“When we know better, we do better.” I’ve heard that saying thrown around in the pop psychology world dozens of times, and while I believe it CAN be true, it’s not always necessarily so. There are plenty of people who know better than to speed, yet they continue to do so. There are plenty of people who know better than to lie and deceive, but they persist. Yes, human beings are a complicated crowd.
“Knowing” and “doing” are two concepts foundational to the daily existence of anyone who subscribes to Adventism and its teachings. The latest print issue of Proclamation! magazine focused on Adventism’s physical reality and pointed out how, according to Adventist belief, we are nothing more than a body (with a brain) and breath (life) (You can read that issue here .)
As an Adventist, I was taught—and I believed—that all that was necessary for me was to “know” what was right and to “do” it. How convenient it was for me that the Adventist church had all the right teachings and all the right answers to define what was “right” and to tell me what actions I needed to take! Even though I spent most of my years in the Adventist church with a lot of exposure to Christianity, I still felt strongly that for every question, the Adventist answer was the “right” one. I was even of the sincere belief that there was no other church or theologian who had ever been willing or able to tackle the most difficult questions about right beliefs and practices.
I’ve written before about how, even though my experience of being born again was a very distinct moment in time, the process of peeling back the layers of Adventism’s influence on my mind and my heart has been long, difficult, and sometimes quite painful. in fact, I was recounting some memories and regrets to another former Adventist friend several months ago, and while sympathetic to my angst, she said at one point, “You didn’t know what you didn’t know.”
Honestly, this phrase has brought me a lot of comfort in the months since that conversation.
I have spent the last months pondering the things that I “didn’t know” as an Adventist, partly because reflection is “part of the process” for me, partly because of my friend’s wise comment, and partly because I am a card-carrying member of “Overthinkers Anonymous.” I am sharing a few of those things I didn’t know with you here, hoping that you can find some comfort in knowing you are not the only one, or maybe that my realizations will stir your mind and your heart to ponder a little more deeply how Adventism has impacted your thinking.
I Didn’t Know: “Sunday Christians” don’t “keep” Sunday
Growing up, I was taught that “Sunday Christians” (who are always comically surprised to find out that this is how they are referred to within Adventism) were “keeping” the wrong day. I was also taught that they believed that the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments had been changed from Saturday to Sunday. As a young child, this teaching meant that I believed that all of those churches in my town were filled on Sunday mornings with people who put aside “worldly” things during that day. I knew pretty early on that they didn’t follow the “sunset to sunset” method, but on the whole, I would have told anyone who might have asked me that this is what a “Sunday Christian” did. I thought they were quite similar to us in religious practice—except for the pesky detail of “keeping” the WRONG day.
As I grew older and had quite a lot of exposure to Christians—more than any of my Adventist friends or relatives did—I realized that my Christian friends did not, in actuality, “keep” Sunday, nor did they consider it to be “the Sabbath”. I know that there are Christians within some traditions who do believe in Sunday-sacredness; however, it is not nearly as all-encompassing as I had been led to believe in my years as an Adventist.
To be fair, many of my Christian friends had a different “rhythm” on Sundays, due largely to church attendance and any other activities that went along with it, but I sincerely believed that their Sunday-rhythms (which seemed surprisingly secular to me) were likely the result of their not knowing what I knew about the “truth” about the Sabbath! It wasn’t until after I left Adventism that I was truly able to understand why their Sundays looked so much different than my Saturdays/Sabbaths.
When I understood the completed atonement of Christ on the cross, I was able to see that their not setting aside a “holy” day was not result of ignorance or of a faulty understanding of the Fourth Commandment. Instead, I found that they had a FULL understanding of the Ten Commandments, of their part in the Old Covenant, and of the glory of the New Covenant which was now kept between the Father and the Son—in Whom we are able to inherit all of God’s promises!
I Didn’t Know: Most people don’t know that Seventh-day Adventism exists…and if they do, they never think about it.
As an Adventist, I had a certain amount of pride in simply being, well, a Seventh-day Adventist. In church, in school, through Sabbath School lessons and other sources of teaching, the virtues and actions of the church were always applauded and expounded. All the hospitals, schools, churches, branch Sabbath Schools, humanitarian efforts, missionaries, health classes, and outreaches were examples of how prominent Adventism was in the world. World membership numbers were often quoted, and large events such as the Oshkosh Pathfinder Camporee and the large scale seminars like Net 98 were touted as huge opportunities to “spread the message”. These events exposed large numbers of people to Adventism and were intended to induce them to ask for more information.
