Colleen and Nikki continue through the book of Hebrews. They talk about Hebrews’ teaching that we can know that we are saved, and also Adventism’s denial that Jesus’ blood is enough. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today we are going to continue with Hebrews chapter 10, and before we do, I just want to remind you that you can contact us. You can write to us, give us your questions and ideas, at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you want to subscribe to our weekly newsletter, to our magazine, Proclamation!, you can go to proclamationmagazine.com. You can also donate to Life Assurance Ministries there, and that will help support the podcast, it will help support the magazine and the emails and all that Life Assurance does. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and write us a review and like our program and rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts. But now, here we are with the second part of Hebrews 10. So, Nikki, before we start looking at each verse of this last part of this chapter, I just want to ask you, as you studied the last half of Hebrews 10, how often did you think of Adventism, and how did you think of it in relationship to the chapter?
Nikki: Well, all the way through. I saw the security of the believer right from the start, beginning in verse 19, because we broke it up. That was never anything that I saw in Hebrews. In fact, if you had asked me even a few years ago what I was afraid of in Hebrews, I would say the areas where it seems like maybe we can’t be secure. But this walk through Hebrews with you has really dealt with that. The text is clear. There is security in our salvation, and I saw that right at the beginning here. Whenever I see that, I guess I get a little frustrated. I’m trying to clean that up. I get really mad – I’ll be honest, I get really mad that Adventism teaches that you can’t know you’re saved because, you know, it renders the work of Christ insufficient if you can’t know you’re saved. So I saw that, and as we move through and talk about rejecting the Son of God, trampling the Son of God, profaning the blood of the covenant, outraging the Spirit of grace, I can see all of the places in Adventism where people are set up to do all three of those things.
Colleen: I agree. I felt my anger at Adventism good and strong as I studied through this part. And as we go, we’re going to read a few quotes from some Adventist sources, just so you know we’re not personally reacting to something that was uniquely taught to us. We are reacting to Adventism as it is presented.
Nikki: I think it’s also important to say that the anger that I feel, it’s directed at the teaching, and it’s directed at the teachers who know what they’re doing. When I say that I was just really angry or I was mad at, you know, what Adventism teaches, I’m not talking about Adventist people, and I know that that’s hard to not personalize if you’re an Adventist and you’re listening to this. But there truly is a difference. Part of what made me so mad was knowing how many Adventists I deeply love who are being taught this and being fed this and believing this, and so that’s where that comes from.
Colleen: In fact, I was aware of thinking, I feel so bad for the Adventists who do believe, thinking that it is actually what the Bible teaches, knowing that there are people in authority in Adventism who know that Adventist teachings are not biblical, and they teach them anyway.
Nikki: Even the people who are naively believing what they’re being taught are held responsible before God because all it takes is a clear reading of the letter to know what God says about Himself.
Colleen: I had to face that when I came out of Adventism. How did I believe Adventism all those years when I hadthe word of God? And I will admit, I had cognitive dissonance in many ways as I read the Bible as an Adventist because it didn’t jive with what the words seemed to say and what the teachings of Adventism seemed to say. So ultimately we are held responsible, but the Lord is so gracious. He makes His word known, and He shows us what’s true, and He makes it clear so that we’re not just ignorantly missing the truth. So why don’t we start by reading verses 19-25. The first part of the last half of Hebrews 10 is a wonderful reassurance of our new and living way that has reconnected humanity with God.
Nikki: “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
Colleen: “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh” – it’s not the end of the sentence, but we’re going to stop there and look at that. Nikki, talk to me about what you understand when you read those two verses.
Nikki: We’ve clarified through the letter to the Hebrews that the holy places is heaven itself. We saw that back in chapter 9. And so when I read this, “since we have confidence to enter the holy places,” to enter heaven, “by the blood of Jesus,” I saw there that we don’t just know that there’s a chance we might get to be in heaven one day. We have confidence, we have full assurance, we know, on the basis of the blood of Christ, that we can enter into the holy places, both spiritually now, but also when we die or He calls us home.
Colleen: It’s interesting that this is a present tense verb, “we have” and then “confidence” is the object. It’s what we have now, and it says we have that confidence to enter. So like you said, we enter now in Christ. We are with Him if we have trusted Him. We are already with Him in heavenly places, with full access to God. In verse 20, I remember the year I noticed this, it was a long time ago. It was actually a lot of years ago, when we were doing Hebrews in FAF shortly after we left Adventism, and I saw in verse 20 that the new and living way which He inaugurated for us is through the veil. Now, what does that metaphor remind us of? That’s a distinct metaphor that’s referring to what he’s already talked about in this book. What’s the veil?
Nikki: That’s the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place.
