Adventist Media Response and Conversation

Monday, January 08, 2007

The Hour of His Judgment

There is in the SDA church a group of people that think that the famous Adventist phrase from Revelation which says "the hour of His judgment has come" is supposedly saying that the time for the universe to judge God has come. Rather then the more commonly held belief that it is a reference to God judging the world, or even the traditional though clearly wrong view that the hour of his judgment refers to the Investigative Judgment.

I noticed this as one of the comments during the last week's lesson study of Jonathan Gallagher's class. It is also a frequent idea over at HeavenlySanctuary.com

I have dealt with this idea before here in reference to an article in the Pacific Union Recorder by Clifford Goldstein. The following is an article from the Dialogue website which in a more creative way points out the seriously flawed notion that is found in the idea of our judging God.
God on trial? by E. Edward Zinke

Suddenly someone steps onto the stage. A distinguished man attempts to hush the crowd. Napoleon,1 the famous general and former emperor of France, takes several steps forward. “We are here,” he asserts, “ for a very important occasion. This is not the trial of the year or decade, or even of the millennium. This is the trial of the ages—the trial of God. We would like to know if He is worthy to be God. We will examine His actions to determine whether or not He has acted wisely, whether He has preserved liberty and peace, whether He has acted in love and with justice.

“Our first task will be to determine what truth is so that we can have a basis for judging God. We will extrapolate principles of truth from our study of nature, history, and interpersonal relationships —the principles by which the universe operates. Then will come the time for the truth about God. If He abides by these universal principles, then we can make a rational judgment in His favor, and the universe can safely worship Him.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regardless as to how one interprets it, the truth is...the hour of His judgment is come.

Anonymous said...

The Napoleon story makes us the arbitrators of truth but that’s not so.
As far as I can tell we choose (judge) between two standards, those represented by God and those represented by Satan. We have a history of how God and Satan do things. Under whose care do you wish to dwell. By the way, if you choose Satan’s care, from where/whom will you be getting life? You Won’t!
Since God is going to destroy Satan, God doesn’t want any misunderstanding as to His fairness. If God isn’t deemed to be fair then His work of redemption will have been a failure.