Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “Creation”. Did you know that Adventism teaches that other worlds exist that are watching us to see if we can keep the Ten Commandments perfectly? Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today we are examining Adventism’s sixth Fundamental Belief, Creation. Now, I was surprised to learn that Adventism has not always had a Fundamental Belief about creation. We’re going to share with you the history of the organization’s coming to a place of a literal six-day creation and making that a point of fundamental belief and a central place of honor that holds up – what do you suppose? – its golden calf of the seventh-day Sabbath. But first, we want to remind you that we love hearing from you. You can email us at formeradventist@gmail.com with questions, comments. And if you go to proclamationmagazine.com, you’ll find our online magazines and articles, as well as links to our YouTube channel and to this podcast, and you can also subscribe there to our weekly Proclamation! Magazine email. You can also click on the donate tab and donate to Life Assurance Ministries. And please, follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and we would love for you to give us a five-star review of this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, before we read the Fundamental Belief statement #6, I have a question for you Nikki.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: As an Adventist, what did you think about creation, about God creating everything? And why was it important?
Nikki: Well, you know, my answer is anchored to the Adventist origins story, so before creation even occurred, you already had the heavens, and you had angels, and you had wars in heaven. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And then you had other, already-existing worlds with people on them.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Because as soon as Satan rebelled in heaven and was trying to wipe out all those angels and take them with him, God had to deal with that PR problem –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – all of these people who are hearing Satan slandering God’s character and saying that He isn’t fair, and rather than just dealing with it and leaving room for people to wonder, He decided He was going to let this play out on a cosmic level so that they could all see that, in fact, He is a good and loving God. So then He cast Satan out, all the angels go away, and then He and the Son go and create the earth.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And we are now tasked with showing the world that God is loving and fair and that His law can be kept. All of that is connected to my Adventist idea of creation and what God was doing, and it’s part of why we had to have the law in the Garden because that’s really what all of this hinges on; right? That God’s law is fair. And so I understood at creation God gave us the Sabbath –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – He gave us the law, which, of course, meant the Ten Commandments –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and marriage.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: So that was the significance of creation to me, that we have a big job to do.
Colleen: I hadn’t thought of it quite in those terms, but that really mirrors what I understood as well. I definitely believed we had all these other worlds. I believed that they were created at a different time than our world, that the story in Genesis was about our world and the heavens that we could see because I believed, as you did, that there was pre-history, that those angels were up there in heaven before we were created. So that wasn’t part of the creation story. I was shocked when I left Adventism and heard people talking about creation including the angels!
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Like, the story of creation was also the story of God creating everything that was created, including the angels. I had never thought of it that way, thank you, Ellen.
Nikki: Well, that was new to me this week, just as we were preparing for this podcast and I asked you about that. I still had all of this creation, created before we were created. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Uh-huh [laughter].
Nikki: And looking at that verse in Genesis that said, “In the beginning God created the heavens,” that’s plural.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: “The heavens and the earth,” just kind of made me stop and realize I still had some of that origin – you know, I didn’t have the details and the facts of whatever went on before we were created. I had tossed that.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: There was stuff that I still had in my head.
Colleen: Right. It is amazing to me how thoroughly the Ellen White paradigm of the great controversy, which includes her origins story, colored the way we see reality, and for years and years, even after we understand who Jesus is. It’s a slow shedding of these details that bring consistency into our thoughts, and it’s amazing to me how pervasive her ideas are. Well, before we go further, let’s read the Fundamental Belief #6. It’s interesting, we’re going to see as we go on, that this belief was rewritten in 2004 because of internal problems within the organization. So it’s very specific. It makes a very big deal, at this point, about the literal six-day creation. Let’s just read it, and then we’ll talk a little bit about the history of how we got here, and then we’ll talk about how Adventism tries to support this Fundamental Belief. And don’t get me wrong, we are firmly creationists –
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: – in a literal creation where nothing was made apart from the word of God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But the way Adventism teaches it, it’s for an ulterior motive. It’s always about supporting the Sabbath. Okay, so go ahead, Nikki, if you don’t mind, and read this, please.
Nikki: “God has revealed in Scripture the authentic and historical account of His creative activity. He created the universe, and in a recent six-day creation, the Lord made ‘the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them’ and rested on the seventh day. Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of the work He performed and completed during six literal days that, together with the Sabbath, constituted the same unit of time that we call a week today. The first man and woman were made in the image of God as the crowning work of Creation, given dominion over the world, and charged with responsibility to care for it. When the world was finished it was ‘very good,’ declaring the glory of God.”
