Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “The Godhead”. Is God like a family or a team that is working for the good of the universe? 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 address the second Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Belief entitled, at least in their book, Seventh-day Adventist’s Believe, it’s entitled, “The Godhead.” Christian belief statements always include statements about the Trinity. Our Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, self-existent God, but it is significant that Adventism uses conflicting statements online and in print as it tries to explain its beliefs. It’s interesting because it actually hides its deviation from the historic Christian Trinity, which Adventism does not endorse, as we will talk about. Again, today as we talk through this Adventist belief statement, it’s really important to remember that underneath this doctrine lies the Adventist arbiter of all things biblical, Ellen White. Now, I know a lot of Adventists believe that the 28 Fundamentals can be embraced even without Ellen White, that they’re all based on the Bible only, but this assumption is not true. Even in this doctrine of the Trinity, which Adventism now officially endorses, the way they define Trinity is determined not by Scripture but by Ellen White, but you have to dig a little to understand that that’s true. It’s important to remember – and Nikki, we’re going to keep repeating this fact as we go through these 28 Fundamentals – that Ellen White is the omnipresent definer of Adventist truth, and even if you say, “Oh, I don’t believe in Ellen White, I never read her” or “I don’t think she’s a prophet,” if you are an Adventist, your entire worldview is the product of Ellen White. Remember, Ellen White’s prophetic ministry is one of Adventism’s 28 Fundamental Beliefs, #18 to be exact. She still speaks to Adventism with prophetic authority, and she is believed to have been given her visions and dreams by God. She and her visions authorized all of Adventism’s doctrines, so if you look at any single Fundamental Belief or Adventist doctrine, you have to see how Ellen White helped that idea become established. Because her divine inspiration, which is said to be just like that of the Bible writers, is one of Adventism’s core beliefs, that means that everything she ever wrote is official and current. She continues to be their prophetic authority, and her words must be treated as Adventist source material. She’s kind of like a hidden doorway. It’s in Fundamental Belief #18. We learn that her writings are still considered inspired and valid, and if we open that doorway of Ellen White and examine her writings, it’s like entering a completely new reality. A whole world of special knowledge opens up. In all of her voluminous and often contradictory work is the source of Adventist hermeneutics, doctrine, and worldview. Not one single Adventist belief can be understood at face value. In order to know what Adventists really mean under its carefully written public statements, we have to go back to Ellen White. Even those Adventists who say the church has changed and has moved from its earliest doctrines, they’re wrong. Still today every doctrine is crafted to both conceal and reveal Ellen White’s extrabiblical revelations. Adventism works to conceal its true beliefs and its true nature from outsiders, but it reveals the deep prophetic mysteries of Ellen to its inducted members. But before we talk about that anymore, I just want to remind you that we love hearing from you. You can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can go to proclamationmagazine.com, and you can sign up for our weekly Proclamation! emails. You can find links there to this podcast and to its transcripts and to our FAF YouTube channel. You can also donate there using the donate tab, and you can find all of our online magazines and articles. We’d love for you to leave a review of this podcast wherever you listen to it. Your responses help our podcast to grow. And now, Nikki, before we read Fundamental Belief #2, I have a question for you. As an Adventist, how did you understand the Trinity?
Nikki: I would have said that I believed the Christian Trinity, that God was three in one. But I certainly didn’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity. I didn’t understand the simplicity of God. And so my picture of this three-in-one God was very different from the God of Scripture. I just didn’t understand that, and I remember reading one time from Genesis, and where it says that God created man in His image, male and female He created them, I went and spoke with my pastor at the time, and I said, “What does that mean, He created us in His image male and female? Does God have genders?” And he said, “No, He doesn’t have genders, but He created a relationship, and what it means to be in God’s image is to be a person in relationship.” And that was probably the most I pondered the Trinity, and it was still confusing to me, and I just sort of backed away from it and decided, this is just another one of those things that’s too hard to understand, like the natures of Christ. And I just kind of left it there. [Laughter.]
