Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “Growing in Christ”. Discover the reason for Adventism’s addition of this doctrine in 2005 and how they put “the cart before the horse”. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Today we’ll be looking at the Adventist Fundamental Belief #11, Growing in Christ. This doctrine attempts to align itself with the Christian doctrine of sanctification. They do this by wrapping and layering fine-spun heresies with Bible texts related to true sanctification. As an Adventist, this kind of teaching led me to believe that we believed what other Christians do, we just had more and better light on the issue. I couldn’t see how we didn’t add to these doctrines; we altered them completely to uphold Ellen.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Pulling apart their meshing of out-of-context Scripture with their great controversy worldview is tedious and frustrating.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: But we’ll give it our best effort in the time we have here. Before we get started, though, let me remind you that if you have any questions or comments, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Visit proclamationmagazine.com to view our online articles, and while you’re there you can find a donate tab if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support. And you can also sign up to receive our weekly emails, with ministry news and direct links to our blogs, delivered every Friday to your inbox. Last, please like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Colleen, their abuse of language in this chapter, in all of the chapters really, is so hard to read.
Colleen: Me too.
Nikki: They talked a lot in this section about dying to self. I remember hearing that in Adventism.
Colleen: Oh! Incessantly.
Nikki: And they supported that idea in this chapter with Matthew 16:24. I’m wondering if you’ll talk to us about what this verse has meant to you as a true believer. It says, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” So when you encountered Jesus, how did this take place in your life?
Colleen: Well, that’s an interesting question because it’s very different than it used to be as an Adventist. As an Adventist, I thought of it basically as what I once heard described as Buddhist self-denial.
Nikki: Oh, okay.
Colleen: The slow erasing from my feelings, from my mind anything that’s normal, natural, or had a desire. I just had to kill off all my natural impulses so that I would just be holy. But when I became a Christian, I was surprised to discover that the Lord gave me myself. More than I had ever been in my life, I felt like I was who I was made to be. I felt like I had an identity, and I had a personality, and it was good because God made it. Now, it didn’t make me love myself in all ways, but I began to realize that the cross that I was supposed to pick up and carry was not the cross of my emotions or the cross of my sin, because Jesus had taken care of that. My cross, as I once heard Elizabeth Inrig describe it in a leaders meeting for women’s ministry, is my relationship with Jesus, not my bad back. It’s not a difficulty that I have to walk around with. It’s realizing that my life is defined by Him, and my reactions to the world around me. I can see through the lens of who He is, and that might mean I will have a lot of loss. It might even mean I’ll have quite a bit of pain sometimes, but I have Him, and when I have Him, all of these things are part of His plan for me, and I don’t have to wither into a puddle of tears or rage into the darkness. I can trust Him and know that He will work His will in my life, and there’s a great deal of peace that comes from knowing that the cross that I’m carrying now is the cross of being united with Christ in His life.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: What about you?
Nikki: Well, like you, the idea of dying to self, it meant giving up just about anything that I decided in my own head was sin or wrong.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And it wasn’t always biblical.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: It could have been a very healthy, normal, natural desire, but if I thought maybe it was sin, I had to die to it.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I had to – you know. So I remember when I was attending my local church, a former pastor of mine had written a book that was all about dying to self. It really was about giving up your rights, your thoughts, and then quoting Scripture, essentially.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And that was going to change you. Well, when I became a Christian, it happened really quickly. I attended the Former Adventist Fellowship Conference, and I heard the true gospel for the first time in my life. And I came to a crossroads that weekend, and I knew that the Lord was calling me out of Adventism. He was giving me a choice: Follow me –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – or don’t.
Colleen: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: But I wouldn’t be following Him if had decided to stay in Adventism. That was very, very clear –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – from the Scriptures that I read that weekend. And so I had to make a decision, and it felt like denying myself.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I had to give up everything I thought I knew, everything that had been precious to me, because all of that stood against the gospel of Jesus.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And so, you know, Carel and I had positions in our church. We had ministries there – in the Adventist church – congregation. I don’t like calling it a church anymore.
Colleen: I know.
Nikki: But we gave that up. We had to give that up because we had to follow Jesus. We had to deny ourselves. And so I relate a lot to what Paul wrote in Philippians, where he gave all his credentials, “I have all these credentials. I kept the law perfectly.”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: “But I count it all as loss now for knowing Christ.” And so that taking up that cross is – it’s identifying myself with Christ. I have a new identity in Him now, and He told us, “If the world hated me, they will also hate you.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And so part of bearing that cross, part of carrying that family name, is being hated. And so, you know, we have this ministry of reconciliation, and the world doesn’t always like that.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: There’s struggle. But you hold fast to who you are in Him, and that’s how I understand that now.
Colleen: Yes, me too. It’s interesting too that the ministry of reconciliation that we’ve been given, we also know, because Jesus told us, that He Himself is a sword.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That He Himself will pierce and divide between the closest of family relationships, that we will lose houses, lands, people because of Him. And it’s so interesting that that’s just not politically correct. You know, the idea of Jesus’ inclusive, warm, embracing love is misrepresented. It’s based on some sort of subjective feeling of emotion or human need instead of the objective reality that we are born dead and must be made alive and reconciled to God. He gives us that reconciling love when we know Him, and it is a sword.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: He Himself is a sword, but He Himself is worthy and worth it, and He doesn’t drop us. I remember Richard saying when we were leaving, going through the same realization you had, that to follow Jesus meant leaving Adventism, and he said he felt like he was jumping off a cliff. But the surprise was that when he actually decided to go, he didn’t jump off a cliff, there was an invisible like glass floor that caught him –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – and he was safe.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But he couldn’t see it before he walked.
