Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “The Experience of Salvation”. Discover that even the name states a falsehood—and the salvation that is taught is no salvation at all. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today’s podcast is going to look at Fundamental Belief #10 called “The Experience of Salvation.” The title alone is a problem. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But we’ll talk about that more as we go. This belief statement and its explanation in Seventh-day Adventists Believe is opaque and vague, carefully upholding the clear statements Ellen White made about salvation not being a present reality while deceptively hiding Adventism’s true belief from people. It tries to sound like normal evangelical Christianity, but it actually teaches the uncertainty and mandatory works required by Ellen. But before we talk about it, just a quick reminder that we love hearing from you. Email your comments and questions to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can go to proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails, to find our online magazines and articles, and to find links to our YouTube channel and to this podcast. Please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And now, Nikki, my question for you.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: What did you believe it meant to be saved when you were an Adventist?
Nikki: Well, I’ve been thinking about how to answer that, and you know, all metaphors fall short, but I was thinking about back when my husband and I were first married, and we did not have a down payment for a home, but we needed one. I was very pregnant, we were living in a small apartment, and it was time to move. And at that time they had programs for first-time homeowners, and they would allow you to take out a mortgage on a home, even without a down payment. And so I kind of thought of salvation like that, in that Christ made a way for me to do something I could never do on my own. I didn’t have the down payment; I didn’t have the ability to even start on the path to salvation.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I was without any hope. And He came, and He did all He did, and now He hands me the mortgage payment.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And I have to maintain that. Just like when you take out a loan on a home, you have to pay those mortgage payments. If you don’t, you’re going to lose your home.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Whereas now I understand it, if I’m going to play with the same metaphor, Christ purchased the home, paid in full, paid cash, gave it to me. I have salvation. I have the home. And, yes, there are things I need to do to take care of the home and to keep it up and whatnot, but it is not at the risk of losing the home.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And this chapter reminded me so much of my previous understanding of salvation, that you are in there making those payments to maintain your salvation.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It was very different from how I understand it now. What about you?
Colleen: About the same, actually. I often said that Jesus was like the ticket to get into Disneyland, but you wouldn’t necessarily get in. I mean, you could hold the ticket, but you could decide not to go –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – you could find yourself rained out or stopped by a car accident on the way in. Any number of things could keep you from actually experiencing Disneyland.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But you could still hold that ticket, which was Jesus. I had no idea that He had completely accomplished salvation for me and that all that was needed was for me to believe in Him, because I believed that I, as part of spiritual Israel, had to continue to do what Israel was required to do. I had to continue to make a deal with God, to be in agreement, to say, “Okay, I’m going to obey, and I know you’ll bless me if I obey, so I’m trying to obey. Please, please, please consider my obedience sufficient.” And I always figured that if I was diligent about trying to live up to all the light I had and I was sincere in what I believed and tried to do, that when I came to the end of my life, it probably wouldn’t be enough, I wouldn’t be perfect, even though that’s what He wanted me to be and required, in a way. But I was also taught that in some way He would make up the difference at the end of my life if I had been persistent and consistent in trying to be good. It was uncertain. I couldn’t know for sure if I was saved. I could take myself out. Any number of things could happen. But the most important thing was that I had to obey and that I could only obey if I accepted Jesus, and I never knew what exactly that meant.
Nikki: Yeah, me neither.
Colleen: This chapter caused me a great deal of frustration.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I say things like that every week, don’t I?
Nikki: This is hard. It’s hard to read. It really is.
Colleen: It is because I think I see their sleight of hand and their doublespeak more in this than I have in any other one chapter perhaps. There are so many Bible verses. There are also a lot of Ellen White quotes in this chapter in the book Seventh-day Adventists Believe, but there are so many Bible verses that are yanked out of context and used to prove an Adventist worldview. I can see why we were confused, Nikki.
Nikki: Yeah, and I can see why some of those texts that they used in this chapter are texts that now former Adventists go, “Wait, what about this?”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Because they were redefined by the Adventists. They’ve got to get that out of their head and learn the true meaning of these texts.
Colleen: And it’s not something you can just do in a flash. It triggers a whole chain of reactions and beliefs and understandings.
Nikki: Yeah. And the other thing that it made me realize is, this is why we can talk to Adventists who maybe aren’t really questioning, but we find ourselves in conversation with them and we say, you know, “The Bible says this,” and they will say, “Yeah, well, we believe that.”
Colleen: Um-hmm. Absolutely. But they don’t believe it.
Nikki: They don’t believe it. They just have leaders who use those texts out of context.
Colleen: Yeah, exactly. Let’s look at the fundamental belief, but let’s just start by giving our overall impressions, a little bit – almost like a popcorn thing.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: When you think about the chapter, what stands out to you first? I know you mentioned to me something about your response just to the title, “The Experience of Salvation.” What’s your response when you see that title of this particular chapter, this particular fundamental belief?
Nikki: Well, the first time I looked at it, before I read the chapter, I thought, yeah, they were intentional with those words, and you need to post a flag, because this isn’t how Christians talk about salvation.
Colleen: No!
Nikki: After reading the chapter, I look at that and I’m, like, yeah, they were definitely intentional about those words –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: – because salvation is a process, and I think a better –
Colleen: For Adventists.
Nikki: Yes, for Adventists. I think a better title for this would have been “Steps to Christ.”
Colleen: I agree completely.
