Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—The Remnant and Its Mission | 112

Colleen and Nikki discuss Adventism’s doctrine “The Remnant and Its Mission”. Learn how Adventism teaches that they are the “remnant of Bible prophecy” and all other Christians are destined for the mark of the beast. Transcription by Gwen Billington.

 

Nikki:  Welcome to Former Adventist podcast.  I’m Nikki Stevenson.

Colleen:  And I’m Colleen Tinker.

Nikki:  This week we’ll be examining the Fundamental Belief #13 titled The Remnant and Its Mission.  If this is your first time listening, over the last several weeks we’ve been working our way through the official book of the fundamental doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and we’ve been comparing them with Scripture.  We wanted to do this because so often when we talk about Adventism and we expose its false teachings, people will defend the organization by saying, “I wasn’t taught that.”

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]  How many times have you heard that, Colleen?

Colleen:  Oh, more than I can count.

Nikki:  So if you’re listening to this and you were never taught what you’re hearing us talk about, you need to know that whether or not you were taught that, it’s what Adventism teaches.  This is what they teach.  This is the message they propagate with your tithe and tuition.  This is the message that’s being given to your kids, your grandkids, your loved ones.  This book is as official as it gets.  This book is titled Seventh-day Adventists Believe…An Exposition of the Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  Now, for those who’ve been following along this far, I have to say again that as we think through these chapters, it’s important to remember the Adventist origins story.  We need to have that in the back of our minds.  If we can start each chapter remembering how they got here, it helps us think through what comes next.  I’ve had many former Adventists say to me, “I can read Adventist stuff and not see right away what’s wrong,” but I think this is the key to understanding the difference between Adventist doctrines and biblical Christianity.  It’s from that worldview that they speak and distort the details of Scripture and of reality.  If you’re not familiar with the great controversy worldview, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to episode 99, where we discuss their story of origins.  You just can’t understand Adventism until you understand that.

Colleen:  That is so true.

Nikki:  But before we jump into this chapter, let me remind you that if you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com.  Visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing new articles each week, as well as other ministry resources and news.  And you can also find a donate tab there if you’d like to come alongside us financially with your support.  And don’t forget to like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  Okay, Colleen, so I actually have two questions for you this time.

Colleen:  Okay.

Nikki:  You have a lot of conversations with Adventists or with people just leaving Adventism, and I know you often ask them what the gospel is.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  What would you say is the percentage of the time that you hear them answer with, “The Three Angels’ Messages”?  And the other question is, when you were an Adventist, what did you think the mission of the remnant was, and who did you believe the remnant were?  I guess that’s three questions.

Colleen:  Well, that’s okay.

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  As for a percentage of times people answer “The Three Angels’ Messages,” I would have trouble giving an actual percentage, but I would say that after the initial confusion, because I have never asked an Adventist what the gospel is and had them able to actually answer –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – many times, I would say a majority of the time, The Three Angels’ Messages gets mentioned.  They might mention other things.  They might mention the Second Coming.  They might mention even Jesus died, but The Three Angels’ Messages will come up.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  In all generations, actually.  The idea of The Three Angels’ Messages is there.  Sometimes it’s in the background, sometimes it’s right in front of their faces, but it’s coloring their perceptions.  It’s always there.  Then, what did I think the remnant was and what did I think its mission was?  Well, obviously, the remnant was the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and I believed I was part of that.  And I believed that the thing that defined it, even though as I was working my way towards being a more evangelical Adventist before we left, I probably would have felt a little embarrassed and maybe even tried to counter the idea of the remnant, but I understood the remnant to be God’s last-day people who had His special messages for the end-times, and that was that Jesus was coming back, I believed that the Sabbath was part of it, that it was kind of like the lost doctrine that God gave the Adventists to restore true worship.  So in short, I believed Adventism had the remnant message, and I believed that whatever else I might believe, I had to remain true to the Sabbath and find a palatable way to present it in a Christian context that Christians would understand, you know, Sunday Christians would understand and be convinced by.  And I also believed that I had to keep that day and remain loyal to it in order to be saved, ultimately.  Because if I left it, I would be leaving the light I had.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  What about you, Nikki?

Nikki:  Very similar.  I believed that the remnant came out of Adventism, so they had to be Adventists, but they were the best Adventists –

Colleen:  Oh, interesting.

Nikki:  – because I had to figure out what to do with that 144,000, because the church was bigger than that.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  So I believed that the Adventists had the most truth of all the churches –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – and then the people who kept the most truth the best were going to be the remnant.

Colleen:  Oh, interesting.

Nikki:  I believed that, but I also remember, even in middle school, thinking, “How could I have been lucky enough to be born into the remnant church?  This isn’t adding up.”

Colleen:  Me too, yeah.

Nikki:  But I did have that sense.  And I believed that the mission was, honestly, related to the story of origins.  It was to uphold and vindicate the law.

Colleen:  Oh.

Nikki:  The commandments – anytime I read “commandments,” I read “the Ten Commandments” into it.

Colleen:  I did too, um-hmm.

