Joe Reeves, who now works in the General Conference Sabbath School department, presented a seminar at the recent GYC, in which he attempts to defend the Seventh-day Adventist dalliance with the United Nations. A video of this presentation was recently posted on YouTube.
As an autodeveloped expert on religious liberty, Reeves also defends PARL ecumenism in this presentation.
Reeves also gave presentations and participated in a Q&A session at the 2023 GYC in which concerns about LGBTQ+, Critical Theory, neopaganism, Marxism and vaccine mandates were regarded as ‘conspiracies’ or distractions (it should be noted that some of these Q&A participants are supportive of social justice).
Observations
At the beginning of Reeves’ presentation he says the devil is dividing the church. There may be some truth to that. The question is by whom?
Truth is too important to kill it in the streets for the sake of peace. Shall we become SDA Ultramontanists seeking to increase and centralize the organization’s power, or shall we stand for the right though the heavens fall? There is a group of ambitious young Adventists who are being fast-tracked into positions of authority in the SDA Church bureaucracy. They have a goal to defend and promote the structure and are being rewarded for it. But, back to this video.
Reeves claims that people are concerned about the 501 (c)(3) tax status of the church, and concerned about SDA hospitals treating patients who are on Medicare. There might be some people concerned about these two things, but they are a very, very small fraction of the church. I don’t know anyone who is concerned about these issues.
1:57 - He says some in the church are concerned about ADRA (as an NGO) getting most of their money from governments. I am one of them.
4:21 - He talks about an old discussion at the 1893-1895 General Conference Sessions regarding a land grant in South Africa, and the wisdom of accepting tax exemptions or gifts from the government. AT Jones was one of the individuals opposed to tax exempt status from the government; he was also opposed to accepting the land grant in SA (he published articles against it in 1894).
His (Reeves) conclusion is that EGW (who was sent to Australia by the GC) wrote back that we should go for the tax exemptions in Michigan and accept the land grant in SA, because we were in turbulent times and needed to advance the cause of God.
27:41 - The GC session voted not to accept the land, but due to communication delays, misionaries in SA had already accepted the land. Reeves concludes that the church arrived at a “biblical position”, without saying what that biblical position is or was. It looks like the church voted not to accept the land while certain missionaries in SA accepted the land, ignorant of the GC Session in 1895. Hardly a biblical position.
24:38 - Reeves suggests that being linked to the United Nations is advancing the work and mission of the church. Regretfully, he fails to explain how being part of an organization where you are not permitted to proselytize (convert people to your faith) is advancing the ‘work and mission’ of the church.
26:14 - He says that people who were opposed to the tax exempt status and the land gift were displaying fanaticism (this would also apply to AT Jones). This same term is sometimes applied today to people who are calling for the SDA church to disaffiliate itself from the United Nation (which is three parts corrupt and one part incompetent).
28:41 - “Just as there's conscientiousness in 1895, there's misguided zeal in 2025.” So, any concerns about the GC attaching themselves to the United Nations and parroting their agenda with GC ADCOM Statements is ‘misguided zeal’.
33:28 - One of the most amazing leaps of logic in this video is where Reeves compares the U.S. Constitution to the United Nations Charter. He states that both are imperfect documents, in order to justify the Seventh-day Adventist Church using entangling themselves with the United Nations. He concludes that we can and should use both documents. And he creates the logical fallacy of false equivalence.
False equivalence occurs when two things are presented as similar or equal in significance, function, or effectiveness, despite meaningful differences that undermine the comparison.
The US Constitution is a foundational domestic legal document that directly enumerates specific individual rights (e.g., freedom of speech, due process, and equal protection under the law via the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments) and establishes mechanisms for their enforcement through the US.
In contrast, the UN Charter is an international treaty that primarily establishes the United Nations organization. The Charter's human rights provisions are aspirational and rely on member states' voluntary compliance or UN mechanisms.
By treating these documents as interchangeable or equally practical for "protecting rights," Reeves overlooks the disparities in scope and application, potentially misleading the audience about their roles—in an attempt to justify the Church’s alliance with the United Nations.
But there is a third document that gets short shrift in Reeves’ presentation—the Bible—which discourages alliances with unbelievers (Ephesians 5:11; 2 Cor. 6:14). The United Nations is a secular organization with vastly different goals from the Body of Christ—whose duty it is to baptize and make disciples through the proclamation of the Gospel.
35:19 - Reeves cites one more objection “We shouldn’t accept money when there are strings attached.” Here, he should have simply said “I agree”, and sat down.
Instead, he defends the limitation on sharing our faith as a United Nations NGO, by citing a quote of EGW in Volume 3 Testimonies page 166. Writing about SDA hospitals, she says our peculiar faith should not be discussed with patients.
In other words, go ahead and accept goverment or United Nations money and don’t worry about it.
Reeves’ Closing Summary
38:03 - “However, to say that the church should never receive government money is an extreme interpretation of separation of church and state that is historic to Adventism in which the council of the spirit prophesies prophecy saved us from. The same is true for church involvement at the United Nations.”
There were a lot of people in this audience who did not agree with this presentation. Presumably because many of them recognize ‘spin’ when they see it.
Hopefully, you do too.
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“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).