Nikki: You know, I also related to the idea of walking off a cliff, but for me I always described what it felt like when I stepped off as falling up.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Everything was set right, you know, because my life before, everything was inverse and upside down. So God set everything right, but it was more than I could ever expect or dream or imagine, to walk in newness of life, not by my choice but by what God did in me. And in that passage I mentioned in Philippians, Paul said that he counted all those things as rubbish – and this is important – “in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.” Denying yourself is shifting –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – your object of faith from yourself to Christ alone.
Colleen: That’s so true. And as an Adventist I wouldn’t have said it was in myself, but it was.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because I had to keep myself worthy.
Nikki: Yeah. We had to keep ourselves in salvation.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: With Sabbath-keeping.
Colleen: Oh, yes. And that internal killing off my own feelings. So this doctrine that we’re going to look at today, “Growing in Christ,” in spite of its name is actually a doctrine that’s the opposite of growing in Christ. And we’re going to talk a little bit about when this doctrine was written and why it was written, and we’re going to look at it more closely and see how it plays with words, redefines the normal scriptural Christian words that Christians understand, and locks its people into even deeper bondage. And far from growing in Christ, this is a doctrine about growing as an Adventist, in deeper and deeper commitment to Adventism.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But before we do that, I just want to briefly say I remembered reading years ago, when this doctrine actually came about, and I went back online and looked it up. This doctrine, which is actually the last one written, even though it’s number 11 in the book –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – is an add-on. It was an add-on that the Adventist General Conference decided to write because they started having problems as their proselytizing energy took Adventism farther and farther into the world, and they began to have converts from many false, as they would put it, false religions, animism, Buddhism, Islam, all of these things that we would identify as non-biblical religions. They have converts to Adventism, but then they started getting questions from the missionaries, like, “How do we teach them to stay and live as Adventists once they’ve accepted Adventism?” And they’ll ask some of their converts, “How do you deal with the demons that you had before?” And their response would be, “Oh, we can’t offend the demons. Oh, we don’t want to offend the spirits.” The missionaries – and I find this so telling – didn’t know what to do with that. Now, to me that is an evidence that they’re not teaching Christianity.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: If you’re really teaching the gospel and people are really hearing the gospel of their salvation and being saved and sealed with the Holy Spirit, there will not be any question about what to do with the evil spirits. Those people would recognize who Jesus was and would feel compelled to do what the Ephesians did in Acts 19, where they built a bonfire and burned their books of magic. But, no. These people are going, “We don’t know what to do,” because they don’t want to offend the spirits. And so this doctrine was written, and they said it themselves. I got this from an article in the Ministry magazine in 2004, where they were reporting on the meeting of the General Conference Executive Committee, where it was decided they would propose a new doctrine to address these problems. So in the document that was sent out by the Executive Committee, the General Conference Executive Committee, they decided that they would propose a 28th Fundamental Belief to counteract transcendental meditation and spiritualistic practice. Now, what’s interesting to me is that transcendental meditation they define in this article as a search for contact with spiritual powers in order to enrich the individual. “In place of spiritualistic practice, we offer them contact with God through prayer, Bible study, service, and meditation on the Word of God and His providential leadings.” So they have written a doctrine to help the missionaries teach spiritual disciplines to the new converts out of paganism, but they’re giving these people nothing except a new set of spiritual disciplines and a new focus of their worship, which is not the God of Scripture. These people are not being taught the finished work of Jesus Christ. They’re being given a new paganism, and as we’ve walked through this doctrine, Nikki, we’ve been so struck by the fact that it’s not biblical Christianity.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: This doctrine comes at these disciplines from a position of ignoring what we have previously identified as the indicative, the indicative that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day, and when we believe that gospel, trust Him, repent from our sin, we are made alive and sealed with the Holy Spirit. That indicative has to precede any practice.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But this chapter is all about practices in hopes of securing salvation. It’s inside out.
Nikki: Yeah, the practices lead to the new creation.
Colleen: Yes. So would you read the doctrine for us, please?
Nikki: Yes. So, Fundamental Belief #11, Growing in Christ. “By His death on the cross Jesus triumphed over the forces of evil. He who subjugated the demonic spirits during His earthly ministry has broken their power and made certain their ultimate doom. Jesus’ victory gives us victory over the evil forces that still seek to control us, as we walk with Him in peace, joy, and assurance of His love. Now the Holy Spirit dwells within us and empowers us. Continually committed to Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we are set free from the burden of our past deeds. No longer do we live in the darkness, fear of evil powers, ignorance, and meaninglessness of our former way of life. In this new freedom in Jesus, we are called to grow into the likeness of His character, communing with Him daily in prayer, feeding on His Word, meditating on it and on His providence, singing His praises, gathering together for worship, and participating in the mission of the church. We are also called to follow Christ’s example by compassionately ministering to the physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual needs of humanity. As we give ourselves in loving service to those around us and in witnessing to His salvation, His constant presence with us through the Spirit transforms every moment and every task into a spiritual experience.”
