COLLEEN TINKER
Last week we received a hand-addressed envelope in the mail from someone we didn’t know. Richard opened it, and inside we found a hand-written letter and a pamphlet from a local Jehovah’s Witness. I scanned the pamphlet which featured art strangely resembling Adventist art, and my eyes stopped on the phrase asking us to “celebrate the death of Christ” with millions of Witnesses around the world this weekend.
In that moment I knew that this “personal” invitation betrayed the fundamental similarity of Jehovah’s Witnesses with their cousins the Adventists: neither of them understands our dependence on Jesus’ resurrection because neither religion understands the nature of man nor our depravity. Adventists, like the Witnesses, do not understand our need to be made alive.
On this weekend when Christians celebrate Jesus’ victory over the tomb, these two religions focus on Jesus’ death! Of course, they focus on it in different ways, but the resurrection is overshadowed by the horror of the cross and Jesus in the tomb.
In recent years Adventism has tried to up its Easter game; many congregations advertise Easter services and mention the resurrection, yet even when they speak of it, this reality-shattering miracle is shrouded in Ellen White’s great controversy perspective. Furthermore, Adventism’s Easter services are held on Saturday—the seventh-day Sabbath—and parishioners are reminded that Jesus honored the Sabbath as He lay dead and buried, showing us the sacredness of the day by “resting” lifeless and doing the work of rising only when the sacred time had ended.
For Adventists, the important thing about Easter weekend is the confirmation of Sabbath-sacredness demonstrated by Jesus’ being dead, doing nothing to defile the day. In the Adventist worldview, Jesus ceased to exist during those hours; His body lay breathless. His spirit did not go to God when He died because the Adventist view of humanity insists that no human—not even Jesus—has an immaterial human spirit that exists apart from the body.
I realize that sometimes Adventists do not understand where their inarticulate ideas originate when they think about Jesus’ death and resurrection. They may even argue with us that of COURSE they honor His coming forth from the tomb—yet when we trust Jesus and become born-again children of God, the resurrection is shocking and new. We see that our new life in Christ would not be possible on the basis of Jesus’ death alone. It is His resurrection life that gives us our new birth, our eternal life!
Ellen Speaks For Herself
Let’s look at a few Adventist quotations to establish the source of Adventism’s focus on Jesus’ death and their lack of engagement with His resurrection.
The spirit of Jesus slept in the tomb with His body, and did not wing its way to heaven, there to maintain a separate existence, and to look down upon the mourning disciples embalming the body from which it had taken flight. All that comprised the life and intelligence of Jesus remained with His body in the sepulcher; and when He came forth it was as a whole being; He did not have to summon His spirit from heaven (3SP 203, 204; Ellen G. White, S.D.A. Bible Commentary Vol. 5, page 1150, paragraph 6).
This does not mean that Christ’s deity was conscious while in the tomb and ultimately brought about His own resurrection of the body. Such a thing would have made Christ’s death unreal, and the whole sacrifice of the Son of God a deception by having a human body that died while His deity remained consciously alive. All that comprised the life and intelligence of Jesus remained with His body in the sepulcher (Ellen G. White, The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 3, p. 204).
This next quotation is from the book Seventh-day Adventists Believe: A Biblical Exposition of Fundamental Doctrine:
Christ became man to die for the race. He valued selflessness more than self-existence (2015 ed., p. 32).
From these examples of statements from Ellen White and Adventist source material (and there are many more) we see that embedded within Adventism is the belief that the Lord Jesus ceased to exist during His death. In fact, even His deity was inactivated and unconscious.
Perhaps the most horrifying reality behind these beliefs is the fact that this Jesus whom Adventists remember on Easter is not God! Adventists claim that they believe in the same God that Christians believe and trust, but their Jesus does not posses the eternal attributes of omnipresence and omnipotence that transcend even death.
Colossians 1:16, 17 says this:
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Do not miss what this verse says: Jesus is the One in whom all things hold together. This means that even in the womb and in the tomb, God the Son was fully existent and conscious, alive and powerful, and holding all creation together!
Did He really die? Of course! The Son of Man was truly dead in the tomb—but His death was the death of all men: His body ceased to breathe, and His spirit went to the Father just as ours do when we we die! Jesus’ deity, moreover, could NOT die. His deity, unlike the descriptions EGW used, was not a force or a power; Jesus is eternal, almighty God who is spirit (Jn. 4:24), and His identity as God the Son and the Creator of all was fully active even as His body lay in the tomb!
Can we explain this? No! Yet these facts are what Scripture reveals, and God’s word cannot lie.
The Adventist Jesus—the Jesus Ellen White taught us to believe—is a false Jesus. He is not our Savior and Substitute who held us together even as He lay in the tomb.
