Adventism Is More Deceptive Than the Occult
This is excellent [“Adventist War In Heaven”, Adventist Fact Check]. I got saved out of the deep occult and unfortunately happened to fall into an Adventist group, and really I just fell into another demonic deception. But this one was harder to spot than when I was practicing occult. It took me a long time to break free of Adventist fear-based doctrine and their idolatry. Jesus of Nazareth never left me; I could never settle in the church. They blamed me and said I didn’t surrender, but actually I had fully surrendered to Christ, just not to Adventist doctrine. The Jesus they preach is NOT the Jesus of the Bible. Having experienced deception from Satan all my life, I cannot stress enough the cunningness of Adventist deception.
—VIA YOUTUBE
What Do Adventists Do With Easter?
Hope you’re doing well. I’m revisiting some of your Former Adventist Podcasts on the 28 Fundamental Beliefs. Is the book that you and Nikki are using called Seventh-day Adventists Believe? I’m looking online to buy a copy and didn’t want to get the wrong book.
One more question: How do the Adventists celebrate Easter? I can’t imagine that it would be anything like an actual Christian church since they don’t believe that Jesus completed the atonement on the cross. How can it be a joyous celebration?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Yes, the book is Seventh-day Adventists Believe, the 2018 edition.
Adventists usually don’t celebrate Easter in the traditional sense. Some of the more progressive ones might have a dinner and an Easter egg hunt, but it’s not typical by any means. Some will give their kids Easter baskets of candy and small gifts just because the culture does so—and they may have them color eggs and then hunt for them, but it’s not really a true holiday.
On Sabbath some Adventist churches have tried to incorporate some sort of mention of Easter and even, at more progressive churches, have a holiday atmosphere at church with flowers, Lillies, and so forth on Sabbath (not on Easter), but the sermons are never about a finished atonement or about our eternal life being the consequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection. One young mom who is a new former Adventist said the last Easter service (on Sabbath) that she attended at the Loma Linda University Church had lots of flowers and activities for the kids, but the sermon was about Barabbas, the prisoner whom Pilate released and killed Jesus instead.
As my husband recently said, they walk all around the cross but never actually address what Jesus DID.
It was an empty holiday; we thought that the resurrection just meant that some day we would be resurrected. It was never connected to spiritual life, to the defeat of our personal sin.
For the Adventists who “celebrate” it, it’s more like a secular holiday that has Jesus in it, like Christmas. It’s secularized in a way similar to the secularization of Christmas.
Why Are Our Friends Still Adventists?
We recently visited some old friends who are Adventists.
They were always good friends—not in any cliques that kept us at arm’s length. They were always warm and welcoming to us. They did not ever attend Adventist schools although both were raised in the church. They did not send any of their children to Adventist schools, either. They never seemed to adhere to any of the Adventist “shalt nots”. They ate meat and enjoyed themselves with whatever they liked on Saturday afternoons. They wore jewelry and were very similar to our Bad-ventist ways at the time. They had many non-Adventist friends, and we were included in social events with those friendships which was always a joy…
Today they do occasionally attend an Adventist church, just not regularly anymore, and they have no church support system. They still consider themselves Adventist, but their home shows no signs of it—no EGW books lying about, no Sabbath messages posted. These people are tremendously successful at everything they do…none of their children are Adventists but are raising their families in Christian churches.
I just thought it so interesting to find such wonderful Christian people in the Adventist church. Why are they still connected? It holds nothing for them. Are they becoming formers? They did not mention it and I did not ask. Neither they nor we spoke of our church attendance while visiting. It just seemed awkward to me as we are still not in agreement…
I wonder how many Bad-ventists there are out there?
Have a wonderful week!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I can’t speak to your friends’ personal condition with the Lord. I believe you have evaluated them accurately—as Bad-ventists. Ha! They clearly have serious disagreement with traditional Adventism.
The fact that you couldn’t talk to the about it, though, suggests to me that although they are disillusioned with Adventism, they may not know the Lord personally. Believers tend to “know” each other and resonate with truth because of the Holy Spirit indwelling them. My take on their continued connection to the organization is simply that I suspect they still retain the Adventist worldview: that somehow the Sabbath is eternally important and in a vague way they themselves can’t define, is connected to salvation and to honoring God.
As Adventists we also redefined HOW to keep the Sabbath. In fact, it is significant that Adventism doesn’t have any guidelines officially for Sabbath-keeping. Many North American Adventists believe that Sabbath is primarily an internal belief that the day is special and holy, but that God wants them to enjoy themselves on that day, not working and doing mandated hard labor but just doing whatever brings them “joy”. Of course, these ideas are not found either in the biblical commands to Israel regarding Sabbath nor in the traditional Adventist practices. They are the consequence of Adventists’ disbelief in the strange doctrines but not really allowing themselves to believe what the Bible says about the Lord Jesus and the exclusivity of trusting Him alone.
Many Adventists love their “Sabbath” because they believe it is a special day on which they get to have a glorified day off. Yet that idea completely misses the point of the Sabbath.
So, for these kinds of “Bad-ventists”, the idea of leaving Adventism seems untenable because of a couple things: first, they believe Sabbath is “special”, and they must keep acknowledging that “specialness” by doing whatever they want on that day because God made it “for them”. It’s their rationalization for honoring God by holding onto the day—instead of Jesus.
Second, they very likely still have a physical worldview, that man is not body plus immaterial spirit but is body-plus-breath. That physicalism places Adventists outside the worldview of Christianity in general. Even if they don’t seem to endorse Adventist doctrines about “death”, it’s likely that they don’t believe the dead are conscious and literally in the care of the Lord as persons. Death for an Adventist is a Grand Pause when people don’t really exist. This understanding eclipses the biblical truth of our natural spiritual death and our need to be born again.
Bottom line, it’s likely that these people don’t really know the true gospel expressed in 1 Corinthians 15:1–4. They still believe that they have to somehow be good people, that their internal “goodness” is part of God’s acceptance of them. They are not born again, more than likely. If they were, they would talk to you about these things. They would come up.
Of course, I can’t say for sure…but this is my experience with Adventists such as these you describe. I believe the Lord brings these connections into our lives so we can pray for them. †
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