By Colleen Tinker
In December, the Adventist Review completed its seven-month series, Digging Deeper of what they called Adventism’s Core Beliefs. Beginning in June the magazine featured a different Core Belief each month. The first subject was the mark of the beast. July featured the Trinity; August’s topic was Deception. In September the subject was what happens after death, and October featured the investigative judgment—“the heart of Adventist theology”. November looked at Babylon, and December examined Creation—not so much from a biblical as from a philosophical and scientific perspective, interestingly enough.
Five articles looked at creation from different perspectives. Rosana Alves, the director of the Neurogenesis Institute Center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, wrote “This Glorious Temple” in which she examined primarily the effects of sleep on the brain. Jim Gibson, the director of the Geoscience Research Institute in Loma Linda, California, wrote an article entitled “Lessons from an Ammonite”. An ammonite, in this case, is an extinct sea creature that lived in a complex shell, and Gibson uses this ancient creature to draw lessons about God’s creativity and intervention in creation. Belliny Phaeton, a recent medical school graduate, wrote “Faith In Science That Makes Sense”. In her article she tells of her own crisis of faith and how she resolved her doubts and settled her faith in God the Creator.
“God’s Sabbath Stamp” by Richard Davidson supports the Sabbath using an unusual approach: the “Sabbath stamp” in Scripture and in nature. Davidson argues that the occurrences of “sevens” in the law and in nature support the existence of the seventh-day Sabbath. Finally, Clifford Goldstein argues in his article “Creation and Resurrection” that creation, as opposed to evolution, supports the idea of a future resurrection.
As we have done before, we will briefly review each article, and then we will summarize the implications of Adventism’s seventh “core belief”.
“This Glorious Temple”
Rosana Alves wrote a short summary of interesting facts about brain function, highlighting that the brain has an “ongoing capacity for learning”. The bulk of her article dealt with the effects of rest and sleep on brain function. In her summary she said, “Our life experiences are infinite and indescribable. And all our experiences are processed through our brains. No wonder David spoke about being fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Alves reflects the Adventist assumption that human life is physical, that thoughts, emotions, creativity, health, and energy depend upon “eating simple, nutritious food; getting adequate exercise; and enjoying ample rest”. Certainly humans were God’s crowning work of creation, but Adventism has missed the remarkable fact that is is our spirits, that immaterial part of us that reflects God’s image, that sets us apart.
Adventism focusses on developing the mind and maintaining good health in order to enjoy and fulfill God’s plan for us. Certainly I have no argument with those excellent goals, but they are not the core of our fulfillment or of God’s intentions for us.
Adventism instills fear and guilt into its members by suggesting that they cannot fully function or even please God without practicing good health habits. Good nutrition and adequate rest will certainly help our overall health, but those things do not affect our true identities or spiritual growth.
“This Glorious Temple” which Alves describes does not define our core identities. Our spiritual reality is left unaddressed.
“Lessons From an Ammonite”
Jim Gibson uses the extinct ammonite to describe “intelligent design” and to illustrate characteristics of the Creator. Ammonites, he says, appear to have been “victims of the global flood described in Genesis.” They belonged “to a group of mollusks that includes octopus, squid, nautilus, and others,” and they had complex shells that expanded as the animal grew. The animal could control its depth by pumping gas into the outgrown chambers of its shell.
Gibson states that the Creator “loves beauty” and that He made us to love it also. Finally, he concludes with these observations: “Ammonites teach us lessons of design and catastrophe that are relevant today. We live in a world that shows intelligent design in many features. Design in nature points us to a Creator, and the Bible reveals what that Creator is like. The Bible also helps us understand the evidence for catastrophe, God’s judgment in the past. It also points us to the future judgment, in which God’s people will be rescued and redeemed. The lessons of the ammonite stand as both a promise and a warning that God cares for His creation and will eventually intervene to restore it to its original purpose.”
Gibson’s observations are good. God is creative, and He does allow creatures to flourish without being permanent. He does judge His creation, and He has promised to recreate it one day.
Gibson’s last sentence, however, reveals a glimpse into another Adventist assumption. He said that God “will eventually intervene to restore [creation] to its original purpose.”
Scripture does not say that God will restore creation. Rather, it says He will make all things NEW (Rev. 21:5; 22–27). Peter tells us that the heavens and the earth will be destroyed by fire, that “the elements will melt with intense heat” and we look for “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Pet. 3:10–13).
Hebrews 12:26–27 also tells us: “And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised saying, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.’ This expression, ‘Yet once more,’ denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.”
Adventism does say God will destroy the earth with fire before the new heavens and new earth appear, but they do not acknowledge the complete “newness” which the Bible promises.
It might seem nit-picky to make an issue of Gibson’s statement that God will “restore” creation “to it’s original purpose”, but within Adventism, this idea reflects their materialistic, physical worldview. For example, behind Adventism’s emphasis of vegetarianism and veganism is the “Eden diet” idea. Eating the Eden diet, they say, will enhance our health and increase our mental acuity. Their goal is to do whatever they can do, prior to the resurrection, to go “back to Eden”.
When they talk about the new earth, they emphasize that God will restore us to His original intent, to the original state of Adam and Eve—just as Gibson suggested.