As I’ve traveled the world, or my corner of it, since leaving Adventism, I’ve realized how painfully desperate these attempts to puff up the earthly significance of the church really are, and how flat they have fallen. As an 18-year-old, I spent several months as a missionary intern in Venezuela. It was a non-denominational mission trip, but as a “progressive” Adventist, I felt comfortable participating. While I didn’t openly teach my Adventist beliefs, I certainly did not turn down an opportunity to explain what I personally believed on any given topic.
We were billeted with various families in the cities we visited, and I developed a lasting friendship with one of the teenagers in whose home I stayed during our multiple visits to the capital city of Caracas. While we lost touch for several years, we did manage to connect again, thanks to the magic of social media, and while we were discussing the time I spent in her home, she admitted that over the entire seven months we were in Venezuela, she and her family somehow thought I was a Mormon!
They knew the team I was with was Christian and that I was “something different,” but they had so little awareness of Adventism that, despite my best efforts to educate them, they were left with the impression that I was a rogue Mormon, participating in this Evangelical mission internship! Talk about a missionary failure!
Thanks in part to that trip, however, I have little problem getting out of my social comfort zone and meeting and connecting with different people. As I’ve mentioned my background as a Seventh-day Adventist, I have learned to expect them to respond with a fairly vague comment, indicating they have “heard of them” before, but really have never given it more than a passing thought. Of course, I do encounter people who have had a more significant experience or knowledge of Adventism, but on the whole, the world is not nearly as aware of the Adventist church, its beliefs and teachings, or even its members, as Adventists would lead their congregations to believe.
As I’ve pondered this dissonance between Adventism’s inflated self-importance and the reality of the world’s lack of awareness, I’ve come to think that perhaps Adventists believe their own press partly because they live lives insulated from the world. Many Adventists are educated primarily within Adventist schools, and of course, they attend Adventist churches exclusively. In my experience, Adventists don’t tend to form friendships with non-Adventist neighbors or co-workers unless they are trying to convert a particular person. Usually those “friendship evangelism” relationships are ended once the Adventist realizes that their target is not interested.
Adventists are often involved in careers or businesses that are highly populated with Adventists and which serve other Adventists. Adventists who are in need of a business or service will make a point to search out a business or service-provider that is run or provided by other Adventists. This phenomenon creates a socially isolated existence and allows for very little “outside” experience or perspective. It also creates the perfect conditions for any person sitting in a pew on Saturday morning to willingly accept statements that promote the influence and affluence of the Adventist church.
The church is a central part of their whole world, so it makes sense that it is part of everyone else’s, as well. This inward focus also creates a sense of hope that it is only a matter of time before the whole world has heard the Three Angels Messages, thus allowing Christ to finally return. Perhaps the “best” result of this Adventist self-deception is that it also creates a bit of a lackadaisical attitude in its members who believe that the work is being done, so they need not feel the urgency to personally promote the church as much.
I Didn’t Know: Christians read the whole Bible…and understand it!
As an Adventist, the teaching and preaching I heard centered on prophecy, both fulfilled and unfulfilled. It formed a large part of my theological learning. While I’ve heard that it has become less emphasized from the pulpit, in part because of the drive toward a more “progressive” and “user friendly” Adventism, sermons on Daniel and Revelation are heard from Seventh-day Adventist pulpits around the world every Saturday and in every Adventist prophecy seminar.
As an Adventist, I thought we had the corner on the prophecy market. I knew that there were other Christian preachers who focused on prophecy, but quite frankly, even my Christian friends were quite cynical if not downright condemning of these preachers who often conveyed a “doomsday” message. Consequently, I never thought they had much influence in the Christian world.
Also, I remember hearing Adventists make disparaging comments about how “Sunday Christians” in essence “threw away,” or “ignored” the Old Testament. These Sunday-Christians, I learned, did not have knowledge or understanding of prophecy, particularly Daniel and Revelation.