Colleen: Can you believe that, Nikki? [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Okay, what jumps out at you first?
Nikki: PR!
Colleen: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: Pivot! [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] It’s all about the Sabbath, even here.
Nikki: Yeah. Yeah. It’s about the Sabbath. It’s about a commitment to a young earth.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: All of that’s in there. And it’s a Fundamental Belief that you have to sign off on to get baptized.
Colleen: Yes. That’s really true. To be an Adventist, this is necessary. And interestingly, this is now part of their control over their employees in the science departments at the universities. This wording is part of what the science teachers have to affirm before they get up there and teach biology, because they had a problem that started showing up around the ’80s and ’90s with Adventist science teachers starting to believe in and often to teach evolution, or principles of evolution.
Nikki: Well, and that’s interesting to learn because I was at La Sierra University, graduated in 2003, and they were teaching I would call it theistic evolution –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – at the time.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Even after this statement was made.
Colleen: Yes. And La Sierra was infamous within the organization and ran into a lot of trouble with the powers that be in Adventism because of that. So another thing that is interesting to me is how they word that sentence that says, “He performed and completed this creation act during the six literal days that, together with the Sabbath, constituted the same unit of time that we call a week today.” And as we go on in this chapter, we’ll find that they argue that the Sabbath was the same kind of day as were the other days of creation, but they never mention the fact that the creation account in Genesis deals with the seventh day differently. The first six days all say: And the evening and the morning were the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days. The seventh day does not have an evening and a morning. God just ceased His work on that day, and there’s no mention of that day ending or beginning.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It was His ceased work into which He created Adam and Eve. Anyway, that’s not ever mentioned.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: Instead, it’s argued that it’s the same kind of day, in spite of the language of Genesis. So another thing that really struck me on that first page of the article in the book is that it said, “Then God ‘rested,’ pausing to celebrate, to enjoy forever the beauty and majesty of those six days.” I just find that fascinating because the Bible never mentions God pausing to celebrate. That is such a projection of their own worldview onto God, onto the sovereign God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Well, before we discuss any more about the actual Fundamental Belief statement, I want to share some stuff that I just found within the last week. I had, actually, an alert, a Google alert, in my email with an article from the Adventist Review dated April 29, 2021. It’s written by Timothy Standish, who is on the staff at the Adventist Geoscience Research Institute on the campus of Loma Linda University, and he’s rather well known in creationist circles, both in and outside of Adventism as a creationist, and in fact, if any of you have ever watched Illustra Media movies, such as The Privileged Planet or the – I don’t even remember the titles, but they have some about butterflies, about birds, about, you know, emphasizing creation.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Timothy Standish has been part of the production of a lot of those Illustra Media movies, which are actually excellent movies.
Nikki: They’re really good, yeah.
Colleen: But he is firmly Adventist, with an Ellen White commitment. He wrote an article that he actually entitled, “How Adventists Became Creationists,” and I did not know some of the things he said. He began by explaining that the Millerites, prior to the foundation of the Adventist organization they were not united as creationists. William Miller himself favored a Day-Age Theory in which each literal 24-hour creation day prefigured one thousand years of human history. That’s the way Standish put it. And what William Miller did in this belief is that he believed that understanding these days representing a thousand years of history supported his prophecy, which ended up with the idea that Jesus would return in 1844. So his particular viewpoint was part of his prediction of Jesus’ coming. Now, after the Great Disappointment, the group that became the Seventh-day Adventists concentrated mostly on prophecy and the second coming and how to prepare for it. So in focusing on how to prepare for that imminent second coming, the Ten Commandments started to play a very central role. With the fourth commandment being the center of the commandments and the center of the requirements for being ready, that led to their looking backwards at creation to support their idea of the Sabbath. But the first periodical, the SDA periodical called The Present Truth, which ultimately evolved into what is now the Adventist Review, it featured an article in its very first issue entitled, “The Weekly Sabbath Instituted at Creation and Not at Sinai.” So we see at the very beginning of Seventh-day Adventism they were teaching that Sabbath began at creation. In that way, emphasis on the commandments was connected in their minds with creation and with being ready for Jesus to come. Then we fast forward a little farther, we get to the year 1872. Now for those who remember, and for those who don’t, the Adventist organization was officially organized in 1863, so it’s 1872 when they first publish a document entitled, “A Declaration of Fundamental Principles.” Now, in this document they did acknowledge that God created all things through Jesus, but they didn’t have a specific line item for creation being one of their fundamental principle beliefs. At that time in Adventist history, biblical creation was more or less assumed, but it was never spelled out. And see, I knew that Ellen White talked about creation and linked the Sabbath to it, but it had never