Phil Johnson Talks About Adventism | 17

Colleen and Nikki talk with Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace To You of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. This interview took place at the Truth Matters Conference at Grace Community Church in October, 2019 Podcast was published January 8, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.

 

Nikki:  Hello, and welcome to Former Adventist podcast.  I’m Nikki Stevenson.

Colleen:  And I’m Colleen Tinker.

Nikki:  We have a special episode today.  We’re going to share an interview that we were able to do with pastor and apologist Phil Johnson.  But before we do, I just want to remind you of a few things.  We have an Instagram account and a Facebook account.  We’d love for you to follow us.  We have some information up there that builds on our various podcast episodes, and we have some links to our websites and to our conference we’d love for you to check out.  Also, we’re so thankful for your donations.  If you’d like to join those who donate to our podcast, you can go to proclamationmagazine.com, and there is a donation link there.  If you have questions or comments, you can email us at formeradventist@gmail.com.  Now, Pastor Phil Johnson is the executive director of Grace to You.  He edits most of John MacArthur’s books, and he’s done a significant amount of research on Adventism.  Colleen, can you tell our audience just how we were able to get this interview with him?

Colleen:  Well, it was surprise.  We were attending the Truth Matters conference at Grace Community Church, and you, Nikki, I believe went to hear him being interviewed in – was a podcast recording?

Nikki:  It was Todd Friel’s Wretched Radio.

Colleen:  And you went to hear him, and you stood in line to talk to him afterwards, and we joined you.  He was very accessible, very surprising, because we had never actually personally met him before.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  He understood what we meant when we said we were former Adventists, and we asked if we could actually interview him for our podcast, and he said he would be happy to, and he set up an appointment for us to meet him the next day, Friday, the last full day of the conference.  So he met us after the last afternoon session and spent over an hour with us.  We were surprised.  We were conscious of the graciousness that he exhibited in giving us all that time.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But he didn’t rush us.  He was careful.  He listened.  He answered thoughtfully, and it was an amazing and delightful experience.  This man actually knows more about Adventism than a lot of never-been-Adventist Christians know.

Nikki:  Yeah, he does.

Colleen:  So it was really a delightful experience to talk to him.

Nikki:  He was very humble, very comfortable.

Colleen:  He was.

Nikki:  It was great to meet another true brother in the Lord.

Colleen:  It was.  It was a wonderful thing.

Nikki:  Now, in a previous episode we shared with you guys an interview that we did with Justin Peters.  If you haven’t heard that, go back and find it.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  It was great.  He let us visit with him at the same conference.  That generated a lot of listeners, from those of you who have never been Adventist, who maybe don’t know much about it, and we would just really like to encourage you, in anticipation of having some return visits for Phil Johnson, we’d like to encourage you to consider following us.  The nature of Adventism is so complex, it’s not something that we can unearth in one episode with you.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  We would really love for you to give us a chance, listen up to what we can share with you about Adventism, and prayerfully consider how you might be able to touch those in your life who are considering Adventism or –

Colleen:  – who are Adventist.

Nikki:  – who are Adventist, because they need to hear from you.

Colleen:  Yes, they do.  Adventists want you to believe that they’re Christian, and they know how to use the Christian words.  And so the main purpose of this interview was to dig below that surface, and Phil Johnson understood enough that we were able to go quite deeply into this with him.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  So we’re encouraging all of you who are listening, both who have been Adventist and those who haven’t, to listen to the end and to follow our podcast in the long term.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Because I think we can help you understand the truth about this religion, which has done such a good job of deceiving the Christian church.

Nikki:  And I’d like to just say, if you are an Adventist listening, you may find yourself upset by what you hear, but we would love for you to follow us too, because I have to say, I didn’t know a lot of this either when I was an Adventist.

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  I thought I was a Christian.  I didn’t know Adventism taught –

Colleen:  Me too.

Nikki:  – or even hid the way that it did.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  And so we just pray that you’ll consider giving us a chance.

Colleen:  And now, listen in while we have our interesting conversation with Phil Johnson.

 

Colleen:  How would you classify Adventism?  I mean, I know that they’re not a charismatic church today, but given the fact that they have this prophet, is there some connection there?  Should that be a major red flag if a person is studying with the Adventists and doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong?

Phil:  Yes.  I mean, how I would classify them is as a cult.  They’re not the worst of the cults, they’re not the furthest from orthodoxy, but they’re far enough from orthodoxy that I think you have to classify them as a cult because they have their own prophet, that’s one of the classic characteristics; they get the gospel wrong –

Colleen:  Totally.

Phil:  – that’s really the linchpin of what makes them dangerous and why we shouldn’t try to whitewash them, and say, “Well, they’re close to or closer than” –

Colleen:  I love that word.

Phil:  Yeah.  Because, you know, if it’s a wrong gospel, Paul says very clearly twice in Galatians 1, “Let them be accursed.”  And what he is saying there is, “Don’t embrace them as brethren, don’t try to whitewash the error.”  And in fact, if you look at what he’s dealing with in Galatians, it’s very similar to the Adventist error because it was people, the Judaizers in Galatia, who were trying to reinstitute portions of the Old Testament ceremonial law, which is precisely what Adventism does, same thing.  So Adventism is a flavor of the Galatian error that Paul wrote against.  And just look at how harsh he was about that.  I think it was J. Gresham Machen, as I recall, who wrote about this, and he said, you know, in today’s world diplomacy and kindness is expected of all of us, and we look at something like the Judaizers in Galatia, and we would say, “Yeah, but it was a small difference.  It was a difference in the ordo salutis really,” and that’s true, that basically the Galatian Judaizers are saying you obey God and then you’re justified, whereas the true gospel says you are justified by faith alone and then that produces obedience.  And so they just reverse the order of law and, you know, or works and faith, and he says this sounds like a minor thing, but it changes the gospel completely.

Colleen:  It does, inside out.

Phil:  And every cult does the same thing, and that’s what makes them a cult.  I know people don’t like the word “cult,” and some people define it in such a specific way that you could eliminate, say, the Roman Catholics from that because their fundamental idea of God is catholic, and you know, we would agree with them on the Trinity or whatever, but I don’t care if you use the word “cult” or not, it’s a fatal corruption of the gospel.

Colleen:  I like that phrase.

Phil:  Yeah.

Colleen:  “A fatal corruption of the gospel.”  Yes.  And I remember Paul Carden from the Centers for Apologetics Research saying once at one of our conferences, “If you’re trusting in the wrong Jesus, you’re not believing unto salvation.”

Phil:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Which has struck a real cord with me.

Phil:  History has a way of repeating itself, and what Walter Martin did by saying Seventh-day Adventists – he said, “They’re wrong, and they’re seriously wrong, but I wouldn’t call them a cult.”  So he takes that label off, and it makes a lot of the average rank and file evangelicals think, “Well, then they’re okay.  They’re just a denomination like the difference between Baptists and Presbyterians.”  Walter Martin did that with the Seventh-day Adventists, and then Hank Hanegraaff did the same thing with Roman Catholicism.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  Where he raised the question:  Is Roman Catholicism – I think he even said, “Is it a cult?”  And he said, “No,” or he basically said – and he claims, or he claimed at the time that he wasn’t intending to say that they’re sound enough on the gospel.  He wanted to say, “No they corrupt the gospel, but I wouldn’t call them a cult or a false religion,” and I think that was a significant mistake, and what you saw in the wake of that, the same thing happened that had happened with Walter Martin and Seventh-day Adventism.  People said, “Well, if they’re not a cult, then we can embrace them as brothers and sisters,” and all that does is obscure the vital distinction between the biblical gospel and this notion that you have to add works in order to be justified.

Nikki:  Well, I was just going to add to that that when people have the impression that they’re not that dangerous, then that’s kind of a great way for the Adventists to come and get their kids in their academies –

Phil:  Yep.

Colleen:  Oh, they do that.

Nikki:  Yeah.  And then the Christians at home, you know, they’re going to their church on Sunday, but their kids go to this Christian school, and they don’t know what their kids are learning in the classroom.

Phil:  Right.

Nikki:  And then they marry an Adventist, and it’s just really unfortunate what we see happening –

Colleen:  We do see it.

Nikki:  – and they didn’t see it coming, and that’s really sad.

Phil:  Yep.

Colleen:  Regarding the fact that you had somebody ask you about their son, who wanted to study medicine at Loma Linda?

Phil:  That is a great concern of ours –

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  – because so many Christians go to Loma Linda thinking it’s a Christian medical school.

Phil:  Are they required – if you went there to study medicine, would you be required to take theology as well?

Colleen:  Oh, yes!

Nikki:  And go to church and go to chapel.

Phil:  Yeah.  See, that was – my counsel to her was if he’s just studying medicine, okay, but if they’re requiring him to take Bible courses or learn theology –

Colleen:  Oh, they are.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Phil:  – then I would say absolutely not.

Colleen:  Oh, they do.  And it’s worth mentioning that they do teach their medical students to do abortions.

Phil:  Wow.

Colleen:  It’s just worth mentioning.

Phil:  Most of my grandchildren were born in the Adventist hospital over here.

Colleen:  They do deliver a lot of babies too.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]  Yes.

Phil:  Yeah, they do.  But we’re making sure they’re not Adventists.

Colleen:  Oh, good.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Phil:  It seems to me that Seventh-day Adventism has been in flux really since the time of Walter Martin.  I don’t know if that’s what touched it off –

Colleen:  Probably.

Phil:  – but it’s been in flux, and you see it on every level.  And there are also other cults that have strong similarities to Seventh-day Adventism – the Worldwide Church of God, Herbert W. Armstrong and others –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Phil:  – who’ve gone through some of the same issues, where some of their leaders, actually, have discovered Puritan works or whatever and the doctrine of justification by faith, and it throws them for a loop, and then they’re troubled about, “Well, can I remain in the Seventh-day Adventist organization and still believe what’s obviously biblical here about justification, and then they’ll play with it for a while.  My observation is that most of those who’ve left – and I’m thinking specifically about people like Desmond Ford, and there’s a fellow in Australia who started a magazine back in the ’70s called Present Truth.  He was a Seventh-day Adventist.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  His name was Robert Brinsmead.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  He was a layperson, but very bright.  And Present Truth for a while was actually an excellent magazine because they reprinted Puritan works on justification by faith, and in fact, I subscribed to it at the time.  I was in college, years and years ago.

Colleen:  Interesting.  Interesting.

Phil:  It was one of my first introductions to Puritan works.

Colleen:  Oh, how interesting.

Phil:  Yeah.  And so I followed this and thought, “This Brinsmead guy is really clever,” but then, seriously, within a very short time, about three or four years, the magazine, which was originally “Present Truth,” they changed their name to “Verdict” and started to publish neo-orthodoxy, and then from neo-orthodoxy Brinsmead left Christianity completely, and now he’s an elderly man.  I was just in Brisbane, and that’s where he’s from.  He’s an elderly man and pretty much opposed to all religion.

Colleen:  Yes, he is.

Nikki:  Umm.

Phil:  And that has been my experience.  It happened with the Worldwide Church of God as well, where some of their leaders, after Herbert W. Armstrong died, they discovered in various ways justification by faith and other sounder doctrines.  They were antitrinitarian as well.  They didn’t believe in hell and things like that.  And they began to revamp the church’s doctrine, which fragmented that church.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  Now you’ve got maybe 15 or 20 major offshoots that –

Nikki:  Wow.

Phil:  – all of them claim to hold to the original Herbert W. Armstrong teachings.  But the main church itself seems to have dissolved.  They sold off Ambassador College and all that.  But for a very brief time, they seemed like they wanted to embrace orthodoxy.  They sent a group of their leaders, including the top guy, here to Grace Church and met with us back in the early ’80s.

Colleen:  Interesting.

Nikki:  Hmm.

Phil:  And we had a lengthy discussion about justification, and they assured us they believed justification and all of that, but again, within two years or so they went right past orthodoxy into neo-orthodox stuff.  They didn’t want to let go of their denial of hell.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Phil:  And they felt like neo-orthodoxy was more compatible.  And I don’t know whatever became of the main group of the Worldwide Church of God.  You don’t hear much about them anymore.

Colleen:  No.

Phil:  I don’t think they’re in Pasadena anymore.

Colleen:  I don’t think so.  I spoke with Joe Tkach Jr. –

Phil:  Right.

Colleen:  – in the mid-’90s, and – well, it was right around the time we were studying our way out of Adventism.

Phil:  Uh-huh.

Colleen:  He was excited about the gospel –

Phil:  Right!

Colleen:  – and he was excited about changing the church, and as a little interesting by-the-by, Dale Ratzlaff’s book “Sabbath in Christ” was part of what helped them change things around.

Phil:  Yeah.  So was Brinsmead’s writings on Sabbatarianism had also influenced them.

Colleen:  Interesting.  Interesting.

Phil:  Because I had the same conversation with Joseph Tkach and Joseph Tkach Jr., and I thought, you know, “These guys are on the right track.”

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Phil:  But we held off, saying –

Colleen:  Oh, good.

Phil:  They wanted us to say, “Well, they’re moving towards orthodoxy.”  We said, “You know, we’re not going to do that until we see that you are settled into orthodoxy and you’ve embraced” –

Colleen:  I’m glad.

Phil:  – “everything that you once denied, you’ve corrected,” and they never did get to that point.  And again, I don’t know what happened to them, but it seemed to me a pattern that people who leave Adventism or any similar cult –

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  – find it very hard to become anchored in the gospel.

Colleen:  I agree.  We’ve actually experienced a lot of people saying, “I pray that Adventism will reform.  I pray that” – well, you know, actually thinking about the word “reform,” it’s like going back –

Phil:  Right.  It suggests you were once formed; right?

Colleen:  Yes; right.

Nikki:  Right.

Phil:  I agree.  And that’s been what I’ve said.  I can’t think of an instance anywhere in church history –

Colleen:  No.

Phil:  – where a false religion or a cult has moved away from their false doctrine to orthodoxy.

Colleen:  The visual that I have is actually borrowed from Rick Langer, who is now teaching at Biola.  But he uses the metaphor of a tree, and there’s the apostolic tree, the apostolic root, and out of that root has grown up a tree, and he says, “You know, you can question whether the Roman Catholic branch is even actually considered a church anymore, but off the Protestant reformation that came out of all of this are these branches that have become denominations.”  He said, “Off to the side of the tree are some bushes that are heresies, and” – Arianism, for example, Ebioism –

Phil:  Right.

Colleen:  And he says, “These have grown up and mingled their branches, so the branches are almost indistinguishable, you have to trace it to the root.”  Adventism came out of an Arian root.

Phil:  Yeah.  That’s a really good metaphor, and it does explain why it’s certainly not a matter of reformation –

Colleen:  No.

Phil:  – because they’re not moving back to anything that they ever once held, but as a group – you know, individuals like you come out of a cult and embrace orthodoxy because the Lord opens their eyes up.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  But that doesn’t happen on a group basis.

Colleen:  No, it doesn’t.

Phil:  That doesn’t happen to a mass religion.

Colleen:  That’s so true!  You can’t reform a heretical group, you have to disband it or leave it.

Phil:  Right.

Colleen:  I think.

Phil:  I agree.  I agree, and in fact, I think a lot of sound evangelicals were encouraging people in the Worldwide Church of God, when that group began to move in a more orthodox direction – and they did, they just never settled into orthodoxy.  When they began to move that direction, too many naïve evangelicals encouraged them with, “Yeah, that’s great.  Stay in that church and see if you can help reform it.”

Colleen:  Interesting.

Phil:  And my counsel was, “Hey, if you see the truth of the gospel, get out of that group and join a church that’s already sound.”

Colleen:  Yes.  Plus you have to be reeducated –

Phil:  Yes.

Colleen:  – and you can’t do that in a group that’s still not sure what’s true.

Phil:  That’s right, and that is the problem because you may suddenly discover, “Okay, what I’ve thought about justification is wrong, and now I see the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, see the truth of it, but I’ve got these other issues, you know, my denial of hell, my denial of the Deity of Christ or the doctrine of the Trinity,” and if those things are still heresies, you’re still in unbelief.  Even if you’ve intellectually seen the truth of one thing, that doesn’t mean you’re actually moving towards orthodoxy.

Colleen:  Absolutely.  That’s absolutely true.

Nikki:  And sometimes they need to know what they don’t know, and so getting in a church where they can be taught – we have a gal who actually used to come here, and she was a former Adventist, she actually came out of Adventism while attending this church.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  And she said, “I would ask questions, and people would just look at me like they didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand why they didn’t understand me, and –

Phil:  Yeah.

Nikki:  – there’s mutual confusion, and that’s not going to be corrected if you stay with the same people who are confused in the same way you are.

Phil:  I agree.  And it takes a while to undo years of teaching in that cult.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  Yes.

Phil:  We have – I think of my Sunday school class – probably at least half a dozen former Adventists –

Nikki:  Right.

Phil:  – and I didn’t know all of them were until I taught on the issue, and then they came up and said, “You know, we came out of that cult.”

Colleen:  Wow.

Phil:  And we also have a missionary in our church who now serves in South Africa who you certainly know.

Nikki:  Oh, Jeff Drew.

Colleen:  Jeff Drew, yes.  We know him.

Phil:  And Jeff’s exodus from Seventh-day Adventism wasn’t instantaneous.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Phil:  It took him several years to unlearn what he’d been taught.

Colleen:  Oh, yes.

Phil:  And I remember that.

Nikki:  Yeah.  And one thing I want to say, you had said that some people just don’t want to give up the doctrine of hell.

Phil:  Yeah.

Nikki:  And then you had said earlier that some people just aren’t willing to give up Ellen.  And I want to suggest that part of that is because we have been so brainwashed with fear, and what I mean by that is we are raised from Cradle Roll –

Colleen:  With our mother’s milk, yeah.

Nikki:  I mean, Cradle Roll is actually – I should explain that.  It’s like Sabbath school –

Phil:  Yeah.

Nikki:  – so it’s like Sunday school, but it’s for babies, infants.

Phil:  Right.

Nikki:  So from early on, we’re taught about the Sabbath, and we’re taught that there will come a time – Ellen saw this in vision – there will come a time when a law will be passed where Christians are going to hunt and kill Sabbathkeepers.

Phil:  Wow.

Colleen:  Oh, yes.

Nikki:  And if you give up the Sabbath because you’re afraid of dying, you will not be saved.  The only way to have eternal life is to hold fast to the Sabbath, and they call this the great persecution.  I think they think of it as like Jacob’s Time of Trouble –

Colleen:  The Time of Trouble.

Nikki:  – is how they define that.  They believe they’re the 144,000 remnant because they are the ones who hold to the commandments of God.  That’s how they –

Phil:  You know, to me, I think the most mystifying element that I’ve noticed in people who are leaving Seventh-day Adventists or who have seen that they’re wrong at least, they know they’re wrong, and they’re trying to sort out the errors, and yet, there tends to be this almost unbreakable connection with Ellen White –

Nikki:  Yeah.

Phil:  – that they just don’t want to let her go.  If I’m not mistaken, even Desmond Ford still regards her as a prophetess.

Nikki:  Oh, yes.

Colleen:  Yes.  Well, he did just die this summer, but yes, he did.

Nikki:  But he died regarding her as a –

Phil:  He never renounced her as a false prophet.

Colleen:  Well, he wouldn’t do that.  He did say she’s not authoritative as a prophet.

Phil:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Go figure.  But he wouldn’t renounce her as a false prophet, and he would say she was, like, a devotional –

Phil:  Yeah, I’m afraid the charismatics have opened the door for that because they’re teaching that, you know, you can prophecy falsely, but that doesn’t make you a false prophet.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  Which to me is the height of irrationality, but –

Colleen:  It is.

Phil:  But Ellen White had – the most fascinating part of my study of Seventh-day Adventist history was all the biographical information on Ellen White.  There’s quite a bit that was recorded by people who not only knew her, but worked with her, traveled with her –

Colleen:  Dudley Canright.

Phil:  Yeah.  And you just – you read it and you think, “How could anyone have respected this woman?”

Colleen:  Yeah.

Phil:  She was manifestly hypocritical.  She didn’t follow her own teachings.

Colleen:  No!

Phil:  And you know, my favorite is how she would go in secret and eat oysters.

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  We all love that one.  Nikki, you were going to say something.

Nikki:  Well, I was going to say Dudley Canright, who you mentioned, was a contemporary of hers, and he wrote a couple books, and I can’t think of the name of the one I’m about to refer to, you might remember it.

Colleen:  “The Life and Times of Ellen G. White?”

Nikki:  It’s a long title with a subtitle; it’s a long one.  But he talks about how people were terrified of her because she could see their sins, and she could see what they were doing, and then she would publicly destroy their lives, and so while it might look in Adventist literature as though she was highly respected, there was actually a lot of fear that she was going to destroy people.  They were afraid of her.

Colleen:  She did destroy people.

Nikki: And in fact, her private secretary went mad, didn’t she?

Colleen:  Yes, she did.

Nikki:  And ended up dying.

Colleen:  Uh-huh.

Phil:  Wow.

Colleen:  And she actually destroyed several leaders of Adventism by discrediting them, having visions exposing their sins.  One man that historically apparently was quite actually, for an Adventist leader, a good man, but he politically opposed her in some way – Ballenger, his name was – and she had him exiled to England to get him out of the way.  I mean, she would have visions to destroy people and to keep her power.  So she was frightening.

Phil:  I thought she was weird, actually.

Colleen:  And I loved that you mentioned her eyes in that talk.

Nikki:  Yes.

Phil:  Yeah, she has crazy eyes.

Nikki:  Yes.

Colleen:  Demonic eyes, I think.

Phil:  Yeah.  Yeah.  The other funny thing about her was the dress she invented, or it’s not really a dress, it’s, uh –

Nikki:  [Laughter.]  Reform dress.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Reform dress.

Phil:  – pantsuit?  What would you call it?

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Phil:  Really!  Now?  In public?

Carel:  A more modern version –

Phil:  Really?

Carel:  – not the bloomers, but I grew up with my Mom sewing her own clothes, and she had a reformed pattern that had the skirt just below the knees, pants underneath it.

Phil:  Yeah.

Carel:  And I went out in public with her like that, yeah.  [Laughter.]

Phil:  Was it hard for you?  Was it embarrassing?

