COLLEEN TINKER
Ever since our 2023 Former Adventist Conference two weeks ago, I have been pondering Paul Carden’s assessment of Seventh-day Adventism which he articulated during his talk on Friday evening. (You can listen to the whole message here.) In evaluating the facts that Adventism has a false prophet, a false Jesus, and an incomplete atonement which equals a false gospel, Paul concluded that Seventh-day Adventism is a “clever and dangerous spiritual counterfeit”.
I love that word “counterfeit” as a descriptor of the religion in which I grew up. By nature, a counterfeit mimics the real thing. In fact, the counterfeiter goes to great lengths to ensure that the counterfeit of the real bears no obvious deviations from the real; to discern the differences, one must look below the surface and evaluate details that can only be discovered by side-by-side comparison and even microscopic examination.
Adventism really is a counterfeit. It has done such a good job of whitewashing its image and its public statements of belief that both Christians and Adventists think they are essentially the same with the exception that they worship on different days, and Adventists have food restrictions. Yet even Adventist food rules don’t seem unusual in today’s culture in which “clean eating” and plant-based meats are flourishing.
If a person looks closely, though, Adventism’s self-descriptions begin to reveal cracks.
If a person looks closely, though, Adventism’s self-descriptions begin to reveal cracks. When one puts Adventism’s belief statements next to the Bible and compares its words and supporting proof-texts with those same texts in their full biblical context, the reality becomes more and more clear: Adventism does not teach the biblical gospel nor the real biblical Jesus who never stopped being Yahweh who upheld all creation, even when He was in the womb and in the tomb. Adventism has an extra-biblical prophet whose writings carry “prophetic authority” even today, and their Jesus, according to their prophet’s writings, did not complete the atonement at the cross but continues it in heaven where He is is involved in an investigative judgment of all believers. Adventists, therefore, have no assurance of salvation. They are on probation until the unrevealed end of the judgment occurs. Meanwhile, Adventists wait in insecurity, never knowing when their personal judgment will be completed, never knowing if they will be saved or lost. They die with the fear that their lives may have been in vain.
There is no hope in the Adventist gospel, and Adventist believers live in anxiety and despair as they wait for the second coming and their resurrection when they will learn their fate.
Yet on the surface, Adventism is beautiful. Their Sabbath and their claims to be “Bible-alone” Christians who offer lifestyle advantages to converts appear to offer hope and relief to the masses. Behind the scenes, though, Adventism’s demands on its members deny them the grace of Jesus and enslave them to impossible requirements that end inevitably in failure. Guilt and shame define them, and anxiety—not certainty—shapes their future.
When one begins to investigate, it’s hard to identify what is wrong at first, but if one digs below the surface, the falseness of Adventism becomes apparent.
It is a shiny counterfeit, like fools’ gold, that promises spiritual riches, yet it is not Christianity. In fact, this “dangerous spiritual counterfeit” has the same effect on people as did the hypocritical Jews to whom Jesus said,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (Mt. 23:15).
Sabbath School Lessons Reveal Reality
As an Adventist I resented the Sabbath School lessons. I couldn’t have explained my deep dislike of them, but I experienced them as flowery, full of moral lessons, yet shallow and even confusing. When I would look up the Bible references in the lessons, they seemed often unrelated or artificially “forced” to support the lesson’s point. Frankly, the lessons left me feeling both irritated and guilty for not finding them helpful.
Today I still find the lessons to be arch and even arrogant in their deliberate explanations of Adventist beliefs and practices. I don’t have the same helpless guilt when I read them, however; now, that reaction is replaced by horror and outrage that Adventism morphs the Bible with EGW and gaslights its members into compliance with its beliefs and practices.
For example, the lesson for the week of October 1–7, 2022, says this in the Saturday introduction to the week:
Christ was the Divine Agent through whom God brought the universe and the world into existence (John 1:1–3, 10; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2). But when God the Father conferred special honor on Christ and announced that They together would create this world, “Lucifer was envious and jealous of Jesus Christ” (Ellen G. White, The Story of Redemption, p. 14) and plotted against Him.
Having been cast out of heaven, Satan decided “to destroy the happiness of Adam and Eve” on earth and thereby “cause grief in heaven.” He imagined that “if he could in any way beguile them [Adam and Eve] to disobedience, God would make some provision whereby they might be pardoned, and then himself and all the fallen angels would be in a fair way to share with them of God’s mercy.”—The Story of Redemption, p. 27. Fully aware of Satan’s strategy, God warned Adam and Eve not to expose themselves to temptation (Gen. 2:16, 17). This means that even when the world was still perfect and blameless, there were already clear restrictions for human beings to follow.
Many details in these two paragraphs reveal the unbiblical worldview of Adventism. First, calling Jesus a “Divine Agent” of creation makes Him a delegated ambassador of God. Jesus was not merely an agent in creation; He Is Yahweh, the Lord God, the second Person of the Trinity. God did not appoint Him to be His agent; Jesus Is God. All the attributes of God are in Him. He is Lord!
