COLLEEN TINKER

Our advanced placement senior English class was small; we might even have called ourselves “special”. We met, seminar-style, around a large table with Mrs. Winter—our seasoned, eccentric teacher—at one end. 

I remember the moment as if it were only last week. Our diminutive teacher whose sharp, frosty personality matched her name, had given us a poem to read—“Silver” by Walter de la Mare. Beautifully crafted, the lines painted a shimmery mental picture in my mind. I didn’t even notice that the beauty I saw inwardly was monochromatic: the perfect balance of silver sparkling in shadows, moonlight creating a fantasy of reflected light. 

Perhaps you, too, will see the silvery beauty I saw—a beauty only visible at night:

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter de la Mare

Suddenly Mrs. Winter’s clipped sentences broke my moonlight reverie. “Are those trees silver? Are the dog’s paws silver? Does the mouse have silver claws? Are the reeds really silver?”

Startled, I looked at our language coach and saw her silver glasses perched on her sharp nose beneath her silver, unstyled hair with wavy tendrils not quite covering her scrawny neck.

“The moon,” she declared as if she knew the moon better than the moon knew herself, “sees a silver world because it is seeing through its own silver light. The poet is showing us that we can miss reality if we look through our own biased perspective.” 

I can still feel my sudden surge of anger—but I lacked the courage to verbalize my thoughts.

I can still feel my sudden surge of anger—but I lacked the courage to verbalize my thoughts. How dare this woman think she could know the poet’s intentions? How did she know he wasn’t simply intending to describe an unforgettable moonlit night? How cold of her to challenge my response to this silver fantasy!

But then I grew up. Life and loss nourished humility, and I began to see that Mrs. Winter was right. “Silver” was written from the moon’s perspective. What she saw as she walked the night in her silver shoon was the shimmer of her own reflection. The full spectrum of daylight did not disturb her enjoyment of her limited perception. Even though, technically, the moon did have access during her orbit around the earth to seeing that same scene in the greater light of the sun, she chose to embrace the silvery reduction produced by her own lesser light. 

I, in my seventeen-year-old sophistry, preferred the shimmery monochrome to the complexity of reality, and I projected my anger at my hapless teacher rather than consider that reality was bigger than I could see—and I might miss something important. 

Harsh Tone

It’s been awhile since we were taken to task for our tone here at Life Assurance Ministries, but last week we received not just one but two emails from people disturbed by our reaction to Adventism. The writers were not hostile; indeed, they appreciate the Former Adventist Podcast and the material we have for understanding Adventism. 

Both writers, though, asked us to be more careful not to express our emotions toward Adventism but to stay objective. Here are excerpts from the first of two letters:

As you “reach back” for those like me who need clarity, encouragement, and biblical, Spirit-led gospel truth, I want to say to you with deep love and respect: please consider cautiously the tendency many of us have when we are given light to see clearly and when we have been given the responsibility to pass that light of truth to those looking for it—that we can perhaps unconsciously begin to reflect a critical spirit (especially toward the Adventists). 

Cheap shots are unnecessary when you have the truth. I say this lovingly…It is my prayer that you’ll be able “pull up” when you’re so very frustrated as time and time again you uncover and share the depths of deception…

Here is the second excerpt:

I want to say that we have started listening to the Former Adventist Podcasts just recently (we’ve heard perhaps 10 or 12), plus we have listened to the Cultish podcasts that you both participated in…One thing I wanted to point out, and it is the ONLY thing that I have found a little disturbing, is the seeming ridicule that you give to Adventism. I realize that you probably feel scarred by that experience and that you feel strongly misled and deceived. We, too, are understanding that as we go! But we both get uncomfortable when you seem to exhibit revenge in your voices and laugh at some things when you refer to Adventists/Adventism. We both cringe a little at those. I personally would suggest your criticism and tone be factual only and try to leave your emotions against Adventism out of it.

We do not want to mock or ridicule Adventists. In fact, if we did not love Adventists and feel a strong connection to the people still in the milieu in which we were formed, we would not be doing this work! We want Adventists to see reality and to understand the gospel and to come to faith.

Adventism, however, is a system, and it is bankrupt. It is perhaps the most clever and deceptive of the “Christian cults”, mimicking Christianity on the surface but hiding underneath the silvery shimmer of its community and lifestyle the quicksand of demonic doctrines that trap its members in service to a weak and fallible Jesus while they fight a devil who will ultimately bear their sins to the lake of fire—if they themselves are lucky enough to qualify for heaven. 