Nikki: And even better than that would be “Steps to Channeling Christ.”
Colleen: Yes. They almost say that in this chapter.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I realize that the idea of channeling probably describes better than anything else my understanding of the “power of Christ in you,” as Adventism taught it. What a confusing idea. I could never find words to explain it, but I knew what they meant: If we prayed like Jesus, and depended on the Holy Spirit like Jesus, we too could avoid sin. But then they use all these biblical sounding words, and it’s really a channeling.
Nikki: Yeah. Yeah, this whole chapter kind of supports what we’ve already said when we walked through the Letter to the Colossians and we talked about how Ellen White taught Christ formed in you, the hope of glory.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is essentially that doctrine.
Colleen: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Not Christ in you –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – the hope of glory, but formed. Okay. Nikki, would you read the fundamental belief, and we’ll go from there.
Nikki: Okay. So this is in chapter 10, “The Experience of Salvation.” “In infinite love and mercy God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might be made the righteousness of God. Led by the Holy Spirit we sense our need, acknowledge our sinfulness, repent of our transgressions, and exercise faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord, Substitute and Example. This saving comes through the divine power of the Word and is the gift of God’s grace. Through Christ we are justified, adopted as God’s sons and daughters, and delivered from the lordship of sin. Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified; the Spirit renews our minds, writes God’s law of love in our hearts, and we are given the power to live a holy life. Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation now and in the judgment.”
Colleen: Okay. As you read this, Nikki, what comes to your mind? And you know, before I actually look at the actual words, I just want to say, one of the first things that rises to the top for me is the idea that Adventist salvation is like Catholicism salvation.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s not by faith in the finished work of Christ, even though they use those words within their formula. It includes sanctification. Sanctification is synonymous with a package that include justification, and you can’t get there without sanctification. Sanctification isn’t a fruit in Adventism, it’s a requirement.
Nikki: Yeah, that’s right there in the text that says that we’re to exercise faith in Jesus as example.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: That’s what that is. That’s our –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: Yeah, our work for salvation. You know, that last sentence has new meaning for me after reading this chapter. “Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation.” So when we don’t abide in Him, we lose that assurance.
Colleen: And what do they mean when they talk about “abiding in Him”?
Nikki: Channeling Him. I mean, that’s really kind of a quick answer that needs a lot of support. I understand that. But that’s basically what the chapter fleshes out. You set your mind on Him, you think about how lovely He is, and you know, we’ll get to these quotes, but they talk about whoever possesses your mind, whoever you’re thinking about, is the one who owns you –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – is the one who possesses you. And when you think about Him – and we had a quote last week too, I believe – your mind and your will and everything about you becomes one with Him, and you begin to live His life, and anyway, it’s pretty convoluted.
Colleen: And it’s all driven by you.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You will discipline your mind and discipline your will so that you will not think about spurious secular ideas. You will think about Jesus, and then He will own your mind and you will live His life.
Nikki: And you will become a new creation.
Colleen: Yes. It’s not something done to you. It’s something that you make happen by your choices.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, another thing about that, and that is exactly what you said, but I think it’s really important, that the word they use in this fundamental belief is, “Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation now and in the judgment.” And that word “now” is important because this fundamental belief is refusing to state what Ellen White clearly states and which every Adventist knows at some level. There’s no Adventist who believes they can know for sure they’re saved, and that’s because of Ellen White, and we’ll get to some of her quotes. But they don’t admit that in this fundamental belief. They’re saying you can know now, you can know you have salvation now. They don’t mean “now” like Christians understand now, like you can be saved and you know it’s forever. No, they mean “now” as in if every sin is confessed this very moment, you can have it.
Nikki: Yeah, that’s the caveat, “abiding in Him.” Yeah, if you abide in Him, you can have the assurance of salvation now, and if you’re still abiding in Him by the time you get to the judgment, you can have assurance of salvation then. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Exactly. Exactly! That’s exactly what they mean. They say “Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified; the Spirit renews our minds, writes God’s law of love in our hearts, and we are given the power to live a holy life.” Those words don’t mean what they seem to mean at face value. Within the Adventist framework – and as this chapter unfolds we’ll see it’s true – those are code words for “born again,” meaning becoming convinced of Adventism’s doctrines and inviting Jesus into one’s heart, because Adventists don’t actually believe in the new birth. They don’t believe humans have dead spirits that need to be brought to life.
Nikki: So the way that I read that, it looked to me like they were trying to define being born again as the renewed mind and God’s law of love on our hearts, that that is what it is to be born again.
Colleen: I think you’re right. And that implies to them an acceptance of Adventist doctrine.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s what that will look like.
Nikki: Because if you are born again, according to them, then you keep the Sabbath. That’s the fruit.
Colleen: Yeah. Exactly. And do you see Sabbath mentioned one time in this chapter?
Nikki: I don’t, or the seal.
Colleen: No! The seal of God is the core of salvation in the Bible, and that is the Holy Spirit, but this chapter doesn’t talk about that, and it doesn’t talk about the fact that Adventism sees the seal of God as being the Sabbath. But it does talk about obedience, and that’s their code for law-keeping equals Sabbath-keeping. Every time you see obedience, that’s where it goes in an Adventist’s mind.
Nikki: Well, it’s like the back of this book says, every chapter builds on itself.
Colleen: Yup. And when they say “God’s law of love,” they don’t mean the law of Christ as expressed in the New Testament for people who have been born again. They mean –
Nikki: The Decalogue.