Second, this quotation reveals Adventism’s unbiblical understanding of the nature of man and of its inclusion of Satan in every part of humanity’s story. The EGW-inspired story of pre-history, of Satan’s jealousy of a supposedly exalted Jesus and a subsequent great controversy between the two which is still being played out in the cosmos is utterly false. There is no such story in Scripture. Jesus was never exalted, and Satan is a disarmed foe (Col 2:14, 15).
Furthermore, the Bible never hints that Satan had any hope of receiving mercy from God, let alone by enticing God’s beloved humans to sin and then essentially sneaking in with the humans into God’s mercy. This Satan-centered idea is utterly missing from Scripture. It is entirely the product of Adventism’s prophet, Ellen White!
Finally, the above quotation ends with an Adventist reminder that the Commandments were already in place before the creation of the world. This assumption is false. The Commandments did not exist until Sinai when God gave them to Moses for the nation of Israel!
The lesson has more to say, however, about the fall of man. These two paragraphs come from Thursday’s lesson of the same week’s curriculum in the Quarterly:
But in the midst of their frustration and despair, God gave them assurance for the present and hope for the future. First, He cursed the serpent with a word of Messianic hope. He declared, “ ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel’ ” (Gen. 3:15, NKJV).
The word “enmity” (Hebrew ’eybah) implies not only a long-lasting cosmic controversy between good and evil, but also a personal repulsion to sin, which has been implanted by God’s grace in the human mind. By nature, we are completely fallen (Eph. 2:1, 5) and “slaves of sin” (Rom. 6:20, NKJV). However, the grace that Christ implants in every human life creates in us enmity against Satan. And it is this “enmity,” a divine gift from Eden, that allows us to accept His saving grace. Without this converting grace and renewing power, humanity would continue to be the captive of Satan, a servant ever ready to do his bidding.
Satan is never named in the story of the fall in Genesis. In fact, Adam and Eve’s disobedience was a breach of trust between them and God alone. Satan was not a player in the Genesis account although we can infer that evil was involved in the words of the deceptive serpent. Nevertheless, God never intended for us to believe that our human sin is caused by Satan, nor do we ever answer to Satan in any sense.
Furthermore, when Adam and Eve sinned, they died spiritually that very day as God said they would (Gen 2:17). Adventism tells us that they began to die, that they continued to live for hundreds of years after their fall—but Adventism ignores the reality of their literal spiritual death,
1 Corinthians 15:21 tells us that “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” Adam’s spiritual death is our legacy as human beings. We are born dead in sin, by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:1–3); by nature we are unable to seek or to please God (Rom. 3:9–18). We cannot seek nor find the Lord Jesus unless the Father Himself draws us to Him (Jn. 6:44, 55).
Yet the lesson teaches that people have “a divine gift from Eden”—an enmity against Satan—that causes us to seek for God!
Yet the lesson teaches that people have “a divine gift from Eden”—an enmity against Satan—that causes us to seek for God!
Do not miss the significance of this claim which has absolutely NO biblical support. This is saying, first of all, that we are born with something in us from God that allows us to accept God’s grace. This alone contradicts the texts that tell us we are born dead, unable to seek or to please God, by nature deserving of God’s wrath. We are helpless without God’s intervention in drawing us to Jesus!
Second, this claim that we have the “gift” of enmity toward Satan, and this gift is what allows to accept God’s grace, is telling us that, in a perverse but powerful way, Satan is involved in our salvation! In other words, our antipathy to him is what causes us to accept God!
The Bible teaches us that God reveals Himself to us and draws us to Jesus; Adventism teaches that we turn to God because we have in us a “personal repulsion to sin” (a claim which directly contradicts Romans 3 and Ephesians 2) and that we grab onto God as a way of avoiding Satan!
Satan has absolutely NO role in our salvation. We do not become saved as a way of avoiding him. We are not looking for God as a way out of Satan’s influence. Furthermore, we are not born with any internal desire for goodness. We are born dead in sin, and dead men have no ability to rise about their natures. God, the only Source of life, has to come to us and reveal Himself and draw us to Himself!
The Adventist idea, however, promulgated to the worldwide organization for Sabbath School members all to study on the same day of the year in every Adventist congregation on earth, teaches that humans are saved by their own reaction against Satan!
The Scapegoat Heresy
The final insult in the Adventist “plan of salvation”, however, comes in their scenario of the end of their “investigative judgment”. They teach that when Jesus is finally finished investigating the lives of professed believers and determining which ones have confessed all their sins and have been loyal to God by keeping the law, Jesus will place the sins of the saved upon Satan who is the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. Satan will then bear the sins of the saved out of heaven, thus cleansing “the sanctuary”, and he will be punished for them in the lake of fire.
This teaching makes Satan, not Jesus, the final sin-bearer of the saved.
