Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ”. You will discover that this doctrine which sounds like the gospel is no gospel at all—and even the name of the doctrine is backwards. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: This week we’ll be examining Fundamental Belief #9 on The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. This is the heart of the gospel. We have a lot to cover, so again I’m just going to jump right in.
Colleen: Good.
Nikki: But first, if you’d like to write to us, you can do so by sending your emails to formeradventist@gmail.com. Visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails that will deliver new online articles right to your inbox every Friday. There’s also a place to donate there if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support, and we very much value your prayers for us. You can like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, as this expands our online reach. So, Colleen, my question is a little bit different this week.
Colleen: Okay.
Nikki: I want to check in with you and hear how you’re doing going through this particular series.
Colleen: Every chapter is worse because in some way this book compounds on itself.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This book, Seventh-day Adventists Believe, there’s no mistake about the way they’ve organized these doctrines and the way each one builds upon the one before –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – like it says on the back cover.
Nikki: It does say that.
Colleen: I feel like I’m increasingly deep in a cesspool as we go through this, which is an interesting feeling because it all sounds kind of pious and biblical, but when you look at it, their beliefs are not biblical. How about you, Nikki?
Nikki: This has actually been kind of a double-edged sword for me because on the one hand it’s really, really hard. They’re taking the God of the Bible, and they are yanking Him out of heaven, off His throne, and reshaping Him and manipulating the people we love with their false doctrines.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And witnessing it and witnessing their methods and seeing, like you said, how they build on each other is really, really hard. At the same time, the other side of it is it’s causing me to rejoice in the fact that God rescued us.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Who of us tried to find our way out of Adventism? I don’t know many who did. Most people didn’t expect that they’d end up here.
Colleen: No, they don’t.
Nikki: God rescued us.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And so that’s been a source of rejoicing and worship as I walk through this series, but it’s pretty intense. It’s difficult – like you said, the back of the book actually says each of these fundamental beliefs, each one, reveals more of what He, Jesus, is like and what a relationship with Him means. And they’re right. Each one is punting you into the next one –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and it’s going to culminate in even greater heresy than the one before.
Colleen: Right. It’s a little overwhelming, and I have to say that today’s fundamental belief is extremely upsetting to me because it covers the heart of what should be the gospel. And you know, it’s so funny, Nikki, because we spent a lot of time collectively, hours and hours, going through this chapter –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – separately and combining our thoughts as we talked about it, and it was just when we sat down to record that we realized the title of this chapter misquotes the important essence of the gospel. It says, “The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.” What is the actual biblical definition of the gospel?
Nikki: It’s the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
Colleen: The life of Jesus in His ministry is not part of what saves us. It’s just a reflection of who He is. But in Adventism, His life is part of what we have to have to be saved. Why don’t we start by reading the definition of the gospel out of 1 Corinthians 15, the core, central passage that defines the basic elements of the gospel? I feel like we need to do this before we talk about this chapter just so everybody listening remembers what is the gospel. And you know, as an Adventist I had no idea how to define the gospel. Could you have defined the gospel?
Nikki: No. I would have tried. I probably would have referenced the cross somehow.
Colleen: Um-hmm. I would have too.
Nikki: But the three angels message would have been in there.
Colleen: The Sabbath would have been in there.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The law. Okay. What’s the gospel according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15?
Nikki: Well, Paul says, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you stand, by which you also are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”
Colleen: That’s the first five verses of 1 Corinthians 15. And if you ever want to know where you can find a definition of the gospel, I had never learned that. I remember hearing this in a sermon from our pastor, Gary Inrig, years ago and realizing there’s a central passage that clearly defines the elements of the gospel. And I noticed that His burial is included.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s not His pre-cross life that’s part of the actual gospel.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s really important to remember as we start into this chapter, which twists so many of the words Scripture uses and leaves Adventism with a murky, difficult, vague concept of what Jesus came to do. And I know as an Adventist I just never understood exactly what His death was about, what His resurrection was about. It was all representative of something, and I knew I was horrifyingly guilty, and His hanging on the cross was just sort of designed to make me feel like a groveling, quivering mass of guilt. I never understood it was my life.
Nikki: And I feel like after reading this chapter I completely understand why that was your experience, my experience, everyone I know. We experienced it that way.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It was different gospel, it was a different message, and one of the things I love about Paul’s summary of the gospel is that he goes to great lengths to root it in history –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – to root it in the Scriptures, to root it in the message that was given to him by Jesus Himself, and to tell them to hold fast to that –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – to that message that’s rooted in history and in Scripture.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: Don’t veer from it. Don’t believe in vain. Don’t play with it. And that’s what Adventism does, and that’s why we don’t know what to do at the foot of the cross when we don’t have the true gospel.
Colleen: In fact, I didn’t even understand as an Adventist how to get to the foot of the cross or what that would even mean. So shall we read the fundamental belief?
Nikki: Okay. So this is Fundamental Belief #9, The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. “In Christ’s life of perfect obedience to God’s will, His suffering, death, and resurrection, God provided the only means of atonement for human sin, so that those who by faith accept this atonement may have eternal life, and the whole creation may better understand the infinite and holy love of the Creator. This perfect atonement vindicates the righteousness of God’s law and the graciousness of His character; for it both condemns our sin and provides for our forgiveness. The death of Christ is substitutionary and expiatory, reconciling and transforming. The bodily resurrection of Christ proclaims God’s triumph over the forces of evil, and for those who accept the atonement assures their final victory over sin and death. It declares the Lordship of Jesus Christ, before whom every knee in heaven and on earth will bow.”