Colleen: And I read that and have the same reaction I had as an Adventist when I would read doctrinal things. It’s like, argh, how do I accomplish all of this? And I did feel that all of these commands were for me, and I needed to fulfill them if I was going to be fit for heaven. So what do you see in this doctrine that really raises a red flag or flags to you, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, as always, there’s a lot that does that, but I’m noticing some of the ways that they craft their sentences after reading this chapter.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: So they say, “Jesus’ victory gives us victory over the evil forces that still seek to control us, as we walk with Him in peace, joy, and assurance of love.” And it’s crafted so that you can read it one way, but after you read the chapter you understand that it’s saying that His victory gives us victory if –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – we walk with Him in peace, joy, and assurance of love. That “as” should be “if.”
Colleen: That’s a great point. It’s also interesting to me that it says that Jesus gives us victory over the evil forces that still seek to control us. You know, Jesus’ victory was complete. When we are in Him, the evil forces are not even in the running anymore. We are out of their control because God has transferred us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son, and to be sure, as Peter says, Satan is like a lion, seeking whom he may devour, and we are to flee from evil, but that does not mean that we are at large in the universe where God and Satan have equal power over us. Jesus’ victory isn’t a means to our victory; Jesus’ victory is our victory.
Nikki: Yeah, and you know, even in the first two sentences of this, the idea that the death of Christ triumphed over the forces of evil or that He’s broken their power, they give the picture that before the cross Satan had godlike power and authority –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and that’s what Jesus broke at the cross.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: In fact, Satan had no ability to do anything without God allowing it. Look at the story of Job.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: So, he didn’t have this powerful, godlike, you know, incommunicable attribute –
Colleen: No!
Nikki: – of omnipotence and omnipresence and – he doesn’t have all of that. What Jesus did on the cross is He disarmed him by removing the law, which is what he used to accuse the brothers.
Colleen: Exactly. That’s, of course, never mentioned.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: It’s all constructed to say that Jesus preserved the law, upheld the law, vindicated the law, and broke down the power of Satan so that we could somehow manage to get the power of Jesus to, like, wield a sword at Satan when he came for us, so that we too could keep the law, and when we were tempted to break one of those commandments, we could just remember Jesus hanging on the cross and go, “If He could do it, I could do it,” whack, whack, bye-bye Satan. That’s not at all what happened.
Nikki: And their comment about being continually committed to Jesus, “we’re set free,” this whole chapter shows that nothing is final.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Nothing is fixed. Nothing is sure. It’s all about our continual, constant, persistent obedience to the Adventist worldview.
Colleen: Yes, yes.
Nikki: And even their mission as a church, you know, they say that we’re to follow Christ’s example by ministering to all of these needs.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Nothing here about sharing the gospel of their salvation.
Colleen: Because they don’t actually believe in the gospel of their salvation. They don’t anywhere articulate the gospel as defined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, where Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day according to Scripture. He paid for sin. He propitiated for our sin, as we mentioned in one of the last podcasts. He has paid for sin and satisfied the wrath of God toward sin. That’s not mentioned. It’s all about us being good, being obedient, being persistent, having spiritual discipline so we too can overcome Satan. And this – meanwhile, remember, this whole doctrine, while it’s directed to every member of the Adventist organization, it was written to instruct the missionaries in the “Third World” – and I say that with my scare quotes here – how to talk to people who came up in nonbiblical, non-Christian-influenced religions. This is about them replacing in their converts a paganism that came out of animism or Islam with – let me say it – a new paganism shaped by false Christianity.
Nikki: Well, and that explains the last two sentences in this, where it talks about what I just mentioned, that we minister to the physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual needs of humanity –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and then it goes on to say, “As we give ourselves in loving service to those around us and in witnessing to His salvation…” So their witness is what they’re doing for everybody.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is the witness. It reminds me of that thing some people say sometimes, “Preach the gospel, and when necessary use words.” No, the gospel requires words –
Colleen: It does.
Nikki: – brave, courageous words.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And all of the missionaries that I knew when I was in college – because, you know, so many kids go away to do missions for a year –
Colleen: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: – they were teaching English –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – they were teaching math, they were building schools.
Colleen: They were extracting teeth.
Nikki: Yes! They weren’t proclaiming the gospel of Scripture.
Colleen: No, not at all. In fact, I often had the sense that those student mission short-term trips for the summer were just a really convenient and cost-effective way to travel.
Nikki: Yeah. You know, I kind of always thought that too. And the kids would come back changed –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – because they would see people who lived in these other worlds, in these different ways, and it really did change their view –
Colleen: Sure.
Nikki: – coming back and living in their First World. And so I also thought that sometimes it was for that purpose, you know.
Colleen: Broaden their horizons, see humanity.
Nikki: Yeah. But you know, you have to know Adventism really well to be trusted with teaching it in other places.
Colleen: [Laughter.] That’s true.
Nikki: Otherwise, they’re just going to give you the work that they use to get the foot in the door.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And that’s, I think, where they use the kids.
