Nikki and Colleen continue their walk through chapter 2 of Ephesians by comparing Adventism’s prophet Ellen G. White with the clear teaching of the Bible. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Today we continue our walk through the letter to the Ephesians by looking at chapter 2, verses 14-18. Before we get started, I want to briefly summarize where we’ve been up to this point, and I’m going to do it by sharing a cycle that I see in Paul’s writing as he writes to the church at Ephesus. It seems to happen in four stages. He seems to begin with statements of what originally was, and then he talks about what God has done for us and then how what He’s done affects those of us who believe, and then this is followed up by God’s will for us now as believers. We see this in chapter 1 as he begins by discussing what originally was, in that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world and predestined us for adoption as sons. What God did, then, for us was to execute that salvation through the work of Jesus. And then we see how what He did affects us, in that when we believed in the true gospel, we were born again and sealed by the Holy Spirit. These truths are followed by the will of God for us expressed in Paul’s prayer that we would grow in our knowledge of Him as He works in us by His power. And then this begins again in chapter 2. Paul begins by declaring what was originally true of us, before God’s personal intervention in our lives. We were dead in our sins and cut off from Him, influenced by the spirit at work in the sons of disobedience and indulging in our flesh. This is then followed by what God did for us. In His great love and mercy, He caused us to be born again through the resurrection power of Christ, and this was all a gift of God. It was not by our work, it’s nothing that we can boast in. By grace we’ve been saved through faith. Next we see how what God has done has affected us in our very nature, that the resurrection of Christ caused us to be created into something altogether new in Christ, and then again this culminates in God’s will for us as His workmanship, that we would walk in the works He created for us in advance. And then I see another cycle, a longer cycle, that begins in verse 11. We’re again taken back to what formerly was, as Paul talks about the Gentiles and tells them to remember that they were once separated from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants, and without hope or God in the world. In verse 13 Paul speaks of what God has done for us Gentile believers. We have been brought near by the blood of Christ. And then the following verses will detail how what He’s done affects the two groups. The Jews and Gentiles become one new person, one new man. They become the church. Then the fourth stage of this cycle, God’s will for His people, seems to be fleshed out in chapters 4 through 6, and this all follows a parenthetical teaching about Paul’s stewardship, with another beautiful prayer in chapter 3. Now, last week we looked at verses 11 to 13 as we reflected on our own past as Adventists. We remembered again what God has done for us in rescuing us from false religion and then talked a bit about how that has impacted our lives now. And this week we will return to this section, reviewing 11 to 13 and focusing on verses 14 to 18 as we look closely at these two groups, which Christ has united in His own Body. Before we get started, though, let me remind you that if you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can also visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails, with links to our online articles and ministry news. This podcast and all the work of Life Assurance Ministries is supported by people like you, and we are so thankful for you and for your ongoing prayers for us. If you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support, you can find a place to donate at proclamationmagazine.com, and don’t forget to email formeradventist@gmail.com with your request to register for our online 2021 Former Adventist Fellowship Conference. Please be sure to add your mailing address to your email request. The conference is free to join, but donations are always welcome, as we do have additional expenses associated with these conferences. We have a lineup of great speakers, we’ll worship together, and we’ll have online breakout sessions as well. Last, don’t forget to like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, our passage today talks about the fact that Jesus broke down the dividing wall between the Jews and the Gentiles, so my question to you today, Colleen, is what did you think that meant as an Adventist?
Colleen: That is such a good question because I have no idea. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I don’t remember really thinking about this passage. I think if I had to comment on it as an Adventist, just looking back, I would have considered it quite metaphorical.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Quite metaphorical. You know, it’s interesting because this morning I asked Richard and our friend, Steve, as we were eating our bacon and eggs – quite truthfully so – what they thought of this passage as an Adventist, and Richard said, “Oh, I just – that was one of those things I just overlooked, because I had no clue what to do with it.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And Steve looked a little puzzled and said, “Yeah, I ignored it.” And then I asked, “What did you think a Gentile was as an Adventist?” And Richard said, “Well, I really did think that Gentiles were just people who were unbelievers and that somehow Jesus made it possible for unbelievers to now become able to keep the law along with the Jews, and that’s how He brought the Jews and the Gentiles together.” And I have to say, that answer probably sums up the general picture I had as well. I really have no memory of how I would have explained this passage except that somehow, because of whatever it was Jesus supposedly did, the Jews and the Gentiles now weren’t separated by whatever, and everybody could now keep the law equally, equally well.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] What about you, Nikki?
