NICOLE STEVENSON
I probably would have forgotten about the practice altogether if it hadn’t suddenly come to mind while I was singing at church recently. There I was, worshiping in song with our fellow congregation and rejoicing in the trustworthiness of God put on display on the cross, when suddenly I was oddly recalling what the cross elicited in me during Adventist “week of prayer” meetings.
As a Seventh-day Adventist youth I took “week of prayer” seriously. It bothered me that I wasn’t living as faithfully as I should’ve been. I often longed for personal revival and for an environment that could sustain spiritual discussions among friends. For some reason it seemed that during “week of prayer” my peers and I suddenly felt free to behave and speak spiritually around one another; so, when these weeks came around I almost always felt relief. I believed I was a part of something special, but around the edges of the experience I wondered how long our collective commitment to the spiritual would last.
Some of the most memorable speakers I remember hearing included pastors or teachers who had at one time rebelled against God but then came back to Him and committed their lives to serving Him. We’d listen to how their new, converted lives were radically different from anything they imagined they’d be, but their new lives were collectively uniform across the board. They were healthier in their eating and lifestyle habits, in full-time ministry or Adventist teaching roles, in keeping the Sabbath, and in honoring God by loving Him through keeping His 10 Commandments. Their uniform lifestyles, “miraculously” brought on by their renewed commitment to God, painted for us a picture of what our lives ought to look like.
Their testimonies would ultimately turn to how God wants us to know the kind of redemption that changes our lives and how all we needed to do was to turn away from our sins, ask Jesus into (or back into) our hearts, and then recommit our lives to following and obeying Him.
It all sounded evangelical, but it was saturated in the Adventist worldview. Whether they overtly celebrated the unique doctrines of Adventism or merely assumed them through their truth claims and interpretations of the verses, we all knew that true conversion meant a deeper commitment to our uniqueness as Seventh-day Adventists.
Sometimes these events would end with writing on paper the things we wanted forgiven and then taping them to a cross or throwing them in a fire.
Sometimes these events would end with writing on paper the things we wanted forgiven and then taping them to a cross or throwing them in a fire. We would sing songs and would think about how our sinful life caused Jesus to die and how our appropriate response was to serve and obey Him forever.
I remember clearly the songs we’d sing, “Make me a servant, humble and meek, Lord let me lift up, those who are weak, and may the prayer of my heart always be, make me a servant today…”. One of my favorites in High School was, “Oh Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true, with thanksgiving, I wanna be, a living sanctuary for you.” Important to note here, in Adventism we had to be “prepared to be a sanctuary”. God could only indwell those who were committed to obeying Him, and when we didn’t He had to leave because He couldn’t be in the presence of sin.
Sometimes kids would kneel on the floor in the front and cry. Sometimes we’d kneel in our pew and cry. What was evident to me was that the most appropriate responses at those events were to be highly aware of what our sins did to Jesus on the cross and to truly grieve over them and come back to a new commitment to obey Him. At the end of these events, these speakers would often turn our thoughts onto the soon coming of Christ, and we would pray for Him to help us get ready for His return.
The Mother’s Milk
I’ve always appreciated Colleen Tinker’s description of how some generational Seventh-day Adventists will learn the Great Controversy worldview and the unique doctrines of Seventh-day Adventism without ever reading Ellen G. White. She says we get it “in the mother’s milk”. The implication is that it is translated in the most benign and natural ways as we walk through life in a community with a shared worldview and shared assumptions about spiritual reality.
When you grow up in an environment made up of all the most significant people in your life who all share the same worldview, you are undoubtably shaped by that worldview without ever understanding how. It’s almost like learning our first language from infancy. We don’t know how we figured out the correct order of a coherent sentence in our native language—we just did. We learned by hearing, by observing, by mirroring, and by observing the praise or correction of those we are mirroring. In this way we learned an entire language without ever asking technical or logical questions. We just observed and absorbed it.
As Adventist youth, so many of us observed and absorbed the unique truth claims, teachings, and “moral responses” of the people we were taught to trust from cradle roll. Those teachers may not have known the origins of their truth claims or lifestyle, but they faithfully passed them on to us who would ideally pass them on to our children.
