Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “The Church”. Learn how Adventism teaches that their denomination is the only true church and how it views those who are not members of Adventism. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: We hope that you are enjoying our plunge into Adventism’s fundamental beliefs. I know I’m becoming much more clear about the way Adventism has woven its beliefs together to teach and to support Ellen White’s worldview and the great controversy paradigm. But it’s pretty painful at times, even though it’s interesting.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Today we’re going to discuss Fundamental Belief #12, The Church. Now, that word sounds innocuous. It sounds like something every Christian would understand, but under the surface of this belief statement, we find Adventism’s belief that it is God’s special last-day visible church to which all other sincere people will eventually come. But we love hearing from you, so feel free to email your comments and questions to formeradventist@gmail.com. And go to proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly Proclamation! email magazine, to find links to our YouTube channel, and also to find links to this podcast. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and please, if you love this program, give us a 5-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, Nikki, I have a question.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: As an Adventist, what did you understand the church to be?
Nikki: That’s a really interesting question, and I wouldn’t think normally that I’d have to spend much time considering it, but as I’ve thought back to that, I realize I had all different kinds of ideas about what the church was. In general, the church was Seventh-day Adventism –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – because the people I spoke to who were believers in Adventism, they were only Adventists. I didn’t know other Christians. So when I spoke about the church, I was talking to Adventists, it was Adventism. Now, it depended on what I was talking about. It was very common to say, “Well, all churches think that they’re the right church –
Colleen: Um-hmm, yeah.
Nikki: – all churches think they have the truth. And in that context I would have been referring to denominations. I did have a sense that there was this church that only God knew, and only He knew who was a part of it, and that was the church that would ultimately be saved. I didn’t think of it in a biblical way. It was all in the context of who I was talking to and how we were talking, what we were talking about. I don’t think I could have explained it the way Scripture does.
Colleen: Yeah, I certainly couldn’t have either. It’s interesting, thinking about it, I have the same reaction you did, that it should be easy, and yet it’s a little complicated to try to come up with what I thought as an Adventist, but basically what you said is what I thought: We were the true church, we had more truth than anybody else, everybody else thought they were the true church, but they were actually not possessed of all the truth because they went to church on Sunday.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But if they were sincere, God would, by and by, bring them to the truth church, us. So, reading through this fundamental belief, The Church, it’s been interesting to see the way this book defines the church and what it means to be a member of the church from an Adventist perspective, and even though they use so many right-sounding words that Christians might not even notice are off, if you understand Adventism and if you have an Adventist worldview, you begin to see, this is not describing what the Bible describes as the church. So, Nikki, why don’t we just start by reading the fundamental belief, which is actually kind of surprisingly long.
Nikki: Okay. This is Fundamental Belief #12, The Church: “The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In continuity with the people of God in Old Testament times, we are called out from the world; and we join together for worship, for fellowship, for instruction in the Word, for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, for service to humanity, and for the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. The church derives its authority from Christ, who is the incarnate Word revealed in the Scriptures. The church is God’s family; adopted by Him as children, its members live on the basis of the new covenant. The church is the body of Christ, a community of faith of which Christ Himself is the Head. The church is the bride for whom Christ died that He might sanctify and cleanse her. At His return in triumph, He will present her to Himself a glorious church, the faithful of all the ages, the purchase of His blood, not having spot or wrinkle, but holy and without blemish.”
Colleen: As you look at this now, Nikki, the words actually sound somewhat innocuous, but is there anything that raises a red flag or even a yellow flag to you as you read through it now, from a Christian perspective?
Nikki: Yeah, there are several in here. First of all, comparing us with the people of the Old Testament times. You know, I know, and anyone listening who is or was an Adventist knows, we thought we were Israel.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: And so I see what they’re doing here with referencing the Old Testament, and I’m always bothered by hearing sentences that can be interpreted through a Christian lens –
Colleen: I know!
Nikki: – and where a Christian would read it and go, “Yeah, I agree,” knowing what’s behind it, which is fleshed out quite well in the chapter, actually.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: But not every Christian looking at their beliefs is going to read the chapter. They’re going to read the beliefs. So that’s hard to read. But one of the things that did jump out for me here near the end, where it’s talking about the church, it refers to the church as “the faithful of all the ages.” As a Christian, I understand that it’s Christ who is faithful.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It’s Christ Himself who saved me and who is keeping me and who will bring me home, but they refer to the church as the faithful of the ages, and I know that that’s coming from their persecution mentality.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And so that, of course, was one of those flags that came up.