occurred to me that the Adventist organization didn’t actually have a Fundamental Belief about it until quite late. Now, at the same time, in the late 1800s, other denominations, according to Standish, were actually becoming more and more direct in their statements of support of a biblical creation, and particularly the Catholics, which I found very interesting. They made much – they were beginning at that time to make much of a biblical record of human creation given in Genesis. During the first 50 years of Adventism, according to Standish, along with the fact that Ellen White did connect Sabbath to creation, there was also a widespread belief among Adventists that reflected that of Frederick Douglass. Now, some of you may know of Frederick Douglass. He was a racial equality campaigner. He was very famous in the post-Civil War era. And he spoke against the idea of an evolutionary understanding of human nature. There was widespread acceptance of the idea that man cannot be explained by evolution. And yet at the same time there was no clear understanding that evolution didn’t have some part to play. In 1866 – this is three years after the formation of the organization – Uriah Smith, who was the editor of The Review and Herald, which became The Review and Herald, the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, he wrote an article in which he declared, and this is a quote, “The line of demarcation between the human and animal races is lost in confusion.” Do you hear that? He’s actually saying that there was a place where animals and humans were blended, were connected in the past, an evolutionary concept. And he cited certain races as irrefutable proof of this idea. Now, it’s important to know that when Uriah Smith wrote this, he was defending Ellen White’s prophetic gift.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And he was defending her for a number of reasons, but one of which – the Adventist organization would kind of like to forget this, but it’s still there, it’s a matter of history – she wrote this: “Every species of animals which God had created was preserved in the ark. The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals and in certain races of men.” That quote shows up in two places, the first volume of Spirit of Prophecy, and it’s on page 78 there, and in her book Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3. So Uriah wrote his statement above to defend the prophet, who drew upon evidence that was produced by science at the time she wrote. And Uriah Smith was quick to grab, according to Timothy Standish, and urge acceptance of a view noted in evolutionary thought rather than the distinct creation of humans found in the biblical record. So that’s part of Adventist history.
Nikki: That’s awful.
Colleen: It is. And we’re not taught that in Adventist school or Sabbath school.
Nikki: I didn’t know she said that until I left.
Colleen: Right. A lot of people don’t, but she did. And I remember actually hearing it from my chemistry teacher when I was in college, and he was supporting that idea.
Nikki: Argh.
Colleen: So it’s an evolutionary idea. In the early 1900s, an Adventist layman, an amateur geologist by the name of George McCready Price, brought creationism back into sharper focus inside of Adventism. He did his writing during the time, within the larger group of Christianity, the evangelicals were writing their fundamentals, which described the basic beliefs of fundamental Christianity. And that actually was going on from the years 1910 to 1915. Price was a contemporary of those people, but he was Adventist. And he was doing writing and his own research into a biblical flood and into a biblical creation, and he had a great deal of influence on some Christian writers, including Leon Morris, who many people know today within the Christian circles as a champion of biblical six-day creationism. Price had actually a very significant influence on bringing a six-day literal creation into the forefront among Christian geologists. And I don’t think a lot of people understand that George McCready Price was an Adventist, and he did have that Adventist bias. Now, I’m not saying he was wrong in everything he said, but it’s significant to me that he is one of the people who was largely responsible for bringing a focus on a literal six-day creation to the forefront, both in Adventism and in Christianity, by the influence of his writing. So, fast forward to the 1930s. Adventist Fundamental Beliefs began to be published in the Adventist yearbook, but there was still no specific Fundamental Belief about creation, although six-day creation is assumed. It wasn’t until 1980 at the General Conference session when there was an actual Fundamental Belief about creation that was included in that first list of 27 Fundamental Beliefs. In the following years, however, there was a disruption, if you want to call it that, in the idea of a six-day creation among Adventist academics. And we alluded earlier to the fact that there were Adventist science teachers all through the denomination that were starting to teach evolution. And because of this, in the year 2004 Adventism revised its doctrine on the Fundamental Belief of creation, and in 2015 at the General Conference session, that revised statement was made official by a vote of the General Conference. And this revised statement is the one you read today, Nikki.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: And it includes the reference to a literal six-day creation, and in an article that was published in the Adventist Review in 2015, only six years ago, author Ed Zinke explained why this change in this Fundamental Belief came about, and he explains that the primary reason for this change and this refinement of it was that the existing statement from 1980 has been reinterpreted to mean almost anything people wish about origins, including theistic evolution, and they were going to make sure that they had a statement that they could hold up in front of their science teachers and say, “No, you have to believe this. You have to believe in a literal six-day,” because in 1980 it never mentioned a literal six-day creation in that Fundamental Belief. Now, it’s kind of a long background, but it’s really interesting to me because there’s a reason they have to hold up this literal six-day creation week. What do you think that is?
