You Are a Blessing!
I can’t express enough how blessed we are by the articles that are published in the Proclamation! blog each week. Along with [the rest of] Life Assurance Ministries’ material, every book and article written is evidence of a writer who is a Spirit-filled, born again, New Covenant believer. When letters are printed from those who are still caught up in the false teaching of Adventism with all their cognitive dissonance, we can pray that God will open their hearts and minds so God will be honored and praised. It is those in Adventism that twist Scripture, and by only believing their own biblical scholars can they defend what they accept as truth. This process is called circular reasoning.
As former Adventists we are often asked why we don’t continue to attend Adventist churches and try to promote change from within. Some try, but it soon becomes obvious that change can only be accomplished by the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit.
On a personal note, leaving Adventism was a matter of integrity; reading and gaining a new understanding of the Bible would not allow me to remain a part of what I now consider a false denomination. I believe that most, if not all, of the Seventh-day Adventist 28 Fundamental Beliefs are not based on Scripture alone. They are worded in a way that is meant to deceive non-Adventists into thinking that Adventists are Christian. They are written with an E.G. White influence.
No matter what Adventists say, believe, or define as the gospel, it is not the same as main steam Christianity’s understanding of the gospel. E.G. White, their prophet, said the health message was the right arm of the gospel. She said that the Three Angels’ Messages in the book of Revelation is the gospel. Adventists add that the Old Covenant 10 Commandments, especially the fourth, must be kept because their prophet had a “vision” showing it with a halo around it. They believe that a 24-hour period of time is what God wants from us. NO!
Adventists say they don’t add Sabbath-keeping to the gospel. This denial is in practice just a deflection, what is not stated is their belief that Sabbath-keeping is the sign that defines God’s remnant people.
The gospel is defined by Paul thus (NASB):
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast [a]the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you [b]as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1–4).
Furthermore, John tells us what the New Covenant commands are:
Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:26-29).
Again in his first epistle, John identifies God’s commandments for believers:
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God (1 John 5:1-5)?
And again he says,
Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He [m]commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us (1 John 3:21-24).
When we believe, we can know with 100% assurance that we have eternal life. 1 John 5:13
is clear:
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.
Finally, the familiar passage, John 3:16, continues by assuring us that when we believe, we have eternal life:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
As former Adventists we know how suffocating and demoralizing the extra-biblical expectations are in the writings of E.G. White. As a result of the acceptance of E.G. White’s writings as coming from God and of being equal to the Bible (even if this equality is publicly denied), the default position of Adventist biblical interpretation will have to agree with her interpretations. This private interpretation is why, when Adventists and Christians discuss the Bible, both can feel frustrated. Adventists interpret the biblical New Covenant (Testament) through the eyes of the Old Covenant (Testament) and its law, the 10 Commandments, whereas Christians understand that the New Covenant and the law of Christ supersede and interpret the Old Covenant.
It is only by the grace of God that we are freed from the domain of darkness and adopted into the family of God.
In Christ,
—JIM LILEY, HIGHLANDS RANCH, CO
Jesus Has Wrath?
Hello there! I listened to the podcast concerning hell. It is a disturbing doctrine for sure, and even many Christians are uncomfortable with it. I was more disturbed to hear the wrath of Jesus mentioned, and how we need to be saved from it. I always imagined that it was God the Father who was the wrathful member of the Trinity, and it was Jesus who pleads before the Father on humanity’s behalf to spare us from His wrath. Jesus to me was the loving Savior who came to love the people and serve them, live among them, and die for them. He was wrathful in the temple when it was being defiled, but nearly always He was kind, good, compassionate, and loving. It was the Father I thought was harsh, vindictive and maybe a tyrant! My own earthly father was abusive and harsh. So no doubt this affected my perception of the Heavenly Father. I am surprised to know that Jesus died to save us from his own wrath, too.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: As Adventists we were not taught that the Trinity is ONE SUBSTANCE. Yes, there are three persons, but all three share exactly the same attributes including omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, and eternality. We were taught that Jesus was the loving one who came to save us from the Father’s wrath. That picture denies that Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are ONE GOD. We can’t explain this mystery, but we know that whatever the Father does, Jesus and the Spirit also do. Colossians 1, in fact, says that God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself.
