We Were Able To Leave!
I just wanted to finally email and say thank you for your ministry and podcast.
My wife and I have been able to leave the Adventist church!! (Both my wife and I were 5th generation Adventist.) I was an Adventist pastor for 15 years and worked 5 additional years in academy work before taking a “break” from denominational employment due to frustrations with church politics.
I would say that you wouldn’t believe the dysfunction and terrible things I experienced working for the church, and then how I was treated by the church and conference administration after I tried to continue to minister in an Adventist context, but I was sure you would believe it.
I came to the obvious conclusion that God simply wasn’t in the broken, fake system where people pretended to be something they were not.
I came to the obvious conclusion that God simply wasn’t in the broken, fake system where people pretended to be something they were not. I saw the disgusting sin and dysfunction in the church and knew that God could not bless sin and unconverted people. I believe the story of Achan relates to at least the local and probably most Adventist churches. Sin in the camp must be dealt with.
My wife and I finally dropped our membership this past May, with no one seeming to care or reach out. Not surprising, but still disappointing that an ordained pastor of 15 years, who baptized 200 people and faithfully served in many positions, could leave without anyone caring.
Thanks again for your ministry!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you so much for writing! I am so sorry for what you have endured—and yes, I can absolutely believe what you have experienced and seen.
You are right; God isn’t in that broken system. I finally understood that if the true gospel is not taught and the real Jesus is not taught, the organization cannot be part of the real church. That was a hard reality that took me awhile to acknowledge!
Praise God you have followed Him to Jesus and out of the counterfeit. The farther you get from Adventism, the darker you will find it to be. I pray that you will find a real church where you can grow and hear God’s word taught faithfully.
If you ever want to join us on Friday nights at 7:00 PM Pacific time for our weekly FAF Bible study, we would welcome you. Just email this address and request a Zoom link!
Thank you so much for reaching out. The Lord is faithful!
Adventist Church Listening to Former Adventist Podcasts
I never had to dig this deep, until I got hooked up with the Adventists. I am learning more from you now than I ever thought I would ever have to know. You girls are a wealth of knowledge. God bless you both. I am loving learning from you.
…the whole [Adventist] church has been listening to them on Wednesday nights, stopping to pick everything you and Nikki say apart.
A few days ago I learned that a friend to whom I sent a couple of your podcasts must have told her Adventist pastor about them. So the whole [Adventist] church has been listening to them on Wednesday nights, stopping to pick everything you and Nikki say apart. She said they have found no truth in them. She says she fears for me, that I am being deceived. This is so very sad. I told her I love her, and I do pray for all eyes to be opened. God and God alone will bring them to the real truth. No one likes to hear they have been duped.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Oh, my—the church is listening to the podcasts? Of course they are picking them apart, but I am praying that the Lord will use them to help someone understand the confusion of their religion and come to know the real Lord Jesus!
Do Adventists Believe All of EGWs Words Were Inspired?
I am talking with an Adventist and he is saying that only some of Ellen White’s writings are inspired. Is this the classical understanding of her writings and inspiration? Or was the historic understanding that all of what she said was authoritative? [If] all of her writings are inspired, do you have a reference for that outside of Fundamental Belief #18? Or some historic statements on her authority as a prophet?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: EGW herself said that all of her writings were either of God or of the devil. In practice, Adventists have always known that some of her stuff is not right. They also say that she “grew” over the years, and they have suppressed some of her earlier writings. Officially all of her writings are inspired and are part of her “opus” that informs Adventism, and their great controversy worldview reflects her most cultic statements. Yet many Adventists are not aware of all that she wrote. They may or may not believe she was a “prophet”, and they may qualify what they believe about her and her writings—but if they do not face the facts and admit she was a false prophet, they remain bound by her and her influence.
It almost doesn’t matter whether or not they believe everything she wrote. By being Adventist they live within a worldview shaped by her, even if they don’t know it: the physicalist view of man, the belief that Sabbath is eternally important, that Jesus could have failed and that He gave up His omnipresence…they live inside an EGW reality even if they don’t know they do.
