BY PETER BATH

NE EVENING DURING OUR ANNUAL family canoe trip in northern Ontario my family and I were worshiping around the campfire. �What shall we sing?� was the question; �Amazing Grace� was the answer. Our eldest daughter, Sarah, suggested, �Let�s sing �Amazing Grace� a new way!� We did. We found it refreshing. Martha and Gillian, our other daughters, not to be outdone, said, �Let�s sing �Amazing Grace� again!� And they introduced two more versions of the old favorite. By the time we had finished, it had been sung at least seven different ways,¹ each providing fresh insight to an old familiar song! I found myself humming them throughout our trip. Each version of �Amazing Grace� recast and reframed the story of grace in a different way, an intriguing and meaningful way. The old �ho-hum� had become a new �aha.�

Jesus transformed the old �ho-hums� and made them into new �ahas� during His ministry on earth. Recasting, reframing the old teachings of the rabbis, He made them fresh, relevant, vibrant, and truer reflections of His character.

Evidence of this is found throughout the Gospels. Matthew recorded these words of Jesus: �You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, �Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.� But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment� (Matt. 5:21, 22, NIV).

And in response to the burdensome and restrictive pharisaical Sabbath laws: �Then he said to them, �The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath�� (Mark 2:27, 28, NIV).

Jesus turned their understanding on its head and recast the correct theological perspective of these biblical teachings.² Instead of the burden the Pharisees had created, Sabbath could now become the joy it was intended to be, and unresolved anger could be transformed into healthy relationships.

Just as Christ transformed and refined the teachings in His day, so we are called to be disciples�to keep the Second Advent fresh and credible in our world. Fresh, credible�and with a grace orientation. But how do we do this? Where do we start?

True Representatives
Here are some important questions to ponder. How have we represented His character? What eschatological false gods have we created that need to be overturned? Might Jesus say something like this? �You have heard it said of old, �No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father� [Matt. 24:36, 37, NIV]. Well, it�s still true, so don�t waste your time on schedules and events! I have made you �competent as ministers of a new covenant�not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life� [2 Cor. 3:6, NIV].

�And you have heard it said, �Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you� [Luke 6:27, NIV], and �As I have loved you, so you must love one another� [John 13:34, NIV]. So I say to you again, �Don�t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels� [2 Tim. 2:23, NIV].�

What do you think He would say?

Not a Stale Doctrine
My wife, Cathy, and I chose to embrace the Seventh-day Adventist faith in 1977. Through an outreach ministry we encountered the Jesus of Scripture, and saw for the first time the integrity of the biblical themes of forgiveness, acceptance, restoration, and healing. We saw in the Sabbath His gift to us of time, renewal, and saving discipline. We saw the connection between the Advents, first and second, and that He was really coming back.

Sure, some new Adventist friends confronted us with the time lines of prophecy, the beasts, and the paranoia of the time of trouble. We were very troubled then (and still are today) by the perspectives of some believers:

�I�m terrified of the Second Advent because of the time of trouble.�

�The Second Advent isn�t about hope for me. . . . I have to be sinless to make it.�

�I don�t understand a church that calls my generation the one that�s not supposed to be!�

(Unfortunately, there are many for whom the Second Advent has become a dim doctrine, a bewildering hope instead of a blessed assurance.)

Other new Adventist friends wrapped past, present, and future events into the majesty and completeness of the cross. The gift of history within the cross has always served to bring us hope, meaning, and purpose in life. Such that we felt a call to leave family, home, and country to live and love radically, because our Lord is a radical God! Our joy in the Advent of the cross has led to a lifetime commitment of service.

But what would Jesus say today about our teaching and understanding of the Second Advent if He were to encounter our world in person as He did 2,000 years ago?

I would like to suggest for your consideration a hypothesis that I would ask you to reflect upon. Perhaps your appreciation for the Second Advent might be refreshed and informed for the present age.

1. Start asking the right questions. Through the ages Adventists have focused upon how and when the Second Advent will occur. Thrust into this defensive polemical position from the beginning, we have limited the meaning of this incredible event to the questions of our spiritual forebears and the resulting life applications that flow from the answers. We have allowed the pressing questions of �When?� and �How?� of the early Adventists to become the only defining truth of the current age. The result is that we have created our present crisis of meaning.