Colleen: Exactly! That’s the Adventist definition for God’s law of love, and Adventists always know that’s what they’re talking about when they see those words.
Nikki: In fact, it’s really hard for former Adventists to switch their mind over on that as they read Scripture –
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: – because they’ve ingrained it so much into us.
Colleen: That’s very true.
Nikki: I thought it was fitting that in the first paragraph of this chapter they begin with a quote from Steps to Christ.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: I mean, that’s essentially what this is.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: This is how you get to salvation.
Colleen: How do we now understand salvation, Nikki? It’s not about steps. What’s it about?
Nikki: Oh, it’s about the Lord Jesus. It’s believing in Him and everything that He’s done. It’s believing the gospel of Scripture.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: And then all of the sanctification comes after that.
Colleen: Yes. And believing results in being born again, being given a new heart, as God promised in the Old Testament, as Jesus said to Nicodemus: You’ll be born again. You must be born again, born of the Spirit. That happens when we hear the gospel of our salvation and believe. And it’s not something we do, and it’s not a mind change we make, and it’s not determination on our part. It’s an act of God.
Nikki: Yeah. If you haven’t listened to our podcast in Ephesians, Ephesians 1 and 2 covers this very well.
Colleen: Go back and listen.
Nikki: Yeah. So, one of the themes in this book is that they take passages of Scripture and redefine them. And I was very frustrated, right at the beginning, where they take Paul’s words in Ephesians chapter 5, and they say, “Christ loved the church” – well, Paul says, “‘Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word.'” So that “having cleansed,” that’s past tense; right?
Colleen: Yes, absolutely.
Nikki: As soon as they finish quoting him, they say, “Such a cleansing is the goal of the church.”
Colleen: Oh, that upset me too.
Nikki: This is the work of Christ. This is what He does. This is what He did.
Colleen: This is not what we strive for or hope to attain, a goal. A goal is something we’re working towards. We don’t work towards this. This is something God does for us when we are His.
Nikki: And then the author describes this cleansing as “the ultimate internal Pentecost.”
Colleen: Oh! That upset me. What’s wrong with that?
Nikki: Well, what does it even mean?
Colleen: I know; right? What was Pentecost?
Nikki: Well, that was the birth of the church –
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: – when the Spirit came.
Colleen: The first evidence of Pentecost was in Acts 2 when Peter preached in Jerusalem and 3,000 people heard in their own languages. Jews, Jews from all over the world who’d come to town for Passover and Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit brought them to spiritual life. That was a one-time event that happened when they believed. That’s what happens to us when we believe. We are brought to life. There is not some sort of ultimate Pentecost inside of us, like we get more and more of the Holy Spirit and finally we get the nature of Christ realized in us. This is all gobbledygook. This is all cult talk. This is not biblical talk. Pentecost was an event in the history of the church, and we are brought to life in the same way when we believe. One time. It’s an event. I just have to say, this fundamental belief, like we said at the beginning, is code for Ellen White’s view of salvation, which is you can’t know you’re saved, and I just wanted to read a few fragments from some of her quotes so we know that it’s true. This chapter does not tell us this, but this is a chapter designed to support these phrases. This is a quote from Christ’s Object Lessons on page 155: “Those who accept the Savior, however sincere their conversion, should never be taught to say or to feel that they are saved. This is misleading. Everyone should be taught to cherish hope and faith, but even when we give ourselves to Christ and know that He accepts us, we’re not beyond the reach of temptation. God’s Word declares many shall be purified and made white and tried. Only he who endures the trial will receive the crown of life.” This is a statement that I grew up understanding. No one can know they’re saved, and I mocked Christians who talked about being born again. I hated that term, I resented it, and I mocked – in my head I mocked people who said they were saved, because Ellen White said you can’t know you’re saved. She even says – and this is also in Christ’s Object Lessons on page 155 – “Those who accept Christ and in their first confidence say, ‘I am saved,’ are in danger of trusting to themselves.” This woman did not understand the new birth. In her mind, being saved is something that can only happen after a lifetime of perfect obedience, obedience to the Ten Commandments. She did not understand being spiritually dead and brought to life. She did not understand that we have spirits.
Nikki: She did not believe God’s testimony about Himself. In 1 John 5, starting in verse 10, John writes: “The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Colleen: That’s know now, and not just for today. That’s a permanent thing when it’s real.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s very different from another quote from The Youth’s Instructor of 1887: “Our faith, the hope we claim of one day obtaining immortality, calls for the stretch of every muscle and the strain of every nerve. We cannot be saved in sin and in transgression of God’s law. We cannot be saved in indolence and inactivity. We must search the Scriptures if we would have spiritual enlightenment. We have to wrestle against pride and against the human passions, which the light of God’s Word reveals. Every soul saved will present unwearied petitions for the assistance of Jesus Christ and will use thankfully and appreciate all the helps which God has provided for them.”
Nikki: [Laughter.] I wish we could convey your facial expressions on the podcast. [Laughter.] They’re too perfect.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: It’s Catholic, Colleen.
Colleen: It’s Catholic. It’s Catholic. We stretch, we strain, we struggle, we hope, we try, we repent, we plead, and we try to obey, and we never quite get there, but you know, if we’re really being successful, we will get our willpower together and gradually overcome our sin and keep that law. And this is not what the Bible says. The Bible tells us that while we were dead in sin, God made us alive in Christ – that’s Ephesians 2:4-10 – and seated us with Him in heavenly places. He cleans us up after we are born again.