Colleen: Yeah. It’s also where they used to use the spouses of the teachers in Adventist academies, but I digress. [Laughter.] So as we walked through this chapter, Nikki, what struck you as we just started going through the explanation of it? We talked a little bit before we started about sifting through some of the details, because they are so incredibly repetitive and wrong, and I think we can do some big picture overviews. What hit you, first of all?
Nikki: I think what hit me right at the beginning is their statement about growth.
Colleen: Uh-hmm.
Nikki: And they say, “Growth – continual, constant, maturing, and fruit-bearing growth – is essential to life. Without it birth has no meaning or purpose or destiny.” Now, we’re talking about growing in Christ.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And true believers who read Scripture know that we grow in Christ after we’ve been created new in Him.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: After He’s given us new life, John 3 born-again life.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Then we begin to grow in Christ. This right here at the beginning tells you their entire premise is the birth doesn’t matter unless there’s growth. If the growth doesn’t happen, the birth doesn’t happen.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It didn’t matter, it never happened. It’s like a spiritual abortion –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – for lack of a better term.
Colleen: Actually, a good term. I was thinking similar things.
Nikki: As I read that and began to move through some of the next sections, I realized this right here is why as an Adventist I could give you the gospel, I could tell you the gospel was that Jesus came and died for my sins and that He was raised on the third day. I could say that. But I had all of this in my head –
Colleen: Oh, interesting.
Nikki: – all of what came next in my head, and so now when we read 1 Corinthians 15, I’m always harping on “according to Scripture, according to Scripture” –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – because none of those words mean anything if they’re not according to the witness and testimony of Scripture, and the way that they talk about the death of Christ in here is not according to Scripture –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – neither the prophecies or the way the New Testament fleshes it out.
Colleen: That is such an important point. Not to mention the fact that when they say, “Without the growth, the birth has no meaning or purpose,” their reference to birth is not a reference to the biblical new birth. They’re using the words, but Adventism doesn’t even understand the new birth. They don’t believe they have spirits that are born dead. They don’t understand that the new birth is literally being given a new spirit, a new heart, and being sealed with the Holy Spirit, as God promised Ezekiel and as Jesus reminded Nicodemus. So when they say this, they’re not even talking about what the Bible talks about, but if a Christian who doesn’t understand Adventism were to read this, it might sound a little confusing, it might sound a little off, but they would having trouble saying what’s wrong with it.
Nikki: Yeah, because, like I said when we got started, they’re trying to snuggle up against the Christian doctrine of sanctification –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – but that’s not what this is.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: This is putting the cart before the horse.
Colleen: Yes. This whole chapter is developing the Adventist belief that sanctification has to be a part of justification or there’s no salvation.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: And you know, that is a Catholic belief.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Adventists are more like Catholics than they ever want to admit. They teach their members that they can’t be saved without the sanctification piece. They don’t teach them that sanctification is the fruit of being saved, and this whole chapter is to prove that.
Nikki: Well, and right here in their introduction they say, “The death of self makes it possible for us to take up the life that Christ offers.” Now, wait a minute. Ephesians 2 says that we were born dead, that we are objects of wrath. That’s out of our control. We’re dead.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But God raised us to life in Christ while we were dead in those sins –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – He raised us to life in Christ. We didn’t die again –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – and then take up the life of Christ.
Colleen: No. We can’t, at any rate. It’s a miracle. It’s the resurrection life of Christ that He gives us when we trust His finished work. Romans 8 makes that very clear. We can’t take up the life of Christ. It has to be given to us because we are dead and, unlike Adventism says, we are raised to life while we are dead in our sins. We are not asked to sanctify and clean up and then take up the life. It’s not any of our work.
Nikki: It reminds me of something that Pastor Gary has said and I’ve shared before. He says, “Our will is not free to rise above our nature.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: “A fish cannot determine to become a bird. We are by nature objects of wrath, dead in sin. We do not have the ability to take up life.”
Colleen: That’s right. And we are objects of God’s wrath, not Satan’s wrath. And it is only God who can remove that wrath from us, and He did it in the Lord Jesus by taking His own wrath. And again I have to say, this is another thing that we just heard Pastor Gary say this last Sunday, he said, “If God does not have wrath, Jesus’ death is reduced to a mere demonstration of love,” and I thought, wow, that is Adventism.
Nikki: Yeah, it is. That’s the moral influence theory, isn’t it?
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And then he gave the example, he said, “It would be like a man running off of a pier saying, ‘I love you!’ and jumping into the ocean to his death.”
Colleen: Yeah. Thanks a lot for that love.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: I have to also say in reference to this, we listened to the church service from Loma Linda University Church again on this last weekend – which, you might ask, why do you do that? Well, because I learn things like I’m about to share. And they sang the song, “In Christ Alone.” And you know that verse where the line goes, “The wrath of God was satisfied” –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – referring to the cross? They sang, “The love of God was glorified.” They wrote “wrath” right out of that. That is a doctrinal heresy.
Nikki: Yeah, that was very intentional. And I remember that was the song we sang the first night of the conference I attended in 2010, and when we got to that line, “The wrath of God was satisfied,” I stopped singing and just began to cry. I’m certain that’s the first time I’d ever seen that.
Colleen: God has wrath towards sin, and Jesus took that wrath. That’s what makes His death so important, so significant, so singular. It wasn’t a demonstration of love, although that was in it. He took the wrath of God so we don’t have to have that wrath of God poured out on us. And as Gary has often said, “Your sins are either on yourself or on Jesus,” because He took the wrath.
