The Trinity Is Not “Three gods”, and Oneness Is Heresy
It’s a great work you’re doing, helping fellow brothers and sisters to leave the anti-Christ Seventh—day Adventist cult.
I came out of the New Age and Tibetan Buddhism (vajrayana, “steep path towards enlightenment/self-realization”) cults. Those took about 20 years of my life.
A sister in Christ rightfully pointed out to me, after noticing your stance on the Trinity on Former Adventist Podcast, “Are these former Adventist ladies trinitarians? If so, they are not of God; they have a false Christ. The Trinity is a false god. Period.”
—VIA EMAIL
Response: The Trinity is NOT three gods. That idea—that there are three beings who call themselves “God”—is an Adventist idea.
The biblical God is ONE GOD expressed in three Persons who share substance. It is a mystery we cannot explain; God does not explain this mystery to us, but read Colossians 1 and 2. All the fulness dwelt in Jesus bodily (Col 2:9), and all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Jesus bodily (Col 1:17).
God is spirit (John 4:24), and that characteristic of God includes the Son, Jesus, and also the Holy Spirit. One of the attributes of God is that He is Spirit. Jesus did not stop being God who is Spirit when He became incarnate. Yet the Lord Jesus IS the Son—a mystery we cannot explain but which the Bible explicitly teaches. He is eternal and one with the Father and the Spirit.
Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit all have exactly the same attributes. Each possesses omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and eternality. Each has exactly the same substance, and yet they interact with each other. Read John 10 through 17. Jesus reveals great detail about His relationship with the Father and the Spirit. Yet they are not three gods; they are ONE GOD expressed in three persons.
That idea of one substance is extremely important. The three talk to and about each other; they share purpose and love, but they have different roles. Yet they are NOT separate; they are ONE BEING—a mystery which is never explained.
Oneness is a heresy; the Bible never teaches that God appears in different modes at different times. It teaches that the three persons function together yet do different things. They are ONE GOD expressed in three persons.
John 10 through 17 is extremely helpful. Also, read Colossians 1 and 2.
Response Confirms “Adventist Shame Game”
I grew up Baptist, and my wife grew up Catholic; we studied the Scriptures on a number of topics, and that journey led us to become Seventh-day Adventists. No one bugged us or pressured us. People like yourself and many other pastors of different faiths tried to inform us what Adventists teach, what their history and beginnings were, and they made allegations about Ellen White and her role in the Adventist church.
When we checked out their claims in the areas mentioned above, we discovered that they were not accurate. Their attempts to educate people about how Adventists got started, about what Adventists teach, and about the role of Ellen White and her writings—all these were very inaccurate and mis-leading. These false teachers who make it a hobby to to tell the world how bad Adventists are played a big role in our studying deeper into the history and background of the Adventist church and of our ultimate decision to become a part the Adventist Christian Church.
Colleen, you might prayerfully consider using your time to help spread the good news of Jesus and the hope people can have in Him while there is still time to do so. I can tell by the way you speak, that somewhere in the past you got hurt by someone in the church, and your You Tube page is a way of getting back at those who hurt you. Anyone can get offended at any church at any given time—this will happen until the end of time—we should not put our trust in people—but Jesus.
—VIA YOUTUBE
Response: Adventists explain those who leave Adventism by saying they have been hurt. Significantly, even when they publish their research explaining the reasons people leave Adventism, they almost never include a category for “doctrinal disagreements”. Instead, those of us who have studied Adventism and studied Scripture are ignored and explained away as having been hurt or having had a life crisis of some sort. But these explanations do not explain a large percentage of people who leave Adventism.
When you say that you “checked out the claims” of those who talk about the history of Adventism, I know that your research included (if not exclusively was comprised of) asking Adventist apologists to explain what we say. Yet Adventists will never explain to you the ACTUAL details of what we say because the organization as a whole has developed a deceptive “explanation” for its own existence. If you want to investigate the validity of what we say, you have to actually look for details on your own that are not filtered by Adventist apologists and loyalists. The details we have said are all recorded in Adventists’ own documents and original source materials, and NONE of it has ever been refuted or renounced or withdrawn. It has been revised and rephrased and hidden over the years, but it has never been changed.
Adventism is a counterfeit of Christianity, and if you don’t actually look at the biblical teachings that their doctrines twist, you will not be able to see what they have done. Explaining the structure of the organization and the reasons for it will not reveal the flaws and deceptions that still exist in the foundation which is invisible without deep digging.
The fact that neither you nor your wife was raised Adventist means that you have not been exposed to the true nature of these things from the ground up. The Adventist worldview must be learned, and it is different from a biblical worldview. In fact, Adventism manages to deceive many converts who hear Adventists use “Christian” words without their ever realizing that Adventism actually has different definitions and a different worldview that shifts what the Adventists mean when they use the words that Christians use. Adventists and Christians do NOT mean the same things.
The worldview is different. Unless you really accept the fact that Adventists and Christians don’t mean the same things, you won’t understand what the danger is. Adventism is much more akin to Mormonism than to evangelical Christianity. It is actually a cousin to Jehovah’s Witnesses and holds some key beliefs that are identical: the non-existence of the human spirit, and annihilation. The Adventist definitions of Christian words reveal that they have a completely different view of reality than do Christians.
I suggest that you listen to two things: the recently posted online book by Dale Ratzlaff and the Former Adventist Podcast series on the 28 Fundamental Beliefs of Adventism. Here is the link to Dale’s book Truth Led Me Out:
And here is the podcast series:
- December 28, 2024–January 3, 2025 - December 26, 2024
- We Got Mail - December 26, 2024
- We Got Mail - December 19, 2024