Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “Nature of Man”. The Adventist organization takes this teaching concerning the makeup of humans and creates a whole bag of tricks (doctrines) that go far from Biblical teaching. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Today we’re going to be talking about the Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Belief on the nature of man, and it is convoluted. There is so much error in this Adventist teaching, and striking the balance between exposing it and correcting it with the Word is hard to do in a short amount of time.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: So I want to encourage you, if this is new to you, go ahead and pause this and go grab something for taking notes, then write down any references shared here so you can do further study. And if you have questions, please reach out; we would love to help you. And if you want to supplement this topic with further study, go and listen to our series on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. The Adventist teaching on the nature of man is massively different from what the Bible teaches, and it’s rooted firmly in their story of origins. This has profound consequences that reach deeply into other doctrines. If you’re an Adventist and have ever wondered what exactly you need saving from – you’re a good person, you don’t believe you actually deserve hell – I would encourage you to get your Bible and lean hard into this discussion. I’ve been where you are, and there are answers to these questions. The truth is that Adventist doctrine conceals our true nature and our need for a Savior in order to support their prophetess. As a result, they present humanity with a fictional answer to a fictional problem, leaving them confused, overwhelmed, and without hope in the world. But before we get started, let me remind you that you can always write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you need a resource from our podcast, have questions or even ideas for shows, or just want to connect for any reason, really, we’d love to hear from you. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing ministry news, online articles, and links to other important resources. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please, leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, Colleen, I remember well the first time you and I talked on the phone. [Laughter.]
Colleen: And I remember that too. [Laughter.]
Nikki: And one of the most startling things that happened during that conversation was that you corrected my understanding on why Jesus came and what our nature and need is for a Savior.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It was completely different from anything I ever understood. You took me through the Scriptures and showed me, verse by verse, something that I never saw in my entire life in Adventism. I still get emotional when I think about what you gave me that afternoon, and I’m forever grateful for all you do for those of us who were trapped and didn’t even know we’d been taken captive. My question for you today is, how did you come to learn about our true nature and need for a Savior? And when did you realize that the Jesus of Adventism solves a fictional problem?
Colleen: That’s an interesting question that actually spans a period of time. We were studying our way out of Adventism, hadn’t officially left yet, and I remember reading a book. It’s an old book, I’m sure it’s out of print, and I don’t even really remember the title. It was the story of a revival that happened in Indonesia in the ’60s, written by a Christian who had been working in Indonesia. It’s a story I had never heard about as an Adventist, and by the way, have you noticed that Adventism does not tell us about the truly great Christian missionaries of the last 300 years?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: We didn’t even know about people like Nate Saint, Elisabeth Elliot, Amy Carmichael, who rescued the girls from temple prostitution in India. I had never heard of these people as an Adventist.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: But I digress. I was reading this book about a 1960s revival in Indonesia, and the man writing the book was talking about having ministered to these people, who had been pagans prior to hearing about Jesus. And he was writing about the fact that when they accepted Jesus they had to renounce their demons, and he said if they didn’t fully come to the Lord and renounce all their past, they would be literally the site, the physical site, of a spiritual war inside themselves because they were responding to Jesus but still trying to take care of and worship their demons. And it was a brand new thought for me, and I don’t remember exactly how my thought process went as I read this book, but I remember suddenly realizing that what he was saying was shining a light on my belief that the spirit that we have in us, as the human spirit, is not our breath, as I had been taught. And I remember Adventism mocking the idea that we have a spirit that leaves the body when we die –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – that knows the Lord or goes back to God, that that has to be breath, and I realized all of a sudden that the spirit in man is the part of us that knows and worships God if we trust Him. And I realized that could not be something happening in my nose –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – or in my lungs.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That if my spirit was merely breath, it completely eradicated the reality of spirit knowing spirit, of God having a Holy Spirit that was in me and my spirit responding to Him. And I remember standing and looking up from the book and weeping, realizing there was more to this than I had ever realized.
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: Well, that led me to do a lot of Bible study, and it was around 2005 when I wrote an article for Proclamation! shortly after becoming the editor where I actually did a Bible study about the human spirit. It was such a new thought, and realizing that we have a human spirit is what helped me see that Adventists have a false Jesus.
Nikki: Wow.
Colleen: Because the Adventist Jesus has to be just like them, and they teach that that Jesus had no advantage we don’t have, and they teach that He was basically nonexistent while He was dead. And I realized that is not the God – that is not the Son of God of Scripture.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And that was when I first did my Bible study on that, so it was about 2000 – um, between – this was probably between 2000 and 2005 when this all dawned on me. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: So, Nikki, as you’ve gone through this chapter on the nature of humanity, what has most struck you about it? Before we actually read their Fundamental Belief statement, I’d like to know your response to it, because this was a very convoluted chapter.