Colleen: That’s an interesting point. I hadn’t flagged on that one, but you’re absolutely right. The faithful of the ages are the ones who manage to be loyal to the law.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s interesting. When we go through this chapter, one thing that I just want to mention in passing is that for some reason they begin with the story of Moses striking the rock the second time around, when Israel was looking for water, and he struck the rock twice when God had told him to speak to the rock and bring forth water, but then God told him that he would not enter the Promised Land because he had not honored God in what had happened there, and this book does exactly what I learned as an Adventist, it quotes Ellen White, it refers to her, it quotes the Patriarchs and Prophets, and it mentions that because Moses lost his temper and struck the rock twice, it was the same as striking Christ twice, and Christ was not to be struck twice, but that was why he did not enter the Promised Land. If you actually look at the Book of Numbers, where the story is told, the real issue with this is not that he struck the rock twice but that he didn’t honor God to the people. He said in anger to the people, “Must we bring water forth for you?” Well, only God can bring forth the water from the rock for the people of Israel, and there is a sense in which Jesus Christ was the spiritual Rock that they followed through the wilderness, and definitely the rock was a symbol of Christ, but the issue was that Moses didn’t honor God, he struck the rock when God said not to strike but to speak, and he didn’t believe God’s word. Moses displayed anger at the people and disobeyed God in his personal anger, and he took credit for having to deal with the people and provide for them. He did not honor God to them. And I’m just wanting to say that because this is how the book begins the chapter. They use a well-known story that Ellen White told us and that the Bible recounts, but they interpret it in a different way than the Bible account actually tells us, and that’s kind of what this whole chapter does. It tells us things that Christians would think, “Yes, I believe that,” but the meaning infused into these definitions that they don’t define publicly, confuse people, and Adventists know the meaning, but Christians don’t. Well, as we start moving into this chapter on the church, they say that the church was weak and feeble at the time when Jesus said to Peter, “Upon this testimony, upon this Rock, I will build my church.” And that was before Jesus went to the cross, when they had gone up to Caesarea Philippi and Jesus had asked Peter who He was, and he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus had commended him and said, “This is not revealed to you by men but by my Father in heaven, and upon this Rock I will build my church.” They use that episode and say, “How feeble and weak the church was when Christ made that pronouncement! It consisted of a few tired, doubting, self-promoting disciples, a handful of women, and the fickle multitude that vanished when the Rock was struck.” Well, Nikki, what’s wrong with that? Was the church weak and feeble? Was there a church?
Nikki: The church was born at Pentecost.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And one of the things that really stood out to me as I walked through this chapter – actually, it brought me back to when I first left Adventism, and I started going to women’s Bible study classes at our Christian church. So in women’s ministry we were taught by Elizabeth Inrig, and she would talk about the Bible as one big picture, and she would talk about how God interacted with His people in different ways at different times, and we’ve covered that in this podcast when we’ve talked about the covenants, and we talk about that when we are dealing with hermeneutics –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and we’re talking about the first audience. And we have this global picture now that I never had in Adventism.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And it’s why, when we talk to Adventists and we ask them about the covenant, they don’t really know how to talk about it, there’s one covenant, the Adventists are the bridge between the Old and the New Testament, etc.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: You see that assumption all over this chapter.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: Before they even teach what the church is, they’re calling these people the church –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and the truth is, the church wasn’t born until Acts chapter 2.
Colleen: Oh, I could not agree more. I am really disturbed in this whole chapter how they assume and state that the church is a continuation of Israel, it’s a continuation of the Old Testament.
Nikki: And they have to do that to hold on to the Mosaic covenant for Christians.
Colleen: That’s right. And they have to do it to believe that they themselves are the inheritors of all the promises God made to Israel, that as spiritual Israel who have the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, they are the chosen ones. But that’s not what Scripture teaches.
Nikki: So after that introduction, where they just assume that the church existed at that point in time –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – they go on to define what the church is, and they try to give a study on the languages, and they say that the church is God’s gathered people.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And so the people in Israel, the people that God pulled out of Egypt even, they are the church.
Colleen: That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that God created a nation, but what God did in the Old Testament was that He created a nation. He took Abraham’s descendants out of Egypt, as He promised Abraham He would, and He made a nation. He gave them the Mosaic covenant to define the terms of their government, the terms of their worship, and the terms of their identity, and He made a nation which was going to represent Him in the world, but which, more importantly, was going to be the place where He would dwell. And as His nation, that is the seed from which the Messiah would come. Now, the book tries to create the argument, which I learned as an Adventist, that Israel’s job was to present God to the nations, that they would be like a shining light on a hill of obedience and that all the other nations would see how blessed they were for their obedience and would come running up to Israel, but that’s not what the Bible actually says the role of Israel was. Israel was to be the place where God would dwell. God would glorify Himself through Israel for sure, but God created Israel to bring forth the Messiah. They were not the first church. They were a nation. The church, later on, when it was founded at Pentecost, as you pointed out, is not a nation. It’s individual people who believe, that become part of the Body of Christ, and God scatters them into the nations. It’s completely inside out from Israel. It’s not a continuation, although the God of Israel and the God of the church is the same God, and He will save all in both paradigms who believe in Him.
Nikki: So I just remember always believing that Israel failed, they just failed, and now we are going to do what they were supposed to do. It was more of a “passing the torch.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And so when I read in this section, “He desired, through Israel, to create the largest church on earth” –
Colleen: That bothered me too.
