Adventists Are Not “Bible Only”
This is in response to the gentleman who wrote last week about his “lonely, tough battle”. I can empathize and sympathize with him with regards to his current situation. It is not nice to be detached from one’s family when it comes to the Bible. I face the same problems every week, just like he does, when it comes to interpretation of the Bible.
Like he has, I have a division in my family as well. What we’ve got to understand is that indoctrinated Adventists do not look at the Bible from anybody else’s perspective but their own. Everything will always revert to the sabbath. If they have any doubts, they will always refer to Ellen White for confirmation of Scripture.
In principle doing such a thing is wrong; it’s as if she has special insight into Scripture, but this belief is not true. A few weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to somebody else who was in a similar predicament regarding being snared by Adventism. He had a spouse who constantly read Ellen White books and listened to Walter Veith sermons on YouTube. When it came to the subject of Ellen White, I advised him to look at it logically. If the investigative judgement started at some random date in 1844 and it is supposed to be the divine judgement of professed Christians, what predicament would the Christians who were born and had died before that particular date be in ? Something of that magnitude could only happen at the start of creation or after the crucifixion of Christ himself.
The only book that we need as Christian is the Bible. If anybody says another source is needed, like the Adventists do, then you have every right to claim that it is a cult.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Ellen White’s explanation of how the investigative judgment covers those who lived before 1844 is that when Jesus went into the Most Holy Place to review the books of record, He began with Adam, the first believer, and has been working progressively through the names of all who claimed to believe from creation onward. This doctrine necessitates the Adventist belief in “soul sleep”, or more accurately their belief that when a person dies, he ceases to exist until the resurrection. One cannot have the spirits of people with the Lord if their names haven’t yet come into the review of the judgment!
The doctrine of the investigative judgment also presents the conundrum of when it may conclude. At what point might Jesus be done when there are always new believers to be examined?
Is Doug Batchelor Changing His Doctrine?
I have a sister-in-law and family who are involved as Adventists. They are involved, but I don’t know if they know the depth of the doctrine. Regardless, I happened to see the last 10 minutes of Doug Batchelor on Daystar recently. He was given away an electronic booklet asking, “Who is Michael?”
I looked it up and read what is probably in the book. What I found was a new take on the whole subject that is amusing and just plain odd but I see what he is doing.
Doug upholds that Jesus is God in the flesh, an affirmation which I find remarkable for Adventists. He also goes on to say that Jesus is Michael and his supports this claim by using the word “prince” [a reference to Daniel 10] and shows that Jesus is also a prince, so he seems to put these ideas together, and there you go.
He also goes to the book of 1 Thessalonians when Jesus will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ shall rise. He suggests that Jesus is that voice of the archangel.
Well, I believe the voice is from an archangel announcing the coming of the Lord, similarly to the president of the USA being introduced by a lower-ranking official. That is what I think is happening here, because an archangel is created, and Jesus is not. Yet Doug upholds that Jesus is God in the flesh.
Is Doug changing his doctrine, or is he just blurring it a bit more?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Doug is not changing his doctrine. Adventists DO say that Jesus is God in the flesh—but they deny that God in the persons of Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit share substance. In other words, the “God” in their Jesus’ flesh is not identical in substance to the Father. They say Jesus gave up His omnipresence, for example, and is forever limited by a body. Yet omnipresence is an attribute of God. They ignore the problem of their denial of “same substance” and simply allow their members to assume that the “God” part of Jesus is all God—like one-third of a pie is “all pie”—but that one third of a pie is not ALL the pie. This shared substance is what they deny. So they are able to rationalize that the three “beings” in their “godhead” are “all God” while simultaneously denying that they share the Same Substance.
So, their Jesus does not have all the attributes of God.
They also teach that Jesus is Michael the archangel. EGW taught this heresy. They attempt to use Jude 9 and Daniel 10 to justify this idea—yet read in context, these verses absolutely CANNOT be identifying Jesus. They try to distance themselves from the idea that Jesus is an “angel” by saying “Michael the archangel” is just another name for Jesus. But this explanation is disingenuous. They DO believe he is Michael the archangel…but this idea denies that Jesus is FULLY God. Jesus was never any sort of created being…and Jude 9 clearly sets Michael apart from Jesus because Michael did not dare to bring a rebuke against the devil but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” Jesus clearly rebuked Satan during His ministry on earth; He didn’t defer to “God” because Jesus had the authority as Satan’s creator and as God to rebuke him directly.