The real Jesus did not cease to exist, honoring the Sabbath with His entombed corpse!
Sabbath, Not Jesus
I admit that I did not know all the EGW statements behind the popular Adventist narrative that interprets Jesus’ death and burial as a demonstration of Sabbath’s overarching sacredness.
I just absorbed the rationale, and I loved the Sabbath. Jesus, I believed, confirmed it in the most powerful way, being dead and gone during the Sabbath in order to exalt it to a pinnacle of prominence. He took Himself and His resurrection out of the picture so that the world would see only the Sabbath. Even in His death, Jesus honored the day and reminded us that keeping it holy was The Most Important Thing we could do prove that we loved God—and to demonstrate that we were safe to save.
Now I know the truth: this argument, that Jesus exalted the Sabbath in His death, was a heresy taught by EGW from the early days of Adventism. It wasn’t a logical deduction from the Scriptural account; it was a rewriting of the history recorded in the Bible, and it reflected the agenda of a false prophet and the men who used her to shape and control the members of the fledgling organization. Consider this quotation from Spiritual Gifts Vol. 1 and excerpted from pages 109–113 (emphasis ours):
Satan could not hinder the plan of salvation. Jesus was crucified, and arose again the third day. He told his angels that he would make even the crucifixion and resurrection tell to his advantage. He was willing that those who professed faith in Jesus should believe that the laws regulating the Jewish sacrifices and offerings ceased at the death of Christ, if he could push them further, and make them believe that the law of ten commandments died also with Christ.
I saw that many readily yielded to this device of Satan. All heaven was moved with indignation, as they saw the holy law of God trampled under foot. Jesus and all the heavenly host were acquainted with the nature of God’s law; they knew that he would not change or abolish it…After he rebelled, in order to save himself, he wished God to change his law; but God told Satan, before the whole heavenly host, that his law was unalterable. Satan knows that if he can cause others to violate God’s law he is sure of them; for every transgressor of his law must die.
Satan decided to go still further. He told his angels that some would be so jealous of God’s law that they could not be caught in this snare; that the ten commandments were so plain that many would believe that they were still binding; therefore he must seek to corrupt the fourth commandment which brings to view the living God. He led on his representatives to attempt to change the Sabbath, and alter the only commandment of the ten which brings to view the true God, the maker of the heavens and the earth. Satan presented before them the glorious resurrection of Jesus, and told them that by his rising on the first day of the week, he changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. Thus Satan used the resurrection to serve his purpose…
I saw that angels were filled with amazement as they beheld the sufferings and death of the King of glory. But I saw that it was no marvel to the angelic host that the Lord of life and glory, who filled all heaven with joy and splendor, should break the bands of death, and walk forth from his prison house a triumphant conqueror. And if either of these events should be commemorated by a day of rest, it is the crucifixion. But, I saw that neither of those events were designed to alter or abolish God’s law; but they give the strongest proof of its immutability.…
I was shown that the law of God would stand fast forever, and exist in the new earth to all eternity. At the creation, when the foundations of the earth were laid, the sons of God looked with admiration upon the work of the Creator, and all the heavenly host shouted for joy. It was then that the foundation of the Sabbath was laid. At the close of the six days of creation, God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made; and he blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work. The Sabbath was instituted in Eden before the fall, and was observed by Adam and Eve, and all the heavenly host. God rested on the seventh day, and blessed and hallowed it; and I saw that the Sabbath would never be done away; but the redeemed saints, and all the angelic host, will observe it in honor of the great Creator to all eternity.
There it is. In Ellen’s words we read where Adventists get their belief that the law is eternal, from eternity past to eternity future, and that all created beings will keep that law forever. In this quote we even find the Adventist belief that all the saints and angels will keep the Sabbath throughout all eternity!
Importantly, this passage reveals Adventism’s automatic response whenever a former Adventist leaves the fold for the sake of Jesus: “But what will you do about the Sabbath?!”
For an Adventist, SABBATH is the central mark of loyalty, the mark of true worship. In an Adventist mind, Jesus is the servant of the law and is the means to achieve loyalty to the Sabbath.
Moreover, Ellen taught Adventists that Satan intentionally deceived Christianity into believing that the Ten Commandments died with Christ. She taught Adventists that when Christians say the law was fulfilled in Jesus and that we now live by the Spirit instead of the law, that we no longer are required to honor the seventh day but that we find our true Sabbath rest in Christ (as per Hebrews 3–4, Colossians 1:14–17, Ephesians 2:14; Romans 14, and the entire book of Galatians)—she convinced Adventists that these biblical beliefs are actually deceptions of Satan!