Only asking the questions of our forebears, while significant, limits our understanding to dates, sequences, kingdoms, and charts. We have defined our concept of church as �fortress� and evangelism as �announcing truth, winning people groups� instead of �making disciples,� in light of the immutable fact that in the end �we win anyway.� Our focus on fact and proposition, while valuable, does not emphasize the saving, transforming relationship that the redeemed are to have with the world, an understanding that would arise if we spent more time with the �who� and �why� of the Second Advent.

Too often we miss understanding that the ethical requirements for the Christian life are radical and redemptive, encompassing all of life. When we focus exclusively on the �how� and �when,� we are led to the false belief that we have an exclusive �role� in hastening the Second Advent.³ When we look instead at the who of the Second Advent, we realize very quickly that all our efforts to serve and save are truly motivated by Calvary, not the religious superiority and spiritual piety that so often characterize our approach to the world. Unfortunately, we often leave unexplained and unexpressed the central truth of His return: receiving to Himself the people of this world; those whose hearts hurt as His; whose lives are motivated by grace, not power; whose privilege is service and where honor is love.

The expression of the Second Advent must go beyond the basics of doctrine and schedules to an encounter with the Person of the Advent. To know His person, His power, His grace, to be personally involved in His ministry today, are far more compelling reasons to look forward to His return with hope and anticipation.

Watching the clock doesn�t cut it! The God who loves and redeems radically lays claim to our lives, inviting us to experience His transforming power in radical ways. A people who have met a Person who has transformed their lives care little about being well thought of by the world; a people who have met the Person of the cross invite their neighbors to join a quest for justice and a well-thought-out and well-lived Chris-tianity.

2. Start living in the now instead of just waiting for the not yet. When we take the Per-son of Christ out of the Second Ad-vent to struggle over the �when� and �how,� we can appear so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. We can miss the present reality�Christ has risen, and His kingdom is already here. If we serve a risen Saviour who has set us up with Him in heavenly places (Eph. 2:1-7), ought we not take seriously His desire to demonstrate through His followers the incomparable riches of His grace? The relevance of a future reality�the �not yet��is made certain by a present expression of the values, principles, and characteristics through the lives and actions of His followers. People do not care how much we know until they know how much we care. The power of the �not yet� must invade and transform the �now.�

To take this a step further, we must realize that as Christ is the incarnate Word of God, so too we His followers are now the embodiment of His life to this world. Christ is making His appeal to the world through us (2 Cor. 5:20). It is the day-to-day ministry that we undertake that testifies to the future hope, which brings power to the pres-ent. Not only does this kingdom work in the here and now testify to those looking on; it transforms those of us living as followers and disciples. We are graced to work now, hand in hand with the resurrected Christ, dealing with real issues, in real time, with real people in a real world�people who are counting on you and me to be faithful, people who are depending on us to give them hope.

Our hope for the future does not lie in ever more technical renditions of the Second Advent, in Power Point presentations or animated CD programs. Our world has had enough of virtual reality. Our hope in the future lies in the cross of Christ alone.⁴ Everything else flows from His outstretched arms of grace. If we engage in a ministry relationship with Him each day the question of �how much longer� will no longer be prominent. The most moving expression of the Second Advent is in the engaged, committed, transforming lives of Christians in ministry.⁵ A people who bring hope to others, not only because He is coming, but more important, because He is already here!

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¹ Traditional, Bermuda, Allelu, Alleluia, House of the Rising Sun, Gilligan�s Island, Fill It Up.
² Fritz Guy, Thinking Theologically (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1999), pp. 68, 69.
³ Roy Branson, ed., �Responding to the Delay,� Pilgrimage of Hope (Takoma Park, Md.: Association of Adventist Forums, 1986). See also Branson, �Social Reform as Sacrament of the Second Advent,� Spectrum, May 1991.
⁴ Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1974), pp. 758-764. See also Leon Morris, Apocalyptic (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1972) pp. 82-87.
⁵���, Christ�s Object Lessons (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1941), pp. 67, 68. See also Dawson McAllister, Saving the Millennial Generation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1999).

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Peter Bath is the senior pastor of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland.