BY KASPARS OZOLINS
Dear Allen,
I have only recently gotten to know you because of the controversy that has been stirred up by your videos regarding Seventh-day Adventism. I apologize for not knowing more about your ministry, but from what I can tell, it has been very fruitful to Christians all over the world, and for that I thank God for all you have done. I am a former Seventh-day Adventist, and like many of my peers, I was concerned when I heard that you had released your original video about Adventism (now removed) in which you expressed a more favorable opinion of the organization. After some of us had contacted you, you then released a two-part series titled ‘I was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG about Seventh-Day Adventism’ in which you went in-depth into an examination about the movement and its false teachings (based on your own findings).
This, perhaps to your surprise, brought up many different reactions from Seventh-day Adventists. On the one hand, conservative, traditional Adventists have doubled down in their defense of the centrality of the Old Covenant sabbath and other key SDA tenets. On the other hand, more progressive SDAs, such as YouTube vlogger Justin Khoe, have tried to water down, or otherwise reinterpret the church’s traditional doctrines and the many troubling statements of its prophetess, Ellen G. White. Welcome to the strange world of Seventh-day Adventism.
To give but a brief overview of my background––I grew up in the progressive wing of Adventism. I was a fourth-generation Adventist who grew up in a loving family with my father an SDA pastor who baptized me in my teens. I rarely heard Ellen G. White mentioned in the sermons of the churches I attended (though she was not completely absent), and many of the traditional SDA doctrines either received little attention or were reinterpreted so as to water them down. For example, the heretical investigative judgment (itself the product of many failed prophecies)––since rebranded by the mainstream church as the ‘pre-advent judgment’––was not mentioned much, if at all. The sabbath was nevertheless a strong component in SDA culture, and traditional views on things such as the soul (humans didn’t have one) and hell prevailed. The Great Controversy theme was part and parcel of my Adventist worldview.
I actually grew up attending the same high school that Justin did and I knew him a bit. I don’t have anything against him personally, though we obviously have gone very different paths in our lives. I was confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ in 2013 and became a born-again believer in March of that year. However, it would take three long years for me to figure out whether or not I could ultimately remain Seventh-day Adventist. It was very hard and painful to leave, though I did eventually.
As you mentioned in your dialogue with Justin, you discovered that many of us former Adventists left for doctrinal reasons. I was never abused, nor was I ever mistreated by anyone in the church. As such, it was initially very easy to rationalize these things for me. I reasoned that since Ellen White was not mentioned much in the pulpit, perhaps God wanted me to be a reforming voice in the church––presenting an alternative kind of Adventism, a more evangelical Adventism.
This is in fact very much the kind of Adventism that Justin would like for you and the world to believe in. His recently released documentary series ‘Humans of Adventism’ tries to paint a portrait of Adventists as normal, ordinary, everyday people. But while they no doubt are such, unfortunately, Seventh-day Adventism, whether in its traditional or progressive form, is anything but ordinary Christianity.
It seems to me that you sensed this in your interview with Justin: there is a very distinct duplicity within progressive Adventism. On the one hand, he stated to you that your criticisms of Adventism have a ‘grain of truth’ to them. At another point, however, he painted a picture within the church in which ‘we see the heavy emphasis on works as opposed to the finished work of Jesus.’ That sure sounds quite different from ‘a grain of truth.’ Nevertheless, in the very same interview, Just repeatedly denied that the official church even remotely teaches anything approaching works-salvation. This, despite the fact that in your research you discovered that Adventism’s founding prophetess, Ellen G. White, made many extremely problematic and offensive statements that are contrary to the gospel.
It may not be deliberate in all cases, but the fact nevertheless remains that progressive Adventists try to brush aside criticisms of Ellen G. White and traditional Adventism without confronting the fundamental heresies that the church itself was founded on. One may try to water down the SDA emphasis on the sabbath as a test of salvation if one wishes, but that can never resolve the fundamental tension you point out: if a godly Christian believer does not obey the fourth commandment as understood by Adventists, how can that be anything but a very serious offense against a holy God? At the end of the day, one may ignore or downplay Ellen G. White as much as one wishes, but that does not automatically give you the gospel and a biblical church, since the very foundations of Adventism are rooted in an Arian view of Christ and an altogether different, false gospel.
Contrary to Justin’s claims that you are engaging in sensationalism and simply trying to get more YouTube views, the issues at stake here are massive. With over 20 million members worldwide (well above the membership of either Mormonism or Jehovah’s witnesses), the following question demands an answer: Is Seventh-day Adventism a biblical church or not? I myself and other former Adventists do not want to win you over simply in order to score points or to denigrate the church or carry out a vendetta against it. Many of our families, friends, and neighbors are still within the Adventism movement and we are genuinely concerned for their souls. More than that, we are concerned for the glory of God and the purity of his gospel. As your fellow brother in Christ, I urge you to fight the good fight and defend the faith ‘once for all delivered to the saints’ with both truth and love.
In Christ,
Kaspars Ozolins
- Overthrowing the Son: How Adventism Denies God His Glory - May 2, 2024
- Coming To Grips With the Deceptive Nature of Adventism - March 14, 2024
- Truth Led Him Out. Truth Led Him Home. - January 11, 2024
This is well stated, especially the advice to do everything in “truth and love”.