We got mail…

What’s true?

Thank you for researching all the information for your podcasts. I listen to your podcasts more than once—the first time to let it sink in, and then the second time to form questions and look up the Scriptures.

For podcast #100, “The Word of God”, I have some questions. Like Nikki, I too used the Bible like an eight-ball. I would pray for guidance, then let the Bible fall open, and wherever my finger landed, that was the word for the day. My friend still uses this method today. Also, I do remember the ABC’s Of Prayer.

Here’s my question: is Jesus NOT my personal Savior as I was taught to believe? Are the Scriptures NOT my go-to for guidance as I was taught to believe?

As a newbie studying the Scriptures (thanks to Nikki for listing the 10 Guides to studying the Bible), I’m questioning everything I’ve learned being an Adventist. Please excuse my constant questioning as I don’t have anyone local to ask who isn’t an Adventist.

—VIA EMAIL

Response: The problem with Adventism is that they use words that are true, but they attach meanings to those words which are different from the normal Christian understandings. For example, “Jesus is my personal Savior” and “Scriptures are my go-to for guidance” are true statements. Within the Adventist great controversy worldview, however, those statements have different implications than they do for Christians.

I’ll start with the “Scriptures are my go-to” statement to explain what I mean. For Christians, the Bible is what is says it is. Jesus quoted the Old Testament often, endorsing it, applying its words, and fulfilling its meanings. For example, Jesus said that just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Mt. 12:40). Jesus affirmed the reality of Jonah, endorsing the fact that he existed, and that the story was not merely a myth. (Today many liberal Christians and Adventists say Jonah was not literally true. We had an Adventist pastor at Glendale City Church years ago who said in his Sabbath School class, “Jonah is more true than if it actually happened.”) Jesus, however, confirmed Jonah’s existence and used Jonah’s experience as a sign of His own coming burial.

In other words, the Bible states its authority. Jesus confirmed the authority of the Old Testament, and in the New Testament the writers assert its power and function and authority (see 2 Timothy 3:16–17; Hebrews 4:12–13). Peter also equated Paul with “the rest of Scripture” (2 Peter 3:16). 

So—we ABSOLUTELY go to Scripture for guidance, because it tells us the truth! It’s the only thing we have in this fallen world that is tangible and 100% truthful. Inside Adventism, however, we were taught that the Bible was our source of guidance, but that guidance came to us inside our Adventist worldview, and the Scripture we consulted was never contextual. It was proof-texted and interpreted through EGW so we understood it to mean things that it didn’t mean IN CONTEXT. Consequently, when we would go to Scripture and look for guidance by choosing a verse to read randomly, or by going to favorite proof-texts, we were reading our Adventism INTO the Bible instead of allowing the Bible to speak to us.

Instead, now we understand that we submit ourselves TO Scripture. We place ourselves under it, not over it. We submit to the Lord as we read, and we read IN CONTEXT, whole chapters at a time, so we understand the author’s intent. Instead of asking, “What does this mean to me?” we ask, “Who wrote this, and to whom? What were the circumstances? Are there commands? Warnings? Declarations? What would the first readers have understood the author to be saying to them?” 

Only after we have looked at the passage from the perspective of the first reader do we make application to ourselves, and the application to us cannot mean something significantly different from what it would have meant to the first reader. Of course, sometimes we will go to specific places for guidance and comfort, but always we have to read IN CONTEXT. We can’t pick a text out of context and claim it for ourselves because outside of its context, the text may suggest something to us based on our own thinking, not on the writer’s intention. 

So yes—absolutely we go to Scripture for guidance, but we don’t go as a “blank slate” prepared to interpret whatever our eyes see first. We go submitted, not demanding, asking God to teach us, and we read in context and allow the Lord to speak His reality to us in context. We are not the first audience; God’s words to the first audience will mean to us what they meant to them.

Roger Coon and his ABCs Of Prayer used to teach that all Bible promises were for everyone. I heard him teach that if a young man was having problems with being attracted to a “bad” girl, the man should claim the promise God made in Genesis 3 where He told the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman”. Coon said the man should “claim that promise”, and on the basis of that promise ask God to put abhorrence in him for that bad woman. 

Obviously such appropriation is a horrible misuse of Scripture. God’s words to the serpent are not His words to us! If a young man has trouble with attraction to a bad woman, his first order of business is not to try to arm-wrestle his will into loathing for her; his first order of business is to deal with the Lord. There is no hope of fixing a bad relationship if one isn’t trusting the Lord and submitted to His will. 

If the man is then trusting the Lord and born again, he has the position in Christ to submit to God’s will and to flee from evil and idolatry. Submitting to the Lord in the temptation is very different from demanding that God fulfill for us a promise He made to Satan! 