Carel:  Yes.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Phil:  Because there are testimonies of, you know, contemporaries of Ellen White, men who hated her for that because she made their wives look ridiculous.  That turned a lot of people against her.

Colleen:  Yes.

Carel:  Yeah, there were weird things.  For example, for us guys she said not to wear belts.  She was really big into health –

Phil:  Were suspenders okay?

Carel:  Yes, yes.

Phil:  Okay.

Carel:  So she was really big into health stuff, and so she had a lot of commentary on what to eat, what not to eat, and a belt would restrict your bowels –

Phil:  Of course.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Of course, the bowels.

Carel:  – and so you’d wear suspenders, and so you end up being the only kid on the playground with suspenders on.

Richard:  I grew up having to wear suspenders, so when I went to Adventist grade school, first grade, I had suspenders on, and it was so embarrassing because my family was more observant than any other family in my class.  I think there might have been one other boy that sometimes wore suspenders, but I always had to, and it took me several months, maybe even a year, to figure out I could wear them underneath.  If you think of suspenders against your bare skin –

Phil:  Yeah.

Richard:  – it doesn’t feel good.

Phil:  No.  Did you go back to them when they became stylish?  Or do you hate them so much that you won’t wear them even now.

Richard:  I don’t wear suspenders.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Phil:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Over and out on that style.

Phil:  Yeah.

Colleen:  So one thing I want to ask you, and I don’t know how much you encounter this, but Adventists have always done this, but it’s become a real push in the last few years is they have their project to reach the cities and to do heavy-duty evangelism.  They pull in interest with their health clinics, their free health clinics, cooking schools, free blood pressure checks, and veganism pushings, and – do you see any of that?  And if you were to have a church member, for example, that you got wind of that was getting help at these free Adventist health clinics, what would you say?  What would you –

Phil:  I would definitely discourage it.  Yeah.  And you know, in Australia and New Zealand, one of the biggest food companies is a Seventh-day Adventist company, Sanitarium.

Colleen:  Absolutely.

Phil:  And they sell all kinds of cereals and, you know, even Marmite.  In England Marmite is its own thing.  If you go to New Zealand, it’s an inferior kind of Marmite, it doesn’t taste as good, and it’s made by Sanitarium.

Colleen:  How funny.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Phil:  People who know I like Marmite, you know, they try to give me the New Zealand kind, and I just can’t stand it.  It’s awful.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Yes.  Don’t get me started on their health food substitutes.

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Phil:  Yes!  I’m sorry, I meant to answer your question.  That was sort of an introduction to that.

Colleen:  No, you’re fine.  That’s good.

Phil:  I don’t have a problem if somebody – I mean everybody in New Zealand buys food from this company –

Colleen:  Right.

Phil:  – because a lot of the name brand stuff is made by them, it’s the only place you can get it.

Colleen:  Right.

Phil:  I don’t have a problem with buying their food and all of that, but I always think of it, you know, that it’s the Adventists who are making a profit off of it.

Colleen:  It was interesting that people like Paul Carden, who worked in Brazil for a while, it was their peanut butter and their food and their hospitals –

Phil:  Yep.

Colleen:  – and that was his first exposure, really, and it seemed sort of benign.

Phil:  Wow.  Do people get drawn into the denomination, the cult, because of the food products even?

Nikki:  In part.  You know, they want to help you fix your life.

Phil:  Right.

Nikki:  It’s a lot of moralism.  They’re going to help you quit smoking; they’re going to help you quit drinking; they’re going to help you lose weight.  They have a program that they call CHIP –

Colleen:  – and NEWSTART.

Nikki:  Yeah.  And so they’re helping you better your life, and they’re showing you how well you can live, and they’re bringing you into a community, and so somebody who’s struggling in these areas can come in and have all – but then, you know, once you get in, if you happen to have any kind of struggles, then they start dealing with you, like –

Colleen:  A problem.

Nikki:  Yeah.  There’s not support and loving –

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  – effort to help you.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  It’s dealt with as serious sin.

Colleen:  So these are very effective methods of public evangelism and outreach because it hits people’s felt needs.  What would you say if you knew somebody was studying with or interested in or drawn into their prophecy seminars and their Bible studies and feeling like these people are getting all excited about studying the Bible?

Phil:  Yeah, and that does happen.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  And I always discourage people.  If you want to study the Bible, great, I’ll recommend some resources for you and all, but don’t get into a cult, and that’s what this is, and I’ll explain why –

Colleen:  Yes.  Good.

