Nikki and Colleen talk about life as former Adventists. They also take questions from podcast listeners. This episode was recorded on the second day of the Former Adventist Conference held in Loma Linda, California, February 12–14, 2021. Video version is on YouTube at FormerAdventist in the 2021 conference playlist. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And here we are, Nikki, doing another live podcast, but this time from different places.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: It’s such an odd thing. But we have experience. We have almost 11 months of doing this from separate locations, don’t we?
Nikki: Yeah. It’s nothing like a conference, though. This is new.
Colleen: No, no. And it’s really odd to be here at the conference with just a handful of people in the room, but a really big online audience compared to other years. That’s one way God is redeeming the situation.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So, Nikki, as you look back over the last 11 months since we recorded together in person, what has carried you through?
Nikki: Well, actually, I want to share a quote with you because I think it’s going to help explain what has carried me through this very crazy year. This is by Jen Wilkin from the book None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us. She says, “The Scriptures speak of a God who does not change. Like the tallest mountain peak on the horizon, from generation to generation God stands unchanging, immutable, anchoring the landscape of human existence. As all else around Him ebbs and flows, blossoms and withers, waxes and wanes, the rock of our salvation endures. The sunshine and shadows of human circumstances may reveal certain contours of His character one day and different ones the next, but His character remains fixed, His plans remain steady, His promises remain firm. In an ever-changing world, He is the unchanging reference point upon which the inner eye fixes to determine the direction that leads to home.” And I love that quote because it talks about God being a rock, being an anchor, and nothing that goes on around that mountain can change the mountain, and this year has been so crazy, between the circumstances that have gone on around us, with the pandemic, the political climate that we’ve just lived through and is ongoing, it’s just – it’s all been crazy, and in the middle of that, I have felt like I have been kept and hidden in the cleft of that mountain.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And that’s new, that’s really new because as an Adventist, when things would go crazy in the world –
Colleen: Yeah, yeah.
Nikki: – it was always a trigger, “These are the last days, this is it, this is the time.”
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: “I’ve got to get it together. I’ve got to clean it up.” And being a believer who has spent time in the word has anchored me in a way that I never anticipated. I had no idea that God’s word could sustain us through such uncertain things.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And there was this one point I want to share, where I didn’t feel so stable [laughter] –
Colleen: Uh-huh. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – during the year. And I want to share it because I think that we as former Adventists will often be – I know people don’t like the word “triggered,” but kind of set in motion into anxiety –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – when things happen that bring stuff up for us, and we kind of like to just say, “The past is the past, let it go. Move forward.”
Colleen: Yeah, but that past is imprinted in our brains.
Nikki: Very imprinted in our brains.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And so I had a moment where we had a circumstance in Yucaipa, actually it was probably in the news – some of the people listening may have seen it – where the riots were moving into town, and some of the guys here were going out into the streets with their guns, and it was pretty violent and scary, at least there was a lot of threat of violence. And I was pretty shaken by that. It just set me off because of my own upbringing. I had a period of time in my childhood where I lived with a violent man –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – when he was drinking, and so seeing that violence was upsetting. And I got a text from a friend, a brother that we go to church with, Gordon Jones, and I told him that I was fearful, and he told me, “Nikki, you’re safe in the will of God.” And that line would have meant nothing to me before, but because of the time I’d spent in God’s word and because of what I had learned about Him, about His unchanging character, about His stability and how He cares for us –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – those words flooded my mind with all the truth about God that I know, and it set me right on course. I was fine after that, and that was back in June, and it’s been a crazy year, but bringing to mind and having brothers and sisters in Christ who bring to mind these truths about God and being in the word with you doing this podcast –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – has been the anchor that I’ve needed.
Colleen: It has.
Nikki: And it’s the anchor that I so long for all former Adventists to have –
Colleen: I agree. I agree.
Nikki: – when they have uncertain times. How about you?
Colleen: Well, it’s the same. It’s the word of God, and this podcast has been so instrumental for me. Because we’ve had to study deeply to walk through the passages of Scripture that we’ve walked through. And it is so interesting to me that what the Bible says about itself actually is true, that the word is alive, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing between joint and marrow, soul and spirit, exposing the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It’s so interesting that the Bible reveals me to myself and shows me how the Lord is sufficient. And it sounds trite, it sounds like – almost like just an expected response, but this is what former Adventists need, they need to be in Scripture and trust it because it is the only thing in the entire fallen creation that is the one thing we have that is absolutely true. There’s science, there’s math, and all of these things reveal the laws of God in nature, but His revelation to us in His word tells us about what we live in, and it’s true. And it anchors me. I am not a naturally anchored person.