Colleen: I get that. I remember sitting in my Adventist elementary school and being taught in Bible class that the Trinity was a little bit like a family. It’s like we have God the Father and the Holy Spirit and Jesus the Son, and it’s almost like there were three people that had a common purpose and common goals and common loves and common commitments, and they were all God. Almost like “God” was a family name and we have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as first names. Now, it wasn’t quite explained like that, but they did deliberately use the family metaphor to explain God. So I was clearly taught that the Trinity was a unity of three separate individuals that all comprised one God, like a God family. I thought that was the true Trinity. I thought that was the Trinity all Christians believed in.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So when we came out of Adventism and somebody first said to me that they had believed as an Adventist a different Jesus than they now believed, I was shocked. Now, I had already come out, but hearing that, I thought, “No. I believe in the same Jesus Christians believe in. I believe in Jesus.” But that bothered me. I had to start figuring it out, and it wasn’t until actually maybe five years after we left that I started to understand that the biblical Trinity, based on all kinds of passages from both Testaments, is one God expressed in three persons who share substance, and that’s what I hadn’t understood. It wasn’t just a shared will and shared loves and shared desires and shared purpose, it was shared substance. That was shocking to me. And I did realize then that I had believed in a different God. And like you were saying, Nikki, at this point I feel like I have to declare as a Christian I believe in a different God than Adventists.
Nikki: Yeah, I do not believe in the Adventist God. I do not believe in the Adventist Godhead or Trinity, and it’s not orthodox Christianity. They do not believe the same way that orthodox Christians believe. They don’t.
Colleen: No, they don’t. And I’ll tell you the thing that really got me was when I started understanding that when they say Jesus is all God, I understood that to be like a piece of pie. Like if I have an apple pie and I have a piece of apple pie, and it’s not the whole pie, but it’s a piece, that piece is all pie. When I started understanding that when Christians say Jesus is fully God, they don’t just mean He’s a piece of God that’s all cut out of the picture or the family of God. He possesses everything the whole Trinity possesses. So using the apple pie analogy, if there is a piece of peel, a piece of core, and a seed in that apple pie, Jesus, as one piece, might have the seed, the Holy Spirit might have the peel, and the Father might have the core, but they’re still all God. That’s what I thought. But what I started realizing was that all three persons of the Trinity have to have all the characteristics and attributes of the full identity of God or they’re not God. So if Jesus doesn’t have the peel, the core, and the seed, same with the Holy Spirit, same with the Father, then we’re not dealing with God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That was the big thing that shocked me. I did think Jesus no longer had the attribute of omnipresence.
Nikki: Yeah, well, we were told that He couldn’t. He had a body now and so He couldn’t be everywhere, and that’s why the Holy Spirit was sent.
Colleen: Such confusion.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Nikki, do you mind reading Fundamental Belief #2.
Nikki: “There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons. God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever present. He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through His self-revelation. God, who is love, is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation.”
Colleen: So, Nikki, as you read this Fundamental Belief, what red flags go up in your head now?
Nikki: Several, all at the same time. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: So it’s hard to even know where to begin. It reminds me, again, of what I was told shortly after I left. When you’re looking at these statements, you look for what isn’t there as well as what is there. And they have a lot of words here that Christians use to describe God, but they also have intentionally left out words that Christians use to describe God, words that tell of a God who does not fit inside of the Great Controversy paradigm.
Colleen: So when you read “a unity of three co-eternal persons,” the average Christian might not have any kind of reaction to that. When you read it now, what do we know about that? In fact, what did we discover they actually do on their official website regarding that phrase?
Nikki: Well, so when we look at this print, we see that they’ve left out that this is a unity of three co-eternal persons in one being, in one substance. That’s gone. That’s not here. And that’s intentional. So, on the website they have a list of 28 Fundamental Beliefs, with only Scripture underneath each of them. This is on the adventist.org website. But if you look to the right of the website, they have links for each of the beliefs, and under the Trinity, if you click on that link, they have an explanation of their belief on the Trinity, and they introduce it by saying, “Seventh-day Adventist Christians believe there is one God and that this one God is three co-eternal beings who work together in unity.”
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? Different word.
Nikki: And it’s an important word.
Colleen: So what is the difference between a person and a being in this sense? Why is that word “being” so important?
Nikki: If you have three beings, you don’t have one being, you don’t have one God in three persons. You have three gods. You have tritheism. It’s that family you were talking about.