Nikki: – “a church where representatives of all nations of the world would come to worship, learn of the true God, and return to their own people with the message of salvation,” I thought, no, that’s actually not at all what happened.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: People who became Jewish, people who were circumcised and became Jewish, lived with Israel; right?
Colleen: Yes, they did.
Nikki: They didn’t scatter. It was the church that scattered.
Colleen: That’s right. Israel didn’t scatter. Israel was a nation. And yes, to be sure, people think of the Queen of Sheba, who came to see the glories of Israel that God was bestowing on Israel, and they did go back to their lands with an appreciation for what God was doing, but it wasn’t because they became Israel or became the church. God was glorifying Himself through a nation.
Nikki: So then they say, “God’s people failed to fulfill their mission,” and they say, “When the Jews lost their mission they became just another nation and ceased to be God’s church.” They were never God’s church.
Colleen: No. They were God’s people, and you know what? They are still God’s people, even though they are in spiritual rebellion. God’s promises, as Paul explains in Romans 9 through 11, will still be fulfilled. They are irrevocable, and God will still keep His promises to Israel, but that doesn’t mean that they are in belief at this moment, although individual Jews are coming into the church.
Nikki: More rapidly than ever.
Colleen: Yeah. It’s exciting to watch!
Nikki: So now they say that the current church exists “to accomplish God’s original plan.”
Colleen: Right, His original plan. You know, His original plan is still His original plan. There’s never been a Plan A or a Plan B. Israel did not fail to do God’s original plan so He had to go to Plan B and initiate the church.
Nikki: The only way you can call any of this God’s original plan is if you’re thinking from the Adventist origins story –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – where God’s original plan was that everybody would keep His law.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But then, of course, Satan rebelled, His law is not fair, so enter humans, and now we are here to vindicate God. The Jews didn’t vindicate God because they didn’t keep His law well, so now He’s giving it to the Christians, and now we are going to vindicate God’s law.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: So there’s your original plan.
Colleen: That’s a very good assessment. That’s exactly right. That’s the lens through which this whole chapter on the church is developed. So no matter what the words say and what a Christian who has never been Adventist would understand – and that is their goal, to keep the Christians from understanding – they speak about the church through that lens of the great controversy and the origins story, and they try to make the law central, even in the church. You might not catch that from reading the fundamental belief, but that is the bottom line. So they start going into the characteristics of the church, and one of the things they say is, “The church is a body.” Well, that’s what we believe as Christians, we are the Body of Christ. Once again the way they describe the Body of Christ is not the way the Bible does. It’s interesting that nowhere in here do they talk about the new birth or about the fact that believing in Jesus is what brings you into the Body of Christ. Instead, they say that “The church is nothing less than Christ’s Body, and it is the organism through which He imparts His fullness.” And then they say, “He gives His spiritual life through His power and grace to every true believe.” Now, that also is code for “His spiritual life through His power and grace.” That’s not about a new birth as we understand a dead spirit coming to life. That’s Adventist-speak for “He’s going to give you His special power, when you assent to Adventist doctrine, to keep the law and to be good. And then they go on explaining about spiritual gifts and that everybody has a gift, and they end this section with an Ellen White quote about the church being God’s fortress, His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world.
Nikki: Well, there’s your great controversy again.
Colleen: The Bible never describes the church as God’s fortress. God is our fortress, our refuge, our strength, a very present help in time of trouble. We are not His fortress on earth.
Nikki: So this section walks through the different metaphors used for the church.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And they talk about the church as the temple, and I’ll be honest with you, it surprised me that the health message didn’t come up. I suppose that’s later. But they talk about the church as a bride, and they say, “Through the sanctifying influence of the truth of God’s word and the cleansing that baptism provides, Christ can purify the members of the church, taking away their filthy garments and clothing them in the robe of His perfect righteousness. Thus He can prepare the church to be His bride.” This is suggesting that Christ isn’t even capable of purifying the members of His Body, His chosen people, until they have been sanctified by God’s Word and cleansed by baptism.
Colleen: Exactly. And the fact is that God cleanses His people, and Ephesians 5 says that Jesus, the Head of the Body, the husband of the bride, cleanses the church. This is not a He can do it, as the book says; it’s not a maybe, if we cooperate. And also, the Bible says that we are His bride when we believe. The book says that Christ works in us in trying to get us all cleaned up so that we can become His bride, that when He comes, by then hopefully we will have become His bride. No, we are His bride. He cleans us up after we become His bride. We don’t become His bride after we get ourselves purified.
Nikki: Yeah. It reminds me, I think it was last week, we talked about that part in the chapter that says it’s the goal of every church member to be cleaned by Christ, and they use the Ephesians 5 passage. So they have that backwards.
Colleen: They do.
Nikki: And then they say that the church is Jerusalem above. This part really got to me –
Colleen: Oh, me too.
