The Modernist/Post-Modernist Debate

A parallel, a Biblical precedent, a powerful metanarrative bounded by 1st century Israel and 21st century SDAs, can be seen in the modern/post-modern scenario, which I strongly believe needs to be considered. Adventism today is repeating the same mistake of Judaism prior to Christ’s first coming: the modernist Jews in Jerusalem versus the post-modernist Jews in Alexandria, Egypt.

Both Hasidic and Hellenized factions believed they held on to truth, the living oracles of God. Suddenly, out of nowhere, up stands John the Baptist, preaching the real truth, the message from God, the true absolute truth. John must have appeared like a throwback to caveman antediluvian days and his message of reformation must have seemed a bit old-fashioned to the Alexandrians. He must have sounded kind of close to the Hasidic Sanhedrin, however a power attended him that they didn’t have, and which made them nervous. John claimed no connection with either group and worked separately from either group’s agendas.

Neither modernist/post-modernist group was correct, according to John; both had fallen far away from the Law of God, and John had been raised up to cleanse and prepare Israel for the coming Prince of heaven. John’s message, inspired by heaven, was heavy on the Law and lacking on grace, but it was the wisdom of God and authorized by the Holy Spirit, and only those who responded to his message of obedience to God eventually accepted Christ’s ministry of justice and grace combined, when He came. Those who rejected John, later rejected Jesus.

“He was to go forth as Jehovah’s messenger, to bring to men the light of God. He must give a new direction to their thoughts. He must impress them with the holiness of God’s requirements, and their need of His perfect righteousness. Such a messenger must be holy….

“In the time of John the Baptist, greed for riches, and the love of luxury and display had become widespread. Sensuous pleasures, feasting and drinking, were causing physical disease and degeneracy, benumbing the spiritual perceptions, and lessening the sensibility to sin. John was to stand as a reformer. By his abstemious life and plain dress he was to rebuke the excesses of his time. Hence the directions given to the parents of John,—a lesson of temperance by an angel from the throne of heaven….

“But the life of John was not spent in idleness, in ascetic gloom, or in selfish isolation. From time to time he went forth to mingle with men; and he was ever an interested observer of what was passing in the world. From his quiet retreat he watched the unfolding of events. With vision illuminated by the divine spirit he studied the characters of men, that he might understand how to reach their hearts with the message of heaven. The burden of his mission was upon him. In solitude, by meditation and prayer, he sought to gird up his soul for the lifework before him….

“John found in the wilderness his school and his sanctuary. Like Moses amid the mountains of Midian, he was shut in by God’s presence, and surrounded by the evidences of His power….

“He looked upon the King in His beauty, and self was forgotten. He beheld the majesty of holiness, and felt himself to be inefficient and unworthy. He was ready to go forth as Heaven’s messenger, unawed by the human, because he had looked upon the Divine. He would stand erect and fearless in the presence of earthly monarchs, because he had bowed low before the King of kings.” Desire of Ages, pp. 100-103.

Through repentance the people received a paradigm shift that was literally out of this world. Seeing a love never before witnessed, a strong, tender father’s love, in John, later magnified in Jesus and pervaded by Paul, a new faculty was awakened and brought to life. This new heart, this new mind, provided a new way of relating to life and reality. All the vain philosophies of men—liberal/conservative stereotyping, modernism/post-modernism categorizing—were counted as loss and despised as dung, that they might have more of the power of Christ.

Let us go with John and Christ and Paul into the desert, even if it’s a wilderness of life experience and trial; let us also bow low before the Almighty, so that we might be able to stand erect and fearless before the world to give the absolute truth, the everlasting gospel, to this generation, for this time.