Young King Hezekiah “trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him” (2 Kings 18:5). What was so different about Hezekiah? Godly kings before him had cleansed the temple of pagan worship relics. What Hezekiah did that nobody before him had dared to do is to tear down and destroy Moses’ bronze serpent, which had become an idol for God’s people.
Imagine the gall of a 25-year-old, new on the scene, to take away and destroy a centuries-old memorial of the beloved leader of the Exodus. The godly elders no doubt demanded: “What do you think you are doing, young man! God gave us that artifact!”
Hezekiah protested: “It has become a distraction from worshiping God. Worse, became an idol worshiped in place of God. It lost its purpose—the devil co-opted and corrupted it. It had to be destroyed for true worship to be restored.”
“Sorry, Hezekiah,” his pious opponents may have retorted. “We could support you when you destroyed the high places and idolatrous images, but this is different. Moses built that according to God’s blueprint. It’s a divine symbol of salvation—‘Look and live,’ remember? God used it miraculously! Who do you think you are, young man, destroying that sacred symbol of salvation from God through our beloved founder! Do you think you are better than Moses? Do you think you are better than God?”
“That artifact was just a symbol of the unseen God whom we are supposed to be worshiping,” Hezekiah tried to explain. “Yes, God established it and worked through it. But then the devil took it over. It had to go.”
And so it went, much to the disappointment and fury of Judah—not only the evil ones who were worshiping it but the good people who were enabling them by preserving their object of idolatry.
Meanwhile, Hezekiah “kept [God’s] commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses” (verse 6). He knew the difference between obedience and false worship. He had divine discernment about what to keep and what to get rid of. So Hezekiah wasn’t the enemy of Moses. Ironically, he was the only one who truly honored their founder by sustaining his example of obedience rather than corrupting his heritage through religious idolatry.
But it wasn’t easy for young Hezekiah. The only reason he survived was that “he held fast to the Lord” (verse 6), clinging tenaciously in the face of opposition not only from the evil people but from the religious establishment that thought itself honoring God but in reality was sustaining an idolatrous system. It may have been in those tumultuous early days of Hezekiah’s ministry that his only support came directly from God. Indeed, “the Lord was with him; he prospered wherever he went” (verse 7).
Thought question: What holy artifacts may have become idols for Adventists today?
I asked that of one lady and she replied: “I don’t there is any such idolatry in the Adventist system.”
But let not the church of Laodicea so flatter itself. Can even our God-established institutions themselves become an object of idolatry? If so, how can we preserve what is genuine while cleansing it from what is not?
What about our understanding of Ellen G. White? God obviously led us with her prophetic gift, and that blessing remains in our day. But have idolatrous traditions also developed over the years? I’m thinking specifically of the proclivity of some Adventists who refuse to accept anything the Bible teaches unless it harmonizes with what Ellen White already wrote about that text or topic—thus effectively giving her authority over the Word of God. I’m afraid that those who have succumbed to such extremist and cultic thinking have made Ellen White their idol. They urgently challenge fellow Adventists—do you believe in the Spirit of prophecy?
First, let’s be clear that the Spirit of prophecy is the Holy Spirit who inspired the prophet—not the prophet herself or her writings.
Let’s also emphatically clarify that Ellen White was not God’s message! She was His messenger. There is a huge difference. And that difference is the distinction between inspiration and idolatry.
Finally, let’s make Jesus Christ is the object of our faith, not any human messenger.
I urge my fellow Seventh-day Adventists to do a searching and fearless theological inventory and then take careful but decisive action, like Hezekiah did, to ensure that no gift from God ever becomes a focus of faith or an object of adoration.
The Pharisees of Christ’s day turned God’s messenger into their message, and in so doing rejected God’s grace and truth. Let us beware of doing the same today.
Martin Weber will be editor of the daily newsletter for global delegates at the upcoming SDA General Conference Session in Atlanta.
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