The Bible, however, describes a new creation that begins when we trust Jesus and are born again. Paul describes those who trust Jesus as new creations. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation” (Gal. 6:15).
Our born-again spirits, indwelt by the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, are new creations now. Believers are not just intellectually enlightened and redirected to a clean, edenic lifestyle. We are literally NEW CREATIONS. We are literally, not just figuratively, different from natural people who are still unbelieving in the domain of darkness (Col 1:13).
When God melts the elements with fervent heat and creates a new heaven and a new earth, it will be different from what we know. We don’t know exactly HOW it will be different, but it will be different. We know from Revelation 21:23–25 that the Holy City which comes down out of heaven will never have night. It will have “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.”
We cannot imagine or describe exactly HOW the new heavens and earth will look or function, but Scripture is clear that it will not be a return to Eden. It will be new and different—yet with connections to what we know. Our resurrection bodies are also examples of this new-but-connected-to-what-we-are reality.
In short, Gibson’s almost incidental phrase at the end of his article betrays a fundamental principle of Adventism: creation (including humanity) is physical. In Adventism, the essence even of heaven is physical, with Jesus ministering as a high priest in a physical tabernacle in heaven complete with the ark of the covenant, the mercy seat, and two compartments between which Jesus moved in 1844.
No, God will not restore us to Eden; rather, He is now making us new creations when we trust Him, bringing us to spiritual life. Finally, He will bring about physical resurrection and cosmic newness on that day when He makes all things new.
“Faith in Science that Makes Sense”
Belliny Phaeton tells of her faith shaking when she went to college and took sociology. She learned social theories such as relativism that were compatible with evolution, and she began to question whether there was absolute truth.
Eventually she realized that believing the theory of evolution required as much faith in an obscure origin as believing in God as Creator. She contemplated the fact that Jesus fulfilled more than 300 prophecies from the Old Testament, and she realized the probability of His being the realization of that many ancient prophecies was negligible. Consequently, she embraced “as testimony” that she will “ever bear for Him. I believe in science. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Bible.”
v ends with this: “Sadly illusions of happiness outside of God’s will and the church lure many youth into partying and dreaming of living the ‘good life’, such as that of celebrities attempting to drown out life’s pain; attempting to fill the empty space in their brains that comes from thinking of themselves as a meaningless accident. But it is never too late to learn better. And it certainly is never too early.”
I feel as if Belliny is familiar. I was an earnest Adventist concerned with knowing what was right. Even as an Adventist I was disturbed by arguments that caused me to doubt what I understood about God. As an Adventist I, too, would have said, “I believe in science; I believe in God; I believe in Jesus, and I believe in the Bible.”
My conception of who Jesus was and of how I was to understand the Bible would not have been what they are today, but I wanted to know what was right, and I did believe the Bible was true—if not inerrant.
Belliny’s last paragraph, nevertheless, reveals the Adventist belief that meaning and belief are functions of the brain. That “empty space in their brains” to which she refers is actually the hopelessness of being spiritually dead, bound in the natural state of the domain of darkness. “Learning better” is not the solution to that emptiness; hearing the gospel of the Lord Jesus and His shed blood, death, burial, and resurrection is actually the antidote to that emptiness.
Belliny’s desire that others “learn better” so they are not lured away from “the church” and “God’s will” is real, but she does not understand that such a goal cannot be reached by learning. It can only come from hearing the true gospel and believing.
Belliny’s earnest search for meaning and reality is real, but her article betrays that Adventism does not understand the gospel nor see it as the answer to their needs. Adventism sees its own worldview and subsequent doctrines as the “answer”, but those can never fill the empty heart nor provide the unshakeable faith that protects one from life’s doubts and distractions.
“God’s Sabbath Stamp”
The seventh-day Sabbath is the heart of Adventism’s dance with a literal creation week. Because it sees the seventh-day Sabbath as Ellen White taught it—the mark that one has the seal of God (or that is actually is the seal of God) and the necessary practice that sets apart those who will be saved when Jesus returns, Adventism has had to create increasingly complex arguments to protect it from the literal understanding of the New Testament.
Their go-to argument for Sabbath today is one which much of evangelicalism also uses: the creation model. Of course, Genesis contains no command for Adam and Eve to keep the Sabbath; God is the One who rested on the seventh day (which was unmarked by the boundary of an evening and a morning as the other days were).
By insisting that the Ten Commandments are for all people and referring to God resting on the seventh day after the six days of creation and sanctifying that seventh day, Adventism and other Christians as well have re-imaged the Sabbath and are promoting it as a spiritual discipline that can do everything from improving one’s relationship with Jesus to saving marriages.
In all of these refurbished arguments, the biblical foreshadowing of our rest in Christ as we enter the new covenant in Jesus’ blood is lost. Oh, people will say that the seventh-day Sabbath is the way we demonstrate that we are resting in Christ, but this reasoning is based on philosophy, not on Scripture. According to Hebrews 4:7–9, all who believe Jesus can enter His rest TODAY, and there they will find the Sabbath-like rest available for all who trust in Him. According to Colossians 2:16–17, the Sabbath is a shadow of the reality found in Christ. According to Hebrews 10:1, the entire law is a shadow of the reality of the good things to come in Jesus.