Nikki: You know, that’s not a part of any of this because this all has to uphold their story of origins.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: And again, we have to remind everybody, if you haven’t heard the podcast on the Adventist story of origins, go back and listen to the introduction. This is about upholding their worldview, and the cross in Adventism demonstrated and validated the importance of the Ten Commandments.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: That was the entire purpose of this, and so they have all of these quotes throughout this chapter, talking about how Satan was present at the cross, and he was trying to get Jesus off the cross because he didn’t want to lose all of that power he had; right?
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And you have Jesus accomplishing this – He’s almost like a way-maker.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: You know, they talk about Him at the cross, “He cast the seed of growth.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And He opened up a pathway, and He invited people to follow Him on this path. There are more quotes here than we have time for me to read. So the cross was all about making a way –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and inviting us into that way and empowering us to walk in that way.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s not an accomplishment, it’s not a propitiation.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: And there’s no mention of the resurrection, which actually is what causes us to be born again (1 Peter 1-3). Please look that up if you haven’t read it.
Colleen: Yes, um-hmm.
Nikki: That’s not here.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: The new life, in Adventism, is a new lifestyle.
Colleen: That’s right, and it’s a new lifestyle of looking back, away from the cross, which is what is supposed to help you do this, back to the law and keeping Jesus’ pre-cross law-keeping life. It’s practicing spiritual discipline, self-denial, trying to keep all the “thou shalt nots.” I just want to say, why are you mixing cotton and polyester and linen when, you know, that was one of the laws.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But whatever the case –
Nikki: Well, it’s just the ten, remember.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It’s just the ten that were eternal.
Colleen: Which really means the Sabbath –
Nikki: Yeah, the fourth.
Colleen: – the fourth. So you’re right. This is all about the new lifestyle, which means taking up the Sabbath, which is really the cross that you’re now carrying because it sets you apart in the world, makes you a little odd, but it also makes you really special.
Nikki: Um-hmm. So then they take these texts of Scripture, of course out of context –
Colleen: Out of context.
Nikki: – to immediately move you into how you’re supposed to live this new lifestyle. And you know, right before we started this series we finished up our series through Ephesians.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I just love Ephesians 2 – well, I love all of Ephesians, but I love Ephesians 2. And we spent a lot of time looking at how Christ’s death on the cross broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile because He nailed the law to the cross; right?
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And He broke down that barrier in His body, and then He made the two men one. He created a new man in Himself. They take this section, and they say that because of the cross Jesus reconciled us to all humanity –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – every human, and they move into a social gospel kind of practice that came out of that. They just destroy Ephesians 2.
Colleen: And along with that, one of the things this chapter asserts is that the cross provides – and this is a quote – “an eschatological certainty that this world of evil” – get this – “once the usurped dominion of Satan, will be cleansed of the presence and power of sin.” And then they use Revelation 12:1 as their text. Well, there are so many things wrong with that. But the one that jumped out at me is, the world has never been the usurped dominion of Satan. Satan usurped nothing. God sent him, cast him out of heaven. God gave him whatever rule and authority he has ever had. That’s very clear. The cross did not restore the dominion of Christ over the earth from a usurped authority that Satan took. Satan was never in charge of anything God didn’t give him, and Romans 8 tells us that it is God who bound all creation to decay, not Satan. Adventists give Satan so much authority. He is actually a sort of demigod in their own system. He is almost divine. He’s like the evil god, and Jesus is the good God, and they’re battling it out. And the fact is Satan has no godlike powers. He is not omnipresent. He is not omniscient. He is not omnipotent. Jesus didn’t win any power back from Satan. As you said earlier, what Jesus did on the cross regarding Satan was He fulfilled the law, and Satan can’t use the law against God’s people anymore.
Nikki: Well, and you know, in that context I kept seeing in here, when they talk about Satan’s power over people and his demonic control, and they talk about sin, it’s all diabolical.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: All of that, it’s like it’s as if we are – which I find so interesting, because when you talk to Adventists about the sovereignty of God, they accuse you of turning humans into robots, but they essentially make humans robots –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – because Satan is the one who has all this demonic power and control. And you know, before we started recording this, Richard talked about how, as an Adventist, we all thought he was omnipresent.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: We thought Satan was everywhere we were because every time we sin it’s Satan’s fault; right?
Colleen: Yeah!
Nikki: So he must be right there tempting us. It doesn’t come from us alone.
Colleen: And if we’re sinning here and someone’s sinning in India, Satan’s everywhere.
Nikki: They talk in this chapter first about the death of Christ. And then, of course, they go on to the death of self.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And then they talk about living in this newness of life. And in the section of “Death to Self.” They say, “Christian life thus does not begin with birth. It begins with death. Until self dies, until self is crucified, there is no beginning at all. There must be a radical, deliberate total surgery of self.”