Colleen: And Moses was given specific instructions of how that veil was to be woven, what kind of designs it was to have, and it was always to hang in front of the ark, separating the Most Holy Place from the Holy Place. Who could enter the Most Holy Place in Israel?
Nikki: That was the high priest.
Colleen: And he only could do it how often?
Nikki: He did it once a year on the Day of Atonement.
Colleen: Yeah. Anything else, it was certain death.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And why could people not freely enter the Most Holy Place?
Nikki: Well, we were separated because of sin.
Colleen: We couldn’t be in the presence of a holy God.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: And the Shekinah glory rested on top of the mercy seat, shining in the Most Holy Place, the glory of God. No sinful human could be in the presence of a holy God and live. So the only accommodation was for the high priest, who had to enter only with the blood of the atoning sacrifice. He couldn’t enter just on his own. He had to enter with the blood sacrifice that was both for him and for the nation. And only once a year. So that veil hung there separating sinful Israel from the glory of God. If they had had free access to the glory of God, they would have died. And I realized when it said that that veil was His flesh, as it says in verse 20, that even in Israel – it’s such an amazing thought to me – even in Israel, that veil represented the body of Jesus, who had not died inside of time yet, but He was, as Revelation says, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. His body, Jesus Himself, was the protection of all sinful humanity from dying at the hands of an almighty, eternally holy God. It was because His sacrifice was eternal plan and an eternal promise, that God did not condemn sinners to death before Jesus died, and Romans 3:26 explains that, the Book of Hebrews talks about that, but when I realized that, it was overwhelming to me. Jesus has always been the protection of sinful man from the holiness of God, and He kept them from dying before His own death paid the penalty.
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: The new and living way was when His perfect, sinless human flesh died on that cross. His perfect, sinless human blood was spilled and paid for human sin, and that was the new and living way by which we can enter the Holy Place, or the presence of God, and what’s also interesting about that is that when the curtain tore when Jesus died and ultimately the temple was destroyed, that wasn’t just for priests to enter. That meant that all humanity had the permission to come before God on the basis of Jesus’ shed blood. Any sinner can come before God and repent on the basis of Jesus’ blood. The way to the Father was opened to mankind. It’s an amazing thing that Jesus’ death accomplished. And then in verse 3, he goes on from explaining the veil and the new and living way, and he explains the next piece of Jesus’ fulfilment of the law. What does he say in verse 21 about Jesus?
Nikki: He is a great priest over the house of God.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? We’ve just had several chapters where the author of Hebrews explained Jesus’ high priesthood, His function as our high priest, and the fact that He’s of a different order than Levi. He is on the order of Melchizedek, eternal, a priest forever. So we have a new priest, we have an open way to God, and then verse 22, we have instructions for believers. On the basis of the new and living way, on the basis of the new priesthood, what are we to do as believers in Jesus?
Nikki: It says, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Colleen: So what does that suggest to you? What do those metaphors of washing and sprinkling and a sincere heart and full assurance of faith? What do you understand that to be saying to you personally, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, that takes me back to Ezekiel. That’s the New Covenant, that’s being born again and having a new heart and God’s Spirit placed in us and having a new spirit. That’s being made new.
Colleen: It is. So God gives us a new heart, He sprinkles us clean from an evil conscience. I find it so interesting, do you remember in chapter 9 how he kept talking about a clean conscience versus an evil conscience?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So when we are born again and given the life of Jesus in our dead spirits, brought to life, what does that do in terms of our perception of ourselves as sinners?
Nikki: Well, it cleans our conscience. Now we’re entering the presence of God on the basis of the perfect Christ, and so it makes me think of the passage in I think it was 1 John that says that fear has nothing to do with love because fear is about punishment. So we can go before God now, knowing that we have been justified and made righteous.
Colleen: It’s interesting because when we’re born again, we’re literally brought to life. It’s not just a metaphor for changing our mind and seeing something differently and accepting a new set of beliefs. It’s new life. It’s passing from death to life. So even though our now living, eternally alive spirits are still in bodies of flesh which are mortal, even though we still have a law of sin in the flesh, as Paul explains in Romans 7, we ourselves, when we’ve truly trusted Christ, are alive with eternal life, and His Spirit convicts our own spirits that we are adopted children of God, as Paul explains in Romans 8. So even though our flesh will sin, we know we are His, and our consciences are clean because we know we’ve trusted Jesus, we know we have a high priest, we know we have a perfect sacrifice paying for our sins, and we can still enter the presence of God with complete assurance, washed with the pure water of His word, as 1 Peter says, as Ephesians says, as Ezekiel even intimated when it said He cleanses us with the sprinkling of water. So we are completely new, and we have confidence before God because we have His life in us.