These things being said, Richard Davidson’s article takes a different angle. In fact, reading it is a bit like jumping into a discussion of numerology. He leads with the uses of “seven” in Psalm 92: seven uses of God’s covenant name YHWH (LORD), seven different “epithets for the wicked”, seven descriptions of the righteous, and so on. This Hebrew literary device has led to this psalm being called “a song for the Sabbath day”.
From the fascinating Hebrew literary devices in Psalm 92, Davidson continues his focus on what he calls the “Sabbath stamp” as it occurs in the Pentateuch and in the Sabbath Commandment in Exodus 20:8–11. In fact, he goes into some detail outlining the uses of “seven” and groupings of seven throughout the Torah’s “seven Sabbath commandments”.
Next Davidson moves to nature and seeks to make the case that in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, “seven-day (circaseptan) rhythms have been identified in many physiological functions of animals”, and he asks the question: “Does the scientific evidence in nature point toward Saturday, the week’s seventh day, as the day of rest?”
Davidson then refers to the 2011 “Pineal Project” that suggested rats have a seven-day cycle of melatonin production, with the highlight of the hormone’s calming occurring on Saturday. Part of the conclusion from this particular study, Davidson report, “repeatedly found that seven-day rhythms can be amplified and resynchronized by a single stimulus, i.e., in response to a one-time event.”
The researcher, Kenneth Greenaway, postulated that “God’s one-time stimulus of blessing and sanctifying the seventh day at Creation may have evoked a literal physiological, endocrinological, and immunological response in the pineal gland with increased melatonin output on that initial seventh day, something that may conceivably be amplified at each subsequent event day.”
In other words, this seven-day cycle of the pineal gland can be strengthened and “synchronized” by external stimuli. Suggesting that God set a Sabbath-response in motion by resting on the seventh day following creation is to completely misread Genesis and also to completely misread what the Bible says about the Sabbath in the new covenant. It is a theory designed to explain their pre-existing belief: that the literal hours of Sabbath are eternally holy.
Yet creation itself, according to Scripture, is not eternal. God created time. Hours and days cannot be intrinsically or eternally holy because only God is holy. Moreover, the new covenant explicitly explains that the seventh-day Sabbath has been fulfilled by and superseded in Christ for those ushered into the new covenant by the His blood.
Davidson concludes with some Adventist stories including a beaver colony which some Adventist observers reported never worked on Saturday, colonies of bees that worked six days a week but rested every Saturday, and a Sabbath-keeping ox who learned to do double-duty on Friday as his Adventist handler was promised he could have Sabbath off in a Communist labor camp if he could provide enough water for Saturday’s need by sundown on Friday. Davidson’s last story was about an incident occurring in 1939 in Angola when Adventist church members reported that manna fell for them during a drought. Interestingly, this story did not report that there was no manna on Saturday. It just said it nourished “the Adventists of that area until the next harvest.”
Davidson’s article has a certain sensational quality, but biblical numerology and anecdotes can never prove or disprove the sacredness of the seventh-day Sabbath. If the Sabbath is for Christians in the new covenant, the New Testament epistles must make that clear. If, however, the New Testament explains carefully that Jesus fulfilled the law and that none of the rituals and observances of the Law are binding on Christians, then Old Testament “sevens” and Adventist stories are no proof.
The new covenant is completely new and was inaugurated by Jesus’ shed blood and resurrection. Jesus kept the terms of the old covenant on our behalf. He was the perfect sacrifice and is the eternal high priest in the order of Melchizedek. He completed the atonement for human sin on the cross, and He destroyed the power of death by His resurrection.
The law, which was given to declare natural man condemned because of his inability to be righteous, was completed and fulfilled by the Lord Jesus. It is now obsolete (Hebrews 8), and it is not for Christians.
Creation did not establish the seventh day Sabbath as eternally sacred. In fact, Sabbath was not given to man in Genesis. Creation did not require observance of the seventh day. Rather, the seventh day which God declared sanctified was His completed work, unbounded by a beginning or ending marked by an evening and morning. God’s finished work was sanctified. His rest was HIS rest, and the Sabbath God gave Israel was to point back to God’s rest and His finished work and to point forward to His rest and finished work accomplished on the cross!
“Creation and Resurrection”
Clifford Goldstein writes the fifth article in this cluster and explains his understanding that a literal creation, as opposed to evolution, is necessary in order to have a future resurrection of the dead. He rightly argues that a literal, created Adam who sinned and introduced sin into the world is necessary in order to believe the biblical teaching that God judged Adam and his sin and that suffering and death had to ensue.
Goldstein says, “Adam brought death (“for in Adam all die”), but Christ will bring life (“in Christ all shall be made alive”), and this happens at the resurrection of the dead. However, once an Adam who caused death is rejected, the sequence falls apart even before it starts. In the standard evolutionary model no Adam brought death into existence. How could he, when it was death itself that brought Adam into existence instead? Thus evolution as the source of our origins destroys any hope of the resurrection, at least if Paul is to be taken seriously.”
Goldstein also points out that an instantaneous resurrection of the dead, which the Bible teaches, has no logical connection with an evolutionary beginning in which humans slowly came into being over eons of time. Rather, he argues, a future resurrection which occurs instantaneously fits the pattern established by God creating man and bringing him to life.