Nikki: You know, I’m not entirely sure. I know I’ve read Ephesians, and I know I’ve been taught from the letters of Scripture in Adventism, but I don’t recall anybody explaining this to me. I think that if you had asked me this question as an Adventist, I would have tried really hard to answer within the context of my understanding of the Adventist Christian. I think I would have seen this as like you have described, as God making a way for both groups to be able to come and keep the law.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: I don’t know. Because I’m not entirely sure that I understood even what the cross did, except that it sort of opened a door for all of us to walk through, where we would gain the power – the light beams from heaven [laughter] –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – that would enable us to keep the law, you know, to vindicate God. So, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can only guess. I just don’t know what I would have said.
Colleen: You know, I’ve been pondering that whole idea of what did I think the cross was about as an Adventist, and I would have said, “Yes, Jesus died so I don’t have to,” but I think I saw that as a sort of representative thing, that He did this unimaginable thing and went through this unimaginable physical suffering so that I don’t have to be annihilated – none of which made sense, actually, in a logical sense, but I didn’t know what else to think – and that it was all part of making it possible to show me that I too could be perfect and keep the law and that because Jesus died that death, then I don’t have to. It was kind of a representative death, kind of like the Aztec priest carrying the virgin’s heart up to the top of the pyramid and sacrificing. I don’t know. That was kind of Jesus to me, and I didn’t know what else to do with Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That sounds like of irreverent, doesn’t it? But I really did not understand what His blood did or what His death did, and I had no understanding of what it really meant that there’s no Jew or Gentile except that somehow circumcision didn’t matter anymore.
Nikki: Yeah. Yeah, that was a big one. And then there wouldn’t be any more animal sacrifices. I might have answered with that.
Colleen: Oh, my!
Nikki: But apparently the food laws got stricter, so I don’t know.
Colleen: That was still part of the law. You know, none of that really made sense. I remember when I was in my mid-20s. I was teaching at Gem State Academy, and I read an article in some Adventist publication, I don’t even remember which one now, written by John Brunt, who had been one of my theology professors in college at Walla Walla, and he was making the argument that the food laws were ceremonial law from the law, and he was explaining how somehow those were still useful for us from health reasons, but that he did make the point that they were ceremonial, and I remember thinking to myself for the first time, “Oh, my goodness! They are ceremonial laws!” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: And then realizing, “Yeah, well, they’re necessary, even though they’re ceremonial,” and having that disconnect in my head. There was so much about what Jesus did I had no understanding of.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Why don’t we read from Ephesians 2, and for context let’s begin with 11 and read from 11 through 18, and we’ll talk about, a little more deeply, what this is saying Jesus did.
Nikki: “Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘circumcision,’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands – remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.”
Colleen: Thank you. This is really an amazing passage. When I think about it now, the passage that completely eluded me when I was an Adventist, I’m looking at how many times these few verses use the word “peace,” and it begins with, in verse 14, “He Himself” – Jesus – “is our peace.” I just want to ask right up front: What does it mean that Jesus is our peace, and what was the peace that was necessary for us to have? What was this peace we needed that He became?
Nikki: Well, He Himself is our peace because He abolished the enmity and the division between us in His body on the cross. And so He brought us peace.
Colleen: And who were we not at peace with?
Nikki: Well, before then it was the Jews and the Gentiles. They were separated by the law of God.