Nikki: Me neither.
Colleen: I’m a very anxious person. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] Me too.
Colleen: But He has kept me anchored, and His word has done that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So you said something earlier. You said that [laughter] you would have been at a place as an Adventist where all of this strangeness in this past year would have triggered thoughts of, “Is this the end times?”
Nikki: Absolutely.
Colleen: And we’ve seen that online, haven’t we?
Nikki: Yes, we have.
Colleen: And we’ve had some questions that have come to us through the podcast and through Former Adventist about this subject. And we had one just recently. This was the question: “What does it mean to be ready for Jesus to come?” Well, as an Adventist, I don’t know. I would have thought I need to be keeping the Sabbath, I need to be making sure my act is cleaned up, I need to make sure that I’m doing all the stuff in the New and Old Testaments, except of course, for the sacrifices. And I had no idea how to make all that happen. How do you relate to that question now, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, it’s not my favorite question because I think that rather than calling out to the people, you know, “You’ve got to get ready! Are you ready? You’ve got to get ready!” You’ve got to give them the gospel. You’ve got to tell them what that looks like.
Colleen: Yeah. Absolutely.
Nikki: Because being ready for Jesus to come means knowing Him and being known by Him.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: It means being born again. And so many of the parables that Jesus told were related to the fact that there are people in every church group that belong and don’t belong.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: They look like they belong but they don’t.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And so He’s talking about this to the Jews, and He’s telling them, you know, in the – let’s see, the parable of the ten virgins, when they come to the wedding feast, He says, “I don’t know you.” In the account of the people coming to Him and saying, “We’ve done all these things in your name,” and He says, “I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.” It’s over and over again. That is what makes it so that they can’t enter.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And in 1 Corinthians 8:3, it says “If anyone loves God, he is known by Him.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And I can tell you, I didn’t really love God. I wanted Him in my life. I wanted to love Him, and I wanted to be accepted by Him, but I didn’t love Him until I was born again, and then it was this overwhelming – I didn’t know I could love God like that.
Colleen: I know. I know. I remember thinking – I used to hear the song Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, and it was almost irritating to me as I got older. I know it didn’t say, “I love Jesus,” it said, “Jesus loves me,” but I had no idea what that felt like or looked like, and it used to irritate me. It’s like, really? And when I understood the gospel and trusted Jesus and was born again, I suddenly realized I loved Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it was a real thing. I really felt love for Him, and that was something that was not possible before I knew the gospel and understood that He had completely paid for my sin and I could trust Him. So you’re right. How do you love God if you don’t know Him?
Nikki: Exactly. You know, the other thing too, as an Adventist I would read Revelation, the Book of Revelation –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and I would get really stressed out by the end of all those letters to the churches –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Nikki: – all of those promises to him who overcomes.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And even after being born again, I would read that and I was confused by it. “What am I supposed to be doing? I’m supposed to still do something to get ready for Him coming. How do I overcome?”
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: And He gives these seven promises in Revelation, and He says that those who overcome eat from the tree of life, they won’t be hurt by the second death, they’re given a white stone –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – on and on, and if you look at the meaning behind all the promises, they’re all related to being redeemed.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: They’re all related to our salvation, and the same author who wrote this letter wrote in John 5:4 and 5, “Whoever has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” If we’re born again, if we’re saved, if we’ve placed our faith and trust in Jesus, we’re already ready for Him to come.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: That’s done.
Colleen: That is the thing I did not know. It’s nothing we do. It’s about trusting and believing Him, and He does the rest. And it is so interesting that the overcoming is about trusting.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s how we overcome. When we know Him, the work is His. Ours is to trust. And He gives us the ability to trust.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So I just want to say to all my former Adventist friends and Adventist friends who may be hearing this, if you’re worried about how to be ready for Jesus to come, the real crucial thing is do you know Jesus? Do you know the gospel? That’s the way we’re ready. I’ll never forget how overwhelming it was when I realized that John 5:24 says that when we believe, we don’t come into condemnation, but we have passed from death to life.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s the new birth, passing into life. And that’s something that can’t be undone.
Nikki: And can I also say that there is a temptation to get distracted once we’re born again. There’s a temptation as we look to the signs. I mean, Jesus says, “You’ll notice as the seasons change; you’ll notice.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And we can get distracted with questions like, “Is Trump the antichrist?”
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: “Is the vaccine the mark of the beast?” Whatever. You know, there are all different kinds of concerns and thoughts going on through the minds of the church, and you know, I love what Kaspars said yesterday, that we are to stand. We need to stand.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And that’s what we’re told to do in Ephesians 6. It says, “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Colleen: To stand, yeah.