Nikki:  And so the people who keep the commandments of God as an Adventist meant the people who keep the Ten Commandments perfectly.

Colleen:  Especially that fourth.

Nikki:  Yeah, oh, especially that fourth, which was a lost commandment because the reformers didn’t go far enough.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.] 

Nikki:  So, yeah, we were given a special message –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – our people were given a special message to give to the rest of the world, and that’s what made us a peculiar people.  That was kind of how I thought about that.  Even though I knew I was in the right church, I never really believed I was going to be among the 144,000.  I wanted to be, but the odds were really against me.

Colleen:  Yeah.  I had trouble believing I would actually be saved in the end.  I actually sort of prepared myself, like, I would do things that would be very uncomfortable thinking, “If I get used to this, maybe I can withstand the burning before I’m dead.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Yeah, I didn’t really think I would be saved either, oh, but I hoped.

Nikki:  And then, you know, a part of that Three Angels’ gospel message was that warning that if you didn’t get it right, you were going to burn.

Colleen:  Oh, right!  Especially if I didn’t get it right after knowing the truth.

Nikki:  Oh, yeah.  Oh, yeah.  And we read that in this book, that, you know, you don’t even have to know the name “Jesus,” but if you naturally do what’s required by the law, then you will be a part of His church.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  And so I used to look at my friends – I had Catholic friends and Baptist friends – and I’d think, “You guys are so lucky you don’t know what I know.”

Colleen:  [Laughter.] 

Nikki:  And it almost felt like the compassionate thing to do would be to not give them that light –

Colleen:  Exactly!

Nikki:  – so that they didn’t have to live under that burden.

Colleen:  Yes.  How did I get so lucky to have the truth?  How did I get so unlucky to have the truth?  [Laughter.] 

Nikki:  Yes.  [Laughter.]  Yes.

Colleen:  Oh, my.  Well, Nikki, this doctrine, The Remnant and Its Mission, is really an interesting one because once again, this is a doctrine that is entirely derived from Ellen White’s book The Great Controversy.  And do you know, just like the doctrine earlier that was called The Great Controversy, where it set forth the conflict supposedly between Christ and Satan, this is the continuation of that worldview, what happens to those who believe that scenario is true, and it’s entirely found in The Great Controversy book, and there is not one footnote from Ellen White.  Now, it has a ton of footnotes, and most of them are from Adventist authors, and some are from Catholic authors, but there’s nothing there from Ellen White, and I find that very interesting because this along with the great controversy doctrine itself are pure Ellen White.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Purely from that vision she had where she took over a funeral and had a four-hour vision.  Why don’t we read this doctrine?

Nikki:  Okay.  This is Fundamental Belief #13, The Remnant and Its Mission: “The universal church is composed of all who truly believe in Christ, but in the last days, a time of widespread apostasy, a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.  This remnant announces the arrival of the judgment hour, proclaims salvation through Christ, and heralds the approach of His second advent.  This proclamation is symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14; it coincides with the work of judgment in heaven and results in a work of repentance and reform on earth.  Every believer is called to have a personal part in this worldwide witness.”

Colleen:  It isn’t even funny, and yet I look at this thing and I think, oh, my goodness, the high-sounding words that they have used to camouflage the reality of what this is saying.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  So, what stands out to you, Nikki, when you look at the doctrine?  What are some yellow or red flags that go “That means something different.”

Nikki:  Well, you know, Adventism has its own vocabulary –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – and it has its own definitions, and when I read about the last days, I know they’re not referring to that in the same way that Jesus did or that the apostles did.

Colleen:  That’s true.

Nikki:  They’re not thinking about the church age.  They’re thinking about their apocalyptic, cultic [laughter] –

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  – interpretation of the last days.  They’re thinking about their job right before Jesus comes back, and so that Jesus can come back.

Colleen:  Oh, yes.

Nikki:  They talk about the remnant announcing the arrival of the judgment hour.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  Well, we know that that means 1844.

Colleen:  Absolutely.

Nikki:  They’re talking about the birth of the remnant church being Seventh-day Adventism and Ellen White, and in 1844, when we got the date wrong –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – we figured out that actually the judgment was beginning, and now it’s our job to tell everybody about the Investigative Judgment.

Colleen:  And, mind you, every believer is called to have a personal part in this worldwide witness.  So “believer” is defined as what?

Nikki:  People who accept the unique doctrines of Adventism.

Colleen:  And then they say, the proclamation is symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14.  I don’t know any Christian who understands what Adventists mean when they talk about The Three Angels’ Messages.  Do you?

Nikki:  No, I wouldn’t.  And in fact, when we speak with people who have never been Adventist, they look at us quite puzzled, and they say, “Which angels?”

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  Because there are a lot of angels in the Book of Revelation.

