By Margie Littell with Colleen Tinker
There are two New Testament letters which are very difficult for Adventists to understand. Consequently, they pick bits and pieces out of both of them to prove their own doctrines! Aside from using them for out-of-context proof-texts, Adventists tend to ignore them.
These two books Adventists have trouble understanding are Hebrews and Galatians. Hebrews was written to Jews who had become Christians, people from the nation of Israel who had rejected Jesus and cried, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” This book shows, step-by-step, how Jesus is greater than every tenet of their Mosaic covenant. It demonstrates that Jesus fulfilled every shadow and ceremony of their law and is greater than all they loved about their God-given covenant.
Finally, the book of Hebrews calls these believing Jews to leave behind the beautiful, God-given rituals of Judaism and the law and to stand fast in the “blood of the eternal covenant” (Heb. 13:20), remembering that they have a heavenly city and an eternal future with the risen Christ.
It is incredible irony that Adventists use isolated texts from the book of Hebrews to attempt to prop up their “sanctuary doctrine”. In fact, Adventism’s “sanctuary doctrine”, which explains what Ellen White said Jesus is doing during the supposed investigative judgment, is an invented doctrine that contradicts Scripture. Perhaps the most horrifying thing about Adventism’s use of Hebrews to validate this doctrine is that, of all the books in the New Testament, Hebrews does the most to explain that Jesus’ work of fulfilling the Mosaic law is DONE. Hebrews demonstrates that there is no investigative judgment or ongoing “sanctuary doctrine” because Jesus has fulfilled every requirement of the law and has sat down at the Father’s right hand!
Galatians, on the other hand, was written to believing Gentiles. The recipients of this first letter that Paul wrote were being infiltrated by Judaizers. Christian Jews from Jerusalem had come to Antioch in Galatia where Paul was ministering, but these Christians were compromised. They were not holding fast to the finished work of Christ alone but were teaching the converted Gentiles that, in order to properly please God and be His people, they had to be circumcised and keep the law.
Adventists say that Galatians is all about circumcision, and they try to say that any reference in the letter to not turning back to the law is about the “ceremonial” law. Adventists are wrong in this assessment.
Adventists say that Galatians is all about circumcision, and they try to say that any reference in the letter to not turning back to the law is about the “ceremonial” law.
Circumcision was the ritual that marked one’s entrance into Judaism. A Gentile who wanted to be a Jew couldn’t simply begin to keep the law; on the contrary, Gentiles were excluded from the law unless they converted and received the ritual of circumcision. In a real sense, circumcision was the entrance into the world of Judaism. It allowed the converted Gentile to observe the law’s requirements.
Paul wrote Galatians to born-again Gentiles who were being deceived by supposedly Christian Jews who were saying the Gentile believers weren’t fully God’s people unless they adopted the law. In fact, the Judaizers were so shaming and manipulative that Paul even had to publicly rebuke Peter for refusing to eat with the believing Gentiles in Antioch.
Imagine! This is the same Peter who, in Acts 10, had received the vision of the sheet from heaven filled with every unclean animal known to man and heard the Lord say, “Kill and eat!” Three times, in fact, Peter saw the sheet and heard the command—and then he realized that nothing the Lord called clean could be considered unclean. He had been led to go to the home of the Roman Gentile Cornelius as soon as that vision ended, and he stayed in Cornelius’s house (an interaction forbidden by the Mosaic law) and ate Cornelius’s gentile food (also forbidden by the law) for several days as he preached the gospel to Cornelius’s household.
Peter had “presided” over the first group of gentiles in that Roman centurion’s household becoming believers in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit—exactly as the believing Jews on the Day of Pentecost had been filled with the Spirit!
This Peter, who clearly knew that God gave new birth to Gentiles without their ever observing the law, who clearly knew he could never again consider Gentiles to be unclean, had slipped back into the old Jewish tradition of refusing to eat with Gentiles—and these Gentiles were fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord!
Because Peter had publicly marginalized his brothers and sisters because of the shaming influence of the Judaizers from Jerusalem, Paul had to rebuke him publicly (see Gal. 2:11–21). After recording his rebuke of Peter, Paul continued by articulating why the believing Gentiles must never turn back to the law—any of it, even the Ten Commandments—and adopt them as their rule of faith. The law was fulfilled by the finished work of the Lord Jesus!
