By Nicole Stevenson
I have a burden for those who leave Adventism and then grow weary of trying to understand God’s Word without the triggers from proof texts. I have seen many online who have decided that doctrine is confusing and it divides, and they resign themselves to the mantra that all that matters is a relationship with Jesus.
One of the dynamics of Adventism that upsets me the most is its defaming of Scripture while professing to be Sola Scriptura—all the while claiming that the Bible is the final test of all things. When honestly examined, however, Adventist distinctive beliefs and practices expose the fallacy of both claims.
The wounds Adventism inflicts on the minds of those indoctrinated by it are deep and persistent, and for me, it has only been the deep and persistent study of Scripture handled honestly and contextually—both alone and in the fellowship of true believers—that has begun to heal them.
Scripture has revealed to me a God who is far more holy than I ever understood, whose attributes cause me both to worship and at times to weep, and who calls me His forever daughter and heir.
Adventist doctrines stole those truths about who God is and about salvation from me for 30 years, and it’s my prayer that Adventism’s total departure from teaching the God of Scripture, from its inception, will be revealed and that all who leave and long to know Him will not grow weary of the battle of unwrapping the grave clothes of false doctrines.
We are sanctified by the Word of God (Jn. 17:17; Jn. 8:31) through the work of the Spirit, yet it is in our reading of Scripture that left-over Adventism can hide and rot in our thinking. Because I know this reality, I feel compelled to share with you a tiny piece of the process I’ve had to walk through to get to a place where I could fully entrust my broken heart and mind to God. I had to learn to trust the process He chose for me to grow in my knowledge of Him and of His love for me.
Thorns in my side
I cannot give this subject a detailed explanation, but I will briefly discuss two points of confusion that seemed to act as thorns in my side as I read God’s Word during my transition out of Adventism.
First, when I was born again, I was clear that Christians are not bound to the Sabbath as the old testament Jews had been. The book of Galatians and the first FAF conference I attended both did a thorough job of revealing the nature of salvation, and I knew Sabbath-keeping had no part in it.
Even so, walking through the Bible after that often felt like a minefield of proof texts.
These classic proof texts and assumptions would interrupt my reading, sometimes in surprising and jolting ways.
While I knew from other clear teachings in Scripture that Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath, I had to confront the proof text arguments in my head with truth in order to disarm them and to rewire my reactions to Scripture.
Thanks to this ministry, I knew that these questions and struggles were not unique to me. Every Adventist I knew who studied his way into the pure gospel of Scripture had to deal with these questions. I’m thankful others have had the same questions, because they were able to come alongside me and help me deal with them while equipping me to help someone else, should God one day give me that opportunity.
You may be familiar with a few of these intrusive questions or arguments:
- Why does the New Testament talk about keeping God’s commandments?
- If we love Him, we will keep His commandments, right?
- What about the people in Revelation who are keeping the commandments of God?
- Don’t all the passages about Paul teaching in the synagogue on Sabbath prove he was a Sabbatarian?
The split in my thinking was all the wedge the devil needed to cast doubt on my faith. How could I really be saved while also struggling with questions related to matters of interpretation that completely alter the gospel that I claimed saved me? The very lies planted in my thinking from childhood, from which I had repented, were intrusively resurfacing to twist my understanding of Scripture and cast doubt on what I knew ABSOLUTELY to be true.
It was as if the command to abide in God’s Word had somehow become a command to step into my spiritual PTSD and allow God to undo what had once been done by showing me the truth about the Adventist lies. I had to ignore the fear and press on and into God’s Word, and I couldn’t have done it alone.
Had the Lord not given me perseverance to press into the questions with mature believers at my side who understood my background, praying with me and teaching me, any one of those difficult moments in Scripture could have easily caused me to give up believing I could ever know truth. The doubts were bad enough that, without the encouragement of those who understood this debriefing process, I would at the least have doubted that I would ever know the truth well enough to defend it and help my Adventist loved ones know what I now knew.
