Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 9:33 am:

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Potomac University, January 21, 1959

"COPY"

Elder W. R. Beach, Secretary; General Conference of S.D.A.; Washington 12, D.C.

Dear Elder Beach:

A little over eight years ago we presented a certain document to the General Conference Committee in which we endeavored to express frankly our deep conviction and concern. We left the matter before the Lord and in your care, and thereafter refrained from agitation or pressing our views before the Committee or the church. We have always felt it improper for us to appeal a matter such as this from the General Conference to the church at large. Hence our consistent and persistent refusal to grant anyone permission to reproduce our document.

The 70-page document which we prepared recently was not presented to you with a desire to abandon our policy of the previous eight years. We decided to prepare it mainly because in a previous document rather widely circulated, our honesty and integrity were called in question, our manuscript being represented as a "serious reflection upon the literary ethics of its authors." We felt that all would recognize we had a right at least to attempt to clear our characters of such an implication.

Perhaps it was merely a selfish concern which motivated us. We recognize that a more perfect faith might have trusted the Lord to vindicate our literary ethics without our saying anything in self-defense. Perhaps our second document is a kind of Ishmael-treatise, written prematurely, in place of waiting patiently in faith for an Isaac defense to have come in due time providentially. Perhaps we pulled too hard on the oar of "works".

Whatever may be our mistake, we wish to state herewith our desire to leave this matter, to drop it henceforth and to continue as in the past to refrain from any agitation whatsoever or the pressing of our view upon the General Conference or the church. If our views and convictions are of the evil one, surely we must not press them. If, on the other hand, there is any truth in our presentations, the Lord can well take care of it without any assistance from ourselves. We do wish to say again, brethren, that we believe the corporate Seventh-day Adventist church is the one true remnant church, led of God, and we are thus happy to resign the whole matter to the disposition of Providence.

We return to our mission field, therefore, with no desire to make an issue of our views there of elsewhere. We are grateful that it could be said of our service during the past eight years, "The two brethren returned to their fields of labor and threw themselves wholeheartedly into their work of proclaiming the gospel message." We earnestly pray now that by the grace of the Lord the same may truthfully be said of our future service also.

Sincerely yours, S/ R. J. Wieland; D. K. Short.

Source: A Warning and Its Reception [part 6], page 396

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I recently received an email from someone who reads atomorrow posts, but doesn't enter into the dialogue. After commending the quality of my posts, he cautioned me to be careful. People can use one's posts in less than honorable ways; Unfair editing, etc.

Some here have suggested that my views are not Adventist views and that the only reason why I haven't been fired is that officials are tolerating me or maybe they don't read my posts.

So, I have been thinking over such things.

As I passed the president's office this morning, he wanted to know how our boys are doing. They graduated from this school. After discussing them, I decided to let him know about my atomorrow posts and discussions.

"My ideas posted there are not always conventional and they may come home to roost," I told him.

"If they do, you will be the first to know," he assured me.

I believe that many SDA officials have developed their professionalism since the days of my youth, the 50's and 60's. I also believe that the turbulant decades of the 70's and 80's have helped administrators decide how to deal with dissenters or unconventional thinkers. I trust my church administrators to deal fairly with me.

Then, I thought of a story about Wieland and Short:

They came to the GC with their document, submitted it, were dealt with rudely, told to "go back to Africa and be quiet" and they did. They followed the directions of the GC.

This letter shows their attitude toward the GC officials. It can serve as a prototype on how to present new thinking. In my situation, if my overseers advise me not to present my thinking here at atomorrow, I would most likely follow their counsel. I would do this for practical financial reasons, of course. But, I also believe in the team-player approach to church matters.

Ellen White's counsels regarding pork, as a point of concern: When it was first agitated, she said that if the time should come to take a stand on the use of pork, the church would stand together on the matter. I think she advised the same thing regarding the Sabbath, early on.

I believe protocols are needed for people who have a new idea. While pastoring, I read that Washington Adventist Hospital allowed abortions while down the street the Roman Catholic Hospital did not. I am strongly against abortion as a common form of birth control. At one point, I called the GC and talked to one of the officers there. He said, "If you feel strongly about this, follow the steps and seek to get it on the agenda for the next GC session." After thinking about this, I talked with my local conference president. Later, I heard that he wondered if I had enough to do because I seemed overly concerned about the matter. In reality, it would be a miracle if someone in my position could move the church on any matter.

