Once again the Adventist leaders have asked the question, “Why are so many leaving the church?”, and once again, they have not addressed the reason so many leave: doctrine.
On February 21, 2020, the Adventist Review ran an article by Errol Webster and two sources, the Adventist Record and Adventist Review. Webster quoted Adventist researcher Monte Sahlin who said at the first Adventist “Retention Summit” which was held in 2013, “survey findings show that the cause of members leaving the Adventist Church has less to do with doctrinal disagreements ‘than with problems people experience in their personal lives.’”
Webster also quoted Adventist historian David Trim from his 2013 survey of people who had left Adventism who said “the ‘creeping secularization’ of our world is a factor” in those who leave.
Interestingly, Webster further referred to the Rwandan genocide of 1996 in which “the Hutu majority slaughtered more than 800,000 minority Tutsis”—of which more than 12,000 were Seventh-day Adventists. Webster stated, “The terrible truth is that many Adventist church members and pastors were involved in the genocide and, it is reported, they maintained their Adventism by scrupulously resting from killing on the Saturday Sabbath.”
The author quoted then-General Conference president, the late Robert Folkenberg, as saying, “What happened in Rwanda is largely the result of unconverted people who carried the name of Christ.”
Ironically, Webster failed to mention that three years after Folkenberg made that statement, on February 8, 1999, he resigned from his office as General Conference president amid a scandal involving his being sued for fraud by a Catholic business partner, James E Moore. Significantly, Folkenberg’s business partnership with Moore had spanned more than twenty years. (See Adventist Today, January/February, 1999, “Folkenberg Resigns”.)
Webster ended his article with this:
What’s the Answer?
Baptism does not equate to conversion. Should we have more emphasis on conversion to Jesus, rather than on baptism? Could it be that we spend more time talking about the Beast, creating righteousness by fear, than talking about the Lamb, who credits us with righteousness by faith?
Carlyle B. Haynes was an Adventist evangelist, bringing people into the church, when the realization came to him that he “had been preaching for fifteen years and yet was an unconverted man.”
“I had neglected the first simple childlike step of coming to Jesus Christ for myself and, by faith in Him, receiving pardon for my sins,” he wrote. “God brought me back, after fifteen years of preaching this message, to the foot of the cross.”
When we turn away from our “own works and look alone to Christ for salvation,” Haynes shared, “God declares that [person] just. This declaration of God is grounded on the finished work of our Lord.”
This is the good news of the gospel.
What’s missing?
Webster’s article subtitle, “Something Central Seems To Be Missing”, is accurate. In fact, his article never hints at one of the most profound reasons an increasing number of people are leaving Adventism: doctrine. While Webster creates an argument that Jesus may be the missing component in Adventist teaching, he fails to deal with the reason Jesus cannot be the organization’s primary focus.
That reason is Adventist doctrine.
Before examining why Adventist doctrine cannot support a central focus on Jesus and His finished atonement, however, let’s look more closely at the way Webster developed his thesis that Jesus needs to be brought to the foreground. He ends his article with a quote from Adventist evangelist Carlyle B. Haynes, who in a sermon told his own story of looking to Christ for salvation and stating that the declaration of justification “is grounded on the finished work of our Lord.”
One has to look at the footnotes, however, to discover the details about this quote. A casual reading of the article would suggest that Carlyle might have preached these words relatively recently. In truth, this quote is from a sermon given in 1923—ninety-seven years ago and eight years after Ellen White’s death. It was reprinted in Ministry Magazine in May, 1986.
Significantly, this reprinting date occurred during the time when scores of Adventist pastors and teachers were being fired for endorsing Desmond Ford’s 1980 Glacier View presentation showing that the investigative judgment had no biblical support and Walter Rae’s 1982 publication of The White Lie showing the extent of Ellen White’s plagiarism in The Desire of Ages.
At the time Carlyle Haynes’ sermon was reprinted, there was a gospel wind blowing through Adventism as a result of Ford’s presentation of justification by faith (contradicting the investigative judgment) and of Walter Rae’s revelation of EGW’s fraud. History demonstrates, however, that the Adventist organization refused to acknowledge EGW’s fraudulence and once again reinterpreted its central doctrine in order to sound more “orthodox”.
In time, the destabilization caused by Ford’s and Rae’s revelations were managed by the Adventist public relations machine, and the members were placated. Today, the names of Ford and Rae are all but forgotten by the generations of Adventists who have attended Adventist universities from the late 90’s onward.
Webster’s conclusion that the gospel is missing from Adventism may be accurate, but his statement is disingenuous. He uses gospel-sounding quotes from a dishonest general conference president and from an Adventist publication, and both of those quotes were made to help manage Adventism’s reputation during times of bad publicity. Like so many Adventists before him, Webster bangs on the “gospel drum” in an attempt to stanch the flow of members who are turning their loyatlties away from the Adventist organization.