Nikki: And it’s on the basis of our position. I love that, at least here in the ESV, it says, “Let us draw near” – so that’s our part, we draw near – “with a true heart, our hearts sprinkled clean.” This is all what’s been done for us. We have all of this. This is in our possession, and now because of that, on the basis of our position, we draw near to God. I had it backwards as an Adventist. I thought I had to clean up my heart, I had to do all of these things and then I could confidently enter the presence of God, and then whenever I – it was very subjective, whenever I felt like there was distance between me and God, whatever that was, it was because I hadn’t done all of that right yet, and I needed to go back and figure out what I was doing wrong. Anyway, very backwards.
Colleen: I had it backwards too. It all kind of depended on me and my sincerity and my ability to ruminate over my sins and make sure I’d confessed them and get it right.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Willpower. And I never measured up. But now that I know Jesus, I know I still sin, and I’m convicted of my sin, but I also know I don’t fall away from Him. I am His daughter. And then, in 23, what does he say we could do next, after that we can approach with sincere hearts, in full assurance, what does he say to do?
Nikki: He says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”
Colleen: Now, what’s the confession of our hope?
Nikki: Well, it’s confessing that Christ is Lord, that He’s Messiah and that He’s done all of this. It’s agreeing with God about our position in Christ.
Colleen: And that we have been brought from death to life –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – because of Him. So we’re supposed to hold fast to that. It’s not, as Ellen White said, presumptuous and likely to lead us into complete denial of God to say and know that we are saved. Not at all. The Bible commands us to know and to hold fast to that certainty. Ellen White taught us wrong.
Nikki: No, this is about the sufficiency of the work of Christ. This is about the sufficiency of God Himself. To deny my salvation is to deny the testimony of God about His Son.
Colleen: That’s true. That’s really profound, Nikki. We have to know, and we are supposed to proclaim.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And hold fast, for our own encouragement and for the power of the message that we have, that Jesus is enough. This is not brave talk or self-affirmations. This is our position in Christ because of His work. It’s not anything we’ve done.
Nikki: It says to do this “for He who promised is faithful.” That means that when we don’t do this, we are questioning the faithfulness of the one who promised.
Colleen: That’s a good point. It does say that. Because He’s faithful, we hold fast the confession of our hope, and thenthe next two verses are very interesting. What is the last piece of this command to believers?
Nikki: It says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
Colleen: You know, it reminds me of Hebrews 3, when we were talking about the passage in Hebrews where the writer started to introduce the idea of another day called “today.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: In Hebrews 3:13, he said, “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” And we had talked about that, that the verse doesn’t say, “So that none of you will be hardened by sin,” because believers won’t automatically latch on to sin, but they can be deceived.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The encouragement of one believer to another on the basis of Jesus’ finished work, on the basis of His promises, we’re to encourage one another so we won’t be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness, and here in verse 24 of chapter 10, he has a similar admonishment to us. What does it make you think when you read, “Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,” Nikki?
Nikki: It makes me think about the moments in my life where I’ve had brothers and sisters in Christ who’ve come alongside me and in my faithlessness have encouraged me to remember what the call is for the believer. I think honestly I think of Titus 2, where it talks about older women teaching younger women to love their husbands, and I can’t quote it right now. I could have a few years ago, but those people in my life who have come alongside me and encouraged me to love others, even when it’s hard, and to do good work, even when I just want to fall into bed. They’ve impacted my life profoundly.
Colleen: I can say the same about my life. There’s something so encouraging, both about being encouraged by another believer and having the opportunity to encourage another believer, and I find it a very interesting thing that this is the Lord’s command to us who are in His body. He fills us with His Spirit, and He uses His Spirit, He Himself encourages us through each other because He Himself is dwelling in us. It’s not just “buck up, sister.”
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Colleen: It’s not just brave talk or look in the mirror and say your affirmations. This is one believer who is filled with the Spirit of God speaking to another believer who is filled with the Spirit of God, and God Himself changes something in each other’s lives as you speak. And that’s why it’s so important, as it says in verse 25, not to forsake assembling together. How often have you heard former Adventists say, “Well, I’m kind of done with church. I’ve done church. I can just worship God on my own.”
Nikki: “All I need is a relationship with Jesus.” And I want to say, how do you intend on obeying the commands of Christ if you are not in relationship with other believers?
Colleen: We are commanded to be in relationship with one another, not as an exercise to please God, but as His command to us for growing and staying connected to His truth. This is part of what it means to be His body. We support, we encourage, we meet with, we pray for, and we speak His word to one another. It’s profoundly encouraging.
Nikki: And we protect one another. The Holy Spirit gives us various gifts for the building up of the church so that we will not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. We need each other.
