The Gleaner is a very large and influential publication with its headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica. As the oldest continuously published newspaper in the Western Hemisphere, its parent organization The Gleaner Company LTD publishes material in North America, the Carribean, The United Kingdom, and Canada. This article, by Jasmine Peru, appeared in the Gleaner yesterday:
Banned Adventist Pastor Conrad Vine Disturbs Church ‘Cancel Culture’
SOMEHOW, CANCEL culture sounds like such a worldly, secular thing, but it came banging at the door of former Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM) president, Dr Conrad Vine, resulting in his unceremonious fall from grace within the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church.
After preaching a series of sermons, starting in August last year, Vine, an ordained minister of the gospel, made headlines across the SDA world, and unpalatable words like “heretic” and “offshoot” are still being bandied about.
“On one extreme I am being called John the Baptist, Martin Luther [however], there are others who see me as a cancer on the body of Christ ... the anti-Christ. But the truth is that I sit at my kitchen desk and ask the Lord ‘What would you have me to preach?’” Vine told The Sunday Gleaner.
The answer from above included a series of four sermons with some rather thought-provoking titles: Divine Divorcee, Trampling Upon Conscience, Remnant, Respectable or Regime Church, and Dancing With the Devil.
Dr. Vine shared that he had the sermons “for months” before preaching them because he knew the push-back that they would receive, but he also knew that he would preach them when the time was right, as directed by the Lord.
“I thought, ‘Woe is me if I preach these sermons.’ I said ‘Lord I don’t want to preach these sermons’. I felt like a man sitting on death row ... but we are told to preach the word in season and out of season. I have to speak the truth because God will hold me accountable if I don’t,” Vine said.
The Regime Church sermon which was preached during an August 13-17, 2024 camp meeting in Maine, USA, enjoyed the most traction and greatly disturbed the Michigan Conference to which Vine’s home church, the Village SDA Church, belongs. In the sermon, Dr Vine, in well-modulated tones, stated that the General Conference (GC) of the SDA Church, trampled on the liberty of conscience of its members during the pandemic and urged the laity to hold their leaders accountable.
Vine’s sermon has some real mic drop moments that cannot be ignored. In a brief history lesson, he outlined that in the 1860s the SDA church identified itself as God’s endtime remnant movement, “those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus”.
“We were fundamentally at odds with our wider environment ... the USA was the second beast of Revelation 13, one of the endtime foes of God’s people,” he said.
He charged that over the years the Church has “morphed” from remnant to respectable, craving and receiving tax exempt status and federal contracts for its colleges and hospitals. Then it morphed again during the pandemic, “when faced by huge social, economic, political and media pressure”.
“We became a regime church. We propagated the official lies, we cancelled the truth-speakers in our midst, we demonised our members who would not bow ... and we chased federal funding for our institutions. It is not easy to talk like this, but this is the truth and for us to have healing in our church we have to speak the truth in love.
“We became a regime church implementing the dictates of a godless government that has no place for God in its deliberations and we acted against our own members to preserve our revenue streams and our institutions,” Vine stated without even raising his voice.
Asking repeatedly for the members to pray for the leaders, including G C President Ted Wilson — who visited Jamaica at the end of April to launch the denomination’s Youth Ambassador programme — Vine stated that “if the G C supports future mandates over the consciences of members I think we are well within our rights to establish a parachurch movement within the Adventist Church”.
His suggestion was that a committee would collect the tithe and allocate it “to conferences who are faithful to scripture ... and that way, the conferences that go woke will go broke ... I recognise that when you touch the question of tithe, this is the sacred nerve in the Adventist Church”.
Adventists worldwide were glued to YouTube. A battalion of them, who see him as a polarising figure, remain totally against Vine, but many others are totally in support of his message. It is this that has caused Vine to be compared to Martin Luther, the Roman Catholic monk whose 95 Theses nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, signaled the start of the Protestant Reformation.
“Go woke go broke” pierced a nerve and the SDA Church sent a clear message through Jim Micheff, Michigan Conference president that Vine should be cancelled.
In a September 3, 2024 letter, Micheff stated that Vine’s messages “raise significant concerns and undermine the unity and integrity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church” pointing to the “statements regarding the remnant church and leadership, the establishment of a parachurch organisation, and the redirection of tithe”.
Vine’s “assertions” were labelled “inconsistent with the clear teachings found in the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy.” In Adventism, the ‘Spirit of Prophecy’ refers to the teaching of Ellen G White, widely acknowledged as the church’s prophetic voice.
“As we continue to work through these issues, he [Vine] will not be permitted access to the pulpits of our Michigan Conference churches,” Micheff stated.
Other conferences followed suit and also banned Vine from speaking in their churches. But that has not silenced his voice. Vine shared that he lives two worlds, one of “cancel culture and icy silence from the hierarchy” and the other filled with warm embrace.
Some mornings he wakes up to “lies” that are spread about him. “But you can’t chase down every rabbit. You have to keep your eyes on the prize.”
Churches that invite him to speak, rent out venues to put him in.
“In a church of 50, 500 will show up at the venue. People come up to me and say ‘Thank you’ because my preaching has led them back to Jesus and they have found strength,” he said.
Vine told The Sunday Gleaner that before the pandemic, he was preaching on issues relating to critical theory and its impact on the Church.
“If Satan is attacking the Church, preachers need to defend it. It is easy to preach soothing sermons that don’t ruffle feathers, but time is short ... souls are precious. In a world of so much noise, it is important to give the trumpet a certain sound,” he said.
Then the pandemic hit and Vine started to speak up for liberty of conscience. His February 2022 sermon, titled Appeal to Adventist Nobility, looked at the 2015 statement made by the General Conference on immunisation and its reaffirmation in 2021.
“The GC does not have the right to over-ride our conscience. People are waking up. A bunch of 10 guys can’t decide what we put into our bodies,” said Vine, who added that it’s not about being anti-vax or pro vax, it’s about making a decision without condemnation.
His recommendation to the GC is to establish a forum where grievances can be worked out, and members given “the assurance that the church will not throw them under the bus the next time it is financially convenient for them to do so”.
“Cancel culture does not work ... the forbidden fruit [becomes] more appealing,” Vine told The Sunday Gleaner.
In February, Vine sent a resignation letter to the AFM board. It was effective March 31.
“Such times of transition are never easy. In these moments, we need the assurance of God’s presence. And so I leave you with God’s promises to Joshua that have carried me through each day of ministry at AFM, and which I pray will strengthen each of us in the days ahead: “I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9),” Vine said in his resignation letter.
His resignation was accepted. Vine’s sermons can now be found on As a Needle to the Pole (AN2P) ministry.
Here is Conrad Vine’s Donation Page, for those who wish to support him.
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