We got mail…

You Say Things I think

I just wanted you to know how much I am appreciating your 28 Fundamental Beliefs series. I have to listen to each podcast two or three times to pull out all the nuances. It always amazes me to hear one of you say something that I have thought to myself, but I have had nobody to talk with about it. For instance, when I first came across your ministry and started reading the Bible and accepting it at face value, I got super excited, wanted to ask a pastor about things, and then realized that although I knew pastors, I had no one to talk with and get excited with (there’s truly nothing more exciting than taking John 5:24 at face value, for example). 

Well, that’s all—just a note of thanks and encouragement that people do listen and appreciate you.

—VIA EMAIL

 

What About Once Saved, Always Saved?

As you know, in the Seventh-day Adventist church we wondered if our salvation was secure, and we feared for it a lot. I want to ask if the adage “once saved, always saved” is correct. In other words, is it true that we will never lose our salvation? Also, if we are still not perfect when Jesus returns, will He change us so that we are completely perfect and sinless, ready for Heaven? Ellen White was emphatic in saying that no character transformation at the second coming will take place. She also said that most Seventh-day Adventists won’t make it to Heaven. I am concerned, because the Lord’s return is near, and I am still far from perfect with many flaws.

—VIA EMAIL

 

Response: Thank you for writing! Adventism definitely taught us to define our readiness for heaven by our character perfection, or at least by our character growth. In fact, Scripture teaches that our salvation depends upon something else entirely. It depends on BELIEVING God. In Genesis 15:6, Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to Him for righteousness.” On this side of the cross, our belief is in God’s full revelation of His promises: the gift of the Lord Jesus who became incarnate in a mortal body, took our imputed sin into Himself, and paid the price to propitiate God’s wrath again sin.

When we believe, we are born again and given a new spirit and a new heart, as God promised in Ezekiel 36; we are literally made into a new creation and move from being in Adam to being in Christ (Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15:20–28). We are actually transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13). When we hear the gospel of our salvation and believe, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise who is the guarantee of our eternal future (Eph. 1:13-14). When we believe we pass out of death into LIFE (Jn. 5:24). 

We are asked to believe that Jesus did finish His work of atonement on the cross. God convicts us of our sin, and when we trust Him in repentance and trust and believe that Jesus has taken all our sin, past, present, and future, to the cross in His body, we are given new life. When we are born again, we cannot be “unborn” any more than a baby can be unborn after being born. After being born again, then God causes us to grow in Him, bearing the fruit of the Spirit and doing the work He created in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10). 

We know from the parable of the soils that some people do respond to the gospel news and appear to accept it. They join the church and function in the body of Christ, but when the heat is on, they wither and die because they never put down roots into the truth of God’s word and into the Lord Jesus and His completed atonement. Others also appear to germinate gospel plants, but the weeds that are the cares of this world also share the soil of that person’s heart, and the gospel plant is choked out by the financial and other worldly concerns that fill the soil. 

In other words, people can be truly drawn to the gospel and even “follow Jesus” and work with the church without being fully trusting in Him. Judas is an example of this kind of person. He lived and worked with the disciples, even going on the missionary journeys into the cities of Judah and healing the sick and casting out demons, but he did not believe. His heart was divided. He loved his own values and his own world more than Jesus, and he betrayed his master. He was never a true believer. 

1 John 2:19 says that people that go out from the body of Christ were never “with us”. They were never truly born again.The sanctification the Lord brings into our lives as true believers does teach us to trust Him more and more the longer we live, but we will never reach perfection this side of being glorified. Perfection of personal character is not the requirement for salvation; belief in the Lord Jesus is required. The issue is not being good or bad; the real issue is being dead in sin or alive through trusting in Jesus alone!

The judgment for rewards described in 1 Corinthians 3:9–15 will reveal which of our works were built on the foundation of Christ and which were not, but those works that were not built on Christ will be burned up while the person himself will be saved! We did not learn that in Adventism!

Are you still an Adventist? I want to encourage you to read the book of Galatians in context. Get a notebook, and begin copying the book. Ask the Lord to teach you what you need to know and to understand what He wants you to understand. The Lord will show you how to have integrity to make your beliefs match your behavior. Adventism teaches a false gospel; light cannot have fellowship with darkness. Ask the Lord to show you what His word says and to plant you deeply in it!

He is faithful and will never fail to keep us who are His sheep. 

 

How should we view Adventists?

I grew up in an Adventist home in the Philippines. I came to America in 1970 as a legal immigrant with my family. This is where I later learned about the true gospel of grace through various resources including Proclamation! magazine. My question to you is about the burden of the apostle Paul written to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. He had become all things to all men in the hope that by doing so he could save some. 

He grouped all people into four groups: 1) Jews 2) those under the Law 3) those without Law  4) weak. In my understanding of what he said, all these four groups have a common denominator: they need a Savior, Jesus Christ of course. 