Nikki: Oh, it’s the Sabbath.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: It’s kind of interesting to me because you can have – like, Christians believe in literal six-day creation, and they don’t believe the Sabbath the way the Adventists do, but they’re so – they have them so connected in their head that they go to battle for this.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: What’s interesting to me is, just like with all of the previous Fundamental Beliefs that we’ve read, they have contained in this doctrinal statement, really creedal statement –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – PR.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I know I keep bringing that up, but it’s all built from that. And I know they like to say sola scriptura. I understand that they do have a list of Bible verses underneath their Fundamental Belief.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Really, the wording in the belief statement is worded for all of the issues that you just talked about.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s not really reflective of the verses that they provide.
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: I think they give like ten verses in here that talk about God creating. They make their point very well from Scripture that God did create, that all things created came from God. But they have statements in their Fundamental Belief that they don’t even get close to supporting from Scripture. They just throw however many verses it is, 10, 15 verses, underneath their statement and say, “See? It’s all from Scripture.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: But it’s really driven by this PR. And one of the earlier articles that you referenced right at the beginning there said that Sabbath began at creation, not Sinai. Even there, they’re starting with the Christian assumption that Sabbath was given to Israel at Mt. Sinai.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And they’re saying, “No, that’s not what’s real. This is what’s real.”
Colleen: That’s true. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Nikki: So they begin from there, we’re going to correct orthodoxy –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – with what we know is true from our prophet, and then we’re going to defend it to the hilt.
Colleen: And how do we know Sabbath, as we understand it, didn’t begin at creation?
Nikki: Well, because it was commanded at Sinai. It was never commanded at creation.
Colleen: Furthermore, the word “Sabbath” isn’t used in the creation account. It says seventh day, and it says God rested. And they never mention the fact that the Hebrew word underneath that word “rested” is ceased.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God ceased His work because it was done. And they never mention the fact that that seventh day, as we mentioned earlier, had no evening and morning outlining it.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: God didn’t get up on the next day and go back to work on the eighth day.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Right.
Colleen: His work was done.
Nikki: And there’s nothing in the text where He says, “Okay, Adam, now you’re going to work the garden for six days, but on the seventh day you’re not going to work.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: “And if you do work, you’re going to be killed for it.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: No. [Laughter.]
Nikki: That’s not there.
Colleen: It’s not there. And furthermore, just by the by, Adam’s first full day of life was that seventh day. He was created into God’s perfect rest. He was God’s last creation.
Nikki: And that is a foreshadowing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: When we are created anew in Christ, we are created into God’s completed work.
Colleen: Exactly. That is exactly right.
Nikki: You know, just another thing that I have to mention. It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine. The early Adventists and Adventists today will say that the law, which, of course, we know they mean the Decalogue –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – is eternal. And the law was in heaven, and it kind of provoked this war.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: And yet, they also say, and they say it all through this chapter, that Sabbath was created during the creation week.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: So you can’t have the Ten Commandments in eternity past –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – if there are only nine.
Colleen: Right! How could then Sabbath be created at creation if it existed in the Ten Commandments before creation? It’s a logical fallacy.
Nikki: It’s a big hole.
Colleen: Yeah, like a lot of other things they say.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, one thing I feel like we must mention, because we’ve talked a lot about Adventism’s emphasis on a literal six-day creation week, and you know, that’s something that a lot of evangelical Christians also firmly espouse today –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – but I just want to say, I think it’s important to notice that there’s enough room in the language of Scripture, both in the English translation and in the Hebrew, to allow for different views on that matter. I believe that while it’s probably easiest and perhaps safest to look at this Genesis account and say, “Days are days,” there is room for seeing those days as longer periods of time. I’m not saying William Miller was right, in that each one represented a thousand years, but I think there’s enough question – as Richard mentioned to me this morning, the evening and the morning outlines all the days, and it’s fascinating that, according to the Genesis 1 account of creation, the way we count time, the sun being in the center of the solar system and the earth rotating around it, that’s how we count a day. The sun was not created until the fourth day so that in the account itself there is room for looking at this and saying: These “days,” yom, can be – and we know that the Hebrew word can be interpreted different ways to mean different lengths of time, to mean eras or longer periods, and I know true believers who believe both ways, and I don’t believe we can make this a test of faith.
