The Adventist Way of Death

Richard’s father died two weeks ago. He was almost 92, and his health had been failing. Still, his death came suddenly, almost without warning. He lived in Oklahoma, and because of the distance, he left without saying “good-bye”. 

He was a loyal Adventist. Although he had conversations with Richard that sometimes sounded curious or even hopeful that the simple gospel might be true, he never admitted to us that he believed in Jesus alone without the trappings of Adventism. 

When we were Adventists, this sort of parting would have seemed “normal”. The resurrection, to us, was the time of reckoning. No one would know whether they were saved or lost until then, because our eternal future depended upon every act of obedience one performed until the moment of death. Then, when the resurrection would finally occur, the work of the investigative judgment would be finished, and we all would learn our eternal fate. We all hoped our loved ones had passed the test and had proven themselves to be progressing in spirituality and obedience so that Jesus would “make up the difference” between their level of perfection and perfect righteousness. 

Now that that we are born again through believing in the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, we understand that death is not the end of existence until Jesus returns. We also know that salvation is determined before a person dies, and when one dies, a person is either absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6–8) or is being kept “under punishment for the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 2:9, 10). 

We do not know which of those realities Richard’s dad is experiencing right now. We do know, though, that his eternal future was not determined by his commitment to keeping the law. Instead, his eternal life or eternal death has been determined by only one thing: whether or not he believed God and trusted Jesus.

Believe!

Pondering my father-in-law’s death makes me see—again—how badly Adventism eclipsed the truth. The power of Jesus’ own words has been lost in the Adventist “formulas” we all learned. For example, after Jesus fed the 5,000 with the miraculous spread of bread and fish (Jn. 6:1–14), the Jews went looking for Him. They finally found Him on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was not fooled, though; He knew they came because they wanted more miracles, not because they were convicted about His identity. Jesus told them that they were not to “work for food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (Jn. 6:27).

The Jews, still missing the point, asked Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” (v. 28). 

Jesus’ answer revealed that He was bringing them the salvation that the law and the prophets had foretold. In a shocking statement that would have been blasphemous if He had not been Jesus the Messiah, He said: 

“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (Jn. 6:29). 

Because of his Adventist worldview, my father-in-law totally missed the power of this single sentence. With these words Jesus identified Himself as the one God sent, and He articulated the bottom line: the work of God is not keeping the law. It is not good deeds, and it is not belonging to the right group of people or religion (something of which the Jews were proud). The work of God is to believe in the Lord Jesus. Period.

All other good works are the fruit of belief. Oh, it’s true: people who do not believe in Jesus can do “good works” and can excel in philanthropy and altruism, but those works are not what God regards as His work. We gain no favor with God and come no closer to salvation through acts of service. 

The only way we can be saved is by believing in the finished atonement of the Lord Jesus. Any other “belief” is a deception. Any other work is useless in contributing to our eternal security. God is not impressed by our obedience to the law or to our acts of social justice. 

Only when we believe do we receive eternal life (Jn. 5:24). Furthermore, when we believe, we pass at that moment from death to life, and we do not come into judgment, ever! When we trust Jesus, all of our sins—past, present, and future—are placed on the Lord Jesus. He carried them to the cross, and by God’s grace, we receive the life of the resurrected Jesus the moment we believe. 

Then, after believing and being born of the Spirit as Jesus said we must in order to see the kingdom of heaven (Jn. 3:3–6), we are sealed with the guarantee of God’s own Spirit who indwells us, promising that we will one day be glorified and receive our inheritance with our Lord Jesus in His kingdom (Eph. 1:13, 14; Rom. 8:15–17). 

Only after being made eternally spiritually alive will be be able to perform works that are God’s work in the world. After we are saved by grace through faith which is a gift of God, our new lives are His workmanship. He creates our new hearts and new spirits for the purpose of doing the good works which He prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:8-10)! 

Throughout his life, Richard’s dad did not understand the miracle of being born again. Adventism had successfully counterfeited “belief” and the “new birth” so that its members would assume these gifts of God were merely products of believing Adventism. 

What if they haven’t heard of Jesus?

It could be argued that my father-in-law had never understood the gospel because he sincerely believed  in Adventism. If a person is sincere, after all, isn’t that what counts? 

I once heard a sermon at Loma Linda University Church preached by the late William Loveless. I remember the moment clearly; I had been part of the orchestra that played for church that day, and I was sitting on the platform surrounded by other musicians. Dr. Loveless stood in front of us, facing the congregation, and I remember seeing his profile from slightly behind him. 

He asked how, if believing in Jesus was necessary for salvation, people in places where He was not known could be saved?

As an Adventist, I had struggled with that question as well. He then stated that because Jesus died for sin, all people, wherever they lived, could be saved if they were sincere in their beliefs. They didn’t have to know about Jesus in order to be saved.

I remember thinking that his explanation was a relief—that I could stop worrying about how to be sure everyone everywhere heard about Jesus, because His death would cover all sincere people. 

Over time, however, his statement did not hold up well. The more I read the New Testament, the more I realized that the Bible does not allow for salvation through sincerity. The Bible requires repentance and belief in the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus.

As I began to see the consistent teaching of Scripture—not just from Paul’s writings but also from John and from Peter and through the recorded words of Jesus Himself—I realized that salvation is inextricably connected to belief in the man Christ Jesus, God the Son!