Colleen: Yes! Exactly. A being is an existing organism, a fully complete existing organism. And if God is one, like it says in Deuteronomy 6:4, “O Israel: Our God the Lord is one!” That is one God, not three co-existent beings. One being implies one substance. Three beings, like you said, implies three separate people or three separate persons or three separate personages who would be different in how they’re made and what they contain inside of themselves. But God is one, expressed in three persons. Do we understand this? No. But it’s important that God is one being, that God is one.
Nikki: So there is presently a movement in Seventh-day Adventism, which isn’t brand new because it’s very much connected to the founders of Adventism, but it’s seeking to pull Adventists back to their antitrinitarian belief system. And one of their arguments is, “Well, ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible; the word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible.” And while they’re correct that the actual word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible, the content of the doctrine of the Trinity is in Scripture, and it’s all over Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity is the best interpretation of the Bible, and Nabeel Qureshi writes a book called No God But One, and on page 57 he has a section called “The Trinity in the Bible,” and he talks about five elements found repeatedly throughout the Bible’s text that are best interpreted through the lens of the Trinity. Those five elements are that there is only one God. The Father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God. These are three distinct persons, and he has texts that support this after each of these statements. And so when we’re talking about the Trinity and we’re talking about the orthodox Christian definition, we’re not talking about a denominational idea. We’re talking about the small-c “catholic” church –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and what they have come to understand on the pages of Scripture. We’ve seen it all throughout history. They created councils to deal with all of these heresies about who God is, what God is, who Jesus is –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and we’ve already talked about the Arian roots of Adventism. And these statements in their Fundamental Belief are just vestiges of that. When you’re talking about the pie, that was such a huge moment for me. When I came to understand what’s called the divine simplicity of God, I began to see more clearly all of the heresy laid all throughout the narrative, the flowery, poetic, beautiful narrative about who God is, that I felt so privileged to have because of Ellen. The divine simplicity says that the nature of the Trinity is simple because it cannot lose any attribute it possesses without ceasing to be what it is. So if you have Jesus giving up any aspect of His divine nature, you no longer have God in any of the three persons. It is destroyed.
Colleen: That’s really well said. When it says in Colossians that the fullness of deity dwelt in Him bodily, that means even as an incarnate man, there wasn’t one tiny bit of attribute of God that was missing from Him as man. He was fully God as well as fully man. So everything that God did and could do, He did and could do as a man. I didn’t understand that.
Nikki: And so you can have these statements that they have written out for the public on the Internet, refusing to acknowledge how Ellen White has shaped what they do and don’t say, it can look very Christian to the average person going to see “Who are these Adventists? What do they actually believe?” But what they don’t know is that underlying all of this is that story of origins that we’ve talked about.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And when you have in the story of Ellen’s that Jesus had to go before the Father three times and plead with Him to let Him save humanity, you’ve now destroyed the simplicity of God because now you have God having opposing wills: the Father not wanting the Son to go, the Son having to beg. And then you also have attributes that are opposing each other: the justice of the Father and the mercy of the Son. She has created a tritheism that can be at odds with each other, but overall they have a common goal. That’s not my God.