Goldstein’s arguments for resurrection depending upon a literal, personal creation are good. (One might even observe that Goldstein’s Jewish roots may be showing in this argument.)
I would even add to the argument the idea that without a literal, personal creation, the entire biblical story of redemption falls apart. Unless we are God’s personal creations, the singularity of God the Son becoming man, taking our imputed sin, dying our death, and breaking the curse of sin into which we are born since Adam, would be nonsense. If we are only evolved life forms, there is no connection between us and a sovereign, personal God who loves us and who sacrificed Himself for us.
Intermediate state?
My main concern with Goldstein’s article is his dealing with what happens to people when they die. In the section entitled “The Dead at Death”, Goldstein mentioned evangelist Billy Graham’s death early in 2018 and says,
When Billy Graham died in early 2018, in pulpits worldwide preachers proclaimed that he had “received his final reward,” or that he had “gone to his glory.” Billy Graham and any Christian who dies, it is believed, ascends straightway to eternal heavenly bliss.
Many Christian scholars of varied theological persuasions, however, understand things differently. Talking about the end-time resurrection of the dead as the great Christian hope, N. T. Wright wrote: “This is actually the official view of all mainstream orthodox theologians, Catholic and Protestant, except for those who think that after death we pass at once into an eternity . . . a quite popular view but one which contains many serious difficulties.”
Meanwhile, theologians expound numerous postulations regarding the states of the dead before the resurrection. Some believe that the saints are in heaven, at least temporarily; others that they’re in a shadowy existence somewhere; some believe that the dead sleep unconscious until the resurrection; others grant that they don’t know what happens immediately after death.
Whatever the diversity of thought, the idea of a disembodied soul ascending into heaven at death as their final reward is closer to ancient Greek philosophy than to sound Christian theology.
Goldstein quoted N. T. Wright from an online article here. He carefully edited his quote from Wright, however, so as to fit the Adventist view that the spirits of the dead do not go to the Lord upon death. (Adventist belief is that the “spirit” that goes to the Lord is a person’s “breath”.) Goldstein uses this quote to endorse the idea that a person’s hope is not “going to heaven when we die” but rather being resurrected to eternal life.
In context, however, N. T. Wright endorses an intermediate state in the article Goldstein references. In the same article, Wright says, “Nor does Paul imply that this ‘departing and being with Christ’ is the same thing as the eventual resurrection of the body, which he describes vividly later in the same letter (3.20-21). No: all the Christian dead have ‘departed’ and are ‘with Christ’…Had the post-mortem state been unconscious, would Paul have thought of it as ‘far better’ than what he had in the present?”
To be fair, Goldstein never overtly denies that the spirits or souls of the dead go to the Lord at death, but he reinforces this Adventist idea by the way he discusses the subject.
While he quotes N. T. Wright for support in proclaiming an eventual resurrection which is the Christian’s hope, he fails to use Wright’s complete argument. In his article, Wright argues that the intermediate state—the human soul or spirit going to be with the Lord—is not our final “destination”. Wright explains that our bodily resurrection is what the Bible promises after believers’ departed spirits are “with Christ”—a condition Paul describes as “far better” than remaining alive on earth—until the day of the resurrection when Jesus puts our bodies and spirits back together.
Goldstein, however, reminds his readers who have been taught that their “soul sleep” is the antidote to the dangers of “Greek dualism”, that the idea of a soul ascending into heaven at death as a final reward is a pagan idea, and Christians have always known this fact.
Of course! Christians have never taught that their “final reward” is an eternity as a disembodied spirit! They have always believed in a bodily resurrection. Yet Adventists have allowed their members to believe that most Christians think of a disembodied soul going to heaven as being a person’s final reward.
Goldstein thus uses a well-known Christian to bolster his Adventist argument that we are not looking for a conscious experience with Christ after death but are looking instead for a bodily resurrection. In fact, Goldstein misuses N. T. Wright. Although Wright’s article is meant to teach that a bodily resurrection is a Christian’s hope, Goldstein uses some phrases and ideas from Wright taken out of context. Goldstein then reinforces to his readers that believing one’s spirit goes to God upon death is a pagan idea, and he stresses that the thing they can anticipate is a new body.
Goldstein never speaks about how a person can know he’ll be with the Lord. He doesn’t speak about assurance or promote an intermediate state. Instead he speaks clearly of resurrection, but he doesn’t speak about what the resurrection is (the person’s spirit being united with a new body), and he speaks unclearly about what happens when a person dies.
Goldstein has written an erudite piece making some good arguments supporting the connection between God’s personal creation and our eventual resurrections, but he has reinforced the materialistic Adventist worldview in the process.
Summary
This seventh core belief, Creation, is the foundation of our existence and life. It reveals our true identity and our relationship to the eternal, sovereign, triune God!
These five articles, however, have reinforced to their Adventist readers their own materialistic worldview. First, they have been reminded that their bodies are “temples”, but temples to what? They have been assured that their lifestyles will improve their health and make their brains clearer, but the spiritual implications of this physical viewpoint are hidden. In fact, the health of the body is separate from the life or death of our immaterial spirits.