When I finally understood the true gospel and trusted Jesus’ finished work for my forgiveness and salvation, I began to realize an astonishing fact—a biblical reality that Adventism had never taught. God is sovereign!

Oh, Adventism will say that God is sovereign, but they explain away the impact of sovereignty by saying that because He is “good”, He limits His power in order to honor our human free will—and the devils’ free will as well. I began to see that God does not limit His power. He is merciful, gracious—and just. His is in absolute control over everything in all creation, even over Satan himself. In fact, the book of Job reveals that Satan cannot make a move against any one of God’s people without explicit permission from God Himself. 

No, our free will is not the most valued commodity in the universe; God’s sovereignty over us, His creatures, is our security and our foundation of reality. 

So what can be said about those who “haven’t heard”? How can they be saved if it depends upon “hearing with faith” (Gal. 3:2, 5) and not upon “sincerity”?

It finally dawned on me: if God is sovereign, He is the One who reveals Himself to those who haven’t heard—or who haven’t understood. Every person ever born receives the revelation of God’s existence and power. In fact, 

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (Rom. 1:20). 

Those who refuse to give thanks and acknowledge Him as God turn to idolatry and indulge their depravity (Rom. 1:21–32), but those who do honor Him do “by nature what the law requires…their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Rom. 2:14, 15). 

I began to see that if God reveals His power and divine nature to all people in all times, then He knows how to bring them the knowledge of Christ. He has revealed Himself to people throughout the history of the world; He will continue revealing Himself to people as long as we are on this earth! In fact, He dealt with my father-in-law, even though I don’t know the details of His interactions with him. 

For example, God revealed Himself to Abraham when he was still a moon-worshiper in Ur. He called Abraham to leave his native land, and He promised him seed, land, and blessing. Abraham, the pagan idolater (Josh. 24:4), “believed the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). 

God revealed Himself to the wicked Assyrian city of Ninevah through a reluctant Jewish prophet, and the entire city repented. In fact, God had to chastise the messenger after the city repented because he was angry that those pagan enemies turned to God. The book of Jonah ends with these words of God: 

“Should I not have compassion on Ninevah, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” (Jonah. 4:11).

It was not Jonah who turned the hearts of thousands of Assyrians to the Lord. Jonah carried a message, reluctantly, but it was God who had compassion on the spiritually blind and ignorant city—including their animals—and brought them to repentance.

It was God who brought the magi to the young Jesus by providing a star to lead them. Wise men from the east—probably from Babylon—were brought face-to-face with the Son of God. They knew Who He was and brought gifts to Him. Their knowledge was not because of men; God brought them and revealed the truth to them. 

It was God who revealed Jesus’ identity to Simon Peter when Jesus asked him, “Who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 16:16–17). 

It was God who brought Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading Isaiah 53:7–8. The eunuch did not know whom the prophet was describing, and Philip climbed into the chariot with the man and told him the good news about Jesus (Acts 8:26–40). It was God who prepared Peter to bring the gospel to the Roman Cornelius, and the first gentiles converts were born again and baptized (Acts 10).

Moreover, Jesus has promised that not one of His sheep will be lost. They hear His voice; He knows them, and He gives them eternal life. “They will never perish,” Jesus said, “and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn. 10:27–29). 

In other words, God takes responsibility for the salvation of His people. 

We are asked to believe when Jesus is presented to us, and concurrently—in an apparent contradiction that we cannot explain but which in the Big Picture is no contradiction al all—God is solely responsible for bringing us to repentance and salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus!

Our Adventist loved ones

Realizing that God is sovereign over our salvation gives me hope when I think about Richard’s dad. I can only know what Richard or I heard him say, but God knows things about him that we don’t. First of all, God is patient, as Peter explains: 

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Pet. 3:8–9).

The Lord knows His own, and He will not allow any of them to be lost. He will take all the time He desires to take from His position of omniscience in order to bring all of His sheep to repentance. He “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), 

Nevertheless, some people, described as the rocky, weedy, and bad soils in Jesus’ parable recorded in Matthew 13, will refuse to place their full trust in Jesus. Only He knows who those are. We can know, however, that the Lord Jesus personally brings each person to a moment of looking at Him directly and either believing or refusing to believe. 

It is not God, however, who makes unbelievers refuse to believe; we are each asked to respond to Jesus. 

We can know this: God can reach a person even when his body is shutting down. Even when a person seems unresponsive to external stimuli, the Lord knows how to communicate truth and comfort and conviction to the spirit of our loved ones. When we can no longer communicate with them, our sovereign God is not limited.

We cannot say for sure whether or not Richard’s dad trusted Jesus alone. We can, however, say this: the Lord dealt with him justly, mercifully, and compassionately. Our Father knows him better than any of us knew him, and we trust Him with his eternal future. 

We can also say this: whatever the reality of our dad’s heart, he now knows the truth. He knows that God is sovereign, just, patient, merciful, and filled with compassion. If he could speak to us now, he would say this: Jesus is enough. He has born our sins in His body on the cross, and He asks us to repent of our sin and trust Him. 

The Sabbath is not the mark of the saved. Law-keeping is not required for salvation. If Richard’s father could speak to us now, he would echo Paul’s words to the churches in Galatia:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith (Gal. 3:1–14).

Believe today—and live. †

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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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