Ex 20:13 NKJV
13″You shall not murder
Here is the correct translation of the 6th Commandment!

MURDER
The unlawful killing of one person by another, especially with premeditated malice
(from Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Copyright (c)1986, Thomas Nelson Publishers)

Defending one’s country in a war is not murder! There is no Bible or Spirit of Prophecy teaching that recomends Conscientious Objection.

Eccl. 3: 1-3 NKJV
To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
2A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
3A time to kill,
And a time to heal;

According to the Bible there is a time to Kill! What would have happened if the Angel that killed 185,000 Syrian Soldiers was a Conscientious Objector? What about David and Goliath? Was David a Conscientious Objector? How many people did God kill with the flood? Does God break his own commandments? Isn’t it obvious that the teaching of the Conscientious Objector is simply a doctrine of men! Remember, — It is wrong to Murder. There is a time to kill, — and it is not wrong as long as it is not murder!

Thanks.

They should have the documentary in DVD format.

Many SDAs have protested the Iraq War. But most American Adventists haven’t. And I think it’s a shame.

Forgive me for stopping mid-stream. I wondered where my writing had got to.

I don’t want in any sense to be critical of Korean society and its excesses without at the same time fully acknowledging the glaring excesses of western societies.

God bless Lim Hee-Jai for his very courageous stance. May his tribe increase.

For myself, I thought I was delivered from the militaristic tradition of my ancestors including Lord Raglan, Commander in Chief of the British and French forces in the Crimea, of Charge of the Light Brigade fame. As a young man Lord Raglan was Field Secretary to the Duke of Wellington. Years later, in the Crimea, Lord Raglan was still referring to the French as ‘the enemy.’ Thank God for the conversion of my father, Raglan, to a pacifist stance.

Thanks again for a very useful paper. As a western who has lived in Korea for the last 4 years, I am an interested observer of things Adventist and Korea.

It is encouraging to know that you have been a positive voice among your fellow Korean American religious scholars in respect of Korean Adventism. Many Korean Christians are still possessed by a marked and unreasonable distain for Adventists. Perhaps this is because Adventists have little use for orthodox religious traditions such as Sunday keeping as well as for Adventists who estew the eating of pork and bottom level feeders of the sea.

Several obsevations that follow help me to understand more completely the changing attitudes of Adventists toward the military as outlined in this paper.

1) The Japanese occupation of Korea (1910 - 1945) and the Korean War (1950 - 1953) were suceeded by a military dictatorship which only ended in 1980 or thereabouts. The black and while demands of a dictatorship are often matched by a similar strictness of the people in matters of conscience.

2) This military dictatorship was underpined by a deeply ingrained confucian society where there was almost absolute respect for tradition and real reverence for elders and superiors.

[According to a recent 'Korea Herald' article "Korean civil law is notoriously weak, leaving little room for redress through the courts for contractual breaches." No wonder Clinton Lee was so non-plussed by the breaching of his 1952 agreement with the Korean government.]

[Also in the same newspaper I recently read a column written by a Supintendent of Police in one part of Seoul. He commented thus - "In traditional Korean society, the privacy of individuals was not considered important and thus there was little perception it should be protected. This tendency seems to still remain the mindset of Koreans .... A society little interested in privacy can not be expected to have any real regard for freedom of conscience either].

3) Could it be that the seeming overnight change in Korean attitudes to military service may have been precipitated by a slackness with regard to the keeping of the Sabbath, which in turn may often have been induced by a willingness of Korean Adventist school children to attend school on Sabbaths as required. There is a noticeable and tragic dearth of kids present at Sabbath services in Korean churches.

I am not w