Nikki: I remember when we went through a Bible study with our pastor. He was talking about different views on salvation, and He addressed the Catholic view, and I was shocked. It was as if he was telling me what I had believed my entire life.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But I was so not Catholic; I was Adventist –
Colleen: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: – and we’re, like, not Catholic; right?
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: He talked about how they believe that Jesus paid for all of our past sins –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and then from the moment that we place our faith in Him, now we have to participate in maintaining that. That is exactly how I understood salvation, and that’s actually how they write about it in this chapter.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: After the introduction, their first section is “The Experience of Salvation and the Past.” And they’re essentially talking about what repentance is and the fact that salvation and the past means really that Jesus paid for your past sins.
Colleen: Exactly. The whole use of the word “experience,” “The Experience of Salvation,” this is a fundamental belief, Nikki! “The Experience of Salvation.” No, salvation is an objective fact, it’s not a subjective experience. It has a subjective element, but it’s not based upon us. It’s something God does when we see who Jesus is and what He did and trust Him. It’s an act of God. It’s not an experience that we build on and mature. It’s not something we drive.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s something He does. Just by the way, Ellen White really does say the opposite. She says, and this is in The Review and Herald in 1898, “Obedience to the law of Ten Commandments is the condition of salvation. This is God’s positive requirement.”
Nikki: There you have it.
Colleen: What did Jesus say the condition of salvation was?
Nikki: Belief.
Colleen: Belief. Believe. Remember the Jews asked Him in John 6, “What is the work of God?” And He said, “The work of God is this, believe in the One whom He sent.” And He said in John 5, the chapter right previous to that, that he who has believed has passed from death to life and will not come into judgment. The work of God is to believe.
Nikki: You know, I remember as a new former hearing these verses, reading these verses, these things that Jesus said, and then thinking, “But what about…” and you have all of your Adventist past, you know, that fills in that blank, “What about?”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: It didn’t occur to me to think, “This is God telling me” –
Colleen: Right!
Nikki: – “to believe Him.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And it takes you back to that Mount of Transfiguration –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – where God says, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him.”
Colleen: And Moses and Elijah were gone when the cloud lifted.
Nikki: Moses and Elijah, true prophets!
Colleen: Yes. Who represented the law and the prophets.
Nikki: Never mind a false prophet.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: If there is any conflict whatsoever, always go with God. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: Always.
Colleen: Uh-huh. Jesus said, “He who believes has passed from death to life.” Jesus said, “This is the work of God, believe in Him whom He sent.” (John 6:29). This is God the Son speaking.
Nikki: And as an Adventist I would have said, “But, but, but, but, Jesus said to keep the Ten Commandments.” But He didn’t.
Colleen: No, He didn’t. No, He didn’t.
Nikki: He told the disciples, “Go into the world and teach them all that I have commanded you.”
Colleen: Yes. That’s true. And He did not die to vindicate and uphold the law as something that has authority over us. He died in fulfillment of the requirements of the law. I grew up thinking the law’s requirements were the Ten Commandments. That’s not the law’s primary requirement. Those were the terms of the covenant, the fourth commandment being the sign of that covenant. Jesus, as God the Son incarnate as a man, fulfilled that covenant. He fulfilled every term of it, and that covenant said, “You obey me and I will bless you; you disobey me, and you will be cursed by me.” And Jesus came along as the perfect Israel, the perfect man, and He was the perfect sacrifice who took the imputed sin of all humanity on Him and fulfilled the requirement of the law: death for sin. He died for human sin, and He broke the curse. That’s what Jesus did. He fulfilled every requirement of that covenant. That’s how we’re saved. We don’t keep the covenant. Jesus did that! He fulfilled it, and He inaugurated a new covenant in His blood, and when we trust Him, everything He accomplished on that cross in fulfilling that covenant becomes ours.
Nikki: Yeah, but, Colleen, you’re not understanding Paul.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] He’s confusing.
Colleen: Oh, that’s right.
Nikki: Well, it’s right there in the fundamental belief that we have to have faith in Him as our example.
Colleen: Yeah, it’s true.
Nikki: And so everything you just said right now has to mean almost nothing to them.
Colleen: Well, it meant nothing to me as an Adventist. And you know why? Because ultimately Ellen White taught us that obedience to the law was tantamount because of the fourth commandment.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: That was the truth that was lost, that Adventism came into being and restored in 1844 to its founding in 1863. That’s what she said. And she actually says in The Great Controversy, “The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty. This is the point of truth especially controverted. While the observance of the false Sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast” – and Nikki, that would be you and me now.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – “the other, choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God.” And she even says, “The enemies of God’s law too late they see that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is the seal of the living God. Too late they see the true nature of their spurious Sabbath. And when the blessing is pronounced on those who have honored God by keeping His Sabbath holy, then there will be a mighty shout of victory.” This whole business of salvation was a mess for us as Adventists, and we couldn’t see what the Bible said because we believed so deeply that the Sabbath was the mark of those who were loyal to God. And you can’t find the Sabbath apart from the Ten Commandments. We had to believe what Ellen White said, we had to miss that the new birth is a spiritual reality. Having spirits that are born dead and brought to life doesn’t even fit the paradigm of keeping a day.