Colleen: No, mine either. My God doesn’t have arguments within itself and then present a united front to the public.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I want to share a few things from the origins of the Seventh-day Adventist movement to help us understand how this happened. Now, we’ve talked before about the fact that Joseph Bates, James White, and his wife, Ellen G. White were three of the founders of the Adventist movement. And it’s really important, when we talk about this particular Fundamental Belief, to remember that both Joseph Bates and James White came from a movement called the Christian Connection. Now, this movement was openly non- or antitrinitarian. And James White was an ordained minister in the Christian Connection. He came into the Adventist movement, which he helped develop, as a fully-blown antitrinitarian, Joseph Bates was a fully-blown antitrinitarian, and together they helped Ellen White take on that antitrinitarianism and endorse it with visions in the beginning. Now, it’s important to remember that James White was one of the original authors of the original Adventist documents that were spread about to the original Adventists who left the failed Millerite movement but didn’t want to give up their date. In 1852 in a publication entitled The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, which was a precursor to the Review & Herald, which many people know, or the Adventist Review today, James White wrote this: “To assert that the sayings of the Son and His apostles are the commandments of the Father is as wide from the truth as the old Trinitarian absurdity that Jesus Christ is the very and eternal God.” That’s foundational to the Adventist organization. Now, another original Adventist, J.N. Andrews, and by the way, he is the namesake for the Adventist seminary at Andrews University, he was an antitrinitarian, and he also wrote this quote I’m going to share in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. This was in 1855. “The doctrine of the Trinity was established in the church by the Council of Nicaea A.D. 325. This doctrine” – get this – “destroys the personality of God and His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The infamous measures by which it was forced upon the church, which appear upon the pages of ecclesiastical history, might well cause every believer in that doctrine to blush.” He had no room for the Trinity, as had been held to by the church ever since its inception, hammered out by the fourth century, when various heresies had come up and the Athanasian creed came about after Athanasius opposed Arius, who had insisted that Jesus had been a creation, God’s first creation. But the Athanasian creed declared that heresy to be false in the 300s, and the church has always been Trinitarian, the true church has always been Trinitarian, but this man, J.N. Andrews, was scornful of that idea. Ellen White grew up believing in the Trinity, as her original Methodism would have taught. Through the influence of James and Joseph Bates, she became an antitrinitarian as well. In her early book Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3, page 37, she wrote this, “While some of the angels joined Satan in his rebellion” – she’s speaking here of that mythological pre-history that she’s given us – “others reasoned with him to dissuade him from his purposes, contending for the honor and wisdom of God in giving authority to His Son.” Do you see right there? The Son is not eternally God. “Satan urged for what reason was Christ endowed with unlimited power and such high command above himself?” Ellen White is here implying that Satan and Jesus came from the same platform, the same stock, the same level of authority, and that God gave something to Jesus He didn’t give to Satan. “Satan stood up proudly and urged that he should be equal with God. At length all the angels are summoned to appear before the Father to have each case decided, and Satan unblushingly makes known to all the heavenly family his discontent, that Christ should be preferred before him to be in such close conference with God and he be uninformed as to the result of their frequent consultations. God informed Satan that this he can never know, that to His Son He will reveal His secret purposes and that all the family of heaven, Satan not excepted, were required to yield implicit obedience. Satan boldly speaks out about his rebellion and points to a large company who think God is unjust in not exalting him to be equal with God, in not giving him command above Christ. He declares he cannot submit to be under Christ’s command, that God’s commands alone will he obey.” Well, what has she just done here?
Nikki: She’s created a completely different story. None of this can be found in the Word of God, none of it.
Colleen: Nope, not any. And she’s clearly defined Jesus as not equal with God but rather equal with Satan, being given honor that Satan wasn’t given.
Nikki: Um-hmm. She knew an awful lot about Satan’s thoughts.
Colleen: That’s a very good point. The very roots of Seventh-day Adventism were Arian, and to be honest, all of the leaders of Adventism now admit that. They don’t shy away from it. And the interesting thing is that even though they have now created a Trinitarian Statement of Belief, they have never renounced Ellen’s original words that were antitrinitarian, like I just read. They’ve never said that was wrong. They’ve never renounced her or what she said about that. And I think it’s really interesting that it was in 1898 when her book many Adventists say is “The best description of the life of Christ that’s in print today,” The Desire of Ages, when that book came out, there were statements in there that did not speak of Jesus as a created being. In fact, she has a quote in there that people in Adventism often mention, where it says, “In Him was life, uncreated and underived.” Well, that sounds like He was God from eternity.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And the brethren in Adventism, when this book was released, were shocked. She had never said anything like that before; she had not consulted with any of them. This just came out in the book. It’s worth mentioning at this point that that book has been proven, even by Adventism’s own scholars, to have been largely plagiarized. Ellen plagiarized Christian writers. So you say, where she get that idea? Well, not from a vision from God. She got it from good sources. But it was incorporated into this book. So then there was this whole rush to adjust the doctrine over the years. Nikki, you came across a quote that confirmed the validity of everything Ellen White ever said. Would you like to read that quote?