Colleen: Oh, my goodness. This chapter makes it clear that for growth in Christ you have to have the death of Christ, first of all. Then you have to have the death of self. You have to have two deaths before there can be any growth. It’s not even there has to be life, there has to be a resurrection, there has to be a new birth. It’s all about death. So back to your first question to me, Nikki. When I read those verses as an Adventist, about taking up my cross, about dying to self, it was all about becoming worthy. It was somehow emulating Jesus on the cross getting this victory over Satan. And I had to do the same. And I had to excise my desires. I had to excise my emotions. And you know what? That went so deep, I still struggle with that. I still find myself internally shutting down if I feel like I’m facing a situation I can’t resolve. And that’s not biblical. As a born-again child of God, I have His life in me. I have His resurrection life in me. The Christian life does not begin with death. We’re born dead. Jesus died to fulfill the terms of the law, and when I trust Him, He gives me, as Romans 8 says, His resurrection life. And it’s wrong to present this as we have to kill off everything that is us before we can hope to please God.
Nikki: It’s very hopeless, isn’t it?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s very hopeless. I used to wonder how, how do I do that? Tell me how.
Colleen: Me too!
Nikki: I know we need to, but how? How do I do it? They talk in here, and they talked in the original wording of the fundamental belief, about the Holy Spirit dwelling with us. So if you just read that quickly, then it sounds like, “Oh, He dwells in all of us.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But if you actually know Adventism and you read anything Adventist related, you understand, that only happens as long as you are worthy of Him dwelling in you.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: He’s not going to come and stay no matter what you do.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: He comes and He goes, and so not only do we have to make effectual the work of Christ on the cross –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – we have to also make the Holy Spirit want to come and live in us –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – and then we have to keep Him here –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – and then we have to figure out how to keep Him here every single day.
Colleen: You know, Adventism is completely physical, it’s completely human-centered, and God is kind of about us. He’ll respond to us almost like a passive-aggressive parent. If we get it right, He’ll honor us with His pleasure. If we don’t get it right, He’ll withdraw, as Ellen White even pictured it, with a sad, frowning face. I mean, I learned that Jesus does not love naughty children.
Nikki: Yeah, she said that.
Colleen: So we have passive-aggressive God, we have easily wounded Jesus, and then we have us, sitting here trying to figure out how to make God happy. And we thought, at least I did, that making God happy somehow involved the same kinds of things I would try to do to make an angry parent happy.
Nikki: Um-hmm. You’re guessing.
Colleen: I’m always guessing!
Nikki: Hypervigilant guessing.
Colleen: Yes, yes.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But nothing ever worked, and I knew I wasn’t pleasing God.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: My self was so thoroughly dead, and I didn’t know it was because I was born that way. [Laughter.]
Nikki: And we sure had a lot of confirmation bias, didn’t we?
Colleen: Yes, we did.
Nikki: Every time something went wrong in our life, we knew we were doing something wrong.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: So they say in here, they say, “In Christian life, the death of self is not an option but a necessity.” So if you define their understanding of death to self as necessary for salvation and a deliberate act of human will after placing your faith in Jesus, then you understand their equation. Faith + works = salvation. You cannot have it any other way.
Colleen: Yes. Absolutely not.
Nikki: I think that they anticipate that argument. I think they anticipate people saying, “Well, that’s faith plus works,” because the very next section they talk about “cheap grace.”
Colleen: Yes, they did. And that made me upset too. [Laughter.] They actually say, “Grace cost God His Son’s life. Free grace does not mean cheap grace,” and then they have a quote from Bonhoeffer, and then they go on to this: “Cheap grace has nothing to do with the call of Jesus. When Jesus calls a person, He offers him or her a cross to carry. To be a disciple is to be a follower, and being a follower of Jesus is no cheap trick.” And I want to say, we’re mocking, we’re being sarcastic, we’re trying to make a point with some sort of cynical humor. Cheap grace isn’t even a thing. Grace from God is grace from God because God is God and we are human, and He sent His Son to take His wrath. That is not cheap. And my receiving that is not cheap, when I realize that He is my life! How is that cheap? It’s offensive the way they talk about this.
Nikki: It’s their method, though. It’s their strawman argument. It’s a lot like, “Oh, there’s no secret rapture.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Well, I don’t know a Christian who teaches a secret rapture. [Laughter.] I know a fictional writer who did, but –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes.
Nikki: They don’t represent what we believe accurately.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Which is why I always felt so superior to Christians. Like, how could they believe this? How could they believe in cheap grace?
Colleen: I know. I did too. Um-hmm.
Nikki: How could they believe a rapture? How could they believe in – anything?
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Don’t they know the Sabbath is right there on the fourth line?
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I mean, you feel superior.
Colleen: The thing that they miss in this business of walking and growing in Christ is that Paul tells us that we are to walk in the same way we’re justified. We were justified by faith. We walk, after we’re born again, the same way, by faith in Christ. We don’t do it by accessing an impersonal it, the power of God in the power of the Holy Spirit to help us overcome temptation. The authors of this book do not know the new birth. They don’t. They couldn’t write this, because this is heresy and slander against an almighty God who sent almighty God the Son and took our sin to fulfill the law and break its curse. And He shattered death so it can’t own us. Nobody could write this way if they understood what it meant to know and love Jesus and to be made alive by His Spirit.