Next, the readers were reminded that God is creative, and creation is full of irreducible complexity which confirms that intelligence had to be behind the design of creatures. These complex creatures, however, exist and often become extinct—a phenomenon which ultimately will resolve when, as Jim Gibson suggested, God restores creation to its ultimate purpose. The Adventist belief in being one day restored to the lost Edenic state is embedded in the physical worldview of Adventism. Yet Scripture tells us that we will not be returning to Eden; rather, God will destroy the heavens and the earth with fire and fervent heat, and He will make all things new. Yes, the new heavens and the new earth will be physical, and our new bodies will be physical, but they will be different from what we know even though they will be related (see 1 Corinthians 15).
Adventists were also reminded that science and faith go together. Evolution requires as much faith to believe as does creation, but creation points to an intelligent God who planned His handiwork.
Interestingly, the Sabbath was not the primary focus of these five articles but was embedded among them. Also significantly, the numerology and the Hebre figures of speech that emphasize “seven” in the Old Testament are not arguments that cement the sacredness of the seventh day. God’s word explains the Sabbath, and the New Testament tells us how the Sabbath fades away in the reality of Jesus’ fulfillment of the law.
Creation is not the bottom-line argument for promoting a seventh-day Sabbath. Creation actually reveals the Creator who has authority over created days as well as over us. Creation does not endorse Sabbath. Rather, Sabbath provided Israel with a physical reminder that God finished His work and placed His perfect humans in His completed work. At the same time, Sabbath reminded Israel that God rescued them from otherwise inescapable slavery.
Furthermore, we learn in Colossians 2, Hebrews 3, 4, and 10, and Galatians, that the Sabbath foreshadowed the rest found in believing in the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
The Sabbath was a powerful sign and shadow for Israel, reminding them what God had done and what He promised to do. Now, however, we have Jesus Himself revealed to us, and we have peace with God through Jesus’ blood. Sabbath rest is our when we hear His voice and believe. Today.
Finally, Adventist readers saw that the intentionality of creation is the necessary foundation for a belief in bodily resurrection.
What is missing?
In some ways this seventh core belief, Creation, is the most varied in the way it was treated and developed. The other six beliefs were more directly tied to distinctive Adventist doctrines. Creation, however, is one thing about which Adventists can “agree” with some Christians.
What Christians do not understand, however, is the materialistic worldview that underlies Adventists’ creation talk. Christians do not understand that the Adventist idea of a literal six-day creation is, for them, the bedrock of their seventh-day Sabbath arguments. Adventists do not see the Sabbath as symbolic but as literal holy time. While some Christians argue for a “Christian Sabbath” using the creation pattern followed by God’s resting on the seventh day, Adventists see God literally making a weekly twenty-four hour period holy. They see that created period of time as holy time, not as merely a spiritual symbol for holy pursuits.
Moreover, Adventists see God creating man and woman as physical, not literally spiritual beings. In these articles, perhaps surprisingly, none dealt with God’s creation of men and women in His image. They dealt with human bodies bodies being glorious temples, but they did not explain what that actually meant. Are they objects where worship occurs? Where a “god” lives? Where the Holy Spirit dwells? In these articles, these details were not explained.
Adventists say that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but the Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit indwelling and eternally sealing those who have been born again when they believe in the gospel of their salvation (Eph. 1:13–14) is not an Adventist understanding.
Instead, Adventists believe the Holy Spirit informs sincere “believers” (those who believe the Adventist doctrines) by influencing the neurons of their frontal lobes. Adventism simply does not teach that being created in God’s image includes being made a spirit being, having an immaterial spirit that can know and worship God (Jn. 4:24). Instead, they believe humans are only physical, material bodies.
Their emphasis on an eventual resurrection, therefore, is actually a belief in a “re-creation”. They do not believe the essence of a person is his immaterial spirit nor that it goes to God upon the death of the body. They believe that the spirit, or breath, of a person is what enlivens the body. When the breath ceases, therefore, the person ceases to exist, and the body goes into the ground.
The resurrection, then, is a new body with data of the person’s memories and identities put back into that body from the memory of God. It is not actually the essence of a person being given a new body.
Adventism’s belief in the completely physical nature of creation underlies every single doctrine, including salvation. Thus, salvation ultimately depends upon humans finding some way to please God, even if that “way” is believing that a good God would never kill His Son or deal out wrath upon sinners. They have developed a human Jesus who, in spite of being “fully God”, could have sinned and failed in His mission. His death on the cross was not propitiation but an example of the lengths to which He would go to show us He loved us. His suffering and death were examples of not reviling His persecutors but of suffering in silence, even unto death. His Sacrifice may have been complete, but the atonement accomplished by His blood is still incomplete, as He “applies His blood” in the literal, physical temple in Heaven right now during the “pre-advent judgment”.
Thus, physical Adventists must observe a holy physical 24-hour day every literal week. They must practice a healthful lifestyle and avoid unclean meats—and preferably all animal products—in order to strengthen and prolong the life of their physical temples and enhance the acuity of their physical brains.
They aspire to honor the literal written Ten Commandments as a sign that they are loyal to their physical Jesus, and they look forward to being instated in a remade Eden one day in the future.