Adventists are quick to assert that Satan is not the sin-bearer, yet this idea comes directly from Ellen White:
Since Satan is the originator of sin, the direct instigator of all the sins that caused the death of the Son of God, justice demands that Satan shall suffer the final punishment. Christ’s work for the redemption of men and the purification of the universe from sin, will be closed by the removal of sin from the heavenly sanctuary and the placing of these sins upon Satan, who will bear the final penalty (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 358).
In the typical service the high priest, having made the atonement for Israel, came forth and blessed the congregation. So Christ, at the close of His work as mediator, will appear, “without sin unto salvation” (Heb. 9:28), to bless His waiting people with eternal life. As the priest, in removing the sins from the sanctuary, confessed them upon the head of the scapegoat, so Christ will place all these sins upon Satan, the originator and instigator of sin. The scapegoat, bearing the sins of Israel, was sent away “unto a land not inhabited” (Lev. 16:22); so Satan, bearing the guilt of all the sins which he has caused God’s people to commit, will be for a thousand years confined to the earth, which will then be desolate, without inhabitant, and he will at last suffer the full penalty of sin in the fires that shall destroy all the wicked (The Great Controversy, pp. 485-486).
Satan did not then exult as he had done. He had hoped to break up the plan of salvation; but it was laid too deep. And now by the death of Christ he knew that he himself must finally die, and his kingdom given to Jesus. He held a council with his angels. He had prevailed nothing against the Son of God, and now they must increase their efforts and with their powers and cunning turn to His followers. They must prevent all whom they could from receiving the salvation purchased for them by Jesus. By so doing Satan could still work against the government of God. Also it would be for his own interest to keep from Jesus as many as possible. For the sins of those who are redeemed by the blood of Christ will at last be rolled back upon the originator of sin, and he must bear their punishment, while those who do not accept salvation through Jesus will suffer the penalty of their own sins (Early Writings p. 178).
Adventists will say that Jesus is represented by the sacrificial goat on the Day of Atonement, but that Satan is represented by the living goat sent into the wilderness. In truth, however, it required both goats to represent what the Lamb of God did for us. He not only shed His blood as a propitiation—a payment to satisfy the demands of God for sin—but He also bore the penalty of sinners who were sent out of the camp and removed from the fellowship of God’s people. The sacrificial goat represented propitiation; the scapegoat represented expiation—the consequence of sin on sinners: removal from the camp.
Hebrews 13:12, 13 emphasizes this fact:
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.
Satan never, in any sense, bears our sins. Furthermore, our sins never defile heaven, as EGWs doctrine of “the sanctuary” maintains. Jesus’ blood never transfers our sins to heaven where they await being placed on Satan for removal to the lake of fire!
Blood always cleanses! Even in the Old Testament, the blood carried into the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement did not defile. It cleansed.
Jesus’ blood always cleanses, and it cleanses us from the moment the Father draws us to see what Jesus did as our Substitute, and we place our faith and trust entirely in Him alone. His crucifixion marked the fulness of atonement, and that atonement is complete. Jesus Himself declared that “It Is Finished!”
When we believe, we are born again and counted fully righteous with the righteousness of Christ alone on the basis of His propitiating blood!
When we believe, we are born again and counted fully righteous with the righteousness of Christ alone on the basis of His propitiating blood!
In spite of its seductive external appearance, Adventism is a trap. It is a “clever and dangerous spiritual counterfeit” that draws people in with gospel-sounding words. Once inside, however, its members find themselves in a tightening web of confusion and guilt, anxiety and shame. They think they believe in Jesus, but their Jesus did not complete the atonement at the cross, and their Jesus is still fighting a battle with the devil.
Their Jesus is not the final Substitute for us in His death for sin and His enduring God’s wrath for our our sin. Rather, their Jesus requires Satan to help complete the eradication of sin. Their Jesus finally offloads our sin onto Satan who bears them into the Lake of Fire where he is punished for them!
In Adventism, Jesus is a noble victim, the volunteer who offered to die to demonstrate that Satan’s claims were false. Satan, conversely, resembles a tragic hero, the evil counterpart to Jesus who ultimately receives the final punishment because of his own fatal flaw: evil.
The real Jesus, however, is not a victim but our Substitute. He received the ultimate punishment for sin: God’s wrath poured out on Him as He hung between heaven and earth on the cross. Jesus alone rescues us from our death and gives us eternal life when we finally see what He has done and trust Him.
The real Jesus is Lord of Lords, and Satan is doomed and disarmed. In Jesus alone we have eternal life.
“Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (Jn. 12:31, 32).
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Beautifully written and excellent article, Colleen, bless you for being led by the Holy Spirit to share such Biblical truths so concisely and powerfully! Shared this article with my family members who are still entangled with the web of deceit in Adventism and praying that they’ll read it – praising the Lord that some of them are coming to know Biblical truth, but others are doubling down in deceit…breaks my heart.