Nikki: Stand firm. And that’s all about knowing the gospel, having the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, to be prepared to share the gospel, the shield of faith, that helmet of salvation, which is our assurance and security, and the sword of the Spirit.
Colleen: They are protection against my own doubts.
Nikki: Well, yes. Yeah.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: That’s actually – that would roll us right into another one of the questions we received.
Colleen: About once saved, always saved?
Nikki: Oh! I jumped ahead.
Colleen: Or which one?
Nikki: We’ll get there.
Colleen: Oh! [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Go ahead. Which one were you looking at?
Nikki: Well, somebody wrote to us and was concerned about, how do I know? How do I know if I’m saved? I want to be, you know, I know the gospel, I believe the gospel, but then I have these fears. You know, what if I’m not the chosen? What if I’m not elect?
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And all of the anxiety that floods your mind when that happens, and that helmet of salvation, believing the words of Scripture and not our doubts, is really the answer to that.
Colleen: It is. You know, I was thinking a lot about that too, and the whole idea of how can I know if I’m saved or not. Number one, if you’re really worried about being saved, you’re not – if you want to be saved and are worried about being saved, you’re not likely lost, or you’re not likely unconcerned, because the fact that you want to know God and that you want to be saved is a sign that He is drawing you and calling you. And I just can’t get away from Romans 8 says, and I referenced it earlier, that when we are born again, His Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God and heirs with Christ, joint heirs with Christ. And the thing is, being born again is not something that’s just an imagination of our own minds, like, well, I’ve made a decision, so now I guess I’m saved. No.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: If we trust Jesus, that involves knowing we’re sinners, knowing we can’t fix ourselves, knowing we’re powerless to overcome our habits, and throwing ourselves at the mercy of the Lord Jesus, who shed His blood for us. And you know, as a former Adventist, I have to say, I didn’t understand and I really a little bit resented that idea of all that blood. I mean, Adventism did not teach me to respect the blood of Christ. It was a guilt thing for me, as an Adventist, like, Jesus died for you, so you better be good and make it worth it to Him. But that’s not what His death was. His death was a substitute, and His death was something that I couldn’t stop Him from doing, and He didn’t do it to incite guilt. He did it because He loved the world, and He did it so that I could trust Him and be saved.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So when you realize that you’re a sinner and you realize that the only hope you have is to put your sin at the foot of the cross, to throw yourself there and say, “Lord Jesus, I need a Savior, and I know I’m a sinner, and I know I can’t fix myself,” and trust that He really paid for our sins, that is the moment that the Lord gives us a new heart, a new spirit, and fills us with His Spirit. And that’s the thing. As an Adventist, I wouldn’t have been able to explain that. But this is a work of God, it’s not something we conjure in our own heads. He confirms to our spirits by His Spirit that we are born again, because we have spirits that are born dead, and He gives us new ones that are alive.
Nikki: And can I say something about that? A few years ago, I was really struggling with depression, pretty bad.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And I didn’t feel like I belonged to Him, because I had old Adventist tapes in my head –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – will God be far away from me right now, because I don’t have the joy of the Lord and I’m – you know, maybe I’m not of the elect. Maybe I was just supposed to know what I know to teach my kids, and He wants them. You know, I had all these lies in my head.
Colleen: “I’m just the medium for Him to get my kids.”
Nikki: Really! I mean, it was very fatalistic. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: But I would cry out to Him, I’d cry out to Him, and you know, “Father, I want to be yours, I want to be yours.” And one day it was Romans 8 and that passage, that He gives us the spirit of adoption that cries “Abba, Father” –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and I realized, I’m crying out “Abba, Father.” I wouldn’t be doing that if I wasn’t His child.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: I wouldn’t hate my sin if I wasn’t His child.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And I wouldn’t be disciplined.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I’d be an illegitimate son if He wasn’t working out all of those kinks that needed working out.
Colleen: That’s such a good point, Nikki.
Nikki: That time, I thank Him for it because I know Him through it, and so anxiety, depression, fear, that doesn’t mean you’re not saved.
Colleen: No!
Nikki: It means you have lies in your head that you need to go and submit to Scripture.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: You need that helmet of salvation, you need to believe the word of God, and I can’t tell you how many wonderful pastors I have heard say, “I preach the gospel to myself every day.”
Colleen: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, the gospel doesn’t get old. I know we move from milk to meat, but the meat includes the gospel. You can’t comprehend Scripture if you aren’t always resubmitting yourself to the cross of Christ and realizing that if it weren’t for Jesus, there’d be no life, there’d be no hope. So – go ahead.