As an Adventist I would have argued that I never read Ellen G. White and didn’t even know what she thought or taught about the cross or how I was supposed to respond to it.
As an Adventist I would have argued that I never read Ellen G. White and didn’t even know what she thought or taught about the cross or how I was supposed to respond to it. I would have called myself an evangelical Adventist and would have felt defensive for the people who taught me. What I didn’t know was that my view of the cross—what was accomplished there and how I needed to respond to it—was in absolute step with what Ellen White taught and was incompatible with the Christian gospel.
While the “conservative”, “historic”, “progressive” or “evangelical” Adventist teachers may pick and choose their favored resources, their worldview truth claims are uniformly held together by Adventist doctrines. So, while the emphasis or packaging may morph as people compile a system of thought according to their own personal convictions, whatever is ultimately handed down is still only a combination of uniquely Adventist teachings mixed in with Christian language redefined by the Adventist worldview and hermeneutic.
Without knowing it, I had been sold a syncretistic message—a message that said I could believe what the Christians believed while also believing and faithfully sharing the Adventist message. It was a message that I assumed had nothing to do with Ellen White or early Adventism but that allowed me to keep my uniquely Adventist doctrines about the nature of man, the great controversy, the Sabbath, the prophecies about the future time of trouble and the return of Jesus—to name a few.
So how did I end up so confused? If you’ve ever been betrayed, then you know that deception isn’t always only about what you’ve been told. Sometimes deception is the result of what you’ve not been told, and usually it’s a combination of both.
Youth Week of Prayer 2023
In a document entitled, “Love is a Verb” , ordained Seventh-day Adventist pastor S. Yeury Ferreira wrote a series of eight sermons to be used in various languages for the 2023 Youth Week of Prayer event which was held this last March. The topic titles began with, “To love is…” and then each sermon filled in the title with the following 8 descriptions of love, “to sacrifice, to be thankful, to forgive, to trust, to obey to worship, to share, to wait”.
It isn’t the purpose of this blog to analyze each of the eight sermons, but it is interesting to note a few things. First, Ferreira drew resources for his various sermons from people such as Max Lucado, Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Keller, and, of course, Ellen G. White. The consequence of mixing Christian resources with Adventist resources is that you end up with an evangelical-sounding message with Adventist definitions and demands at their core. The youth walk away with an Adventist message that presents as if it’s in full agreement with Christianity on the essentials.
Ferreira’s first sermon began with the story of a wealthy king who was in love with a peasant girl. The king pondered how to make the girl love him and decided to bring her to the palace and to elevate her status to be like his, until he decided that wouldn’t guarantee him her love. Then he decided to go into town with great pomp to impress her and then bring her back to his palace to be his, but then decided this would not guarantee her love either. He finally concluded that he could not gain her love by “oppressing” her, but by becoming like her and winning her heart where she lived her life. This story was then likened to the work of Christ for us.
At the conclusion of his first sermon Ferreira wrote, “What moved our king to such a sacrifice? Could it be His love for us? Yes, my friends. Jesus, the heavenly King became poor for us—which is really the richness of love—sacrificing for the wellbeing of the ones you love. And thanks to His poverty, our lives are made richer today. Now, I ask you: How will you respond to such love? The best answer you can give is surrendering your life as a sacrifice of love. Remember that true love comes [with] sacrifice. In the face of our king’s great sacrifice, you and I must be willing to drop everything, sacrifice everything, and give it all out of love for Him. Today I invite you to surrender your life to the heavenly king who, out of love for us, became poor while being rich.” (Emphasis mine)
At the conclusion of his last sermon for the series Ferreira called the youth to be prepared for the return of Jesus. “Today I invite you to await with love the coming of the Lord. I invite you to ask God to prepare you for the day when Jesus manifests himself in the clouds of heaven.” He then told them about a gentleman named James Gordon Bennett, who founded The New York Herald in 1835. He was a wealthy man with multiple homes containing servants who had to live always prepared for his unannounced return. Ferreira then quoted from another author who’d written about Bennett, “Each [house] had all the necessary staff, ready to serve Bennett if he walked through the front door without warning: the cellars were stocked, fires roared into the grates, and sheets were lowered every night. (Jill Jones. Eiffel’s Tower, Viking Adult: 2009, p. 199)”.
