History of The Seventh-day Adventist Church - Mid 20th Century

Mid 20th Century

World War II

In Southern Europe, as soon as the war broke out, most of the church's workers of military age were drafted. The church lost union and local conference presidents, pastors, evangelists, and institutional workers.

When the Nazis occupied France they dissolved the conference and all the churches, confiscated church buildings, and prohibited church work. In Croatia all Adventist churches were closed, and the conference was dissolved. All church and evangelistic work was strictly forbidden. Over in Rumania, where there were more than 25,000 Adventists, the union conference, the six local conferences, and all the churches were likewise dissolved. Over three hundred Adventist chapels, the publishing house in Bucharest, and the school at Brasov were all taken from the church. All church funds were taken. Three thousand Adventists were put in prison. They were tortured and abused.

The work of the church went forward under creative cover. People baptized were reported as students graduating and receiving their diplomas. One minister reported on life insurance policies sold. Another reported on the harvest of 253 baskets of fruit.

1970s

In the mid 1970s, two distinct factions were manifest within mainstream Seventh day Adventism. Defending many pre-1950 Adventist positions was Historic Adventism, while the more liberal Adventism emphasized a different understanding of justification by faith, and sought greater fellowship with Evangelical Christianity. This controversy soon led to what some see as a full-blown internal crisis and fragmentation.

In the 1970s Kenneth Wood and Herbert Douglass, editors of the Review and Herald, began to emphasize historic Adventist teachings which had been the traditional views in the church before Questions on Doctrine such as sinless perfection of a final generation, which was opposed by many Progressive Adventists