Nikki: So that takes us then to the next question that you had already mentioned. The question was, do you believe in once saved, always saved?
Colleen: And that’s always said kind of like an epithet, “Oh, you believe in once saved always saved?”
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Ahhh, maybe.
Nikki: Yeah, “maybe” is the right answer. Let’s define our terms now because that’s a loaded statement.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And a lot – not just Adventists, but a lot of different people like to repackage it, and they create these strawman arguments –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – against security, really. I like to call it the security of the believer –
Colleen: I do too.
Nikki: – because that’s what it is.
Colleen: That’s what it is. It’s interesting, I loved what you said about “they call it something.” It’s like a strawman.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Adventists describe “once saved, always saved” as professing that you believe something and then being able to do anything you want and sin any way you want, and that’s how they package that term. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible does teach we cannot lose our security and our salvation, because being born again is an act of God –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – not an act of us. You know, we can’t undo our natural birth from our mothers, we can’t undo that. We didn’t ask to be born, and here we are. It’s kind of the same thing. When we trust Jesus, He gives us new life, He gives us new birth. It’s what Jesus said to Nicodemus, it’s a very real thing. But it’s spiritual and not physical. And when we are born again, we can’t take that life away from ourselves, and I know Adventists love to say, “Well, you can choose to walk away from Him. If you couldn’t choose to walk away from Him, you wouldn’t have free will,” and I want to say – go ahead. Answer that! [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] I want to say, that’s not in our new nature.
Colleen: No!
Nikki: Choosing to walk away from God is our old nature. Our new nature, that doesn’t even come up.
Colleen: No!
Nikki: It’s not a reality.
Colleen: Not at all. And you know, just like – well, I can’t say that people don’t look for ways to escape their physical lives because we know some people do get into such a spiral that they do, but the natural response of a physical creature is to hang on to life, you know, at all costs, hang on to life. Think of it. Spiritual reality is no different.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And like you said, Nikki, our new nature is given to us by God, and I love that God gave Ezekiel the prophecies that were behind what Jesus said to Nicodemus. He said the day was coming when He would give His people new hearts, new spirits, and put His spirit in them, that they would be sprinkled with water and made clean, and He would do this for them, and that is fulfilled when we are born again, and that is a New Covenant gift that comes from Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, and when we trust Him, that’s ours. And it’s not in that new nature to want to walk away from Him. That’s when we become aware that we need to grow, that we have things He’s correcting in us, that we realize that we are not all that yet, but we have a wonderful Savior who is.
Nikki: Yeah, I just want to say that, related to that Ezekiel verse, that was one of the verses that helped me understand that humans even had spirits –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – because it says that He will put a new spirit in us and give us His Spirit, and that word in the original language is the same word.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He’s talking about a spirit because the Holy Spirit, I’m sorry, it’s not breath.
Colleen: No!
Nikki: He is a Spirit.
Colleen: You can’t say the Holy Breath.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Right.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: Right. Right. So that was just one of many. There’s a lot of evidence in Scripture for the human spirit.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: But that takes us to our next question –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – can you talk about the human spirit versus Adventism’s argument against the immortality of the soul.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Another strawman argument, I must say. You know, I actually have gotten to the point where some of these questions – when they come from formers, I understand them very well –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – and I feel very respectful and feel the need to talk about it, which is why we’re talking about it.
Nikki: Absolutely. Um-hmm.