Would you agree that the Adventist believers would fall under number 2? My question to you is this:  how should we treat the Adventists as a group or as a church? Should we engage in evangelism to them with the true gospel of grace, or should we just wait for some of them to come out and minister to them? Is it necessary for us to remove our name from the rolls of the church in order to be saved? Did the apostle Paul renounce his being a Jew when he believed in Jesus? 

—VIA EMAIL

 

Response: You ask a good question, and here’s my answer: NO. Adventists do NOT fall under your category 2. They are not under the law. The law cannot be separated from itself; the Ten Commandments—the actual “words of the covenant” (Ex. 34:26-27) were the heart of the Mosaic covenant. All 603 of the other laws were inseparable from the Ten. When James wrote in the New Testament that if anyone breaks any one law, he is guilty of breaking all, he was not speaking of the Ten Commandments specifically; he was referring to the entire Mosaic Law. The context in James 2 makes that very clear. In other words, Adventists do NOT keep most of the Old Covenant laws. The Ten Commandments cannot continue without the rest of the Mosaic Covenant. In fact, Hebrews 6-7 explains that the entire Mosaic covenant is built on the Levitical priesthood, but now we have a new order of priesthood: the Melchizekek priesthood. The change of the priest requires a change of the law (Heb. 7:12). Adventism does NOT live under the Mosaic law, and they are very clear that they do not embrace the whole law!

Adventism is not a Christian denomination. They have built their organization on Arianism (the founders did not believe Jesus was eternal, almighty God), and they have an unbiblical view of man—that man does not have an immaterial spirit which is born dead (Eph. 2:1–3) and must be born again. They do not believe Jesus finished the atonement at the cross but believe He continues it in heaven where He is applying His blood to sins as believers confess. If they forget to confess, their sins (and remember, the investigative judgment is about professed believers, not about unbelievers) remain on the books and count against the person. This is an unbiblical teaching! 

Adventism cannot be evaluated as a form of Christianity. They are worshiping a different Jesus and have a different gospel which is no gospel at all (see Gal. 1:6-10). Their adherence to the Ten Commandments is not even shaped according to biblical law-keeping. They actually deny the finished work of Jesus and turn back to embrace the law; they do not believe that Jesus finished the atonement and that He alone is all they need for salvation. Furthermore, they have a false prophet.

Adventism must be evaluated as a false religion, not as a form of Christianity. For an example, what would you say about Jehovah’s Witnesses or about Mormonism? Would you consider their members to be “Mormon believers” or “Jehovah’s Witness believers”? No! Even Adventism recognizes these religions as cults with utterly heretical teachings.

Adventism is in the same camp as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses. They need the gospel. I would treat Adventists the same as I would treat Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. I would share the gospel with them when they give me opportunity to speak; if they resist or argue, refusing to hear, I would stop trying to make them “hear”. Jesus Himself said that we must not cast our pearls before swine lest they trample the pearls into the mud and turn and rend us. When people are resistant and argumentative, they harden their hearts when we insist on bringing up discussions of truth, and they begin to sin more.

In answer to your question, I believe we speak to them about the gospel just as we would speak to Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses: as God brings openings to speak. Otherwise, we pray for them.

Paul did not “renounce” being a Jew because he WAS A JEW. He had an ethnic heritage that went back to the tribe of Benjamin! But He had to see that His Judaism was fulfilled in Christ. He had to turn from the Jewish system of worship and embrace Jesus alone. In Philippians 2 Paul outlines His Jewish credentials and says they were all rubbish in the light of knowing Christ Jesus His Lord.

He DID stop living as a Jew; He travelled and ate with and ministered to and stayed with gentiles all over Asia Minor and Europe as he evangelized and took the gospel to the gentiles. Of course he always preached in the synagogues when he arrived in towns—and he preached there as long as they tolerated him. But when they threw him out, he did not go back.

Adventism is not Christian. If you would not worship in a Mormon ward or a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, if you would not worship at a Buddhist temple, then worshiping with Adventists (if you are a born-again believer in Jesus alone) would be in that same category as worshiping in any other false, pagan religion. Removing our names from the church rolls is not necessary for salvation—salvation is based entirely upon believing in Jesus alone, and being lost is entirely based upon NOT believing and remaining spiritually dead in sin (see Ephesians 2:1–10 and Colossians 1:13, etc.). But if one has fully trusted Jesus alone, the Lord brings us face to face with the decision to make our actions match our beliefs. If we believe that Adventism is false, we have an integrity problem if we remain Adventist and thus endorse Adventism. 

All of us who have been Adventists know that members disagree about the doctrines. Yet Adventism is consistent and clear: there is only ONE Adventism and only one Adventist worldview. Staying within that framework if we do not believe it is dishonest and compromises our witness, both to them and to those outside the organization.