By Nicole Stevenson
One day recently, as I pondered the horrors of recent news and prayed for our nation, I was impacted by 2 Timothy 3:1–7 12:
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth…Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
That morning, though, I saw something I had not noticed before; this passage not only described the irrational violence of wicked men but also the intentional evil of false teachers. Three simple words grabbed my attention: “For among them…” These three words link the list containing descriptions such as heartless, brutal, unappeasable, slanderous, treacherous, reckless, and abusive to the subsequent description of false teachers! It is from among evil, treacherous, and abusive people that these false teachers arise.
Uncovering the Cover-up
In my earliest days of discovering and exiting Adventism, I did what so many who have been abused by trusted authorities do: I explained away their responsibility. I had “logical” reasons for why some of these people I once trusted perpetuated the false doctrines that had been cutting me and my family off from the gospel of our salvation:
- They didn’t know better.
- They were sincere, so it really isn’t their fault.
- Maybe if I show them Scripture that exposes it all, they will see and things will change.
- They just don’t know that they have been deceived!
During that time I naively attempted to contact a beloved Bible professor I’d had at La Sierra University, and I poured my heart out to her in an email sharing what I was learning about our religion. By that point I had read Dale Ratzlaff’s book Truth Led Me Out and had watched the John Ankerberg show exposing how the Adventist “church” deceived Walter Martin with Questions on Doctrine. I didn’t yet know about any other material or ministries exposing Adventism. I asked my former teacher to help me think through these things and even asked her to discredit Dale if she could! I wanted what I was learning to be wrong.
She never responded. I emailed again apologizing for my confusion; still no response.
I also emailed a former senior pastor I’d had in Adventism whom I knew well. Once again I was met with unusual silence and an ignored “friend request” on social media—even though she is friends with all of my family members.
By then I was becoming suspicious that these Adventist leaders knew the problems with Adventism and couldn’t answer my questions. I was also hurt that women I once considered friends and mentors would shun my attempts to understand our mutual religion and heritage. It seemed as if they didn’t care if I “apostatized” as long as I didn’t make things difficult for them.
I had never seen this side of them. They had always been approachable and willing to discuss anything I brought to them.
Shocked by the silence of my Adventist mentors, I thought about the discoveries I had made when I read Dale Ratzlaff’s book. There had once been a world of underground information circulating among Adventists which exposed the errors of Adventist doctrine, such as Ellen White’s plagiarism and Desmond Ford’s expose´ of the “sanctuary doctrine”, as well as the deception within the upper echelons of the organization.
I was indignant. I had not been aware of this information and wondered how one got their hands on it! Why did no one in Adventism ever talk about these things? How did I get to be an adult without ever knowing these problems existed?
When I realized that a whole reality of doctrinal and organizational crises had been kept from the majority of people my age (those who were too young to remember the Des Ford fiasco), I felt as if I’d fallen down a rabbit hole. Surely the Adventist organization would want to prepare its members to rebut deceptions that attacked the core of our faith! They certainly prepared us for the impending Sunday laws that threatened us—why not prepare us for these hits on our doctrinal foundations? Why the conspiratorial organizational silence?
One afternoon another of my Adventist mentors and dear friends called to check on me since I had recently delivered my daughter and was not attending church regularly. During our conversation I shared some of my concerns about Adventism. I admitted I had been reading fascinating material that made a great case for examining our historic doctrines, and I asked her if she knew who Dale Ratzlaff was. I fully expected her not to know; after all, we were close friends, and we discussed our faith frequently. She had never mentioned him or any opposition to Adventism, and I was sure that something on this scale would certainly come up between us!
Her response shocked me. Rather matter of factly she said, “Yes, I get his magazine.”
Magazine? What magazine? She must mean his book. Does he have a magazine?
A very long and loud silence followed, and I remember nothing else of that conversation. I can’t tell you how a silence “feels” stern, but that one did. It was clear that we wouldn’t be discussing Dale Ratzlaff further. She was done. I almost had the feeling that she was disappointed in me for looking into those things—or maybe she was just sad. Whatever she felt, she was not going to speak of it again.
In that moment, on the phone, I felt the full blow of betrayal by all of these people I once looked to for truth. The pattern was fixed. No one wanted to try to defend Adventism to me, and no one wanted to deal with my questions.
The task of facing these questions about our religion was more daunting to them than was the idea of losing me and my family. We were weighed in the balance against their love for Adventism, and their well-guarded false reality proved more valuable to all of them than was my or my family’s “salvation”.
What had I stumbled upon?
I wouldn’t begin to grasp the vastness of the Adventist deception and the role of its teachers for years still, but I knew enough. One of my mentors—a teacher, an elder, and eventually an ordained pastor of the organization—had been receiving Proclamation! magazine. She had access to all the information I had just discovered, to all the glorious reality of the gospel of Scripture, to all of the horrifying reality of the dark history and ongoing deception of our religion, yet she felt no responsibility for sharing what she knew.
The implications were clear; she either knew Adventism was indefensible, or she believed it in spite of the criticisms and didn’t care if we slipped away in our disillusionment and were lost forever. Either option, in my estimate, is swollen with conceit, is heartless, brutal, reckless, unholy, and has with it the appearance of godliness while denying its power. For those leaders in the church I loved to refuse to acknowledge the serious problems of integrity that I had just discovered is to choose to be deceived and to propagate the deception.
The woman on the phone suddenly felt like a stranger to me. In fact, they all did.
