will retain 90% of the tithe for local church use and will send only 10% to their head office. In this case, the head office is not a part of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. The churches which choose to belong to Mission Catalyst will be what we call congregationalist churches. That means each individual church is a free-standing organization.

This is not a new idea, but it reflects a model that has been around a long time, which has been held up to our ministers and members who have in recent years been attending the seminars and training sessions sponsored by the Willow Creek Church, which is located in a suburb of Chicago, IL. This large church even formed its own organization called the Willow Creek Association. For years a number of Seventh-day Adventist churches and even other denominational organizations have been enrolled in this association, and large numbers of our leaders and pastors have become promoters of the organization.

The president of the conference where I worked for many years once sent me to Willow Creek. Later when I asked him why he did that, he told me it was so he could hear another point of view.

I think it would not be difficult to document that those churches in our country who have most closely implemented the Willow Creek model have also been those who have drifted away from the model of church governance that we have in our denomination, and a number of them have even given up the faith and become Sunday-keeping churches.

The recent organization to which I am referring represents itself as being faithful to the doctrines of our church and has drawn a certain amount of sympathy from members and ministers across the country.

I am now going to express some concerns that I have concerning what is going on and will tell you why I feel this way. I will use the case of Desmond Ford as an example. In the immediate term after the meeting at Glacier View Camp in Colorado, Desmond Ford was defrocked for his beliefs. Dozens of ministers and teachers also lost their jobs for supporting his cause. By the way, one of the principle disagreements that Dr. Ford had with this church was its doctrine of the investigative judgment, and I will add to that Mrs. White, because in order to overthrow the doctrine of the investigative judgment you have to discredit Mrs. White.

In the long term, those ministers and teachers who saw what happened to those who publicly sided with Dr. Ford decided that they would not commit professional 'hari-kari' and so they took a low profile, but in their hearts they felt he was right. What I am saying is that, for all practical purposes, Desmond Ford lost the battle but he won the war. The damage to the influence of the ministry represented by the Spirit of Prophecy of Mrs. White since then has been, for all practical purposes, institutionalized, and the doctrine of the investigative judgment has, for an increasing number of ministers and members alike, become a non-issue.

I am telling you this because I believe we are on the track of even something worse this time--if it could be said to be worse. What is happening seems to be the issue of who will control the finances of this church, but it is much more than that. You see, the golden rule is whoever controls the gold rules.

The underlying issue is not how will we distribute the tithes and offerings that come into the churches, but what will be the fate of the doctrines that make this church what it is. Though our organization may be somewhat redundant and uneconomical, it has been able to do two things that would never have been possible if we had been congregational, and that is, we have been able to practically carry the gospel to the whole world, and secondly, our doctrinal integrity until recently has been maintained intact.

If this trend toward congregationalism catches on, our future as an organization is in the past. As churches begin to control the money they will also, depending upon their local guru, begin to decide which of the doctrines are important and which are not. Although they will profess to maintain core Adventist doctrines, each one will decide for themselves what the word "core" means.

Having made of no effect the Spirit of Prophecy and thrown out the investigative judgment, the next target is the Sabbath. The Sabbath will be downplayed under the guise that we ought to do good on the Sabbath, and of course, that will be for each one to decide for themselves.

As I prepared this sermon I was sitting out Hurricane Frances. We knew in advance it was coming. I boarded up my house, found a safe place and laid in provisions. Days in advance we knew it was coming and, though we could not stop it, we prepared to face it.

Friends, a storm is breaking upon the church that we love. Did I say that we love? I mean the church that Jesus loves. This church was expressly brought into being by our loving Savior. It was to be, if you please, a basket which was to carry a special truth.

Through the years I have expressed the conviction that the Articles of Faith, and by that I mean our doctrines, are not so much to save the lost as they are to keep the saved from being lost. The doctrinal errors that are held by our brothers and sisters in Christ who are members of other denominations will make them vulnerable to losing their salvation, and they run the risk of actually enforcing the mark of the beast thinking they are doing the will of God.

So what shall we do? During Hurricane Frances, during the hours that it took for the strong storm to pass across the Florida peninsula, those in charge of the emergency office repeatedly warned the population not to leave the safety of their homes. We were advised to get in a space where there were the most walls, where we would not be exposed to glass that might shatter into the house.

During a hurricane there is, besides the danger of the sustained wind and the rain, the danger of tornados that can seemingly appear out of nowhere. Listen to this counsel from the servant of the Lord:

"Christians should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise and this preparation they should make by diligently studying the Word of God and striving to conform their lives to its precepts." - Prophets and Kings, p. 626.

"None but those who have fortified the mind with the truths of the Bible will stand through the last great conflict." - Great Controversy pp. 593, 594 (1911).

"Only those who have been diligent students of the Scriptures and who have received the love of the truth will be shielded from the powerful delusion that takes the world captive." - Great Controversy, p. 625 (1911).

"Our people need to understand the oracles of God; they need to have a systematic knowledge of the principles of revealed truth, which will fit them for what is coming upon the earth and prevent them from being carried about by every wind of doctrine." - Testimonies, Vol. 5, p. 273 (1885).

"A revival of true godliness among us is the greatest and most urgent of all our needs. To seek this should be our first work." - Review and Herald, March 22, 1887.

"The time has come for a thorough reformation to take place. When this reformation begins, the spirit of prayer will actuate every believer, and will banish from the church the spirit of discord and strife." - Testimonies, Vol. 8, p. 251.

"A revival and a reformation must take place under the ministration of the Holy Spirit. Revival and reformation are two different things. Revival signifies a renewal of spiritual life, a quickening of the powers of mind and heart, a resurrection from the spiritual death. Reformation signifies a reorganization, a change in ideas and theories, habits and practices. Reformation will not bring forth the good fruit of righteousness unless it is connected with the revival of the Spirit. Revival and reformation are to do their appointed work, and in doing this work they must blend." - Review and Herald, Feb. 25, 1902.

Friends, this sermon was not meant to be a divider. The church is already being divided. The purpose of this sermon is to plead that the divisions stop. A business cannot be run, be it for profit or non-profit, like the church is trending. The Scripture is clear when it says, "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" To those who have been persuaded that the doctrines of this church are false, I plead with you to reconsider.

Can't we see that we are not making history, we are only repeating it. The Spirit of Prophecy says that the sinners in Zion would be shaken out. That will surely occur, but at this stage it seems some are fulfilling the words of the prophet Isaiah when he wrote, "And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach." Isaiah 4:1.

Jesus has a message just for our church, just for this time. It is found in Revelation 3:14-19:

"And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

"I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent".

I pray that as a church we will respond to this call. This is my prayer in Jesus' name.