Colleen: Um-hmm. Absolutely. There was no peace between Jew and Gentile. And humanity as a whole, we’ve already learned, was not at peace with God prior to Jesus coming. And this is the thing that I think has just started to make sense to me in a new way in the more recent years, actually, that the Jews, who were just as dead in sin as the Gentiles, had an advantage, as Paul says in Romans 3:1-3, because they had the oracles of God. They had the law. Now, this has been quite a revelation to me because as an Adventist, having the law meant something very different from what I’m seeing Paul says it means. But when God gave Israel the law, He gave them an understanding that they were not connected to Him, that they could not please Him, and that they couldn’t even do things to make their lives right with Him. They had to bring animal sacrifices. They had to bring blood sacrifices for every sin they committed, and they had priests who had to intercede, who had to mediate God’s forgiveness to them and mediate their repentance to God at the Temple over these sacrifices that they brought. So what I’m seeing now is that even though Israel – even though the Jews were just as dead in their sins as were all the Gentiles of the world, they had this revelation of God’s big picture and purpose and love for them that was revealed through the law. They realized through the law that they had to have atonement for sin because they couldn’t please God. And they realized that God would cover their sins with blood sacrifice. And they realized that God gave them mediators between Himself and them, and the Gentiles didn’t have any of that. So the Gentiles were at a disadvantage, as we have just learned in the first part of Ephesians 2. They were at a disadvantage because they didn’t have those covenants. They didn’t have the law. But Israel, being dead, didn’t always benefit from the law, as we now see they could have, because they just kind of went through the motions without actually believing God. So when Paul comes along and says, “He Himself is our peace,” we realize that that peace, in the context he’s talking here, is first of all between Jew and Gentile. The Jews were inside this paradigm created by the law and the revelation of God’s goodness and righteousness and the revelation of their own sinfulness and the need that they had to repent before God. The Gentiles didn’t have that revelation, so they were truly at odds with each other, and God kept them separated so the paganism of the Gentiles didn’t mix up with the Jews and blur out what God was revealing through the law. But then, even beyond that, they weren’t at peace with God because there had never been a sacrifice that was offered that could truly atone for human sin. So when Paul says, “He Himself is our peace,” this is a very big thing, and what we see further, in verse 14, is that Jesus is our peace, and He made the Jews and the Gentiles one by breaking down the barrier of the dividing wall. That’s the really big piece of this that Adventism obscured to us. What’s your take on this, Nikki?
Nikki: You know, I never saw that as an Adventist, but I do remember reading this, as I look at it now, that He broke down this barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances. And you know what? I think as an Adventist I autocorrected this in my head to say that He abolished the ordinances under the commandments, not that He abolished the commandments contained in the ordinances. That might seem confusing, but in my head it was all of the stuff that belonged to the commandments that was abolished, not the commandments themselves –
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: – because that had to be eternal; right? That was a part of pre-Creation history. Those Ten Commandments were eternal, they were deified. I think that I just autocorrected without even thinking about it as I’d read, avoiding the conflict there.
Colleen: That’s so interesting, Nikki! So the way Paul words this is that He abolished in His flesh the enmity which is – and he’s identifying it here, is is a state of being verb [laughter], just so you remember your grammar –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: This is an identification statement. He’s saying, the enmity is the law of commandments. So the way you understood it was, He did away with the ordinances –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – which were like the subset of the Ten Commandments.
Nikki: Yep.
Colleen: But what he’s saying is, the enmity is the law of commandments contained in ordinances. That is interesting. I’d never thought of that before you said that. In other words, the ordinances, which were all the things the Jews had to do that were dictated in the law, in the full Mosaic covenant, all the ceremonies, all the rituals or the sacrifices, all the requirements, were the ordinances, and what this is saying is all of those requirements were acting out the law of commandments, and you were seeing it the other way around.
Nikki: Yeah. You can’t do away with the law of commandments, so you’ve got to do away with the ordinances, like cutting the fat off the steak, if you will. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Oh, what an interesting metaphor. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] Well, yeah, like Jesus came and His sacrifice did away with that, but not the other. But that’s not what this verse says. And you know, it was interesting as I was preparing for this podcast, this part down here near the end of verse 15, where it says that He did this so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man. Well, this made me think back to verse 10 above, that we are new creatures created in Christ Jesus, and if you put 9 and 10 together, you see that God created us in Christ Jesus, but if you look down here, you see that Jesus Himself created us in Himself, and that word there “make,” it’s the same word used of God when He creates. It’s something from nothing. And so we see here that Jesus made something from nothing in Himself. He created us into a new man together.
Colleen: That means He’s God.
Nikki: Yeah! [Laughter.]