Nikki: – because we just did a walk through Hebrews last year –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and it was wonderful.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: And I love Hebrews chapter 12. But they use Hebrews 12 here, and they leave off a really important section. They talk about this Jerusalem above, really, as being Zion, as Hebrews talks about in chapter 12. And they say, “Those who are part of this glorious company ‘have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.'” They end there, and they say that that’s Hebrews 12:22 and 23. It is not.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: It is the first section of Hebrews 12:23. It’s incomplete. And they leave it off because they’re trying to maintain their doctrine on the nature of man.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Hebrews 12:23 says, “And to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.”
Colleen: And there you go.
Nikki: They left it off.
Colleen: It’s also interesting that they refer to Galatians when they talk about the Jerusalem above.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And they use Galatians out of context as well. They say, “The New Testament sees the church as the ‘Jerusalem above,’ the spiritual counterpart of the earthly Jerusalem,” and then they reference Galatians 4:26. Well, in context, Galatians 4 is using the metaphor of Mt. Zion, or the Jerusalem above, being contrasted with Sinai, and in Galatians 4 Sinai is being compared to Hagar, the slave who produced children of slavery, and the Jerusalem above is our mother. Sarah’s children are belonging to the Jerusalem above, and the context is the New Covenant, leaving behind the Mosaic covenant, leaving behind Mt. Sinai and moving on to the New Covenant, where our home is, the Jerusalem above. This book completely ignores the context, completely ignores the New Covenant.
Nikki: That was the part of Galatians that opened my eyes –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – for the first time. I read that Sarah and Hagar story, and I put the book down, and I cried, and I knew that they had lied to us.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: That was the moment.
Colleen: You know, I think one of the things that makes me the most upset about the way Adventism uses its proof-texting – and right here, Nikki, in this section on the Jerusalem above, we’ve referred to two that are very powerful passages of Scripture that we didn’t know in context as Adventists.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And they’re using Galatians 4 and Hebrews 12 to make a point to support their Adventist doctrines, to conceal the truth, to misrepresent it, to make people think they’re getting Scripture, but they’re not.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: They’re teaching falsehood using proof-texts from the Bible. There is no greater sin than that. It’s what Satan did with Jesus in the wilderness. He grabbed texts out of context, texts that Jesus Himself was the author of, and tempted Him using His own words out of context, and it’s very effective if people don’t know the Word of God.
Nikki: Um-hmm. It’s the same thing that happened in the garden too –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – “Did God really say…”
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: So then the next metaphor they refer to is “The church as a family.” They say, “Two metaphors are used to describe how people join this family: adoption and the new birth. Through faith in Christ, those who are newly baptized are no longer slaves, but children of the heavenly Father.” So you see what they did there.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Scripture teaches that God causes us to be born again.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And it teaches us that He adopts us as His children. These are acts of God.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then they try to take those two acts of God –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – and summarize it by saying, “Through faith in Christ, those who are newly baptized are no longer slaves, but children of the heavenly Father.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Baptism is the entrance into the Adventist church.
Colleen: Make no mistake, that’s what they’re saying, that’s what they’re declaring, and that’s how you become an Adventist.
Nikki: And baptism has nothing to do with either the new birth or adoption.
Colleen: No. It is the sign that we have trusted Jesus. Biblical baptism is often called “believer’s baptism,” and it happens after a person has trusted Jesus and has been born again. We enter the Body of Christ through the baptism of the Spirit, not through the baptism of water. If baptism of water were necessary to enter the Body of Christ, the thief on the cross could not have been in paradise with Jesus the day he died.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, Jesus did command us to be baptized, and believers are supposed to obey that command, but it’s not a salvation issue. It’s a declaration issue. It’s like having the public marriage ceremony after committing yourself to somebody. Baptism is like that public ceremony saying, “This is where I’m putting my faith.”
Nikki: So as they move through talking about the church as a family, they describe something I never experienced when I was an Adventist. They described support, encouragement –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Oh, yeah.
Nikki: – acceptance. They refer to the church as a family as being a place “‘where people are loved, respected, and recognized as somebody. A place where people acknowledge that they need each other. Where talents are developed. Where people grow.'”
Colleen: Oh, my goodness.
Nikki: And “‘where everybody is fulfilled.'” This isn’t how the New Testament talks –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – about the church.
Colleen: No. Nor is it the way a lot of Adventists experience Adventism.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: It’s always the ideal they present, “Oh, be like this to the ones around you.” “Oh, be like this. Give this kind of grace.” But how can you give grace if you don’t know Jesus? This is all an ideal from a humanistic perspective that says, “You have to be nice. You have to be kind. Don’t be rude. Be supportive.” It does nothing to change the heart. It does nothing to give you a new identity in Christ.
Nikki: You know, it’s funny when I first went to a Christian church, I opened up their worship folder, and I was looking around to see who the pastor was and who was up front and who was talking, and I didn’t see any of that in there. But I saw page after page of different places where people could go to receive help for struggles, for sin, for addiction, or for Bible study. It was all about being the Body of Christ –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and being all those things that the Adventists attempt to counterfeit, and I thought, “My goodness, these people admit that they’re struggling with these things to each other.”
