Passing of an Adventist Leader 

[KASPARS OZOLINS]

Former North America division (NAD) president Daniel R. Jackson passed away suddenly on July 23, 2022. The news was sudden to me, at least, because he had only recently retired in 2020, two years ago. I know very little about the man and had never met him during my Adventist days. A Canadian native, Dan Jackson served the Adventist church for almost five decades. That time included a five-year stint in India at an Adventist college in the city of Pune, from 1981 to 1985. Jackson was elected president of the NAD on June 28, 2010. In recent years he (and the NAD) clashed with the General Conference (representing the more traditional global church) over several issues, especially women’s ordination. 

He is perhaps best known (online at least) for his famous “hooey” speech, which took place at the conclusion of the 2018 Year End Meeting business session, on November 5, 2018. Jackson began his remarks by stating that he had observed a certain “malaise” in the church in recent years, and that the church urgently needed to pray that God would unite it. From there, however, he launched into a rather bitter defense of his NAD, which in his view had been unfairly maligned as “rebellious.” “We are not rebels. We are Seventh-day Adventists,” he emphasized. A key component in his defense of this claim was the massive amount of tithe contributed by the NAD to the global church. Only one percent of Adventists worldwide live in the countries represented by the NAD (chief of which is the United States, the original birthplace of Seventh-day Adventism). Despite this, the prosperity of the US and Canada means that the NAD contributes a disproportionate amount of money to the General Conference fund.

The ordination of women, Jackson argued, was trivial in comparison to the loyalty of the NAD to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in this and other areas. 

The ordination of women, Jackson argued, was trivial in comparison to the loyalty of the NAD to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in this and other areas. The global church should not speak down to the NAD. The president declared: “No, we’re not your students. We are colleagues together in ministry with our other brethren from the General Conference. Period.” 

His remarks were periodically interrupted by enthusiastic applause by NAD leaders in the room, some even standing up to signal their approval. Jackson continued, “I believe that this church is going to one day stand up and apologize for the absolute abuse of women.” He tried to clarify this by stating that he was not referring to the ordination of women in general, which he claimed to respect as a different point of view. Rather, he decried the church’s inconsistency in its official policy on women’s ministry, specifically as detailed in its most recent directives (i.e., the hated “compliance” document). This inconsistency, however, reaches back to the 1870s, when the leadership of the church gave none other than Ellen White ministerial credentials, yet not (ostensibly) ordination status. According to the White Estate, “she was never ordained by human hands, nor did she ever perform a wedding, organize a church, or conduct a baptism.” It is the compliance document that Jackson described as “hooey.” With emphatic tones, he intoned: “Our women in the North American Division who serve as pastors and leaders will be protected by the North American Division and every conference and union president in this place!” 

Jackson further characterized as “hooey” male headship theology, which he claimed “was never Seventh-day Adventist and will never become Seventh-day Adventist.”

Jackson further characterized as “hooey” male headship theology, which he claimed “was never Seventh-day Adventist and will never become Seventh-day Adventist.” This is a standard line from progressive Adventists who argue that these ideas are foreign imports from “fundamentalist” Christianity. One gets the impression (I do, at least) that progressive Adventist opposition to “headship theology” has subtly endeared itself to not a few former Adventists, who perhaps might be sympathetic to this perspective. To wit, I came across some positive remarks from various former Adventists about Dan Jackson after the news of his passing had just come out. The general theme of these comments was to express a measure of confidence that Jackson was now finally in heaven and that his love for Jesus was evident, regardless of his Adventist affiliation. But that raises an important question: How should we regard the passing of other Seventh-day Adventists (especially prominent Adventist leaders)? 

Show Me Your Gospel

I want to describe Dan Jackson’s brand of Christianity with an illustration drawn from the pastoral epistles. The apostle Paul suddenly shifts topics in his first epistle to his protégé Timothy at the beginning of chapter 4:

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared…”

This frightful warning grabs our attention, leading us to rightly expect Paul to describe some extreme heresy, or moral sin. Instead, he only mentions the forbidding of marriage and the requirement to abstain from certain foods (v. 3). What? 