What About That Star?
A year ago I first heard my Adventist family talking about how the star of Bethlehem that was guiding the three whose men was actually angels. Looking back, this prompted me to start examining Adventism more critically, and what a year it has been.
Anyway, I found out today that my family was saying that because it was something EGW wrote in The Desire of Ages:
“That star was a distant company of shining angels, but of this the wise men were ignorant” (DA p. 60, par. 1).
I am sorry to say that as far as I know, they still believe this idea, and I don’t think they even realize who wrote it. They think it’s something in the Bible.
It’s really amazing how deep-seated the lies run. Again, I am sure they don’t even know that, as far as I know, this is something that Ellen completely made up.
Do you know why Ellen would say this?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Yes, the Bethlehem star being a group of angels is definitely a prevailing Adventist belief! I don’t know why Ellen White decided to assert this idea, but I assume it is because she either copied someone’s thoughts about it or tried to explain it as a miracle. It was surprising to me to realize after leaving Adventism that the star may not have been angels at all! Scripture doesn’t explain the star, but whatever it was or however it manifested, those wise men knew it was the star that signaled Jesus’ birth because they said, “We have seen His star in the east and have come to worship Him.”
The wise men were gentiles from the east—not Jews—but they knew the king of the Jews had been born! Likely they had been exposed to the writings of Daniel from the days of the Jews’ exile; he had received his prophecies in Babylon. But whatever the case, it is EGW who taught the Adventists that the star was angels.
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What About That Star?
I’m not going to delve into possible astronomical identifications of the star the wise men saw in the East or on its (heliacal) rising, but I’d like to comment on the statement that those men had likely “been exposed to the writings of Daniel from the days of the Jews’ exile.” Whether they were exposed to the writings of Daniel or not would be entirely irrelevant, unless those who claim a Messianic interpretation for the Seventy Weeks were right. Such a position, however, is exegetically untenable. The individual that “put an end to sacrifice and offering” is not the Messiah, but the evil prince that was to come and “destroy the city and the sanctuary”, the very same fellow that was to “set up an abomination that causes desolation” (Dan. 9:26f, NIV). The correctness of this interpretation, and the utter fallacy of the Adventist fable, is plainly shown by the parallel passage of Daniel 11: “And in his place a despicable person will arise, on whom the honor of kingship has not been conferred, but he will come in a time of tranquility and seize the kingdom by intrigue. […] At the appointed time he will return and come into the South, but this last time it will not turn out the way it did before. For ships of Kittim will come against him; therefore he will be disheartened, and will return and become enraged at the holy covenant and take action; so he will come back and show regard for those who forsake the holy covenant. And forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice. And they will set up the abomination of desolation” (vers. 21-31, NAS).
It has always been obvious that the evil prince in question was Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The prophecy of the Seventy Weeks of Seventy Hebdomads did not start in 457 BC, nor do the dates 408 BC, 27 AD, 31 AD or 34 AD contain any substance, as the Adventists would like us to believe. The Seventy Weeks began much earlier, at the very end of Isaiah’s life, not much earlier than King Manasseh’s Babylonian temporary exile (2 Chr. 33:11), around 647 BC. And, quite certainly, the war in the last hebdomad of the seventy has nothing to do with the days of Nero and Vespasian (36 years after the purported end of the prophecy in the Adventist imagination), but with the times of the Maccabees and Antiochus IV.
In case some of the above is less than clear, the beginning of the Seventy Hebdomads and the announcement of the birth of Cyrus as Yahweh’s anointed was signaled by the passage of Isaiah 44:23 – 45:7. That paramount passage demonstrates the decree to have Jerusalem rebuilt wasn’t issued by Cyrus, Darius Hystaspes or Artaxerxes Longimanus, but by God himself, roughly half a century before Cyrus’ birth. And, quite explicitly, the passage shows Cyrus was to be God’s anointed in carrying out the restoration of Jerusalem. Something tells me the Adventists and others will never find anything remotely similar about Artaxerxes I. The entire Messianic application of the Seventy Hebdomads is a hoax of the greatest magnitude.