Adventists Have No Testimony!
I’m holding steady and praying daily as I live as a never-been Adventist outside of Adventism. My Adventist husband no longer pursues Adventism yet still listens to Adventist teachers.
I’m currently working on a project for his family. I’m transcribing their family’s history as refugees from a communist country and trace their journey of ultimately becoming immigrants to America. Because I am a native English-speaker, transcribing their thoughts into proper English for future generations fell into my hands.
It is a very interesting story and thus an interesting topic to write about. I’m trying to keep as much of it in their own words as possible.
So as I near the end of the project, I am reading and re-reading, proofing, and re-reading again—and am finding that the whole story is FLAT. I can’t imagine why.
They wanted a closing paragraph to wrap up their part of the family story, leaving it to be continued by children and grandchildren, but they couldn’t think of anything to say.
So I wrote an ending for them. It included honoring and glorifying God—but they did not like it. They said, “It is not us.”
Then I realized why the whole story is so flat. They have no living testimony! After my realization, I went through and re-read every paragraph, every chapter. I could easily make a statement to glorify God’s hand in their lives at every turn. I could easily find Scripture to highlight every chapter.
I am amazed. I have come to understand by talking to a few other former Adventists that Adventists do not have testimonies!
I am dumbfounded.
How can anyone belong to God and not have a testimony?
The story I’m transcribing for them is empty. I don’t want to leave it that way, but then it is not my story. It is theirs.
Just thought I’d share and wonder if you might have thoughts.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: What an interesting account you shared! I also discovered, after leaving Adventism, that Adventists do not have testimonies. They don’t have them because they are not born again. They have not, as a general rule, placed their faith in the true, living Jesus and His COMPLETED atonement. Adventism is perhaps the most deceptive of the cults because it best masquerades as Christian. It uses all the same words, and it declares all the same declarations. They claim being saved by faith alone. They claim their Sabbath-keeping is their way of showing they love God.
Yet they do the work of Sabbath-keeping when that is the OPPOSITE of what God asks of His people. The New Testament shows that the Sabbath was fulfilled—along with all the law—in the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement. But Adventism teaches an unfinished, two-part atonement, and they actually teach that “salvation” is about “accepting Jesus” (whatever they mean by that) and then turning TOWARD the law and keeping it more and more perfectly. In keeping the law, they find the heart of God.
Adventist soteriology is exactly upside-down and inside-out from biblical Christianity. They do not have a testimony because they have not believed in the Lord Jesus unto salvation. They have accepted a formula that keeps them in the loop for their own salvation. They believe that if they give up the Sabbath or eat meat (especially unclean meat), they will lose their salvation because that would mean deliberately “disobeying”.
Adventists say almost the right words, but they do not know the real Jesus. They believe their own right-doing is necessary for justification and salvation. In fact, within Adventism, “righteousness” is defined as “right doing”. In the Bible, “righteousness” is identified as the alien-to-us holiness and perfection of God Himself.
You have stumbled onto the hidden secret of Adventism—a secret which most Christians do not see: they do not know and trust the Jesus of Scripture. They have not put their trust in Jesus, and they believe, secretly, that their success or blessing is linked to their obedience.
They do not have testimonies, and you are right: you can’t write that sort of praise to God into their stories. It will feel alien to them.
Adventism is a beautiful deception that is firmly planted in the domain of darkness. It is not composed of born again believers.
I believe your husband is being drawn; I continue to pray for you and for him. The Lord sees and knows. And thank you for sharing your discovery. You have seen what so many Christians have not seen—partly because they haven’t known where or how to see it. But this is the common story of Adventism. Most of them—especially those born into it—do not know Jesus, and they have no testimony.
Articles Reveal Adventist Deception
Your weekly articles “Problems With This Lesson” with commentary on the weekly Sabbath School lessons have further enlightened me how totally heretical the Adventist belief system is on almost every issue. As a former Adventist (and I am sure many current Adventists are in the situation as well), I was not aware of the subtle play on words that church uses to keep the truth from the people. The Godhead vs. Trinity is a good example.