True Shepherds and False Teachers
Thanks to that conversation, however, I knew there was a magazine. After a little research online I discovered Life Assurance Ministries (LAM) as well as their FREE magazine, annual conferences, local weekly Bible studies, their online forum, free downloaded materials exposing both the dark history and false doctrines of Adventism, Sabbath School lesson commentaries, testimonies of those who have left, Bible studies that reveal the clarity of the glorious gospel of Scripture, partnerships with other ministries and websites exposing Adventism, and loads of other free information. These people have given their life’s work to providing the truth free of charge! They did not take the light and hide it under a basket!
I found myself sitting in an absolute stupor.
If LAM was not truthful, how had I not been prepared by Adventism to answer its accusations? I had been a Masters’ student in New Testament Studies in an Adventist University. Why wouldn’t the professors have mentioned this apologetics ministry of former Adventists? I had been an elder and youth leader at my local Adventist church. I had been close family friends with our longtime pastor. Why did these things never come up? They were preparing me to teach within their system; shouldn’t they have prepared me for these criticisms so I could equip our students with the “truth” that would protect them from such widespread attacks?
Unless… unless—it was all true, and Adventism’s behavior, positions, and doctrines were indefensible. Unless—Adventists’ only recourse was to ignore their opponents and let those who discover Adventism’s dark secrets slip away quietly while Adventists slander them or accuse them of leaving because they were “hurt” or “bitter”; redefining reality and protecting the Adventists’ facade and deceptive system held together with a twisted and false application of the Law of God.
“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comest to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (Jn. 3:20, 21).
Wicked things, in the verse above, is contrasted by doing what is true. Wicked things includes deceptive things—such as hiding the fact that their works are not of God. Evil does not give an account for its behavior; rather, it seeks to silence or destroy those who expose it.
The more I researched online to see how Adventism answered the claims of those who are exposing it, the clearer it became that the fruit of Adventism was rotten, and the work of Life Assurance Ministries was both biblical and a difficult work! I can’t help but think of LAM as I read these words in 1 Thessalonians 2:2-5:
“…though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated…as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with pretext for greed–God is witness.”
The ministry of LAM is born of a burden to preach the gospel free of charge. It exists on the donated funds of others, the donated time of the writers, and above all, on the grace of God who provides both for the ministry and for the needs of the Ratzlaffs and the Tinkers. They do not seek to protect their reputation or to hide anything, and that transparency comes with a cost. They only long to see people freed from the errors of Adventism and brought to the glorious truth of the Gospel of Grace in the Word of God. They long to see people freed from the law as Adventism teaches it and brought into a biblical understanding of the new covenant. They have endured much in obedience to this calling, but they have done so to the glory of Christ who is worthy and sufficient, and who is their strength and their joy.
True shepherds not only endure hardship and persecution, but they also continue preaching and teaching and sharing the gospel in the midst of it. The fruit of LAM proved to be biblical fruit.
On the other hand, false teachers run at the first sign of trouble, and they care nothing for the sheep (Jn. 10:11-14). In the light of truth, the fruit of Adventism and its avoidant and dishonest teachers lay bare and rotten at my feet.
I was devastated. It truly was from “among them”—the reckless, arrogant, conceited, unholy lovers of self—that the founding false teachers of Adventism arose. Furthermore, it is from among those forefathers of Adventism that the culture of deception has been passed down from one self-preserving generation to the next, leaving a legacy that goes from bad to worse.
False Teachers and Persecutors
In Galatians chapter 4 Paul describes those who are born according to the flesh as those who live according to the law, and those who are born according to the Spirit as though who are no longer under the law but who live according to the Spirit (Gal. 4:21-31, Jn. 3:3-8, Eph. 1:13,14, Rom. 8). As an Adventist, I believed it was those who lived without the law who would persecute us for keeping the law. Scripture tells us it will be the other way around; those who seek to be justified by the law will persecute those who are born again of the Spirit. I strongly recommend reading the passage contextually, but for our purpose I will share only a few verses:
Now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now….You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace (Gal. 4:28,29; 5:4).
Ponder that for a moment. Those who seek to be justified by the law have fallen away from grace and are persecutors of those who are born according to the Spirit.
As people leave Adventism and then attempt to reach back to their Adventist friends and family to share with them what they know, they are silenced either with overt hostility or covert shunning. Sometimes they are met by a barrage of insults and character assassinations; other times it may simply mean being left off the invitation lists. These responses appear to come either by the indoctrinated preprogrammed reactions of deceived Adventist adherents, or by the calculated responses of deceiving leaders and teachers. Every time an Adventist refuses to give a fair hearing to their friends or family who have left, they have chosen to be deceived rather than to risk being wrong.
“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
Our Marching Orders
So, as we watch the news stories around us depict a society that is going from bad to worse, and as we watch the world fall under the spell of the many variations of false Christianity which seem to sink further and further into wild heresies, what do we do?
Listen to what Paul tells Timothy:
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:14-17).
Whether you are just beginning the disorienting process of discovering the reality of Seventh-day Adventism, or whether you have been out for years and still find yourself increasingly horrified at how it distorted reality and the truth about God, we who have been born again all have one thing in common to ground us, and to keep us faithful: the unerring Word of God. It equips us to be competent and prepared for the good works God prepared in advance for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10). That anchoring Word tells us that we will be persecuted as we desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus, but we can rejoice that we share in His sufferings, and as we wrap our lives in the Word of God we will grow in our discernment which we will surely need as the end approaches.
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim. 4:1-5).
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