Nikki: It really was. Argh. It’s even hard to give just a single response. It was a really upsetting chapter to read.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It was interesting to me because a lot of the concepts that I had in my head as an Adventist, I never actually read about. I don’t remember being taught them.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I’ve always said I kind of got it through oral tradition. And I’ve been around so many other former Adventists who were taught very well what they believed, and you guys have described to me these examples of how Adventism teaches what it is to be alive, this electricity and all of these different metaphors and examples, and I thought, well, that fits with what I thought, but I was never really taught that, and then I read this chapter, and it was – it’s like you guys have been quoting them all these years.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It’s exactly what they teach. And it is a completely different story. It has no roots whatsoever in Scripture.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: And so probably the overwhelming thing that I took away from outlining and studying this chapter was there is so much that we could debunk and that we could deal with, but it would all be a distraction from actually proclaiming what is true about the nature of man, and that is desperately what Adventists need to know.
Colleen: I agree with you. In fact, I have thought for quite a while, and Richard will just completely come out and say it, that the natures are the essence of the Adventist heresy. What Adventism believes about the nature of man changes what they believe about every other thing they claim to be scriptural, but it isn’t. If you believe that humanity is merely physical, bodies that breathe, then you’ve changed the definition of Jesus the incarnate Son of God, you’ve changed the definition of sin, and you’ve changed the definition of salvation. Everything that Adventists teach is different from Christianity because of their belief in the physicalness of man. And I agree with you, we have to talk about the implications of their belief, but what is most needed is to understand what’s actually real from Scripture.
Nikki: Um-hmm. Yeah, and I would just add to what you said there that the reason all of these natures are tweaked and twisted and necessary for them is because it’s all springing from their story of origins, and you need humanity to not have a spirit –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – you need Jesus incarnate to not have a human spirit and not have deity truly –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – so that He can keep the law, so that we see that we can keep the law, and we’re all going to keep the law, and we’re going to vindicate God.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And if you’re listening to this and you didn’t start with the series at the beginning, I would encourage you to go back and listen to us discuss their story of origins because it changes everything about –
Colleen: It does.
Nikki: – our need for a Savior and what the Lord came to actually do.
Colleen: Right. And mixed in with all of this is you need to have that God who is basically physical.
Nikki: Yup.
Colleen: Even though they don’t actually talk about it a lot, it’s still implied, and we have the quotes from Ellen to prove it.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s still there. All of this physical reality, it’s part of the Investigative Judgment, with the High Priest Jesus puttering around in heaven with a real ark and a real set of Ten Commandments, doing the work of a Levitical high priest, trying to figure out whose sins are confessed and unconfessed, it’s just all physical.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So why don’t we start by reading the doctrine, reading the doctrinal statement, and then we’ll talk about some of the reasons this is so important for their practice as Adventists.
Nikki: Okay. This is Fundamental Belief #7, The Nature of Man: “Man and woman were made in the image of God with individuality, the power and freedom to think and do. Though created free beings, each is an indivisible unity of body, mind, and spirit, dependent upon God for life and breath and all else. When our first parents disobeyed God, they denied their dependence upon Him and fell from their high position. The image of God in them was marred and they became subject to death. Their descendants share this fallen nature and its consequences. They are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil. But God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself and by His Spirit restores in penitent mortals the image of their Maker. Created for the glory of God, they are called to love Him and one another, and to care for their environment.”
Colleen: So, Nikki, as you look at that statement, can you pick out anything that is just blatantly false?
Nikki: There are several issues with this belief statement, and because I’ve read the chapter I can see even more now than I did before I read the chapter. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: But one of the ones that, of course, jumps out when I’m talking about the nature of man is that they say that humans became subject to death.
Colleen: Yes. It does not say they died when they sinned.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: Another thing that jumps out at me is right up in the second sentence: “Though created free beings, each is an indivisible unity of body, mind, and spirit,” which is their argument for saying that when a person dies nothing sentient or conscious or with an identity actually goes to God. This is the core of their belief that we’re just physical.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Christians believe that when people die their identity, their spirits, go to God, and He knows how to deal with both the believers and the unbelievers until the final judgment. The Bible tells us He deals with them differently, even prior to the judgment. But if we are a believer, the Bible is very clear that we go to be with God. And Adventism doesn’t believe that. This sentence about an indivisible unity of body, mind, and spirit is core to their physical worldview. I also noticed that it says that humans are born with weaknesses and tendencies to evil. Did you learn that as an Adventist?
Nikki: Yeah, I didn’t understand original sin. I didn’t know at what point does someone actually sin? What happens to babies? All those questions –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – were always floating around out there, and what I knew is that we were just prone to sin.
