NICOLE STEVENSON
Have you ever been told that you left Seventh-day Adventism because you were hurt? Or that you left because you didn’t understand it? I suspect that if we were in a room together, we could look around and see a sea of raised hands. It seems to be the dominant assumption made by those who can’t make sense of our leaving. When I first heard these accusations more than 13 years ago, I responded with defensive retorts about how I wasn’t hurt in Adventism and how I had loved Adventism. I’d quickly detail how I loved my culture, how I served in the church and had dear mentors, and how I grieved when I had to walk away. Even so, my accusers usually preferred to rely on the false notion that they knew me better than I knew myself, and the conversation ended with me reeling with frustration over being misunderstood and dismissed, and with them remaining content with their assessment.
…after all I’ve done to share why I left Adventism, I still hear people say I was just hurt and that even now I don’t really know Adventism.
While my responses were honest, I now believe they are the wrong response to these dismissive summations of my “aberrant experiences” and “failed understanding”. They’ve never resolved the misunderstanding between me and the one making the claims. I’ve been out of Adventism and working publicly with Life Assurance Ministries for 13 years, and after all I’ve done to share why I left Adventism, I still hear people say I was just hurt and that even now I don’t really know Adventism. The truth is, I know Adventism better now than I ever did, and the more I know of it, the more I thank God for rescuing me from it. Yet, my own testimony and public commentary on the official doctrines and sacred writings within Adventism still has no value before my accusers. So, what is the better answer?
After several years of growing in my knowledge of God and of His testimony contained in the Scriptures, I have a different response to the accusation of having been hurt in Adventism. After discovering the lengths to which Adventist leadership, educators, and writers have gone in order to protect and hold together their false worldview, and after seeing what their compromises and twisted doctrines do to a person’s ability to know the God of the Bible, it has become very important to me to turn the accusation on its head and to say that I did leave Adventism because I was hurt. Only, I get to define what I mean by “hurt”.
I Was Hurt In Adventism
Adventism used the relationships that God wired me to trust and depend on in order to indoctrinate me with a false gospel. It created an enmeshed system so intricately woven together that you cannot have one (the relationships) without the other (the worldview). It covertly permitted me to feel content in my spiritual death by distracting me with all the bad fruit of a false worldview and all the demands of false morality.
I trusted the words of our prophet handed down to me from generations prior. The propagation of Adventism came to me from the mouths of my parents and theirs. I believed the fictional Investigative Judgement was true. I believed error about the nature of God; I believed fiction about Satan; I believed in a false gospel. I ran vigorously on the treadmill of false religion while millions of Adventists patted me on the back with their mutual participation in this great deception. They deceived me, and we deceived each other. It’s a perfectly self-reproducing lie. I was hurt in Adventism.
They deceived me, and we deceived each other. It’s a perfectly self-reproducing lie. I was hurt in Adventism.
In demanding my loyalty to its Three Angels “gospel” and counterfeit Christian culture, Adventism cut me off from the God and gospel of the Bible. It also effectively cut me off from the body of Christ, which, through the word of God, has the power to demolish strongholds and to destroy every argument and pretension which sets itself up against the knowledge of God. If that’s not being hurt in Adventism, I don’t know what could be worse; I left Seventh-day Adventism because it prevented me from knowing the God of the Bible.
To Be Sure, I Loved Much About Adventism
Detailing the ways I loved and valued my Adventist experiences and traditions are, in my opinion, the right answers to a different question. They’re the answer to why I stayed inside for so long. They’re not the full answer, but they were a significant part of it. Many of the cultural trappings of Adventism that I recall so fondly were the very idols that kept me feeling safe, secure, and as though I belonged somewhere and was a part of something important. They kept me content in our collective alienation from the true gospel of God according to His word.
They were things that deceived me into feeling safe while simultaneously preventing me from knowing life.
To speak of the trappings of Adventism as having been precious to me demands the confession that they were as precious to me as golden idols. In reality, many of the things I loved about Adventism were more akin to the Greek mythological siren than they were “good experiences in Adventism”. They were things that deceived me into feeling safe while simultaneously preventing me from knowing life.
How can I now use the details of that idolatry to defend myself against ludicrous accusations of leaving over hurt? Those who love the siren are killed by the siren. Escaping the siren (no matter your temptation to love her) is escaping fatal injury! Those who escape the siren don’t speak fondly of her deadly song— they speak victoriously of their escape.