Nikki: No. And they teach you how to hold conflicting beliefs. One of the most difficult questions for me to answer, when I was really brand new and just starting to speak with former Adventists, was “Do you believe that you work for your salvation?” Well, no, of course not.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Of course not. “Do you believe that you can lose your salvation if you don’t keep the Sabbath?”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Oh, well, yeah, of course.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: That’s incompatible. You can’t believe both.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: So I know that one of the things that we also like to ask people as they’re coming out is, “What is the gospel?” So that we can take them to 1 Corinthians 15, and so often they give us the three angels message, Jesus is coming back, all of these different things, but there are some who will say the cross, and I said that Jesus died for our sins and that we repent and believe, and I would say the words, but they meant something different to me. And as I read this chapter, I saw so clearly why they did. As an Adventist, I tried desperately to repent.
Colleen: I did too.
Nikki: I was frantic.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And they define repentance in this chapter, but they give you a different definition.
Colleen: What do they say?
Nikki: They talk about repentance, and they say that the people who repent, they experience sorrow and guilt. They confess specific sins.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: “Through the decided exercise of their wills, they surrender totally to the Savior and renounce their sinful behavior. Thus repentance reaches its climax in conversion.” It was this desperate sorrow and sadness and weeping at the cross.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And I wanted to feel that, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how to access that.
Colleen: I know.
Nikki: Like, I couldn’t get there, and they also say, “The heart is melted and subdued when we sense that Christ’s death justifies us and delivers us from the penalty of sin,” and I want to say, no, that’s not true of everybody.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I remember one of our Bible studies at Former Adventist Fellowship years ago. Somebody came in and was talking about their understanding of Jesus dying for them, as an Adventist, and they said, “He died on the cross, but so many good men have died for my freedoms in more devastating ways than the cross.” They too couldn’t access this emotion that you’re supposed to conjure up at the cross.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: There’s so much of Jesus on the cross in this chapter.
Colleen: There is. You know, in fact, thinking back in my days of Adventism and reading this chapter, this is another way the Adventist soteriology is very Catholic. They talk about Jesus on the cross. They talk about contemplating His suffering and His agony and His obedience and His faithfulness, and by contemplating we will be changed. But it’s all very guilt-producing, it’s very shaming, partly because I could never, as you said, conjure up those emotions, but they don’t really talk about His resurrection.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: I never learned as an Adventist why His resurrection was significant. It was all about the suffering Jesus and His compliance and His silent obedience and His demonstration of how to suffer without retaliation. Oh, poor Jesus. Once again, poor Jesus. And it was almost embarrassing. How do you understand repentance now? What is repentance?
Nikki: Well, first of all, I understand that repentance is something that we arrive at by God’s grace.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He grants us repentance. We see that in multiple places in Scripture. And the way I understand it now is it’s a turning away from. And honestly, I don’t know how to explain this, but it’s almost inevitable –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – when you come face-to-face with Christ.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: Like, when He reveals Himself to you in His Word, it really is a gift.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: When you come to know the true Christ, there’s no alternative but to turn away from everything you knew before and to follow Him. So, repentance is realizing your sin, realizing your need, I mean –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – and confessing that, agreeing with God about your need and your sin and turning to Him. And I’ll tell you, when I truly came to repentance at the end of the FAF conference in 2010, I was praying, and the prayer of my heart, I asked God – I didn’t confess specific sins. I asked God to forgive me for thinking, for presuming, that I knew Him, that I had Him all figured out. I confessed that I did not know this untamable God. And I asked Him to reveal Himself to me, and I told Him I wanted to follow Him. I asked forgiveness. I confessed I was a sinner, dead in sin, in need of life.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: But I also, if I got specific about anything, I repented of my Adventism.
Colleen: I had to repent of that too. Because Adventism taught me a false Jesus, a false God, a false Trinity, a false way of salvation, and I had a false prophet who channeled doctrines of demons, who had formed my worldview, and I did not know it, and I had to repent of that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And you know, this chapter says that if we contemplate Christ, contemplate His sufferings, it will motivate us to repent. Repentance is not motivated by our internal choices to think about certain things. Repentance is a gift from God, like you said. It reminds me of when Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” And he said, “You’re the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Peter. This has not been revealed to you by man; this has been revealed to you by my Father in heaven.” And that’s how I felt when I understood repentance.
Nikki: Yes. That’s exactly right. And after you know that He is the Son of the living God, once you know who He is, if you think about Him on that cross, if you think about your sin, yeah, it elicits emotion –
Colleen: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: – but it’s because you know Him now.
Colleen: Yes. And the knowing is the thing that Jesus talked to Nicodemus about when He talked about being born of the Spirit. Adventism will deny that we have a spirit, a literal immaterial part of ourselves that is born dead in sin, as the Bible clearly says it is in Ephesians 2:1-3 and Romans 3:9-15 and other places. But we have literal spirits. That’s the part of us that’s in the image of God. That doesn’t disappear because we are born in sin. We still have spirits. They just aren’t alive.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And when we repent, God grants us life. As it says in Colossians 1:13, He transfers us from one kingdom to another, from the domain of darkness right into the kingdom of His beloved Son. We come to life, and we are adopted and born again. That’s something real. It’s not a metaphor.
Nikki: And we’re created new in Christ Jesus. That means that by our very nature now, our new nature, we are created in Christ. We’re not apart from Him. We are created inside, in Christ. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah, exactly.