The Gospel of God is glaringly missing from this cluster of articles as it was also in all preceding six core belief discussions. Adventists have succeeded in developing scholarly-sounding arguments for their doctrines that sound erudite and convincing, and they deceive even many Christians who do not know the underlying Adventist assumptions.
What Adventists need, however, is to know that when Jesus came to earth, He was the eternal, almighty God the Son incarnate in human flesh. He was spiritually alive from the moment of conception. He was never dead in sin as the rest of us all are (Eph. 2:1–3). He was never disconnected from God.
He lived a perfect life and perfectly fulfilled all the terms of the old covenant, from minute obedience to becoming the sin offering demanded for human sin. He died and was buried according to Scripture, and on the third day He rose to life according to Scripture after which He was seen by over 500 eyewitnesses (1 Cor. 15:3–9).
He ascended to heaven where He sat down at the Father’s right hand, His work finished, and the atonement of His shed blood completed. Because He fulfilled every term of the old covenant with His Father, the old covenant is now obsolete (Heb. 8). Now, when we trust Jesus and His finished work, we are cleansed by His blood, born again of the Holy Spirit, and sealed eternally by Him. We pass at that moment from death to life (Jn. 5:24).
When we are alive in Christ, we enter the new covenant in His blood on the basis of His personal obedience, death, resurrection, and fulfillment of all of God’s righteous requirements. In the new covenant, we do not have to fulfill any terms or perform any works. We simply believe in the Lord Jesus and trust His shed blood as payment for our sin.
The new covenant is a Spirit-covenant, as 2 Corinthians explains. Instead of being under the law, we are under the tutelage of the indwelling Holy Spirit who changes us, teaches us, comforts us, and sanctifies us.
This gospel, this truth about Jesus’ finished work and the sufficiency of His shed blood for all human sin, is what these articles in the Adventist Review do not have.
Creation, certainly, is of foundational importance, revealing the basis for all of our existence and reality. It is not, however, a merely physical phenomenon. God made us spiritually in His image, and our future will include our redeemed spirits receiving glorified bodies if we have believed in Jesus.
The Adventist core beliefs are not what they sound like to Christians. They are actually false doctrines built on a false worldview that denies the spiritual reality of us, of our Lord Jesus, of sin, and of salvation.
Only in Jesus and in the blood of His eternal covenant (Heb. 13:20) can we find eternal life and true Sabbath rest. †
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Great article, Thank you Colleen!
I would like to share a few thoughts regarding Adventist interpretive assumptions (still held by a large number of formers) of a couple of NT passages that you quote, Colleen.
The first one is regarding those “elements” that “will be destroyed by fire”, when the “heavens will disappear with a roar” and “the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” or “burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10). This is usually interpreted as alluding to the “end of the world” in a permanently future, yet consistently imminent, “second coming”. In such a view, the “elements”, naturally, would refer to molecules and atoms. I see no scriptural basis for such an opinion. In Isaiah 51:16 God is described as He who “set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth” in connection with the establishment of Israelites as God’s people. This, along with other passages of Scripture (for instance, “I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass”, Lev. 26:19), indicates that the “heavens” and the “earth” need not be interpreted as the physical soil we tread upon or as the air we breathe and birds fly in or as the abode of heavenly beings, but rather as an entirely human construct related to rule and authority. After all, didn’t the patriarch Joseph dream of himself as the sun and his brothers as minor stars? On the other hand, the word translated as “elements” is στοιχεῖα, the very same word used in Galatians 4:3 to speak of the “basic principles of the world” (στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου). Quite certainly, the apostle didn’t mean that he and his contemporaries were under the influence of atoms and molecules! Verse 9 says that the Galatians had turned back “to those weak and miserable principles [στοιχεῖα]”. The Colossians were to see to it “that no-one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles [στοιχεῖα] of this world rather than on Christ” (2:8). And the apostle asks: “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world [ἀπὸ τῶν στοιχείων τοῦ κόσμου], why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules[?]”.
Likewise, the author of Hebrews (probably not Paul) likened those στοιχεῖα with milk, not solid food: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths [στοιχεῖα] of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!” (5:12). So, when the apostle Peter writes to his contemporaries (not primarily 21st century Americans or Europeans) that were looking forward to “the day of God and speed its coming”, which would “bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements [στοιχεῖα] will melt in the heat” (2 Pet. 3:12), it is extremely doubtful that he meant the matter of the universe. The στοιχεῖα are clearly related to the Old Testament fundamentals, and the heavens and the earth are the heavens and the earth set or laid along with those fundamentals. The book of Hebrews is presented as being written not long before the final collapse of the Old Testament cultus, and that is precisely what was literally burned up.
Which takes us to the second passage I wanted to comment on, Colleen. Quoting Haggai, the author of Hebrews wrote: “At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken– that is, created things– so that what cannot be shaken may remain” (12:26-27). Again, this has been usually interpreted as announcing the shaking of the universe (or, at least, of our planet) sometime in the 19th, 20th or 21st centuries on the occasion of a perpetually imminent “second coming”. However, the passage is not amenable to such an interpretation. In verse 28 the author seems to imply that he, along with his first readers, would receive (with no indication that this would be after death or in some extra-terrestrial setting) “a kingdom that cannot be shaken”. The imminence of the conflagration then announced had been emphasized in verses 22-25: “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?”