Colleen: That’s a really interesting insight. He makes us, creates us, as one new man in Himself. Now, as an Adventist, you know, that was just Bible talk, Bible speak. It’s like Richard said, “Okay, Gentiles and Jews. No more circumcision. We can all keep the law together.” That’s not at all what this is saying.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: This means what it says: In Himself, by abolishing the law in His flesh, Jesus created one new man in Himself. So, let’s back up and see what this actually is saying. We talked about this a bit last week too. Jesus, as the living Torah, the living Word, who went to the cross as the living Word of God, all the commandments of God that were contained in the Mosaic covenant were fulfilled in the person of Jesus. He had kept the law perfectly, He had become the curse of the law, He took the curse of the law, He died the death that the law said humans had to die, and He ultimately broke the curse by rising from death. In Himself He fulfilled every single requirement of the Mosaic covenant. And by doing that, He abolished that dividing wall, the law, which kept Israel separate from Gentiles. And now Jesus Himself becomes the great unifier. Instead of it being a wall that keeps the two separate, He becomes the One in whom we meet when we trust Him, and that means that when we trust Him, because of His blood, which paid for our sin, we literally become, as the Bible puts it, new creations. Or as John says in John 1:12 and 13, we are literally born of God. That’s a miracle, and that’s real. And I can’t explain how it happens, but the Bible says it does, and anybody who’s experienced it knows it’s true.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: It’s like Jesus, God the Son, was born of Mary and became the Son of Man, and we, as sinful humans, when we trust Jesus and His finished work, are born of God and become the adopted sons and daughters of God. It’s not just Bible speak. We literally become new, and like you said earlier, Nikki, it’s almost like we become a new species of man that’s not natural but is spiritual, born of God.
Nikki: And this is all what it means when we say “in Christ alone.” In Him we live and move and have our being. We are created new.
Colleen: That’s very true. And all of this means that the law, which said we are sinful, we cannot please God, we are unable to do anything to merit our salvation or to overcome our own natural, sinful, dead-in-sin state, that law that condemned us and exposed our sin, is now fulfilled and, as Hebrews 8 says, it’s obsolete, because we have our Savior, who took the curse and became our life. This is 180 degrees different from what Adventism taught us. In fact, in verse 16 Paul goes on and says that Jesus did this, He abolished this law, so that He might reconcile both the Jews and the Gentiles in one Body to God through the cross. Now, you know, this can be read one of two ways, and both would be correct. We are both reconciled, Jews and Gentiles, in the body of Jesus, and we’re reconciled to God as one Body in Christ. The church is Christ’s Body, and the church is composed of believing Jews and believing Gentiles who are born again, sealed with the Spirit, and become the Body of Christ. This is a miracle that we can’t explain because there is spiritual reality here that we can’t see with our literal, physical eyes, but the Bible declares it, and we know it’s true because His Spirit convicts our spirt that we’re His sons when we believe, His heirs. And by doing this, Jesus has put to death the enmity, and it was the law that created that enmity. It created the separation between Jews and Gentiles, and it defined our separation from God.
Nikki: This is such an incredible picture. There was this great collision that happened on the cross, where all of these things were brought together in Christ. He destroyed the law that kept them separated from each other and from God. He reconciled us to Himself, to God. He disarmed Satan. We read that in Colossians.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: You know, in Adventism not only did the cross not disarm Satan by abolishing the law, Jesus did not put to death the enmity that separated the Jew and the Gentile, because Adventism unlawfully uses the law to accuse the brethren and unlawfully uses a strange new teaching of the law to create a dividing wall. It seeks to maintain what God destroyed, and I just see a thumbprint of evil.
Colleen: Once again, I went looking to see if we have any words from the prophet –
Nikki: [Laughter.] Good.