Colleen: Right!
Nikki: It didn’t line up at all with anything in this chapter. But what did is they say that this metaphor of family “engenders a deep loyalty that undergirds and strengthens.”
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: And that I resonated with –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – the loyalty to Adventism.
Colleen: It doesn’t matter if you agree with Adventism or not, if you are an Adventist, you somehow deeply know that you will remain loyal to them, even if you disagree. And it’s so interesting because I remember the experience of having worked with everybody from very conservative historic Adventists way up to the progressive Adventists of the Loma Linda area. They had deep disagreements within themselves. If they met together in a Sabbath school class, there would be heated disagreements. But if somebody from outside comes in, all that disappears, you circle the wagons, and you’re first of all Adventist.
Nikki: Yeah. You know, I have to share, when I was an Adventist I had a family member who would talk to me a good deal about her discontentment with the organization, and when I left and I tried to tell her what I was seeing, what was being revealed to me in Scripture and by our own history, she said, “I can’t talk to you about this. You’re not in the family anymore.”
Colleen: Perfectly said. She revealed it. It’s interesting to me that Adventists talk so much about their family, about the support, the identity, and it’s all deceptive because they don’t have true loyalty inside because they don’t have any new birth. They aren’t actually centered in Jesus. They aren’t actually born again through the gospel. They are united by a worldview established by Ellen White’s origins story. Everything they believe is filtered through that, and that’s what sets them apart and makes them unique in the world. That’s what unites them. It’s not Jesus, it’s not new life, it’s not eternal life, it’s not reconciliation, being justified through the propitiation of Jesus’ blood. That’s not what unites Adventists.
Nikki: No that’s all of their “I hope so.”
Colleen: And they’re united in their “hope so.”
Nikki: Yeah. It’s really sad.
Colleen: It is sad.
Nikki: It’s really, really sad.
Colleen: It’s a complete deception.
Nikki: And you know what holds them there, they have absolutely no faith in their ability to understand truth. They don’t believe that they can read Scripture and know it, and the very next section actually encourages that. They say that the church is the pillar and foundation of truth, and listen to this quote: “Truth, however, is dynamic, not static. If members claim to have new light – a doctrine or a new interpretation of the Scriptures – those of experience should test the new teaching by the standard of Scripture. If the new light meets this standard, then the church must accept it; if not, it should reject it. All members should yield to this Bible-based judgment, for ‘in the multitude of counselors there is safety.'” So those who are experienced will test it, and if they say it passes the test, then the rest of the church better fall in line.
Colleen: That’s right. And this quote that you just read gives complete permission for Ellen White. It actually states that you can’t just reject new light.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Not just new light, but new interpretations of the Scriptures. Nikki! Scripture stands.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You don’t have people that come along with new interpretations of the Scriptures that you would even consider. This is giving permission to Ellen White – and you know, it’s so interesting to me, their biblical proof that this is a biblical concept is not from the New Testament. They use Isaiah 8:20, which says, “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not stand with this, there is no light in them.” That passage is an Adventist proof-text, and the code for law and the testimony, Christians would think that to mean the Old Testament.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is the context. Isaiah is prophesying to Israel, chastising them about people who are false prophets and false teachers, but Adventists yank that out of context, and they mean law, Ten Commandments; testimony, Ellen White’s writings.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, Christians may not understand that when they see that verse, but Adventists do. That’s what they mean. And that’s the text they use to say that in the church, new doctrine or new interpretations shouldn’t just be dismissed but should be tested, and if they don’t disagree with Scripture, they should be accepted. There you have Ellen White.
Nikki: And so when you have a question, when you’re reading Scripture and you see an interpretation of Scripture – um, like reading it literally and believing it –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – you think, “I’ve got to go show this to someone. I’ve got to go talk to someone about it.” You go back to your Adventist teacher, and they’re going to tell you, “No, you’re not seeing that right.”
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: When I read Galatians and I had that moment there with Sarah and Hagar, I knew they weren’t the ones I needed to ask about it.
Colleen: That’s a very good point. You can’t go back to the people who deliberately teach Scripture wrong and hope that they can enlighten you on what you see in Scripture. You can’t go to a false teacher and expect to get clarifying help. The book goes on then and uses the metaphor that the church is as an army, militant and triumphant. And you know what? I struggled with this because as a Christian, having not been in Adventism for just over 20 years, I’m thinking, “I don’t think of the church as an army.” And I started looking at texts, and I don’t see that metaphor anywhere in the New Testament. I don’t see the church compared to an army. But then I thought, there are some hymns. I know Adventism loved the hymn “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I don’t know exactly where that came from. I don’t believe that was an Adventist hymn. They use Ephesians 6 as one of their proof-texts for calling the church an army. But Ephesians 6 is a passage on the armor of Christ, and if you read the passage in context, all of that armor is protective armor, not offensive armor. And Paul tells us that we are to don the armor of Christ and stand. The only truly offensive weapon in that arsenal is the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Even the armor of God is not lending itself to the image of a militant army that’s going to be triumphant. Only God is triumphant. The Lord Jesus fights for us. In fact, even in Exodus, when Israel was standing at the shore of the Red Sea, God said to Moses, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Stand still. I’ll fight for you.” It’s never been an army.