The truth regarding this false assumption did not come to me until 2016, almost TWELVE years after I left Adventism. I was attending my first Former Adventist Fellowship conference, and I will be honest that I was less than enthusiastic about the topic: PROPHECY. You see, while I had been out of Adventism for over a decade, its heavy focus on prophecy and all the nitty gritty details of hidden meanings and subtle nuances had left me more than a little worn out on that topic. Historically, even though I was an adult when I left Adventism, and even though I had had more-than-the-average exposure to Christianity as an Adventist, I just had NO idea that any theologian had EVER had the courage to tackle Daniel 8:14 and Revelation 14:6–10.
My belief seems so egotistical and naïve now, but again, as I’ve spoken with others who have walked this journey out of Adventism at differing stages of life, I realize that I am not the only one! We were taught and conditioned to believe that Adventism had ALL the answers, and there was certainly no need to bother looking anywhere else. This conditioning prevented us from even entertaining the thought that another plausible conclusion might even exist!
By the time I left Adventism for the Gospel, I was honestly just worn and weary of prophecy, and I was ok with not knowing the specifics. While I knew that the Adventist interpretation was inherently false, I didn’t have the mental energy to dive into it myself, and unknowingly I still functioned under the naïve and egotistical belief that no one had really ever come up with a solid interpretation before.
Imagine my surprise when Gary Inrig opened up the book of Daniel and began to teach. Not only were there other, non-Adventist opinions about these passages of Scripture, but they were accurate and completely plausible! You may laugh (I laugh at myself over this one), but that moment when I first heard Gary open the meaning of Daniel is a moment I often remember, and I wonder how I could have been so well-indoctrinated and insulated that, even after having been OUT of Adventism and IN Christ for so many years, I had no idea there were logical understandings for those prophecies!
As I’ve grown in my understanding and appreciation for the New Covenant, I’ve also grown in my understanding of why Adventists perceive Christians as disregarding the Old Testament, including prophecy. You see, as an Adventist, I used my Old Testament “glasses” or perspective through which to view the New Testament. In this way, I was viewing Jesus, His birth, death, and resurrection as well as the New Covenant, through the lens of the Old Covenant. As I’ve come to understand the significance and effect of the New Covenant, however, I’ve realized that my Adventist perspective was completely backwards.
The Messianic prophecies, the Old Covenant—they all pointed TO Christ and what He would accomplish as the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Thus, it is necessary to use the NEW Testament “glasses,” or perspective, through which to view the OLD Testament. HE is the fulfillment of all of those things, and so, through the reality of that birth, death, resurrection, and completed atonement, we look back “through” the lens of those things to see the reality and clear purpose of all that came before. Once again, I now see that my Christian friends did not have a lesser understanding of Scripture; they had a fuller view of it, one which I am forever grateful to have seen for myself.
I Didn’t Know: Most Christians don’t strongly identify themselves with the denomination of church they attend.
As an Adventist, I remember when I first decided to refer to myself as a “Seventh-day Adventist Christian.” My story is a little different from some; I was born again when I was 12 years old, which just happened to be 12 years before I left Adventism. I don’t know if I heard someone else use the term and decided that it fit me well or if I actually thought about these 2 different terms and felt that I needed to use both (I’ve been in that Overthinkers Anonymous crew for many years now). As Adventists, however, our Adventist identity was paramount. The problem was we didn’t want to be seen as “weird,” or “cult-y”. We definitely wanted acceptance within the Christian world, partly as affirmation that we as Adventists were “ok” and “not a cult,” and partly as a way to maintain acceptance. Truthfully, we also wanted access to Christians so that we could share the “truth” about the Sabbath and, less importantly, our other distinctive beliefs. We needed to clarify that we were, indeed, Christians so we would be believed. I remember Adventists, however, placing a decent amount of emphasis on differences among the “Sunday” churches and specifying who in the community went to what church, as a way of somehow identifying with or differentiating from them.
As I sit on this side of things, now 15 years out of Adventism, one of the things that I have noticed, to my amusement, is that Adventists are the only ones who make these distinctions. Have you ever heard anyone refer to themselves as a “Baptist Christian’? A “Lutheran Christian”? A “Presbyterian Christian”? In fact, today I know of no one in Christianity who would call themselves a “Baptist” or a “Lutheran” or a “Presbyterian” as their primary way of identifying their faith.
We spent the first 13 years, post-Adventism, in a Christian and Missionary Alliance church, and we still attend a different congregation of the C&MA from time to time. While I did check their statement of faith before we made our decision to settle there, “who” the Christian and Missionary Alliance was, as a denomination, was not of utmost importance to me. First of all, I was (and still am) a Christian. Secondarily, I was part of a local body of believers, and thirdly, our local body happened to be affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a denomination whose statement of faith I was comfortable with accepting.
