Continuing the Worthy Goals Set by Christ!

By Dr. Royce Mitchell

(This article appeared in the Mar-April 2024 Sabbath Sentinel Magazine Edition)

The Bible Sabbath Association (BSA) Board of Directors election is over and a new Board has been selected by the BSA members. The new Board has met and selected its officers for the coming 4 years. Anyone interested in who will be those officers can find that list inside the front cover. Perhaps YOU could join as a member also!

Although it was not within my desire to hold any office on the Board, being content to serve merely as your Editor, the Board members nominated and elected me to the office of President to replace retiring Kelly McDonald. Having served with Kelly for the past 8 years, I can tell you that his shoes will be big ones to fill, requiring several of us to coordinate our efforts just to maintain the marvelous efforts that Kelly produced in promoting the goals of the BSA. It is a task that humbles me and for which I am not sure that I am adequately prepared. But, with your patience and loving guidance as BSA members and readers, I hope that we can propel the BSA to even bigger and better promotion of its great goals over the next few years.

As one can see from the last edition of this magazine, elected to the board were some excellent examples of the variety of Sabbath keepers who are part of this Association. They come from a variety of Sabbath keeping backgrounds and will provide fantastic insight into methods whereby we can continue to improve upon the wonderful actions taken by the previous Board. Hopefully, we can
be even better at reaching across Sabbatarian corporate lines to foster fellowship where there has been distrust and animosity in the past. I truly believe that this is what Jesus had in mind when He said that His followers would be known by their love for one another (John 13:35).

All too frequently we in the Church have filtered out other brethren by using differences in doctrine as the standard. What this has caused is an ever-widening gulf between the different groups who claim to be following Christ’s teaching. Some groups are less strident about this, of course. But, too many groups remain insular in nature and avoid getting to know, much less accept, those of differing understandings from them.

But, Jesus, or Yahshua if you prefer, did not teach us that His disciples would be known by their perfect understanding of the scriptures, did He? No, of course not. What is Jesus’ focus for His disciples? The focus is LOVE!

The question then becomes, “Can I love my brethren who think or understand differently from what I believe?” This is a hard question because it requires an honest look at how we approach those who have slightly different understandings of the nuances of scripture.

To get past these divisive matters, we need a new approach. It is an approach that reorients our mind in love and away from the politics of division in which so many engage for the purpose of protecting their “understanding.”

As a beginning, let’s consider what Jesus said shortly before He was nailed to a stake for us. He advised His disciples of this often overlooked, and sometimes misunderstood, truth. He said, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…” (John
16:13).

Most fail to recognize an important point implied by a word that is NOT in that scripture. That word is the word “immediately!” You see, Jesus was not saying that He would open our minds to understand everything at once. In fact, if you look at such stalwarts as Peter, John and Paul, reviewing their actions and writings, it is easy to see that none of them had complete understanding from the beginning. In fact, we can even see that toward the end they recognized that they still had not quite discerned even the most important of things—when the Christ would return!

Why is this important? It is important because understanding our brethren in different groups requires us to accept that each one of us is at our own point in being led to ALL truth. I find myself wondering as I have gotten older whether or not Christ’s words were even intended to convey that we would receive ALL truth in this lifetime!

Now, if I accept that I did not have all the truth over 40 years ago when the Father had called me to His Church, then I have to also understand that even now I may not have all of the truth firmly fixed in my mind. What we all need to understand is that none of us are any different in
that respect! By this I mean that it is highly likely that none of us has ALL truth clearly understood as if the Father had directly spoken those truths to us.

For instance, I recognize that 40 years ago I had certain understandings of the scripture. 30 years ago, I had different understandings of the scripture. Likewise, I do not have the same understanding today that I did 20 years ago. We are told to GROW in grace and knowledge! (2 Pet 3:18). If the Spirit leads us to all truth immediately or quickly, or even ALL truth in our lifetimes, Peter would not have admonished us to grow in knowledge. Or, he might have reasoned with us that we need to grow in
grace and knowledge until we have everything right. How many of us would fail that test? Or, even worse, how many of us think that we already know it all and don’t need to continue to grow in knowledge?

How would we feel if a brother turned his back on us because we have not yet come to the same understanding as our brother? I suspect that we would not like that in the slightest. I know that I would not like it. But, that is exactly what has happened by our dividing ourselves over minor differences in doctrinal understanding.

Shouldn’t we recognize that we are not all at the same understanding of scripture and afford one another the grace of giving God’s Spirit the time needed to lead our brethren into those truths? Should we not recognize that if we were wrong in our understanding 20, 30 or 40 years ago, that would still be wrong in our understanding even today? And, if we could be wrong, should we display a lack of love and tolerance for those whose understandings are not in complete accord with our own?

Can we recognize the warnings of Christ related to children apply to those who are still spiritual children? Jesus told us that “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt 18:6). Of course, He was talking about physical children at the time. But, can we see that implication is also addressed to spiritual children? And, if we can see that, can we not reorient our mindset to allow others to be mistaken because God has not yet open their eyes to a truth that we see. Can we allow them to be mistaken without feeling the need to erect a wall between us pending their coming to the “correct” understanding? I hope that we can!

Coming to the realization that we could STILL be wrong should also have the effect of putting us back into God’s Word to prove all things and to hold onto those things which are good! (1 Thess 5:21). I’m scared for my brethren who have come to the point where they believe that they have perfect understanding of all things and use that to erect walls between them and others of those who will
inherit eternity!

What is important to our fellowship? As stated before, we need to love one another. It is true that we need a common point from which to work, on which we can all agree. One of those points is that Jesus said that man should live by EVERY word that God has spoken. (Matt 4:4). He did NOT say that we should live by what men have said about what God has said!

When we boil down what it is that we are to live by, we find that this amounts to keeping all of His commandments and accepting Christ, our Messiah, as our Savior and soon-coming King. I can safely say that all of the groups who keep the Sabbath have these two understandings in common! We all preach Jesus as our Lord and Savior, don’t we? We all preach adherence to the commandments of God, including the keeping of His Sabbaths, don’t we? Therein is the common ground from which we can build fellowship and love for one another! AND, this is exactly what Jesus taught us we should be doing!

The Sabbath Sentinel will continue to have writers from the various flavors of Sabbath keeping groups. This is not because the BSA wants to convert brethren from one group to another. We do not and we take no position on those differences in understanding. But, what we want to
do is to foster understanding between the groups. The first understanding is that we have important truths in common. The second understanding is that the rest of our differences pale into insignificance compared to those great truths—and we ought to act like it!

Loving one another and being tolerant of our differences is important as we see this present evil time approaching its climactic end. We are going to need one another as the evil escalates. Let’s use this relative peace to come closer to one another in love!

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View the Mar-April 2024 Edition of The Sabbath Sentinel at https://biblesabbath.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/SabbSent0324_Proof.pdf

To learn more about the Bible Sabbath Association (BSA) visit https://biblesabbath.org/