Nikki: You know, I’ve heard people suggest that if you don’t believe in a young earth, literal six-day creation, then you will not handle the rest of Scripture properly. And I think that that’s a false statement. I think it’s unfair and uncharitable. Like you, I know believers who are very good with the Greek and the Hebrew, very faithful Bible teachers, who are not dogmatic about the age of the earth and who say that there’s Christian freedom in that because there is room in the original language. One of the things that I’ve really appreciated Pastor Gary for, I was listening to one of his sermons, I think it might have been from the ’80s –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and he said in there that the creation account is not given as a science textbook, to tell us how God created. It’s given to tell us that God created. And what’s important to know is that it’s true, it’s historical –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and Adam and Eve are historical, real people –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – and those things really did happen. But it’s not designed to tell us exactly what order and how long and how He did it, just that God, the God of the Bible, created.
Colleen: I like that. I remember hearing him say that. And it’s very significant that Genesis 1 tells us that He created it. Throughout the entire Old Testament and the New, we keep getting reiterations of that fact, that Jesus was the Word, without Him nothing was made that was made. All through, from beginning to end, we have the declaration that God created. That is what we have to know. And that sets the stage for everything about salvation.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: If we were random appearances in a hostile universe, there would be no place in there for a salvation story of a God who wants us reconciled to Him. Why would we be reconciled if we just appeared?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The creation story is necessary and true, but as you said, there is not enough evidence to say we can say for sure how long those days were. But we have to know He did create everything.
Nikki: Yeah, and you know, I want to say to believers who have never been Adventist but who have been blessed by the young earth information that they’ve contributed to, I want to tell you that while some of those contributions – like you were mentioning, those videos are wonderful –
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: – while they may be a blessing to you, you need to know that this is a very inconsistent way for them to deal with Scripture. They are not literal in most of their hermeneutical interpretations of the word.
Colleen: And you mean Adventists.
Nikki: The Adventists, the Adventists.
Colleen: Yes, um-hmm.
Nikki: So they may present at Christian on this front –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – but you can’t, based on this, determine that they’re true believers. You need to know that this is an area that they guard carefully because they’re trying to uphold their prophetess.
Colleen: That’s an important point, Nikki.
Nikki: And you can see that inconsistency even just right in Genesis 2. So in Genesis 1, all the days are very literal, but when God tells Adam, “On the day you eat of the fruit, you will surely die,” suddenly in Adventism, that “day” now means, like, an era, age. It’s an age.
Colleen: That’s true. They began to die.
Nikki: They began to die, because they can’t have a spirit.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Humans don’t have a spirit, and we’ll look at that closer even next week. And so now you have “day” meaning something else because it upholds that doctrine.
Colleen: That is a really good point. They’re completely inconsistent. They do not have a consistent hermeneutic except defending Ellen –
Nikki: Um-hmm, yeah.
Colleen: – and her story of origins.
Nikki: We can see right here in this chapter on page 81, right here at the beginning. They say, “The fourth commandment would be meaningless were each day stretched into aeons.”
Colleen: Right. [Laughter.]
Nikki: So here we see, it’s the Sabbath.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: The Sabbath to them has to be connected to a six literal-day creation.
Colleen: Exactly. Right. It’s also interesting, on page 82 of the book Seventh-day Adventists Believe, on page 82 the authors of this book argue that the heavens God created “probably refer to our sun and its system of planets.” And then they go on to say that, “of course where God lived was something that’s not the same heaven because He was there before.” This is back to that story of origins. Adventism did not see the angels as being part of the creation that God created in Genesis 1.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We were talking before the podcast, Nikki, that in our Adventist worldview, we had those angels existing with God and Jesus and, you know, Lucifer prior to creation, and that’s when the whole great controversy started. That’s not what Scripture says.
Nikki: And not just the angels, but other worlds. This quote on page 82 was kind of wonderful. I’m sorry, it was funny to me. The writer says, “Indeed, the earth, instead of being Christ’s first creation, was most likely His last one. The Bible pictures the sons of God, probably the Adams of the unfallen worlds, meeting with God. So far, space probes have discovered no other inhabited planets. They apparently are situated in the vastness of space – well beyond the reach of our sin-polluted solar system, quarantined against the infection of sin.”
