By Colleen Tinker
The problem of pinning down “official” Adventist teaching is alive and well. In fact, Tim Martin from The Centers for Apologetics Research has been writing a pamphlet about Seventh-day Adventism, and in his research he has bumped into this problem.
In his research, Tim encountered the work of M. L. Andreasen, one of Adventism’s most prominent theologians during the 1930’s and 40’s. Andreasen is remembered especially for formulating the idea of “Last Generation Theology” which he developed from the writings of Ellen White.
In a nutshell, Last Generation Theology explains that when Jesus comes again, all who are alive will need to have reached perfection of character and perfect law-keeping in order to be saved.
What Tim Martin has found, however, is that in spite of Andreason’s ideas conforming to Ellen White’s writings, “it is rejected by many of the mainstream SDA folk.”
Is Last Generation Theology a fair example of Adventist teaching, Tim wondered, or is it not? How can we know?
In the process of attempting to harmonize Andreasen’s rigid doctrine of Last Generation Perfection with today’s mainstream Adventism which essentially ignores the difficulty of Ellen White’s perfection requirements, he encountered a Master’s thesis written in May, 2016, by May Anette Stolen Tallini, an Adventist pastor in Norway. Her paper is entitled, “Is The Last Generation Theology, As Developed By M. L. Andreasen Compatible With Ellen G. White’s Theology Of The Remnant?”
Ms. Tallini ultimately contrasts Andreasen with EGW, saying that Andreasen’s “Last Generation Theology” required perfection as the condition of salvation, but Ellen White says that one is saved by repenting and believing.
This contrast between M. L. Andreasen and Ellen White, however, is entirely contrived. Most of us who have been Adventist know that Ellen White is internally contradictory. One can find statements from her writings to support nearly any theological position one wishes to take. Ms. Tallini represents the modern “evangelical Adventist” attempt to eclipse the more obviously cultic, harsher doctrines which were well-known in the middle of the 20th century.
This contrast between Andreasen and Ms. Tallini is a perfect example of the reality within Adventism: individual members may disagree over doctrinal details, and all those members who disagree with one another will insist that their view represents Adventism.
The problem is obvious: Andreasen’s Last Generation perfection does not harmonize with today’s progressive Adventism which publicly says salvation is by grace through faith, that all God expects is that a person be committed to doing right and doing the best he or she can. Jesus, they say, will make up what we fail to achieve.
Which idea is correct? Which represents real Adventism? If those who hold opposing ideas still claim to be true Adventists, what is it that actually defines Adventism?
In an attempt to help unpack this internal Adventist dissonance, I have stepped back and described the subtle deception and underlying assumptions which Adventists generally do not admit, especially to “outsiders”. I use Andreasen and Ms. Tallini’s research paper as my examples to explore this problem.
No person’s belief is OFFICIAL
There is absolutely no theological explanation developed by any Adventist person—(except Ellen White, and as Ms. Tallini’s study emphasizes, EGW is internally contradictory and cannot be pinned down regarding salvation, the nature of Christ, His righteousness, or its application to humans)—that is seen as “official Adventism”. In practice, things which are actually written/edited, endorsed, and published by the Executive Committee of the General Conference are seen as official. Works published by the official Adventist publishing houses, if not written by the General Conference officers, will be seen by members as trustworthy and will become integrated into Adventist life, but if they become “problematic” in any way, they may be officially denied or ignored.
Even today, my conservative Adventist family members disagree about Adventist teachings and practices if those beliefs disagree with their own understanding of EGWs commentary. For example, if the General Conference makes a statement or recommendation with which my family disagrees, they say, “That’s not our belief.” End of argument. This denial of personal acceptance of Adventist belief has always been the “Adventist way.” In fact, this phenomenon is part of the reason the infamous Questions on Doctrine was so divisive after Walter Martin met with Adventist leaders in the 1950s.
Walter Martin, the author of The Kingdom of the Cults, set out to interview the theological minds of the common sects or cults that existed on the fringes of Christianity. He interviewed Mormon leaders, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, and others with the purpose of explaining their doctrinal flaws and declaring them to be cults or heterodox Christians.
The Adventist leaders who met with Walter Martin deceived him, and today this fact has been publicly admitted by Adventist historian George Knight. In the annotations within the 2003 republished version of Questions on Doctrine, Knight admits that the Adventists used words that they knew Martin would hear as being evangelical while the Adventists themselves might take offense at them. Underneath, however, they were attempting to harmonize Adventism with evangelicalism, trying to keep Adventists happy and simultaneously attempting to convince Martin that they were not a cult.
This duplicitous process has created doctrinal schism in Adventism which remain to this day. Adventists internally disagree—even hotly disagree—on many points of doctrine and practice. Nevertheless, they all claim to be Adventists while clinging tightly to their own beliefs, and the General Conference has not clarified these doctrinal disagreements.
If questioned, they can say that Andreasen, for example, does not represent official Adventist doctrine—because it was articulated by an individual man doing his own research. Similarly, they can say that Ms. Tallini’s paper does not represent official Adventism, even though it paints Ellen White in a most evangelical light, because Ms. Tallini is just one person writing her own opinion.