I left the Adventist church in 1984 when I was convinced that E. G. White was a narcissistic, self-deluded, mentally ill product of her time, as well as that everything the the 1844 movement was a complete, unscriptural lie. The main reason I stuck in there for 14 years was fear. When I look back at how my story unfolded, I see that God knew me and pursued me to set me free from all that error and to replace it with joy and assurance that He did call me and that it was His purpose to show me the Way, the Truth, and the Life in Jesus alone!
Thank you for sticking in there sharing the true Gospel and exposing all the heretical aspects of the Seventh-day Adventist cult.
—VIA EMAIL
Adventist View of Human Spirit Is Evil
I emailed you a few months ago. I have not considered myself Adventist for quite some time, but I really wasn’t sure what I was or how wrong some of my prior beliefs were. I’ve been listening to a lot of your podcasts to catch up and educating myself. I love how you explain the word of God.
Anyway, one of the things you discussed was the view of what is a spirit, which frankly has confused me for a long time. I learned the same “formula” that you did, Colleen, and I didn’t really think it was wrong, but now I am quite sure it is.
Growing up Adventist, we didn’t talk about abortion—or if we did, it was somewhat favorably approved. In my early 20s I met more people, and not just Christians, who were horrified by the practice, but I just couldn’t get the same outrage they did. Adventists just did not care about this issue, and I was so surprised to find Christians who were passionate about ending it and participating in the March for Life. Well, Colleen, you kept saying that the belief in what a spirit and soul is was the reason. I suspected you were right, but no Adventist ever said that out loud. I think they just took a more libertarian view.
Well, you may have heard recently about a tragic story in Canada, where a mom chose to abort her 38-week-in-utero baby, even though numerous people reached out to her and offered to adopt. Reading the website comment section (which is usually a mistake), most people were outraged. However, one commenter stated, “But the spirit doesn’t enter the body until the first breath. And many of you believe in killing and eating animals.”
I know that had to be an Adventist, who apparently thought killing a healthy child was just fine, justified by the religious view that the child was not alive, or did not yet have a spirit, or something. And then they tried to argue that killing animals was worse because they were already alive and breathing.
The view on the spirit is not a harmless difference of opinion between Christians. It really is evil.
Just thought I’d share. Keep up the good work.
Response: Thank you so much for writing! You are so, so right. The view of the spirit is foundational to understanding humanity, sin, salvation, and the nature of Christ. The Adventist view IS evil. I had no idea an unborn child was really human as an Adventist. It seemed no more of a moral issue to kill an unborn baby than to abort a litter of kittens.
When I realized our identities are spirits which the Lord gives us from the moment we are conceived—because humans are spirit and body, created in the image of God, not just bodies that breathe—I wept and repented. I still cry about the abortion evil as I realize how many helpless bearers of God’s image are intentionally killed in the place where they should be the safest. Adventism protects its view of abortion, and more and more I see its view of human identity and life as a “thumbprint” of its true nature: evil. Thank you so much for your letter.
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Thank you, Colleen and Beverly for this great article that makes things so plain!
Now, on the subject of abortion: I was a third-generation SDA and knew nothing else until age 54 when I began to study the Bible for myself without those blinding SDA/EGW goggles. My study ultimately led me out of Adventism and I ran into the welcoming arms of my Savior. Like the poster above, I was a bit ambivalent regarding abortion, just a “clump of cells.” Then in 1971 we adopted a newborn baby. I would look down into the face of that beautiful little boy, my son, and think, “That woman could easily have chosen to end her pregnancy and kill this precious baby.” In that moment when they placed my son in my arms, my entire perspective changed regarding abortion. And then some years later my daughter became pregnant in her senior year of high school. Her guidance counselors and teachers strongly urged her to “just take care of it,” and get on with her life. My beautiful granddaughter, who has grown up to be an amazing godly woman, would have have never come to be – An added layer of change to my position on abortion. It is the murder of an unborn human being. End of story!
May God continue to bless you and your ministry, Colleen!