Colleen: And it’s interesting that he says, as you see the day drawing near we should not do this less and less but more and more, all the more as you see the day drawing near. And you know, I feel like saying, “Okay, did you know about the COVID quarantine?” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: And yet, at the same time, the Lord has provided ways to stay connected with one another, and it is His mandate that we do that. I can just say, “Thank you, Jesus, for these podcasts because they’ve kept me focused on His word and studying His word with you, Nikki, which is a really interesting thing. It’s a different dynamic than studying it on my own.
Nikki: Yeah, it’s been wonderful. Um-hmm.
Colleen: So I thank Him, and I was just saying to you earlier, it struck me as quite an interesting, not a surprise to God, but surprise to me that we’ve done Hebrews during this time of isolation. It’s been especially encouraging to me. It’s such an interesting coincidence, except it’s not.
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Colleen: And now, we come to this part of Hebrews 10 that I think makes every former Adventist and probably a lot of Christians cringe, because what do you do with it? But I think we know what to do with it. So we are going to talk our way through it after you read it, Nikki, and it is in this section that I have seen so clearly how Adventism contradicts the gospel. Would you mind reading 26 to 31? We’ll talk about that, and then we’ll finish with 32 to 39.
Nikki: “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Colleen: So, Nikki, when you first left Adventism and you read this passage, what did you first think? You were talking to me earlier about how it would frighten you. And what was the first thought that would come to your head?
Nikki: Oh, no, I’m supposed to keep the law! [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And you know, after studying it now, I’m looking at it going, “How did I come up with that?” But I did. It was this part that talks about anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy, and I thought, “Oh, no. If I’m not going to honor the Sabbath, Friday night to Saturday night, then I’m supposed to be put to death.” I really put myself in the wrong parts of Scripture.
Colleen: But it’s the way we were taught to think. And I want to just say, I think most people who have an Adventist background see it that way because of how we were taught about the law. I think it’s worth just mentioning that again. As an Adventist, Nikki, what did you think the Bible meant whenever you saw the word “law.”
Nikki: The Decalogue.
Colleen: That’s what I thought. In fact, I wasn’t even conscious of how much I was putting that meaning into what I was saying until a few years ago when The Chapel in Michigan, with Pastor Phil Bubar, had invited Life Assurance Ministries to come and do a weekend to help them understand how to talk to their Adventist community, because they’re situated right outside of Andrews University, a few miles. And Phil Bubar, the pastor, came up to me at one point and said, “When you say ‘law,’ are you referring to the Ten Commandments?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “You need to make that clear because I think most of the people in my church who hear you talk, when they see ‘law,’ they think the whole counsel of God, the word of God.” And I realized that that Adventist preset was still coloring the way I spoke. But when the Bible says “the law,” just “the law,” we would think “Decalogue,” but even in this case, it says the Law of Moses. I would have thought Decalogue, and yet what was the Law of Moses in reality?
Nikki: Oh, it was all of it. Wasn’t it like 613 laws or something like that?
Colleen: Yes, it was. And it’s also the law can be referred to as the Torah, the Books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament, where the law is given to Israel and re-given to the wilderness generation and gives the history of Israel. The Bible doesn’t mean Decalogue when it says “law.” In fact, the Bible never separates the Ten Commandments out of the rest of the Law of Moses. It’s a unit, a whole unit. So it’s completely wrong to read verse 28, “Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy,” it’s wrong to read that “Ten Commandments.” As an Adventist, did you believe you were under the whole Law of Moses?
Nikki: No, I did not.
Colleen: No, I didn’t either. I would have said, “Oh, the sacrifices were fulfilled. All those little ceremonial things like washings and not touching lepers and leaving the camp for seven days and cleaning your house if there’s a spot of mold in it.” Those laws are over. I would have also said I don’t have to avoid wearing mixed fabric in my clothes. Those laws are done, those were the ceremonial laws. But the Bible never, ever separates those ceremonial laws from the Ten Commandments, and furthermore, as we’ve just learned in these last few chapters of Hebrews, the Bible never separates the law apart from the Levitical priesthood. It’s all a unit. The Levitical priesthood was part of the law. So when it says, “Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy,” who is that talking about and what is that talking about? Who had the Law of Moses?
Nikki: Israel.
Colleen: This is talking about an Israelite. Anybody who is in Israel – because only Israel had the Law of Moses – who has set aside the Law of Moses – and that means any part of it, whether mixing linen and wool or whether committing adultery, it was all part of the law – anyone who sets it aside dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. But now there is a reference to Deuteronomy, where we find out even more specifically what this author is talking about. You had talked to me a little about that before, Nikki. Do you want to talk about what you read in Deuteronomy?
Nikki: Yes. It’s Deuteronomy chapter 17. So in Deuteronomy 17:2 it says, “If there is found among you, within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing His covenant, and has gone and served other gods and worshipped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.”