Nikki: Yeah. So Ellen White wrote this in Letter 38 in 1906, so this is after people have said that she’s accepted the doctrine of the Trinity.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And what she writes is, “And now, after half a century of clear light from the word as to what is truth, there are arising many false theories, to unsettle minds. But the evidence given in our early experience has the same force that it had then. The truth is the same as it ever has been, and not a pin or a pillar can be moved from the structure of faith. That which was sought for out of the word in 1844, 1845, and 1846 remains the truth today in every particular.”
Colleen: Wow. So all of her antitrinitarian statements, all of her visions confirming the anti-Trinity, all of that she is saying is still truth.
Nikki: Yeah, and she said the man Jesus is not the Lord God Almighty.
Colleen: She did say that. Even if you want to say, “Well, that’s just her opinion of Jesus,” if Jesus is different, the Trinity does not exist.
Nikki: Yeah, and it has to be stated over and over again. We have not yet gotten to Fundamental Belief #18 –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – which I think is interesting, that they put her so down the list, but she is the interpreter of all of the other Fundamental Beliefs. It’s why their statement on their Godhead accommodates her worldview so carefully.
Colleen: Exactly. They cannot leave her behind. They cannot get rid of her. They cannot adjust their doctrines to disagree with her in any fundamental point without losing their whole organization. She remains, even if they have to hide her under cleverly crafted words. It’s significant that a man named Dr. Jerry Moon, who is a professor at Andrews University, the Adventist seminary, authored a paper, a rather well-documented paper, in 2006 entitled, The Quest for a Biblical Trinity: Ellen White’s “Heavenly Trio” Compared to the Traditional Doctrine. Now, right from the title we need to notice that Jerry Moon is comparing Ellen White’s what she eventually called and affirmed as a Trinity, he’s comparing that to the traditional Christian doctrine, and they are not the same. And Jerry Moon does make that point, although he validates Ellen White’s version and not the traditional Christian version. But he wrote this. This is a quote from his paper. “The view that Ellen White was a Trinitarian has recently come under attack from a few writers who advocate a return to the semi-Arian position of some of early Adventist’s leaders.” Now, Nikki, you had mentioned that part yourself, that today there is a growing movement of them.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Then he says, “Ellen White’s view did change – she was raised Trinitarian, came to doubt some aspects of the trinitarianism she was raised on, and eventually came to a different Trinitarian view from the traditional one. In her earliest writings she differed from some aspects of traditional trinitarianism, and in her latest writings she still strongly opposed some aspects of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. It appears, therefore, that the Trinitarian teaching of Ellen White’s later writings is not the same doctrine that the early Adventists rejected. Rather, her writings describe two contrasting forms of Trinitarian belief, one of which she always opposed, and another that she eventually endorsed.” She always opposed the classic Christian Trinity.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So what Trinitarian doctrine did she approve? What is it that Adventists believe about the Trinity? There are a couple of really significant quotes that come again in 1905 and 1906, quite a few years after the publication of The Desire of Ages, which is supposed to have established her as a Trinitarian. One of them is this from Manuscript #92. This one is actually 1901. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” – now get this – “the three holy dignitaries of heaven, have declared that they will strengthen men to overcome the powers of darkness. All the facilities of heaven are pledged to those who by their baptismal vows have entered into a covenant with God.” Well, what’s wrong with that? The three holy dignitaries of heaven?
Nikki: It’s more of that flowery language to describe a very different God.
Colleen: Yeah. There is one God, not three dignitaries. She also says this, and this is in 1905 from her book Evangelism, “There are three living persons of the heavenly trio” – God is not a trio; God is one – “in the name of these three great powers – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers” – get this – “will cooperate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ.” What’s wrong with that?
Nikki: There’s so much wrong with it. They’re not three powers. God is one, and He is all-powerful.
Colleen: Yes. They don’t each have a piece of power. Nikki, share the idea that you shared with me when we were talking about this before the podcast.
Nikki: Well, again it goes back to divine simplicity. God is what He has. He doesn’t possess all power, He is all powerful. He doesn’t possess love, He is love. If God possesses love or power, that means love and power exist apart from God, and they don’t. He’s the arbiter of truth, of reality. He created all things, and He Himself is the only uncreated one. So you can’t say God has power, because power doesn’t exist apart from God.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: God is all-powerful. And these attributes inform each other 100%. You can’t pull Him apart. He’s not made up of pieces.
