Help! My son and his wife are Adventists
My son and daughter-in-law have been Adventists for the past 10 years. At present, we are having Bible studies by Zoom on Saturday nights. For them, they wish to convince me of the validity of their beliefs. For me, I value it as my connection with them. These are particular issues where we are constantly stuck: 1844 and EGW, Sabbath-keeping, and the Investigative Judgment. I firmly, yet lovingly and respectfully, reject these.
I love my son beyond words and will do anything to not lose contact with him. But I need help.
A friend just told me about the Proclamation! website. I’ve read so much and am so grateful to have found it.
I speak with my son on a weekly basis regarding these issues. I wish I could just send all the articles I’ve read to him and his wife all to him at once, but I know that would not be wise. That would be overload, for one thing, but my goal is to keep our talks to a loving discussion.
I was excited to talk after listening to a video based on Galatians 3, but I did not do it well. I stumbled over it and couldn’t articulate what I wanted to say.
They do not attend any Adventist meetings, as they have found some to advocate abortion which they are strongly against. So they read the Bible and study and listen to online messages. They keep the Sabbath and urge me to do so as well.
I said I didn’t mind keeping the Sabbath to do my own studies, but I Will NOT miss my own church services on Sunday. They don’t understand when I say, “I need to be fed.”
Neither of them was raised in Adventism. Always before they were in Bible-believing churches until they were married for a few years.
I can’t tell you how happy I am for your help.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you so much for writing! I am going to send you some links; Adventism is hard to get your “arms around” until their worldview becomes more clear. The doctrines can sound almost right when they try to defend them to outsiders; what does not change is the underlying worldview through which they view reality. Their false view of the nature of man (purely physical with no immaterial spirit) alters their understanding of sin, salvation, and the nature of the Lord Jesus. It eclipses the necessity of being born again and keeps them from even knowing what that means.
The first thing I will send you is an article addressing this worldview and showing how it contrasts with a biblical worldview:
What Is Seventh-day Adventism?
Next I will give you a link to an old edition of Proclamation! that contains two articles: one describes the classic understanding of the investigative judgment, and another explains how progressive Adventists try to explain it using “updated” improved descriptions:
Investigative Judgment articles
Next I will attach an article explaining that the Adventist Jesus is the WRONG Jesus. This article contrasts the new covenant revelation of Jesus’ supremacy over the law as discussed in Hebrews and shows that Adventists (through the writings of Ellen White) portray Jesus as an old covenant priest.
Jesus Is Not An Old Covenant Priest
Next I will attach a video from a recent Former Adventist Fellowship Conference explaining the biblical covenants. Adventism does NOT teach this biblical revelation.
And here is a video showing the biblical context and meaning behind one of Adventism’s Sabbath “proof texts”, that Jesus is “Lord of the Sabbath”: Why is Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath?
I’m also going to give you one more link; this is an article explaining that Adventism is pro-choice and it gives the history of the dual guidelines which have existed in the organization since 1971. The Adventist view of the nature of man make abortion perfectly OK. Since they do not believe humans have immaterial spirits separate from the body, the unborn are not truly viable people until they are born. In fact, their book Seventh-day Adventists Believe states that every time a child is born, a soul “comes into existence”. Their belief that the human spirit is literally the breath in our nostrils is the basis for this understanding. Until a baby breathes, it is not a soul, they believe. Abortion, therefore, is not the killing of a complete human. Here is the link: Abortion In Adventism
Finally, I recommend you start following the Former Adventist Podcast. Many people, both former and never-been Adventists, say these have helped them to understand Adventism better than anything else because Nikki Stevenson and I share our old Adventist understandings as we talk through passages of Scripture and explain how Scripture corrects our previous assumptions. You can find the podcasts here or wherever you listen to podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/former-adventist/id1482887969
Unconvinced about hell
I read the article about hell. My problem is with going into eternal evil and darkness. That means evil is eternal. And if you say “destruction” does not mean annihilation but that God’s intention for humanity is not realized and they remain spiritually dead, than God is not able to destroy evil.
That would be one weak god. Just think about an able God who could save all people eventually. The way we understand some of Jesus’ words depends on specific Bible translations. In some places the Greek word “eonian” is translated “eternal”, but it really means a long or undetermined period of time. Perhaps Jesus meant the wicked suffer punishment for a period of time, and the righteous are alive through those periods of time—but after all those ages, God saves everyone?