Colleen: – that clarify the confusion that we all had as Adventists, and I did find some. I just brought a few to read. This is so clearly saying that Jesus abolished – that word is abolished. He abolished in His flesh the enmity which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances. He abolished the law by becoming everything the law condemned and taking its curse and breaking its curse. Only Jesus, God the Son incarnate, could do that. But here’s what Ellen said. This quotation is from her Letter #16, written in 1892: “I saw” – and you just want to say, where and from whom did she see it? “I saw that Jesus did not come to abolish His Father’s law.” Now, I want to say this, in case there are any people who don’t have an Adventist background listening, when Ellen White talks about law, she always means the Ten Commandments, and we as Adventists learned to understand the word “law” in Scripture as the Ten Commandments. Now, Christians, who’ve never had our deceptive background, understand God’s law to mean everything He said.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It means the entire counsel of God, but not to us Adventists. It means the Ten Commandments. So when we read that Christ abolished in His flesh the law of commandments, we can’t accept that because Ellen White said the law means the Ten, and the Ten are eternal. So that’s the background. I’ll just read that again. Ellen says, “I saw that Jesus did not come to abolish the Father’s law. The Ten Commandments were to stand fast forever. Adam and Eve broke God’s law and fell” — and she means the Ten Commandments – “and the family of Adam must perish. God could not alter or abolish His law to save lost man, who had by his transgression fallen so low that God could not accept any effort he might make to keep that holy, just, and good law. Jesus saw the degradation of man and pitied his hopeless condition. All heaven knew that God could not change or abolish His law to save man. Said an angel, ‘Did Jesus come to make void the law of God and by His death abolish it? No! No! If God’s law could have been changed, if it could have been abolished, God would not have given His Son to die a cruel, shameful death.'” I mean, can you imagine she says that? “But the fact of Jesus giving His life for man shows the immutability of God’s law.”
Nikki: It’s really upsetting. And when she says that an angel said that, doesn’t it make you think of that snake in the garden saying, “Did God really say?”
Colleen: Yes. And it makes me think of the angel of light in Galatians 1, and if that angel of light comes and preaches anything other than the gospel of the New Testament, he is to be accursed. Here’s another one from the Review and Herald, written in 1901. And I just want to remind you that Ellen White died in 1915, so she was not a young woman in her early years. These are her later years, when Adventists say she became more orthodox and corrected her early problems. No, no she didn’t. Okay, here’s what she says in 1901: “The law of God is immutable.” Again, she means the Ten. “Were it otherwise, no confidence could be placed in His government. God rules the world in omnipotence, and all that His love inspires He will execute. He does not abolish today that which He enforced yesterday.” Well, I just want to say, wait a minute. What about the flood? There was a lot abolished at the flood because mankind was so degenerate. God Himself never changes, but the way God deals with humanity does change. And the Bible tells us that the law of the Mosaic covenant had a beginning and an ending. It is not eternal, it is not permanent. God is permanent, not the law. And then here’s one more. “Those who are unwilling to obey God’s law declare that it is done away, that God has abolished it.” Do you get that, Nikki? Those who are unwilling to obey God’s law say it’s been done away with and abolished. “But,” she continues “if this law is perfect, why should God abolish or change it? That which is perfect cannot be improved by any change. An attempt to remodel a perfect enactment only causes imperfection. God has neither abolished nor changed His law. It is the foundation of His government, and it will stand forever, the immutable, unalterable standard which all must reach would they be saved. ”Til heaven and earth pass, declared Christ, not one jot or tittle shall in anywise pass from the law ’til all be fulfilled.'” And that was from Signs of the Times in 1897. This woman was, in my opinion, demonic. She’s completely contradicting Scripture.
Nikki: When there is a change in the priesthood, there is of necessity a change in the law as well.
Colleen: Hebrews 7:12.
Nikki: One line shreds all of what she wrote there.
Colleen: She’s a false prophet. We can’t listen to anything she says, and she has so twisted our understanding.
Nikki: Can I just say that the word “abolished” in this section when speaking of the commandments means “to make completely inoperative or to put out of use.”
Colleen: Yes. Hebrews 8 again says that the law, the Mosaic Law, became obsolete, and just by the way, in case people want to argue that the Ten Commandments are somehow special and are disconnected from the law that was made obsolete and abolished, no. Exodus 34:27 and 28 calls the Ten Commandments the “words of the covenant.” They were the overview, the abstract, if you will, of the entire Mosaic covenant, and Moses called them “the words of the covenant.” They are included in the unit called the law, which was made obsolete by the blood of Jesus and abolished at the cross. Now, does this mean we live without lawfulness? No! Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, he says he becomes all things to all people so that he may save many, and he says to those who are not under the law he becomes as one not under the law, though he himself is not apart from the law of God but is under the Law of Christ. The New Covenant has a different law. We’re not lawless. We’re not antinomian, but it’s not the Ten Commandments.