Even though we were fairly new out of the Adventist church at the time, I will never forget being taken aback when an Adventist family member informed us that they had “researched and studied” the beliefs of “our” Alliance church. It was then that I first really realized the difference between the way Adventists feels connected to their “church,” and the way Christians do. On the whole, Christians do not primarily identify with their denominations as Adventists do. This reality is completely different from what I was led to believe was “normal” as a practicing Seventh-day Adventist.
I Didn’t Know: What abortion really was and that Adventist hospitals actively provide them.
Abortion has become an increasingly emotionally charged topic in recent years, particularly in Western society. To be honest, I didn’t know abortion existed until I was in my late teens, and even then, I remember hearing the term but having no idea what it meant until much later. I did not know until the past several years that abortions are a commonplace procedure in many Adventist hospitals. I didn’t know that, while Adventism’s abortion statement on its website sounds gentle and compassionate, they applaud and honor men who have made lucrative careers in the business of performing thousands and thousands of abortions.
It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I first learned what abortion really was, but it was not from an Adventist source, and I definitely never heard it discussed or mentioned in any of my time in Adventist churches, schools or universities. I remember vividly the conversation I was having with my dad in our kitchen when I first realized what abortion entailed. Up until that point, I had heard various “soft” explanations of it, but it was that day that I realized the sobering truth.
I was dumbfounded, and while I now have a greater appreciation and compassion for women who feel afraid and stuck in a seemingly impossible situation, at that point, I could not come close to comprehending how anyone could or would even consider that as an option, nor could I comprehend how a medical practitioner could perform such a procedure.
Furthermore, as a Canadian, I did not grow up with Adventist hospitals as part of my everyday world. Because our health care is publicly funded, Adventist hospitals were a very “American” thing, and I never gave much thought to how the system worked there. It is only in the last few years that I have come to know the active involvement of both the denominational hospitals and prominent church members in the abortion industry.
Simultaneously, it has been through my growing in my understanding of the deep implications of the Adventist teaching on the human soul, rooted in its false teaching of the investigative judgement as well as in their version of soul sleep, that I have become horrifyingly aware that abortion is not all that problematic within their framework of doctrine and teachings. If a human is not a soul until birth, as they teach (Fundamental Belief #7), then an abortion may end a life similar to that of an animal, but there is no soul, thus minimizing the perceived seriousness of the procedure.
Adventism’s current statement on abortion is carefully worded to allow those members who are pro-life to feel reassured that their church values life, while at the same time, it allows their own hospitals as well as prominent members in private practice to take thousands of lives every year through abortion procedures, without obviously contravening the church’s position.
As I was writing this piece, the current print issue of Proclamation! was a helpful resource to me in thinking about how Adventism’s physical reality drove us to “know” and “do.” As I read the articles and thought about the stories of each of the writers, I wondered about their “I didn’t know” moments, and I wondered if they, too, sometimes struggled with regret.
As sometimes happens, a line from a favorite song of mine came to mind: “You are perfect in all of Your ways…to us.” I smiled, because it’s true. While I am tempted to have regrets over time seemingly wasted in ignorance or false belief, I am continually reminded that I am His. He has written my story since the foundations of the earth, and nothing that I experience, whether it is good, bad, or in between, is wasted. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I can move forward, knowing that I can trust Him. He will reveal what I need to know when I need to know it.
For further reading:
- Now I Love Communion - May 25, 2023
- Can You Be an Accidental Christian? - March 30, 2023
- Boast in the Lord! - February 2, 2023
Thank you for this article Kelsie. It was so interesting! I just love to hear and read the observations of those who have come out of the Adventist Church! JUST LOVE IT! Back nearly 20 years ago when I came to the Lord Jesus in TRUTH – that is, apart from SDA’ism – I also began attending a CMA church in Florida (and we still attend that same church). What an eye opener! It was scary at first because – going to church on Sunday and all….I thought surely I must be being deceived – and oh how correct I was!!! I WAS being deceived – and it was in the false teachings I had been indoctrinated in my entire life!!! Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is FREEDOM!! I’m so thankful for the Lord opening my eyes and my prayer is that the rest of my family can find the same peace and joy that can only come with a RIGHT relationship with Jesus. Thanks again!