After sharing this account, Ferreira concluded his week of prayer series with these final words, “This is how we must live: waiting and watching because at any moment our Lord Jesus Christ will return in the clouds of heaven with power and glory!”
However evangelical Ferreira’s messages may have been packaged at various points, these youth left the foot of the cross with a message shaped by the Great Controversy and all of it’s assumptions and demands…
However evangelical Ferreira’s messages may have been packaged at various points, these youth left the foot of the cross with a message shaped by the Great Controversy and all of it’s assumptions and demands; God did all this for you, now what will you do for Him? Will you live as a light in the world by obeying His commandments? Will you be ready for His return?
Certainly there were Christian-sounding statements tucked into his messages—statements I have no doubt Ferreira believes he believes— even while holding other dueling doctrines. Many of Ferreira’s Christian truth claims will be integrated into the minds of these kids and connected to their confused worldview in some detached way. Even so, at the end of eight days of teaching, these Adventist kids were led to make a decision to serve and obey God without ever being taught the true gospel.
These Adventist youth were given evangelical pictures of God’s character and were given inspiring stories and moral anecdotes colored by descriptions of God’s love and forgiveness, but they were never told the gospel. The weight of redemption rested, full-stop, on their ability to respond to God’s sacrificial love and to obey God’s commandments in order to live ready for the return of Jesus.
The “Uplifted Victim”
What did Ellen G. White say about the work of Christ on the cross, and what did she say is our appropriate response to it? As you read her words below remember that to Ellen, “God’s law” means the “10 Commandments”:
“It was not His purpose to abolish by His death the law of God, but rather to show the immutability of its sacred claims. It was His purpose to “magnify the law, and make it honourable,” so that every one who should look upon the cross of Calvary with its uplifted Victim should see the unanswerable argument of the perfect truth of the law….” (LHU [Lift Him Up] 181.4).
“Look, O look upon the cross of Calvary; behold the royal victim suffering on your account…The Son of God was rejected and despised for our sakes. Can you, in full view of the cross, beholding by the eye of faith the sufferings of Christ, tell your tale of woe, your trials?… We must not shrink from the depths of humiliation to which the Son of God submitted in order to raise us from the degradation and bondage of sin to a seat at His right hand…. It is high time we devoted the few remaining precious hours of our probation to washing our robes of character and making them white in the blood of the Lamb, that we may be of that white-robed company who shall stand about the great white throne.” (The Review and Herald, August 2, 1881. TMK [That I may Know Him] 65.2-65.4).
“The last great day will witness the triumph of the law of Jehovah. As the impenitent look upon the cross of Calvary, the scales fall from their eyes, and they see that which before they would not see. The law, God’s standard of righteousness, is exalted even as His throne is exalted. God Himself gives reverence to His law. The result of uplifting this law before the universe is to bring human character to the test, and every man finds his proper place in one of the two classes. He is either holy to the Lord through obedience to His law or stained with sin through transgression. He has either done good, cooperating in faith and works with Jesus Christ to restore the moral image of God in man, or he has done evil, denying the Saviour by an ungodly life.” (21 MR 351.1- 351.22 [Manuscript Release Vol 21]).
“At the beginning of the great controversy, . . . had Satan and his host then been left to reap the full result of their sin, they would have perished; but it would not have been apparent to heavenly beings that this was the inevitable result of sin. A doubt of God’s goodness would have remained in their minds as evil seed, to produce its deadly fruit of sin and woe. But not so when the great controversy shall be ended. Then, the plan of redemption having been completed, the character of God is revealed to all created intelligences. The precepts of His law are seen to be perfect and immutable. Then sin has made manifest its nature, Satan his character. Then the extermination of sin will vindicate God’s love and establish His honor before a universe of beings who delight to do His will, and in whose heart is His law. . . .Christ Himself fully comprehended the results of the sacrifice made upon Calvary. To all these He looked forward when upon the cross He cried out, “It is finished.” (The Desire of Ages, p. 763-764).