Colleen: Well, Nikki, what rings a warning bell in the fundamental belief?
Nikki: All of it?
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: I’m sorry my answers are always so general when you ask me that, but it’s hard to know where to start.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: This first sentence takes that same order.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: “Christ’s life of perfect obedience to God’s will.” Well, yeah, that’s important. We studied that in Hebrews –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – when we talked about Him being made perfect. We know that Christ submitting to the Father is extremely important, but what they’re saying is something very different. They’re talking about Him showing us how to keep the law.
Colleen: That’s right. That’s exactly what they’re saying. “In His life of perfect obedience to God’s will” – and we will find as we look further into this chapter that that’s exactly what they say, that Jesus’ perfect law-keeping is necessary for us to be saved, and it’s necessary because that’s His cloak of righteousness which He places on us. That’s the Adventist belief, that Jesus’ perfect life of perfect law-keeping is the righteousness that He gives us. And that’s not what Scripture says. It’s just so frustrating to me that in Adventism the belief is that Jesus had to be able to sin in order to be our Savior. I was actively taught that –
Nikki: Me too.
Colleen: – in Bible class in Adventist school. He had to be able to sin to be our Savior. In other words, He had to keep the law perfectly because part of our salvation was being given both the example and His power to keep the law, and if we didn’t keep the law, there is no salvation. So the cross is like secondary to the fact that Adventists see Him as this perfect law-keeper. Okay, I’m getting a little heated up here. But that’s how they lead in this statement. But as Paul declares the gospel, what doesn’t he say is necessary for our salvation that this says is?
Nikki: Law-keeping.
Colleen: Yes! Jesus’ keeping of the law is not what saved us. And they also indicate in this chapter that the fact that He kept the law is what qualified Him to be our Savior, and I want to say, No! He kept the law because He was sinless, because He was God, because He was spiritually alive. That concept is missing from this chapter.
Nikki: They miss the fact that the law testifies of Christ. It is a witness to the Messiah, so when the Christ came He had a unique, one-time, unrepeatable relationship with the law. He was the substance of the shadow.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He fulfilled it, and it was all purposed to reveal who He was.
Colleen: Use the illustration you gave me before we started recording.
Nikki: I have come to think about the law and the Lord as almost like a lock and a key. God created this system; He created the law, to reveal the Messiah.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: There was a purpose for this. It culminates in this. Scripture says that He was witnessed by the law and the prophets.
Colleen: That’s Romans 3:20 and 21.
Nikki: So then Jesus comes, and He is the only key that can fit into this lock.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And so His relationship to the law is unique. So when He goes and He heals someone on the Sabbath or He tells someone to carry their mat on the Sabbath, the rulers of the day say, “Hey, He’s breaking the law!”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: But He can’t break the law because He’s here to reveal who He is.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He was healing and touching people, sick people, and not going and cleansing afterwards.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Only He can do that without breaking the law because He’s God. He was revealing who He was.
Colleen: It wasn’t His law-keeping that qualified Him to be our Savior. That’s very different from what both this chapter says and the way I learned about Him.
Nikki: Could you almost say that His life under the law is what showed us He was qualified to be our Savior.
Colleen: Yes, but it wasn’t part of what saves us per se. It’s not His law-keeping that He gives us. It’s not the ability to keep the law that He gives us. He gives us Himself.
Nikki: Romans says that now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.
Colleen: Right. And that’s in the Lord Jesus, and it’s Jesus Himself, the righteous God the Son, second person of the Trinity, who gives us His identity, as Paul says in Philippians 3:9, the righteousness of Christ is ours. That’s not law-keeping Jesus. That’s God the Son, who became incarnate man. This is the righteousness of God Himself that’s applied to us when we trust Him, and this chapter just plays with the words of Scripture and leads with Jesus’ law-keeping as the first part of the formula they say is necessary for us to be saved.
Nikki: And they redefine all kinds of Scripture to make that happen.
Colleen: Yes, they do.
Nikki: You know, one of the texts that they use comes out of Romans 8 when they say that He came and He died so that the righteous requirement of the law would be fulfilled in us. They use that to say His obedience to the law would be fulfilled in us.
Colleen: They do say that.
Nikki: That text comes in the context of Christ condemning sin in the flesh. He did that on the cross.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So He condemned sin in the flesh so that the righteous requirement, singular –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – of the law would be fulfilled in us. That’s the sentencing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: That’s His substitutionary death. The righteous requirement of the law is death for sin –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – and we all deserved that sentencing, and Christ fulfilled it for us.
Colleen: It wasn’t about keeping the “thou shalt nots.” It was about fulfilling the death sentence and breaking the curse of death. That does not mean anybody is given permission to sin.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: Jesus didn’t have permission to sin. He was God, and that’s how He kept the law. He was spiritually alive as Jesus the man, He was God the Son, both together. He could not sin. In some mysterious way that is not revealed to us, but it’s part of that hypostatic union, Jesus couldn’t fail, and that’s why He’s our Savior, not because He kept the law. Related to all of this, right in the first page of this chapter, it says, “John the Revelator sees a Lamb that had been slain but now is alive and empowered with the Spirit.” There is something wrong with that. Now, in John the reference in this sentence is that John sees a vision, and it says, “And I saw between the throne, with the four living creatures and the elders, a Lamb standing as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.” Now, the author of this Seventh-day Adventists Believe takes that passage and says that that means that the Lamb is empowered with the Spirit. The figurative language in that vision is basically saying the perfect number of seven indicates that He has the full power of God, the Spirit of God – God the Father, God the Son – the Lamb has all the wisdom and power of God. But this book is making Him separated from the rest of the Trinity. It’s revealing their tritheism again.