Colleen:  That’s right.  And in Revelation 14 there are more than three.  Those three that Adventists have picked out because of Ellen White are followed by a couple more angels that are not included in The Three Angels’ Messages, and I look at that and I think, “Now, how did they decide,” and then I look at what they say The Three Angels’ Messages mean, and it’s clear why they picked those three, and we’ll talk about that as we go through this chapter.  Adventism has taken The Three Angels’ Messages of Revelation 14 and have called it the gospel.  “The gospel in verity,” Ellen White said.  In other words, the true gospel, but when we look at it, The Three Angels Messages do not speak of the gospel as defined in 1 Corinthians 15.  It’s something else, and it’s a call to repent, and it’s a call to the world, but it’s not the call the Adventists say they’re giving.

Nikki:  No!  And it’s very clear here that they believe true believers are going to participate in this great work of repentance and reform on earth.  Well, that reform is bringing people back to Saturday.

Colleen:  And the health message.  Actually, my mother-in-law was a very observant, very well-versed Adventist, and I remember her explaining one time that since 1844 we have been living in the antitypical Day of Atonement and that ever since 1844 began, when Jesus supposedly went into the Most Holy Place and began the work of Investigative Judgment, believers on earth are living in what the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament foreshadowed.  This period of time from 1844 until the second coming is the antitypical Day of Atonement, and we are to afflict our souls and put off our worldliness, and that was her reason why we shouldn’t wear makeup and jewelry, because this is the afflicting of the soul, as Israel did on the Day of Atonement.  We are not to be involved in celebrating, rejoicing.  We are to be searching our souls, putting off sin, essentially wearing sackcloth and ashes, in a figurative way, and not living as if we are fully happy and fully forgiven, because we’re being investigated and we’re on probation.

Nikki:  And we’re supposed to be remembering every single one of our sins so that we can pass this probation.

Colleen:  Exactly!

Nikki:  Which is really, really frustrating when you know that the Day of Atonement, the sacrifice that was made on the Day of Atonement, was for the sins of the people that they didn’t even remember.

Colleen:  But Adventism doesn’t teach that.

Nikki:  No.

Colleen:  So as they talk through this doctrine, they introduce the idea that Jesus was the Son of the woman in Revelation 12 that the red dragon tried to devour, but when the Son was caught up to heaven, the red dragon went after the rest of the remnant of her seed.  Now, Nikki, when we read Revelation 12 now, it’s pretty clear that John had in mind and was having a vision of Israel.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And what was going to happen to Israel in the future?  Adventism has appropriated that chapter and has said that the dragon, who is Satan, is now going after the remnant, which is Adventism, because Adventism has the last-day message.

Nikki:  Well, they’re true Israel, and we saw that last week when we talked about what the church is.  They said that Israel, you know, they failed their mission, and now they’re just another nation.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  So we can’t have them in the future –

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  – being important in any way.

Colleen:  I’m really struck by a sentence at the end of the very first page of this chapter.  It says, “Nothing, not even death on the cross, could deter Jesus from His mission as Savior of humanity,” and I want to go, “Really?”  How could death on a cross even be mentioned in a sentence that says it could not deter Him as Savior?  His death on the cross was what qualified Him to be our Savior.  He was our Savior because He died.  They have no true understanding of what Jesus’ blood and death was for.  They see Him as an example, returning us to the law, showing us how to keep the law.  And that’s the mission of the remnant.  There’s so much that they have done in this chapter that’s just a matter of bringing in their cultic teaching and trying to find proof-texts to explain it.  What struck me the most, and we talked about this before, Nikki, is that we’re just going to kind of do a big picture overview until we get to a discussion of The Three Angels’ Messages, because that’s the essence of the remnant.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But we have to talk about the presentation in this chapter of church history.  Adventists’ interpretation of church history, which comes straight from Ellen White’s great controversy vision and her book The Great Controversy, is a perversion of real history.  I didn’t know that as an Adventist.  I was taught church history the way Ellen White taught it, and I was taught that Martin Luther failed to finish the Reformation.  He didn’t go far enough.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And as the book says, the Reformation stagnated, and then God had to raise up a remnant.  As you look at this, what strikes you about the church history part of this part of the chapter?

Nikki:  Well, it’s really clear that they married their bad hermeneutic of Scripture with their bad teaching of history.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  They’re really trying to build a case.  And like the book says, each doctrine builds on itself.

Colleen:  Oh, yeah.

Nikki:  That’s what I see happening, even in this chapter.  They’re taking things in Scripture far out of context –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – and then taking pieces of history, misrepresenting them, and saying, “This is what that was.”

Colleen:  That’s exactly right.  I’m looking right now at a heading in this chapter that’s called, “The Ascendency of ‘The Man of Sin.'”  Now, the man of sin is a phrase that’s used in 2 Thessalonians when it’s talking about the great deception that’s coming on the world and an antichrist power that’s coming.  They have used this phrase and combined it with a misunderstanding of passages out of Revelation, and who do they say the man of sin is?

Nikki:  They say it’s a system of religion.

Colleen:  And they define that system of religion as?

Nikki:  Essentially the Roman Catholic Church.