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] It’s just so funny because it’s a basic assumption in Adventism –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – it’s a basic assumption that you have all these other planets with all these watching worlds who a part of, you know, this big trial –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – to see if God’s fair. It doesn’t occur to them that a Christian reading this is going to go, “Wait, what? You’ve got other worlds? You’ve got other Adams in unfallen worlds who meet with God?” And apparently they’re quarantined –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – because we haven’t found them yet.
Colleen: Yeah, yesterday you sent me a meme of two little aliens wearing a mask. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] I don’t know, that one just got me.
Colleen: Keep away from that sin. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Yeah, you have to understand that their literalness about those six days completely vanishes when you hear that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and they assume that there are other creations before the earth because that’s the way they have to uphold Ellen White’s story of origins.
Nikki: Yeah, that is their golden calf.
Colleen: It is. On page 83, there was another quote in this book that amused you, Nikki, about God creating Adam.
Nikki: Oh, yes.
Colleen: Can you share that with us?
Nikki: “When Christ with loving care, knelt over Adam, shaping this first man’s hand,” and then it goes on to talk about what He was thinking about. So you have preincarnate Christ with a body, kneeling on His knees, leaning over Adam, forming His hands, and then we have this description of what He was thinking.
Colleen: “His divine foreknowledge did not stop Him. Under the ominous cloud of Calvary, Christ breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, knowing that this creative act would deprive Him [Jesus, Christ] of His breath of life. Incomprehensible love is the basis of Creation.”
Nikki: And if I remember correctly, when they reference His foreknowledge, it’s after speaking of Him as the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.
Colleen: And what’s so interesting about that is this book is describing Christ, who it declares to be the Creator who was slain from the foundation of the world, and that just being His divine foreknowledge, creating Adam, whom He knew would take His life. How does that jibe with Ellen’s pre-history where He went before the Father three times after Adam sinned begging to come down and be the sacrifice, and the Father not wanting to send Him but then finally acceding and letting Him go? Even their own stories don’t hold up.
Nikki: Um-um. No, this makes me think of dealing with kids who lie.
Colleen: Yes, it does.
Nikki: And they are committed to that lie, and you bring it up and you bring it up, and the story changes here and changes there.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: They forget the details, and it just starts taking different shapes.
Colleen: This same section of this book also says that God established the seventh-day Sabbath – and it’s referring to creation – so we would have a perpetual reminder that we are creatures of His making. “The Creator placed the injunction to remember this sacred memorial of His creative power in the center of the moral law as an everlasting sign and symbol of Creation.” Now, I just want to point out, this is a Fundamental Belief about creation, revised and revised so that it would be a literal six-day creation that everybody had to answer to and be responsible to uphold when they teach their science classes, and yet here we have in this book, they tip their hand again, the real reason creation is important to them is because they have to make Sabbath a creation ordinance and say it’s a memorial of creation that God gave man. That’s their core public identity. Their core unseen identity is the Investigative Judgment and the whole 1844 heavenly sanctuary fiasco.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: But this is their core identity, and they have to defend it, and they use creation to defend it.
Nikki: Well, and we’ll spend more time on this when we get to that chapter, but it’s interesting that they’re so heavy on this here when we haven’t even gotten to that Fundamental Belief.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: And it’s also interesting to me that there are a lot of progressive Adventists who will toss the Investigative Judgment, but they will not let go of the Adventist interpretation of the Sabbath.
Colleen: Yeah, that’s very true. The Bible never says that God created the Sabbath as a memorial to creation. They get that by reinterpreting the fourth commandment. Rather, the Sabbath God gave to Israel to remember His finished work and, according to Deuteronomy 5, to remember that He brought them out of slavery in Egypt. It pointed forward also to the Lord Jesus, who fulfilled the Sabbath on the cross, as He announced, at the end of His redemptive work, “It is finished.” In both instances, creation and the cross, God ceased His work because it was done, and that’s what the Sabbath was about, God’s finished work.
Nikki: So as they were leading into this really strong defense of the Sabbath, they did, like they do so many times, where they try to represent what Christians think, people who are not Adventists think, and then they throw all of why they’re right at the reader.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And they begin on page 84 by saying, “Men and women of every generation are tempted to ignore the doctrine of Creation. ‘Who cares,’ they ask, ‘ how God created the earth? What we need to know is how to get to heaven.'”