Nikki: Yeah, that’s all over this book. And if you just keep reading through that passage, you’ll see that Jesus received worship. Only God receives worship.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: He received the prayers of the saints. Only God receives the prayers of the saints.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: He was God. This throne room scene showed us that God died for us.
Colleen: That’s right. Oh, that’s such a powerful sentence: God died for us. And this isn’t God the Son, Jesus the man, a Lamb that was slain, being filled with the Spirit. This is God, who is one with the Spirit, the triune God. This isn’t Jesus being externally filled with the Spirit so He has some kind of power He wouldn’t have had without the Spirit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But Adventism betrays its tritheism. It cannot have almighty God and Jesus being synonymous or their entire false gospel breaks apart.
Nikki: They make God a unity, not a Trinity.
Colleen: Yeah, a unity of three, as they say, co-eternal persons who they say are separate beings.
Nikki: Um-hmm. Right after that, speaking of the Trinity, they talk about God’s saving grace, and they say that He has an overwhelming concern for the salvation of humanity. So here we have again, like that earlier fundamental belief we talked about, we have God yearning for relationship. This is the situation He finds Himself in.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He’s cut off from His people, and He’s longing for their salvation. And they say, “The members of the Godhead are allied in the work of bringing people back into a union with their Creator.” So here again we have a unity and not a Trinity. One will doesn’t ally with itself. God is a Trinity, three co-equal, co-eternal persons, one in essence, nature, power, and will. And again, in this book we see God’s will is separated into three.
Colleen: Yes. That’s a really important point. As we move into this second section of the book which is, as you mentioned, “God’s Saving Grace,” we find this book portraying God as, as you said, yearning for His people and inviting them into relationship with Him. On page 122 of this book, it says that God extends an invitation to salvation, “but His love necessitates His permitting each person to have freedom of choice in responding.” Now, are we asked to believe? Yes. Are we asked to respond when we see the truth of who Jesus is? Yes. But we are not characterized in Scripture as being invited, asking us to respond and have choice in salvation. Now, I am not saying we don’t have a response that we are asked to give. But the Bible also teaches that God knows, calls, foreknows, predestines all things. He is sovereign, and He knows His own from the foundation of the world. This book never presents that picture. It never presents the picture of God who knows His own from before creation and arranges for their salvation. This is showing a God who is somewhat needy and weak and limits Himself to our choice and our desire for Him, longing, longing for us to come to Him. The Bible doesn’t describe God that way.
Nikki: No, absolutely not, and the sentence right after the one you just read says, “Coercion, a method contrary to His character, can have no part in His strategy.” So they’re constantly maligning the way Scripture represents God. They’re mocking the God of the Bible –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – when they suggest that God’s sovereignty in our salvation is coercion.
Colleen: It is not coercion. And He does tell us to respond by believing. There’s a tension there we can’t explain. It doesn’t fit any of the classic “isms”, but the Bible teaches both things, both things are true, and we have to know that when we hear the gospel of our salvation and believe, that is not opposed to the fact that God foreknows His own and calls His own. None of these things cancel each other out. We can’t explain it, but we have to know that what the Bible says is true.
Nikki: And we have to remember that Scripture tells us not to go beyond what is written, and I see this, even outside of Adventism –
Colleen: I do too.
Nikki: – where people play with this issue: Why did God put the tree in the garden?
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Well, because He wanted us to have a choice, and we can’t force love, and – let’s go with what Scripture says. We don’t always get to know why God does what He does.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: We only know what He tells us, and He tells us that He’s sovereign over all of this, and He tells us that He created us to have a responsibility to choose.
Colleen: Yes, He does. We also then see that this book says, “God wants to change sinners into saints.” Well, I will agree that in a sense that’s true, but what this book is saying is that God wants to make people who sin into people who don’t sin, and that is what they say Jesus died to do: Jesus died to help us to stop sinning. No! This book never, ever deals with the idea, this chapter never deals with the idea, that we are born spiritually dead, that Jesus came to earth as a spiritually alive human who was also God the Son, took our sin into Himself, and died to pay the price for our sin so that we can believe in Him and have spiritual life. A saint in Scripture is one who believes God, who trusts God, who acts on God’s word, who believes in Jesus, whom God sent, and the New Testament is very clear that when we believe, we are born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit. That is salvation. That is the definition of a saint, one who believes God and has the life of God in him because he has believed in the cross and resurrection of the Son.
Nikki: As they move through this process of God turning sinners into saints –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – they start with our nature, in a sense.
Colleen: Yeah, in a sense they do.
Nikki: They have a section titled “God’s Wrath Against Sin,” and their first sentence says, “The original transgression created in the human mind” –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – “a disposition of enmity against God.” I emphasize mind because in Adventism the human nature is not that we are born dead in sin –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: – that we are spiritually dead and need to new life. It’s that our mind has problems, our mind has a tendency to sin, we’re kind of set up to fail. And we’ll see later in the chapter that they actually talk about the mind being literally where the Holy Spirit dwells.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So this is kind of an important point, that they are saying that our mind, our disposition, is enmity against God. And then they go on and they talk about wrath against sin. And you had some reactions to this.