Nikki: The next thing they do in this chapter is they give “Seven Hallmarks of Growing in Christ,” and they include: A Life of Spirit, A Life of Love and Unity, A Life of Study, A Life of Prayer, A Life of Fruit-bearing, A Life of Spiritual Warfare, and A Life of Worship, Witness, and Help. In the first section, “A Life of Spirit,” Ellen White says, “With the indwelling of the Spirit comes a new life, new in that it rejects the old ways of thought, action, and relationship that were against God’s will.” This is their definition of new life. It is a new lifestyle.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s what’s in the mind. It’s what’s in the behavior. They don’t understand that all of that flows from being created new, having a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – Ezekiel 36.26, having a new spirit, having the Spirit of God, which causes us – and that word is a word related to God’s creative power – causes us to walk in His ways.
Colleen: It’s a complete miracle of God.
Nikki: Yes! It’s an act of God.
Colleen: We don’t develop it.
Nikki: And then she also refers to the Holy Spirit and refers, of course, to Him as an “it.”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And she says, “When the Spirit of God takes possession of the heart, it transforms the life.” She goes on to describe what that looks like – of course, it’s all behavior-related – and she says at the end of this, “Then that power, which no human eye can see,” which she has described as light from the courts above –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – “creates a new being in the image of God.” So after all of this behavior change in this new lifestyle –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – then this light from the courts above creates a new being in the image of God. This isn’t even close to Christian.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: Every human being is created in the image of God.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: The new creation is predestined (Romans 8:29) to be conformed into the image of the Son.
Colleen: That’s right. And that’s following being created into a new life. The new life doesn’t come after we perfect our behavior. The second thing they talk about is a life of love and unity, and they word this whole section in ways that sound very suspiciously like a social gospel –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – a bit of universalism thrown in, this inclusive, no-barrier, all-inclusive love that is supposed to be filling our hearts as we grow in Christ. This is clearly betraying that these people have never understood what it meant to be born again. And I just have to say, the love that fills our hearts when we’re born again is not some sort of social decision that everybody should all come in and all be treated equally. There is still a distinction between believers and unbelievers, but God puts Himself in us so that we see other people as He sees them. I will never forget, shortly after we became Christian, after leaving Adventism, Richard and I went to the beach one Saturday afternoon, and normally the people on the beach, if the beach was crowded, would really irritate Richard. He would feel like he couldn’t get his Sabbath blessing, that the beach was this lovely place, the second book of nature, where he would meet God, and people were just a distraction and an irritation, and they were in the way. And this particular day we were walking along the beach, and it was very crowded – it was the middle of summer in Southern California – and all of a sudden Richard said to me – and he was emotional – he said, “I just realized that I don’t hate these people. I love these people. These people are why we are here. These people need to know Jesus.” The attitude in his heart was completely 180 from what it had ever been before, and he didn’t decide to do that. He was walking on the beach and realized that God had changed him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s what it means to be growing in Christ and born again. It’s fruit of what God has done, not something we achieve by a determined decision.
Nikki: There’s so much Scripture to support that. It’s Christ who’s washing His bride. It’s the word of God that’s transforming our minds and our hearts. We don’t even know it’s happening. So often we end up surprised by how our affections have changed –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and our concerns have changed. In Adventism the topic of hell was something to just get angry about and debate. As believers, you think about hell, and you understand you are charged with wearing those shoes that are ready to go out and share the gospel, the armor of God in Ephesians 6.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Everything’s different.
Colleen: Everything.
Nikki: And it’s not because you’ve just decided to have a different lifestyle.
Colleen: Um-um.
Nikki: I found it interesting in the next section, where they talk about a life of study. They say that there are two primary sources for spiritual food, which I was like, really? Are they going to admit Ellen here?
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: Well, they didn’t. They said that it’s the Word of God –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and prayer life.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: This is a source of spiritual food, your prayer life. So in talking about these two sources of spiritual food, they begin with Scripture, and they have an Ellen White quote here that says, “Jesus met Satan with the words of Scripture, ‘It is written.'” He said, “In every temptation the weapon of His warfare was the Word of God. Satan demanded of Christ a miracle as a sign of His divinity. But that which is greater than all miracles, a firm reliance upon a ‘thus saith the Lord’ was a sign that could not be controverted. So long as Christ held to this position, the tempter could gain no advantage.” So she has Satan questioning the divinity of Christ –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – and she responds by diminishing the divinity of Christ!
Colleen: Yes! Exactly. And you know what else is interesting? They use this quote from Ellen White to tell their members, “Oh, you’ve got to depend on Scripture.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They use the prophet to validate Scripture.
Nikki: The prophet who, of course, redefined Scripture for them.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then they ask if you want to know how to keep your soul on track for God. “Do you want to know what God has in store for you today, tomorrow, or the day after? Reach for the Bible, study it daily.” It’s a sales pitch.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: And it’s promising what Scripture doesn’t promise.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: God doesn’t tell us what’s going to happen today, tomorrow, or the day after in our personal lives.
Colleen: No, He doesn’t. He asks us to trust Him.
Nikki: And we don’t keep our souls on track for God. 1 Peter 1:5 tells us that we are guarded by the power of God Himself.
