The Progressive Adventist’s Biggest Misunderstanding about Adventism
By Lisa Winn
A response to Loren Seibold’s Adventist Today article,
“Itching Ears, On AT’s Most Misunderstood Article Ever”
I have been repeatedly dumbfounded by progressive Adventists’ ability to eschew the teachings of Ellen White and the early Adventist pioneers, yet somehow remain in the Seventh-day Adventist church. The cognitive dissonance required to maintain such a position must be taxing on the psyche.
I can empathize a little. It is tough to leave one’s culture behind, and human nature causes us to remain in the most terrible of circumstances for the sake of security and stability, or simply out of fear of the unknown. And then, of course, there is the Sabbath—Adventism’s biggest ruse—a belief so compelling when you hold it, yet so perplexingly ridiculous-sounding once you finally let it go.
I thought I had heard everything a progressive Adventist could possibly have to say about Adventism until this week, when a friend sent me an article from Adventist Today’s website written by Loren Seibold: “Itching Ears, On AT’s Most Misunderstood Article Ever.”
I confess I am not a regular reader of Adventist Today; I have only read this one post by Mr. Seibold, along with the article that inspired it. Even so, I cannot help but address it. I can feel his pain and frustration as he writes. He says, “We have in this denomination nurtured a class of people who have little regard for verifiable truth.” He questions some Adventists’ ability to “distinguish a spurious story from a true one,” and suspicions that some “prefer to believe any bit of mythology that feeds their hunger for novelty…”
His article is in response to a false report that has circulated amongst Adventists. The false claim is that General Conference president Ted Wilson sent an apologetic letter to the Pope because—and this part is true—a group of Adventists had canvassed Philadelphia with copies of The Great Controversy right before the Pope had come to visit. Mr. Seibold knows it is “inconceivable” that Ted Wilson would send such an apology, considering that Wilson maintains “loyalty to the historic teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church.” Apparently Mr. Seibold thinks Wilson’s devotion to Ellen White should be patently obvious to every Adventist (I wouldn’t disagree), yet somehow, he claims, “The Great Controversy is not a good expression of who we Adventists are today.”
What?
Great Controversy is not an Adventist expression?
If the president of the GC himself is “a true believer in the ministry of Ellen White, including the anti-Catholicism in The Great Controversy”, how can this book not be representative of Adventism today? Certainly, a significant portion of Adventists still hold to its teachings, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church has never officially recanted a single word of Ellen White’s writings.
It is true that the majority of progressive Adventists are not fans of the “19th century American nativism” to which Ellen White subscribed when she…ahem…compiled the glorious heap of garbage that is The Great Controversy. Before you object to the word “garbage,” here is how Mr. Seibold himself, a supposed Adventist, describes the book: “embarrassing” and “a bit cultish” (when used in evangelism), “pedantic,” “dull,” “unhopeful,” and promoting a “conspiracy.”
Sounds like garbage to me!
In lambasting The Great Controversy approach to evangelism, Mr. Seibold has good intent. He wants to know why Adventists cannot simply “return to the plain facts of the gospel… ‘that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day [1 Cor 15]…’” He wants to know, “Why do some Seventh-day Adventists so under-appreciate that simple message? What makes them so anxious to add fables to the glorious good news…?”
The answer, Mr. Seibold, is that Adventism is itself based on a fable. It began when a group of people with “itching ears” followed after William Miller’s sensationalist message of Jesus returning in 1844. After The Great Disappointment, when every other Adventist had sheepishly slunk back to their original churches, and even Miller himself had recanted, a die-hard group of conspiracy theorist Adventists refused to accept defeat. Instead, they conjured up an entirely new interpretation in its place: Jesus entering the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, and the investigative judgment. Adding fuel to the fire, they eventually picked up the “Sabbath truth,” further isolating themselves from other Christian denominations, and began teaching there would be future Sabbath persecution by the Roman Catholic Church and “Sunday-keeping” Protestants.
Mr. Seibold—a “return to the plain facts of the gospel” would require returning to a point in time before Adventism came into existence!
Because Adventism has this history, it can’t help but breed conspiracy theorists. It thrives on Revelation seminars filled with beastly prophecies promoting paranoia, and attracting and breeding conspiracy theorists from here to Timbuktu. The more devout of an Adventist one tries to be—the more one reads the writings of Ellen White and follows them—the more likely one is to become one of these conspiracy theorists.
“Cultish” indeed!
Beautiful teachings?
Progressive Adventists really don’t want to “return” to anything, but instead they desire to move forward—away from these historic teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—but towards what? The interesting thing about ditching the The Great Controversy worldview is that it renders the Sabbath an empty, meaningless husk of a doctrine, and Adventism itself irrelevant. If the Sabbath is not an essential teaching separating God’s “true remnant church” from the rest of “apostate Christianity,” then what good is it? Whether he realizes it or not, by abandoning The Great Controversy, Mr. Seibold is essentially asserting that Seventh-day Adventism needs to move away from… Seventh-day Adventism!