Colleen: Oh! [Laughter.] Yes, I did, because this book presents God’s wrath against sin as a theoretical objective thing. I actually learned or heard – I’ve heard many Adventist pastors talk about the fact that God actually doesn’t have wrath, that Jesus didn’t take the wrath of God. Now, this book does say He took the wrath of God against sin, but it’s such an important distinction that I think most people wouldn’t even catch if you hadn’t been steeped in this idea that God is not wrathful and that’s what makes the Adventist God such a much better God. He would never burn His enemies in hell. He doesn’t have wrath. That’s a false God. And I mean, I know how Adventists talk about this. So when I see that this book says God has wrath against sin and I read how they describe it, I’m realizing they’re separating sin from the sinner, and that was also something I learned as an Adventist, “Oh, God hates sin, but He loves the sinner.” Yes, God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son. Yes, He loves His creation. But the fact is God’s wrath is turned towards those who sin unrepentantly, and Romans 1 makes that extremely clear.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Romans 1 says the wrath of God is being poured out on all of those who refuse to acknowledge God, who give in to their depravity, who indulge their passions and depraved natures. It is now being poured out on them. God has wrath, not only against sin, but wrath that is turned against unrepentant sinners, and that’s really important to know. The Bible does teach that. That doesn’t mean that God’s wrath makes Him disdain His own creation and say, “Well, pshaw, off with them!” If He did, Jesus wouldn’t have come. But God has wrath against sin, and it’s turned against the sinners who refuse to believe.
Nikki: That’s it right there, who refuse to believe. Now, that was something else I noticed when they talked about wrath. So in Ephesians 2 we know that we were by nature objects of wrath.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We were born objects of wrath. And they say in this section that basically God has to call us sinners when we sin. They quote G.E. Ladd, “Men are ethically sinful; and when God counts their trespasses against them, He must view them as sinners.” So they’re sinners when they fail.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Well, now that’s going to happen – look at Romans 7. That’s going to happen after the new birth. You’re going to be mighty confused if you don’t understand your position before God, if you don’t understand your nature before you’re born again and your new nature. They don’t deal with that.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: So wrath is just every time you sin you become an object of wrath again.
Colleen: That’s really a good point, which is why Adventism teaches its members that when they sin they fall out of salvation and have to repent to come back in. So it’s in-out, in-out, in-out, and the more perfectly they develop their law-keeping, the closer they get to being “safe to save.”
Nikki: Yes. They say here, “Deliberate rejection of God’s revealed will – His law” – and they mean the Ten Commandments –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – “provokes His righteous anger or wrath.” So anytime you’re breaking those Ten Commandments, whether you say you believe or not, you’re provoking His wrath.
Colleen: And yes, that does say a person provokes His wrath, but they make it really clear that that wrath is against sin, which it is, and it’s a technicality, but I camp on it because they deny that we are by nature objects of wrath.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: As Jesus Himself said in John 3:18, until we believe, we are condemned already. Jesus Himself said that.
Nikki: Um-hmm. And as we saw walking through Ephesians and Colossians and Hebrews, our need is for life. We are dead; we need life. Here they say: we are sinners; we need to be saints.
Colleen: It’s also significant to me that they say, in relationship to what Jesus did and why, you know, why God’s grace is necessary and why we have to be saved, it says, “We cannot save ourselves from Satan, sin, suffering, and death.” And then they go on, “Our own righteousness is like filthy rags,” and they have a series of Bible quotes, all sort of taken out of context, and you’d almost miss the fact, but it’s repeated in various ways throughout this chapter, the idea that we have to be saved from Satan.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Satan is not the cause of human sin. Now, we said this last week too, but the New Testament is extremely clear, Adam is blamed for all human sin. We are sinners because we are born in Adam, “As in Adam all die.” This book denies that. This book basically says Satan is the cause of our sin, and as sinners we are under his control. Now, to be sure, Ephesians 2:1-3 says that we are born dead in sin, under the dominion of the prince of the ruler of the air, and Colossians 1:13 says that we are in the domain of darkness, but the fact is we aren’t owned by Satan, and we aren’t in that condition because Satan condemned us to sin. We’re in that condition because God said sinners must die. It’s not Satan we have to be saved from, it’s God’s own declaration of wrath against sin that we have to be saved from. And that’s something I never learned as an Adventist, and it’s so deeply upsetting to me. It’s one of the ways Satan takes center stage in Adventist soteriology. Adventists see him as responsible for their sin and the one who will ultimately be punished for making their life so miserable. No! God is the one who condemns sin. God is the one who said sinners will die. God is the one (Romans 8) that has bound all creation to decay as it groans waiting for our revelation as glorified sons of God. It’s God who did that.
Nikki: And that very passage that you’re quoting from in Ephesians says we were dead in our sin, but God raised us to life. There was our need; there was His answer.
Colleen: And it’s so interesting to me that Matthew 10:28 – we’ve mentioned this passage before in this podcast, but I still can’t quite get over it. It says, where Jesus is saying to His disciples, “Don’t fear the one who can kill your body but not the soul. Fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” As an Adventist, I really thought that was talking about fearing Satan and not man. Satan can destroy my body and soul in hell, but that’s not true. That text is saying, don’t fear Satan. He can destroy your body; he can’t destroy your soul. God is the only one who can destroy body and soul in hell. It is God’s own declaration of justice that Jesus came to save us from, not from Satan.