Ford, on the other hand, held considerable influence in the church. What if Ford had followed Wieland and Short's approach? I.e., Lay it at the door of the church leaders and go back to teaching. Or, what if Ford had used the political processes of the church to try to get the doctrinal matter to come up at GC Session? Glacier View was not such a process. Ford was all alone.

The GC in session may have arrived at the same conclusion as Glacier View, I don't know.

Was Ford politically naive? Am I?

Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 12:24 pm:

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Interview with Desmond Ford

Spectrum magazine, vol. 11, no. 2 (Nov. 1980), pages 53-61.

SPECTRUM: One of the criticisms that has been made quite frequently is that if you had not allowed your sanctuary manuscript to get out, the church would have been able to solve this problem in a more quiet and satisfactory way. How do you respond to this accusation that you are not really playing as a team man?

FORD: I did not leak the document; I had never at any time given the document or sections of it away to anybody. I have been very, very careful and have very close, intimate friends who would have loved to have had the document ahead of time, or chapters of it, but the document did not get out through me. However, it would seem to me that it is a medieval mentality to think that truth can be kept in a corner or that even criticisms about truth can be kept in a corner. As long as we treat the church people as children, they will behave like children and not gather to themselves the burden a responsible adult should carry in taking the gospel to the world.

SPECTRUM: It sounds as if you do not regret having spoken as you did on October 27, but let me ask you this question, which is probably not a fair question for anyone: If you had the last year to live over, thinking about the Forum meeting, the manuscript, Glacier View, all of that, would you have done anything differently?

FORD: Most things I do, I do very imperfectly, and I am conscious of that all the time. But as regards conscious volition and choices, I doubt if any major choice would have been different. I have been very grateful that the church has taken the matter seriously. I think a lesser administrator than Elder Wilson would have swept it under the rug and ignored it. I was grateful for the opportunity the General Conference gave me to write the manuscript. I only have praise for Elder Wilson's attitude through that time. I am quite grateful for the year, and I would not consciously have chosen otherwise.

SPECTRUM: Time and again during the past few weeks, you have expressed your confidence in our church leaders. Do you maintain this confidence, or do you feel they treated you unjustly?

FORD: No, I do not feel they treated me unjustly. I have confidence in their well-meaning intentions. I do not have great confidence in some of their understandings of the Bible. I must be frank about that. My experience in mixing with administrators from the top down is that these men mean well, but are tremendously busy. In other words, the urgent takes the place of the important. An administrator is like a man in a swamp with his rifle raised, picking off the alligators one by one as they come toward him, instead of being able to get out and drain the swamp. It is the great gulf fixed between administrators and scholars that is the root of the problem. I see no malice in the men who dealt with me. I have the highest of regard for the men with whom I associated. [56]

SPECTRUM: To follow up on your analogy of the swamp, I am wondering if there is not wisdom in getting out of the swamp when there is an opportunity offered. Some have thought that such an opportunity occurred on Friday morning at Glacier View, when we understand that you had already indicated that you could support and preach the consensus statement as you understood it and it was voted by the people there. In your judgment, why wasn't the process ended there? Why didn't everyone just go home and say, "We have problems that need further study, but we have unity on the important issues"?

FORD: I expressed my willingness to bury the sanctuary topic. I mentioned to the brethren in whole assembly there that I had only spoken publicly on the issue once in 30 years and that by request. On Friday afternoon, I expressed, to the brethren that met with me, a little group of administrators (there were no scholars there), that I was quite happy with the essence of the consensus statement and could preach it in sincerity. This they found very hard to believe. So it seems to me that there must have been some other issues.

SPECTRUM: I would like to come to those other factors in a moment, but first one more question regarding the process at Glacier View. How could the brethren have responded differently to the events at Glacier View? What do you think you might have done differently if you had been Elder Neal Wilson?

FORD: I suspect I would have made many more mistakes than Brother Wilson. I am a very poor administrative type. But I do hope someone would have said to me, "Des, don't dare make a decision in PREXAD as to whether a man is a heretic unless you have biblical scholars present. Don't dare make a decision about heresy unless you are sure you have the actual data from the men that are involved in it all day, every day. Don't dare do it on the basis of what administrators say." I think this, perhaps, is the greatest problem in the situation. Of course, it is easier for me to be critical than correct, and I can only say, had I been in Neal Wilson's place, I might have made a dozen such mistakes.