Colleen:  Yes, exactly.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Now, to be fair, a lot of Christians through the centuries have believed that the papacy represented a false system of religion.  Ellen White took this and made a fine point out of it and created a whole worldview on the idea that the Catholic Church and the pope are the man of sin and everything that’s going to happen is about them trying to deceive us, and it all centers on the Sabbath.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  As they develop this idea that the Catholic Church is the man of sin, they try to interpret passages from Revelation and plug it into history.  For example, Revelation says that the beast, who appeared to have died, will be supernaturally revived, and they make the case that this is the Catholic Church, and they talk about it being in great decline and then coming back at the end of the 1700s following the French Revolution.  And then they try to create a whole scene for the appearance of the remnant to correct the problems of this false system of religion that has been revived that they have made a case to prove is the antichrist.  It’s all very confusing.  It’s all wrapped up in their time prophecies, their 1260 days, their beast of Daniel 7, their beast of Daniel 9.  None of it makes sense when you read Scripture for what it means.  But Ellen White has developed an elaborate system of theology and a whole worldview on this idea.

Nikki:  One of the things that stood out to me in this section is when they go through some of the doctrines that the Catholic Church held to and they seek to refute them, they essentially describe what I experienced in Adventism.

Colleen:  Isn’t that interesting?

Nikki:  Yeah, it was very interesting.  They’re right.  A lot of these doctrines were very wrong.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  But they are also guilty of a variation of them.  This one actually made me laugh a little.  They say, “Ordinary believers had no authority to interpret the doctrines God had revealed in Scripture.  That authority resided only in the Catholic Church.”  But remember, we’ve already looked at this on page 172 of this book.  They say, of Adventist members, “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 the standard, then the church must accept it; if not, it should reject it.  All members should yield to the Bible-based judgment, for ‘in the multitude of counselors there is safety.'”  So they moralize giving the church final authority over all doctrines and ideas.

Colleen:  Absolutely.  And that’s exactly what they claim Catholicism has done.

Nikki:  Yeah!  And one of the other things they complain about is that the ultimate authority resides in the church.  But listen to what Ellen White said.  She said, “I have been shown that no man’s judgment should be surrendered to the judgment of any one man, but when the judgment of the General Conference, which is the highest authority that God has upon the earth, is exercised, private independence and private judgment must not be maintained but be surrendered.”

Colleen:  Oh, my.

Nikki:  You know, the other thing they said was lost in the Reformation: it was the Sabbath, the second coming –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – and then this one here: “Justification by faith, the great principle of the gospel, was rediscovered, as was a new appreciation for the once-for-all atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His all-sufficient mediatorial priesthood.”  So here again they’re punting us into the Investigative Judgment.

Colleen:  One of the things that has bothered me so much since we left Adventism and I began to see where the worldview really came from is the whole idea that the Reformation began – and she will say God raised it up, and she makes Martin Luther the greatest of the reformers, but she says it began to basically expose and stop false doctrines from the Catholic Church, to restore justification by faith, but then she says it stagnated and that Luther didn’t go far enough.  I want to say, wait a minute.  God did what God did in the Reformation for the purpose of all of His saints.  And for her to say the Reformation the stagnated and then God had to raise up the remnant to bring in what the reformers failed to see is just unbelievable.  This book actually says: The reformers “had failed to discover other important truths, baptism by immersion, immortality as a gift bestowed by Christ at the resurrection of the just” – in other words the state of the dead, where you cease to exist –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – “the seventh-day as the Bible Sabbath, and other truths.  They were still lost in the shadows.”

Nikki:  I had to laugh that in that sentence they say, “See chapters 7, 15, 20, and 26 of this book.”  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Exactly!  So if you want to know what the Reformation left out, just look at the Adventist doctrines.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  These things were not forgotten.  This is what I want to say: The Reformation did not restore anything that had been lost, and there were no truths that had been lost.  There were things that had been perhaps not as widely taught during the period of the earth’s history that we know as the medieval period, sometimes called the Dark Ages – that’s not a very well-accepted term at this point – but for a few hundred years there was a great dearth of learning, of being able to read, and the Catholic Church was the primary political and religious authority in Europe.  And during those years, the majority of the people on earth didn’t actually have access to Bibles.  What seems to be missing from this Adventist perspective is that God raised up the printing press and then reformers and then the corresponding parallel events called the Reformation and the Renaissance.  They were hand-in-hand, and they were acts of God.  And it wasn’t that truths were lost so much as it was that people had been unable to read Scripture for themselves.  It had not been accessible, just because of the political climate.  And God made sure that that ended.  It was kind of interesting that when we reached the year 2000 I saw a list in the LA Times one day that said, “The 100 Most Important Events of the Last Millennium,” and #1 was Gutenberg’s printing press.  It was what made it possible for the Bible to become widely available, not just chained to an altar in the Catholic cathedrals.  It’s what made it possible for people to begin to read and publish and study history and science and mathematics, and learning flourished as the Bible became available.  So the Reformation was about teaching the truth of the gospel, which had been obscured through darkness and lack of learning, but it wasn’t because it was lost.  Jesus had said the gates of hell would not prevail against His church.  And Adventism grew out of a movement that was called The Restorationist Movement, which we now know was a false movement that ran parallel to Christianity, and the whole premise of every organization that came out of The Restorationist Movement was that truth had been lost and God had raised up this group to bring them back.  Adventism is part of that Restorationist Movement, and they believed that God raised them up to bring back seventh-day Sabbath and the second coming.