Colleen: But when Adventists say these things, I just want to say, “You guys, you’re playing with your words.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because, number one, it says in 1 Timothy that only God is immortal. Only God has no beginning or end. We have beginnings, so the fact that we are given eternal life does not mean we’re immortal in the way God is immortal. It simply means that we don’t have an end. When we trust Jesus, we have eternal life. Now, I want to unpack that “eternal life” thing as well because the Bible is pretty clear – I don’t mean pretty clear, it’s very clear, that when believers die they leave the mortal tent and go to be with the Lord, 2 Corinthians 5:1-9, central passage. Write that down if you don’t remember it. We go to be with the Lord, and that is very much better, Philippians 1:22 and 23. So the Bible is clear what happens to a believer. But we also know that unbelievers die. And unbelievers have spirits just like believers do, but believers have new, living spirits with the life of God in them. We have spirits when we’re born, as we’ve said before, but they’re dead, Ephesians 2:1-3, they’re dead. Romans 3:9-15, by nature no man seeks for God, no man does good, no man knows Him, there’s nothing good in any person as we are born, by nature objects of wrath. But we have spirits when we’re born, just disconnected from God. So when unbelievers die, they also go somewhere, and they go to God. He takes care of them, but they’re not in Christ. And we don’t always know what that looks like because Scripture isn’t clear, but what we do know in 1 and 2 Peter is that the unbelievers are kept and held for judgment, and we don’t know what that looks like, but it is said that that’s what happens. So back to what happens about the soul. Well, that doesn’t make us immortal, the fact that our spirits live on. It means that we are either living on after we die in Christ, with eternal life, or without Christ, being held for judgment. And here’s the thing, when we die, we go on, but being without Christ means we are dead, and that is our natural condition. Adventists say being dead means not existing. So when I talk to people who are still Adventists, they will often say, “Oh, so, if you don’t disappear when you die and you’re not a believer, then that just means that you go into eternal life in hell.” No, I want to say, that is not eternal life. Being without Christ is death. Adventists define death wrong. Death does not mean ceasing to exist. Death means being either spiritually alive or spiritually dead. That’s why God told Adam that if he ate of that fruit, he would die the day he ate. The real death is not being alive in Christ. So the argument about immortality of the soul versus no spirit is a strawman argument. We are born with spirits that are dead. When we trust Jesus, we get the life of Christ in us, He is in us, we are hidden in Him, and that’s life, and we have eternal life in Christ from that moment.
Nikki: Yeah, and I want to say, that’s where the security comes in. I love that you call if the gospel according to grammar.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Because it’s important. You have eternal life. Eternal doesn’t start and stop and start and stop –
Colleen: No!
Nikki: – it’s ongoing.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: And that’s a present tense.
Colleen: I’m glad you mentioned that. Yeah, we can’t walk out of eternal life.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: That defies the rules of grammar. [Laughter.]
Nikki: In fact, I remember my first FAF conference. Jon Rittenhouse came, and he was talking about security, and I believe it was him who said that being born again is like hard boiling an egg.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: You have fundamentally changed its nature, and it can never go back to what it was.
Colleen: That’s a really good point. I’d forgotten he said that. That’s awesome. Well, there is another question that came to us. It’s a really good question because I think it’s one we all experience. “What can formers do with the anger they feel after being lied to in Adventism?” And I want to say, number one, and I will certainly want to hear your response to this also, Nikki, but I want to say, when we leave Adventism, we really do go through all the five stages of grief because we leave our identities. It’s a death. It’s a death of who we thought we were. It’s a death of everything we knew. It’s a death of our social structure, it’s a death of our spiritual environment, it’s often a loss of family, it’s often a loss of even livelihood. So yes, we go through all those stages of grief, and I do remember, as we were leaving, I camped a little longer in depression than Richard did, but he camped a little longer in anger. And I remember him saying, “I just want to sue them for all that double tithe I paid!” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But when he was finally fired from Loma Linda, which he was fired for cause but it was actually probably – he probably could have contested the firing. But he said, “I can’t sue the people that I’m trying to minister to.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So it kind of changed his whole perspective. What would you say to people about the anger they feel after being lied to?
Nikki: Well, I think it’s probably a defensive part of me that wants to start by saying to anyone who is watching and doesn’t understand us, we don’t leave because we’re angry.
Colleen: Oh, so true.
Nikki: The anger that this person wrote about is the anger that comes after we understand what Adventism was and how it traumatized us and terrified us with visions of being hunted for the Sunday law.
Colleen: Absolutely. Yes.
Nikki: In fact, I want to share we recently had someone reach out to us who was one of those students up at Camp Au Sable –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – who had to endure that camp training, because they were readying the kids for the Sunday Law, and they had them at gunpoint in the field. Anyway, that’s another podcast, but people have been traumatized, and they’ve been lied to, and we see our family cut off from the gospel.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We see people thinking that they are on the right track because they’re going to keep the Sabbath, and they’re going to make it through, and they have no hope. Anyway, that anger is legitimate, and it comes from something. What we do with it, I feel like I always give the same answer, but we really double down in the word.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And I want to say, anger isn’t a bad thing. Jesus had zeal for God’s glory. We’re told in James, “In your anger, do not sin” –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and I think sometimes I have seen a tendency for some, not all, not even most, but for some formers to become crass in their reactions to Adventism –
Colleen: I agree.
Nikki: – and miss their opportunity to witness the gospel to people. But I think you fill your mind with thoughts of God, and you really work at knowing Him in His word, and it just starts to replace that, and you become thankful because your past in your Adventism pressed you into the word in a way that nothing else could.