Ellen White systematically veiled the identity, the nature, and the work of the Lord Jesus and deceptively twisted Scripture to elevate the law and to make Sabbath-keeping the THING for which Adventists would be willing to die! She replaced Jesus with the Sabbath, and the seamless structure of Adventist doctrine has woven a web of deception which keeps Adventists in black despair. They know they cannot keep the law, and they know they break the Sabbath!
Adventists know that Jesus, their example of perfect law-keeping, is supposed to help them obey, but Jesus’ perfection confronts them with their failure, and observing Him drives them to anger and despair.
Ellen Puts Law In the Place of Jesus
Ellen White has succeeded in causing Adventists to see Jesus in the way the Bible teaches us to see the law. Galatians explains that the law was given because of transgression, to reveal that we are depraved by nature and under an intractable curse of death because of our spiritual death. (See Galatians 3.) The Bible reveals that the Law was intended to INCREASE sin, to cause people to see that they need to repent and to throw themselves on the mercy of the Lord Jesus and His shed blood. The Law was intended to reveal the Lord Jesus’ full payment for our sin and to believe in Him!
Ellen, however, has caused Adventists to see Jesus as redirecting them to the Law, to see Sabbath-keeping as the mark of the truly saved, and to see Jesus’ perfection as the mirror accusing them of hopeless sin. She has made Adventists resent Jesus and recoil from His bloody cross.
Moreover, she has suppressed the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection as the thing that actually saves us and gives us new birth and eternal life when we believe! Romans 5:9, 10 says this:
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Ellen White did not teach that Jesus fulfilled the law and paid fully for all our sin, justifying us once-for-all by His blood shed on the cross. Even more, however, she did not teach that Jesus’ resurrection is what actually SAVES us. If Jesus had merely died to pay for our sin, we would have been justified, but the law’s curse of death would still have been in place. If Jesus had not risen, we, too, would still be condemned to death. It is Jesus’ resurrection that releases us from that curse.
When we believe and trust Jesus’ once-for-all atonement on that cross, we are born again and filled with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13, 14), and we pass at that moment from death to life (Jn. 5:24). It is Jesus’ resurrection life that is the eternal life of our new birth. When we believe, our previously dead spirits come to life, and we are eternally saved!
Look at this amazing explanation Paul gives us in Romans 8:9–11:
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
Resurrection Is Our Life
I appeal now to everyone who has ever been Adventist (or Jehovah’s Witness): ask God to remove the veil of your cultic theology. Ask Him to make His word come alive in your heart and to reveal our sovereign Lord Jesus to you. Ask Him to show you that Jesus’ death actually DID fulfill the law. Ask Him to give you faith to believe that Jesus took all of your sin—past, present, and future—in His body on the cross and paid the once-for-all blood sacrifice that His own law demanded for sin.
Ask the Lord to grant you repentance from believing that your obedience to the law was what would commend you to God. Even more pointedly, ask the Lord to forgive you for thinking that keeping the Sabbath would declare your allegiance to Him!
Repent of the spiritual arrogance that believed that Jesus served the Sabbath instead of the Sabbath being a shadow of Him.
Finally, on this weekend when we remember Jesus’ ultimate payment for human sin and His changing all creation by breaking the curse of death, repent for believing that Satan tricked Christians into celebrating Jesus’ resurrection on Sunday. Repent for believing that Jesus’ death trumped His life by eternally exalting a created day!
This weekend, look at Jesus on the cross and thank Him for becoming a curse for you and for taking the law’s death sentence for you. And when Sunday comes, see Him shattering death and revealing Himself to you as the One who justifies you and gives you His resurrection life!
He is alive, and when you believe Him, you also are eternally alive. He gives you His Spirit in your heart, and you will, from now on, live with the living hope of your guaranteed eternity with Him. The Sabbath is fulfilled in the perfect, eternal life of Jesus—and that life is eternally yours in Him.
He is risen!
Link to A Trip Through Holy Week
- May 4–10, 2024 - May 2, 2024
- We Got Mail - May 2, 2024
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024
Colleen,
Thank you again for a clear, Biblical teaching.
I was horrified by one thing you quoted from EGW. In the second quote you included, the one from Spirit Of Prophecy, she started off by saying:
“This does not mean that Christ’s deity was conscious while in the tomb and ultimately brought about His own resurrection of the body.”
But in John 10:18, Jesus clearly said that He would raise Himself: “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.””
Contrary to what she wrote, Jesus said He would resurrect Himself!
The more I know of her contradictions to, changing of and downgrading of the Bible, the worse she sounds! How could we have ever believed her?
Thank you for all your work to lead us to the Bible and to discard the
often blasphemous writings of a deluded woman.
In Christ
Jeanie