Nikki:  And isn’t it interesting that that truth couldn’t come to them without visions.

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  This is all just a distraction.

Colleen:  Absolutely!

Nikki:  The Scriptures we have now are dated back far before the Reformation.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  We have the original language, and it’s been interpreted into many different languages, and the doctrines that we live by come from sola scriptura.  We don’t need visions –

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  – or visiting angels or any of that to interpret that Scripture.  God promised us His Holy Spirit, who illuminates the Word of God when that veil is removed –

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  – when we are found in Christ.  And so this whole Reformation talk is a distraction.

Colleen:  And Martin Luther and the other reformers did not write and speak and teach the gospel and the justification by faith because they had visions.

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  They studied Scripture.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And they said: Wait a minute.  We’re living in a system – the Catholic Church at the time – that is not practicing what these words actually say, and these words are right there in front of them.  They went back to Scripture and committed themselves to learning what God had said in those words.  Ellen White came along, and the Adventists came along, claiming now to be the remnant with special light from God to restore lost doctrines, and all of this had to be brought about by visions.

Nikki:  Yeah.  And they do not like people who say that we can know the truth from Scripture alone.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  They say here, “Controversies erupted.  ‘There never was an epoch in which men were so much occupied in discovering each other’s errors, or in which they called each other by so many opprobrious names.’  Thus the good news became a war of words.  ‘Scripture no longer speaks to the heart but to the critical intellect.’  ‘Dogmas were orthodox, but spirituality was extinguished. Theology was triumphant, but love was quenched.'”  They don’t like people who stand on Scripture – 

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  – and who use Scripture to be Bereans and to decide, are these doctrines from God or are they from something else?  They want the spiritual experience, the “truth as it is in Jesus,” the way they described it back in an earlier chapter.

Colleen:  Yeah.  Yes.  This quote that you just read is very telling because this is how they’re characterizing the Reformation.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  They’re characterizing it as a bunch of infighting, theological disputes.  “‘Dogmas were orthodox, but love was quenched.'”  That does not characterize the gospel.  And the gospel that was taught when Martin Luther and the other reformers taught the doctrine of justification by faith does not quench love.  It reveals the truth about what Jesus did on the cross and how we are actually saved, without all the sacraments of Catholicism.  That is not quenching love.

Nikki:  It’s the ultimate love.  They laid down their life so that we could have the Word of God in our languages.

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  They gave up everything.

Colleen:  Yes, they did.  I was so shocked as I came out of Adventism and realized that all of that history in Ellen White’s The Great Controversy, that’s touted as such an interesting book that reveals the movement of God through the ages, it’s false history.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Remember, Nikki, the summer we did a class with Elizabeth Inrig on church history, and we used the book – and I recommend this book.  It’s called Christian History Made Easy.  It’s by Timothy Paul Jones, and it’s published by Rose Publishing.  It’s available.  It’s an amazing handbook of Christian history, starting with the apostles and ending with modern times, and it walks through all the movements, all the major players, all the goods and the bads, but it talks about the progression of the church and the progression of doctrine since the time of the apostles, and it’s a fascinating look into how God has been at work in His church.  There was never a time the church was lost or truth was forgotten.  There were times when fewer people were aware, but nothing was lost.  The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church.  By the way, Adventism is not at all featured in this book as a movement of church history.  Adventism is part of the false religions that came up in the 1800s, along with Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science.  All of these religions emerged about the same time in about the same part of the United States, and they all claimed to restore lost knowledge.

Nikki:  I remember when we went through that class, we would get to a part where we’d be learning about some of the heresies that were coming up and how the church handled those heresies, and I’d think, “Oh, my goodness!  I believed that as an Adventist.”

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  “That’s a heresy from way back then?”

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  I didn’t understand that we just sort of had this cocktail of –

Colleen:  Yeah!

Nikki:  – old lies.

Colleen:  Rehashed and recombined.  Well, one of the sections in this chapter is a discussion of what and who the remnant are.  Now, we have talked about that already to some extent, but I think it’s important to mention that while Adventism has a very clear picture of itself as the remnant, as Ellen White has defined it, it’s significant that there are people within Adventism who are looking at those original Adventist doctrines, because, you know, Jesus hasn’t come yet.  So looking at world movements, which did not exist in Ellen White’s time, there have been some attempts to redefine some of these terms.  And it’s not in the book, but I wanted to mention there is a man who is well known in Adventism today, Jon Paulien, who is the Dean of the School of Religion at Loma Linda, and about, oh, 12 years ago or so he proposed a new definition of the remnant.  Now, it still is the last-day people who will bring in the last message and go into the kingdom, but he has a new way of defining them, and he says that “The remnant will arise out of a combination of the principles that are brought to the playing field by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”  He says that the three monotheistic religions of the world each contributes something significant to religion, and the remnant will arise out of a combination of those three groups and their values.  It’s not necessarily official doctrine, but he makes a very careful case for showing how this is not opposed to Ellen White’s view of the remnant being the last people of God.  And I just think it’s important to mention that, because there are a lot of Adventists alive today who are looking at this idea of the remnant, not rejecting it as an unbiblical idea, but expanding it to fit what they see in the world.