SPECTRUM: In the months prior to Glacier View, I heard you indicate several times your belief that the theologians and biblical scholars in the church were in essential agreement with your position, yet published reports from Glacier View seem to indicate the opposite. Was your assessment of the scholars' position in error?

FORD: I would agree with Dr. Ray Cottrell's appraisal of that situation. He has gone on record as saying that 90 percent of the scholars would agree with the main essence of my positions. I know personally, from talking to these men over a period of about twenty-five years, where many of them individually stand. Now I could name men that do not stand where I stand—for example, the men whom I understand had the most to do with the special issue of Ministry, men such as Drs. Shea, Hasel and Damsteegt. These are diligent scholars whom I personally respect and who would not agree with my positions. But they are a minority. I am quite certain that the majority of theologians and biblical scholars do hold the major positions that I hold, and I could name the men who have individually told me so...

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Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 - 5:43 am:

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LandMarks Magazine, October 2007

My Work in Historic Adventism, By Ralph Larson

[Editor’s Note: Deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. Ralph Larson, often regarded as the patriarch of historic Adventism, we reprint this article that was first published in the July 1996 LandMarks and which presents his view of his work.]

What we do is closely related to what we are. It is said of Christ that His nature and His work are inseparably intertwined and interwoven with each other, and the same is true to a lesser degree of all of us. We are what we do and we do what we are.

Consider my life span. I became a Seventh-day Adventist in the year 1936, when I was sixteen years old. Although I did not realize it at the time, I was a very fortunate and privileged person, because being baptized at this particular time gave me the privilege of living some thirty years during the Golden Age of Adventism, from 1936 to 1966. The tragic book Questions On Doctrine, [Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D. C., 1957] which brought the Golden Age of Adventism to an end, was published in 1957. It took about ten years for it to really have much influence upon the church. But by 1966 the dire influence of that fateful volume had become widespread, the precious unity and harmony of the church had been destroyed, and the Dark Ages of Adventism had begun, and have continued for thirty years (until 1996). Thus my Christian life has consisted of thirty years in the Golden Age of Adventism and thirty years in the Dark Ages of Adventism. I am able to make comparisons.

What were the characteristics of the Golden Age of Adventism that I experienced from 1936 until 1966? Not the absence of problems. We had our share of them. Not the favor of the world. The world and the worldly churches cordially hated us and maliciously lied about us. Not wealth. The depression was still in force. But we had something far more precious than any of these things. We had unity and harmony throughout the entire church. We were one in faith and doctrine.

During those years you could travel to any foreign country, find the local Seventh-day Adventist church, walk in through the front door and say, “I am home. I have never seen these people before, but I know them. I know their beliefs and I know their lifestyle. On all of the important matters of life, their hearts beat as mine.” This was especially true of church workers. When two of them met, anywhere, there was an instant bonding and a fullness of fellowship. How precious were those days, now known only as they are held in sweet remembrance. We would have treasured them even more had we known what was ahead.

Fidelity to the Bible and to the Spirit of Prophecy was taken for granted. Infidelity was neither glossed over nor excused. Not long after my baptism in 1936 I enrolled as a freshman at Walla Walla College [Walla Walla, Washington]. By the time a few weeks of the school year had passed, it had become apparent that three of the Bible teachers, including the chairman of the Bible department, were undercutting the Spirit of Prophecy. Careful investigations were conducted, and by the end of the first quarter, all three of these teachers were gone from the campus. Two quickly found their places in Sunday keeping churches, where they belonged, and the third retired to his hog ranch. Yes, his hog ranch. But none of the three were undercutting the Spirit of Prophecy nearly as much as is being done in many of our college Bible classes today, while church administrators look on indifferently or benignly.

Our week of prayer speakers ministered to our needs in a careful and conscientious way, always teaching us the joys of victorious Christian living. If any of them had announced to us that it is impossible to stop sinning, we would have heard him no further. And the administration would have replaced him, even before the week was over.

So that is where I am coming from, and that is who I am. I listen in astonishment to earnest young Calvinists among us describing those years as the “age of legalism.” They can’t kid me. I was there.