Colleen: His power cannot exist apart from His love, cannot exist apart from His wrath, cannot exist apart from His mercy, His grace, His justice, every single identity, every single attribute of God is connected to every other one and can’t be separated.
Nikki: So when Ellen says that there are three powers in heaven, she is separating. And the minute you separate any of it, you don’t have the God of the Bible.
Colleen: That’s right. She wrote that, that last thing I read, in 1905. You know, she died in 1915 and all her major books were written by 1905. Now, there is a 1911 version of the Great Controversy, but it wasn’t her earliest version. This is late Ellen White. This is not early Ellen White. You can say she became Trinitarian, but she did not become Trinitarian, embracing the classic Christian doctrine. She embraced a tritheism, three beings, three worthies, three powers, a heavenly trio.
Nikki: It becomes very evident, when you press into what they taught and you compare it to Scripture and to accepted orthodox Christianity, that all of the changes that they’ve made down through time have been for the purpose of pivoting for the sake of the image.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Because none of it comes back to the truths taught in Scripture. It’s always just reformatted and corrected according to whatever argument is hurled at them. You see that all over their different editions of the same book. Things are tweaked and changed and altered to deal with a problem. They’re not corrected by proper study in the Word of God.
Colleen: And there’s never been repentance. There’s never been repentance for the founding Arianism. There have only been explanations that Ellen White grew in her understandings and became orthodox as she went on in her ministry, supposedly. This is just blasphemous almost. She is crediting God with giving her visions confirming false doctrines about Himself. God would never do that.
Nikki: And let’s just talk for a minute about what true confession and repentance is. I didn’t hear about any of this until I found out that she used to be Arian. Once you find out about it and you start looking for answers, then you’re going to find politically correct statements that hold together her reputation for the church.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: But when you’re a child and you’re growing up and you’re going through academy and you’re being taught the history of Adventism, I do not remember ever being taught our founders were Arian, they didn’t believe Jesus was God, but we repent of that, that is absolutely incorrect, and this is what’s true. That doesn’t happen. True repentance, true confession, would make sure that your children are coming up knowing what’s real, knowing the mistakes that you made, and correcting them.
Colleen: There’s no acknowledgement. Plus this supposed expansion and growth that she exhibited was into a further heresy.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: A tritheism instead of the Trinity.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Jerry Moon also affirms that Ellen White based her understanding of God on her visions. There again, her understanding of God did not come from a study of Scripture, it came from extrabiblical visions, which we know were not from God because they didn’t match the Bible. In 1850 she wrote that she had “often seen the lovely Jesus” and that “He is a person,” and further, she asked Jesus if His Father has a body like His, and He told her “I am in the express image of my Father’s person.” She had visions saying that the Father had a body and that Jesus had a body. This is not scriptural. In fact, James White says in his earlier document, The Personality of God,” that being created in the image of God means that we are given a body like God’s. That’s just patently untrue. But Adventism has never been able to acknowledge spiritual reality that is not connected to just a breath and a body.
Nikki: So in Early Writings, Ellen White is sharing a vision that she had, and she says, “I asked Jesus if His Father had a form like Himself. He said He had, but I could not behold it, for He said, “If you should once behold the glory of His person, you would cease to exist.” So she saw Jesus in heaven with a body.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: She asked Him, “Does your Father have the same form?” And He said, “Yes, but you can’t see it.” And you know, this just reminds me again of G.A. Irwin’s statement back in 1911 where he said that “It is from the standpoint of the light that has come through the Spirit of Prophecy, (Mrs. White’s writings), that the question will be considered, believing as we do that the Spirit of Prophecy is the only infallible interpreter of Bible principles, since it is Christ through this agency giving the real meaning of His words.” So Ellen White, her visions, the Spirit of Prophecy, are interpreting Scripture. Because you have this entire organization approaching Scripture through her lens, they will pivot as long as they can protect her.
Colleen: And they will do that no matter what the cost. The most progressive, the most evangelical Adventists, will still quote Ellen White. They’ll pick and choose from her writings, but they uphold her, they endorse her, she is their founding prophet, no matter how they want to describe her.