Colleen: Argh.
Nikki: And you know, as an Adventist, that was my question, “How do I get to heaven?”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: There was no security, and ultimately what I learned from my Adventist worldview is you get to heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and by especially keeping that Sabbath, which would be a big test later. What I want Adventists to know is that is not the big question for believers.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Christians are Christians because they heard the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation, and believed. And they were sealed by the Holy Spirit. And God causes us to be born again, and we live from salvation. We know we’re going home.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: We’re not asking, “How do I get to heaven? How do I get to heaven?” The Adventists are because they don’t have the true gospel. They don’t know that the gospel is that Christ offers us eternal life –
Colleen: Now.
Nikki: – and it’s all – for Christians, for us, it’s all about knowing God. I love what Tozer said. He said, “What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.” And Jesus, He prayed that we would have eternal life, and He said that eternal life is that we would know the Father, that we would know God. And in Scripture it says that God knows those who love Him.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Eternal life, life knowing and connected to the Father, that’s what Christians are about, not “How do I get to heaven?”
Colleen: That is what the cults ask. You think about Adventism, you think about Mormonism, you think about Jehovah’s Witnesses, they’re all worried about how to get to heaven or to the third heaven or the highest level of heaven or whatever their particular religion teaches. They’re worried about how to get to heaven. Christians know how to get to heaven. We’re not worried about that.
Nikki: That’s what “It is finished” means to us.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So they go on and say, “The doctrine of divine Creation forms ‘the indispensable foundation for Christian and Biblical theology.’ A number of fundamental Biblical concepts are rooted in the divine Creation. Indeed, a knowledge of how God created ‘the heavens and the earth’ can ultimately help one find one’s way to the new heaven and earth.” And then they go on and talk about – under that, they have 13 subpoints.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And they talk about what creation teaches us.
Colleen: Okay. Share those 13.
Nikki: Okay. So they say creation is the antidote to idolatry. They say it is the foundation of true worship.
Colleen: Oh, that’s a reference to the first angel’s message of Revelation 14, “Come out of her my people. Worship God who made heaven and earth.”
Nikki: Ah, of course.
Colleen: And that they interpret as a call to keep Sabbath.
Nikki: And that would explain why the Sabbath is the seal to them –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – it’s the mark of ownership.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And then, of course, like you mentioned, the Sabbath is a memorial of creation. And I found it very interesting that one of their texts that they use to support that comes out of Exodus 31:13-17, and it’s a section where God is speaking to the sons of Israel, and He’s speaking of the Sabbath and how it’s a sign between them forever, and I counted out how many times does He refer to His audience, because now we’re talking hermeneutics; right?
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Who’s the first audience? Seven different times in this section He is speaking to the sons of Israel: between me and you throughout your generations, it’s holy to you, the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath, on and on. This is replacement Israel, what they’re doing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is spiritual Israel, replacement theology.
Colleen: What Adventists do –
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: – to say, “Oh, this is for us because we are now Israel.”
Nikki: Um-hmm. And I personally do not see a basis for the church replacing Israel in Scripture.
Colleen: I don’t either.
Nikki: I know Christians disagree on that, but I’m pretty convinced that there is no basis for that.
Colleen: I agree.
Nikki: So they go on and they say that at creation we learn about marriage, we learn about the basis for true self-worth.
Colleen: Oh!
Nikki: The basis for true fellowship, because they speak of God being the Father of all created beings, and so we’re all siblings, and this should eliminate racism, and they talk about personal stewardship, that we’re accountable to God for our physical, mental, and spiritual faculties. They talk about the responsibility for the environment. And this one got me, they speak of the dignity of manual labor.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] That’s what creation does, it speaks of the dignity. They say, “God assigning mankind this useful occupation in a perfect world reveals the dignity of manual labor.” And I laugh because in Adventism going to university is absolutely just unavoidable. You cannot do it. If you don’t go to college as an Adventist –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – you are looked down upon.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And if you do go, there are certain majors you better be thinking about –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – if you want to live in the top tiers of Adventist social life.
Colleen: Uh-uh.
Nikki: So this one kind of got me. They also talk about how creation gives us an understanding of the worth of the physical universe, and they say that it is the remedy for pessimism, loneliness, meaninglessness –
Colleen: Oh, you know what? No. Knowing Jesus is the remedy for that.