The Heart of Christ On The Road To The Cross
Our pastor loves to quote A.W. Tozer who wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” That quote has come to mean more to me as I’ve weeded out the false doctrines of the Adventists gospel and godhead and have come to grow in my knowledge of the triune God of Scripture.
According to God, knowing God is eternal life. Since eternal life is knowing God, our knowledge of God absolutely must come from God Himself alone. Jesus, God the Son, successfully accomplished the task of revealing God to humanity, and through the pages of Scripture and the illumination of God the Spirit, we can come to a full and saving knowledge of God through faith.
At the culmination of the life and ministry of our Lord, Jesus prayed to His Father in the presence of His disciples who would record His prayer for us in God’s eternal and unerring Scriptures. In His great mercy and love for us, our triune God invites us into the moments, conversations, teachings, and prayers of Jesus on that last pre-cross night.
“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:1-5).
The hour had finally come. The moments leading up to the single greatest act of love— the propitiating work of the Son who came down from Heaven to reconcile all creation to God in Himself— reveal to us the heart of Christ and all that was most important to Him in those final hours.
Jesus had just eaten the Passover meal with His disciples. He had washed their feet and sent Judas to do what he had been destined to do. He had given the remembrance of the New Covenant, the sharing of the cup representing His blood that would be shed for us, and the breaking of bread representing His body which would be broken for us. He began to speak clearly of all that would soon take place.
Jesus told the disciples that He was leaving them, but that they would one day be where He was going because He Himself is the way, the truth, and the life.
Jesus told the disciples that He was leaving them, but that they would one day be where He was going because He Himself is the way, the truth, and the life. He comforted them with the truth that He would not leave them as orphans but that He was going to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house and He would come to bring them to be with Him where He is. He comforted them and promised them the Holy Spirit who would come and lead them and teach them and remind them of everything He had taught them.
Jesus told them the world would hate them because they were His disciples, and the world hated Him. He told them not to be afraid in the face of that hatred because He has overcome the world (declaring victory before He was even arrested). Jesus told them that while they would not see Him for a while, their sorrow would turn to joy. With a view to His victorious resurrection and ascension, He went on to speak of the nature of their future relationship with the Father on the basis of His reconciling work;
“In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father” (John 16:26-28).
The life, death, burial, and resurrection of God the Son was purposed by our triune God for the reconciliation of God and fallen man—it was the work of the Trinity that accomplished the work of salvation on behalf of humanity. The propitiating work of Christ would be applied to all who would believe in God’s testimony about the Son (1 John 5), and all who love Him and who believe and receive the testimony of Jesus concerning Himself (John 1:12,13; 8:12-30; Eph. 1:13-14) would know personally the love of the Father, having full access to Him forever! This was all the Lord Jesus saw fit to declare on His last pre-cross night, and it’s the message He would commission His apostles to live and die for as they spread it to all the world. God did not need Ellen G. White or any other Last Generation theology to come fill in the gaps later on.
Knowing God Is Eternal Life; Hiding God Is Evil
Jesus said that eternal life is knowing God.
I’ve often thought that if the complete saving work of God on our behalf to reconcile us to Himself is the greatest act of love known to man (and it is), then the second greatest act of love would be to share that truth with others. This also means that the greatest act of evil would be to conceal it— whether by silence or distortion (Galatians 1:6-9).
If eternal life is knowing God, then eternal death is not knowing Him. The single most important thing that you will ever do is to choose to either know and be known by God, or to refuse Him and His testimony.
It was the fullness of God in the Lord Jesus who revealed the Father to us. The finished work of our omnipotent Triune God is eternally sufficient, and His cannon is closed. The God of the Bible doesn’t need a General Conference, a seminary, a university, a prophetess, or a people group to reveal Himself to you truthfully. He is not dependent upon anyone. God has already revealed Himself truthfully and sufficiently in Scripture.
He is not dependent upon anyone. God has already revealed Himself truthfully and sufficiently in Scripture.
If you don’t know the God who created you, then I hope you won’t wait another moment to know Him. He desires that you would know Him according to His own self-disclosure in the pages of Scripture. I pray that He would render powerless all that seeks to deceive you and that He would give you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mouth that confesses that the Jesus Christ of the Bible is your Savior, your Lord, and your God.
In knowing Jesus, even the deadly wound of Adventism’s counterfeit gospel is healed. Yes, I was hurt in Adventism by having the real Jesus hidden from me, but He came and found me. In Him I have found life! †
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