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting?
Nikki: So clearly it’s referencing apostasy. It’s referencing somebody – “setting aside” is not just accidentally not obeying. It is to completely turn away from, to reject, and to go and worship other gods. I actually looked up that Greek word for “set aside.” It means to make ineffective or nonexistent, to do away with what has been laid down, to declare invalid. It’s complete rejection, it’s apostasy.
Colleen: So if they apostatized, turned away from God and worshipped any other kind of god, whether of wood, hay, stubble, metal, or the moon or the stars or the sun, they were to die. But they couldn’t just die because one person said they had done that. What was the provision in law?
Nikki: Well, he tells them they need to investigate, they need to look into it diligently, and then they need to have two or three witnesses.
Colleen: So it can’t just be one person with a vendetta against another. There have to be two or three people who have witnessed this apostasy, who have witnessed this pagan worship, and then, on the basis of provable witnessing from two or three people, then the person must die. God was very specific with the Israelites that they were not to have apostasy and idol worship in their camp. He was preserving them, and He was preserving the holy seed for the Messiah who would come. He’s referring back to the fact that if an Israelite trampled on the Law of Moses and turned away from God and worshipped idols, on the basis of two or three witnesses, he must die. And then he makes the contrast. What does he contrast that with in verse 29?
Nikki: He says, “How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?” He’s comparing the rejection of Yahweh in the Old Testament to rejecting Messiah in the New Testament, and he’s saying, look, we’ve just gone through Hebrews, we’ve read it’s a better covenant with a better priest and a better law, and now if you turn your back on the better, how much worse will the punishment be?
Colleen: In the context of what we’ve just been studying in Hebrews 10, this author is saying, to reject the single, sufficient, finished sacrifice of Jesus is worthy of a much worse death than the death of an Israelite who was killed for worshipping an idol. You might think, “That seems extreme. Turning away from God and worshipping an idol is clearly worshipping a different God, an apostasy,” and yet this author is saying, “If you defame, disrespect, trample the Lord Jesus, in any way defame His blood, in any way insult the Spirit of grace – now that’s not even saying turn aside and worship another God. It’s saying, if you disrespect and do not put your weight of trust on the finished work of Jesus, that’s worse than worshipping idols. That’s kind of a powerful comparison, in my mind. So, Nikki, as you read this, did you have any thoughts about Adventism?
Nikki: Well, yeah. I mean, it reminded me of Galatians 5:4, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” When you turn to the law, whatever interpretation of that you have, when you turn to the law and you add that to the work of your position before God, you’re turning away from the work Christ did on your behalf. It’s rejecting Him, and that was exactly what Adventism taught me to do, honestly. It was not enough to be a Christian. They point to the Christian churches in America, they point to the protestant church, and they say, “They don’t have it right. We’re the remnant.” You actually have to add sabbath-keeping, healthy eating, no dairy – and that varies across the country, I understand that, but sabbath-keeping is the – it is the idol that is going to add to the work of Christ to make sure that you are counted as loyal and saved.
Colleen: The thing that Adventists have done with their soteriology, with their “plan of salvation,” is to say you first come to Christ, and then when you come to Christ, you will have the power to find and keep the law perfectly ultimately, and as you keep the law, you will find God. That is completely inside out. The Book of Hebrews has shown us that the law convicted of sin, the law condemned Israel to death, and Jesus fulfilled the law and opened a new and living way. The law is obsolete, as Hebrews 8 so clearly said. If we go back to the law when Jesus has come and has done everything the law pointed toward, when He has done everything necessary to atone for sin, to be the propitiation of our sin, when He has broken the curse of death, if we go back to the law, we are trampling underfoot the Son of God. We’re saying, “He didn’t do enough, I have to keep the Sabbath.” If we turn back to the law, we are regarding as unclean the blood of the covenant. His blood paid for our sin, but Adventism says His blood did something else. Adventism says that when Jesus went to heaven and started His intercessory work in 1844, He transferred our sins from us to heaven so that in reality He and His shed blood defiled heaven with our sins. That is the purpose of the Investigative Judgment, is for Him to find out which of those sins that has been transferred to heaven, defiling it, has actually been confessed so He can apply His blood to it, and then ultimately, those sins are placed on Satan, who bears them out of heaven. Adventism actually makes Jesus’ blood unclean by saying it transfers sin to heaven. Blood nevermade anything unclean. Blood never transferred sin, even in the earthly tabernacle. Blood always cleansed. Finally, insulting the Spirit of grace – do you remember what Adventism said the seal of God is?
Nikki: Oh, the seal of God was the Sabbath, and the Spirit of Prophecy was Ellen G. White.
