Parachute Adventists and Adventist Remnant

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

Imagine that you are in an airplane and decide suddenly that you do not like the way the person left of you eats her food and how the person right of you sleeps during the flight. Solution: Get out. So you ask the attendant for a parachute since you do not want to continue on this flight any longer. You jump to escape this flight and found an alternative route to reach the ground. That is what many are doing or experiencing with their church-life.

There are some who suddenly feel they do not belong any longer among the Laodicean sleepers and with Revelation 18 in their mouth they say: “Come out of her my people” meaning come out of Babylon. However, Ellen White said that this remnant will be the one that will go to the end. The church will not be Babylon. In a document I have by D. E. Robinson, a member of the Ellen G. White Estate Staff (March 1962) the question was posed: “Has the Seventh-Day Adventist Church become Babylon?”

Robinson cited a number of paragraphs from Ellen White: Testimonies Vol. I, p. 333; 417-418; “The Loud Cry” Pamphlet and so forth.

A Parachute Adventist group arose in 1893. “The Loud Cry” Pamphlet was circulated among SDA’s in which the position was that the church was completely apostatized and that she has become Babylon and that all of God’s true people should heed the call and come out of her (Robinson, 2). On the 12^th of June 1893 Ellen White wrote about them: “Those who have published the ‘Loud Cry’ tract, have not consulted me upon the subject. They have quoted largely from my writings, and put their own constructions upon them. They claim to have a special message from God, to pronounce the Seventh-day Adventist Church Babylon, proclaim her fall, and call the people of God to come out of her, and try to make the testimonies substantiate their theory. . .”

In a series of articles “The Remnant Church not Babylon,” Mrs. White warned against the misuse of her articles. They were published in the Review and Herald of August and September of 1893. They are reprinted in Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 32-62.

In Testimonies to Ministers pp. 50-51 she said:

“There is but one church in the world who are at the present time standing in the breach, and making up the hedge, building up the old waste places; and for any man to call the attention of the world and other churches to this church, denouncing her as Babylon, is to do a work in harmony with him who is the accuser of the brethren.”

In the stormy years of the 21^st of April 1903 Ellen White wrote extensively about the role of unity rather than division in the church. Testimonies volumes 8-9, all written after 1903, had the same message as the one in November of 1903: “The entire church, acting as one, blending in perfect union, is to be a living, active missionary agency, moved and controlled by the Holy Spirit” Testimonies, Vol. 8, page 47.

Then in August of 1929 a Parachute Adventist complained that Ellen White got increasingly tired of the Adventist church after 1893 and that the turning-point was the 21^st of April 1903 when she proclaimed the church a harlot in Testimonies Vol. 8, page 250 (Robinson, 1962, 5).

But, as Robinson unveiled about this passage, she was speaking of the spiritual condition of the true church that there are remnant weed among the remnant seed. She was not advocating a separation or calling the Adventist church Babylon. Babylon is a harlot but so is Israel when they are not faithful. The solution is provided also in Isaiah 1:21ff. which is cited by Ellen White. The so-called “Reformer” or Parachute Adventist pulled her words out of context and started his own movement. This 1929 Parachute leader admitted that Ellen White declared on the 23^rd of March 1893 that “The Remnant Church Not Babylon” but said that the Testimony of 21^st of April 1903 cancelled her opinion. Not so, as indicated by Robinson 1962, pp. 5-9.

So getting back to the parachute and airplane remnant concept, we may ask a number of questions:

1. If it is the habit of Korean churches to have business meetings on Sabbath but the Union Conference or Division Conference Board-meetings are not on Sabbath, who are the Parachute Adventists in this case?

2. If all the Korean churches have the habit of cooking food on the Sabbath at church but other countries do not, like South Africa, Eastern European countries, and the USA for example, who are the Parachute Adventists and who are “on board”?

3. If someone is objecting or complaining about the Sabbath cooking and other Sabbath breaking practices, (if I may use Isaiah 56’s words, that person is “a barking dog” about the truth regarding this matter), who is a Parachute Adventist and who is a Remnant Seed?

4. If nearly all the divisions in the World decided that Women's ordination is not biblical and should not be permitted, but the NAD voted against it, who are the Parachute Adventists and who are “on board”?

5. If in future some will vote against the biblical rejection of Gay-ministry in favor of it, who are the Parachute Adventists and who are the Remnant Seed?

6. If the Fundamental Beliefs are hard to accept or questioned by some, although those are extrapolated phrases from the Bible representing a longstanding view among Adventists on core ideas, who are the Parachute Adventists and who are the Remnant Seed?

    

   Dear Lord

   We all want to be saved and that by Your Grace only. Help us to keep faithful to Your Word and not find our own unsurrendered ways to get saved. In Jesus Name, Amen.