We perhaps might protest Paul here and counter that he might have been a little extreme in his characterization of such practices (recall his forceful words: “depart from the faith,” “devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons”). I believe the immediately preceding context to these verses provides us with a glimpse of Paul’s frame of mind in order to account for his reasoning here. The previous chapter concludes with a magnificent statement, in which Paul describes “the mystery of godliness”:

“He was manifested in the flesh,
Vindicated by Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Proclaimed among the nations,
Believed on in the world,
Taken up in glory.”

The mystery of godliness is not self-discipline or a focus on a healthy diet or the honoring of particular days, or any other such religious practices. The mystery of godliness is wholly contained within the incarnation of the Son of God, who at all times retained his full humanity and his full divinity (along with all attendant divine attributes). It is found only in his vicarious, bloody, substitutionary sacrifice, his full and complete atonement. The mystery of godliness is beheld in the resurrected God-man, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given. All other competing preoccupations, no matter how seemingly innocuous, Paul condemns as teachings of demons—and even as a sign that one has departed from the faith. 

Now I never knew Dan personally, so I cannot ultimately vouch for his gospel. But I know that the Seventh-day Adventist gospel (progressive or not) cannot save, and I know that the Seventh-day Adventist Jesus cannot save, because he is a false Jesus. And so I cannot concur with one online commentator who remarked about Jackson’s passing: “I do believe despite the fact that he believed in a false Jesus that his heart was pure and that he is with Jesus now.” While we do not have the knowledge (which only God possesses) about the ultimate fate of any person who dies, that does not mean we cannot examine a person’s life and their beliefs in light of Scripture. It does matter what we believe about the person and work of Jesus Christ. (And the idea that someone’s heart on the inside is “pure” derives more from Disney movies than it does from Scripture.) 

What few statements I have seen from Dan Jackson are sadly consistent with the Seventh-day Adventist gospel.

What few statements I have seen from Dan Jackson are sadly consistent with the Seventh-day Adventist gospel. In a sermon given at a Minnesota Adventist camp meeting, Jackson emphasized: “Should we ever forget that the messages of the three angels are central to Seventh-day Adventism as they are rooted in Jesus––if we ever forget that, we have lost our way. When preachers begin to omit the messages of the three angels, we are omitting a message about righteousness by faith.” Note the last code words righteousness by faith, which express the false Adventist gospel (as opposed to justification by faith). 

Elsewhere, summing up his own life, Jackson remarked, “[t]he best way for me to understand my life and my service for God is to keep my eyes fixed upon Jesus as my Example and my Mentor.” Jackson’s views on the Sabbath and its centrality are also unmistakably Adventist. For him, the Sabbath is “an opportunity to rest, to take a break, to commune with nature, to build relationships, so that [it] is no longer some obscure teaching, but rather, it’s who I am, it’s something I express on the seventh day, but also on the other days of the week.” Before you protest that I’m nitpicking, consider Paul’s words above, as well as the entire context of the “Seventh-day” Adventist Church’s teaching on the sabbath.

How Should We Speak Of the Deceased?

We should strongly resist falling into one of two ditches when thinking and speaking about people who die as members (especially leaders) of cultic movements. On the one hand, we do not ultimately know the condition of an individual’s heart at the point of death. I pray that Dan Jackson truly came to know and trust the true Jesus of Scripture. It is wrong, I believe, to definitely state with certainty that a given person is right now in hell. 

Yet we must equally avoid the opposite ditch. The sober words of Hebrews 9:27 state: “[I]t is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Our faith teaches us that if anyone does not repent and believe the gospel, they will perish eternally. This is not a matter of “salvation by right doctrine,” as some sneer. Rather, to believe rightly upon Christ is the first and greatest evidence that one has truly been saved by Christ. J. C. Ryle, a 19th century Anglican minister, famously remarked: “One thief was saved that no sinner might despair, but only one, that no sinner might presume.” 

We ought not despair and assume that God is not able to save someone who lived and died as part of a cultic group, yet we dare not presume that such a person is right now in heaven, no matter how much we might wish this to be the case. †

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Kaspars Ozolins

Kaspars Ozolins was born in Latvia to an Adventist family. They moved to Los Angeles where Kaspars attended Adventist elementary and high schools in Glendale, California, and his father was an Adventist pastor. He met Ieva, his wife, while studying in Latvia before pursuing a doctorate at UCLA in historical linguistics. After Kaspars completed an M. Div. at The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, California, he served as a research associate at Tyndale House in Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. He is now on the faculty at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation.

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