Dear Mr. Seibold,
Although I have never met you, I feel as though it might be appropriate for me to write to you by means of an open letter, since this is now the second time that I am responding to an article of yours. Your blog post from August 21, 2020 (titled “The Church: Love It or Leave It?”) has motivated me to write this letter. I hope and pray that what I say here may be of benefit to both you and the readers of Adventist Today, many of whom no doubt share much of your worldview and convictions.
My background and story is of little concern to you, but I would like to briefly note that I am a former Seventh-day Adventist who grew up a fourth-generation Adventist in the progressive “bubble” that is Southern California. I’ve been through elementary, high school, and a bit of college––at Adventist institutions. When I became a born-again believer in Jesus Christ in 2013 (although I had professed to believe in Jesus all my life), I did not leave Adventism immediately but took about three years to process through an agonizing decision that lay before me: should I leave the church? This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, since I sensed that it would hurt my dear family, whom I love (and still have a wonderful relationship with, thank God). Part of my struggle was answering the question that was constantly on my mind: Is Adventism really that bad that I have to renounce it? I say all this to let you know that I am familiar with your context in some ways, and that I did not leave Adventism lightly, nor do I bear a grudge against my family or friends (most of whom are still in the church).
Who counts as an Adventist?
Let me now briefly respond to your article. I’ve noticed that you (and other like-minded writers for publications such as Adventist Today and Spectrum) have been quite concerned with the attempt by many in the global church to delegitimize the Adventist “credentials” of progressive folks. The quotation you provided from your theology professor, Fritz Guy, was quite striking to me and seemed to sum up your frame of mind: “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you aren’t a real Seventh-day Adventist. No one but you and God get to say whether you’re an Adventist or not.” You also claim, ironically, that many former Adventists lobby the same critique (albeit from a different perspective):
Showing similar anger at my remaining a Seventh-day Adventist are folks who have left the church and now consider themselves its opponents. The anti-Adventists are sometimes just as rigid and just as angry as are the true believers—they’re just on the other side of the divide. I respect those who have gone elsewhere, who have found another church or belief system, or perhaps none at all—God bless you, that’s where God has taken you and it’s not for me to pronounce judgment upon. Though I have deep ties to the Adventist church, I really don’t subscribe to religious tribalism as such: God is in lots of places, in the hearts of lots of people.
I know there are former Adventists who are angry at the church (and perhaps its members) for various reasons. Nevertheless, although I am a former Adventist, let me say at the outset that I don’t at all dispute your Adventist bonafides. My concern is not whether you count as Adventist, but whether Adventism itself counts as being genuinely Christian. Now, before you accuse me of subscribing to “religious tribalism,” please know that I am not here to defend a denomination, or an organization. Rather, I care (however imperfectly) about the glory of God, revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I think that bad theology genuinely hurts people (a claim you also explicitly make in this article). Though I am no Paul, I say to you in truth: “The aim of [my] charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5).
Tell me your gospel
Mr. Seibold, you state toward the end of your article, “The gospel of Jesus Christ that I am charged to teach is clear in the New Testament.” Since you have appealed to the Word of God, I would like to challenge you on that very basis.
The apostle Paul is at pains in his epistle to the Galatians to defend his authority to proclaim the good news of Jesus while admonishing his readers for “turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one” (Gal. 1:6–7). He goes on to give a brief biographical defense of his ministry and states that he “went up because of a revelation and set before them [the Jerusalem apostles] … the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain” (Gal. 2:2). I would like to humbly yet firmly challenge you: could it be that you are running in vain? You desire to advocate for a “broad” Seventh-day Adventist church, and one that is “constantly evolving.” But could it be that you may have completely missed the fact that Adventism, which split off from the Millerite movement, never actually was a genuine Christian church, with a biblical gospel? (Again, my appeal is to the New Testament, which you seem to profess as your standard.)
What is the gospel you proclaim? You give us a paragraph indicating various things that in your view are not the gospel:
Living under the constant guilt of an impossible perfection is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Terrifying eschatology is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Calling other churches (who have never shown us the slightest animosity) our enemies and accusing them of setting up to persecute us is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Making insignificant things, like food choices, into big things and judging people’s spirituality by them is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. A hierarchical church administrative structure that calls itself “the highest authority of God on earth,” led by an authoritative president who confuses doctrines with policies, is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Enforcing on every Adventist the world over exactly the same beliefs, and expecting us to operate in lockstep across a diversity of cultures, is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It’s clear to any reader that these are each a rejection of what the Seventh-day Adventist church has taught in one form or another for a century and a half. Yet you undo the very thing you appear to deny six times (“… not the gospel of Jesus Christ”) when you state in the next paragraph:
The gospel of Jesus Christ is much simpler than that. It says that those who believe in Jesus and do their best to model their lives upon his can have the certainty of eternal life.
Is your gospel “much simpler” or radically different? Which is it? Is it compatible with all the things you seem to reject in the previous paragraph or diametrically at odds with them? To use Paul’s terminology, is your gospel another species of the same category (Gal. 1:7: ‘another gospel’ állo [euangélion]), or something completely different (Gal. 1:6: ‘a different gospel’ héteron euangélion)?
Grace and works
Your own positive definition (and indeed, most of your article) suggests that it is in fact compatible with the things you nevertheless declare as “not the gospel of Jesus Christ.” For while you may not have intended to invoke this comparison, I could not but help noticing that your words sound remarkably similar to a famous passage from the Book of Mormon: “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23).