Nikki: What you’re saying is when we say that the law is obsolete, we’re not saying we can go out and commit adultery and steal and do all of the things that we’re accused of doing when we say that we are now under the Law of Christ.
Colleen: Absolutely, because morality – contrary to the way Ellen White taught it, morality is not defined by the law. Morality comes from God Himself, and Romans 5 tells us that death reigned from Adam until Moses, but where there is no law there is no sin imputed. There was no law until Moses, but death reigned because men were sinful, because of Adam. But Adam didn’t become a sinner by breaking the Ten Commandments. Adam had only one command: Don’t eat that fruit. His eating that fruit plunged all humanity into sin, but it’s not the law that defined that sin. The sin was not trusting God’s word. That’s what plunged humanity into spiritual death, and now, when we trust Jesus, we’re brought into spiritual life. It’s not the law that defines righteousness. It’s God.
Nikki: Can you imagine Adam’s confusion in the Garden if he had to honor his mother and father?
Colleen: That’s a really good point. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] There’s a lot of missing logic in this idea that the Ten Commandments are eternal.
Colleen: Well, and think of angels not committing adultery.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: There are great problems with that idea. So as I was thinking about this, I was trying to figure out how to express what I’ve come to see. It’s so confusing to have come up through Adventism with all of the definitions of what law and righteousness and immorality and being unsaved, what all those things mean from an Ellen White perspective and understanding that we used all the same words Christianity uses, and neither we as Adventists nor the Christians who talked to us understood that we had different definitions going on while we used the same words with each other. And I was thinking about it. I was thinking, Ellen White established a worldview that equated the Ten Commandments with God’s character. I mean, we’ve all heard that. She thus made the Ten Commandments eternal and immutable, and she developed a, what do you want to say, philosophical framework that assumes that the law is the basis for righteousness and morality. Not God, the law. She thus removes the Decalogue from the covenant that it defined. Now, we’ve already mentioned Exodus 34:27 calls the Ten Commandments “The words of the covenant,” but Ellen lifted those Ten Commandments out of the Mosaic covenant. She declared they were eternal, and she defined them as God’s law, the law which ruled heaven before Creation, the law which Lucifer broke, the law which Adam broke, the law which we all broke. But this scenario is false. Scripture clearly says the law has a beginning and an ending. Galatians 3:17-19 makes that very clear, the law, which came 430 years after Abraham until the Seed. The Ten Commandments were the heart of the Mosaic covenant. The New Covenant has a new law, the Law of Christ, as we just mentioned. Paul declared that in 1 Corinthians 9:21. Ellen has perpetrated her false gospel by creating an invented worldview that places law, not God, at the center of reality and righteousness. She has defined the law and placed Jesus under the law as its servant and its sacrifice. Ellen White’s Jesus sacrificed His life to establish the law as the eternal judge and jury of mankind. Ellen puts Jesus in a position related to the law that is the same as ours, subject to the law, answerable to it, judged by it. She does not have a Jesus who is our Lord, our triune, sovereign, eternal God. No! She places Jesus under the law in the same way we are under the law, and she has thus made Jesus not God, but a glorified sort of demigod, a sort of supernatural person who had enough supernatural power to impress us but who’s not sovereign and almighty. She makes law the core of reality and the definer of truth, and in her world law is not a tool of God nor an expression of His power, but law is a thing that God Himself must keep, like we’re told, “God Himself keeps the Sabbath and we’ll keep it with Him.” No! She made law the thing that defines God. Law, in Ellen’s world, not God, is the ultimate eternal value in the universe. She has completely contradicted Scripture.