Colleen: Talk about insulting the Spirit of grace. Adventism has completely redefined the Holy Spirit. They have called Sabbath the seal of God when Ephesians 1:13 and 14 and Ephesians 4:20 clearly say the Holy Spirit is the seal. And, like Nikki just said, they say the Spirit of Prophecy is Ellen White and her writings. No. The Spirit of Prophecy is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Himself, the Spirit of God Himself, who provides for us and provides us the knowledge of God’s will through His word. So we were talking about this before the podcast, Nikki, and you were telling me about some things that you had discovered as you were looking up some Adventist quotes to see what they really said about the blood of the covenant, the atonement, and Jesus. Do you want to talk about that?
Nikki: It’s hard to nail them down if you’re not constantly listening to their teachings. One of the most upsetting things that I read was from Doug Batchelor talking about the security of the believer, and this passage is talking about full assurance and confidence. Doug Batchelor had some passages of Scripture he was trying to teach, and he took the passages where Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice,” and “None that the Father has given to me will I lose,” and he said that Christians have misinterpreted that and that a loving God does not demand love and that demanded love is essentially rape.
Colleen: Oh, my goodness.
Nikki: Because He loves us, He gives us the freedom to leave Him. This was his teaching. This is not what Hebrews is teaching. This is not what Hebrews 10 is saying Christ did. It’s telling us to have full assurance.
Colleen: Not because we think so, but because Jesus says so on the basis of His eternal sacrifice. I found a book by Graham Maxwell. Some of you may remember Graham Maxwell. He taught theology at Loma Linda University for at least 40 years, and he made very popular, he and Jack Provonsha both, a version of the atonement that some people call the moral influence theory or a variation of that. It’s a way of looking at the atonement which denies the necessity of Jesus’ shed blood. Graham Maxwell promoted the idea, which is still promoted at Loma Linda and among many graduates of Loma Linda, and it’s interesting to notice that he taught theology at Loma Linda for over 40 years, and during that time the medical students, the dental students, the allied health students, for many years the students at Loma Linda sat in his classes and learned this bloodless atonement version of Jesus’ work. They took this idea out with them into their churches, into the mission fields, for 40 years, so that sprinkled among Adventists throughout the world is this idea that Jesus didn’t have to die in order for God to be forgiving. It’s complete heresy, it’s completely different from what the Bible says, but I wanted to read you a little brief quote from his book, “Servants or Friends? Another Look At God.” This is a book that Graham Maxwell wrote in 1992 when he had quite fully developed this idea. But on page 112 of this book, “Servants or Friends,” Graham Maxwell is contrasting the idea of being a servant of God or a friend of God. Now, the Bible clearly tells us that when we are born again and trust Jesus, we are His servants, or even slaves. Paul called himself a slave of Christ. We belong to Him. It is a joyful, willing, loving relationship. We live for Him. But Graham Maxwell developed the argument that servants don’t know the Father’s will, friends know the Father’s will. So the people who actually serve God are His friends and know His will. So he’s using that contrast as he writes this. “One of the characteristics of the servant view of sin and salvation is the frequent use of terms and phrases that friends might consider dark speech.” Now, I want you to notice that phrase, “dark speech.” He says, “Such terms as justification, sanctification, expiation, and of course, propitiation,” and then he says, “It may help to remember that these actual words were never used by the writers of the Bible. Even Paul never used the word ‘justification,’ for which he is so well known. That’s a Latin-based English word. Paul wrote his epistles in Greek, and the Greek can be translated into more simple language than you find in some of the versions. Recent translations into many languages around the world have gone a long way toward making the words of the Bible more plain and clear.” I just want to say, Tyndale is the first person who coined the English word “justification,” and he used that word because it summarized what the Greek was saying. But then, Maxwell doesn’t stop there. He says, “Such familiar old phrases as ‘washed in the blood,’ ‘there’s power in the blood,’ ‘covered by His righteousness,’ ‘accepted in the beloved,’ ‘saved by the blood of the Lamb,’ and so many more surely qualify as dark speech.” I want to say, this man is speaking heresy. How can he call this central concept of the atonement “dark speech”? The only conclusion is this man is trampling on the Lord Jesus and calling unclean the blood of the covenant. The Bible couldn’t be more clear. And he had an example, and I will stop reading from his book with this example: “In religion class one day, I asked a medical student to explain why he thought Jesus had to die. ‘Oh, because without shedding of blood is no remission,’ he replied, without a moment’s hesitation, quoting that famous verse in the Book of Hebrews as translated in the King James Version. Then he settled back in his chair as if nothing more could be said. ‘But does that mean,’ I persisted, ‘that if blood had not been shed God could not have forgiven sinners?’ ‘Oh, why can’t you accept the Bible just the way it reads,’ he replied with some agitation. ‘Why do you have to confuse things by always asking for the meaning?’ Isn’t that the way servants talk?”
