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Dr. Desmond Ford
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| Today, Dr. Desmond Ford is the leading Seventh-day Adventist theologian and exegete. He is also the father of Adventist Reform. In fact, his reformed eschatology about Dan 8:14, combined with his clear articulation of the Protestant Gospel, has made a significant and long lasting impact within the Adventist Community.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is fair to say that Dr. Ford's Reformed Sabbatarian theology has been responsible for discrediting much of what the Takoma Park leaders had been teaching about the Gospel, as well as about the Sanctuary and the Three Angels Messages for generations. Without his scholarly insights, few in the Adventist Community today would understand the Gospel.
Moreover, his insistence that the doctrine of the Investigative Judgment is incompatible with the Gospel, which alone is foundational to the Adventist Apocalyptic, cannot be credibly refuted or denied. Nor can his version of Historic Adventism be successfully challenged by those who incorrectly think that the IJ resides in the 1st Angels message.
However, in spite of the fact that Dr. Ford was correct, the leaders would not admit that the church's eschatology was deficient, or that the Takoma Park version of the Gospel was wrong. Rather, they claimed that Dr. Ford's theology would lead to the demise of the Three Angels Messages and to the end of the Adventist Movement.
So at Glacier View they rejected the Protestant Gospel, dishonestly revised the Adventist Apocalyptic, and exiled Dr. Ford. The SDA leaders declared his reforms unwanted, invalid and dangerous.
Unfortunately, the leaders mischaracterized Dr. Ford's positions. They dishonestly led the church to believe that he had repudiated the Three Angels Messages and the ministry of Ellen White, when that is exactly what they were doing. But Dr. Ford was not guilty as charged. Dr. Ford was a friend of the Adventist Movement and he still is today. He is still a champion for the original version of the Adventist Apocalyptic, which includes the Protestant Gospel of Paul and Luther, as well as the Seventh-day Sabbath of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.
So Dr. Ford is a true Adventist Reformer. He is a paradigm shifter who has initiated a far-reaching process of Gospel Reform within the Adventist Community. A process that, if accepted, will save this confused and dying Movement, empowering it to move forward and embrace its unique eschatological destiny.
In fact, when Dr. Ford's much needed reforms are better understood, the Adventist Movement will be free to repudiate the many historical myths and false doctrines that have so bewildered and confused them. Such Gospel reform will allow this church to return to the historic fundamentals of the Three Angels messages and to complete the Protestant Reformation as the Pioneers mandated.
The Adventist Movement should be very grateful to Dr. Ford. He is a great Protestant defender of the Apostles, Reformers, and Adventist Pioneers. He supports Historic Adventism and the Gospel. He supports Ellen White and the Pioneers. He has paved the way for dramatic, 21st century, Adventist Reform that would please the Pioneers and rehabilitate this self-destructing church.
Dr. Ford is a true Seventh-day Adventist who supports a return to the original version of the Three Angels messages. Thus he encourages Adventist Reform and a return to the Protestant Path of the Pioneers.
Listen to his call for Adventist Reform:
"God raised up the advent movement to proclaim the three angels' messages to the world, a proclamation which would have the everlasting gospel at its center with warnings against its counterfeits and perversions. "
"The Sabbath would be presented as the outward sign of the spiritual rest which comes to all who by faith accept the gospel. But we have failed. At this point of time, more than a century and a half since our beginnings we represent but one in every 450 people on the globe. "
"This failure is because the gospel has not been clearly presented even among ourselves and therefore the average church member does not give even one Bible study a year to nonbelievers, and our apostasies are gargantuan. Surely it is time for reformation. "
Desmond Ford, July 2004
We agree with Dr. Ford that it is time for Adventist Reform. And we thank him for making his materials available to us for continued study and research.
Tom Norris, for Adventist Reform | |
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