Nikki: No. And if we look at those pieces of the armor of God, we see that they are pieces that God puts on us. He gives us the belt of truth.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: He gives us the breastplate of righteousness. He gives us the helmet of salvation. And it’s as we are in His Word and we know how to read His Word or wield that sword that we learn all of those things and we stand in the truth, and then you have these cults that come along, and they try to dismantle your assurance of salvation –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – or just what that righteousness is. And if you’re really using that sword correctly, they come and they try to take it off.
Colleen: That’s true!
Nikki: But we stand.
Colleen: Yes, we do.
Nikki: And we pray for our brothers and sisters.
Colleen: Absolutely! And you know, I have to say too that they also use the parable of the tares, the person who came at night and sowed seeds of weeds in the field of wheat. And when they grew up, the farmer’s helpers came to him and said, “Master, do you want us to pull them up so they don’t choke out the wheat?” And the master said, “No, let them grow together so that you don’t pull the wheat out with the tares.” Now, this book uses that parable the way I learned it as an Adventist. And they say – this is their quote – “Weeds and wheat both flourished in the field. While God leads the converted to the church, Satan brings in the unconverted. These two groups influence the whole body – the one working for purification, the other for corruption. The conflict between them – within the church – will continue till the harvest, the Second Advent.” Nikki, in context, they did not take that far enough. They refer to Matthew 13, where this parable is found, but they don’t refer to the text where Jesus Himself identifies the field. The field is not the church. The field is the world. And in context, Jesus is saying: An enemy has sown seeds of tares in the world, but there are children of the kingdom in the world as well, and it’s not the church’s place to go through and try to dig out all the unbelievers in the field of the world. God will do that. The angels that He brings will do that, but it’s not our job. It’s not the church. And this is another thing that tells me Adventism does not understand what the church is. The church is not just a group of people who are converted to a set of beliefs or a way of thinking. The church is comprised of those who trust Jesus’ finished work and are born again of the Spirit. Satan can’t bring any unconverted members into that group. Now, to be sure, local congregations can be made up of true believers and false believers, but the local congregations are not the church. The whole definition of church is off, and you can tell that it’s off in this book because of the way they use this parable.
Nikki: Yeah, and immediately after that they say that Satan is angry with God’s church and will bring against it a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, and they reference Revelation 12, which is referring to Israel.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: They’re trying to create a situation where, first of all, you’re going to have a church that’s going to have people in it who will betray you –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and who will try to sow discord. And then Satan’s going to come, and there’s going to be a tribulation.
Colleen: That’s a really good observation.
Nikki: It’s setting them up for the doctrines that are going to nail that last nail in the coffin, the scary –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – time of trouble, the persecution of the Sabbath-keepers.
Colleen: That’s a great point. Well, what did you think, Nikki, about the church visible and invisible in this book?
Nikki: That was interesting. You know, I realized as I looked at that heading, I haven’t heard the church talked about that way since I was an Adventist.
Colleen: I hadn’t either!
Nikki: So we talk about the local church and the universal church.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: But they talk about the visible church and the invisible church, and it was interesting to see how they defined it. So they say that the visible church is a place where Christ’s specially chosen witnesses will illuminate the world, just like He did, that they will preach the gospel, that they will heal the brokenhearted, that they will preach deliverance to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind. They go on and they use prophecies of Christ, and they say this is what the visible church is doing. And then the invisible church, this is a gold nugget –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – in this chapter. This is a gold nugget.
Colleen: Yes, it is.
Nikki: They say, “The invisible church, also called the church universal, is composed of all God’s people throughout the world. It includes the believers within the visible church, and many who, though they do not belong to a church organization, have followed all the light Christ has given them. This latter group includes those who have never had the opportunity to learn the truth about Jesus Christ but who have responded to the Holy Spirit and ‘by nature do the things contained in the law.'” So you can have people in the Body of Christ, in the church, who’ve never heard the name of Jesus –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – but they keep the law.
Colleen: And that saves them.
Nikki: That’s their salvation –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – the law-keeping. And really, that’s the salvation even of those in Adventism who claim to believe in Christ –
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: – because that is the final test.
Colleen: That’s right. So their definitions, if we want to summarize what they’ve said here, their definition of the visible church is actually the Adventists, and the invisible church are those who claim to love Jesus, who claim to believe in Him, but who haven’t yet heard the truth of the Sabbath and who haven’t yet heard all of the Adventist message, but God will bring them, and they’re the invisible church because they’re not part of the visible church teaching all this Adventist truth. And they even go on to say, “Just so today, God intends to lead His people into His visible church, characterized by loyalty to” – and get this, because this is code – “God’s commandments and possessing the faith of Jesus, so they may participate in finishing His mission on earth.” Well, they have just taken phrases right out of Revelation 14, Revelation 18, and Matthew 24, and they have used their Adventist proof-texts as code for “God’s commandments are the Ten Commandments.” They define the faith in Jesus as the Spirit of Prophecy, which they say equals Ellen White. So they are now saying that God is going to bring the invisible church, all those Christians who go to church on Sunday who really truly are sincere, and He’s going to bring them around to keeping the law and believing in Ellen White. And that’s what they’re actually saying.