In fact, as we interacted with questioning Adventists, we had to examine ourselves to see if we were being fair in the way we spoke of Adventism. 

 As Richard and I left Adventism and became involved in a local community of the body of Christ, our view of Adventism was much less black and white than it is now. Oh, we were convinced that it was deceptive, that it was not possible to know Jesus and to stay within Adventist ranks with integrity, but it still seemed to have a lot of “good things” about it. In fact, as we interacted with questioning Adventists, we had to examine ourselves to see if we were being fair in the way we spoke of Adventism. 

I remember that often in the early days of my being editor of Proclamation!, I had to think through—again—how I could justify speaking strongly about Adventism being “false” when it seemed that so many Adventists didn’t hold—or even know—the historic Adventist beliefs. Indeed, why did I say with such certainty that a person who knew the gospel and understood the new covenant couldn’t continue to attend an Adventist church? 

I had to talk myself through the reasoning I would have used with a former Mormon or Buddhist or Jehovah’s Witness if he or she had asked me if they could continue attending services at their former place of worship just to support a spouse or other loved ones who were still caught in the false religion. I would have to say NO. After all, most of us who had been Adventists could see clearly that those other religions were false—involving false gods and unscriptural beliefs. One couldn’t keep going to a Mormon ward or Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall. 

In the same way, I realized, one couldn’t continue to worship at an Adventist church because the gospel is not being taught there; a different Jesus is upheld; a tritheism is believed instead of the Trinity, and worship at an Adventist church is not worship of the real Jesus who bore all of our imputed sins, died, and rose again because His blood had completed the atonement and thus broke death. Continuing to attend the Adventist church would be to be worshiping outside the body of Christ and honoring a different Jesus and a different gospel—not to mention that a false prophet lurked behind all the teachings there. 

It Made Me Angry, But It Stuck In My Mind

The longer I was out of Adventism, in fact, and the more I learned about its historic and current teachings, the darker I saw the religion to be. In spite of periodic updates to its statements of belief, Adventism has never changed its core teachings. In fact, no matter what Adventists proclaim individually, they all share a worldview, and that worldview is what defines the Adventist culture and their understanding of Scripture. Whether “evangelical” or historic, whether progressive (to the point of questioning Scripture and the reality of God) or reactionary (to the point of returning to Arianism because it defines the “original Adventism”), Adventists share a physicalist view of man and of Jesus. They also share a visceral commitment to the eternal importance of the Sabbath, to Jesus’ role as an example, to annihilation, to Satan as the scapegoat, and to Ellen White as a prophetic voice whom God used when the organization needed her. 

In fact, as I understood more and more clearly how even the nuances of biblical teaching were reinterpreted or rationalized to fit with Adventist belief and practice, I became convinced that a mere human mind could never have created such a complex set of doctrines. The Adventist doctrines are doctrines of demons, and the farther out of my old religion I went and the deeper into Scripture, the more clear was my conclusion: only evil could have devised such a seamless counterfeit. 

Early in our FAF online forum days, there was a questioning Adventist who was wrestling with her understanding of Adventism and the gospel. She understood that the true gospel was not the same as Adventism, but she struggled with seeing that Adventism was spiritually dangerous. We had many open discussions, but one day she disappeared and didn’t come back.

That is, she didn’t come back until one day about three years later. Suddenly there she was, posting on the forum as if she had never left. I was thrilled to see her back!

“When you said all those months ago that there was an evil spirit behind Adventism, that the Adventist doctrines were more sinister than merely human and that only an evil spirit could devise such a seamless religion that eclipsed Jesus and His gospel, it made me angry!

Then she posted to me words to this effect: “When you said all those months ago that there was an evil spirit behind Adventism, that the Adventist doctrines were more sinister than merely human and that only an evil spirit could devise such a seamless religion that eclipsed Jesus and His gospel, it made me angry! I refused to keep talking to you because I believed you were uncompassionate and judgmental. But your words never left my mind, and eventually I admitted that you were right. I had to hear those words, as hard as they were to take in.”

That woman’s words still live in my memory. Now, as Nikki and I address Adventism in the context of the Former Adventist Podcast, we are committed to telling the truth about our own experiences in that religion. We were loyal Adventists who loved our Adventist identity; we didn’t want to leave!

Yet when we began to learn that the Bible teaches a sovereign, infallible Jesus who has already completed everything necessary for our salvation, when we began to learn the facts about the ways Adventism has ignored its own history and has guilted its members inside a false gospel that will never save, we had to admit the religion we loved was a deception. 