Nikki: Part of what also frustrated me about that section you read from, Colleen, is that that sentence is tucked between a lot of Scripture, scriptures that proclaim the sovereignty of God over salvation that they proclaim that faith is a gift from God, repentance is a gift from God, true biblical truths that they will not flesh out, that they will knock in the very chapter that they’re placed in –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and they all surround that one text about being saved from Satan.
Colleen: If I let myself, Nikki, I could probably cry right now. It’s so upsetting to me how the reality of God, His justice, His sovereignty, His selflessness, His mercy, His grace, His love, are decimated by the Adventist pseudo-gospel. They make it all about human choice and a weak and longing God instead of a sovereign God who planned for our redemption before we were created. Don’t ask me to explain how that works. We’re not told. But we have a God who’s so much bigger than we can imagine. We have a God who died for our sin to take His own wrath against sin. This isn’t about Satan. Satan has no part to play in the story of our salvation, nothing at all. We’re not saved from him.
Nikki: No, when we talk about this we’re talking about that unconditional covenant with Abraham, when Abraham was asleep and God Himself walked through the cut pieces. There was nothing of Satan in that.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: This is God doing God’s work, which God declared, and we’re the recipients of it by faith.
Colleen: Yes. Abraham didn’t participate in that covenant, he didn’t promise to obey, and just saying, I’ve been writing commentaries on the Sabbath school lessons this quarter, which are about “The Covenant, The Promise,” and these Sabbath school lessons are saying typical Adventism, that there’s only one covenant and that really the only thing new about the New Covenant is the word “new.” They actually say that, and they say that, you know, there’s a little further revelation of God because Jesus has now come. They never say that it’s actually a new covenant, based on a new priesthood, based on a new foundation. You can’t have the law in the New Covenant because we have a new priesthood. It’s a new law. And this chapter is denying what Jesus actually came and did. We move into a section that’s – the title of it is “Christ’s Ministry of Reconciliation,” and this is one more section where words are played with, words are redefined, and innuendos are mentioned, and it completely destroys the magnitude of what Jesus has done.
Nikki: So as they introduce this section, one of the things they say is that God took the initiative in restoring the broken relationship between humanity and Himself. And you know, when I read these chapters, sometimes I just want to jump out of my seat because I want to say, God knew what was going to happen before He created us, of course He took the initiative. This isn’t, like, Plan B. Okay, they messed up, I guess I’ll go look for them.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: I’ll go to the garden, and I’ll wander around and call for them. Or, I’m going to reach out because they’re not going to reach out first.
Colleen: Because I’m the bigger person.
Nikki: [Laughter.] He initiated the entire creation of humanity.
Colleen: Exactly. [Laughter.] Exactly.
Nikki: So there’s just something about the way they speak of Him that brings Him down off His sovereign throne.
Colleen: I know.
Nikki: And enters Him into our story –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – and then we think from a human perspective and we make Him small, and we explain Him in ways that we can live with, and now He’s the nice guy, He’s the loving guy with the good character because even though we were mean to Him, He came looking for us.
Colleen: That’s really well said. He doesn’t enter our story; He brings us into His.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And you know, related to that, Nikki – I had a mark in my book here – I hate it every time they use this phrase, and it’s bothering me more the farther into the book I go. “God’s plan of reconciliation is a marvel of divine condescension.” I’m sorry, “divine condescension“? God has never condescended. He’s doing what His plan is, and there is no Plan B. He has always done Plan A. We are part of His Plan A. The fact that you and I are sitting here together in this room after a year of COVID separation doing this podcast is part of His Plan A.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He’s not condescending because we needed some kind of help. The fact that we needed saving was not unknown to Him before He created. And again, don’t ask me to explain that, but salvation is not a divine condescension. It’s God’s will, and we are being brought into His story. He’s not going, “Poor dears. Let me go down.” And I go on in this, and I find them, in this book, talking about the word “atonement.” Now, I have to say, this is one of those things that really kind of made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. This book is saying, “The process of reconciliation has been associated with the term atonement.” And then they go on to say exactly what I was taught in Adventist school, “Atonement can be broken into its syllables, and it means ‘at-one-ment.'” Did you all learn that?
Nikki: Yup.
Colleen: “At-one-ment.” “Jesus came to make us ‘at one’ with Him again.” But that’s not what atonement means. I remember hearing our Pastor Gary talk about atonement once. It didn’t mean what Adventism taught me, so I looked it up. And I just looked it up in on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, which is not a Bible dictionary, and it clearly defined atonement as, “A satisfaction for an offense or reparation.” It’s a payment. It’s like when our son Roy ran into the neighbor’s new pickup truck with his new bicycle, and he broke the taillight. Roy was eight, and that taillight had to be replaced and Roy couldn’t afford it, so we had to make reparations with that neighbor. We paid the neighbor. Now, we did have Roy pay us back by doing chores, but the fact is, we made atonement for Roy’s transgression against the neighbor’s property by paying for that light. That’s what atonement is, reparation, satisfaction for an offense. It does not mean “at-one-ment,” restoring at-one, and you know what was so interesting to me, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary said, down under like its third or fourth definition, “At-one-ment is a Christian Science definition of the word atonement.”
Nikki: Oh, that’s interesting.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? But it’s what Adventism teaches all through its levels of education. It doesn’t admit that atonement is a payment, reparation, satisfaction for an offense, because they deny that God really has wrath, and they don’t want to admit that Jesus’ blood was payment that had to be made for justice to be done.