And yes—Jesus IS my personal Savior when I believe the gospel of my salvation and have been born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13-14). But the words “my personal Savior” are not the words of Scripture. The commonly used phrase, that we must “accept Jesus as our personal Savior”, are words that don’t actually say anything. If a person does not understand her own sin and her need of a Savior, for example, or if she doesn’t know the true gospel—that Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, that He was buried, and that He rose on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor 15:1-4), what does it really mean to “accept Jesus as your personal Savior”? That was always the problem I had as an Adventist!

Adventism does not teach the gospel; it teaches “accepting Jesus” and then turning to the Law and throwing oneself into prayer and agony over trying to keep the law. That approach is absolutely backwards.

Instead, Scriptures asks us to “Believe”. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). “This is the work of God, that you believe in the One whom He has sent” (Jn. 6:29). The one who has believed does not come into condemnation but has passed out of death into life (Jn. 5:24). And so on.

Without understanding the gospel and our true nature—children of wrath (Eph. 2:3)—we have no real understanding of what it would even mean to accept Jesus as our personal Savior. As an Adventist, I only knew I had to find a way to be saved, to get to heaven. I did not know I was spiritually dead. I didn’t know HOW to accept Jesus so it would “stick”. I kept accepting Him over and over and never believed my sins, past present, and future, were forgiven. I believed I kept falling out of salvation. 

Only the true gospel resolves these issues. 

So—yes. Adventism uses words that we hear in Christianity, but they are redefined to fit the Adventist worldview that we have no spirits, that Jesus could have failed and did not complete the atonement, and that we must beat ourselves into obedience to the Law. Those Christian words lose their power and meaning when we don’t know who Jesus really is, what He really did, or who we really are. As Adventists, we didn’t know our true need. Because we lived in an “alternate reality”, Scripture didn’t make sense. Now, however, the real gospel is showing us what is real. God’s word reveals ultimate and absolute truth, and it is God’s gift to us. When He brings us alive, His words have new meaning, and they reveal us to ourselves and Him to us. 

That pesky Great Controversy worldview completely warped our perceptions of life and truth! Even Scripture was obscured because we read it in the context of a false worldview! In Christ, however, reality becomes clear.

 

My Resistance To Adventism

My wife, daughter, mother, and several of my cousins are indoctrinated in Adventism. As most Adventists and Former Adventists can affirm, every year Adventists have an annual two-week prophecy seminar or campaign where I live in which an Adventist evangelist is invited from either the USA, Australia, the Caribbean, or Africa to preach. The objective at the end of the campaign is to encourage people to be baptized into Adventism. 

I have been to several of these campaigns and have been reluctant to stand up when the minister gave his call. Each time I get asked the same questions: has your heart been touched? When are you going to give your heart to the Lord ? Then I am advised, “Don’t leave it’s too late.” 

My response to the question with regards to baptism is, if my head and my heart aren’t right, then there is no point in being baptized. I don’t want to make a decision based on emotions stirred up by the campaign. Everything has to be clear with no distractions. 

I then get told that I am trying to be a perfect Christian. 

In my early 40’s, I had a breakdown with anxiety and went to see a counsellor who happened to be a Christian but not an Adventist. She asked me if I was a Christian, and my response was that even though I believed in God, I wouldn’t classify myself as a Christian because I hadn’t been baptized. When I explained the issue about my wife’s opinion on the matter (she wanted me to be baptized), she was in agreement with her.

Lo and behold, I contacted Former Adventist a few years later after an argument with my wife about Adventism. I listened to a few podcasts, and one of them talked about Ellen White’s view of perfection. It was the answer I needed after all these years. It made me realize that the catalyst for my attitude of resistance was EGW. Subliminally, through listening to Adventist sermons, Ellen had planted the perfection seed in my mind which made me reluctant to stand up. The things that were used to entice people to join thankfully pushed me away.

I would advise the people reading this: Adventism is dangerous. It is based on scapegoating and scaremongering people to join when you get to the true core of it. Any literature to do with Ellen White needs to be put in the trash because when you interpret Scripture through her lenses, you can’t interpret Scripture from a fair perspective. How can you take her word about Sunday worshippers receiving the mark of the beast? The only literature you need in your Christian journey is the Bible. At least, if you use the Bible only, you are likely to find out why people worship on a day other than Saturday!

—VIA EMAIL 

 

Spot On

I spent some time listening to your dialogue in the podcast on Fundamental Belief #11: “Growing In Christ”. It was very powerful, and I agree. Nikki, your assessment of Adventist teachings reveals much that I have discovered over the past five years. I won’t repeat it but just want to say, “Spot on”!”

Jesus gives me His victory and obedience. I have His victory, not my own. I have His obedience, not my own. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:27 that the mystery of God is Christ in you. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 it says we share in His righteousness through our union with Christ. 

My righteousness will always be as filthy rags and incomplete, no matter how good I can get. 

My salvation is in Jesus’ merits, not my own. 

Keep up the good work. I really enjoyed how candid you gals are.

—VIA EMAIL