Colleen: And Philippians 1:6 says God is faithful to complete what He begins in us. The fourth thing here is the life of prayer, and they actually say that prayer is listening to His voice. They are recommending to their people that by prayer they can have extrabiblical revelation, and who’s to say they’re right or wrong?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Who is going to go up to another Adventist and say, “You’re telling me that you heard from God. Well, I can’t say yes or not to that because I can’t counter your experience.” So they are wide open giving these people permission to believe anything that their consciences or their minds tell them to believe, “Oh, I got it in prayer.” You know, if our prayer is our last word, then we are in danger of listening to our own internal monologue. Scripture is what God has given us, and Scripture is the Word of God, and Scripture, according to Hebrews 4:12 and 13, is what divides between our soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and reveals the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. And it’s interesting that this chapter also says that that verse from Hebrews is giving us the power to discern and to divide between thoughts and intentions and revealing our heart. No! It doesn’t ever say we’re given that power. Scripture itself has that power. Scripture examines us, we don’t examine. Scripture examines us and reveals God’s will to us.
Nikki: And it was also interesting that they said that, “Effective prayer is spirit-filled prayer,” and I have no idea what that means to an Adventist.
Colleen: I don’t either. I never did, as an Adventist.
Nikki: In the next section they talk about a life of fruit-bearing, and if you read through the entire section, you understand quickly that they’re referring to keeping the Ten Commandments –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – which, of course, is going to lead us to their fundamental belief on the Sabbath.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: And then they get right down to the purpose of the entire fundamental belief, don’t they, Colleen?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: They begin to talk about spiritual warfare. They say that “we’re engaged in a warfare that is real and dangerous,” and they refer to angels as “spirits who are here to guide us in spiritual growth.” How is this not the paganism that they’re allegedly combating?
Colleen: I agree with you. They are giving these converts a new form of dressed-up First-World paganism. This is not scriptural belief in Jesus. They’re giving them another form of angel worship. It’s a New Age with a Christian coat. I just have to mention, in this last one, “A Life of Worship, Witness, and Hope,” they say that “The great commission of Matthew 28 charges the Christian to be mature enough to take the gospel of forgiveness to the world around in order that all may know the redemptive grace of God.” And then they say, “The sign of the life of the Spirit in Christian growth is a life of ever-expanding witness, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the world.” Well, this is the heart of the reason for having written this fundamental belief.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They’re speaking to the missionaries, and they’re saying, “Be a man. Stand up. Be mature. Take this Adventist message to the world.” And then they’re misusing Jesus’ promise to be with His disciples to the uttermost parts of the world, to the end of the age, and they use the Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria formula, if you want to call it that, when the Book of Acts explains that. Pentecost occurred first in Jerusalem to the Jews, second in Samaria (Acts 8) to the Samaritans, and third to the uttermost parts of the world (Acts 10), where the first group of Gentiles received the Holy Spirit when they trusted in Christ. This is not about Adventism, but they’re appropriating Scripture and challenging these missionaries to stand up, be mature, and go out there and take this heresy to a group of vulnerable people who want what Adventism offers because Adventism offers them to be cleaned up, to be educated, to have a job with the church, to have income. It’s not about knowing Christ; it’s about having a First-World lifestyle.
Nikki: That’s exactly what it is, and this is the culmination of an entire chapter that redefines what it is to live a life in Christ. They don’t know what it means. It looks like everything Ellen White said. It includes spiritual warfare, talking to angels, just all kinds of things that you’re not going to find in Scripture. And then they say that Matthew 28 charges Christians to be mature enough. What does mature enough look like to an Adventist? Someone who understands all of the points of Adventism.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: That’s not what Jesus said. Jesus never said, “Be mature enough.” Jesus Himself taught those men.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He was the one who taught them. They had the purest information of anyone who’s ever walked the planet, and He told them to go and teach everyone else what He taught them. So they end this section, they end this chapter, misusing Scripture in a way that just – it really makes me angry. It’s a text that I love from 1 Thessalonians. They say, “‘Lead a sanctified life’ says the same apostle,” referring to Paul, “in order that” – and then they begin to quote the text – “‘your whole spirit, soul, and body may be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.'” So they’re saying, “You lead a sanctified life so that you can be preserved,” but listen to what the text says, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it.” That’s 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. The text says God is the one who acts in us to sanctify us and to transform us into the person He’s called us to be, and they’re saying, “You do this so that you can be saved.” At the very end there’s a quote from Ellen where she says, “The house of God, the church on earth, is the gate of heaven.” So these missionaries are being told that they have to be mature enough to take this gospel all over the place, throw it far and wide. It’s a false gospel.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And they have to lead this sanctified life so they can be saved, and the church is the gateway to heaven, and it’s your job now to take this Adventist church into the world.
Colleen: That’s exactly what they’re saying. And we appeal to you, if you do not know the Jesus who took the wrath of God for your sin, if you still think that you have to grow in Christ in order to be pleasing to Him and fit for heaven, please go and read the Book of Hebrews and see what Jesus has done. He has fulfilled the law, every requirement of it. He has broken death. He came and died and carried the weight of your sin to the cross and made the law obsolete by fulfilling all of its requirements, and He is asking you to believe Him. If you haven’t done that, please do it.
Nikki: If you have any questions or comments for us, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com, and don’t forget to visit proclamationmagazine.com to view our online articles, to sign up for weekly emails, or to leave a donation should you choose to do so. And last, please like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Join us next week as we look at Fundamental Belief #12 on “The Church.”
Colleen: We’ll see you then.
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—God the Holy Spirit | 114 - October 17, 2022
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