DISTORTING SCRIPTURE TO STAY UNDER THE LAW

By Colleen Tinker

Adventist “law arguments” die hard. No matter how clearly the Bible explains the limited scope of the Mosaic covenant and the surpassing glory of the new covenant in Jesus’ blood, Adventism clings to the law. The truth is, though, that there is one commandment—the fourth—that drives Adventism’s undeviating passion to stay under the authority of the Decalogue. They must have a string of “proof” to insist that the seventh-day Sabbath is eternal and universal, and they want to say Sabbath is a moral, not a ceremonial, law. In context, the Bible denies their arguments.

Ironically, however, Adventists say that the “ceremonial laws” were discontinued after Jesus died and rose again. Yet even as they dismiss those “non-moral laws” that were inseparable from the Ten Commandments, they insist that the levitical food laws remain in force. Thus Adventism forbids the use of “unclean meat” as a moral issue and even categorizes clean meats as a health risk that threatens their bodies which, they insist, are God’s temples. 

In my blog two weeks ago I addressed the Adventist proof-text Matthew 5:17–18 which is often used to end all arguments that the law does not continue for new covenant believers:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

That blog received a significant number of reactions from various readers, but one email that came over a week later addressed more than the Matthew passage. The letter was written by a friend I’ve never met in person but with whom I’ve been corresponding for a few years. This woman has never been Adventist but has an entrenched Adventist friend who continues to try to convert her. 

Since my friend’s email reflected her confusion over the nearly-universal Adventist arguments against new covenant life,  I will share her questions to me below. After that, I will share my answers to her. 

Confused by the arguments

Colleen, I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you. You, and the entire team at LAM, have addressed these two subjects many times, and yet I still feel there are certain aspects of them that I have not fully comprehended and I still don’t know how to answer when confronted by them.

The first question has to do with food and Adventism. You see, Adventists say that when in Acts 10 Peter had the vision of unclean animals, that it ONLY pertained to accepting the Gentiles as brethren in Christ and NOT to the actual eating of unclean foods by the converted Jews. They say that neither Peter nor Cornelius ate unclean food; Peter for being a law-keeping Jew, and Cornelius because he was a proselyte (was he?). 

But, is this an accurate assertion? The first few verses of Acts 10 say that Cornelius was a God-fearing gentile.Would that be equal to being circumcised and abiding by the entire law of Moses (dietary restrictions included)? If my memory does not fail me, there was an issue of Proclamation! which said that Peter, by entering Cornelius’ house, would have had to eat at the latter’s table of all sorts of “unclean” foods in order to have true fellowship with him, his family, and friends (guests). 

So, again, my question is about Cornelius’ status with regards to food before Peter’s visit, and I guess, by the same token, Peter’s position with regards to food after the vision and his visit to Cornelius’ house. I hope my question is clear enough. 

Now, still on the subject of food, how would the episode recorded in Acts 10 square with Galatians 2:11-21? I mean, I think that before the vision Peter indeed did not eat unclean food (even though by now he obviously knew Christ and had heard Him declare all foods clean [Mk. 7:19]). So, it took a while for the whole concept of “clean” (both with regard to gentiles and with regard to food) to become clear in Peter’s mind. 

But by the time the confrontation between Paul and Peter transpired in Galatians 2, Peter must have known better, and that’s why Paul publicly scolded him, right? Please help. How can we prove from Scripture that the vision of Acts 10 also included eating all kinds of food and not just accepting gentiles through the gospel?

The second question has to do with the Mosaic law in general. Adventists love to say that Jesus did not come to abolish the Mosaic law. They emphasize this part more than the “…but to fulfill it” part. They might even quote Hebrews 8:10 (which in turn is quoting from Jeremiah 31) to say that under the new covenant the law is still very much a part of the believer by having it written in his or her heart (so as to dismiss the argument that the law written in stone brings death and condemnation). 