Nikki: You don’t have to read Ellen White very long to realize that she was a false prophet with a very different gospel. In the Christian gospel, the gospel of Scripture, Jesus is the one who is our peace and who breaks down the barrier of the dividing wall between Judaism and the rest of the believing world. We are a new creation in Him. We’re eternally reconciled to God, covered under the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. Go and listen to Hebrews if you haven’t yet. Both groups are born of the Spirit and live by the Spirit. We are now disciplined by the Father of spirits Himself and not be a religious order of priests and ordinances –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – or the lifestyle commandments of a false prophet. We’re under a new covenant, with a new high priest and a new law, the law of Christ. Galatians 3:28 tells us, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ.” The Adventist Jesus is the one who upholds a false version of that wall and waves people in, pulling in Christians and pulling in all the world to practice their new form of Judaism. It’s not even biblical Judaism. It’s baptized by this 1844 movement. They seek to take the Jew and Gentile world and make them one new group under an Adventist blend –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – of the two cultures. There is a new false dividing wall that continues to divide Adventists from other people, even from Christians. They have their food laws, which promote pretend meat in a can and sugary cereals [laughter] –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – and they actually enact even greater food restrictions, eliminating dairy, fish, and all other sources of animal protein. It kind of depends on what part of the continent you live on, doesn’t it? They have their sabbathkeeping, which bends to cultural preferences but still marks one’s ability to be saved. They have all their private institutions, which run the gamut of theory and practice. They have their special prophets, and I have plural there because they have ongoing false prophets that pop up all over the world.
Colleen: Yes, they do.
Nikki: And they have these detailed lifestyle laws or points of pride, the Blue Laws, and you can either take them or leave them and still be an Adventist. They have their own special missionaries and their own special history that they keep separate from Christendom. These missionaries always promote the special SDA message. As an Adventist, I knew nothing of the Christian missionaries. I didn’t know who Nate Saint was. I didn’t know so much of Christian history. It’s kept separate. Adventism invented cultic enmity between its adherents and the rest of the world. They pit themselves against everyone else. They are the remnant. They are the healthiest. They are the ones who don’t worship Babylon. They live the longest. It’s them against the world, Christian and unbeliever the same.
Colleen: Nikki, you summarized that so well. I realized, as I was listening to you, that as an Adventist I did feel all those things. Even though I tried really hard to make myself believe I was just a normal Christian that kept the Sabbath, I still felt that those things were true about Adventism. You know, it’s so interesting, this section that we’re looking at today in Ephesians 2, the last two verses of our passage, 17 and 18, they summarize exactly how false Adventism is. Verse 17 quotes Isaiah, and we realize in verse 17 that it was always God’s plan to save both Jews and Gentiles. He simply brought the Savior and the plan of His working out our salvation in the person of Christ. He brought that through Judaism. As Jesus told the woman at the well, “Salvation is from the Jews.” That’s why it was so important for them to have a law that separated them from the paganism of the Gentiles, to preserve the holy seed and to preserve the living metaphor, if you want to call it that, that the law was, to show that salvation was coming through Him. But here’s what 17 says: “And He” – meaning Jesus – “came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near,” the far away, of course, being the Gentiles, and those who were near were the Jews, all equally dead in sin by nature, but farther from God if they didn’t have the covenants of promise. But now, through Him, verse 18, “we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.” Isn’t that interesting? The whole Trinity is in verse 18. Through Him, Jesus, we both, Jew and Gentile, have our access in one Spirit to the Father. Our salvation is the work of the Trinity, every one, every person of the Trinity, has a role to play in our salvation, and we can’t say Jesus alone did it or the Spirit alone brings us to life or the Father alone elected. This is the work of the Trinity, who is our one God. We are saved by our eternal one God.
Nikki: And that’s really the answer to the accusation that God abused Jesus by sending Him to the cross. This was done in the triune God. This salvation was brought by the triune God. This was not abusive. It makes me shudder to think of them even saying that.
Colleen: It’s horrifying. But when you know, when you see what Jesus has really done, that the eternal almighty God the Son became incarnate, became a man, died the death of a human, but He was sinless, and took all of our sin in His flesh to the cross and undid the curse of the law and undid the curse that we were born into by rising from death, if you have never trusted Him, please do. You will be amazed at the difference in how the Bible looks to you, at the difference in how Jesus looks to you, and the falseness of our Adventist paradigm will just become as clear as a bell, and it will begin to fall away in the light of Scripture. Come to Jesus and trust His finished work on the cross.
Nikki: So if you have any questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com, and you can also visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails with links to our online articles and ministry news. You can also find a donate tab there if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support. And again, don’t forget to email formeradventist@gmail.com with your request to register for our online 2021 Former Adventist Fellowship Conference. Don’t forget to add your mailing address to that email request. The conference is free to join, but donations are welcome. Join us again next week as we talk about what it means to be a part of the household of God.
Colleen: And we’ll see you then.
Nikki: Bye.
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