Discovering the New Covenant by Greg Taylor - exAdventist Outreach

DISCOVERING THE NEW COVENANT
me to death was the description of the judgment. We were
told that we would have to be perfect when that time came
because we would have to stand before God without a
mediator. 1 We would have to be good enough to stand
before God on our own merits.
I was taught that there would be great deception in the
last days. There would be many false revivals. People
would be caught up in these movements and would be led
away from the truth. The only way we could be sure not to
be deceived was be to pay attention to all that was written
in the “Spirit of Prophecy” (Ellen G. White’s writings),
because those who lost faith in her inspiration would
eventually reject the Sabbath and turn away from God and
be lost. 2 I learned to be suspicious of any person or group
who seemed to be having a deep experience with the Lord,
because they might be getting caught up in a false revival.
After all, Satan would imitate the miracles of God, and
many could be led astray. We believed that the other
churches were deceived by the Devil. They did not have the
truth because they were disobedient to the fourth
commandment. They should therefore be considered
Babylon. Our duty as Adventists was to call the sincere
believers out of Babylon into God’s true remnant church.
We would hold “evangelistic” meetings each year or
sometimes more often than that. We felt it was our mission
to get the people out of these nominal churches into the true
church.
I also remember hearing the description of the
persecution of those days. All the people of the world
would turn against us and try to force us to keep Sunday. 3
Satan would appear and impersonate Jesus. He would
deceive the nations into believing that Sunday was the true
Sabbath. Those of us who refused to obey would be
1 Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 1, p. 198
2 Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 4, p. 211
3 Ibid. Vol. 1, p. 201.
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