Nikki: Notice there’s nothing here about the gospel –
Colleen: No, nothing.
Nikki: – but the creation story is offering all of this information to us, and they say that the creation story tells us of the holiness of God’s law.
Colleen: Oh, no!
Nikki: Yes. Page 86, “God’s law existed before the fall. Both before and after the fall, human beings were subject to it. The law of God” – this is Ellen White. “The law of God is as sacred as God Himself.” And remember, this is the Ten Commandments.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: “It is a revelation of His will, a transcript of His character, the expression of divine love and wisdom. The harmony of creation depends upon the perfect conformity of all beings, of everything, animate and inanimate, to the law of the Creator.”
Colleen: Oh, and I just want to say, how many ways is she wrong in that? The law is the transcript of His character? No! Jesus is the actual transcript. The law is a created thing that was not present at creation, and as we said earlier, if God gave the law at creation, how could it have preexisted creation? How could the Sabbath have preexisted creation if it was a creation ordinance, as they also try to say?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: There’s just too much doublespeak about this.
Nikki: Again, it’s an idol.
Colleen: It’s an idol.
Nikki: And their last point is that creation teaches us about the sacredness of life. And they say because life is a gift of God we must respect it; in fact, we have a moral duty to preserve it.
Colleen: So why do they have an official position of choice regarding abortion? Why do they teach their medical students to perform abortions? Why does La Sierra University have a school of business named after Dr. Allred, who is one of the most well-known Adventist abortionists, who established one of the largest independent abortion clinics that’s thriving in Southern California? Why is abortion permitted inside of Adventism if their duty is to preserve life? And I think the answer we’ll find when we study the nature of man.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They don’t believe life begins when life begins. This is a horrifying thing to me.
Nikki: And part of what horrifies me about all of these 13 points is that they follow the idea that by understanding these things, it will ultimately lead us to the new heaven and the new earth. This is works salvation.
Colleen: Yes. Well, I think it’s significant that this chapter about creation ends with this statement. It’s the first time it has brought in the cross as anything significant, but look how they talk about it: “It was the perfect, divine hands of Christ that first gave humans life; and it is the hands of Christ, pierced and blood-stained, that will give humans eternal life. For humans are not only created; they may be re-created. Both creation and re-creation are equally the works of Christ – neither has come from within through natural development.” Now, I just have to say, this is saying that Christ’s hands will give humans eternal life, and humans may be recreated. And then the very last sentence of this chapter says, “As the crowning act of His Creation, God invites each of us to enter into communion with Him, daily seeking the regenerating powers of Christ so that, to God’s glory, we will be able to reflect His image more fully.” That is not a gospel call.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: That is a call to each person to seek, to strive, to try to enter into communion, and they never tell how. That has always been my beef with Adventist theology. It’s like all these wonderful goals for me. How do I get there?
Nikki: By seeking daily the regenerative power of Christ. They don’t even know what that means.
Colleen: No, they don’t. They don’t.
Nikki: And we’ll understand a little better next week when we talk about the nature of humanity. What is regeneration?
Colleen: But for now, I want to just say to everybody listening, the triune God is the Creator, and it was done through the word of the Lord Jesus. Everything that has been made was made by Him, nothing was made apart from Him. He created ex nihilo. There is nothing that preexists the creative Word of God. And we are saved by the creative sovereign choice of God as well. Jesus came and took our imputed sin, a mystery that only He could have done. God the Son became incarnate in human flesh and took our imputed sin into Himself to the cross and paid the penalty for human sin as He bled and shed His innocent blood. Adventists don’t want to talk about the innocent blood of Jesus. They don’t want to remind people that they have to submit, to repent, and to trust the shed blood of Jesus. But that’s the way we’re saved. And if you haven’t entrusted yourself to the finished work of Christ, if you haven’t seen that Jesus’ work on the cross is what the Sabbath foreshadowed for Israel, then you haven’t seen the purpose of the Sabbath, and I invite you to go to the book of Galatians and read it, and go to the book of Hebrews and read it. And you will find there that the real Jesus has done everything necessary for you to be saved. If you haven’t repented and trusted Him, we urge you to do it because you will find rest, and you will enter that rest that God initiated when He ceased His work on that seventh day. God is sovereign. He’s our creator, He’s our redeemer, and Christ is the sacrifice that bled and died for us.
Nikki: If you have questions or comments for us, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing ministry news and other online articles. Like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us next week as we dive into the doctrine on the nature of man.
Colleen: And we’ll see you then.
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