CENTRAL POINT: "The evangelization of Seventh-day Adventists with the true gospel constitutes the greatest goal of the Catholic Church for the return of Protestants to Rome."

PURPOSE:

1. To instill ideas and projects among the Adventists, which will help to foster a closer Catholic-Adventist relationship.

2. To make concessions, to bring the Catholic way of thinking among Adventists.

3. To see and analyze common evangelization objectives with Seventh-day Adventists.

4. To remove the erroneous paradigms Adventists have about the Roman Catholic Church.

5. To show Seventh-day Adventists that their origin as a church has no biblical foundation.

6. To show Seventh-day Adventists that the writings of Ellen White are false.

7. To show Seventh-day Adventists how damaging (dangerous) to world peace is their position regarding the Pope, the Virgin Mary and Sunday as the day of rest.

8. To let Seventh-day Adventists know that their church has the highest record of apostasies among Protestants, due to the theological differences among them.

9. To unmask before the world the steps that the Adventist Church has taken, through its bona fide leaders, towards Catholics and ecumenism.

10. To make Seventh-day Adventists understand that if they do not unite with Catholics and Protestants to seek world peace, they will be guilty of all the evils and/or disasters that come upon the earth.

By now most of us have probably heard of the so-called Special Document From the Vatican with its 10 points to "Evangelize Seventh-day Adventists." The president of the Inter-American Division of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Israel Leito, confessed that he did not at first pay much attention to the document when it was handed to him. He thought that "it might be a hoax." However, in his own words:

"that same night as I checked my e-mail, I received a message from our web master here at the Division, copying a message that he received from a certain Stephen P. Haws....This made me think that what was handed to me in Central America is not a hoax but may have some degree of truth, presenting the plan to regain lost ground to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

What alarmed me more is that when I went into the web page as advertised here by Mr. Haws, I discovered that they have linked the Inter-American Division web page to their web page, making it appear as if Inter-America is cooperating with the Catholic Church. I am deeply disturbed by this...We have insisted that they remove us from their web site, and after initially challenging us on the legality of it, they have reluctantly done so. However, substantial negative information has been included about our church..."

Hi,

My name is Steve and I'm building a Catholic site called "Examining Protestantism!" I am currently working on a page called "Common Ground" where I am trying to list those Christian groups who share various Catholic beliefs.

(http://www.shasta.com/sphaws/commonground.html.)

I know it would be strange to think that the SDA and Catholic Churches share any beliefs (other than the Trinity), but I am curious about your "Beliefs" page, no. 15 -The Lord's Supper. What do you mean by "Christ is present?" You might actually make my page if you believe the Eucharist is more than a mere "symbol."

You are already on my page under "Trinity."

Am looking forward to your reply on the "presence" of Christ in communion.

Thank you.

Stephen P. Haws

This letter is very interesting and it is highly significant that the president of the Inter-American Division did not comment on the startling discoveries of Mr. Haws.

Firstly, according to Mr. Haws, Seventh-day Adventists and Catholics agree on the Trinity, while they disagree on almost everything else.

Secondly, he has discovered a statement in the SDA beliefs which makes him believe that SDAs and Catholics may also share similar beliefs on the subject of the literal presence of Christ in the Communion bread.

One can only imagine how delighted Mr. Haws would have been if he had managed to get hold of the latest SDA Church Hymnal and then turned to the second verse of hymn #402. That would have made his day! It reads: His broken body in our stead, is here in this memorial bread...

No doubt Mr. Haws would have been even more thrilled to discover that the earlier SDA Christ In Song hymn book had rendered this verse: His broken body in our stead is seen in this memorial bread...

No doubt he would have felt that we were making progress in the "right" direction.

I found the website setup by Mr. Haws to be in no way alarming (at least not from the angle from which the IAD president viewed it). It is not much different from hundreds of other sites set up by people who wish to defend their religious beliefs, or their denominations. Mr. Haws has in fact set up links to several websites of other denominations, none of which have reacted in such a paranoid way as the IAD has done.

What Mr. Haws has attempted to do is to show that although other denominations are critical of the beliefs of the Catholic Church, many of them in reality have the same, or similar beliefs as the Church which they are criticizing. He simply used the SDA link as a reference to which people could go in order to prove that what he was saying about SDA beliefs is true. There is nothing wrong with that.

I suspect that there was something about the information on this Catholic web site, which touched Mr. Leito on a sore spot. Let us examine what Mr. Haws has to say about the SDA church, which according to the IAD president is "substantial negative information about our church."

After showing that the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed and Baptist Churches all believe in the Trinity (with links to the web sites of some of these organizations), Mr. Haws then comes to the SDA Church, and comments as follows:

Even the Seventh-Day Adventists! See this Catholic article on SDA Beliefs which confirms that the SDA's believe in the Holy Trinity. (Interesting, in that Satan allows "Antichrist" and His "Whore" Church to teach the truth about God! Why (do) they focus on Sunday services?)

Can anybody point out to me the "substantial negative information" about the SDA Church to which Mr. Leito referred? It seems to me, rather, that Stephen Haws has touched the SDA Church on the same sore spot that we have been hitting for a couple of years. How can the Roman Catholic Church be antichrist if they teach the truth about the most important doctrine of Christian faith? Or, to put it another way, how can the SDA church and the antichrist organization agree wholeheartedly on the doctrine which is the basis of all the beliefs of the Catholic Church?

Mr. Haws continues with a final note:

(NOTE: On April 13, 1999 I received an e-mail from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Inter-American Division, requesting that I remove their link from my site. I therefore replaced the SDA "proof link" with the above Catholic link. The SDA-ID did not deny they believed in the Trinity. I therefore assume my comment re Satan allowing his "whore" church to teach the truth about God hit an Achilles heel. I wish to thank the SDA-ID for giving me the idea for a new article, "How to Handle Seventh-Day Adventists". Look for it in the near future.)

Comment: If a man shows you dirt on your face, wash your face. Don't attack the man.

"Especially in this phase, the phase of celebration, the aim will be to give glory to the Trinity, from whom everything in the world and in history comes and to whom everything returns.

This mystery is the focus of the three years of immediate preparation: from Christ and through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, to the Father. In this sense the Jubilee celebration makes present in an anticipatory way the goal and fulfilment of the life of each Christian and of the whole Church in the Triune God." The Third Millenium John Paul I I, p. 78,79