Obviously, the inspired writer is not primarily addressing 21st century New Yorkers, Londoners or Christians living in Madrid. He was probably addressing Roman Christians of Jewish ancestry so that they wouldn’t turn back to their Jewish traditions not many months before the conflagration in Judea.
This obvious interpretation clearly indicates that the “once more” shaking announced by the inspired author was still in his future, but has been in our past for hundreds of years. Will there be another “once more” when no inspired writer ever announced “twice more”?
One of the most important things we formers must learn is a correct hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture. Unless we read the Bible as we would read an ordinary book observing the rules of grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and literary devices, we will become our own “last word” and authority. The Bible is a book, and the normal rules of grammar and interpretation that we would use in a literature class or even a history or science class must apply.
In other words, the words mean what the words say, and context is everything. If we pick and choose what we see as “literal” and what we mean as “symbolic”, we are redefining the vocabulary and the intent of the writers. We have be consistent throughout the book including all its authors.
Literary devices are part of normal writing: metaphors, similes, allegories—but these devices are easy to see. We have to understand them as enhancing our understanding of meanings. For example, the Song of Solomon is filled with similes and metaphors, and no one I know has any trouble recognizing that the description of the beloved’s neck being the tower of Lebanon is a metaphor helping us understand the writer’s perception of his beloved’s beauty, including her long neck.
We can’t, however, make everything we don’t understand and “allegory”. When God declares what He will do, for example, we can’t decide it’s just symbolic or an allegory.
The passage in Hebrews 12:25–29 does quote Haggai: “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” When Haggai wrote that prophecy (Hag. 2:6), he was speaking God’s words to Israel as they returned to the land of Israel after their Babylonian captivity, and He encouraged Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, who happened to be of the tribe of Judah. By the time Israel came out of Babylon back to the land, there was no more king of Israel. Yet God was affirming His promises to David that a king from his own line would be an eternal king. Zerubbabel was of the line of Judah. He was not a king, but he was the governor of the newly resettled Judah.
Through Haggai, God asked who among the Israelites remembered the “former glory” of the temple. Then He said, “‘Take courage, Zerrubbabel,’ declares the Lord, “take courage also, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the hight priest, and all the people of the land take courage,” declares the Lord, “and work; for I am with you,’ declares the Lord of hosts.”
God reminded Zerubbabel and the Israelites about His promise which He made when they came out of Egypt, that His Spirit was abiding in their midst. They were not to fear. Then he says the words the author of Hebrews quotes: “‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord of Hosts.”
He goes on to say in Hag. 2:9 that “the latter glory of this house will be greater than the former,” and “in this place I will give peace.”
If we are going to ask how the first readers understood that prophecy, who would those readers have been? It was post-exilic Israel and the descendant of the royal tribe of Judah, Zerubbabel—a descendant of David who did not have a throne.
There were no kings over Israel ever again after the exile. Yet God promised those people that one day He would not just restore their glory but make it greater than it had ever been, and God delivered this prophecy to encourage the rightful heir of the non-existent throne.
Did those first readers experience the fulfillment of this prophecy? The answer is they did not. Did they experience God restoring them in the land and reestablishing the temple worship of the Lord God? Yes, they did. They were restored as a nation, but a nation without the promised king—and that restoration came with the promise of God that He would one day keep every promise He had made to them. He even reminded them of His faithful leading of them out of Egypt to confirm that He does the impossible and keeps His word.
Fast forward to Hebrews 12. If we are going to ask how the “first readers” understood the prophecy in verses 25–29, we cannot do that without first asking how the first readers of the original words of Haggai understood the prophecy. Clearly the very first readers did not see the complete fulfillment of those words, because the writer of Hebrews is quoting them again to this generation of Hebrews who had become Christians, and he is telling them that Haggai’s prophecy was still going to come true.
In the context of Hebrews, the point the author is making is that the physical system of worship involving the temple was done, and it was about to disappear completely (see Heb. 8:13). He Is reminding them that their worship is invisible now, not on earth but in Heaven where Jesus our eternal High Priest is interceding at the right hand of the Father. In Hebrews 12 he even reminds them that the promise of a kingdom still stands—a kingdom of uncreated things. The kingdom they can look forward to is not physical and earthly but made by God for eternity. They are not to think of it in terms of the wilderness tabernacle or of the temple in Jerusalem.
By the time Hebrews was written, God HAD filled His temple with glory: Jesus Himself had come into the temple. He has fulfilled every one of its symbols. He had established His church following His death, burial, and resurrection. The whole earth is now filled with His glory as believers carry His Spirit into the world. This is the “already here” kingdom, but it is not yet a kingdom where the nations acknowledge the King of Kings who dwells on earth and to whom they bring homage.
The fact that the author actually quotes Haggai, reminding them that God will one day destroy the created things that can be shaken, means that God actually will do just that one day.
Now, in AD 70, many of those recipients of the letter to the Hebrews experienced the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Every stone was broken down. Yet that destruction did not include the shaking of the whole earth or of heaven. It was localized, and that destruction utterly destroyed all vestiges of temple worship and the old covenant system of worship. It was a HUGE paradigm shift, but it was not the destruction of heaven and earth.