Our hermeneutic is crucial
The next thing I had to do was adopt some very important assumptions and questions when approaching Scripture. This is the biggie! A proper hermeneutic is crucial to unpacking false doctrines!
The cults like to invent their own ways of interpreting Scripture, borrowing from the language of Christians while applying their own definitions and terms to those words. I believe that while some honestly believe their definitions are correct and superior, others know that they are morphing Scripture. They twist God’s word intentionally for the preservation of their tradition and idol. I truly believe that there is no cult with an honest and good hermeneutic.
If people can be kept from learning how to approach Scripture to understand its meaning, then cultic teachers (no matter how sincere) can use the Bible like a judicial gavel and pronounce the final word on all things.
So, while there were many things I needed to learn about a proper hermeneutic, here are five of the ones that helped me while dealing with many Adventist trigger texts:
- Scripture is inspired by God; it is fully trustworthy and inerrant in the original languages. That statement means if it appears to contradict itself, the problem is not in the text but in my understanding of it.
- The Bible is not a book of magic or secret codes and formulas predicting the future. It is not a place where God secretly hid the knowledge of salvation for those who are smart enough to find it or Holy enough to receive a vision about it. It is a book rooted in history and purposed by God to clearly reveal Himself and His plan of salvation for mankind. It is not a trick or a puzzle, and it must be read with an understanding of its context, its genre, its authors, its purposes, the first audiences, and the normal definitions of the words and the normal rules of grammar—to name a few.
- Before I make something doctrine, I have to step back from the passage and ask if the text is prescriptive or descriptive! I’ll come back to this.
- When bumping into a confusing text (or when studying any text, really) I ask myself, “Where else does the Bible talk about this subject, and how do those passages shed light on this one?”
- Clear passages interpret less clear passages on an issue.
This is not a perfect list, but these 5 guidelines helped me while working through Sabbath proof texts and other questions.
What about “Commandments”?
I want to give an example of how some of these hermeneutical principles helped me understand that the word “commandments”, taken from the very passages Adventists use as proof texts, is not referring to the Ten Commandments.
First of all, everything I’m sharing here, I learned from those who left Adventism before me and who faithfully walked me through this process. Helping others understand how to unpack their Adventist proof texts is something I pray each of us will always be available to do for others.
Now, as I looked closely at these texts, I noticed that all of the proof texts that jolted me—and which I kept hearing from Adventists who were arguing with me—were coming out of John’s writings. They are found in the gospel of John, in the epistles, and in Revelation. Knowing the author and the books he wrote helped me compare the verses contextually.
The other important principal I had to keep in mind was that its the original language that is inerrant and John wrote in Greek. I thank God that we have access to interlinear Bibles online where we can look up these passages and see the Biblical Greek, word for word, over the English words in every verse of the New Testament.
You will recognize these proof texts:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn. 14:15).
“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him….Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him” (1 Jn. 3:24).
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 Jn. 5: 1-4 ).
“Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus” (Rev. 14:12).
As I pressed into Scripture with the hermeneutical principles above, I was able to see that every author, while truly inspired by the Holy Spirit, had his own writing style. It is a fact that whenever John wrote about the Law of Moses, he used the Greek word NOMOS. Whenever John was writing about instructions or teachings not pertaining to the Law of Moses, however, he used the word ENTOLE (or ENTOLAS in the plural). In every single passage I read above, he used the word denoting teachings or instructions. Consequently, if one inserts the English words “teachings or instructions” in every occurrence of the word “commandments”, the text changes from the Adventist lie to the original meaning of the Holy Spirit who inspired John.
I will now give a few examples where John uses the word NOMOS, and I hope you will look into these for yourself. You can do this easily by going to BibleHub.com and clicking on Interlinear. Then look up any passage of Scripture. Be sure you are evaluating John’s writings with each other, however, as each author had his own style of writing. John is is particularly consistent in his use of NOMOS and ENTOLE.
“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn. 1:17).
“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph’” (Jn. 1:45).
“If a man receives circumcision on [the] Sabbath so that the Law of Moses will not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on [the] Sabbath?” (Jn. 7:23).
