JESUS WAS NOT EXALTED ABOVE LUCIFER

By Colleen Tinker

A few months ago I was corresponding with a fairly-recently-out former Adventist. She told me she was talking online with an Adventist friend about some of her new understandings about the Lord Jesus and her insights into Adventist doctrine. She became stumped, however, when her friend pushed back against her statements that Jesus was never exalted above Lucifer, as Ellen White said He was, and that Jesus was never at the level of Lucifer.

I will share part of her email to me:

I was discussing with a friend online the point about Jesus being exalted above Satan, implying that He was not fully God at some point, and my friend made these points about the sentences I had shared. I’m rather confused. I guess I don’t know enough yet to fully understand what’s going on and should maybe keep my mouth shut. 

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt hat Adventism is wrong and I would have to deny the Spirit of God working in me to go back, but I don’t know what to say to my friend regarding this subject. 

Here’s what my friend said:

“Regarding those particular passages you reference, the idea you are talking about is Arianism—that Christ was a created being and later elevated to equality with God. Early Adventism certainly debated this idea, but it was soundly rejected, with EGWs support. I would respectfully suggest you are misunderstanding those passages, which include:

“’Satan’s position in heaven had been next to the Son of God. He was first among the angel” (Selected Messages, Bk. 1, p. 341).

“‘Satan was once an honored angel in heaven, next to Christ” (Early Writings, p. 145).

“The topic of these two statements is Satan’s position, not Christ’s. Christ is merely used as a reference point. There is no reason here to infer that Christ was in any way less than the Father.

“‘The exaltation of the Son of God as equal with the Father was represented as an injustice to Lucifer, who, it was claimed, was also entitled to reverence and honor” (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 35).

“I can understand what you say about this passage. Read a certain way, it can imply an event at which Christ was exalted. However, it is worth reading onward. On page 38, EGW writes, “There had been no change in the position or authority of Christ. Lucifer’s envy and misrepresentation and his claims to equality with Christ had made necessary a statement of the true position of the Son of God, but this had been the same from the beginning.”

“Clearly, “the exaltation of the Son of God” does not describe an event that happened in cosmic history, but rather describes the state of things. It is a rather archaic construction, but emphasizes that Lucifer was concerned about Christ’s position, not his person. The clear statement that this was not a change of position for Christ directly contradicts Arianism (and the idea that Christ was at some point raised to equality with God). Rather, he was always equal with God, because he was God.”

Cutting through the verbiage

I understand the confusion of the person who was writing to me. Adventists have mastered the art of spinning the meanings of words so that their heretical implications are muddled in soothing rhetoric veiling reality. 

Following is my response to our writer:

First, you need to know that the Adventist organization actually acknowledges that Adventism was founded by anti-trinitarians and Arians or semi-Arians. It was not merely a debated idea. The founders and doctrine-shapers were anti-Trinitarians and Arians. James White and Jospeh Bates were from the Christian Connexion, an anti-trinitarian organization. J.N. Andrew, for whom the Adventist seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, was named, was a vocal anti-trinitarian and never changed his views. In fact, none of the founders changed their views, with the exception of EGW who gradually altered her way of writing about it. 

It seemed that her more trinitarian statements showed up in the The Desire of Ages, a book which both outside and internal researchers have concluded was over 80% plagiarized. In fact, her more-nearly orthodox-sounding descriptions of Christ surprised the brethren., and they wondered why she wrote in more trinitarian ways. Never, though, did she adopt a classic trinitarian view. As for Jesus’ status, the organization eventually stated that He was not a created being, but the Arian roots never left. Adventists still perceive Jesus as somehow “different” from the Father. They do not claim the persons of the Trinity share the “same substance”. While Adventists acknowledge they have the same purpose and will, they deny that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have the same substance.

For example, they believe Jesus surrendered His omnipresence when He became incarnate. Now that He has a body, they believe He can’t be present everywhere, and that’s why God sent the Holy Spirit. They will argue to make their view seem plausible, but it is not. If Jesus Himself cannot be omnipresent, He lacks an attribute of God, and thus He is not God.

Furthermore, the argument that EGW’s statement indicates “Lucifer was concerned about Christ’s position, not his person,” is actually a nonsense sentence. Think about it: Jesus, according to Colossians 1, is the Creator of EVERYTHING, including authorities and powers and all creation. That includes Lucifer. Lucifer was a created being, and he knew Jesus was God the Son and his own Creator. He was never in doubt about Jesus’s position!

A child is never in question about his parents’ “position” or “person”. The angels were never in doubt about Jesus’ authority or position. They knew He was their Creator. Adventists, however, cannot simply acknowledge that there could be no confusion about Jesus’ identity. They were founded in Arian confusion, and even though EGW tried to sound like she believed in Jesus’ eternal divinity, she wrote things that gave Lucifer a plausible excuse for misunderstanding Jesus’ position. 

It actually makes me quite upset when Adventists make this argument, because God is a different BEING from angels and from humans. He, as a Trinity, has never been misunderstood or misidentified by the angels. No Person of the Trinity has ever been in question as to His authority or position. To say that Lucifer was “concerned about Christ’s position, not his person” is an anti-trinitarian argument, an Arian-based argument, and it is blasphemous.