Similarly, Andreasen’s Last Generation Theology can be denied as representing Adventism. No matter what is published or sold in the Adventist publishing houses and Adventist Book Centers, in practice, anything written by individuals not representing the General Conference Executive Committee is deniable. If a person’s publications causes Adventism problems, Adventists can deny that it represents true Adventism.
In this way The Clear Word, a “devotional paraphrase” of the Bible which has Adventist doctrine woven into the biblical text without any explanation, can be denied. Never mind that it was written by the dean of the theology department at Southern Adventist University who eventually retired in good standing, is published by the official Adventist publisher Review and Herald Publishing Association, and is sold still in Adventist Book Centers under the heading “Bibles”, Adventism denies that The Clear Word is an official version of the Bible and insists it is independent and private. In short, it is deniable.
Andreasen and Walter Martin
Andreasen was not selected to speak to Barnhouse and Martin because the Adventists knew that they would see immediately what Adventism traditionally believed, and the evangelicals would continue considering Adventism a sect or cult. In the annotation in the republished Questions on Doctrine (2003), George Knight acknowledged that the General Conference selected specific men to meet with Walter Martin, men who “knew how” to communicate with outsiders. They knew how evangelicals thought and spoke, and the committee of Adventists selected to meet with Barnhouse and Martin knew how to speak their language and morph traditional Adventist belief to sound nearly orthodox and acceptable. It worked.
Question on Doctrine was the result, and the schism that resulted in Adventism has not ceased to this day. Adventists (Andreasen being outspoken) knew that the book compromised their traditional teaching. The committee that met with Martin and Barnhouse wanted it that way, because they wanted evangelicalism to accept them. They also knew there were issues with the Ellen White-shaped cultic teachings, and they probably did want to morph the church’s teachings.
The plan has not worked. While on the surface the statements of some Adventist doctrines have changed to sound more evangelical, internally, Adventists are all over the map theologically. They DO have a common bottom line, but it is not one most “outsiders” see or understand. Instead, Christians are often deceived into thinking some Adventists are changing and are pretty orthodox, while others remain historic. These apparent differences, though, are only superficial window-dressing. Under the hood they share the same worldview.
Interpreting EGW to reflect one’s personal view.
While Ms. Tallini does an amazing job comparing Andreason to EGW in her research paper, she fails to deal comprehensively with EGWs conflicted writings. The point of her paper ultimately is that Andreasen taught that the last generation on earth when Jesus returns must reach absolute perfection in order to be saved, while she claims that Ellen White never taught the need for perfection but rather that one was saved by repentance and faith.
Her claim is false on the one hand—Ellen White absolutely DID write that the saved would have to perfectly reflect the character of Christ, cease from sin, and stand before a holy God without an intercessor in the Time of Trouble. On the other hand, EGW’s statements about repentance and belief are not news. Adventists have always known Ellen White says our salvation is dependent upon repentance and belief!
Adventists also know, however, that she says observance of the seventh-day Sabbath and the Ten Commandments will mark those who are saved at the end of the investigative judgment. Tallini builds a deceptive argument saying Andreasen differs from EGWs meaning by saying one had to be perfectly obedient, but Adventists have believed for decades, as I did as a student in Adventist schools in the 60s and 70s, that their HEARTS have to be right; it’s not enough to DO the law.
Adventists have always known that the perfect obedience Andreasen describes is predicated on “repentance and belief”. Repentance and belief, however, means repenting for disbelieving non-Adventist beliefs and for thinking obedience wasn’t important, and then doing what one knows is right because one has committed himself to “the truth”. Those two things have always been intertwined, but Tallini actually says EGW never calls for perfect obedience. She says that EGW “can be interpreted to mean” that if a person has repented and believed, their obedience may never quite make it, but Jesus will declare them righteous at the end of the judgment.
Actually, the way Tallini explains this idea has never been “official” Adventism. What Adventism HAS said, however, is that if a person doesn’t quite get rid of all their sin but is going in the right direction, God will make up for their lack by applying Jesus’ grace in place of our imperfection. So, in a sense, one can argue that the Adventist Jesus will declare those with repentant hearts “righteous” at the end of the judgment (which even Tallini admits is where the Adventist Jesus carries out the atonement). The way this idea is explained to the people in the pews, however, is that He makes up what we fail to achieve.
In other words, two things are true. Whether Adventists are taught Last Generation perfection or whether they are taught to do their best and God will make up the rest, they are never taught that Jesus declares them righteous with the literal righteousness of Jesus. They are always taught that whatever righteousness is credited to them will be seen by God as they themselves having become or having been declared personally righteous. Second, whatever Adventists may believe about perfection, they all learn that Jesus is completing the atonement in heaven right now.
There is an explanation for this chaos
Adventism does not admit to the public the bottom-line fact that explains Adventist identity. The unifying foundation is that Adventism believes man is only physical. Andreasen, Ellen White, and Ms. Tallini all demonstrate the same thing: Adventism is utterly confusing and open for differing explanations, but if one sees that the nature of man is merely physical, everything resolves.