The problem, however, is that Adventism CANNOT make the gospel central because its doctrines are built on heresies. The foundation of Adventism is a complex of biblical aberrations that come from Ellen White’s visions and endorsements. This prophetic foundation and its central pillar—the investigative judgment—are antithetical to the gospel. The real gospel cannot exist on a foundation of false doctrines. It can only exist on a foundation of Jesus Christ laid once and for all by the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:19–22).
What’s wrong with this scenario?
Webster’s article is just one more Adventist plea to make the religion seem more “Christian”. His plea is doomed to fail, though, because the foundational doctrines of the organization contradict the Bible and the gospel of God.
What are those heretical doctrines that deny the finished work of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3,4)?
First, Adventism has an extra-biblical prophet whose visionary great controversy worldview has redefined all the terms of the gospel. At the core of this worldview is the only unique doctrine of Adventism: the investigative judgment (IJ). No matter how Adventists may redefine it, the IJ remains completely without biblical support and undermines the finished work of Jesus and the sovereignty of God.
Moreover, Adventism was founded almost entirely by anti-trinitarians and Arians. James White, Joseph Bates, J.N. Andrews—all were anti-trinitarian, and Ellen White herself never adopted an orthodox view of the Trinity (see “Discovering the Adventist Jesus”, p. 10, Proclamation! March-April, 2007). Furthermore, Adventism teaches that Jesus came to demonstrate that the law could be kept and teaches that He gave up certain attributes of God, such as His omnipresence, when He took a human body.
Furthermore, Adventism has an unbiblical view of the nature of man. Based on EGW, Adventism denies that man has an immaterial spirit that is literally born dead and must be made alive through belief and trust in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus (Eph. 2:1–3; 1:13, 14; Jn. 3:18; 5:24).
In addition, Adventism teaches that keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is the mark of those who will be saved when Jesus returns. Ellen White says keeping the Sabbath is the “seal of God”, and today many Adventists say that keeping the Sabbath is the sign that one has the seal of God. Either way, Adventism has retained what the book of Hebrews (chapters 3, 4 and 10:1) and Colossians 2:16, 17 call a shadow of Christ. Adventism sees loyalty to this day as the evidence of honoring God. It fails to understand being literally born of the Spirit as a consequence of believing in the Lord Jesus alone. Thus Adventism refuses to renounce its idolatry of the Sabbath, and most Adventists do not understand what it means to trust Jesus alone—without the law—with the weight of all their sins.
Finally, because of the IJ and the great controversy worldview, Adventism holds that Satan is the scapegoat upon whom Jesus will ultimately place the sins of the saved. The IJ teaches that when Jesus finally finishes His examination of the heavenly books, the confessed sins of those who will be saved will be placed on Satan, and he will bear them out of the heavenly sanctuary into the lake of fire. Thus Satan will be punished for them (some say for causing them—thereby eliminating personal responsibility for sins) and will thereby cleanse the sanctuary.
This doctrine is the hidden core of Adventism: Satan, not Jesus, is the one who ultimately bears away sins.
Adventism cannot teach the gospel
Even if Adventists teach that Jesus died for our sins, they cannot teach the true gospel because their Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture. Furthermore, their view of man denies that every human is born literally spiritually dead in sin—depraved—and must be born again through believing in the gospel of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection for our sins according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
Webster is right: Adventism is not teaching Jesus. It is stressing baptism for membership over the gospel of Jesus dying for our sins because their Jesus is not almighty God the Son who bore the curse of sin which He Himself required!
Unless Adventism is ready to admit that they have been teaching what Paul called “another gospel” (Gal. 1:6–10) and is willing to renounce its extra-biblical false prophet and admit they have exalted a created day over the Creator and ascribed ultimate punishment for sin to Satan instead of Jesus, they cannot preach Jesus truthfully.
Furthermore, Adventism cannot admit that sin is an affront to an eternal holy God, not merely a few bad decisions over the span of a few years. It cannot acknowledge that humans have spirits in the image of God who is spirit (Jn. 4:24), and it denies the eternal justice of God against the rebellious who refuse to believe.
Because all of Adventism’s theology is built upon a false understanding of reality as found in Scripture, it will never be able to teach the life-changing gospel of the Lord Jesus and His finished work. It will never be able to offer the security of the finished work of Jesus that is the answer for everyone who suffers. It will never be able to offer true fellowship as described in Scripture—the fellowship of believers who love one another as parts of their own bodies. It will never be able to teach the assurance of salvation.
Adventism is a deception. It mimics Christianity and claims to be evangelical, but it is not. It is masquerading, like an angel of light, but it is dark inside. Because it cannot teach the gospel of the Lord Jesus apart from the law, its membership will continue to hemorrhage. Because it is built on man-made ideas, its members will continue to leave because of doctrine. †
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