I don’t think so. Fear has done a lot of work in this church and it has been very damaging.
We grew up with the investigative judgment still running, probation able to close without notice, a Sunday law always just over the next ridge, and the last generation expected to get it right or else. Those ideas can make a person careful. They can also make a person tired. A lot of us learned to treat other Christians as people who might turn on us later, and to treat our own standing with God like a file that had not been closed.
That filled tents. It sold books. It made the health message feel urgent. But it also left a trail of kids who sat through weeks of prayer more scared than loved, and adults who still cannot say, without hedging, that they are safe in Christ. I have heard that story too many times for it to be an accident.
The problem is not that Adventists take last things seriously. The problem is when seriousness turns into a low-grade alarm that never shuts off. Scripture talks about fearing God. It also says perfect love casts that kind of fear out. We have been better at the first half.
There is another way this church already lives, in places. Sabbath as rest instead of a test. Revelation as the story of a God who finishes what He started. Obedience as what grows when people know they belong, not as the fee that gets them in. That version is quieter. It also leaves people standing.
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