Adventists are a mix of truth and error, and not all is error.
Hell is one thing that Adventists are more correct about than are mainstream Christians. Look for the correct translation of eonian. It is not “eternal”. “Eonian” is time with a beginning and an end. Please read the attached links. I think it’s important.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I read the links you sent, and I see that the author is actually a universalist who believes that ultimately, after all the “eons”, all people will spend eternity with God. The Bible never makes provision for ultimate eternal life on the basis of Jesus’ death apart from a person’s belief.
Even without the passages where life or death are described by a form of the word “eon”, there is plenty of biblical evidence that only those who believe in the Lord have eternal life, and the wicked will be punished “forever and ever”, as Revelation 14:10 and 20: 10 say. The arguments that the author you recommended has developed deny the depravity of man, the fact that everyone “by nature” is a child of wrath (Eph. 2:1–3). We are born in that dead condition that occurred to Adam when he ate the fruit.
The author’s arguments for “kingdom life” during the kingdom “eon” as the fulfillment of Jesus’ words about “eternal life” (Mt. 25:46) also create a scenario not taught in the rest of Scripture. John 5:24, for example, says that when a person believes, he ‘passes out of death into life” and does not come into judgment. John 3:18 says that those who believe are not condemned, but those who do not believe are “condemned already”. In contrast, the websites your recommended don’t teach that we are born condemned and must believe to be given life. The author makes accommodation for all people eventually to have eternity with God, and Scripture simply does not make this accommodation.
In fact, that author’s explanations deny the Bible’s teaching from beginning to end: that people are born in the image of Adam, dead and condemned, and they must believe God to pass out of death and to be counted righteous. When we believe in the finished work of the Lord Jesus, we are literally born again, born of God, and receive the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus at that moment (see Romans 5:10, Romans 8, John 5:24, Ephesians 1:13-14). Jesus also said there is only one way to God, and that is through the Son.
The author you suggested apparently wants to find a way NOT to believe in eternal punishment. In trying to find a linguistic way to defend his position, he has left out some of the most compelling passages of the NT that describe the condition of man and the work of the Lord Jesus and our passage from literal spiritual death to life when we believe.
I respectfully disagree with him and consider him to be teaching a different gospel than the one taught in Scripture. I don’t disagree with him primarily because of his focus on “eons” but because of his universalism and his lack of clarity about the nature of man and the work of Christ.
I know how hard it is to believe in eternal punishment. Yet sin is an eternal offense before an eternal, righteous God. Jesus interrupted the curse under which we all are born by becoming a curse for us and by taking our personal sins to the cross and paying the price demanded by God—which includes Jesus Himself—so we can receive His personal righteousness. To refuse to believe is to remain under one’s own sin—not merely the deeds one does but the spiritual death with which we are all born.
Adventism truly has no doctrines that are untainted. Its foundation of physicalism and its soteriology that has Satan at the core carrying the sins of the saved into the lake of fire means every single doctrine is skewed. We cannot believe any Adventist doctrine as it is presented. All of them have an underlying component that skews Scripture.
There is no statement in Scripture that the evil are annihilated—but there is clarity that God places them outside the reach of the righteous where they are unable to interact or to have eternal connections. God redeems creation and makes all things new—including the righteous and their physical bodies. He deals with sin, but He deals with it according to His wisdom, not according to our human understanding of how that should look. We have to remember that God is outside of time and outside our three dimensions. We have no ability to comprehend how He will deal with these things as we understand them on earth. There is mystery involved in our understanding of this subject, but I believe it is safest to take the clear meaning of the words Jesus spoke to mean what they say. He is the One who spoke more of eternal punishment than any other person in the Bible.
Thank you for the podcast
Thank you, Richard and Colleen, for both of you—for in the midst of your everyday busyness you still were able able to put back the podcast back online in its regular time slot even as you recovered from surgery.
Thank you again. Greetings to Richard and I’m always praying for his speedy recovery.
—VIA EMAIL
- 2. Did Abraham Keep the Sabbath? - May 2, 2024
- 1. Sabbath Not Changed - April 25, 2024
- Into Adventism, Out of Adventism - April 18, 2024