Yes, Jesus did come and save us—but He saved us from the Trinity’s own holy glory and wrath against sin. In other words, God (the Trinity) saved us from God Himself—all three persons!
Jesus showed us God’s glory and mercy as He hung on the cross, and He said that no one comes to Him unless the Father draws that person (Jn. 6:44).
Many people within Adventism had harsh, punitive fathers, and it was not hard for us to picture God that same way. Yet Jesus said He came to show us the Father—and He died for us, taking our imputed sin into Himself in order to pay its penalty. In doing this He showed us the Father’s love for us and His willingness to do what was necessary to save us.
In the man Christ Jesus, God took human sin on Himself and paid the sufficient price of sinless human blood to satisfy the Trinity’s own wrath against sin. God took the punishment for our sin so we could be reconciled to Him!
Do Dead Spirits Exist?
I just listened to you podcast on hell.
You say in this podcast that Adam’s and Eve’s spirits died, and we are all born spiritually dead because of Adam’s sin.
If our spirits are dead when we are born human, does it still exist? Has it ceased to exist until we are born again by believing in the Lord Jesus? Do we have some kind of dead spirit that still thinks so it can be born again?
Or is it up to the physical body to understand the gospel that will bring our spirit back to life?
Or is our dead spirit still alive somehow, but separated from God until somehow we understand and accept the gospel so our spirit can come back to life?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: We as Adventists were not taught the biblical definition of “dead”. We were taught that when anything died, it ceased to exist. But biblical “death” does not mean to be annihilated or to disappear but to be deprived of LIFE. Adam and Eve died the day they ate; the Life of God went out from them, and they became dead in sin—the same death described in Ephesians 2:1–3 and John 3:18 and 36. We were citizens of the domain of darkness (Col 1:13), under the authority of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:2) and “by nature children of wrath”.
This condition is spiritual death. Our spirits DO exist, but they are not connected to God. They are unreconciled, separated from the life of God, as Ephesians 2 describes the gentiles prior to the gospel going to them after Jesus destroyed the dividing barrier of the law that separated Jews from gentiles.
It might help to think of the devil and his angels. Angels are spirits, as we are told in Hebrews 1:14, but the devil and his angels are not elect angels. They have sinned and have been cast out of the the presence of God. They work against God’s purposes. They are spiritually dead, but they exist. We likewise have spirits that exist. They are either dead or alive. John 3:18 says that when we believe we pass out of condemnation, but those who have not believed “are condemned already”. John 3:36 says that the wrath of God remains on everyone who has not believed.
Being a child of wrath with the wrath of God remaining on us is death. It is spiritual death, and it also condemns our bodies to die eventually as Adam and Eve’s bodies died. In other words, they died in two “stages”, if you will: their spirits died immediately, and their bodies died eventually. When we believe and are born again, our spirits come to life by the power of God and we are sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13, 14). Our dead spirits come to life with the life of God. Our bodies will still die if Jesus be not yet come, but we are promised to be resurrected with glorified bodies, and our born-again, living spirits will be connected to our new bodies.
Incidentally, the word for “death” in the Bible is a word that means “separation”. It does not mean ceasing to exist. When we die, our bodies separate from our spirits. Our spirits go into God’s care, and our bodies go into the dust.
As Adventists we were taught that death means ceasing to exist, but in Scripture is does NOT mean that. Rather, it means that when we die, our bodies and spirits separate. Our spirits are born dead, separated from he life of God, so we have living bodies with spirits that exist but are not alive with God’s life. When we trust Jesus, however, we receive Jesus’ resurrection life (see Romans 8). When we die on this earth, our spirits are either alive eternally and go into the presence of God, or they are dead in sin and held by God under punishment for judgment, as Peter says in 2 Peter 2.
This article may be helpful: Are Humans More Than Living bodies?
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