Here are a few of her own quotes:
I have been shown faults and wrongs of individuals who professed perfect confidence in the visions, but found fault with the instrument. The natural feelings of their heart rise up in rebellion against the visions which had exposed their errors and evil. Instead of humbly acknowledging they had erred, they found fault with the manner in which the vision was delivered. They took the position that a part of it was correct and a part of it was a mistake, that I had been told circumstances and thought that the Lord had shown them to me in vision. {1MR 306.3}
Has God placed His work in such a careless manner, that man could fashion it to suit his own inclinations, receive that which was agreeable to him, and reject a portion? Would God give visions to correct His people of their errors and then trust to the erring one’s judgment to receive or reject what portion of them he pleased? What would be the use of visions in the church if held in this light, or if erring individuals in their darkness were left to make what application of them they pleased? This is not the way that God works. If God reproves His people through an individual He does not leave the one corrected to guess at matters and the message to become corrupted in reaching the person it is designed to correct. God gives the message and then takes especial care that it is not corrupted. {1MR 306.4}
The visions are either of God or the devil. There is no half-way position to be taken in the matter. God does not work in partnership with Satan. Those who occupy this position cannot stand there long. They go a step farther and account the instrument God has used a deceiver and the woman Jezebel. If after they had taken the first step it should be told them what position they would soon occupy in regard to the visions, they would have resented it as a thing impossible. But Satan leads them on blindfolded in a perfect deception in regard to the true state of their feelings until he takes them in his snare. Letter 8, 1860, pp. 16, 17. (To Brother John Andrews, June 11, 1860.) {1MR 307.1}
God has given us, as His servants, our work. He has given us a message to bear to His people. For thirty years we have been receiving the words of God and speaking them to His people. We have trembled at the responsibility, which we have accepted with much prayer and meditation. We have stood as God’s ambassadors, in Christ’s stead beseeching souls to be reconciled to God. We have warned of danger as God has presented before us the perils of His people. Our work has been given us of God. What, then, will be the condition of those who refuse to hear the words which God has sent them, because they cross their track or reprove their wrongs? If you are thoroughly convinced that God has not spoken by us, why not act in accordance with your faith and have no more to do with a people who are under so great a deception as this people are? If you have been moving according to the dictates of the Spirit of God you are right and we are wrong. God is either teaching His church, reproving their wrongs and strengthening their faith, or He is not. This work is of God, or it is not. God does nothing in partnership with Satan. My work for the past thirty years bears the stamp of God or the stamp of the enemy. There is no halfway work in the matter. The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God, or of the devil. In arraying yourself against the servants of God you are doing a work either for God or for the devil. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” What stamp does your work bear? It will pay to look critically at the result of your course. {Testimonies for the Church, Volume Four, page 229, paragraph 2.}
Because of Fundamental Belief #18, all of her words need to be seen as from God. Adventists will excuse her for some of them if she contradicts herself, but they explain these internal contradictions by saying that she “grew” over the years, and that she was receiving “present truth”—an invented idea to say that God simply hadn’t revealed everything to her at the beginning. Yet they saw her visions as from God from the beginning. Their own denominational history book quotes Arthur White’s account of the formation of their doctrines. When the men couldn’t understand a passage, EGW would go into vision, and the meaning would be revealed. They knew those meanings had to be from God because EGW herself said that when she wasn’t in vision, she didn’t know what the Bible passages meant.
They have insulated her by creating excuses for her internal contradictions. Even if an individual doesn’t believe everything, Fundamental Belief #18 demands loyalty. The organization doesn’t really care if members don’t believe everything she wrote as long as they don’t go to the point of calling her a false prophet. If they call her that, then their confidence in Adventism crumbles, and they see that all of their worldview falls apart. As long as they see her as important even if they don’t believe “everything”, they remain Adventist, protecting the presence and the reputation of their prophet a bit like a family tolerates an eccentric great-aunt who embarrasses them, but they have to include her for Christmas dinner because she belongs to them. After all, even if they don’t believe everything, she might be right about a lot of things—they just never know which things for sure. They hedge their bets and hold onto her. †
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