According to Ellen G. White, the correct view of the cross is to see Jesus as a victim who died to uplift God’s law making a way for our salvation, and our right response to this kind of “loving victimhood” is to follow His example and wash our robes by selflessly upholding and keeping His law before all the watching worlds as we ready ourselves for His return. Our response to God is a response of compassion for God’s victimhood and obedience to His law which will cooperate with Jesus to ready us for His return. This is not the gospel.
What Wasn’t Said
Even if Adventist teachers veil their worldview with new preaching methods so that Adventists can say, “My pastor doesn’t teach that,” the issue remains that what they don’t say is just as incriminating as what they do. The omitted details of the gospel are left out precisely because they’re incompatible with Seventh-day Adventist doctrine. The gospel doesn’t allow room for assumptions that their syncretistic “Evangelical Adventist” teachings rely on.
What they never told me, and what they didn’t tell the kids this year, is that no matter how obedient we are to the 10 Commandments we cannot change our natural condition—our very nature needs changing! They didn’t tell them that we are born cut off from God with human spirits that are dead in our sin nature. They failed to mention that we are born after the likeness of Adam and so, by nature, are objects of God’s wrath deserving of hell. They didn’t tell these kids that, apart from the resurrection life of Christ, their spirits are dead, and no matter how hard they work to be good or obey God, they cannot please God in this state. They didn’t tell them the bad news!
They didn’t tell these kids that God offers us new life—not merely “a new lifestyle” but literally a new life!
They didn’t tell these kids that God offers us new life—not merely “a new lifestyle” but literally a new life! They didn’t mention that He offers us a new nature through faith in Christ alone when we trust in the gospel according to Scripture.
They didn’t tell these kids that God the Son took a body—while remaining fully God who cannot sin—and brought life into this world, revealing the Father and His will to all humankind, and rescuing us from hell and an eternity away from God through His voluntary death on the cross to propitiate for our sins. They didn’t mention that in this act, Jesus conquered death once and for all and has the power to give life to all who trust Him. They didn’t tell these kids that the moment they believe the gospel of their salvation, the Holy Spirit applies the finished work of Christ to us, reconciling us to the Father, bringing our dead spirits to life, and sealing us for eternity with Him! They didn’t tell them that once we are born again, we are transferred out of the domain of darkness and placed in the kingdom of the beloved Son. Furthermore, once we are saved, we are kept by God and are guarded through faith because God never loses any who are His. Furthermore, we can know that we are saved and will be with Him forever no matter what life throws at us. They didn’t tell them the good news!
“Oh on that cross, how it was seen…”
So, when I stood that Sunday, shoulder to shoulder with brothers and sisters in Christ who had once been dead but who are now made alive by the resurrection of Christ—who gather to celebrate the One who saved us once and for all and placed us eternally in His family—I couldn’t help but cry as we sang these words together;
“Oh on that cross, how it was seen
I can go now ever trusting in the One who died for me
What could I bring, for Your gift is complete
So I trust You, simply trust You, Lord with every part of me
Oh on that cross, how it was seen
I can go now ever trusting in the One who died for me”
Now when I look at the cross I no longer feel compelled to ruminate over my sin in order to feel adequately guilty for the “royal victim” on the cross in an attempt to empower my commitment to be a servant and uphold law-keeping to the watching universe. There is no pressure at the foot of the cross now. There is only praise and a desire to trust Him with more of myself everyday!
After all, “What could I bring, for Your gift is complete. So I trust You, simply trust You, Lord with every part of me.”
What was seen on that cross that elicits our deepest trust? If you don’t know, it’s time to open your Bible and read without the lenses of Ellen G. White or your Seventh-day Adventist culture. I always like to encourage people to start with the gospel of John. Come and meet the Promise Keeper, the Truth tTller, the One who is powerful enough to rescue to the uttermost all who draw near to Him. †
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