Tell it not in Gath!

Tell it in Jerusalem!

 by Nic Samojluk

In his August 2004 Adventist Review editorial, William G. Johnson made reference to the principle that has guided the coverage of the publication he is in charge of. He stated that church "members have a right to know" not only the good news, but the bad news as well, because readers prefer to learn the bad news from the Review instead of the public press. "We believe that our members can handle bad news; the one thing they cannot abide is cover-up." Then he added the following: "Although we don't withhold any news that members need to know, we don't print everything we know."

In support of this limited coverage of news, he cited the example of King David following the death of King Saul. In his lament about the death of King Saul following the defeat of Israel by their enemies, David stated, "How the mighty have fallen! Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon." My question is: We do not know what happened in the Phillistine cities of Israel's enemies, but we do know that the bad news were published in Jerusalem, because someone recorded these bad news in the Bible. Actually, we find in the Bible a lot of bad news.

Had Bible writers refrained from publishing the bad news about God's chosen people, we would have had a sanitized version of the Old and the New Testament. The fact is that we do not have such a sanitized version of the Bible, but rather a book containing the true account of what happened, which included the good and the bad news. We have the record of the bad news about Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, King Saul, King David, the kings that followed, and in the New testament we have the bad news about Peter, Annanias and Saphira, and so on.

My question is: What lesson can we learn from King David's Tell It Not in Gath statement? Taking in consideration the fact that the bad news the future king of Israel didn't want published in the cities of Israel's enemies were published in Jerusalem, I conclude that we need to share the bad news with our church members, while refraining from disseminating the same among our enemies. Is it easy to implement such a policy? I doubt! What we publish in Jerusalem, has a way of getting disseminated in Gath and Ashkelon as well. Bad news travel faster than good news, and whether you use the printed page or the Internet, what we publish becomes available to both friends and enemies.

Our magazines do include some bad news, but a lot gets never published. This is one of the reasons we have some independent publications such as Spectrum and Adventist Today, plus the many independent Internet websites. Are these publications telling it in Gath and Ashkeon, or are they telling it in Jerusalem? This is a value judgment you have to make as you read or peruse said publications. Those who criticize said publications outright, should remember that we do not have a sanitized version of the Bible. Actually, one of the main arguments that we have used to prove that the Bible was inspired by God is the fact that it includes so many bad news in addition to the good news.

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