Nikki: And they’re saying that this is so that they can participate in finishing His mission on earth, remember that mission that Israel failed to do.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: That vindicating God through upholding His law, the commandments of God, the Decalogue.
Colleen: Now, we’re going to move into two larger sections that I don’t think need extreme comment because they’re just kind of details. But we’re going to mention a few of them because of the underlying meanings. Under the title “The Organization of the Church,” they lead with the idea of church membership. What did you notice about church membership from the Adventist perspective, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, they say, “When they have met certain qualifications, converts become new members of the new covenant community of faith.” That’s not in the Bible.
Colleen: No! You don’t meet certain qualifications.
Nikki: My understanding, though, is in Adventism you have to quit smoking –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: I mean, there are things you have to do.
Colleen: You have to acknowledge Ellen White.
Nikki: You have to sign off on the 28, literally.
Colleen: You have to adopt Sabbath-keeping.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And the health message.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So, yes, in Adventism there are qualifications for being Adventist, but they assume that that means those are the qualifications for becoming members of the church, God’s true church. That’s not what the Bible says. How do you become a member of the church biblically?
Nikki: Belief.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: You believe, and then all of a sudden God does all of this stuff.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Right.
Nikki: He does a work that only He can do. He causes you to be born again, and He adopts you, and He places you in His family. You’re suddenly there.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And then you learn about it.
Colleen: Exactly! What struck you about the priesthood of believers? Now, we’ve all heard that phrase, both in Adventism and in Christianity. But what’s different about the way Adventism teaches it?
Nikki: This was really frustrating to me. So, they talk about Christ’s ministry, of course, in the heavenly sanctuary, and then they say that we are a priesthood under this new order. They don’t know what they are talking about.
Colleen: No!
Nikki: They don’t understand the Melchizedekian order.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: But this was interesting to me. They say that “This new order, the priesthood of all believers, does not authorize each individual to think, believe, and teach as he or she chooses without accountability to the body of Christ,” AKA the General Conference.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: “It means that each member has a responsibility to minister to others in the name of God.” They are setting people up to be submitted to their system of authority –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: – which they’re going to walk through in the chapter.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s very true.
Nikki: And then they talk about the major function of church organization, and one of those major functions is worship. And they say, “Throughout history the church has been God’s agency for gathering believers to worship the Creator on the Sabbath.”
Colleen: “Throughout history.” That’s just plain false.
Nikki: They don’t back any of this up with Scripture.
Colleen: No, or any historical documents.
Nikki: [Laughter.] No, no.
Colleen: Well, I found myself irritated as I read the titles, “Christian fellowship,” “Instruction in the Scriptures,” “Administering the divine ordinances,” and “Worldwide proclamation of the gospel,” because from an Adventist perspective these things are not the way the Bible teaches them. There is no Christian fellowship, as we talked about earlier when we discussed “church as family.” It is only a deception; it is only a counterfeit fellowship. You can’t have true Christian fellowship without the Holy Spirit indwelling believers. That’s the source of our unity as Christians. It’s not rallying around a common worldview that has a false religion. You can’t have true fellowship that way.
Nikki: No, you can’t. And they say that a part of the proclamation of the gospel is “proclaiming a message of preparation for Christ’s return.” This is an apocalyptic cult.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: This is: Jesus is coming, get ready. Keep the Ten Commandments, keep the Sabbath.
Colleen: Yes! This is not Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day according to Scripture. The Adventist gospel is exactly what you said: Jesus is coming, get ready. And it is: Keep the Sabbath so you will be ready. They did something particularly upsetting to me. There is a passage in 2 Corinthians 2 that says this, “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” In context, Paul is talking to believers, and he is saying, “In the world, where so many unbelievers are, we who believe, who have the Spirit of God in us, are the aroma of Christ. And to those who are being saved, we, carrying the Spirit of God, are like a fragrance to the people who are being saved. But to those who are perishing, we are a fragrance of death.” So it’s not just the words we say, it’s our very existence and presence and what we stand for and who we are and how we live for Christ that is the fragrance to those who are being saved and the stench of death to those who are perishing. In this book, they equate the Adventist message with this fragrance or stench, and they say, “When the church proclaims the truths of the Bible” – and I want to say, Adventism does not proclaim the truths of the Bible. They misuse Scripture and proclaim false messages using scriptural proof-texts. Anyhow, “When the church proclaims the truths of the Bible, these keys to salvation” – notice that, keys to salvation, like a secret knowledge that you have to fit into the right lock – “have the power to bind and to loose, to open and shut heaven, because they declare the criteria by which people are received or rejected, saved or lost. To those who accept the church’s gospel proclamation and submit their lives to its commandments and promises, the gospel exudes ‘the fragrance of life.’ Those who reject the gospel experience, ‘the smell of death.'” They are here equating the Adventist message with what Paul used to say believers are. Adventism is not the gospel. Adventism is not fulfilling this passage in 2 Corinthians. This is another example of them taking a proof-text and twisting it around with their theology to make it sound like it works, but if you read the passage, it’s saying something completely different.
