mental, and emotional well-being, relational calm, or social adjustment. It is the progressive integration of
the spiritual attributes of love, faith, hope, freedom, creativity, humility, and forgiveness with the other
dimensions of personhood in an ongoing process of peace and joy towards a perfectly harmonious
development intended by God, not achievable in our lifetime, but shall be culminated in our resurrected
bodies in the eternal life to come.
To attend to the needs of the whole person, SDA's have established churches, schools, hospitals, and
publishing houses. To proclaim and to share the good news of Christ's offer of salvation (soteria, health,
healing, deliverance, restoration of wholeness, re-creation), SDA's have dispatched missionaries, medical
and dental and para workers throughout the world, established human centers of hope and healing inviting
whoever is willing to come. That and more is truly the SDA's evangelical thrust impelled by a sense of a
global mission, with vision, passion and compassion.
Now returning to the beginning of our discussion, let us revisit Jesus' prayer for unity among Christian
believers and unity with God. He prayed to the Father, "My prayer is not for them (disciples) alone. I pray
also for those who will believe in me through their messages, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you
are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I
have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.
May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as
you have loved me." Jn. 17: 20-23.
Finally, let me ask this question: Is Evangelicalism's ambit generous enough to circumscribe Seventh-Day
Adventists?
Before answering the question, let's make a general statemtent first. This question will not apply to the
most fundamentalist Seventh-day Adventists who tend to accord E. G. White's writings the same authority
as that of the Bible. Neither would the question be relevant to the ultraliberal SDA's, whose beliefs are
obviosuly conflictive with Evangelical teachings. The question is directed to the majority, middle-of-the-
road Adventists, whose interests and concerns are represented by the official church organization, the
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists of Takoma Park, Washington, D.C.
When the question is directed to this large group of Adventists, the answer, I submit, may be found in
further defining which group of Adventists and Evangelicals one has in mind. In addition, the answer also
largely hinges on to what degree each camp is willing to listen in humility and with tolerance while both are
imbued with love and heeding the Master's call for unity.