Today when we talk about it, we feel the shame of realizing that we endorsed a lie and that we protected a dysfunctional system. In the light of Scripture we see that we lived in a mirage. We thought we were Christians, but we didn’t know the real gospel! We tried hard to honor Adventism’s expectations, but we kept falling short. 

Now we see how cultic many of those expectations actually are, and we are compelled to tell the truth about them. We can’t give Adventism the benefit of the doubt because it is wrong from the ground up. It is not accidentally wrong; it is wrong by design, even if not all individual Adventists understand this fact. 

I remember realizing that Adventism was my identity. In fact, as I struggled with leaving, I realized I was an Adventist first and foremost. After that identity came others: American, woman, wife, musician, mother, teacher, writer. At the core of me, however, was Adventism.

I understand how those who begin listening to the podcast or reading Life Assurance materials might feel criticized at first. When we talk about the reality of Adventism and its effects on us, it can feel as if we are harsh toward individuals’ personal identities. We can be perceived to be insensitive because people identify with Adventism. 

The emotion we project is born of our own experiences. We admit that as we process our own experiences, we express our feelings about what we did and what we believed. We know how it feels to be Adventist, and we long for the people of Adventism to see the truth about Jesus and believe. 

I now realize that when I was an Adventist, my worldview kept me from seeing reality as the Bible exposed it.

I now realize that when I was an Adventist, my worldview kept me from seeing reality as the Bible exposed it. Like the moon in her silver shoon, I saw through the reflection of our lesser light, and the full spectrum of our almighty God who sent the Son to become human and pay the price for human sin was almost invisible. In fact, my own need to see was eclipsed. I didn’t know how bad my sin was, and I didn’t know how new I would be if I looked at the world through the greater light of Scripture.

But God knew, and He helped me look at Him as He really is. He outshone my silvery Adventist lens and revealed, in full color, the fact of Jesus’ completed atonement for my sin. Now I have to speak clearly about what I know.

I am committed to breaking through that Adventist lens and revealing Scripture’s reality-altering words. Adventism is a false gospel and tells us lies about our sovereign God and about ourselves. Jesus, though, knows what we experience, and in His mercy He took our curse and broke it. When we trust Him, He gives us our true identities in Him. 

Conclusion

I have a word of encouragement for the two writers I quoted above and for all those “fresh” formers and the Adventists who are just starting their journey of discovering truth. When we leave Adventism, we experience all the stages of grief. We have identified with a group we didn’t know was cultic in its demands and beliefs, but we have absorbed the people-pleasing mentality of getting along with the group. Our lives in the Adventist community were less scrutinized and more favored if we didn’t “make waves”, and we learned early to protect our collective reputation if threatened by an outsider. Even if we didn’t like or even agree with all the Adventist distinctives, we hurried to circle the wagons if criticism threatened us. 

It is normal to feel protective and defensive when we first hear other former Adventists discussing their own journey out. Their reactions and conclusions feel like the old threats we were trained to deflect. We were not taught to say the hard or critical things we often felt—just as I had no courage to confront my English teacher over her analysis of a poem! Now, when we are having questions ourselves, to hear other formers openly describing their feelings and reactions to our common past feels over the top. We automatically go into protective mode, defending our own experiences, the good memories, the traditions that gave us structure. 

It is normal to feel this way, and this stage will pass with time. The objective truth of Adventism’s deception will become more and more clear, and we feel less and less defined by our past religion as we become more and more defined by the reality of Jesus’ rescue of us.

We understand, and we are here for you. Our desire is that you will also come to know the Lord Jesus. He is the reality we couldn’t see as long as we were blinded by our lesser light. †

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Colleen Tinker

Colleen Tinker, the editor of Proclamation! magazine, and her husband Richard left Adventism in 1998 with their two sons, Roy and Nathanael, who were in grades six and ten. They have co-led the Former Adventist Fellowship since 1999. Colleen, a graduate of Walla Walla University, is a former high school English teacher and also the former managing editor of Adventist Today magazine. Colleen became the stepmother of Roy and Nathanael in 1989, and in 2008 she adopted them. Romans 8:15-17 has assumed new depth and significance for her and Richard since she and her sons chose to claim each other legally and permanently. She and Richard share an office and a commitment to sharing the gospel of the true Jesus with all of those seeking a way out of the bondage of the false gospel of Adventism.

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