HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2016 / FALL / ASK THE PASTOR
F A L L • 2 0 1 6
VOLUME 17, ISSUE 3
DALE RATZLAFF
Founder of Proclamation! and
Life Assurance Ministries
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Dale and Carolyn Ratzlaff have authored six books: Sabbath in Christ—a volume that explains new covenant Sabbath rest, Cultic Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventism—explores the false Adventist doctrine of a pre-advent judgment that decides eternal destinies, Truth About Adventist “Truth”—a little book that’s perfect to give to Christians that need to understand Adventism, Truth Led Me Out—in which Dale Ratzlaff tells his own story of following Jesus, no matter the cost, My Cup Overflows—Carolyn’s autobiography, and Gospel Transformation —which teaches what the Gospel is and accomplishes.
Each of these books is available at Ratzlaf.com or by phoning (928) 554-1001.
WHY PUBLISH AGAINST
ADVENTISM AND THE SABBATH
Why do you persist in publishing against Adventism and the Sabbath?
It began in the early 80’s when a small group of us organized a church and began studying the Sabbath together. I had studied the Sabbath often before and had even received an “A” from Dr. Hans LaRondelle’s “Theology of the Sabbath” at Andrews University. In fact, every Adventist pastor knows the Adventist position on the Sabbath and how to defend it well. Yet the study we were doing was different. We were not going down a list of proof texts and explaining each one with another. Rather, we were seeking to squeeze everything out of a given text or section that was there, trying not to make the text say more than it did. For the first several months, I thought for sure we would end up with the traditional Adventist understanding of the Sabbath minus the belief that the Sabbath was the “seal of God”.
When we did a thorough, inductive study of the covenants, the tentative conclusions we reached on individual passages seemed contradictory to what we had believed. I was not sure we could find harmony. Then it happened. Like the explorers who first discovered Yosemite Valley must have felt, that “eureka experience” took us by surprise.
I was struggling to fit some of Paul’s “difficult statements” in Romans, Galatians, 2 Corinthians, and Hebrews into our old paradigm. I had always “forced” them to fit before, as if putting a puzzle piece into an opening that looked correct but wasn’t, thus yielding a messed up picture. Now, however, I had no reason to force anything. Rather, I thought, perhaps I need to accept a new paradigm and see if our tentative conclusions fit it. Therefore, I took Paul’s statements about law at face value: the law was “added” at the time of Moses and was to last “until Christ.” Christians are not under the law. Rather than try to fit Paul’s statements into my old paradigm which I could not do, I took Paul’s paradigm and tried to fit the other conclusions of our study into it. They fit! Suddenly, in an instant of time, my whole theological “picture” changed. No longer was the law the focus; no longer was the Sabbath the “testing truth”. Now Christ alone was at the center of theology and life. He was the testing truth. He was my true rest.
That study yielded the book that is now Sabbath In Christ, but I longed for a way to reach more people with the good news of the gospel than I could with a book. In 2000 we launched Proclamation! magazine. Now, 16 years later, the demand for the magazine is greater than ever. While some of us who have left Adventism years ago have settled most of our questions, there is an ongoing stream of new requests for the magazine from readers around the world.
Even though the magazine is online, the demand for the printed version is not waning. More and more Adventists are questioning the validity of Adventist doctrine, and they are hungry for the real Jesus of the Bible and for the real gospel of His finished atonement for our sin. As you know, the magazine is free, and many who receive Proclamation! do not support this ministry. Nevertheless, we know that some of you are among those who received Proclamation! for some time before you began your study.
We continue to publish the truth of the gospel because Adventists need to hear it, and they need the safety of being able to study privately. We love our Adventist friends and family, and we long for them to know the freedom and security of being alive in Christ.
We are grateful to those who have helped to provide this magazine to thousands of Adventists over the past 16 years, and we pray that others will also join us in making it possible to continue printing and mailing Proclamation! to those who languish in a false gospel, starving for want of the true Bread of Life. †
Copyright 2016 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Camp Verde, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised August 23, 2016. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com