Colleen: Like we have bad genes.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: As the gene pool has deteriorated through the years because of sin, we get more and more genetic tendencies to sin.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And it’s interesting, as an Adventist if I was going to write a Fundamental Belief on what I believed about the nature of man, I would have come right out and said we don’t have spirits –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – we die like animals –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and we have to take care of ourselves so that we can keep the law. That’s how I would have come out and said it. They don’t really come right out and say that. I was looking at what you just discussed about being an indivisible unity, and when I read that through, before reading the chapter, I thought, well, that’s kind of weird. You know, you get these little red flags.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But I know that the word for “death” is “Thanatos,” and that’s “separation” –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – and I thought maybe that’s what they’re getting at. No. You’re absolutely right. The chapter is clear. That is to support the idea that we do not have an immaterial spirit.
Colleen: It’s really significant to me, and as you said earlier, Nikki, we’re not going to walk through everything in this chapter because there’s just too much, and it would take far too long to debunk it, which we could do.
Nikki: Easily.
Colleen: Um-hmm. But we really need to talk about what is actually real and what actually affects the way we live and breathe as both Adventists and former Adventists who are Christians. I think one of the most significant things about this view of man, in terms of practice, is what we see on page 94 about babies. And this has implications for what Adventism insists upon, and that is their pro-choice statement on abortion.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, we’ll talk about that a little more after we read what they say here. But on page 94 of this book, Seventh-day Adventists Believe, on page 94 we find a really important and central passage of the Adventist belief about babies. Would you read that, Nikki?
Nikki: They say, “A new soul comes into existence whenever a child is born, each ‘soul’ being a new unit of life uniquely different, and separate, from other similar units.”
Colleen: Okay. Now, this might look innocuous if you didn’t already know that they have defined life and the breath of life on the preceding page as analogous to electricity.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They say that the breath of life is the breath of the Almighty that gives life. They actually say this, “We might compare it with the streams of electricity that, when they flow through various electrical components, transform a quiet, gray panel of glass in a box into a pulsating splash of color and action – when we flip the switch on a color TV. The electricity brings sound and motion where once there was nothing.” So right there they identify the breath of life, which they also say is the human spirit, as analogous to electricity bringing a television to life. Now, when I was in Adventist school, I learned a formula. I can remember the teacher writing it on the board and us having to memorize it for tests: Body + breath = living soul. “Breath” was the word that came from the Hebrew “ruach,” which is “spirit,” and we were taught that literally means [puffs of breath], the breath we breathe. So a body that breathes is a living soul. The body ceases to breath, the soul goes out of existence. That’s what they’re saying here when they say this.
Nikki: They actually give that formula here. They say, “The scriptural equation is straightforward: the dust of the ground (earth’s elements) + the breath of life = a living being, or living soul.” One of the things I noticed they often do is before they make their own private interpretation, they begin it by either undercutting or undermining somebody else’s or they say, “It’s very obvious. It’s very clear.”
Colleen: Yes. It’s a logical fallacy that they do.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: So we come then to this statement about babies, and I just want to say, Nikki, what does this sentence say about when a baby becomes a living being?
Nikki: When the child is born.
Colleen: That baby has to breathe before it comes into existence as a living soul.
Nikki: And it isn’t until that moment that they’re considered “a new unit of life uniquely different, and separate, from other similar units.” So as long as that baby is in the womb, it is not a unique or new unit of life. It belongs to the mother.
Colleen: That’s right. And even though it’s not stated in their official statement on their official Adventist website, this is the reason Adventism can hold a pro-choice view of abortion. Now, people will argue – Adventists have been very careful to phrase their statement, to redo it, to couch it in the most sympathetic terms of how sacred and important and protectable life is, but the fact is their statement allows for abortion under certain circumstances, and actually, if you take apart their sentences, it’s any circumstance that the mother deems necessary for the quality of her life. They do abortions in their hospitals. They teach their medical students at Loma Linda University to do abortions. They can do this with impunity because they have devised a statement of belief that says a baby is not truly alive until it’s born. Even though many Adventists would never do an abortion or have an abortion and recoil at the thought – and I give them credit for that – as an organization, Adventism supports abortion.
Nikki: And they are very careful to look to other Christians as though they don’t –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – or as though that’s the last option available to a woman.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: I remember a few years ago they were crafting a statement, and a woman came forward during the Q and A, and she was very exercised, and I honestly don’t remember her question, but I do remember her saying, “People who are not Adventist are going to be reading this statement. We need to be careful in how we word it.”
Colleen: There you go. They want to be seen not as a pro-choice, liberal, Planned Parenthood type of organization, but in fact, they do teach, support, and allow abortions and, as we’ve said before, the largest private abortion clinic in Southern California was started decades ago by an Adventist doctor named Dr. Allred, and it is today owned by another Adventist doctor, not Dr. Allred – he is now dead – but the organization is still flourishing, still doing abortions, and is still Adventist owned.
Nikki: You know, one of the other surprising things to me about the chapter is that it actually touches on – it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it touches on the health message –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and they say that if you have any kind of diminished weakness in your body, then surely it’s going to affect your spiritual life.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And they talk about the fact that we were created to imitate God, and so we have to keep the Sabbath.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: I’m like, how did they get there? But they did, they got there. They said, “The fourth commandment appeals to this obligation [the obligation being that we are to imitate God]: we are to follow our Maker’s example in working the first six days of the week and resting on the seventh.”
Colleen: And there you go.
Nikki: So they squeeze the Sabbath in, and then they come up with a completely fictional covenant.
Colleen: Yes, the covenant of grace.
Nikki: It was a very convoluted chapter.
Colleen: I agree. And you know, it’s significant that when they start talking about man being made in the image of God, because they will say that, and they will use the creation story to say that, they insist that that is a physical image.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And that’s the thing that’s so shocking. But you have to understand that Adventists will make an argument, even though in the book they don’t come out and use Ellen White’s quotes, which I’m going to share here in a minute, but they say, “Could it be? What if?” to say, people have seen God’s hands, His feet, His backside. Could it be that being made in the image of God includes physical characteristics, as if it’s a speculative, open-minded “consider with me” sort of question. But there’s nothing in Scripture to suggest that. And we’ll show why. But here’s what Ellen White said that underlies this, two very short statements, but they’re in some of her more common books. This first one is from The Great Controversy, page 644 and 645, and she says, “In the beginning, man was created in the likeness of God, not only in character, but in form and feature.” Now, that’s physical.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And she says in her book Education, page 15, “When Adam came from the Creator’s hand, he bore in his physical, mental, and spiritual nature a likeness to his Maker. God created man in His own image.” We have to know that that’s what underlies Adventism’s physicalism, and we talked about this when we talked about God the Father and about the Trinity. Adventism was founded as an antitrinitarian religion that believed God had a form, and that still determines their doctrines, even though they don’t reference those original beliefs in their official book. But as we’ve said before, Ellen White is like a secret door, and when you read her stuff it’s all current truth for Adventists, and this is what she says. So if you know where to look, it’s easy to find. Adventism is based on the belief that God has a form, man has a form, and that changes the natures of everything.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It gives them a different worldview than Christians have. It was interesting, Richard used an example. He said, “Suppose that you’re a normal person who is born in North Korea as it is today, and you grow up in an environment where your electricity is turned off at a certain time every day, the water runs only certain hours in every day, you’re taught that your leader is almost a god, you’re taught that your country is being threatened by outside powerful forces that want to change and undo what you know to be real, and you grow up believing that you are right, your country is the best country in the world, that your gods are the right gods, and the outside world is your enemy, that’s Adventism, and they see Sunday Christians as being the enemy. Now, if you come to a place like we live, in Southern California, you’ll find much more progressive Adventists, and they wouldn’t ever say that, but they have actually abandoned the biblical belief of who God actually is and what Jesus actually did. So either way, they still hold the same worldview, that we are all physical, that God has somehow been a physical God, and the great controversy determines how they see everything.
Nikki: Yeah. I was going to say, they do retain their worldview even if they’re more willing to engage in friendship evangelism with the Sunday-keepers.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: So I’m listening to you talk about these things and remembering how I once believed that we were in the truest church and we had the most truth of all the people and thinking that I was so blessed to be a part of that. But you know, I think of the women that I’ve known, and I remember my own experience, and I want to say to you, if you’re an Adventist woman listening to this and you recognize those thoughts, I think it’s pretty safe for me to guess that even in the middle of that you still feel empty and lonely and maybe even wonder if you’re the only Adventist woman you know who feels that way. I’m going to tell you you’re not. The reason that you feel that way is because even though you’ve been given all of the rules and all of the ways that you’re supposed to live and function in your family and make everybody look Sabbath-ready, you were never given what you need most. You were not given the truth about your need, and you were not given the truth about how God meets that need. You’ve been given a fictional story. So that emptiness, that’s not terminal uniqueness, that’s not your personal hopelessness. That’s because you’ve been lied to, and you have been trapped in a deceptive system, and I really want you to pay attention, and I really want you to know you have a need you don’t even know about, and the Lord has met that need, and you need to read the Word, you need to listen up, lean into this, and hear from us. We do not believe like you do, and we want to show you what we believe from the Word of God.
Colleen: I couldn’t agree more, Nikki. I felt that same way as an Adventist, and I get emotional just listening to you talk about it. I was in terminal anxiety.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I didn’t know the truth about what I needed.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: But I knew I needed something. Why don’t we walk through the truth, kind of like we did in that first conversation we had, Nikki?
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: Just role play it a little bit because the Bible reveals something very different from the way Ellen White told us to read it. We’re going to actually start at the very beginning, because if we don’t understand what happened in the Garden of Eden, we will not understand what’s true about us. And the Bible could not be more clear. We’re not guessing, we’re not interpretively taking liberties with the words. The words tell us what happened. But Adventism told us to read it a different way. We’re going to start in Genesis 2, when God created Adam and when He told him what to do about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and I just want to say, Adventism teaches us that even Adam broke the Ten Commandments in the garden, that they broke God’s eternal law. No, it’s very, very clear here what command they broke, and it wasn’t anything to do with committing adultery or honoring parents, which wouldn’t have applied really to them at that time anyway. So what they broke was God’s command about not eating from a certain tree, and that’s not the Ten Commandments. So, Nikki, as an Adventist, what did you believe happened in the Garden of Eden when Eve ate that fruit? Tell me what you believed about that story?
Nikki: I had a lot of details that I’ve since learned are not in the Bible. I believed that Eve had wandered away from her husband and found the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the snake began to speak to her. The snake was Satan, and he was trying to get her to eat the fruit because he wanted to get back at God. And she ate it, and she brought it to her husband, and he ate it, and they knew they were naked, and God came to look for them. They were hiding.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: He asked them about this. They blamed each other, they blamed Him, and ultimately He kicked them out of the garden so that they couldn’t continue to eat from the Tree of Life.
Colleen: Now, what did you learn was the problem with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? What did you learn God had told them about that?
Nikki: Just that they weren’t supposed to eat it.
Colleen: And what would happen if they did? How did you understand that?
Nikki: You know, I don’t remember what He said to them, but I remember that I knew that if they ate it then they were going to lose their eternal life. They were going to become mortal.
Colleen: Well, why don’t we look at the Bible and see what it actually tells us?
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: Okay? So let’s start with when God gave the command, and I think it’s interesting, because I didn’t know this as an Adventist, but let’s just see, when God first gives the command about not eating from that tree, who did He give the command to? Let’s look at Genesis 2:15-17.
Nikki: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'”
Colleen: Okay. Was Eve with him?
Nikki: No.
Colleen: Look at the next verse and see why Eve was not with him.
Nikki: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'”
Colleen: Eve had not yet been created when God gave that command about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That command was given to Adam, and that has become very significant to me over the years because I didn’t know this as an Adventist. Adam received that command. The implication is that Adam had to teach it to Eve, because it’s never said that God told Eve not to eat of the tree. Adam was in charge of the animals. Adam was the head of the human race, and he was responsible for helping Eve to understand God’s will too. So God never specifically told Eve not to eat from the tree. That was Adam’s job. Now, when this actually happened, that Eve and the serpent encountered one another, let’s see how that’s described in Genesis 3. It actually starts – let’s just start with verse 1, and we’ll go down to verse 7.
Nikki: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?”‘ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”‘ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”
Colleen: So, Nikki, where was Adam?
Nikki: He was with her.
Colleen: And what did Ellen tell us?
Nikki: Oh, in great detail she talked about Eve wandering away from Adam, and she also said that the angels warned her not to wander away from Adam. The angels warned her and told her all about the war in heaven and what Satan was going to try to do and how they had to do everything they could to not be deceived.
Colleen: But the truth is, they were together. And the implications for that are huge. Adam was the only one God had specifically given that command to, and he stood by and watched as his wife was deceived by the serpent and he took of that fruit with her. Now, Ellen, I think created a huge story about him being overwhelmed by her unnatural beauty and the desire he felt when he saw her all excited by sin. That’s just not here. He took the fruit from her, he was with her, he watched this, and we find in the New Testament that it’s not Eve who is blamed for human sin, it’s Adam.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” So we see here that Adam was responsible for this command. He didn’t stop Eve, but he participated with her. Now, to the point about the nature of man, what happened when they ate? What changed? In verse 7 we hear the first thing. What did they know?
Nikki: Well, the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
Colleen: Now, what had it said previously? That they were naked and not what?
Nikki: Ashamed.
Colleen: You know how Ellen described that?
Nikki: Yes. [Laughter.]
Colleen: What did she say?
Nikki: They had a robe of light.
Colleen: Uh-huh. Basically she said they were clothed in light that apparently hid all physical details from one another, and that light went out when they knew they were naked. That’s not what it says. They were naked and not ashamed. When they ate that fruit, they knew they were naked, and they were ashamed. How do we know they were ashamed?
Nikki: They hid.
Colleen: Yes. They even cobbled together fig leaves for clothes to hide themselves. They hadn’t needed to hide themselves, they were innocent, they were unashamed. What had God said to Adam would happen to them if they ate from the tree? What would happen the day they ate?
Nikki: He says, “For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” That’s from the mouth of God.
Colleen: Yes. And it doesn’t say, “You shall begin to die” or “You now will become mortal and eventually die” or “Your status changes,” just “You will die the day you eat it.” Do you realize that the way Ellen White taught us about it, that they began to die that day, makes God a liar.
Nikki: Yes. Yes. And she’s already contradicted His Word even by having Eve wandering away from Adam. These aren’t just tiny little things, like oh, you’re being too picky.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: This is the fruit. “You shall know them by their fruit.”
Colleen: And this is what the Bible tells us about what happened to humanity, and we have to know that the words mean what the words say, and we don’t get to reinterpret them. God said they would die the day they ate it, and now we see that the minute they ate the fruit, they knew shame and they hid. And then what happened? God comes looking for them. Look at verse 8. Do you mind reading verse 8 to verse 12?
Nikki: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’ He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.'”
Colleen: Go ahead and read 13 as well.
Nikki: “Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'”
Colleen: So what do they do? They fall into a typical spiral.
Nikki: They blame. They blame each other and even God –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – for giving Adam Eve.
Colleen: “The woman you gave me…” And then Eve says, “The serpent made me do it.” Nobody owns their own sin. They’re ashamed. They hide. They know shame, they know guilt, they know fear, or they wouldn’t have hid, and they blame, and they refuse to own their own sin. So, Nikki, God said they would die the day they ate. Something changed in them –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – but they’re still living, breathing, and walking around; right?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: What died?
Nikki: Their spirits died. They were cut off from God.
Colleen: They were.
Nikki: Remember that word for death is “separate.”
Colleen: Yes. And what separates at death?
Nikki: The spirit and the body.
Colleen: That’s right. And we know they do because when Jesus hung on the cross, right before He breathed His last, what did He say? “Father…”
Nikki: “…into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Colleen: Yes. And He breathed His last and died.
Nikki: You know, since understanding this, I have seen the human spirit all throughout the Old Testament as well. There is so much evidence of it, and if you want any of those texts in your email box, write to us and I will send you my list.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s all over the Word of God.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: It’s not just a few verses in the New Testament that are misunderstood and the Adventists are going to correct.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: The entire Scripture teaches that humans have spirits.
Colleen: One of Adventism’s fallacious arguments is that the word “ruach,” the Hebrew word underlying this word “spirit,” is a word that can mean breath or wind, and it’s the same word used for the Holy Spirit, and they call it “the breath of God” in this book.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But you know, if ruach, “spirit,” is only breath and in the man and the woman it’s only our breath and our breath leaves, as they taught us, to be consistent we would have to refer to the Holy Spirit as the Holy Breath. We couldn’t know He was the third person of the Trinity. We couldn’t view Him as God. They have created something that’s completely unbiblical, completely untrue. Adam and Eve died the day they ate, just as God said, and God cannot lie.
Nikki: So here’s where we get to the nature of man in 2021. I have heard people say, “I didn’t sin like Adam. I wasn’t the one who took the apple. I’ve been a good person. I’ve kept the law. I go to church. I haven’t rebelled. So why am I destined for hell?” They don’t like that doctrine. They don’t like that they are responsible for the sin of Adam. So how do you then explain to them what it means to be born in the likeness of Adam?
Colleen: That’s a really important question. First of all, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 22.
Nikki: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Colleen: A lot of people say, “Well, that’s just not fair.” But the fact is, it’s the way God designed humanity to be. Adam was the head of the human race, and because he sinned and died, all of those born to him forever after, all of those born to the human race, were born in the image of Adam, they were born spiritually dead. And we learn right here that “as in Adam all die.” That death is something we can’t undo because we’re born with it, and we’ll show you other texts in a moment that show that. But let’s look over a Roman 5 for a moment because Romans 5 is very, very clear. Romans 5:12-14.
Nikki: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned – for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”
Colleen: So, Nikki, in verse 12 Paul is telling us here sin entered the human race through one man.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And that was whom?
Nikki: That was Adam, and death through sin.
Colleen: Exactly. So sin entered the human race and death with it. That’s something we’re born into.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s not like maybe we’ll be born and get lucky and not sin and not die. No, we are all born into sin and death. And then, what is the shocking, amazing thing we learn in 13 and 14 about sin and law?
Nikki: Well, we learned that the law was not given at that point.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It did not come before. And everything we learned about creation last week was that the law had been given before the fall, and Adam and Eve broke the law.
Colleen: And Satan in heaven broke the law.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: So in verse 12 we learn that sin existed before the law was given. Adam didn’t break the Ten Commandments –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – but he sinned.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And we all sinned because we’re born to him. And then we learn a really interesting thing. Sin is not imputed when there is no law, and it goes on to say, “Nevertheless, death” – which is the wages of sin – “reigned from Adam until Moses.” Why does he pick Moses? What does he mean by that?
Nikki: Well, Moses gives the law for the first time. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Exactly! So death reigns even before the law is there, but what we do learn is that the people who lived prior to Moses were not judged by the law. Whatever we may say, sin was in the world before there was a law, and death was in the world, and people were guilty of sin, but it wasn’t in the terms of the law. That was a different revelation, a more detailed revelation of sin.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But sin was there.
Nikki: And that death being there, it wasn’t the inevitable – well, it wasn’t only the inevitable death of all who are born. It is the fact that we are born in the likeness of Adam, who was spiritually dead.
Colleen: We are born spiritually dead, and that does not mean with inherited tendencies to evil. Now, of course, we have those. We know that people inherit genetic tendencies to all kinds of things, like alcoholism, for example. Things like this can be carried in the gene pool. It doesn’t excuse them, but it also doesn’t define the sin into which we’re born.
Nikki: So, one thing that helped me think about this was to know that we sin because we’re sinners. We’re not sinners because we sin.
Colleen: And then we learn that those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam were still dying and sinners, and the likeness of Adam’s sin was what? He broke a very specific command, and that was?
Nikki: He ate of the fruit of the tree in the garden.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s not our sin. We’re born sinners because we descend from Adam. Now, you might say it’s not fair, but that’s how God set it up.
Nikki: Well, yeah, and it was part of the curse. One of the things that helped me think about this nature of humanity, the fallen nature of humanity, is to look at the snake. He told the snake, you know, “You’re going to crawl in the dust.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And every snake that’s ever been since that snake crawls in the dust.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And Adam, his spirit died that day. And every human who’s been born since then is born with a dead spirit. Our need is for life.
Colleen: That’s exactly right. But there’s hope for us who are born dead. Would you read that hope for us, Nikki, from 18 to 21 of Romans 5?
Nikki: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Colleen: So in verse 18 it said, “Through one man’s act sin came into the world,” and that was Adam’s sin of eating the fruit. What was the one act of righteousness that brings justification of life?
Nikki: We see that in Romans 8 where it says, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.” That righteous requirement is death for sin –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – and He did it.
Colleen: And He did it. Now, just so you know that we’re not being overly dramatic when we say that we’re born dead, born spiritually dead, I want us to read Ephesians 2:1-3. I don’t know where I was as an Adventist because I know I read these words, but I did not see what they said. Would you read those three verses, please, Nikki?
Nikki: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Colleen: Nikki, I never saw that.
Nikki: No, me neither.
Colleen: I never understood that.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: “By nature.” You know, “by nature” means the way we come out of the womb.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I am by nature a woman, I’m female. I am by nature the daughter of a Romanian mother and a half-Swedish father. I can’t help my nature.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: I’m born that way. I didn’t get to choose it. That’s who I am by God’s sovereign decree. And by nature I was born a child of wrath. Who’s wrath?
Nikki: God’s wrath.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: This makes me think of something Gary said while he was preaching once. He said that our will is not free to rise above our nature. No matter how well we behaved, no matter how clean our house was on the Sabbath –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – or how nicely dressed our kids were for Sabbath school, nothing we did could change our nature. And that’s why you can be the most devout Adventist and still feel empty and dead and alone and misunderstood and forgotten and lost because you are by nature cut off from life.
Colleen: That’s right. We have no hope in this world except for Jesus’ shed blood. We are born, as John 3:18 says, condemned already. Only when we believe in Jesus’ finished work on the cross and His resurrection are we freed from this nature of death. It was a shock to me to realize that God didn’t come as Jesus to make bad people good so we could be with Him. He came to make dead people alive. And that’s what we learn in John 5:24. Let’s just read that verse. It has become one of the most comforting and powerful verse that I go to.
Nikki: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
Colleen: How much more clear could it be? “He who believes Him who sent me,” he who hears Jesus’ word and believes, “passes from death to life.” How do you do that if you’re not dead when you hear His word? His word brings us to life, believing His word, believing what He did, believing in His death and resurrection. When we believe what God tells us in His Word, when we believe what Jesus did, we pass from death to life.
Nikki: You know, as I was leaving Adventism I had a few questions, and someone told me, “You know, Paul’s gospel is not the same as John’s gospel, as the other disciples. Paul – there’s something wrong with Paul.” Well, actually, what we just read in John is exactly what Paul says here in Ephesians 2.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: He goes on in verse 4, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,” and remember that “us” is believers, Ephesians 1:13 and 14, those who heard the word of truth and believed –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” And he says later that this is through faith. This is a gift, it’s not by works. This is why I was so frustrated reading this chapter, Colleen. They don’t talk about the new birth.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: They don’t talk about John 3.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: We read nothing about the conversation between the Lord and Nicodemus when Jesus says, “Unless one is born of the Spirit, they will not see or enter the kingdom of God.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Jesus tells us our need right there in John 3. We need life.