Nikki: And this is why I always thought that everything I believed was rooted in Scripture, because they would reference it. They talk about “The Principles of Church Governance,” and they talk about different roles in the church –
Colleen: Right, uh-huh.
Nikki: – the elders and stuff, and I just have to point out, they make clear that an elder has certain qualifications, and they include being men, husbands of one wife –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – and older men.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And in my local church, at 23 I was asked to be an elder. I had only been baptized into the Adventist church three years earlier, and they asked me, a young woman –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – to be an elder. And I remember reading the Bible and thinking, “I don’t qualify to be an elder,” after I had been for a while.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And I went back, and I said, “You know, I think we’d like to step down.” Carel was an elder too, and he wanted to step down as well. And they said, “You know what? You don’t have to do any of the work. It’s okay, don’t worry about it. We’re just going to keep your name on the books. They like to see younger people on the books.”
Colleen: And there you go.
Nikki: I was so upset. This was said to me by one of our church pastors, who had been there already for more than 20 years.
Colleen: Oh, my.
Nikki: He was someone I looked up to, and he said, “Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to do anything. Just keep your name on the book.”
Colleen: And, Nikki, that story illustrates why this entire section on church governance is superfluous.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Adventism is not the church. Adventism is not a denomination of God’s church. Adventism teaches a false gospel. It has a false prophet. It has a false Jesus. It does not teach the gospel of salvation. And anything that they use to glean from Scripture to try to make a case for how they’re going to organize their organization is just appropriation, false appropriation, because they have not submitted to the Lord Jesus and His finished work. They’ve held themselves above Scripture, interpreted it through the lens of their false prophet, and they’re not a church.
Nikki: No. And tucked into all of these Christian-sounding concepts and outlines are ominous statements about future persecution and admonition to be loyal and to always go to your authorities if you have questions. There are statements about how to deal with conflict. There is admonition not to listen to gossip about elders.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Well, yeah, I mean, biblically speaking, right. I get that. But in the context of Adventism, when we know that they’re moving elders and pastors from church to church who are accused of abuse –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and they’re saying, “Well, we need more than one witness,” and they’re not doing anything about it? We have a long history –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: – of sexual abuse in Adventism.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: That’s a whole other podcast.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: But it all sounds very moral, and it sounds very rooted in Scripture. And, Colleen, I just have to point out one of the things that they say under the “Restoration of offenders.” They say, “Church members should not despise, shun, or neglect the disfellowshipped. Rather, they should attempt to restore their relationship with Christ through repentance and a new birth.”
Colleen: They don’t even believe in the new birth as it’s taught in Scripture.
Nikki: This is not something that we can will. In fact, Scripture comes right out and says that it’s not by the will of man or the will of the flesh.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It’s the will of God that causes us to be born again, and furthermore, if you’re going to talk about church discipline, I don’t believe this lines up scripturally either.
Colleen: That’s right. This chapter concludes with this statement near the end: “God’s church, the theater of the universe, displays the power of Christ’s atoning sacrifice in the lives of men and women.” Nikki, as we’ve discussed, this is really gobbledygook. The theater of the universe? And then talking about the lives of men and women showing the benefits of Christ’s atoning sacrifice? Adventism does not even teach the truth about Christ’s atoning sacrifice. And I just want to close after this chapter, which is supposed to be defining “church” from an Adventist perspective, with what Paul said in Colossians 1, where he defined the church. He says this in verses 25-27: “Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages” – and notice, that means we are not an extension of Israel; the church was hidden somewhat from past ages – “and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” That defines the church. All of us who have heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus, who have trusted His finished work, are born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and we become a new creation, almost a new race, in Christ instead of in Adam. If you haven’t experienced that new birth through trusting in Jesus alone, you can. You can go to Scripture instead of Adventist teachings, and you can find the real gospel: Jesus died for your sins, He was buried, He was raised on the third day. Place your trust in Him and live, and be baptized by His Spirit into the Body of Christ.
Nikki: If you have questions or comments for us, write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Don’t forget to visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails, and there’s a donate tab there if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support. We always value your prayers, and thank you for those as well. Don’t forget to follow us and like us on Facebook and Instagram, and join us next week as we look at Chapter 13, The Remnant and Its Mission.
Colleen: And we’ll see you then.
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—God the Holy Spirit | 114 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—Unity in the Body of Christ | 113 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—The Remnant and Its Mission | 112 - September 7, 2022