Nikki: And you know, I have to say, I wouldn’t have been able to quote Ellen White as an Adventist, and I would have told you, “I don’t think I have to believe her to believe in Christianity, to believe Adventist teachings.”
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: But it’s because I didn’t understand that she formed all of it. I didn’t know what was her and what was Scripture.
Colleen: I had no idea. I thought it was Scripture, I really did. I’ll never forget when we were studying our way out with our neighbors, with our weekly Bible studies. Mel would look at us across the living room and say, “So where you do find that in Scripture?” And I thought I had abandoned Ellen completely, and I realized, oh, no, I just expressed another Ellenism and had no idea.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: There is a contemporary Adventist who is a Professor of Sociology at Andrews University, Lionel Matthews, who wrote this in his paper, Sociology: A Biblical Perspective. And this is just to show that these aren’t all old ideas. Current Adventists are still explaining the Trinity using Ellen White’s affirmed tritheism. Here’s what he says: “In spite of its clear monotheistic ring, the biblical account seems uncompromised on the idea of God as a group. While God has been declared to be one God, He has also been presented as a plurality of beings. What the notion of a triune (group) God seems to suggest is that the three members of the Godhead become joined in their relationship with each other, on the basis of their common purpose, values and interests.”
Nikki: This sounds an awful lot like their sports metaphor on the Adventist Today website. On the website they say, “The triune God may be compared to a winning team. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit work together in ways that a human team would never be able to for a common goal. While each person of the Godhead has a distinct role in the plan of salvation, they unite in their mission.”
Colleen: Ugh.
Nikki: And they go on to describe their working together to be – like they come together and they do absolutely everything they can, everything within their power, to get you right up to that doorstep of salvation.
Colleen: Oh, my goodness. And to call the Trinity a “team” is heretical.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God is one! I also need to read a rather shocking, to me, quote from Doug Batchelor. Now, most people who will hear this podcast know who Doug Batchelor is. He is a well-known Adventist apologist and evangelist with Amazing Facts. It’s an independent Adventist organization, but he is an ordained Adventist minister, and he teaches pure Adventism. And he has written this about the Trinity. And when I think about how he’s described this, I can only say this is so shocking, it feels to me like I am hearing an expression of pure evil, the way he characterizes Jesus. He says this, “The real risk in the redemption plan, besides the loss of man, was the breakup of the Godhead. Had Jesus sinned, He would have been working at cross-purposes with the Spirit and His Father. Omnipotent good would have been pitted against omnipotent evil.” Listen to that, Nikki! He is calling the Father and the Spirit omnipotent good, and if Jesus had sinned, He would have been omnipotent evil. He is saying that our Lord could have become evil but would have been omnipotent, an omnipotently evil – it’s horrifying!
Nikki: It’s wicked fantasy. And if he understood God, he would know that Jesus could not have sinned. There was no risk. He was the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.
Colleen: He also goes on to say that if this had happened, it “could have sent the Godhead and the universe spinning into cosmic chaos; the proportions of this disaster are staggering. Yet the Godhead was still willing to take this fragmenting risk for the salvation of man.” God was never at risk, ever. He cannot be broken apart from Himself. He cannot be fragmented.
Nikki: How is an omnipotent, holy, perfect God able to fail at anything? How is an omnipotent, perfect, holy God able to sin?
Colleen: He can’t.
Nikki: How is a simple being able to be separated and still exist?
Colleen: And this, Nikki, is why I know that, as believers in the Lord Jesus, we worship a different God from Adventism.
Nikki: Yes, we do.
Colleen: Because these descriptions that I’ve been reading describe the God I knew as an Adventist: Jesus could have sinned, Jesus could have failed, the Trinity could have been split apart. But the Trinity can’t be split apart. God is one!
Nikki: They talk about it like a cosmic divorce. But if God ceases to exist, we all cease to exist. We don’t move into a new era of omnipotent evil. Everything’s gone. He sustains all things. He’s the life-giver. If God ceases to exist, it all goes away.
Colleen: I just want to say, if any of you are listening to Doug Batchelor and trying to figure out what Adventism believes, stop!