EGW goes on and on about whether or not Jesus inherited Adam’s tendencies to sin. What do we inherit from Adam? Are we sinners based on the degeneration (a word Ms. Tallini used in her paper) of human nature over the years, are we just perverse? And what about depravity? Adventists (starting with EGW) do not believe in “original sin”.
These confusions all clear up when we see that Adventists do not believe in spiritual death. They don’t believe in SPIRITS. All this discussion of perfection, repentance, obedience, reflecting the character of Christ, sinlessness, achieving all we can and Jesus making up the rest—all of this confusion resolves when we see that Adventists are always (in nearly every case) talking about people who, like animals, do not have immaterial spirits. To an Adventist, humans are neurons and cells and inheritance and bad genes. Period. Of COURSE there can be no agreement about the nature of Christ if there is no spirit! Thus, there is no new birth.
So, Adventists engage in these esoteric arguments, one camp espousing last generation sinlessness, one camp espousing Jesus declaring the repentant righteous at the very last minute when the atonement and judgment are completed, and one camp saying Jesus’ blood isn’t even necessary for forgiveness because God is a good God. Christians, never understanding that these arguments are purely MATERIAL and never related to a literal spirit that is alive or dead, think some of these Adventists may have it right! They are truly Christian after all! This misunderstanding was the great chasm into which Martin and Barnhouse fell.
Martin and Barnhouse did not understand that they had been intentionally deceived by hand-picked theologians who knew how to talk to them—and who could play with words to try to convince the Adventists that they really didn’t sell the church down the theological river.
Martin did begin to figure it out before he died; his five-day appearance on the John Ankerberg show with William Johnsson in the mid-80s showed Martin’s intense distress, and he even said if the Adventists wouldn’t republish Questions on Doctrine (they had let if fall out of print and refused to republish it), he (Martin) didn’t know how the label “cult” could help but be reapplied—if it ever should have been removed in the first place!
Incidentally, the 2003 Heritage Edition of Questions on Doctrine (with annotations by George Knight) did NOT amount to the church republishing the book. It was not published by an official Adventist publishing house; rather, it was published by Andrews University Press, under the label applied to several republications of old Adventist works: “Heritage Edition”. It was a “private” university publication of historic interest, not an “official” republication of the book by the church.
And also incidentally, Andreasen’s works were published and sold by Adventist publishers and Adventist Book Centers. The fact that Adventists deny him as expressing “official” doctrine only illustrates their deep duplicity and commitment to deception. Thus they can claim that “Last Generation Theology” was Andreasen’s idea, not the church’s—yet those ideas came from the official Adventist prophet, and the “church” was quite happy to disseminate Andreasen’s works to the laity far and wide.
If one looks at all of the Adventist chaotic theology and sees it through the grid of the “natures” as Adventism teaches them—the nature of man (physical), the nature of Christ (his humanity was physical like ours with no spirit), the nature of God (not the classic Christian Trinity but a godhead that could be split if one member misbehaved—as Jesus might have if He had actually sinned as the Adventist Jesus was capable of doing), the nature of sin, the nature of salvation, and the nature of death, it all comes together. It all makes sense. Adventism’s confusion flows from physical arguments trying to describe spiritual reality—and it doesn’t work.
There were Christians who didn’t buy the deception that caught Barnhouse and Martin. Louis Talbot, the chancellor of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) for example, wrote rebuttals to Barnhouse’s endorsements. His three-part response published in The King’s Business in 1957 is available HERE.
Further, the videos of the Martin/Johnsson debates on the Ankerberg show are definitely worth watching. Scroll down on THIS PAGE to see all five videos.
Finally, Steve Pitcher wrote an excellent summary of the Adventist–Walter Martin debacle HERE.
Because deception is the heart of Adventism, it is difficult to dissect its heresy so one clearly sees what is wrong. Understanding the hidden assumption, however, that humanity is merely physical reveals the dark twists and exposes the false gospel that once held so many of us and which still impriosns millions of Adventists in darkness. †
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On YouTube I frequently run into the denial of authority described in this article. For example, I often encounter Adventists who say “Our authority is in the Bible alone.” I then let them know that if they are faithful Adventists they cannot utter such words.
I just finished reading the new (2018) Discipleship Handbook and it states”
“Isn’t the Bible all we need? While this question gives an appearance of faithfulness to Scripture, it actually denies it…..We read the writings of a modern prophet because the Bible tells us to do so.”
Discipleship Handbook. Pacific Press Publishing. 2018, p. 22
Adventists want to run away from this quote, but I remind them of their baptismal vows and vow #9 in particular which is their affirmation to “believe in chruch organization.” (Seventh-Day Adventist Church Manual-19th Edition-Revised 2015) and the official chruch organization is the General Conference at the top of the list.
So to be a faithful Adventist is to affirm the General Conference and if they still wish to deny the General Conference then I look at this as an opportunity to question they association with an organization in which they reject their authority and reject baptismal vow number nine.
Good points, Bookscout.