I was taught our faith and doctrines by dedicated men who were one hundred percent Seventh-day Adventists. I spent fifteen years of my ministry in full-time evangelism. (The other years were divided between pastoring and teaching in college and seminary classrooms.) In my evangelistic work I was required to closely examine the false reasoning, the sophistry, and the casuistry in the writings of the “Evangelical” ministers who were desperately opposing our message, and show their tricks to the new converts. You can imagine the pain I feel when I see the same sort of material being set forth by some Seventh-day Adventist ministers now. When they proclaim that “We are Evangelicals!” my response is, “You really didn’t need to tell me. I knew that already. The methodology of your writings makes it abundantly clear.”

So my present work is preaching to and teaching the historic Seventh-day Adventists in camp meetings and seminars. I am in the pulpit virtually every Sabbath, either near my place of abode, or in some other state. I answer innumerable theological questions, by mail or by telephone. For want of a better place to go, ministry leaders often come to me for counsel. And in between these activities, I try to find time for writing. I feel guilty because I am not writing more, but I run out of time.

But in it all, I am happy. I know that I am defending God’s pure and holy truth, and I have no moments of anxious foreboding such as the Calvinists among us must certainly have. The shaking time is moving in on us. By God’s grace, I will survive it, and live again in the happy fellowship of a purified church.

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Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 - 6:30 am:

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Wood, Lynn H. "The Kahun Papyrus and the date of the Twelfth Dynasty", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 99(Oct., 1945):5-9. — This does not deal directly with the chronology of Genesis 11, but it establishes Egyptian chronology on a secure basis, using the Sothic Cycle. Thus the Old Kingdom was said to have begun about 2800 B.C. This being true, the Flood could not possibly have been in 2348 B.C. as proposed by Ussher.

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Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2008 - 4:26 pm:

1910-11 Taught Science, Mathematics and Building Construction at the Foreign Missions Seminary, Washington, D.C.

1912 Helped establish the church in Baltimore, Maryland.

1913 Union College in Nebraska.

1914 Principal and Mathematics teacher for the Southern Training School, Graysville, Tennessee; 150 students.

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The Southeastern Union Field Tidings, June 17, 1914, page 8 (a DJVU file)

Prof. Lynn H. Wood arrived in Graysville last week, and has already found much to busy himself with. Work in the preparation of copy for the school Calendar has been his chief burden.

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1915 February 18. A fire occurred in the girls' dorm; two injuries, no loss of life. He reported the incident in the Review and Herald.

1915 The September 23, 1915 Review and Herald states that he was Educational and Missionary Volunteer secretary of the Southern Union Conference.

1916 Educational Secretary, Southern Union Conference.

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Notice!

There is constantly coming to us from the Southeastern Union the rumor that the Hazel Academy is planning to carry twelve grades of work this winter. We would like to take this opportunity of absolutely denying this rumor, and saying that there is no truth in it whatsoever. Hazel has planned all last year and this year to continue as a strong tenth grade school, but that is all. There is not the slightest rumor in this field that she is even contemplating doing anything else.

W. R. ELLIOTT, Chm. School Board.

LYNN H. WOOD, Educational Secretary Southern Union.

Southeastern Union Field Tidings, August 30, 1916

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WORK BEGINS ON NEW SCHOOL SITE

Farm Purchased and Preparations for Opening School October 18th Under Way

...

Special Ministerial Short Course

Arrangements were made for a special course to be given in practical field evangelistic work, covering a period of about two months, and be- ginning about the first of March. This course will cover such subjects as Bible doctrines, sermonic construction, journalism, history, practical field methods, etc. This course is primarily intended for our conference workers now employed in actual field work, many of whom feel greatly the need of some special instruction in these lines. The conferences in the Southeastern and Southern Unions plan to arrange for all of their younger workers to attend this special course. It is expected that Evangelist Carlyle B. Haynes and Prof. Lynn H. Wood will connect with the faculty to assist in giving the instruction during this short course.

While this course is being especially prepared for our conference workers, yet all our regular students in the Bible department will be given the benefit of this course without additional charge. It will be so arranged as to weave it into the regular Ministerial and Bible Workers' course. This offers a special opportunity for those students who attend this year.

Southeastern Union Field Tidings, September 20, 1916

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