‘Clipping the wings of the third angel in advance so he can only flap about’ the case of vicarius filii dei

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Visiting Professor Department of Liberal Education, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

Recently a letter arrived from an emeritus professor in Adventist prophecies complaining that the Andrews Study Bible has left out in Revelation 13:18 any comment on VFD or vicarius filii dei = 666. This is of course very shortsighted by the Editor of the Study Bible and also by his team or contributor for Revelation. It is lately also left out apparently by some Spanish Study Bibles.

Then the professor made the comment, worth looking at: “Are we [by these actions of removal of cardinal pioneer theological tenets] ‘clipping the wings of the third angel in advance so he can only flap about?’” A very relevant question. What is going on?

Is there something wrong with VFD or vicarius filii dei = 666? Is it unscientific? Is it wrongly calculated? Is it not used by the Roman Catholic Church today, this century, last century, ever? Are the sources not well-established for this equation? Did the pioneers endorse this equation? If one reads the 800 page book by Edwin de Kock 2011 on the topic all the answers are provided. So there is nothing wrong with this calculation or conviction of the meaning of 666.

But why did the Sabbath School lesson book of 2001 by A. Rodriquez shelve the issue? Why do other Revelation scholars like J. Paulien and R. Stefanovic also try to shelve this issue? In a South Korean Compass article, a church journal of November 2014 it was also shelved not on an independent research or even a research, but just compiling views of “table talks” of Paulien and Stefanovic or Rodriquez et al. And that is it. Even when the counter-article appeared by K. Ahn emeritus professor in Systematic Theology of Sahmyook University in December 2014 and January 2015 in Compass presenting a strong case for VFD based on Edwin de Kock 800 page research, you still get people mumbling nonsense about an imperfect number 666 that just cannot become 7. None of these scholars like Paulien, Stefanovic and Rodriquez who saw all the data of De Kock lift up their hand to change their ideas. They are lame due to whaterver reason. They just stare motionless at the strong evidence. It was the same with Bacchiocchi in 2008. Both myself and De Kock and others presented the strong data to him, but he just carried on with his wrong views. That year he died of cancer. He was probably under chemo-treatment so that his passivity to this evidence should be seen in that light.

Let me tell you what I think is happening with our church. First, it is not only our church. Then secondly, it is the trend of the times we are living in. Third, it is problem of the world’s consensus concept of what true jurisdiction is.

First the other church. In 2010 a group of professors, pastors and laymen of the Dutch Reform Church in South Africa was very concerned about the inroads of liberalism in their church, so they wrote a book about it. Die Trojaanse Perd in die NG Kerk – Die Kanker van Evolusie en Liberalisme (2010) [The Trojan Horse in the Dutch Reform Church – The Cancer of Evolution and Liberalism 2010]. A list of problems are presented by them: the rotation in their view of Scripture; Scriptural criticism and Scriptural use; the results of wrong decisions regarding the Scriptural view; homosexuality as example of understanding the deviant current view of Scriptural exegesis; onslaught on Scripture by post-modern views; Evolution and Evolutionism – the rotten apple in the crate; marriage in the fire.

So there you have another church with a can of worms to deal with. Swanson and Gane’s publication in 2013 on Gays in Adventist perspective falls under the same category. The magazines Spectrum and Adventist Today have been instrumental in the 1990’s and later to blow this anti-biblical stance. At Avondale this trend was promoted by Arthur Patrick and he said that he initiated the same understanding on the 13^th of September 2008 (Arthur Patrick Blog paragraph 114). So the liberal strain has been with the church basically since its inception. The view to not take the Bible literally but only spiritually, to make the Bible meaningful for that time not our time, to lock the prime meaning of the Bible away only in the times of the Bible are tenets that from time to time have popped-up in Adventism, especially by its critics and heretics like Canright et al.

But these days it is openly promoted by Theologians at our Seminaries and Colleges. Why? They studied their doctoral dissertations at non-SDA universities and did not read the sources critically and did not counter their professors at all. They just went with the stream. The modern stream. So, modernism came in at Avondale with Desmond Ford arriving from Manchester University in 1972 and his preterism push, with Norman Young and his love for the Second Coming, Miracle, and Atonement denier, Rudolph Bultmann in 1973 from Manchester University and with Arthur Patrick (see his blog) also in the same year. Patrick glorified the heretic and critic of Adventism and sought until his death for the borderline issues to become mainline and all the concerns that the Dutch Reform Church had in their Trojan Horse of Liberalism to come into the Adventist church as well. He died however a year or two ago.

Then there is the case of the influence of World Jurisdiction concepts. Gender Mainstreaming and the Gender Competency Center in 2003 in Germany in Berlin sought implementation of the concepts of Gender Mainstreaming. The idea was that gender frees itself from origin, belief, age, limitation, sexual orientation and other structural items. In March 2007 on Women’s day the UN Secretary announced a 50/50 equality for all men and wormen in all positions of labor and living situations. At the 2007 EPSCO-Council of the EU the German President read a paper “Europäische Alianz für Familien" to do away with sexual stereotypes. To summarize what Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz said: In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir said that for a female to be a human she must be a male. After 1949 Luce Irigaray said: for a female to be a human she must be a female. But since 1984, they are saying that for a female to be a human, she must be neither a male nor a female. Pluralism of ethical sources in Jurisdiction design led to distorted views regarding sexuality in societies around the World in First World Countries but this is also penetrating other countries.

So finally we know what is going on in our church. They are following the trends around them, in order not to be left behind.

The last reason is that Jesus predicted that there will be ten sleeping virgins before the Second Coming. Also the Laodicea church is a “sleeping mode” church. See but not see. Prophetical interpretation is put on hold or shelved or eradicated by preteristic inroads in cardinal Adventist interpretation, like Jon Paulien message on Youtube in November 2015 at Loma Linda pushing for a “psychological exegesis of Revelation 13” leaving out all the evangelist stuff of the past. The idea is to get away from history and just do exegesis. However, the historical Jesus cannot be properly studied without history. Luke said that in the 14^th year of Tiberius such and such happened. That demands history to be brought into exegesis. It is the nature of the genre of prophecy to employ future events [history thereof] after it happened and was recognized as fulfillment, to be brought together with exegesis.

 Finally, those who did not yet buy the books of Edwin de Kock on Prophetic Interpretation in Adventism and before, should really order all his books from Texas, USA without any delay and update themselves with proper Adventism in these trying times.