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I get emails from people who say they’ve listened to Doug Batchelor to try to figure out what Adventism teaches about things, and I just want to say, you will only hear heresy. He has a silver tongue with a ton of proof texts, and he can confuse you right out of the details of what the Bible is saying. Don’t listen to Doug Batchelor. I have one last Ellen White quote, just to remind us that all of this stuff that Ellen ever wrote, from her early Arianism to her “heavenly trio” and the “three great worthies of heaven,” whatever point of the spectrum of her writing you want to look at, it was all part of her “Spirit of Prophecy” inspired writings that are still authoritative sources of truth for the Adventist organization. Here’s what she wrote in Selected Messages, Volume 1, page 55, “Abundant light has been given to our people in these last days. Whether or not my life is spared, my writings will constantly speak, and their work will go forward as long as time shall last. My writings are kept on file in the office, and even though I should not live, these words that have been given to me by the Lord will still have life and will speak to the people.”
Nikki: Well, there you have it. Ellen White is the living word.
Colleen: She’s their last word.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: She’s their hermeneutic. She is their filter for understanding Scripture. She is their designator of truth and doctrine and practice. Adventism would not exist without her, and you can say you don’t believe in her, but your worldview is from her if you are an Adventist. And she herself validates herself as the last word.
Nikki: And even the progressive Adventists who believe they’ve set her aside, they need to know that they’re being deceived. You may believe that you believe like other Christians do, but they have not told you the truth about what we Christians believe. You don’t actually know what we believe. We’re misrepresented.
Colleen: That is such a good point, Nikki. I really did think I understood what Christians believed when I was Adventist, and I have found out that nothing I thought, really nothing, was accurate.
Nikki: And this is why so many formers end up grieving because they realize that they’ve been lied to and that they’ve missed out on the truth of God and who He is for all these years, thinking they already knew.
Colleen: There is hope for Adventists, though. And the hope is the Bible. Anytime a person turns to Scripture and wants to know the truth, really wants to know the truth, and asks God to show them, that’s a prayer He will answer. The Bible will reveal truth, and the truth about our triune God is that He is one God, one being, expressed in three persons. Can we understand this? No. God doesn’t tell us the how, but He tells us what is real, what we need to know about Him. He tells us enough so that we can trust Him, we can have faith, and here’s the mystery: The more we accept the words of Scripture in context, the less confusing His reality is. Nikki, would you share the insight that you had from something you read about the name of God?
Nikki: Yeah. In Matthew 28:19 Jesus tells the disciples, “Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The name there is singular.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And He goes on to share the three persons of God.
Colleen: And that’s the words of Jesus Himself. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have a singular name, and that’s what we’re baptized into when we believe, one God, one being, expressed in three persons. I love what Jesus said in His upper room discourse in the Book of John, in the Gospel of John. In John 14:16-17, He said to His disciples, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” It’s so tender to me that Jesus was preparing His disciples for His soon absence. He was going to go to the cross, He would be resurrected, and then He would ascend to His Father. And He knew His disciples couldn’t understand all of that before it actually happened, but He promised them He would send them the Helper, who would be in them after He had left. And then He says this a few verses later, “Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, ‘Lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.'” And here Jesus very explicitly has just said the Holy Spirit will come and indwell His believers, and He and the Father also would make their abode with His believers. That means the entire Trinity, one God, cannot be separated, but when we trust Jesus and believe His word, He comes to us and He never leaves us. All three persons of the one God, we become His, He is ours, and we cannot be separated from Him. If you have not experienced this oneness with our triune God through trusting the finished work of our Savior, Jesus, who is God the Son incarnate in a human body, who died for ours sins according to Scripture, who was buried and who rose on the third day according to Scripture, if you’ve not repented of your sin and trusted Him and His finished work for your forgiveness and for your salvation, please consider what Jesus Himself has said. He is the way to the Father, and He, the Father, and the Spirit, the triune God, the Trinity, never will leave you when you trust Him.
Nikki: If you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing ministry news and online articles, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And join us next week as we look at Fundamental Belief #3, the doctrine of God the Father.
Colleen: We will see you then.
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—God the Holy Spirit | 114 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—Unity in the Body of Christ | 113 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—The Remnant and Its Mission | 112 - September 7, 2022