Root of the problem

Adventism did not spring from the apostolic root. It is a heresy that grew up with an Arian root and mingled its branches with the “leaves” of the apostolic Tree that became the Church. 

When Adventists say Jesus has always been “God”, they do not mean what Christians mean. It helped me to understand this idea when I thought about a pie. As an Adventist, the statement that Jesus is fully God always meant to me that He was like one-third of an apple pie. No part of Him was anything other than apple pie. He was fully God—fully apple pie. But when I understood that God’s ATTRIBUTES had to all be in all three persons, I realized I had not believed Jesus was “fully God”. 

Using that pie analogy (which is imperfect but helped me), an apple pie might have a stray seed in it. It might have a bit of peel, or a piece of core, or an undissolved clump of brown sugar. My understanding as an Adventist was that Jesus might have been the third of the pie that had that stray peel or seed, and the Holy Spirit might have the brown sugar clump, and the Father might have had a chunk of core. But no! Each person of the Trinity has to have ALL of those things! If that pie had a seed, all three Persons had to have that same seed. All three had to have the same clump of sugar, and the same chunk of core. 

The attributes of God ALL must be present in all three Persons. Adventists do not understand the Trinity that way!

You are not misunderstanding those Ellen White passages. You are understanding them perfectly well. They describe a scenario that is completely INVENTED. It is not in Scripture. Moreover, they describe a very powerful Lucifer that remains Adventism’s tragic hero; Satan, according to EGW and the “heavenly sanctuary” doctrine of theirs, is the one who carries the sins of the saved out of heaven at the end of the investigative judgment and thus cleanses heaven. In fact, those sins got into heaven by being transferred from us to heaven by Jesus’ blood, thus making Jesus’ blood the medium of defiling heaven. But blood NEVER defiles, even in the OT. The animal blood CLEANSED. It never carried sins into the tabernacle as EGW said.

Adventism makes Jesus’ blood the “defiler” of the heavenly sanctuary, and it makes Satan the final “sin bearer”, although they would deny that term. But EGW said Satan is punished for them. NO!! He is never punished for our sins—only for His own. He is not the cause or the responsible party for our sins. We are.

Ellen White, in the 1900’s, still referred to the Trinity as the Heavenly Trio and the Three Worthies of Heaven. Her “trinitarian” upgrades sounded more like classic Christian definitions, but she never acknowledged the Christian Trinity. She endorsed (and Adventists still understand although they do not SAY it) that God is a tritheism: Three separate persons who are not of the same substance.

All to say, Adventists insist they are not Arian and are Trinitarian. They downplay that the entire organization and all its doctrines were founded and formed in Arian beliefs. The changes in wording occurred later, and they were never universally accepted. Even today, there is a growing movement within Adventism at the grass-roots level that is returning to Arianism because, the arguments go, “Arianism is the TRUE Adventism” because it was the ORIGINAL Adventism. 

One only needs to remember that the Adventist seminary is named for an unrepentant anti-trinitarian to know that Adventism is not truly trinitarian. 

I’m going to attach three things for you. The first is a PDF of a document by Jerry Moon at Andrews Seminary. It’s a long scholarly document he wrote in 2006 explaining that Ellen White’s “Heavenly Trio” is not the classic Christian Trinity but is, according to him, the biblical Trinity. It’s a document that has attempted to harmonize Ellen White’s clear anti-trinitarian stance with Christianity, but he ends up confirming that the Adventist Trinity is not the classic Christian Trinity.

The second is a link to a past issue of Proclamation! which contains an article explaining that Adventism did not rise out of the apostolic Christian tradition but is a heresy that mimicked Christianity and hides within its shade. 

The third link is to the Winter, 2018, issue of Proclamation! with an article that discusses the Adventist Jesus who is always depicted as an Aaronic high priest in a literal heavenly sanctuary.

In short: Jesus was never “exalted” except in the biblical sense that He was exalted to the Father’s right hand after his resurrection and finished atonement. He was not exalted to be God’s Son, and there is no “pre-history” that tells this story. That “pre-history” is entirely an invention of EGW’s visions which came from someone other than God. No EGW information can ever be considered revelation or truth. Only the Bible is God’s own eternal, living word. Only His word can be believed. 

Resources:

Proclamation 2007: The Tree: Are you connected? and Discovering the Adventist Jesus

Not an Old Covenant Priest

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Colleen Tinker

Colleen Tinker, the editor of Proclamation! magazine, and her husband Richard left Adventism in 1998 with their two sons, Roy and Nathanael, who were in grades six and ten. They have co-led the Former Adventist Fellowship since 1999. Colleen, a graduate of Walla Walla University, is a former high school English teacher and also the former managing editor of Adventist Today magazine. Colleen became the stepmother of Roy and Nathanael in 1989, and in 2008 she adopted them. Romans 8:15-17 has assumed new depth and significance for her and Richard since she and her sons chose to claim each other legally and permanently. She and Richard share an office and a commitment to sharing the gospel of the true Jesus with all of those seeking a way out of the bondage of the false gospel of Adventism.

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