Nikki: It’s so upsetting. And it’s not just him in that book. By the time I went to La Sierra University – it was 1999, 2000, somewhere in there when I started the program there – this kind of mindset was all over campus, and there was a sense of, I don’t know, I want to use the word “gnostic,” like superior knowledge of truth, and I remember when I went into my New Testament Studies program – I wanted to get a degree in New Testament Studies, and I went into a class, and the professor said, “Let’s bow our heads for prayer before we start class,” and I bowed my head, and he proceeded to read a chapter out of “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” And when he finished, he said “Amen.” They trampled underfoot the things of God. And I remember studying this book, “Servants or Friends.” There was a place for this kind of thinking inside the Adventist worldview because the role of the Holy Spirit really, if you read the Great Controversy, is to help us vindicate God. I mean, that’s His job, He’s helping us vindicate God. You would think that would offend Him a little.
Colleen: Well, I was thinking about the ways Adventism tramples underfoot the Son of God and regards His blood as unclean, and first of all we can say, the Adventist Jesus is weak and fallible. He could have sinned, He could have failed, He inherited Mary’s sinful genes, He inherited Mary’s sinful nature, and according to Ellen White, He had to overcome sin. He came to demonstrate perfect law-keeping. He showed us that we too can do what He did because He was just like us. He was no different from us, although Adventists still called Him “God.” But we were taught He set aside His God powers and as a man, weak and fallible like us, He showed us that the law of God is not too hard to keep, and He showed us how to do it. Nonsense. That is not the God of Scripture, that is not the Jesus of the Bible. And Adventism denies and tramples the perfect, righteous Son of God when they make Him weak and fallible and merely an example of how to keep the law. Secondly, Adventism tramples underfoot the blood of the covenant. Now, you might say, “Not all Adventists see it the same way.” Well, there are different views within Adventism, but every one of them is not biblical in terms of the blood of Jesus. In historic Adventism, Jesus’ atonement was not finished on the cross. His blood had to still keep on being applied while He’s up there in heaven, finding out who’s confessed their sins, and applying His blood to the confessed ones. Once and done is not Adventism. His blood, in historic Adventism, transferred human sins to heaven, where they polluted the sanctuary. Clearly Jesus and His blood are the means of defiling heaven. If that is not calling unclean the blood of the covenant, I don’t know what is. Jesus had to continue His atonement, in Adventism, in phase 2. The cross was just phase 1, His sacrifice was complete, but in phase 2 He has to investigate the records and apply His blood to confessed sins. Now, that’s the basic historic Adventist teaching. Well, what about the 1888 movement, which is supposed to be so gospel oriented? Well, in that movement, they still say Jesus’ blood was a demonstration. His death, they say, showed the lengths to which He would go to show us that we were so wicked we would kill God, that we had such a self-exalted inner sense that we wanted to kill God to vindicate ourselves. It’s confusing, but they say that. They also say His death was an example of righteous suffering. The moral influence theory, which we have just read some examples of from Graham Maxwell, says that Jesus’ blood was not necessary for God to forgive sins; God would forgive even if Jesus hadn’t come, because God is a good God. The death of Jesus, in the moral influence theory, is that He showed us how to suffer without anger and retribution for His persecutors. It wasn’t necessary for salvation, but it showed us how good God is. Jesus didn’t curse His enemies. And then in progressive Adventism, there’s a universalist quality to how they teach Jesus’ death. Jesus’ death paid for all sin, some of them say. People are born with all sins atoned. They just have to acknowledge it or opt out. They have to act on the status of their forgiven sins, they just have to be reminded that it’s already true. There is no central preaching of man as being depraved, needing a Savior, needing to repent. In this model, it is not assumed that man is depraved, as Scripture teaches. In this model, everyone is born essentially saved, and people just have to opt out and decide they don’t want Jesus. Every one of these models tramples the blood of the covenant, demeans Jesus, and insults the Spirit of grace, who seals us for eternity when we trust the real Jesus and His once-for-all sacrifice. Adventists would rather participate in being worthy of salvation. They don’t want to throw themselves on the mercy of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Jesus. They don’t want to receive the atonement of His perfect blood shed for their own personal sin because being indebted to Jesus is far too heavy a load to bear. I remember having that feeling. “What can I do with a Man who took all my sin?” Never understanding that if I threw myself on His mercy, I would receive life! But because they don’t believe we’re born depraved, with dead spirits, because they believe sin is genetic and physical, there is no sense of being born again, and there is no real understanding of how to repent before the Lord and receive His life.