Colleen: So true. You know, I remember realizing several years, actually, probably even – it was about the time we were studying our way out of Adventism I realized that when Jesus was flogged, when He was tortured before He was crucified, carrying His cross as He was already bloody and fainting from lack of blood and from, you know, just torture, I realized that His death on the cross paid for all my sin, but He carried all the trauma that has been done to me, which is somebody else’s sin, but it’s not just that He took all the bad things I’ve done, He internalized everything that has been done to all of us, and He paid for that, He redeemed it. So the anger at being lied to by Adventism is a very real thing, when you realize it, but you have to realize the only resolution for that anger is seeing Jesus on the cross. He didn’t just go there as a token or as an example. He went there to literally redeem every terrible thing that’s been done to every one of us, not only the things we’ve done, but the things that have been done to us. And that has helped me, and it’s given me a lot of conviction that I have to use my experience to reach back and present the gospel to the Adventists who don’t know.
Nikki: You know, I think sometimes that those places where we grieve and hurt end up becoming the places where God is preparing us for the work that He created in advance for us to do. And I think that’s why we come out on the other side grateful for what He’s done in us.
Colleen: I think so.
Nikki: I do want to say, though, that we do have a podcast on grieving after Adventism.
Colleen: We do.
Nikki: It was early when we first launched, and so that might be helpful for some to go listen to.
Colleen: Yeah, I agree. Well, you know, I want to jump over to a different kind of question –
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: – that we actually receive kind of frequently. “How would you advise a Christian thinking about marrying a Seventh-day Adventist?”
Nikki: Carefully? [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: Well, I’ll tell you what, I have been married to the same man as an Adventist, when we were both Adventists, we didn’t know the gospel, we were not born again yet, and then as believers. And I can tell you that when you are married to a believing man, marriage is very different.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: And I wouldn’t want to give that up for anything.
Colleen: I agree. I can say the same thing. It’s absolutely true. And I just want to say, if anybody who’s hearing this podcast has heard any of Phil Johnson’s last couple of seminars at this conference, it should help you understand why you cannot see Adventism as a different brand of Christianity. As a Christian, if you’re dating an Adventist, you have to know you’re dating somebody in a different religion, as different as Mormonism, as different as Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s not the same Jesus. It’s not a biblical gospel. It’s not the same worldview. You might not even realize this about your Adventist boyfriend or girlfriend, but they don’t believe that you have anything about you that’s not your body. And that changes everything. It changes the nature of sin, the nature of salvation, the nature of Jesus. You can’t have unity in belief with an Adventist. You can’t even agree to disagree. There are dynamics that happen, and it is as consistent as the sun coming up in the east, because of the way Adventism teaches its members. You may be able to marry an Adventist who says, “Okay, fine. I’ll go with you on Sunday, you come with me on Saturday,” or “Okay, fine. We’ll go to different churches,” which is never a happy thing. But once the children come, the Adventist is almost subliminally hardwired to make sure those children become Adventist. And there’s a feeling of they have failed God if their children are not Adventist. They will make sure the children don’t believe they have spirits. They will have to go to Adventist Sabbath school. You know, it’s all the stuff, so I just say you need to know what Adventism is, and if you find yourself studying the Bible with your Adventist fiancé, as many people who’ve written to me have done, they find that there are certain areas where they just can’t go any farther. It’s like a wall goes up. And I’ve even talked to people who say, “This person treats me so well. He loves me so much. He’s so kind to me. He’s so good to me. But he won’t study the Bible with me, or he argues with me about stuff.” And I say, “That is the nature of your relationship, because you don’t share a worldview and you don’t share conviction. You don’t share the Lord.” And that will be the nature of your marriage, and I just have to say, don’t marry them. I know that sounds really harsh, but that’s what I would have to say.
Nikki: It’s hard to say. It’s hard to say it. You know, if you are a Christian and you’re not – I just want to tell you, you probably don’t have a very solid understand of Adventism, because most Adventists don’t. And so this fiancé may not be able to even adequately let you know what you’re getting into. They may not know what they’re into until –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – you know, a fake Sunday Law drives by.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Or the threat of one!
Nikki: Yeah. Go listen to our podcast on mind control in Adventism because you’ll see there that Adventism touches every part of your life, your dress, your eating, your intimacy, your –everything, just everything. It touches everything. And so while it may not come up right now, it very likely will come up at some point during the marriage, and you won’t have that shared freedom.