Again, I hope I worded my question in an understandable manner. In this vein of the new covenant, if I may ask another question, please, how “new” is the new covenant in Christ? I mean, I have heard that the word “new” in Greek simply means “renewed” rather than “completely new”. By saying this, the argument is made that the new covenant is merely a revamping of the old. Old covenant + Jesus, I guess, is what they mean. But that’s not right, is it? How can we answer this argument?

Proselytes and protein

I totally understand your questions, and I know those deceptive (and frankly provoking) Adventist arguments. In fact, I believe Adventism is becoming increasingly deceptive and confusing, shoring up its traditions as it becomes exposed by God’s word rightly divided.  

As for Peter, I agree with you entirely that it took time for him to understand what Jesus was teaching them when He “declared all foods clean”. After all, the disciples had little context for many of the things Jesus said to them before His death. For example, even when Jesus told them He would die and rise the third day, they did not understand Him until after it all happened.

Back to Cornelius. First, he was a “God-fearer”. The study notes for Acts 10:2 in the NASB Study Bible published by Zondervan say this about God-fearing gentiles: “Feared God. The term used of one who was not a full Jewish proselyte but who believed in one God and respected the moral and ethical teachings of the Jews.”

In other words, God-fearing gentiles were not circumcised. They were not under the law. They were gentiles, but they believed in God and the moral principles of Judaism rather than in the Roman/Greek pantheon of gods. They were not, however, under the law. They were not subject to the feast days, the sabbaths, the food laws, or any of the other legal requirements. Adventists may try to say Cornelius was a proselyte, but he was not. He was ROMAN. If he had been a proselyte, he would have been considered Jewish, and he would not have been able to remain a centurion and live like a Roman soldier. Jewish lifestyle would have prohibited him from eating with his own Roman men. 

Adventists will try to argue from “silence”, but this argument about Cornelius not eating unclean food is false. A God-fearer was not a proselyte. This Adventist argument is similar to Ellen White’s argument that God prevented Abraham from worshiping the false gods of his father. She said God preserved him and made him a faithful man whom God called. Scripture, though, is clear that Abraham worshiped “other gods” with his father (Josh. 24:2). Adventism’s insistence that true believers must first be good people and somehow worthy of God’s call is entirely false.

This argument about Cornelius is similar. He was a gentile, a Roman. He was not a Jew. Proselytes were JEWS…converted Jews, but Jews nonetheless. They were under the law and had to obey it.

Moreover, the Acts 10 vision specifically included unclean animals and a command that Peter kill and eat. God does not trick us. His command was clear: Peter was not to refuse foods nor people whom the law had declared unclean but whom God declared clean. 

Even more, Ephesians 4:12-14 and Colossians 2:14 explain that in Jesus, the law, the wall of division, had been removed entirely, and God had made one new man out of the previous two. There was no longer any law that divided Jews and gentiles. All were now simply people who needed a Savior—One who now made access to a Holy God through His own broken body and shed blood. One sufficient sacrifice is eternally the way to the Father (Heb. 10:20). 

Food laws, Jews and gentiles, divisions between them—all are GONE in Christ.

This removal of the food laws is further emphasized in 1 Corinthians 10:25–27. There Paul says we are to eat whatever is set before us, even by unbelievers, without asking questions. Food laws are obsolete in the new covenant just as Jew and gentile are no longer divided categories. 

And yes, the incident recorded in Galatians 2 occurred AFTER Acts 10. In fact, Acts 10 happened before the first group of gentiles was baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Peter’s vision occurred just before he was sent to preach to Cornelius and his household, thus becoming the apostolic eyewitness to the fact that gentile believers received the Holy Spirit exactly as Jewish believers did. 

Peter knew that God had commanded him to fellowship with gentiles and not to refuse to eat their food.