Perhaps you protest that you have never claimed, nor intended, to preach a “works-righteous” gospel. Perhaps you might say that believing in Jesus is the heart of your gospel. Yet the dividing issue for the apostle Paul was never the necessity of faith or grace. On that point both the Judaizers and the apostle were agreed! Rather, the question was the complete sufficiency of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul went so far as to say this to the Galatians: “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” (Gal. 5:2). In other words, if you attempt to add anything to the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, it becomes useless to you. The very fact that you propose a “détente” in your article with conservative Adventists who have a health ministry functioning as the “right arm of the gospel” indicates that your gospel is not a biblical one at all.
At this point, if you’re honest, Mr. Seibold, you might feel tempted to characterize the apostle as one of the “love it or leave it” types you decry (were it not for the fact that he wrote holy Scripture). Why can’t he have a “détente” with the Galatian Judaizers? After all, wouldn’t they all perfectly fit the criteria of a “broad” Seventh-day Adventist church you define in your article?
If a pastor is a godly, moral believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, if the pastor is taking care of people, if the pastor appreciates the Sabbath and believes that Jesus is returning someday, if the pastor is pleasing her or his congregation, then that’s a pastor we want to keep.
But no, the apostle Paul is resolutely firm on this point. Those who take this path and teach others are “severed from Christ” (Gal. 5:4).
Our works are filthy rags before a holy God
Why is he so “narrow-minded”? I believe the glory of God and the salvation of man are both at stake. The gospel shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). The darkness that light shines into is human depravity. God’s glory is displayed through his mercy given to undeserving sinners through the shed blood of his dear Son on the cross. The work of Jesus Christ is the only “work” that glorifies God and saves sinners––anything else is an offense to God and fatal to salvation.
The good news of the gospel must begin with the bad news (indeed, the light is light because it shines in the darkness). That is why Paul jumps seemingly abruptly from a glorious declaration of the gospel in Romans 1:16–17 to this in the very next verse: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Unfortunately, Adventism has always failed to take seriously the sinful nature of man. Oh, there have been many harsh and legalistic statements made by Adventist leaders (including Ellen White) toward members in their denomination. But the deadness of man in sin is fundamentally misunderstood and minimized by Adventist doctrine.
Several reasons may be given as explanation for this. In part, this is because the Christian doctrine of the soul is scorned as “unbiblical” and derived from pagan Greek philosophy. Sin, therefore, becomes a matter of “doing,” and much less a state of being. Furthermore, the very concept of a “Great Controversy” has the effect of putting God on trial, when Scripture says it is man that stands condemned. What is more, the idea of an eternal hell is mocked as unjust and cruel in Adventism (what can this mean but that man is not as evil as the Bible claims he is?). In short, although you make much of the fact that conservative Adventism is legalistic (which is true as far as it goes), neither progressive nor conservative Adventism does justice to the biblical reality that mankind is radically depraved and totally helpless. This state of helplessness is what leads the prophet Isaiah to despair that “our works are filthy rags” before a holy God.
But God …
Against this dark backdrop of human evil, in which none of us are exempt (Rom. 3:10 bleakly declares: “There is none righteous, no not one!”), God put forth his own precious Son. The Bible says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5). Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, lived a perfect sinless life (the life none of us could ever live). As the God-man, there was no possibility of His ever sinning. According to God’s foreordained plan before the ages, He was delivered up into the hands of sinners to be condemned and crucified on a cross.
On the cross, as Isaiah foretold, “it pleased the LORD to crush him [the Messiah]” (Isa. 53:10). There, Jesus Christ suffered the divine penalty that was due sinners in order that God might extend grace and forgiveness to the one who has faith in His Son (Rom 3:26). Having satisfied divine justice, He rose again after three days as a vindication of His sacrifice and because the grave could not hold Him. He ascended into heaven and is right now seated at the right hand of God. There is no further atonement to be made, no heavenly sanctuary in whose most holy place Christ entered in 1844. Jesus cried, “It is finished!” and those who trust in Him alone have joyous confidence in those words.
Where do you stand with God?
There is coming a final day of judgement when God will judge the secrets of men’s hearts (Rom. 2:16). Those who have “loved his appearing” will rejoice and be with him forevermore. Sadly, however, many will have been deceived into thinking that they know God when in fact they have not known Him savingly. I’ve always found Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 to be incredibly sobering:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
I want to make an appeal to you, Mr. Seibold, and to the readership of Adventist Today (and I say this without pretension or arrogance). You state in your article that you are quite comfortable in your Adventism and have no desire to leave. Could it be that your convictions, shaped through a life lived in the Seventh-day Adventist church, have blinded you to the reality that––from the day of its founding up until the present––Adventism has never been a biblical church? This is not about religious tribalism. What will you do with Jesus Christ? If you died today, do you know that you have eternal life? (Not theoretically, in the future, or on a good day.) Have you realized your utter spiritual bankruptcy before a holy and good God and turned to His Son, trusting in His shed blood alone for the forgiveness of your sins? I would encourage you to look into the mirror of God’s Word and examine whether the things I write to you are true.
Sincerely,
Kaspars Ozolins
- Coming To Grips With the Deceptive Nature of Adventism - March 14, 2024
- Truth Led Him Out. Truth Led Him Home. - January 11, 2024
- Response to Adventism’s Non-Combatancy - November 2, 2023
I love reading a presentation of the gospel against the backdrop of beliefs that give only false hope. Because that is where we all started before being liberated from vain and superstitious ideologies (1 Cor 6:11; Col 2:8-10; Rom 4:1-8).