Phil:  – and you know, sometimes it’s helpful.  Others – as you know, someone who’s in several generations of Seventh-day Adventism, it’s very hard to convince them that, you know, there’s a danger here that you need to – because they think, “Well, my family’s been in this for years, so how can it be wrong?”

Colleen:  And they say the right words to them, “Oh, I believe in Jesus.  I don’t believe you need to keep the Sabbath to be saved.”

Phil:  Right.

Nikki:  And I’m wondering if you could share a little encouragement to those who have left Adventism who are feeling incredible strain from their family to come back or, you know, “Just come this Sabbath, just come with us for this baptism.”  They’re feeling that strain.

Phil:  Yeah.

Nikki:  And then they do have Christians who are telling them it’s really not that bad.  You can go, you can worship God anywhere.  What would you say to them?

Phil:  Well, you need to study what the problems are with Seventh-day Adventism so that you can tell your family, “No, this is why, and this is why I don’t trust it, and I’m not going to be re-educated into cultishness.”  And my advice would be – and it’s hard for some people because they just don’t have the personality, but my advice would be however aggressive your family is in trying to pull you back into the cult, you be more aggressive in giving them the gospel and so that they hear the gospel, so that they’re forced to think about it.  And don’t expect them to respond positively the first time you give them the gospel.  And if they don’t respond positively, still don’t give up.  I’ve known people who’ve come to Christ after 15 years, after I gave up on them, you know, and then suddenly the seed that’s been sowed and somebody watered will bear fruit.

Nikki:  Uh-hmm.

Phil:  So just keep sowing that seed and realize that that’s your duty as a believer is to give them the gospel.  I’d like to say, well, don’t feel bad about it, but it does feel bad when your family’s after you, they feel you’ve disappointed them and all that.  I understand that.  Jesus understood that as well, and it’s why He said so much about if you’re going to follow me, you have to be willing to leave father, mother, sister, brother, and a man’s enemies will be his own household.  Christ recognized that that’s the potential of the gospel, to divide even families, and it seems on the surface like a bad thing because it’s hurtful, and you’re hurting actually people that you dearly love, you’re hurting them emotionally at least, but you’re not hurting them, you’re not.  You’re being an example of Christ’s love and truth to them, and that’s what they need.  And even though it’s difficult and it’s uncomfortable, you’ve got to persevere in that effort.  And don’t be duped by people who say, “Yeah, well, it’s Seventh-day Adventism, they’re not that far off.”

Nikki:  Right.

Phil:  Because they corrupt the gospel, and so it doesn’t matter how close they may sound to orthodoxy in other areas, what they’re proclaiming is a different gospel, and it’s deceiving people in a way that keeps them from really embracing and knowing Christ.

Nikki:  Part of the dynamic that we hear about from people who are in this situation is the tension between honoring your mother and father –

Phil:  Right.

Nikki:  – and then disappointing them so greatly or needing to protect their children from the influence of their parents’ indoctrination.

Phil:  Yeah.

Nikki:  What would you say to them?

Phil:  Well, I feel that pressure.  I mean, when I became a Christian, my parents were, and had been for many years, in a liberal church.  It was a church where the Bible wasn’t taught, wasn’t believed, and all of that.  And their first response to, you know, my salvation was “He’s become a fanatic, he’s joined a cult.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Phil:  They were afraid that I was in a cult.  And you know, I was pretty aggressive at first, maybe too much, not sensitive enough to them, but kept giving them the gospel.  It took years for them to see, from the consistency in my life, that I hadn’t just impulsively jointed a cult, but that something really had happened that changed my life, and you know, they responded to that well.  They ended up in a sound church and soundly saved themselves, and you know, be patient, just be patient and be consistent with the way you live, because your testimony to your family is the one thing that’s most likely to really persuade them to listen more carefully to what you’re saying and open their hearts to the gospel.

Colleen:  It’s such an interesting things because my husband’s parents were such devout – well, his father died this summer, and his mother is actually dying – such devout Adventists, and there’s never been a letdown, not at any point a letdown, but sometimes we actually come to the point where we pray for other people to tell them the gospel.

Phil:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Because the hostility is such that it’s cut off conversation sometimes.

Phil:  You know, John MacArthur said that yesterday in one of the Q&A’s, that if you have a wayward child, he was talking about, maybe the best thing to do is pray that someone besides you is going to come and give them the gospel because they’ve probably already exhausted their ability to hear it from you –

Colleen:  They have, yes.

Phil:  – and they know you believe and all that.

Colleen:  That happens, actually.

Phil:  Yeah, it does.  It does.

