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Adventism In Time Of War-1
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June 18 - Adventism In Time Of War-1

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Thou shalt not kill. Ex. 20:13.

Seventh-day Adventism was in the midst of its birth as an organized denomination when a civil war devastated the United States between 1861 and 1865. It would take more lives from the nation's relatively small population than the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, the Spanish American War, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War, World War I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. Yet Adventism was sending no soliders into this most important of all conflicts, one that would determine if the United States would continue to exist as a unified nation and that would eventually do away with slavery.

Why? What was wrong with the Adventists? Why were they holidng back? That is the question that James White set out to answer in the Review and Herald of August 12, 1861. His first points had to do with the fact that Adventists were loyal citizens of the Unites States, noting that "slavery is pointed out in the prophetic word as the darkest and most damning sin upon this nation," that many Adventist publications because of their anti-slavery teachings "had been positively forbidden in the slave states," and that "those of our people who voted at all at the last presidential election to a man voted for Abraham Lincoln." "We know," White concluded, "of not one man among Seventh-day Adventists who has the least sympathy for secession."

Having established that Adventists were loyal citizens, he went on to explain why they were as a church providing no soldiers. Standing firmly on the Ten Commandments, he wrote that "the position which our people have taken relative to the perpetuity and sacredness of the law of God contained in the ten commandments, is not in harmony with all the requirements of war. The fourth precept of that law says, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it hold'; the sixth says, 'Thou shalt not kill.'" His position was clear enough. Adventists couldn't volunteer for military service because it would put them in a place where they chose to voluntarily break at least two God's commandments.

White had begun to solve the problem even though he wasn't yet finished. But he had raised an issue that would affect tens of thousands of young Adventist lives. Not all moral issues are clear-cut in a world of sin. The church needs divine guidance in such times.

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Give us wisdom, Lord, as we as a church continue to wrestle with important issues relating to our duty to both You and earthly governments.
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