Paul had to rebuke Peter (see Galatians 2) especially because he KNEW those food laws were not required. He was never to allow food to stand between him and fellowship with gentile believers, yet he publicly marginalized fellow believers because of his fear of man when the Judaizers came. He committed a public sin against his brothers—a sin he KNEW was a sin because he had been entrusted with the vision. Paul’s rebuke was public because the sin had been public. 

In fact, Peter’s sin against his gentile brothers and Paul’s rebuke was a significant enough issue that the incident is recorded in God’s eternal word for all people for the rest of time!

How new is “new”?

Now for the question of the covenants. First, Adventism refuses to internalize what the Bible says about the old covenant or the new covenant. It arbitrarily dissects the Ten Commandments from the old covenant and says the Decalogue is “the law”. They insist it is “the character of God” and call it eternal. 

This assumption is nowhere in Scripture. In fact, Exodus 34:27-28 explicitly identifies the Ten Commandments as the “words of the covenant”, the Mosaic covenant. Moreover, these Ten are not “eternal”. They came into being, along with the rest of the Mosaic covenant, 430 years AFTER Abraham and lasted “until the Seed” came (Gal. 3:16–19). 

Hebrews 8:7 identifies the first covenant as having faults. “If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been so occasion sought for a second.” 

There is no room for saying “new” means “renewed”; context forbids this idea. Hebrews 8 moves from saying the first covenant had faults—and those faults were in the people themselves so that they couldn’t be successful—and then by verse 13 the author says, “When He said, ’A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.” 

Jeremiah 31 clearly says God is going to make a NEW covenant with Israel. Hebrews 8 confirms that this covenant is NEW. The author even identifies a first covenant and a second one and says that God has made the first one obsolete, and it is disappearing. (When the temple was destroyed in AD 70, that first covenant was completely obsolete. No more sacrifices could be offered without the temple.)

Hebrews 7 is explicit that the old covenant cannot exist without the levitical priesthood, because with a change of the priesthood of necessity comes a change of the law (Heb. 7:12). The new covenant CANNOT be a RENEWED covenant; it is completely new. It has a new priesthood, a new sacrifice, a new way to the Father. This is not a renewed covenant; it is a new covenant that arises from Jesus fulfilling the Old Covenant. 

Hebrews 7 through 10 explains in detail how in Jesus the old covenant was fulfilled and became obsolete, and a new covenant in Jesus’ blood has replaced the old one. 

Adventism plays with its word meanings, and it lies about the truth. To call the new covenant “renewed” is not accurate. This verbal deception collapses in the light of Scripture’s facts.

Furthermore, the law written on our hearts is nowhere said to be the Decalogue. The Holy Spirit Himself is in our hearts…the Author of the law and of the word of God. 

In reality, moral details overlap from law to law. For example, England’s laws have rules against murder, theft, and treason just as the laws of Mexico and the USA have. Yet the fact that those rules are in the laws of different countries does not make ME under the law of Mexico or England, or you under the laws of the USA or England. We are under the laws of our own countries.

Now we are under the Law of Christ, and the fact that morality, which originates in God Himself, occurs in both the old and new covenants does not mean the old covenant is still in authority or has power over us. On the contrary, God has given us Himself, and His own Person and character reside in us and convict us of sin and of godliness. He Himself impresses His word into our hearts and minds because He has given us His life!

The priesthood and the sufficient sacrifice demand a completely new law. We do not have the old covenant written on our hearts. We have the One who fulfilled that covenant in our hearts. We have access to the Father directly, and the law has absolutely no more authority over us. 

I admit I am upset by Adventism’s disingenuous arguments that misrepresent the reality of the Lord Jesus and His finished work. Adventism will do anything to eclipse Jesus and His finished work and the sufficiency of God’s word. That organization must keep the law as the focus and object of its members’ practice and worship. They will eclipse Jesus in any way they need to eclipse Him in order to retain their Ten Commandments. 

They are claiming for themselves the curse of the law by insisting they remain under it. It is horrifying and deeply sad. †

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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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