Now Teaching True Gospel To Brazil
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
We watched the vote confirming Erton Köhler as the new General Conference (GC) president of the Seventh-day Adventist organization on July 4, 2025, at the Adventists’ quinquennial meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Our interest is related to the fact that the Brazilian outreach of Life Assurance Ministries is spearheaded by Deborah Buffone, a former secretary of Köhler, who is Brazilian, during the time when he was the director of youth ministries in the South American Division (SAD) from 1998 to 2002.
Köhler has most recently served as the Executive Secretary of the GC, and before that he was the president of the SAD. He is the first South American to lead the world organization of Seventh-day Adventists.
Deborah’s Journey
Deborah resigned from her position with the South American Division in 2000. She gave back her Adventist missionary credentials and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the USA, to study English for two years. She was deeply committed to Seventh-day Adventism and had given her life to spreading the Adventist message, and although she never actually went out as a missionary, her dream was to take the “Adventist truth” far and wide.
In fact, her move to Connecticut was driven by the desire to be better equipped to serve the cause of Adventism. Since she already was an executive secretary and had served in the division office, she knew she would improve her ability to serve if she could speak English. As an executive secretary, she was the person who would be expected to contact the GC headquarters when the local officers needed to communicate with GC leaders. Her immersion into language study would help her be more efficient, and she always intended to go back to Brazil and to work for the leadership as she had already been doing.
First Crack in the Foundation
Before Deborah left Brazil, she had her first question about the legitimacy of Ellen White’s prophetic role when Deborah bought her first new car. She argued with the salesman who tried to convince her to buy auto insurance, but she refused because Ellen White has spoken against buying insurance, telling her followers that they needed to depend on God and not spend money on insurance policies. When Debbie reported this event to her pastor, he quickly told her that he carried insurance and that it was the right thing to do.
This direct opposition to Ellen White’s counsel disoriented Deborah, but not knowing what else to do with the dissonance, she swept her confusion “under the rug”.
Deborah’s first serious doubt about Adventism, though, came shortly after the infamous 9/11, when, about a year after she arrived in the USA, terrorist planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York City and threw the whole country into fear and turmoil as the Towers collapsed and people from coast to coast grieved. Debbie asked to lead the local Brazilian Adventist Church she was attending in a prayer vigil after the attack—something many Christian churches were doing.
To her shock, the local pastor did not allow her to hold the vigil. He told her that what was happening to America was God’s will according to the words of its prophetess Ellen White.
The next Sabbath Deborah attended the English Adventist church in town just to see what the American congregations were saying. She couldn’t believe that her church would take such an unsympathetic stance toward the people it was serving. Again she was in for a shock.
She discovered that the local “American” church had a ban on saying Ellen White’s name from the pulpit—a stance opposite from that of the Brazilian church—yet they held the same position on America that the Brazilian church held: that America was the lamblike beast of Revelation 13.
Deborah disagreed. She was horrified that within Adventism there was such external duplicity, that one congregation was so committed to Ellen White’s scenario of the USA falling into apostasy and becoming the “false prophet” for the antichrist that it would not permit the congregation to pray for the Americans who were suffering and frightened, while a church down the street would not publicly acknowledge Ellen White but internally was protecting the prophetess’s great controversy scenario of the United States as a servant of evil.
From Messianic Jew to Christian!
The event with the American and Brazilian churches’ response to 9/11 hastened her realization that she could not remain Seventh-day Adventist. She could not endorse either the duplicity she saw during the 9/11 events nor the callous refusal to meet the needs of the people who were suffering as their country came under attack. Furthermore, she had her first serious doubt about the authority of Ellen White’s counsels. And yet—Debbie believed in the Law. She was committed to obedience and began looking for a religion where she could honor what she understood God had commanded His people to do.
Five years after her disorienting confrontation with Adventism’s duplicity, Deborah found her new religion: she officially left Adventism and became a Messianic Jew in 2006—and she threw herself deeply into practicing the FULL law. Messianic Judaism seemed like the right choice to her—her birth mother had been Jewish, and she believed that she was coming to her rightful spiritual home.
As Deborah says, “I was a Messianic, following Moses!! I even took the Nazarite vow! I was lost in my trespasses!!”
For eleven years Deborah lived committed to every detail of the Law, disciplining her behavior and appetites scrupulously—until one day in 2018 when she attended a Christian church with a friend. As the Lord arranged things, the sermon that day was from Galatians 4:21–31, and as the pastor preached through Paul’s contrast of the “two mountains” representing two covenants characterized by Hagar (Mt. Sinai) and Sarah (the heavenly Jerusalem), he asked, “Who is your mother?”
This question touched Deborah deeply. She had grown up in foster families, and had never felt rooted in biological family. Suddenly she realized that the Bible offered her the ability to know who her true mother is from God’s perspective.
She went home and read Galatians—and as she realized what the TRUE gospel is, not the “gospel” of Adventism identified by the Three Angels’ Messages and not the Old Covenant, she trusted the Lord Jesus and was born again. Suddenly she knew what her true mission was: she had to tell her Adventist family and friends—her Brazilian Adventist family—the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
New Ministry Focus
In 2022 Deborah Buffone became the coordinator of a Portuguese language outreach to Brazilian Adventists (and other Portuguese-speaking people) for Life Assurance Ministries. She has a growing group of questioning Adventists contacting her and joining her for online Bible studies. She also has a Facebook page, Former Adventist Brasil, and a Youtube channel, “Deborah Buffone”.
Because of her past experience with the South American Division and Erton Köhler, Deborah watched the General Conference presidential vote with interest. After Köhler preached his first sermon the next day on Sabbath morning as the new president, Deborah posted this on her Facebook account:
“I can say that I have accepted the challenge of my former boss. He asked each of us to be a Missionary taking the TRUTH to those who want to serve JESUS. I have answered the call to be a missionary, but I have answered God’s call to teach the real truth without the lies and heresies of the Adventist Church.”
Deborah commented to me,
“Köhler’s sermon on his mission focus inspired me to do more for God’s mission to spread the truth of the Gospel! Missionary work was a dream I had—but the truth God wants me to teach is not Adventism! God is fulfilling that dream. I am a real missionary to my own people! He did it—but not before I understood the real Gospel of Jesus’ death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day which broke our curse of death!”
It’s not about the Great Controversy or the Three Angel’s Messages—it’s all about the Gospel of Jesus’ finished work! †
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Very interesting and the 9/11 vigil being rejected because of EGW…it just does not surprise me one bit. I remember hearing a lot of people trying to attach that horrific atrocity to an EGW vision in order to seem relevant. Sick.