Adventists Are Rejecting Jesus’s Covenant
Finally, I understand. The Adventist church (because it is based on the Old Covenant, and its commandments, and its Sabbath signs) spends a lot of time defending itself. Thus, they are doing as the Jews did in Jesus’s day….rejecting Him, and rejecting His New Covenant with its commandments and its signs.
Should we continue to call their attention to the New Covenant and how it is not like the covenant they want to acquire (Jeremiah 31:31)?
They take our information about the New Covenant as an attack against their church and their church doctrines—which are based on the Old Covenant.
They take our information about the New Covenant as an attack against their church and their church doctrines—which are based on the Old Covenant.
Please pray for them as they honestly are rejecting Jesus, His New Covenant, and His New commandments.
Thanks for letting me vent…whew!
Love to you all.
—VIA EMAIL FROM A PROCLAMATION! WRITER
Response: I completely agree! 100%. I believe we have to keep doing what we are doing because there are some whom the Lord is calling. It’s crazy; they are unbelievers, and they are rejecting Jesus. Just as you said.
The Lord has given us His work to do, and it is not easy. Sometimes I think of Paul and how he was derided and persecuted—and I realize that the Lord has given some of us Formers a very specific job to do: to keep teaching the new covenant to Adventists unless they trample it like pigs with pearls. Then we have to move on.
The Lord is bringing His sheep, and thank you for being part of the new covenant call to them!
Eternal Hell Brings Division
Hi all at FAF.
I hope this email finds you well. It’s been a while since I’ve last sent you an email.
It came as a surprise to find that my 19-year-old stepson is getting baptized on the 16th of December in the Adventist Church. Apparently my Adventist wife wasn’t even aware of this event…
Even though I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, this news has saddened me greatly for a few reasons. Firstly, I’ve been praying that God would deliver my wife from Adventism since we were married nearly 14 years ago. During this time, she has only gotten deeper into Adventism. I feel greatly saddened that God seems to be answering with a “no” to my prayers.
Secondly, even after showing my stepson some of the blatant false teaching by EGW (such as Jesus having older brothers in The Desire of Ages), which he agrees that are false, has still decided to go ahead to be baptized. Truthfully, I doubt he knows what he his signing up for with this baptism. The difference between being baptized into Adventism and being baptized into Christ are worlds apart.
And lastly, I fear that this decision will influence our two younger sons (10 & 13 yr).
I feel alone, helpless, and unheard.
My second response was, “I’m pretty sure Jesus used the term ‘eternal punishment’”, to which she replied, “How can you believe God to be so wicked to torture people in hell forever!”
Another issue I’ve had recently was when my wife asked me if I believe in eternal torture. Knowing how our theological disagreements eventuate in heated words, all I said was, “I believe whatever Jesus taught on the subject,” hoping that would end the conversation—but no! She pressed me to reveal what I believed. My second response was, “I’m pretty sure Jesus used the term ‘eternal punishment’”, to which she replied, “How can you believe God to be so wicked to torture people in hell forever!”
I knew then that the next 10-15 minutes would be a barrage of “You don’t know your Bible”, “You have faulty interpretations because of your denomination,” and so on and so on.
I asked her why, then, did Jesus lie when he used the word “eternal” when he should’ve used the word “temporary”. For some reason she quoted the Old Testament passage that the “dead know nothing”.
Next time the issue of hell arises, I will quote Proverbs 30:5: “Every word of God proves true,” and also 2 Timothy 3:16.
Then I will read John 14:26 that Jesus will send the Holy Spirit to bring to the disciples remembrance of ALL things that Jesus taught including this meaning, that the word “eternal” along side “punishment” is not a mistake.…
Anyway, thanks for reading this far of this email.
I know I must continue to pray for my wife.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing; I am so, so sorry about your stepson and your wife. The Lord truly does see and know and is stronger than the deception. The heartache is real, and the deflection of Adventists’ own blindness, attributing the Christians around them with blindness and not knowing the Bible, is classic behavior from abusive families with family secrets to hide. People are terrified of facing the fact that their whole identity might be a mirage, a construct built upon a hope and a wish instead of reality.
Yes, Adventists really make eternal punishment a “hill to die on”. I believe their blind insistence is based on a very deep fear that God might actually punish the wicked forever. People who suppress the knowledge of God do deeply fear that they may be wrong. It’s interesting that atheists tend to shame and argue against Christians’ belief in God, but they do not shame or decry other things they don’t believe in, such as unicorns or Santa Claus. They may make light of those kinds of things, but they don’t spend their life’s energy trying to disprove them.The truth about God, however, is something people deeply fear if they do not believe.
It’s interesting to me that 2 Timothy 1:10 states that the gospel is what brought life and immortality to light. The OT is less explicit about what happens to people after death and into eternity. That is because the Lord Jess had not yet become incarnated in time and revealed His victory over the curse of death through His blood, burial, and resurrection. Adventists depend on the OT to “prove” their annihilation theories. Also, your discussion with your wife is touching on one of the basic problems with the Adventist worldview: they do not believe Scripture is inerrant. They believe God revealed ideas and allowed the writers to interpret them the best they could given their cultural and personal understandings—just as EGW was allowed to interrupt her ideas from “God”.
They equate the method of inspiration of Scripture with that of EGW based on her own explanation. Adventists mock the idea that the actual words of Scripture are God’s words; they say God didn’t cause people to do “automatic writing” like spirits sometimes do. They refuse to see that God gave the Bible via a mystery that is as unexplainable as the incarnation, the hypostatic union of God and man. God gave us His word. Our job is to believe it, not to stand “over” it and deconstruct it.
I am praying now for your wife and for your enablement from God to love her for Him.
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