In the striking first paragraph of this week’s lesson study, the quarterly’s author says that in this time of last-day apostasy, "a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." Then, referring to the eleven-million-member Adventist Church of today, he declares: "We claim to be that remnant."

I say "striking" because the last sentence is an arresting, even though conventional, claim. I say it, too, because this claim departs from the church’s 1980 statement on "Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists."

In your reflection this week, you can, for one thing, explore the conventional claim. It is in itself remarkable, and in the Church’s older strongholds, many will wince at it—or perhaps not study this lesson at all. For these latter, the lesson’s very title, "The Remnant," is off-putting. This metaphor—so familiar and (to me) so wonderful—bears for them too large a weight of insecurity and arrogance. Adventists who read widely and have a diverse circle of acquaintances are, quite simply, embarrassed by it. If someone arranged for billboards near major Adventist institutions to say, "We claim to be the one true Remnant—Your friends the Seventh-day Adventists," the embarrassment, or better, anger, would be palpable.

Or you can explore the 1980 statement of fundamental Adventist beliefs, where, despite convention, no such claim is explicit. In belief twelve of the now famous twenty-seven, the last-day remnant is said, as the lesson author himself notes, to "keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." This remnant, as the statement says further, is a community that gives voice to the hope of the Second Advent, a "proclamation" that is "symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14" and results in "a work of repentance and reform on earth." The statement says finally that every believer "is called" into the life and witness of this remnant.

As I write on the morning after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, I wish the perpetrators had heard and responded to this proclamation. I wish West, East, and Middle East knew and upheld the ideals of compassion, justice, and nonviolence that came to full flower in "the faith of Jesus." I wish human rage in the face of undeserved pain and grief would neither fizzle into resignation nor explode into violence. I wish it would resolve instead into joyful, revolutionary song, as it does in the book of Revelation. I wish a truly faithful and ever-growing community of Christ’s followers would daily receive new stamina and ardor for replacing the kingdom of evil with the kingdom of peace.

So what is wrong with these wishes?

I would say nothing. You might agree or not. But in either case you could interject that even if belief number twelve contains no explicit Adventist claim, the claim is implied. Well, maybe it is, but if the 1980 General Conference merely repressed the claim, it may well have repressed it providentially. It may well have set us on a course that transcends institutional insecurity and arrogance, a course that, in the end, simply upholds (an imperfectly embodies) the remnant ideal.

Why not simply say, "We are called to be the remnant"?

Why not embrace, with enthusiasm, this biblical figure of speech? It has been, after all, at the forefront of Adventist consciousness from day one. It is critical, moreover, in both testaments of Scripture. Finally, when rightly understood it puts all the focus on Jesus and on the peace he came to establish. Why not, then, embrace the metaphor anew, and why not, to the degree God grants, embrace it without insecurity and arrogance?

If this week the faith of Jesus seems irrelevant, it’s time to stock up on booze and give up on the human prospect. But if his faith betters the passions of the terrorist, then we may recall, with gratitude, what happened when the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists organized in 1861. That was two years before the wider Church’s organization in 1863, and the delegates declared: "We, the undersigned, hereby associate ourselves together as a church, taking the name, Seventh-day Adventists, and covenanting together to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ."

Bingo!

Okay, I shouldn’t have said that. But you get my point.

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