Nikki: This is our nature now, and so that’s why we move forward. And Paul says whether we’re dead or alive – listen up Adventists – whether we’re dead or alive, we make it our aim to please Him. That’s what the life after is about.
Colleen: Yes. That’s 2 Corinthians 5:9. You’ve got to look up that verse. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: And you know, I just have to say, understanding that repentance is a gift of God that comes from seeing who He is in Scripture, that comes from seeing who we are through the pages of Scripture, that actually – the Word of God is alive and active and pierces between joint and marrow, soul and spirit, revealing the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. When we see that and trust Him, it puts the lie to everything I learned that Ellen White said. She said this in a book that’s entitled That I May Know Him, ironically, “All sin unrepented of and unconfessed will remain upon the book of record. It will not be blotted out; it will not go beforehand to judgment to be canceled by the atoning blood of Jesus. The accumulated sins of every individual will be written with absolute accuracy, and the penetrating light of God’s law will try every secret of darkness. In proportion to the light, to the opportunities and to the knowledge of God’s claims upon them will be the condemnation of the rejecters of God’s mercy.” This woman said that if we have any unconfessed sins, they will be held against us, and Jesus’ blood will not cover them. That’s not the repentance of Scripture. It’s like you said, realizing we had thought wrongly of God, that we hadn’t known who He was, that we hadn’t known who we were, and repenting and desiring that He show us the truth. How can I possibly remember every sin? I can’t. I would be doomed, and we all would be doomed.
Nikki: This is holding up their Investigative Judgment doctrine, which we’ll eventually get to. You know, it was kind of exciting for me, as I was reading through this chapter, after repentance they go into justification. And they use the prophecy in Zechariah 3 prophesying of the Messiah, and they talk about the robes of righteousness –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – that God put on the high priest there in that prophecy. And of course, in Adventism that means we have to wear our robe of righteousness.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: We have the robe of righteousness because of God, but we’re capable of taking it off. You see this in the chapter.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: But what’s so interesting about that prophecy is it goes on and says, God says, “‘For behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave an inscription on it,’ declares the Lord of hosts, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.'” This is a Messianic prophecy about Christ, who is the stone. He’s spoken of as the rock, as the stone, and God says on the day He removes their iniquity, He will engrave upon that stone. And we just read in Colossians that Jesus, the Word made flesh, Jesus nailed on the cross the stone –
Colleen: The law of ordinances.
Nikki: – the law of ordinances. And in Adventism they say, “Oh, the Ten Commandments are supremely important because God engraved on that stone with His own finger.” That was a foreshadowing of God engraving on the palms of His Son’s hands on the cross, nailing that to the cross. So they take this prophecy, and they use it to make us very aware of these robes of righteousness and this righteous behavior we have to live in in order to maintain salvation, but it’s the very passage where God says that He will remove their iniquity in one day.
Colleen: Yes. And you know, I’ll never forget reading – and I’ve referred to this article before, and if you haven’t read it, go to proclamationmagazine.com and search for The Unity of the Law by R.K. McGregor Wright. I will never forget when I first read that article, maybe 15 years ago, and realized that Jesus as the Logos, as it says in John 1, is the same thing as the Torah in Hebrew in the Old Testament. The Logos and the Torah are both the Word of God. And Jesus, as the living Torah, the living Logos, the living Word of God, took the law, the Word of God to Israel, in His flesh and nailed it to the cross in fulfillment of its death sentence and its promise of life for obedience, and He did the obedience by dying the death and breaking the curse of the law. He fulfilled the Old Covenant. I just don’t even know how to be strong enough to say how completely inside out this is from the way Adventism teaches. It was when I understood that Jesus, not I, was the one that fulfilled the terms of the Old Covenant with the Father, when I learned that and realized that as an man He is my substitute, and when I trust Him I am in Him and His obedience, and I don’t see that anymore as just simply keeping the Ten, that’s His obedience to do what God sent Him to do, which was to take the curse of sin and break it. That’s what Jesus did. He fulfilled the law by doing that, and His righteousness is mine when I trust Him because He fulfilled that and inaugurated a new covenant in His blood. His blood is my claim to salvation, not my law-keeping.
Nikki: So what do you do with this quote that she, Ellen White, wrote to young people? She said, “The righteousness by which we are justified is imputed. The righteousness by which we are sanctified is imparted. The first is our title to heaven. The second is our fitness for heaven.”
Colleen: That really makes me mad because that’s very clearly saying that our salvation is in two pieces, justification and sanctification, and right here is where we see the Catholicism.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We are not saved by a combination of justification and sanctification. According to Scripture, we are justified by His blood, which means we are forgiven of our sin, we are made just as if I had not sinned, but we are, more than that, given His righteousness. It’s not just that God erases our debt. He puts money in our bank, so to speak.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We are justified by the blood of Christ, but we are (Romans 5:10) made alive by His life. That’s His resurrection life. Sanctification, according to Scripture, is the fruit of being justified, not the companion that makes us fit for heaven. My sanctification does not fit me for heaven. Only Jesus’ blood fits me for heaven. He is fit for heaven. He brings me into Himself and imputes His righteousness to me. I do not fit myself for heaven. He produces fruit in me. Now, the Bible does describe two types of sanctification. It describes positional salvation that means when I am in Him I am sanctified and set apart for His purposes. He sees me as a saint, and I am righteous. The second thing is – and this is very clear in Paul’s writings – that we produce fruit as we live in Him, fruit of righteousness. So there is a progressive sanctification, but even that is not my work. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit in me.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He develops Himself in me. He doesn’t make me live His life. He brings me into His story, into His life, and produces fruit in me, sometimes without my even knowing it. He teaches me to trust Him. That’s where sanctification flows from. But it’s not what I do to get into heaven.