Colleen:  Yeah.  In the light of the pushback that we face, which we face from all parts of the Christian community sometimes, what would you say to encourage Christian pastors to take the errors and dangers of Adventism, take those dangers up with their congregations, the sheep in their care?

Phil:  Exactly.  And that is a frustration that I face as well, and not just about Seventh-day Adventism, but Roman Catholicism –

Colleen:  Right.

Phil:  – the charismatic movement, the prosperity gospel part of the charismatic movement, where the gospel is clearly being corrupted, and yet it’s very difficult, it seems, to get some evangelical pastors to take that seriously.

Colleen:  I know.

Phil:  My advice to them is that is your duty as a pastor, otherwise you’re just a hireling.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  Your duty is to guard your flock from false teaching, specifically, so you need to know these doctrines and understand what they teach.  Don’t take somebody’s word for it that, okay, they’re all right, they’re sound enough.  You need to study it and understand what they do with and to the gospel, and I think if you do that with Adventism or Roman Catholicism or the prosperity gospel, a faithful pastor has to conclude that these are teachings I am duty-bound to warn my congregation against.

Colleen:  Thank you.  I appreciate that.

Nikki:  Can you give some advice to those who are leaving and looking for a church in a dangerous climate of false churches?

Colleen:  Good question.

Nikki:  It’s been so hard for us to –

Phil:  Yeah, that is a great question.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Phil:  When I became a Christian, it was – I discovered the gospel sort of accidentally, reading the Bible for myself, and just reading the Bible convinced me that I was lost.  It set me on a quest to find the gospel.  And providentially, the Lord led me within three days to a number of sources that gave me the gospel with such clarity that I came to faith, but basically on my own, so that, I mean, there wasn’t anyone who took any sort of shepherd’s responsibility for me, and yet I knew I needed to join a church where I would be taught and fed, and all I knew to do was find a church where the pastor – all I wanted was a church where the pastor opened the Bible and taught from it.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Yes.

Phil:  That’s all I looked for.

Nikki:  That’s hard to find.

Phil:  And I didn’t know from Baptist, Presbyterian, or whatever, I didn’t know.  I’d grown up in a very liberal Methodist church, and I had a good friend whose father was a Pentecostal faith-healer.

Colleen:  Oh, wow.

Phil:  And I’d experienced both of those ends of the spectrum, and in neither case did they just open the Bible and declare its truth.  So I just started visiting churches in my area, and about the fourth week or so, I ended up in a church that the pastor opened the Bible and taught from it.  And that sort of set me on the direction.  He recommended that I go and study at Moody Bible Institute in the days when you really could learn the Bible and some decent theology at Moody, and that’s what set me on the right direction.  I think that would still be my advice.  There are good sources on the Internet where you can find churches in various areas.  The Master’s Seminary operates a list of churches where their alumni are pastors; most of them are going to be sound, solid Bible expositors.  The Founders movement in the Southern Baptist denomination also keeps a list of churches, most of which I would recommend, or at least it’s a great starting point to look for a good church, or find someone who you know who is a solid church and see if they have a recommendation, but failing all of that, I would say, visit churches until you find one where the pastor opens the Bible and actually teaches from it with clarity and – I mean, you’ll recognize if it’s accurate because it’ll be clear and right from the text.  You can look at the text of the Scripture yourself and say, “Yep, that’s what it says.”  If what he’s saying, even if he’s pretending to teach from the Bible, if it’s unclear and murky and confusing, then keep looking.

Nikki:  So I have a good friend in kind of a remote part of Canada who has been looking for a church for years, and the only way for her to regularly attend a church is for her to sit under the teaching of pastors who veer or are a little charismatic.  What would you say to somebody who really doesn’t have a good option?

Phil:  Yeah, and that is a hard question.  There are some – there are not many, and it’s certainly not the majority of charismatic churches – there are some charismatic churches where you’ll hear some decent Bible teaching, and you’ll hear the gospel.  If that’s the only choice in an area, I’d say choose the best one –

Nikki:  Okay.

Phil:  – and if that’s it, then fine.  The fact that it’s charismatic doesn’t necessarily mean that they twist the gospel.

Nikki:  Okay.

Phil:  But watch out for those who are teaching about prosperity and seed offerings and stuff like that or making false prophecies and promises.  If they don’t open the Bible and teach from it, keep looking.

Nikki:  Okay.  Thank you.

Colleen:  Good advice.  Thank you so much for taking this time.

Nikki:  Yes, thank you.

Phil:  Thanks for having me.  I’d love to talk with y’all again sometime.

Colleen:  Well, we’ve enjoyed this a lot.

Phil:  All right.

Colleen:  Thank you.

Phil:  Thank you. †