Nikki: Do you notice that every time they create a different kind of a definition for a word – maybe not every time, but often – they like to say “what many Christians think” or “what other Christians think” –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – and it’s usually not right?
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: So, related to atonement, they say “Many Christians limit the term atonement exclusively to the redeeming effects of Christ’s incarnation, suffering, and death.” I don’t know a Christian who uses atonement that way.
Colleen: No, I don’t either. They all believe it’s a payment.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: But they do this to lead into their discussion about atonement, from their perspective, being a two-phase issue, that there’s the sacrifice and then there’s the work in the sanctuary, where they say, according to their Investigative Judgment, that Jesus is up there applying His blood to confessed sins. That is unbiblical, that is a heresy, that is not true, but they have to maintain that, and that’s one reason they blur atonement because if Jesus’ death really were a payment and it was a done deal, they couldn’t have their two-phase atonement, with the Investigative Judgment going on up in heaven.
Nikki: Yeah. They say that a part of atonement is the intercessory ministry of Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary, and they refer the reader to chapter 24, of course.
Colleen: Of this book.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Hebrews does tell us that Jesus forever lives to make intersession for us, but that doesn’t mean He’s up there puttering around a sanctuary and an altar and records of sin and sprinkling blood. His blood was shed at Calvary. That was once and done, and Hebrews is very clear about that. Jesus in heaven interceding for us is interpreting our prayers, is praying for us, as He told His disciples, and when we’re finally with Him in eternity, that text gives me great comfort because that means it’s Jesus’ blood that will forever guarantee my eternal position with Him. That’s not about Him shaking His blood drops around heaven. And just by the by, under their section about Christ’s atoning sacrifice, they do say there is a record of people’s sins, and as a result of the reconciliation, God does not count their sins against them. But then they go on to say, “This does not mean that God dismisses punishment. Rather, it means that God has found a way to grant pardon to repentant sinners while still upholding the justice of His eternal law.” Well, once again, this is gobbledygook, but the fact is when we trust Jesus, there is no more record of our sins. Even the Old Testament said, “He has put our sins as far from Him as east is from the west.” When we trust Jesus and repent and know that He has died for our sin, our sins do not stand against us any longer. There’s no record of our sins.
Nikki: Yeah, and you know, for those of you who don’t understand the Investigative Judgment, I think it’s worth pointing out that believers enter into judgment upon belief, and there’s ongoing record of our sins in heaven, in Adventism.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: Sorry. Colleen’s looking concerned. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: In Adventism –
Colleen: Yeah!
Nikki: – there are angels keeping record of our sins –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – as believers, and we have to repent and apply the blood of Jesus –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – to each one of those sins. So the sentence that you read, this does not mean that God dismisses punishment or that sin no longer arouses His wrath. Believers still can come under God’s wrath –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – in Adventism.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: The Bible, when we read Paul in Thessalonians, it says we are not destined for God’s wrath –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – because we are His children, we’re born again. We’ve been rescued and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son. God’s wrath is no longer on us.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: We’ve been rescued from that. And here they’re suggesting that anytime you sin, God’s wrath is aroused, but God has found a way –
Colleen: Yes [laughter].
Nikki: – to grant pardon. And then this is – you know, we’ll see this in chapter 24, I’m sure, but this is where 1 John 1:9 comes in.
Colleen: Right. It’s also interesting that they also say here – and this is what we were talking about earlier – they say that this is “the heart of the gospel of forgiveness of sin and the mystery of the cross of Christ.” This is it, folks: “Christ’s perfect righteousness adequately satisfied divine justice, and God is willing to accept Christ’s self-sacrifice in place of man’s death.” Do you catch the implication of that sentence? “Christ’s perfect righteousness,” meaning His perfect law-keeping, is what satisfied divine justice, Jesus’ perfection as a man is what satisfied God’s justice. No! Jesus’ death is what satisfied God’s justice. This says His righteousness satisfied God’s justice, so God then is willing to accept His death on our behalf. No! This is completely wrong.
Nikki: I know. This is their emphasis with the title, “The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.” They cannot say He was God.
Colleen: No. And they cannot say His blood satisfied God’s justice. They have to say His righteous, perfect law-keeping life satisfied God’s justice. No! The law is not what Jesus came to save. Jesus came to save us. The law was given to point out sin, to increase sin. Read Romans, read Galatians. It could not be expressed more clearly. In fact, Galatians says that once we’ve known Christ, if we go back and take the law on, we fall from grace!
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The law is not what Jesus upheld. It was not His law-keeping that satisfied God’s justice. It was His death, His shed blood. He was the perfect sacrifice.
Nikki: So they go from His perfect life to His blood. And they say, right after that, “Persons unwilling to accept the atoning blood of Christ receive no forgiveness.” So you need to accept the blood of Christ in Adventism because you have to now apply it to your sins. Every time you ask forgiveness –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – Jesus is going to apply it. You’re kind of like, your hand’s on the mouse, telling the Lord what to do with your repentance. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: You know, moving it. So I just want to say, there’s nothing in Scripture that says we have to accept the blood of Jesus.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: Jesus doesn’t offer His blood to us.
Colleen: No, He doesn’t.
Nikki: He offered His life to the Father –
Colleen: To the Father.
Nikki: – on behalf of us, and the Father received and accepted His sacrifice, and we see that in the resurrection of Christ.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Scripture calls us to repent and to believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And believing on His name means believing everything He has said, everything He’s taught us, everything He represents, believing Him. And it’s not just believing, it’s trusting.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: That word means to trust. You put the entire weight of your life on Him.