Nikki: I want to say, this is clearly a serious indictment we’re raising here against Adventism. And this letter was written to believers, people who have come to know the true gospel, who have come to understand and have knowledge of the Lord, and the warning here is that they would not get entangled with these other things. And I’m very aware of the fact that we’re speaking to people at various stages of leaving Adventism, and I know for me, when I left early on, there was a temptation to minimize the problems with Adventism, to compromise, to maintain peace in the relationships that I had had. And it’s one of the most difficult parts of leaving, I think, being confronted with the fact that if you act on what you know to be true, you are severing yourself from the comfort that you’ve known in those relationships. You’re creating division because you’re entering into the true gospel, and the true gospel divides. The word of truth is a sword. It divides from error. And so this warning here to believers, this is something that we really need to sit up and listen to when we feel that temptation to minimize the problems of Adventism. The warning here is against apostasy. And to accept all of these doctrines which defile the blood of Christ and trample Him underfoot and outrage the Spirit is to set yourself up for walking away from Christ altogether.
Colleen: In fact, 30 and 31 say, for those who apostatize, who walk away when they have understood clearly what the gospel is, that it is God who says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” and “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” And I so want my fellow brothers and sisters who’ve grown up Adventist, who’ve been Adventist, to know the freedom and the life that comes from knowing Jesus, being cleansed by His blood, and being alive because of His resurrection. Would you read 32 through 39, Nikki? This is a quick summary of the author’s reminding his readers of what they’ve experienced as believers. It’s what you alluded to when you talked about losing relationships and comforts. This will happen, but we have Jesus. So, read 32 to 39.
Nikki: “But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, ‘Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.’ But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”
Colleen: Thank you. This is a passage that just basically states the truth: When we trust Jesus, we do suffer loss. And the author is showing compassion to his readers. He’s undoubtedly suffered the same things. He’s reminding them that they have been reproached, and they’ve had tribulations. They have shown sympathy to people who’ve been imprisoned for the gospel. They’ve had their property taken. They’ve lost relationships. They’ve lost their comforts. But don’t throw away your reward. He’s reminding them, don’t look back. Don’t look back to the shadows of Judaism, which were so comfortable and truly beautiful, because the real sacrifice has come. Keep walking forward in the life and confidence of your Savior. And he even ends this chapter by saying what he is sure about, about his readers, and what is that that he says? He’s sure they’re what?
Nikki: Not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
Colleen: He’s sure he’s writing to true believers, and we can know when we read this passage that he is not saying to anybody who picks up this book, “Oh, be careful. If you break a law or commit a sin, you might be lost.” That’s not his point. His point in this part of the chapter is: If you have heard the gospel of Jesus and seen what He has done, don’t close your eyes and look back to the law. Don’t close your eyes and look back to the beautiful forms of false religion. Keep hanging on to Jesus, and He hangs on to you.
Nikki: And I think it’s good to remember the parable of the soils. This is talking about believers who once endured hardships, and we know in the parable of the soils that sometimes the trials of life will choke out the plant, and they’ll walk away, and they were never truly born again. He’s telling believers here not to throw away their confidence, because their confidence is rooted in the complete and finished work of Christ, and it’s that confidence that gives us endurance to persevere all the way to the end. So when we see passages like this and we have the Adventist background that we have, we might be tempted to worry that we can lose our salvation. When we look at verse 26, where it talks about if we go on sinning deliberately, there no longer remains a sacrifice, the following verses clarify that that sin is the sin of apostasy, it’s walking away, it’s saying, “I have no need for this.” And this is basically telling us that Jesus Christ is the only way. There’s no other name under heaven by which man can be saved, it is Christ alone. There is no sacrifice, there’s no other way to God but through Him. And so this isn’t a statement about – because we all sin, and I know that this was something that would really stress me out as I was reading this leaving, but we look at the fuller teaching of Scripture, and this is no way undermining the other parts of Hebrews that we’ve read or the other letters in the New Testament that say that once you are born again and an adopted child of God, you belong to Him.
Colleen: This is a passage of assurance, of warning to those who have not fully trusted Jesus, but if we have, there’s no danger of committing apostasy. If we haven’t fully trusted Him, this is the time to do it. And if you haven’t fully trusted Jesus, if you haven’t looked right at Him, seen what He has done, and cast your lot at His feet, dropping yourself in front of Him and saying, “I am a sinner who needs a Savior,” if you haven’t trusted Him with your life, I just ask that you do it now because I do want to meet you in the kingdom. So if you have comments or questions, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Go to proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for the magazine, to sign up for our weekly email, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and wherever you listen to podcasts, rate our program and write us a review. Thank you so much for sticking with us through another portion of Hebrews, for understanding at an even deeper level the meat of the gospel of who our Lord Jesus really is.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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