Paul explained that God’s promise to Abraham is fulfilled when people believe, that those who keep the law are children of slavery. He even made the shocking statement that the covenant God made with Israel on Mt Sinai is now represented by the slave woman Hagar, but the new covenant is represented by Sarah and the “Jerusalem above”. Those who stay under the old covenant are in slavery with their mother Hagar, but those who believe are children of promise, and they are free along with Sarah and her children of promise!
Adventists need Galatians and Hebrews
Both of these books were written after Jesus returned to heaven. Both books carry the same message: Jesus’s salvation plan. They just have different audiences. Hebrews addresses believing Jews who needed to understand how much superior the Lord Jesus is to every provision of the old covenant. He is greater than angels, than Moses, than the sacrifices, than the priesthood. He is greater than the Sabbath, and His blood has rendered the law and its covenant obsolete!
Galatians explains that faith in Jesus replaces adherence to the law, and Paul says in Galatians 5:2–4 something that Adventist cannot accept:
Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
Paul tells the Gentile Christians that they sever themselves from Christ if they accept circumcision and put themselves under the law! Adventists argue Paul’s clear point, but the context of Galatians cannot be dismissed. In fact, Paul says in Galatians 4:9 that when Christians have been known by God but turn back to the law and begin to observe days and other requirements, they are turning to something that is no more powerful or appropriate than paganism!
Adventists need to study Galatians, but their beliefs cause them to argue—or even simply to “glaze over” and refuse to see what Paul is saying. Yet the message is clear: if we go back to the law when Jesus has fulfilled all of it, we fall from grace and embrace the equivalent of paganism.
Adventists also need to study Hebrews. The author explains that God has replaced the seventh day with a new day, TODAY, and if we hear God’s voice and believe, we enter His rest eternally TODAY. Moreover, when we trust Jesus instead of the days and seasons and restrictions of the law, we find that we have a completely new High Priest: Jesus, in the order of Melchizedek, not of Levi! Jesus is not in heaven reviewing records and applying His blood.
No! Jesus is a seated High Priest. His work is done, and when we believe, all our sins: past, present, and future, are covered and paid for by His blood. In Christ we have a new altar (the cross) from which those who observe the law have no right to eat (Heb. 13:10)!
Adventists have taught their members to study Scripture OUT of context because Ellen White used a passage from Isaiah 28:10 wrongly. The prophet said that Adventists are to study “precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little”.
Adventists use this passage to defend their proof-texting and their out-of-context conclusions.
In fact, EGW’s use of this verse is horrifying. Isaiah was prophesying God’s judgment on apostate Israel, and he was telling them that God would send them into exile with people who did not speak their language. Because Israel refused to listen to God and to obey Him they would be subject to people whom they would not understand, and God’s word would no longer be the clear word of His prophets. Instead, God’s word to them would be the judgment of being unable to discern what was being said. Isaiah’s prophecy is explained more fully in Isaiah 28:11–13:
For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the LORD will speak to this people, to whom he has said,
“This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose” yet they would not hear.
And the word of the LORD will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
Ellen White used a judgment of God—a curse on the nation of Israel—as a pattern for Adventists to understand Scripture. When people refuse to study Scripture in context, allowing the words to mean what they say and permitting the context to determine the meaning, they end up believing falsehood.
Ellen White left a legacy to Adventists that leave them unable to perceive the meaning of God’s word.
The call to each of us is to heed the opening words of Hebrews 1. God commands us to abandon our loyalty to an extra biblical prophet who used the Bible to teach us falsehood. She taught an invalid hermeneutic—proof-texting—that would make it impossible for her followers to comprehend truth. It is time for all of us with Adventist beliefs to abandon EGW’s “here a little, there a little” method of bible study and to embrace instead the powerful words of Hebrews 1:1–4:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. †
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Excellent article!! Passing on. Thank you ladies
This article was EXCELLENT! It answered some key questions for me as a former Adventist. As an Adventist studying Galatians the truth of the book was glaring to me. But when I would debate the issue of grace over law I was shouted down. Now I understand why.
Note: In 2011 and again in 2017 the Sabbath School Quartiles were devoted to the Book of Galatians. I had kept the one from 2011 because it had made such an impression on my mind. So when the 2017 Quartile came out I was interested in comparing the 2 to see if any new insights had been made. To my astonishment they were EXACTLY the same lessons page for page with only different introductions and advertisements. That was bright red light for me. Something was not right. That was not the key reason I left in 2018 but it helped to confirm my decision.