Colleen: On Him. And on His shed blood. His blood wasn’t offered to us, but His blood redeems us –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – because God accepted His blood. And because God accepted His blood which was shed as the human sacrifice for human sin, we can trust Him, and God redeems us from sin, not from Satan. He redeems us from ourselves, from our own dead-in-sin natural condition. He redeems us from our own selves and makes us the members of a new kingdom, the kingdom of His beloved Son, and it’s so interesting that 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 make it really clear that by nature we are in Adam sinners, subject to death, but in Christ we will be made alive. We literally receive a new inheritance. We go from being in Adam to being in Christ, and that’s because Jesus offered His blood to the Father, the Father accepted it, and we are redeemed into God’s family. We’re not just given a tool for covering over our sin. We are literally made new creatures, born of God, new blood inheritance, the blood of Christ. And while we’re at it, another word that this book messes up is “propitiation.” Romans 3:25 specifically uses the word “propitiation.” I’m going to read Romans 3:25 and 26 because it completely negates what this book says about what Jesus’ death meant. Romans says that “God displayed Jesus publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Now, the book tries to sidestep the word “propitiation.” It will use it. It will acknowledge the word is in Scripture. The word actually means “a payment, a satisfaction.” It’s very similar to atonement. But the book says, “It doesn’t mean what the pagans say, ‘placating an angry God’ or ‘appeasing a vindictive, arbitrary, and capricious God.'” And then it goes on to say, “‘God in His merciful will presented Christ as the propitiation to His holy wrath on human guilt because He accepted Christ as man’s representative and the divine substitute to receive His judgment on sin.'” You know, that is just so much gobbledygook, and that’s a quote from a pretty famous “evangelical” Adventist scholar, Hans LaRondelle, but the fact is, Jesus propitiated for human sin. Now, they try to sidestep and say that His blood was an expiation. Expiation means it removes sin from us. Well, it was that. But it was also a propitiation, it was a satisfaction to God. And again, they don’t want to go there because it implies God has wrath against sin and the sinner. But they end this section, where they try to redefine the effects of Jesus’ blood, and they say, “God’s objective act of reconciliation has been accomplished through the propitiating and expiating blood (or self-sacrifice) of Christ Jesus, His Son. Thus God is both the provider and the recipient of the reconciliation.” Well, Nikki, I hardly know how to talk about that.
Nikki: Well, here again, they’re changing the words of Scripture.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: This is what I want to say to former Adventists who read this and it’s murky and maybe they don’t see what we see right away. Anytime you hear something that sounds like Scripture but it’s not exactly it, and so you’re trying to go, well, maybe they mean this.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Post a flag. If you need to go back to it later, go back to it later, but you need to know that when they’re changing the words of Scripture it’s because they think they’re improving upon it.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And that usually means there’s something behind it.
Colleen: To say that God is the provider and the recipient of the reconciliation, well, let’s just think through that. They’re saying God provides the reconciliation between man and Himself. He’s also the recipient of the reconciliation, as in, God has been longing for us to come back to Him for so long, and now He can finally justify it, and He’s kind of removed the guilt of our sin so that we can see Him and reach out to Him and He’s restored to us. That’s not what Scripture says. What I just read in Romans 3 says Jesus was given as a propitiation in His blood, a satisfaction to God – Jesus’ blood was a satisfaction to God – so that He would be shown at the present time to be both just and the justifier. Well, what does it mean to be just? That’s judicial. That means Jesus revealed Himself and God, the Trinity, is the judge, the legal righteous judge of sin and sinners, and by dying for our sins, Jesus showed Himself to be just. Our sin had to be paid for. Not just eradicated or covered over or excused or forgiven, it had to be paid for. God had to be satisfied that sinners’ sin was paid for fully, and that’s what Jesus showed. He is just. He shed just blood for human sin. It was a just sacrifice for all our sin. But He’s also the justifier. He offered Himself as the payment so we don’t have to do that. So He’s just, He’s demanding the full sentence of death for sin, but He’s also being the one who gives that full sentence of death for sin. This book just reduces it to He’s both the provider and the recipient of reconciliation, like oh, how sweet. What they’re really saying here, what they’re really sidestepping here, is that this chapter in Romans 3, this passage in Romans 3, is basically saying there was never a controversy about whether God was fair or whether His law was too hard to keep, as Ellen White has told us, and we know that these doctrines always uphold the great controversy, always uphold Ellen White. What Romans 3 is saying, there was never any such controversy. The only controversy that could have ever existed was whether or not God was just in not killing sinners.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: And when Jesus came and died, He showed that He was just. His blood was the just payment for all sinners for all time. That was the only unanswered question, and Jesus came and showed God is just.
Nikki: I love how one person put it in our Bible study. They said that when Jesus died on the cross it sent ripples in every direction of time.
Colleen: Yeah, backwards, forwards.
Nikki: So after they talk about the purpose of the blood, they spend a lot of time talking about our need for Christ’s perfect character. They just continue to hound on and refocus His law-keeping and His life because ultimately He’s our example –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and we’re supposed to now have perfect character.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: The way they treat the resurrection betrays the fact that they don’t actually hold to a Christian orthodox view of the resurrection of Christ.
Colleen: Before they talk about the resurrection, as you were saying, Nikki, they actually say that the robe of righteousness that we get from Jesus is His perfect obedience to the law.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I mean, really? We get His perfect obedience placed around our shoulders and we somehow derive power from that to do our perfect obedience of the law, and they actually state that our righteous character is needed, our law-keeping is needed, for our salvation. So they set up a whole different system of salvation than the Bible presents, and then they move into the resurrection, which they can’t talk about biblically either.