Colleen: No, no, you won’t. You know what the irony is? Ellen White told Adventists they should not marry non-Adventists because they would have unequal yoking and a home where the shadows are never lifted. It’s so ironic because that’s actually true, but in an upside-down way because a Christian who knows the Lord will have a very hard time sharing the mutuality of a marriage with somebody who doesn’t. Now, it’s one thing if a spouse becomes a Christian after marrying as an Adventist. The Lord is in charge of this kind of thing. Paul talks about unbelieving spouses married to believing spouses, and if the believing spouse wants to stay, stay, let them stay because they’re somehow choosing to be in the presence of the Holy Spirit in you, and that has a sanctifying effect.
Nikki: And we’ve seen that.
Colleen: Yes. We’ve seen that.
Nikki: People get saved because of that.
Colleen: Absolutely. But that’s a different thing from marrying somebody who is refusing to leave Adventism, who’s arguing about it and wants you to become them. That’s a whole different ballgame, and that’s something that you don’t have to enter into. That is an unequal yoking. Just ask yourself this: Would I marry a Mormon or would I marry a Jehovah’s Witness? And if the answer is “no,” it really has to be the same answer for Adventism. I know that sounds harsh, but I know it’s true. So, Nikki, what should people do with their old Adventist books?
Nikki: [Laughter.] Well, I can tell you what we do.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: We have a podcast for that too, don’t we?
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah, we have a podcast for these things.
Nikki: So if you go to Acts 19, you’ll read what we do.
Colleen: Yup.
Nikki: In Acts 19, the people burned all of their witchcraft books, all of their – was it witchcraft?
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: It was dark magic. It was something.
Colleen: Um-hmm. Yeah.
Nikki: And they were worth a lot of money –
Colleen: They were.
Nikki: – but they burned them. And so on Reformation Day, which by the way I didn’t know what Reformation Day was as an Adventist, I only knew about Halloween.
Colleen: Me too. [Laughter.]
Nikki: But on October 31st, we now celebrate Reformation Day, and we sing “A Mighty Fortress” –
Colleen: We do.
Nikki: – we praise God for our freedom –
Colleen: We do.
Nikki: – and we burn those books that lied to us, and that has felt to me more like an act of just – this is going to sound weird, but an act of worship, of gratitude to God.
Colleen: It does to me too. Yeah.
Nikki: And I feel better about that than giving them secondhand to someone. I would never want to hand someone something that’s dangerous for them.
Colleen: No. You know, when we first came out, we had shelves of Ellen White books, and then, after the Ellen White books, we realized we had shelves of Adventist books, just like the veggie novels and the whatevers from the ABC stores, and we talked about it, and we didn’t have any precedence; right? We were just kind of like coming out in the ’90s. And we said to one another, “You know, people go to the dump and search for stuff. We can’t even just throw these away.” I mean, that was our decision. I mean, it would be better than keeping them. But we decided we needed to burn them. So it took us a couple days because we had to rip them apart and burn them in the fireplace, and you know they’re kind of thick, but we did. And it was an amazing experience. And you know, I know how bad this sounds. I used to teach English. I’m an editor. Book burning is the mark of oppressive regimes.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But you know what? This isn’t that. This is not suppressing knowledge. This is not suppressing history. This is Acts 19, burning the doctrines of demons recorded in books written by a false prophet.
Nikki: It’s an outward symbol of repentance.
Colleen: Yes. Exactly. So I’m not saying you have to burn books, but I wouldn’t keep them in my house. Now, there’s a place for research, there’s a place for having books for research, but – and related to this, it’s not quite the same subject, but this came up in the last Q&A session and I didn’t get a chance to say it, but I do want to say, as people are starting to come out of Adventism, there’s a lot of confusion, a lot of anxiety, a lot of loss, a lot of back-and-forth excitement and doubt, excitement and doubt, and one of the things we had to conclude that we now tell people frequently is when you’re coming out, you need to swear off of Adventist reading, Adventist listening, Adventist materials for at least a couple years, two to three years at least, while you immerse yourself in Scripture and start unpacking your head.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because those things do nothing but plunge you back into their arguments and make you confused.
Nikki: Yep.
Colleen: So, if it’s dangerous to belong to it, it’s dangerous to keep immersing yourself in it. It’s the backwards glance, it’s the Lot’s wife thing. There’s no backwards looking.
Nikki: And they really shouldn’t have an issue with it if they are sola scriptura.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: We know they’re not.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But we can choose to be.
Colleen: Exactly. That’s so true. So, Nikki, how do you speak truth to your Adventist family?