After understanding that the word in these “proof texts” meant the instructions of Jesus, I became curious about what those unique commands of Christ were. Below is a list of just some of Christ’s commands in the New Testament. I have taken these from the table of contents in John Piper’s book, What Jesus Demands from the World. Please know these are not quotes from Christ but a list of things He commanded.
- You must be born again
- Repent
- Come to me
- Believe in Me
- Love Me
- Listen to Me
- Abide in Me
- Take up your cross and follow Me
- Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
- Rejoice and leap for joy
- Fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell
- Worship God in Spirit and Truth
- Always pray and do not lose heart
- Do not be anxious about the needs of daily life
- Do not be anxious about the threats of man
- Humble yourself
- Do the will of My Father in Heaven
- Strive to enter through the narrow door
- Love your enemies
- Love your neighbor as yourself
- Lay up treasures in Heaven
- Do not take an oath
- What God has joined together let no man separate
- Render to caesar the things that are Caesar’s
- Do this in remembrance of me
- Be baptized
- Let your light shine before others
- Make disciples of all nations
- Teaching them all that I have commanded you
These are far more, and far more profound, than a simple list of Ten Commandments.
What About the Sabbath?
So, what about Paul teaching in the synagogue on Sabbath? When I would read the Acts of the Apostles and would see Peter or Paul teaching in the synagogue, I nearly always felt like the account was a proof text that we were supposed to keep the Sabbath. Also, when I saw Jesus doing nearly anything on the Sabbath—in fact, just seeing the word SABBATH in the New Testament—would throw me into a cycle of asking why it was there! I just wanted it to disappear altogether!
When passages like this threw me off course, another one of those hermeneutical rules helped me greatly! I had to step back and ask myself if these passages were descriptive, meaning they were simply describing an event, or if they were prescriptive, meaning they were being taught as commands to the church. Truly, there are no commands to the church to keep the Jewish Sabbath. On the contrary, we are taught that the Sabbath day is among the shadows that were fulfilled in Christ (Col 2:16) and that we were not to go back to the Law of Moses (Galatians).
As I pressed into these triggers and spent time in God’s word and talking with or reading other trustworthy believers, the meaning of Scripture became fuller, and the oppression of Adventist triggers began to fade away. I can honestly tell you that when I read the words “Sabbath” or “commandments” in the New Testament now, I no longer shrink away from the point of the passage. I know my ability to read these verses without anxiety is only because of the work of the Holy Spirit, of His Word, and of the body of Christ coming to bear on my heart and pressing me on toward the goal of growing in Christ.
It is my earnest prayer that former Adventists will not grow weary of unraveling the grave clothes we call Adventist distinctives. It is my prayer that they will not simply walk away from Adventism and assume they were untouched by its teachings. It is my prayer that they will find a way to reach out to the body of Christ as well as to others with their background, allowing them to come alongside them and encouraging them in this process. I pray they know with certainty that they are not alone and that God is knowable and has revealed Himself clearly in Scripture.
The longer I live in this life after Adventism, the more convinced I am of two things: we will never come to the end of learning about God, and we who are born again by His Spirit through faith in the final and complete testimony God has given us concerning His Son in the pages of Scripture will never tire of hearing Him glorified through the faithful teaching of those He’s gifted. I believe that’s why, when we gather both to worship in song and in the teaching of Scripture, we know we’re home, and that we’re with family.
We can tell ourselves that doctrine is not important, that we don’t need church, and that all that matters is a relationship with Jesus, but saying these things won’t make them true. You see, doctrine is simply truth about God. A relationship with Jesus means He is Lord of our lives, and obedience to Him means believing Him and keeping His instructions for the church. He said, “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” He said we were to learn from Him, and if we are willing to be honest with Scripture, we must admit that so many of the commands of Christ are related both to doctrine (what we believe about Him) and to our relationships within the church. It has been here, in fellowship and relationship with the body of Christ and in abiding in His Word, that I have grown in deep and sometimes heartbreaking ways.
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, Amen” (Eph. 3:20–21).
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