Nikki: No, it’s not. And they talk after this about a new and victorious life. It’s frustrating to me that they use Christian ideas, and Christians will overlay what they already know to be true about Christianity onto the words that they’ll read in these books if they look at them. But in this section they say, “The realization that the Savior’s blood covers our sinful past brings healing to the body, soul, and mind. By daily bestowing His grace, Christ begins transforming us into the image of God.” Well, what does that look like? Ellen White tells us.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: She says, “The Word destroys the natural, earthly nature and imparts a new life in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes to the soul as a Comforter. By the transforming agency of His grace, the image of God is produced in the disciple; he becomes a new creature.” So this is really important as we move through the rest of the chapter, because when she talks about Christ indwelling us and us being a new creature, it’s all based on our time in Scripture, our time in the Word, mortifying the flesh and meditating on Him. That’s how we’re created new.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: It’s not a one and done, it’s not the new birth, and it’s all about reproducing the image of God.
Colleen: Yes, through focused, intentional, almost like – it’s almost a version of meditation, a New Agey kind of meditation. It’s like, “Now, you’re going to think about this, you’re going to think about Christ’s suffering, you’re going to submit all your head to Him, and you will become new.” It’s a self-abnegation. It’s almost a Buddhist emptying, with just thinking about the suffering of Christ, without actually submitting your actions, your will to His Word and letting His Word tell you the truth. This is still about your head driving the ship –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – instead of the Lord Jesus showing you in His Word what is true.
Nikki: And she redefines Scripture again. She says, “This is what it means to live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” the this being spiritual disciplines.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It is our spiritual disciplines that keep us saved and keep us alive. It’s like clinging to a life raft.
Colleen: Exactly. And that’s not unlike things you’ll hear within Christianity these days.
Nikki: Sadly true.
Colleen: Spiritual disciplines are not a key to a richer spiritual life. Submission to God’s Word, submission to the Lord as He’s revealed in Scripture, that is where we grow, not in observing disciplines. And you know, it’s hard to talk about this because on the surface they might actually look similar. You know, spending time reading the Bible can be a spiritual discipline or it can be actually feeding on God’s Word.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So it’s hard to describe in words the difference, but when you know the Lord and you’re asking Him to show you what is true and real, He opens Scripture to you. It’s not like you bring yourself with your own expectations and you think, “Okay, I’m going to find this.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: No. He comes through His Word and changes us.
Nikki: Um-hmm. If we use reading Scripture as a means to gain salvation versus reading Scripture to know God, you’re handling it differently, and part of what’s so frustrating about knowing how to even talk about these things for the podcast is you say the words out loud and you know, okay, someone could interpret that correctly, but that’s not what they mean.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And it’s tricky trying to flesh that out. So they talk about the internal change in us as a result of all of this, and they say, “At the Second Advent we will be changed physically. This corruptible mortal body will put on immortality.” Okay, yes, we agree with that.
Colleen: Okay. Yup.
Nikki: Then they say, “However, our characters must undergo transformation in preparation for the Second Advent.”
Colleen: That’s the same as saying what Ellen White said, that Jesus will not come until the character of Christ is perfectly formed in His people; we determine when He comes by how well we keep the law and reproduce His character.
Nikki: Well, this is why when they recently had a big anniversary, the president of their General Conference came out and kind of admonished them for the fact that Jesus hasn’t come back yet –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – because they hadn’t gotten it together.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: So here’s where we kind of move into this channeling thing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: They say, “Those who become new creatures in Christ Jesus” – and remember, Ellen White just defined what that looks like. It’s meditating on Him. “Those who become new creatures in Christ Jesus will bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. By the faith of the Son of God, they will follow in His steps, reflect His character, and purify themselves even as He is pure.” And they go on to say, “We must place ourselves in the channel of the Spirit’s working, which we can do by beholding Christ. As we meditate on Christ’s life, the Holy Spirit restores the physical, mental, and spiritual faculties. The Holy Spirit’s word involves revealing Christ and restoring us into Christ’s image.”
Colleen: Argh. [Laughter.] You know, if we would just stick to Scripture, it would be so much more clear. There’s so much double-speak in Adventism. All of this is similar also to what they say in this chapter about perfection, that He is asking us to develop perfection as part of our attaining salvation, that – they actually have the temerity to say this, “Believers” – and this is – the thing that’s so upsetting to me about this is that this quote I’m about to read is referring to Matthew 5:48, where Jesus said, “Be ye also perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” and they take that out of context, and this is how they reinterpret it. “Believers are to be as perfect in their finite sphere, Christ said, as God is perfect in His infinite and absolute sphere.” No, that is not what He said. He said, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Now, I understand why they’re saying it and interpreting it this way. Adventists don’t know what to do with that. But Jesus was talking to the Jews, and in context, He was saying, “This law, this rule, this perfection, this righteousness, you can’t do. God will tolerate nothing less than absolute moral perfection, and there’s no human alive, except Jesus Himself, who could do that. He is saying to them, “You need someone besides yourself. You need me. You have to have my righteousness. I’m not going to produce myself in you. I’m going to cover you, take you in, make you new. You are mine when you believe me, and then my righteousness is that perfection.”