Nikki:  So when they introduce the characteristics of the remnant, they say that John describes this group in specific terms: “They are made up of those ‘who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.'”  They say, “They have the responsibility of proclaiming, just before Christ’s return, God’s final warning to all the world, the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14.  These messages themselves contain a description of the remnant, they are ‘those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.'”  So when I left Adventism, one of the things that was so helpful to me was understanding what the commandments are.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  Because we were so brainwashed that any time you read “commandments” in the Bible anywhere, it’s the Ten Commandments –

Colleen:  Absolutely.

Nikki:  – it’s the Decalogue.
Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  But we have linguistic evidence –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – that lets us know, this is not talking about the Decalogue.  Whenever John wrote about the commandments, he was very consistent in using “nomos” when he was talking about the Mosaic Law –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – and “entole” when he was talking about the instructions and teachings of God or of Christ.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  This passage uses “entole.”

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  So the remnant are those who keep all of the instructions and teachings of God.  They are God’s people.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  They obey Him in all of His Word.  But they make this about those who hold on to that Mosaic covenant, the Decalogue, the words of the covenant.

Colleen:  And their point in doing that is primarily because of the Sabbath.  If they went with the real meaning of “entole,” which is “the full counsel of God, the full teachings of Jesus,” they could not say that the Sabbath is required and is the mark of those who will be saved.  But if they keep the commandments, meaning the Decalogue, then they can hammer home the Sabbath.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  They also say that the remnant is characterized by the faith of Jesus.  Now, this is an interesting thing because most Christians understand the faith of Jesus as being the imputed faith of Jesus that we have as Christians, or the faith that we have in His finished work.  It’s what we receive from God when we trust in Jesus; we have the faith of Jesus.  When they say that the remnant has the faith of Jesus, they actually say this: “God’s remnant people are characterized by a faith similar to that which Jesus had.”

Nikki:  It’s Jesus is my example again.

Colleen:  When they say that the remnant has the commandments of God, they mean they keep the Ten Commandments, and when they say they have the testimony of Jesus, they mean they have Ellen White, who has the last-day message.  They can use these phrases which come out of passages in Revelation, but when they use them, they mean something internal that only they know.

Nikki:  Yeah, they come right out and say, “Through the strength Christ gives them, they obey God’s requirements, including all ten of the commandments, God’s unchanging moral law.”  Well, I hate to break it to them, but there are more than ten of God’s commandments in the Word of God.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  That’s right.  [Laughter.]  I think this is a good place to point out what it is that Ellen White actually said about herself.  When we talk about the testimony of Jesus and we see that Adventists apply that to Ellen White, it becomes even more abhorrent because we realize that she made some pretty tall claims for herself.  In Testimonies, volume 4, page 147, she wrote herself into Hebrews 1:1-2.

Nikki:  “In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things and through whom He made the universe.”

Colleen:  Now, just notice what she says about herself: “In ancient times God spoke to men by the mouths of prophets and apostles.  In these days He speaks to them by the testimonies of His Spirit.”  Notice, “testimonies of His Spirit.”  That’s the phrase she claimed for herself, she gave the testimonies according to His Spirit.  She goes on, “There never was a time when God instructed His people more earnestly than He instructs them now concerning His will and the course that He would have them pursue.”  And again, that’s Testimonies, volume 4, page 147.

Nikki:  She also wrote in Testimonies, volume 4, page 230, “God does nothing in partnership with Satan.  My work for the past 30 years bears the stamp of God or the stamp of the enemy.  There is no halfway work in this matter.  The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God or of the devil.  In arraying yourself against the servants of God, you are doing a work either for God or for the devil.”

Colleen:  She said it herself.  She equates her own work with the testimonies of the Spirit, and she claims that phrase in Revelation, “Here are those who keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus, those who have the testimony of Jesus.”  She claims that for herself and yet she herself says it’s either of God or of the devil, and when we see the doctrines that she teaches and the way the remnant is defined and the way the message of the remnant is defined, we can only conclude that, by her own testimony, her works are of the devil.

Nikki:  And they say here, “John defines ‘the testimony of Jesus’ as ‘the spirit of prophecy.’  The remnant will be guided by the testimony of Jesus conveyed through the gift of prophecy.”

Colleen:  That’s not what he said.  Well, the book goes on to explain the mission of the remnant, the remnant who have this spirit of prophecy.  And this is where they describe the three angels’ messages, and it’s important for us to understand how Adventism interprets these messages.  These are taken from Revelation 14:14-20, and like you said earlier, Nikki, Christians look at that and go, “Ah, which angels are those?” because there are more than three angels in Revelation 14.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But these three they have reinterpreted to define the core of Ellen White’s false gospel.  The first angel’s message is taken out of Revelation 14:6 and 7.