I am certain at this point, if he is reading, Mr. Seibold is shaking his head in disagreement. As he says in his article, “At the end of time, should the history of this denomination be written to be read through eternity, it will say that we Adventists had the good news, girded by beautiful teachings about the Sabbath, health, and Jesus’ return.” Mr. Seibold wishes to hold on to the “beautiful teachings” of Adventism, such as the Sabbath and the health message, and discard the bad. It is these “beautiful teachings” which, in the progressive Adventist’s mind, enable Adventism to justify its continued existence, meriting a place amongst the many mainstream Protestant denominations.
And this is where progressive Adventists have sorely misunderstood Adventism. These “beautiful teachings” which “gird” the gospel, as Mr. Seibold says, are actually doctrines of demons. These teachings have been added to “that simple message” Mr. Seibold claims he wants to preserve. He has already admitted that many Adventists suffer from “itching ears”—a reference to 2nd Timothy 4—but has he considered what Paul states in 1st Timothy 4:1-3?
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
Through the “health message,” which Mr. Seibold deems a “beautiful teaching,” Adventism is in actuality promoting a doctrine of demons! Ellen White’s vegetarian mandate distracts one from the gospel, and discourages fellowship with Christian believers who do eat meat. One cannot be “all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22) and effectively share the gospel while simultaneously turning up his nose at the food laid before him on a potential convert’s table. Mandating that one strive towards vegetarianism also adds undue burden and guilt on converts who have grown up eating meat, live in places where they do not have access to alternative proteins, or simply cannot afford a healthy version of the vegetarian diet. “The health message” is not a “beautiful teaching” but simply another archaic remnant of 19th century American thought, and dangerous to the gospel.
The Sabbath is another wedge in Protestant Christian unity if there ever was one. Mr. Seibold asserts that he wants Adventists to focus “on the plain facts of the gospel,” but then he throws in the Sabbath as “a beautiful teaching” for which he desires Adventism to be known and remembered. One really can’t have it both ways, and this just illustrates how the Sabbath distracts from the gospel message. If the Sabbath is not part of the gospel, there is no reason to make it a distinctive doctrine that historically has separated Adventism from Christian fellowship among other denominations. Again, the Sabbath doctrine simply has no place as a doctrine at all if The Great Controversy worldview is erroneous.
Just as some Adventists “lie intentionally and boldly” to others in order to promote their paranoid conspiracies, progressive Adventists, hoping to bring Adventism into the 21st century, are lying “intentionally and boldly” to themselves. Adventism began in error and will end in error. Any attempt by progressive Adventists or the church to jettison any teaching of Ellen White’s would destroy Adventism as we know it, and fracture it into countless offshoot denominations. No, Adventism is stuck in the 19th Century for good.
Why do you stay?
Mr. Seibold—I am writing this in hopes that it might inspire you, and many other progressive Adventists, to reconsider your reasons for staying in the Seventh-day Adventist church. On some level, you must know that if Adventism were to ditch all of its false teachings, there would be nothing left that distinguishes it from the rest of Protestantism. The most effective way a progressive Adventist could “improve” Adventism is by leaving it completely, truly embracing “that simple message” I can tell you are longing for, and only then turning back around to fight against Adventism’s countless heresies.
Yes, leaving Adventism can be scary and sometimes comes with great sacrifice, but nothing is more marvelous than being “called…out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 peter 2:9). †
- Dear Adventist, Do You Keep the Sabbath? - June 2, 2022
- Dear Adventist, Have You Disciplined Your Diet? - October 29, 2020
- DOCTRINES OF DEMONS: A RESPONSE TO SEIBOLD - August 3, 2018
Really strong article, Lisa. So well stated. I found myself nodding my head in agreement after every line. Thank you!
Thanks!
Great Article. I run across progressive Adventists when commenting on YouTube videos. Recently in a discussion with an Adventist, he was attempting to distance himself from some of the unbiblical and wacky Ellen White comments I had posted. I then reminded him that to be an Adventist without Ellen White was the same as saying “I am a Christian, but do not believe in Christ.” Of course he did not approve of the comment. Your article shows that within Adventist there is a group trying to distance themselves from EGW, but so long as they remain Adventist that is impossible.
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
Simply Outstanding Lisa!! In many ways I was fortunate to grow up in a progressive Adventist home where the gospel was always made clear and the extras were just extra traditions. In other ways for many of my friends the progressive path fogged up the gospel almost worse than a traditional legalist. Thanks for your clarity!
Thanks! I am increasingly convinced that progressive Adventists are tougher to evangelize than the conservative legalists. They don’t care if EGW wasn’t a prophet or if she plagiarized. They just idolize the SDA culture. It is willful ignorance. I wrote about this here: https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/2017/06/14/when-culture-is-king/