Nikki: Yeah. She says that He restores us to the image of Christ. But the Bible says that we were predestined to be conformed into the image of His Son. If you are being conformed, it’s acted upon you.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: God is at work in us conforming us to His Son. But this is not about salvation, and it’s not about perfection.
Colleen: And it’s worth mentioning also, and the book also talks about this, where Paul says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The context of this verse is not “get busy and keep the law and eradicate sin,” which is how I learned that text.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And that text actually is a trigger for a lot of people leaving Adventism, “Well, what about this?” They’ll say, “What about this?” Where Paul is saying this, he’s talking to people who are already saved, who are already born again and know the Lord and have repented, and he’s saying, “Now, this salvation that you have, you live your life from that. Let that drive your decisions, let that drive your motivations. Work it out.” Like when I married Richard, I was suddenly married, and I was suddenly a stepmother, and I didn’t have the chance or the time to get used to this idea. It was just there. And now I had to live as a mother, I had to live as a wife. This was something that was already done. It was already a fact. And my life now was shaped by that fact, and that’s what Paul is saying.
Nikki: I love the example of the farmer working his field. He has the field, now work the land.
Colleen: I want to make one more comment about this business of justification and sanctification both being required as the title and the fitness for salvation. But the Bible is really clear that justification is where we receive the new birth and eternal life, not sanctification. I love Romans 5:10. Paul says this, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” His blood is the entire thing that justifies us and fits us and reconciles us, and we receive this reconciliation before we’re cleaned up, before we’re sanctified. There’s no wait and see if you get there and then we’ll see if God takes you. This is at the moment we see who we are and we see who Jesus is, His blood reconciles us and justifies us, and then, now that we are reconciled, His resurrection life is what saves us. He brings our spirits to life. That’s eternal life. Sanctification flows out of that.
Nikki: That’s a big contrast with their section here on “Daily Justification.”
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: Just the heading there should raise flags for everybody, “Daily Justification.” They say, “All believers who are living the Spirit-filled sanctified life (Christ-possessed) have a continuing need for daily justification (Christ-bestowed). We need this because of conscious transgressions and because of errors we may commit unwittingly.” So this again makes me think of the Investigative Judgment –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – which we haven’t gotten to yet, where you have to confess every single sin, and if you have sins you’ve forgotten, you are kept awake. But it was so exciting for me when we went through the Book of Hebrews for the podcast –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and we got to Hebrews chapter 9, and these verses – I just – I couldn’t believe I didn’t know this in Adventism. So, the sacrifice that Christ made was in fulfillment of the Day of Atonement, and we read about this in Hebrews 9:6 and 7: “Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle, performing the divine worship, but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.”
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: “The sins of the people committed in ignorance.” Jesus paid for all of our sins, the ones we know, the ones we don’t, past, present, and future.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It is finished. This is why Christians are happy! [Laughter.]
Colleen: Exactly! [Laughter.]
Nikki: I always wondered, “Why are they so happy?”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: This is why it’s called “good news.”
Colleen: We’re not trying to maintain our salvation by remembering our sins and confessing them. We are living in the victory of Jesus and knowing that when we sin we have an advocate with the Father, and we have to acknowledge it to Jesus, but He’s already covered it. Right near the end of this chapter they actually said this, “To emphasize our present salvation to the exclusion of our future salvation creates an incorrect, unfortunate understanding of Christ’s complete salvation.” Well, that’s just confusion. But what they’re doing is upholding the Investigative Judgment and Ellen White’s statements that you cannot know you’re saved until the end and that it would be wrong to teach people to think they’re saved or to say they’re saved, because you don’t know until Jesus comes again what your last breath might have done. You don’t know if you obeyed perfectly and to all the light you had right up to the end until He comes again. That’s not biblical. We can know.
Nikki: These chapters are laced with the sin of omission.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: There is so much that they won’t come out and say –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – but that they’re holding together. And then they also will say things that sound right to believers.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: At the end they say, “The indwelling Christ in our hearts is one of the conditions for future salvation – the glorification of our mortal bodies.” Well, a believer might say, yes, when you’re born again and Christ is in you, He is your hope of glory. Paul says that. But remember, the indwelling of Christ is completely conditional from day one in Adventism.
Colleen: In Adventism, yeah.
Nikki: He can come, He can go, so you better make sure He’s there.
Colleen: And yet the gospel is that when we’ve heard the word of our salvation, which is Jesus’ death for our sins according to Scripture, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day according to Scripture, all done for our reconciliation, for our forgiveness, for our justification, when we hear that gospel and believe, we’re sealed in Him, with the promised Holy Spirit, who is a guarantee of our future. There is no ongoing, life-long experience of salvation. We don’t work our salvation out. The Lord works it into us. And if you haven’t experienced that, we ask that you consider seriously what Jesus has already said: The work of God is to believe in Him whom He sent (John 6:29). Those who have believed have passed out of death into life and will not come into condemnation (John 5:24). What must I do to be saved? “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your household.” (Acts 16:31). You can know that you’re saved, and it’s a spiritual reality that nothing can take from you. When you are born again God’s Spirit testifies with your spirit that you are His child (Romans 8:14-17). You can know, and we pray that you will know.
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 containing online articles and ministry news. Like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, as this does expand our reach. And join us next week as we look at Fundamental Belief #11, Growing in Christ.
Colleen: And we’ll see you then.
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