Nikki:  “Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth – to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people – saying with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.'”

Colleen:  Now, how do you understand that when you read it, just in the Bible?  What is this angel calling people to do?

Nikki:  He’s calling them to fear God and to give Him glory.

Colleen:  Absolutely.

Nikki:  And he’s letting them know that the hour of His judgment has come, but in the context of Revelation.

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  Not an Investigative Judgment that occurred in 1844.

Colleen:  No.  And that’s what Ellen White and the Adventists say is happening here, that this first angel is declaring 1844 and the Investigative Judgment.  Now, you know, we said early on that Ellen White is one of the doctrines of Adventism, and we haven’t come to her fundamental belief yet, that will be #18, but she’s like a secret door.  When you open Ellen White’s door, there is this entire opus of work that is current doctrinal truth for Adventism, and that’s what we’re seeing here.  This angel’s message is clear in Scripture, but when you’re an Adventist, believing Ellen White had the last day message for the remnant, you understand that what this is really saying from an Adventist perspective is 1844 brought in the judgment.  Now you’ve got to get busy and honor God, and more than that, there’s another piece to it.  You have to worship Him, the one who created.  And then they take that and say, “If He’s the Creator, we have to worship Him in the way He created the world.  He made a week.  He rested on the seventh day.  You have to worship on the seventh day.”  So they say the first angel’s message is “Fear God, give Him glory, worship on the seventh-day Sabbath, and know that 1844 started the Investigative Judgment, the hour of His judgment is here.  Get busy and repent.”

Nikki:  And they do refer you on to chapter 24 of the book.

Colleen:  Yes!  Yes.

Nikki:  They’re very clear that this is about 1844.  It was interesting to me too, they say the first angel symbolizes God’s remnant carrying an everlasting gospel to the world.  Not the everlasting gospel.

Colleen:  That’s a really significant point.

Nikki:  You know, I have never heard the health message in the context of the first angel’s message, but it is here.  They say, “John predicts that the movement preparing the world for Christ’s return will give a renewed emphasis to the biblical concern for glorifying God.  As never before it will present the New Testament appeal for the sacred stewardship of our lives: ‘Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.’  We do not have exclusive rights to our physical, moral, and spiritual powers; Christ bought these with His blood at Calvary.  ‘Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.’  ‘Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.'”  This is the right arm of the gospel.

Colleen:  The health message.  It’s also interesting that they say in this section, where they’re describing the first angel’s message, that honoring God by keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is honoring His memorial of creation.  Nowhere, nowhere does the Bible say the Sabbath is a memorial of creation.  That is an Adventist construct.  The Sabbath is a shadow of Christ (Colossians 2:16-17).  The Sabbath was a sign for Israel that they were keeping His covenant with them.  It pointed back to the finished work of God at the end of creation, and it points forward to the finished work of Christ on the cross (Colossians 2:16-17).  It’s not a memorial of creation.  It’s not something that the remnant is supposed to bring to the world as the right way to worship God.  It has nothing to do with that.  That is a complete appropriation of this idea and applying it into Scripture and making it say what it doesn’t say.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But here they actually say that the seventh-day Sabbath is the sign of God’s creation, “a sign neglected by the vast majority of His created beings.”  No.  There’s no neglect.  The neglect is in seeing Jesus for who He is and what He’s actually done.

Nikki:  At the end of that section about the first angel’s message, they say, “Only when true worship is restored” – Sabbath-keeping – “and believers live the principles of God’s kingdom” – the Ten Commandments – “can God be glorified.”  God cannot be glorified apart from us.  He cannot be vindicated apart from us.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  God can only be God if we make Him God –

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  – in Adventism.

Colleen:  It’s all up to us.  We vindicate Him; we glorify Him.  He can be glorified through our Sabbath-keeping and our law-keeping.  It kind of makes me mad.

Nikki:  They don’t know my God.

Colleen:  No, they don’t.  So what is the second angel’s message?

Nikki:  “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”  This is people who go to church on Sunday.

Colleen:  Absolutely.  Babylon they describe as false religion.  They center the identity of Babylon, in church times, in Catholicism, and they say, “Everybody who goes to church on Sunday is a daughter of the whore of Babylon, and if you go to church on Sunday, you are worshipping a false religion, and you are part of Babylon.”  So they say that the call to come out of Babylon is to come out of Sunday worship.

Nikki:  Yeah.  They believe that Christians go to church on Sunday because of the merging of church and state and that they get the support from the state to go to church on Sunday, and that’s why they go.  So this is false worship, going on Sunday.

Colleen:  Absolutely.  And implicit in this whole second angel’s message to “come out of her my people,” which is Sunday worship, is their belief that there will be a Sunday law at the end of time and that the state will force Sunday-keeping and that only the true believers will maintain their seventh-day Sabbath observance.  They will be hunted and killed for that, but never you mind, you come on out and keep the Sabbath because that’s the only way you can worship God truthfully.