Colleen: Yes. And He also tells us that flesh is different from spirit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He says to Nicodemus in John 3:3-6, He says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh,” and we might think we’re born in Adam, “but Spirit gives birth to spirit,” and in John 1:12 John tells us that the right that God has given us is to be born of God. Now, I just want us to look at one other thing that was really huge for me when I started figuring out that we have a spirit, and that’s John 4. And by the way, what you just said about Adventism saying, “Paul is so hard to understand, and his gospel is different,” I heard that too. And yet these things we’re reading from John completely confirm and elaborate on what Paul tells us.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is not a different gospel. In John 4 Jesus has done something really unusual. When Jesus was here on earth, they did not go to Samaria. The Samaritans were the descendants of the northern kingdom that had been taken into captivity centuries before by Assyria, and they had intermarried with the Canaanites, and they had a syncretistic religion and a syncretistic national ethnic background, and the Jews hated them. Jews did not go to Samaria because the Samaritans were not fully Jewish, but neither were they fully Canaanites. They were half-breeds. They were considered unclean. And in this passage Jesus takes His disciples, and He goes deliberately through Samaria, and He has this meeting with a Samaritan woman, and I just want to say, Nikki, this is one of the most amazing passages to me because if there was ever a place where we see Jesus redeeming the reputation of women, He goes to a non-Jew, He speaks to a woman, which was not done – Jewish men didn’t do that – and He delivers to her one of the most profound pieces of theology anywhere in the New Testament. It completely undoes the heresies of Adventism and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Okay, read for us John 4:21-24.
Nikki: “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.'”
Colleen: Right here Jesus identifies who God is.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: What does He say God is?
Nikki: God is spirit.
Colleen: God does not have a body. God is not physical. God is not bound by the physical, created universe. He is over it. He is bigger than it. He is God. But what do we learn about humans? What does He say about humanity here? What is God looking for?
Nikki: He’s looking for people, for humans, who will worship in spirit and truth.
Colleen: And notice those two things, spirit will worship God who is spirit. We can’t avoid the parallel here. Humans have a spirit. God is spirit, not body. We have bodies, but we also have spirits that can know and worship God, but it’s important that He says we worship in spirit and truth. How do we perceive truth?
Nikki: Through God’s Word.
Colleen: Right. And what part of ourselves processes that truth?
Nikki: Our brain.
Colleen: Yeah, that’s our bodies. Our understanding truth is both a function of our minds – our brains – and our spirits, who can know God. And our spirits, as we learned in Ephesians 2:1-3, are born in what condition?
Nikki: Dead.
Colleen: We have to have God bring them to life. What did we learn in John 5:24? How do our spirits come to life?
Nikki: By believing. And in Ephesians it’s very clear that it is the true gospel. That is very important. It’s not enough to just say, “Jesus, I believe Jesus” –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – because there are many who claim to be Jesus in the world. It is the true gospel according to God’s testimony in His Word.
Colleen: And what is that?
Nikki: That God sent His Son. God the Son became incarnate man, and He came and He revealed God to us, He revealed Himself to be the Messiah that was prophesied in Scripture. He lived, He died, He was buried, and on the third day He rose again, and He appeared to His believers.
Colleen: That’s right. The gospel is that God the Son became a man, He died for our sins according to Scripture, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, and when we believe that – and we can only believe it when we submit our minds, when we submit our hearts, our spirits to the truth of His Word – when we believe that, we are brought to life. We who believe receive – at that moment pass from death to life as Jesus Himself said. And we will never die. As He said in John 3:18, “Those who believe are not condemned. Those who have not believed are condemned already.” We have spirits. We are born – babies are born living, breathing, but they have spirits that are dead, and they need to believe in Jesus to come to life. Adventism taught us that we had to somehow, in a convoluted way, understand esoteric truth and proper behavior and the health message, and if we get it all right and the stars line up, we might become good enough to be saved. That’s a lie. We can’t be saved by being good.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: We can only be saved by being alive.
Nikki: And you know, I know this brings up a lot of questions, “Well, what about babies who die?” And we would not presume to tell you that we know what happens to each of those babies who are lost. We know that there’s evidence in Scripture that God takes babies to Himself when they die. We know that David cried out and said, “My son will not come back to me, but I will go to him.”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: He knew that his son was with the Lord when his baby died. We trust God with those details, but we have to believe His Word, and His Word says that we need life, and it says in the Gospel of John that when we’re born again it is not by the will of man, it’s not by the will of the flesh, it’s by God. We can’t determine, “Okay, well, I’m going to be born again today, make it happen.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: You have to follow the Word of God. You have to trust Him. You have believe what is true. You have to be willing to let go of everything that you cling to in order to follow Christ. And that’s scary. But He’ll catch you, and He’ll lead you, and He’ll take care of you.
Colleen: And if you haven’t trusted Jesus. If you haven’t recognized that He shed His blood for you, for your personal sin, to bring your dead spirit to life so you can be with Him forever, we urge you to do that. Go and read John 4, go and read John 3, and go and read Ephesians 2:1-10. The truth is there, and it’s clear. And the truth is Jesus. The Adventist doctrine of the nature of man being body with no spirit is a lie. The reality is amazing, and the Lord Jesus brings us to life when we trust Him.
Nikki: If you have questions or comments for us, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. We would love to share any resources you’d like to request, and we’d love to answer your questions. You can also visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing ministry news, online articles, and other links to important resources. Don’t forget to follow us or like us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And join us next week as we look at the Fundamental Belief #8 on The Great Controversy.
Colleen: We’ll see you then.
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