Nikki: Well, I had a window, and it was really early on, and I don’t have that window anymore. But what I want to say to people who are asking that question, I want to say, “It’s looks different for everyone.”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: We could sit here and give you a script of a bunch of, you know, clever questions to ask, some that have really helped a lot of us figure out that we were in something, but not everything works the same with everyone, and so I think the most important thing I could say to anyone who is asking this questions is that it might be the wrong question. I think what you need to do is to, again, same answer, immerse yourself in Scripture. Read.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Read the New Testament, read it. Because with my narrow window, I didn’t know enough yet to answer the rebuttals and the questions –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – and I walked away from that time and I learned more about Scripture, and I went, “Oh, I would have said this.” “I should have said that.” Not a snarky comment, Scripture that actually answered the question that I didn’t have in mind at that time. And so I would say, “Read, read, read, read.” I wrote down – I won’t read all of it here, but somebody put out a meme or something that shows how long it takes to read each of the New Testament books, if you just sit and read, and guys, this is easy. We can do this. It takes – the longest one I see here is 2-1/2 hours, but you get into these other books, Galatians 20 minutes, Ephesians 20 minutes, Philippians 14 minutes, Colossians 13 minutes, 1 Thessalonians 12 minutes, 2 Thessalonians 7 minutes, Philemon is 3 minutes. It doesn’t take long to sit down, to set aside that time and to read through these, and as we read them, they’ll answer our questions, they’ll get us familiar with Scripture, and it’s that sword of the Spirit so that when you do talk to your parents or your siblings or your aunts or uncles, whoever –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – you have that in mind. And even if you can’t – as you’re practicing for that discussion, even if you can’t bring it up, the Holy Spirit will bring it up if you need to say it.
Colleen: He will. He absolutely will, yeah.
Nikki: He knows how to do that for you.
Colleen: Um-hmm. Absolutely. And again, one of the things that I recommend, and I know many of you have heard me say this, but I’m going to say it again: Get in the habit of copying Scripture or memorizing it.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Because there’s nothing to substitute for actually examining every single word, and like you mentioned earlier, Nikki, I often refer to the gospel according to grammar.
Nikki: Yup.
Colleen: It has been so amazing to me to discover in memorizing that the actual grammar of the passages that I knew in the back of my mind made a completely different – gave me a completely different message in context when I paid attention to stuff like verb tenses.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s one of the biggest ones for me, realizing things that are present tense, not future tense, realizing that the words mean what they say, they’re not metaphorical, they’re not allegorical, they are literally true, and as they’re written, they mean something according to the tenses and according to the context. So I just suggest you get a notebook and start copying books of the Bible. You don’t have to do a lot, but pray that the Lord will teach you what those books need to say. And like Nikki said, you will be able to answer as you study and as you immerse yourself in God’s word, and you will not always be able to silence their arguments, but you will learn to recognize the way the questions are skewed. And if there’s an honest question, you’ll know what to say because it’s going to be clear. But if it’s a dishonest question that is skewing the words and skewing you, like these questions about the immortal soul and life after death. You know, the Bible speaks about things in a very clear way. We’re either dead or alive, and God is immortal. And you have to just define your terms. But it’s only in Scripture that you do that. And there is one more thing I’d like to say, sometimes Adventists just want to argue. They just want to win. And we were taught to do that. I was taught to do that. You know, Adventism, in the past, past decades, was known for its debaters. They would hold Sabbath debates where they’d have an Adventist minister and a Baptist minister, and they’d get up and they’d get a big crowd and they’d – who’s going to win the debate? And the Adventists were very proud of the way they could win their debates, but what the average Christian didn’t know was that a lot of those arguments were taken out of context. So, knowing Scripture is the way, and if somebody’s just arguing, leave it alone.
Nikki: Yeah. I want to say that that was important for me to learn. I think a part of honoring our family and loving our family for God is not pushing them into blasphemous discussions.
Colleen: Yeah. I agree.
Nikki: If they’re not receptive, back off and pray a lot, and maybe a day will come when they’ll come to you and say, “Can you explain this to me?” And they’ll have honest curiosity.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: I had a conversation with a family member where I said – she actually told me she would no longer be discussing these things with me, and I said, “Okay, but if a time every comes when you want to, I’ll only do it if we both have the Bible in our lap.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And that time hasn’t come, but I still pray.
Colleen: Right. Well, Nikki, we’re coming to the end –
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: – of our second live podcast, with all of its problems. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But I just want to say for everybody listening, if you haven’t trusted the Lord Jesus to have paid for all your sins, if you haven’t recognized that you’re a sinner in need of a Savior, not in need of an example to help you clean up, but someone who will save you and make you new, go to Galatians and read that epistle and ask the Lord to reveal to you what is true about you, what is true about Jesus, and trust Him. You’ll never regret it. Your life will never be the same, and you can never walk out of His hand. So, thank you for being with us, and I’ll see you again.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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