Nikki:  And all those Christians who worship God on Sunday have been deceived, and so they’re deceived into taking the mark of the beast.  I have to point out, in Revelation 13 we’re reading about what John sees –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – what God shows John; right?

Colleen:  Yes, um-hmm.

Nikki:  And he sees the people who receive the mark of the beast, and he tells us who receives the mark of the beast.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  He says, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, every one whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb who has been slain.”  Remember Ephesians?

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  We were predestined.  We were in the book.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  He wrote us in the book.  We were chosen from before the foundation of the earth.

Colleen:  It’s amazing.

Nikki:  The people who take the mark were never written in the book.

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  It doesn’t say that they were blotted out of the book.  Those whose names were written in the Book of Life do not take the mark of the beast.  Believers are not deceived into worshiping.  That word for “worship” is homage.  It’s like bowing down. 

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  It’s physical.  It’s intentional.  We can’t be tricked into this.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  And so many people who come out of Adventism don’t unpack that part because we don’t like touching Daniel and Revelation when we leave.

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  They don’t unpack that part and then they live in fear that, “Oh, no, I might accidentally take the mark of the beast,” but according to what John actually saw –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – that’s not going to happen.

Colleen:  No.  And can we explain exactly what the mark of the beast is?  No.  We’re not told.  But we are told it’s something only unbelievers get.  These doctrines, this doctrine of the remnant, never deals with placing ones faith and trust entirely in the finished work of Jesus Christ.  It does not talk about the new birth.  It does not talk about being a believer in Christ and alive in Christ.  It’s all about believing Ellen White, keeping the Ten Commandments, and observing the seventh-day Sabbath.  It’s all about how to make sure you’re saved by what you do, and that’s a false gospel.

Nikki:  And they actually call that “righteousness by faith.”

Colleen:  They do.

Nikki:  And they say those who worship on Sunday are doing a work, righteousness by work.

Colleen:  It’s incredible.  It’s an incredible perversion of what Scripture actually says.  So then we come to the third angel’s message.  And what does the third angel say?

Nikki:  “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.  Here is the patience of the saints.  Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”

Colleen:  Well, as convoluted as it seems, Adventists have actually made this message, this call to come out of Babylon and avoid the mark of the beast, they have made this into stop keeping Sunday or you will be destroyed.  And they say that keeping Sunday is the mark of the beast.  It’s ironic because this is very clear that those who do not believe, who are lost, who are not part of God’s true church of believers, His Body, that they will be tormented forever and ever.  Adventism denies that.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  They say they will be burned up and annihilated, but they are calling people to leave Sunday worship – they call it Sunday worship –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – and come and keep Sabbath, and ultimately they make the mark of the beast or the saved a matter of which day you keep holy.  It’s not even about Jesus.  Now, they will say if you keep the Saturday Sabbath, it means that you love Jesus and that you’re worshipping Him.  It’s the sign that you have the right worship.  But in reality, the day marks the difference.  An unbeliever will not keep Sabbath.  The Bible never says anything like this.  It couldn’t be more false.  And I believed that as an Adventist.

Nikki:  Yeah, I did too.  There’s a quote in here about the third angel’s message.  It says, “The final issue involves true and false worship, the true and the false gospel.  When this issue is clearly brought before the world, those who reject God’s memorial of creatorship – the Bible Sabbath – choosing to worship and honor Sunday in the full knowledge that it is not God’s appointed day of worship, will receive the ‘mark of the beast.’  This mark is a mark of rebellion; the beast claims its change of the day of worship shows its authority even over God’s law.”

Colleen:  They also say, “God has His children in all churches; but through the remnant church” – Adventism – “He proclaims a message that is to restore His true worship by calling His people out of the apostasy and preparing them for Christ’s return.”  You know, Nikki, it makes me so upset when I read this because think about the true believers that we know.  Think about our Pastor Gary, who has fed us the Word all these years and who continues to.  Think about the people we worship with every Sunday who love the Lord, who know His Word, who worship in spirit and truth, as Jesus told the woman at the well true worship was to be done.  Think about those people, and think about what this message in this book is saying.  Those are people who are in apostasy!  It’s heretical, it’s horrifying, it’s blasphemous.  These people that we know who love the Lord, who love the Word, who are born again, are not in apostasy.  The day does not determine whether one is in apostasy or not.  What matters is if we’ve trusted Jesus, if we’ve placed our faith in Him.  If we’ve placed our faith in Him, He gives us new life.  He brings us to Himself.  He gives us His resurrection life.  When we know that He completed the atonement on the cross, He died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, when we trust Him and trust His finished work, we are saved.  It has nothing to do with a day.  We are His people.  We have no special extra-biblical prophet.  We have no special day.  We just have Jesus, and we are part of His Body.  If you haven’t trusted Him, please do. 

Nikki:  If you have questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com.  Visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing new articles each week, as well as other ministry resources and news.  You can also find a donate tab there if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support.  Don’t forget to like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  And join us next week as we look at Fundamental Belief #14 – halfway through –

Colleen:  – Unity in the Body of Christ.