Nikki: Well, you know, that’s really duplicitous that we’re supposed to have perfect law-keeping and we also need Christ’s perfect law-keeping. So you really need the perfect law-keeping of two people now to be saved. I want to say too, it also seems to betray the fact that they don’t understand the difference between the Jews and the Gentiles. Like, they say in the chapter that when you’re saved you receive the power of the Holy Spirit to break down the barrier between Jew and Gentile. No, Jesus did that in His body on the cross. They do not understand that.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: They do not understand the Jew and the Gentile –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – and they do not understand we are Gentiles. Why do I need the perfect keeping of the Mosaic covenant and the Mosaic Law in order for me to be saved? I need life, and that’s what Christ’s resurrection gives me, 1 Peter 1:3-5: Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who has caused us to be born again by the resurrection of Christ.
Colleen: Yes, the resurrection of Christ. And that’s what they don’t deal with when they talk about resurrection. And just in case anybody thinks we’re off base by saying we Gentile believers do not need perfect law-keeping as part of the package of our salvation, no matter who did it, read Galatians. It’s very clear that the law has been fulfilled in Christ, and Gentiles do not go under the law, they are not justified by the law, they are not justified even by Jesus’ law-keeping. They are justified by Jesus’ death and burial and resurrection.
Nikki: And this is why that same passage in Ephesians says that He broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, making them both one new man. New, different, not making the Gentile like a perfect Jew.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: He makes them one new man in Himself.
Colleen: And it even says He does this by having nailed to the cross the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. It’s through fulfilling the law and taking the living Torah, the living law, in His flesh to the cross that He broke down that wall. We never break down the wall between Jew and Gentile.
Nikki: And you know, I feel like I can just imagine people shaking their fist at us for diminishing the law. The law is perfect.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: The law is beautiful. The law is God’s Plan A –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – and it showed us our perfect Messiah. We needed the perfect Messiah, we needed the perfect Lamb to come and die for us –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – but it was about the Lamb. It wasn’t about the road to the cross.
Colleen: And that perfect law showed us we couldn’t walk that road to the cross on our own. We couldn’t. And I say we because I grew up hearing I was spiritual Israel –
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: – and needed to keep the law.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But no human could –
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: – except the man Christ, who was born sinless and had no sin in Him. So His perfect law-keeping was, as you said, a demonstration that the law pointed to Him. And His death satisfied the demands of the law, and I didn’t understand that as an Adventist. I didn’t understand that His fulfilling of the law really culminated in taking its death sentence. He took its death sentence, and He broke the curse of that death sentence, and that’s the resurrection that Adventism doesn’t know how to talk about. It’s kind of fascinating to me that they basically say the resurrection shows that Jesus triumphed over forces of evil. Well, no! Satan didn’t kill Jesus. Jesus’ death wasn’t anything to do with Satan. It was entirely to do with the Trinity’s own sentence and judgment against sin. Jesus’ death was intentional, voluntary, deliberate, and substitutionary. It had nothing to do with Satan. He didn’t triumph over Satan at the resurrection.
Nikki: They’re so off-base when they’re talking about this. On the cross Jesus put Satan to open shame.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He disarmed him –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – in His death. When I was an Adventist I thought of that moment of Christ on the cross, I thought of Satan being victorious because Christ is suffering and He’s – look at Him up there, humiliated, and He’s uncovered, and – I always – I’d get very upset thinking about Satan just gloating in this moment. No. That moment, Satan was put to open shame. But this is not the way that the Adventists talk about it. And His resurrection showed that He was who He said He was –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Nikki: – that He laid down His life and He took it up again, and the Father received this atonement. It was the yes. It was the – it was finished on the cross, but it was the amen. [Laughter.]
Colleen: It was the amen, yes. And in fact, Romans 5 says if we have been justified by His blood, how much more are we saved by His life. That’s not the backwards look at His law-keeping life. That’s the forwards look at His resurrection life, and Romans 8 makes that clear.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Romans 8 talks about it’s His resurrection life that gives life to our mortal flesh. It’s His resurrection life that gives us the Spirit, that gives us eternal life. It’s not something that happens as just a change of mind or the Adventist version of conversion. No. When we trust Jesus we receive life from death, and we receive the seal of the Holy Spirit. And we are never going to come into condemnation.
Nikki: [Laughter.] And this is why we celebrate Easter!
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: The resurrection is adoption day –
Colleen: Yes! [Laughter.]
Nikki: – for everyone who believes. [Laughter.]
Colleen: It is absolutely true. And it’s also our new birthday.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s birthday, it’s adoption day. We couldn’t be more secure as God’s children. And if you haven’t experienced that, we urge you to go and read Hebrews, the Gospel of John and see what it says about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, and realize that if you grew up Adventist or if you were converted into Adventism or if you’ve been tempted to think Adventism has the answers for your life, it’s actually telling you a lie. Jesus exposed the darkness when He hung on that cross and took away the tool of Satan by fulfilling the law. Satan can never use the law again to accuse the brothers of Jesus. We are His when we trust Him and when we receive His resurrection life and are born again.
Nikki: So if you have questions or comments for us, write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails. There is also a place there to donate if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support. You can 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 examine Fundamental Belief #10, The Experience of Salvation.
Colleen: We’ll see you then.
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