The argument that the “elemental principles” to which Peter refers is only referring to the old covenant principles is not the plain meaning of the text. That idea has to be imposed on the text. Peter, like Haggai, like the author of Hebrews, like John the Revelator, overtly states that heaven and earth will be destroyed and something new will be made. And of course this statement could mean the actual atoms and elements of creation! We already know that the elements of creation can be destroyed and altered by atomic forces. The Creator of heaven and earth certainly known how to deal with the basic building blocks of matter as He destroys what He had bound to decay (Rom. 8) and remakes heaven and earth.
It’s important, though, to realize that the remade heaven and earth are not unrelated to what we have now. In fact, Jesus’ resurrection is our “guide” to this fact. He was raised from death with a glorified, eternal body that was not unlike his mortal body. In fact, He bore the scars from His crucifixion on that glorified body. Yet it did not behave with the same physical limitations as a mortal body does. While He ate broiled fish and walked and talked with His disciples, He could also appear without having to use the door!
We don’t know exactly what the remade physical universe will look like, but God has said it will happen, and it will, because God always keeps His promises. The fact that the author of Hebrews repeated Haggai’s prophecy approximately six centuries later tells us that God’s promises do not always fully come true at the time they are first made. Oh, they may be partially fulfilled, as Haggai’s words were partially fulfilled for the Israelites of his day. But the prophecies and promises of God will happen, and if we haven’t see those things occur as He said, that doesn’t mean they won’t. What He says He will do.
God’s word is eternal and living. It is for all of us, not just for those to whom it was written at the first reading. Hebrew 4:12–13 say that God’s word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword” and “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Hi with whom we have to do.” Hebrews 1:1–3 says that God revealed His word through prophets in times past, but “in these last days He has spoken to us through His Son.”
The Bible is not just a record showing how to interpret history; it is a revelation of God’s will and purposes for humanity, and it is eternal. When the NT writers say that God will destroy heaven and earth and make new ones, those words mean what they say. Those are not metaphors; they are not figures of speech. There are obviously partial fulfillments of God’s prophecies as time passes, just as Haggai’s words were partially fulfilled in the time post-exilic Israel, and they were partially fulfilled after Hebrews was written and God established His church apart from the physical worship of old covenant Israel.
We, the church, live in an “already-but-not-yet” kingdom. God’s kingdom with Christ as our King of Kings already exists in the new births of His people, but the future fulfillment of His kingdom promises remains to occur later.
The writer of Hebrews was addressing the believing Jews of his day, but his words stand as God’s own words to us today, whatever century we may inhabit. We can both look back to see fulfilled prophecy, and we look forward to see that just as God’s word has been fulfilled absolutely in the past, so it will also come to complete fruition in the future.
Metaphors and similes are figures of speech, but prophecies of God’s acts are not allegorical symbolism. God’s prophecies may be partially unrevealed, like a mystery that has not yet been explained, but they are not metaphors. Metaphors describe reality; but God’s promises and prophecies ARE reality. We cannot dismiss their plain meanings by saying they are merely symbolic or allegorical.
I know, EMR, that we have communicated before. I truly have no desire to argue with you or to debate these issues. Because you have stated your opinion on a public forum, I have answered you here. I do not wish to argue; I only know that I must clearly state that I stand by a normal reading of Scripture. It’s meanings are not up to me nor dependent upon my interpretation. I have to submit myself to God’s word and stand UNDER it, not over it. I have to act on the knowledge that God breathed out His own word to the authors over a span of 1400 years, and He has been in charge both of the words and of their preservation. I cannot dismiss them by calling them allegories if the structure of the sentences does not support that interpretation.
Words matter, and context is everything.
Thank you, Colleen, for taking the time to respond. Even though you state that you “have no desire to argue with” me “or to debate these issues”, I feel compelled to address, at least cursorily, some of your arguments. I won’t be addressing any of the less weighty matter.
First of all, I’ve noticed that you have provided no biblical passage to support the notion that στοιχεῖα might mean “atoms” or “molecules”. Obviously, no such passage exists. I explicitly quoted all the relevant NT verses on the issue, and it overwhelmingly clear that the word specifically refers to the OT rudiments that Galatians had given credence to, as opposed to the substance of the gospel.
Secondly, your observation that the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 was “localized” is very surprising. Wasn’t the exodus equally localized? Weren’t the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of Israel and Judea also localized? Wasn’t Zerubbabel ’s return entirely localized? Wasn’t Nehemiah’s wall absolutely localized in Jerusalem? Wasn’t Jesus Christ born in the local town of Bethlehem? Wasn’t the crucifixion a localized event? Wasn’t the downpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost absolutely localized? These biblical episodes manifestly show that localized events can acquire universal dimensions. Why, exactly, shouldn’t the parousia be just as localized as the crucifixion?
Before saying that certain biblical expressions might be interpreted as implying a “universal” parousia, think twice. Adventists and all futurists say that the parousia hasn’t occurred yet because, when it happens, “every eye will see him” (Rev. 1:7; they are less prone to quote the following words, “even those who pierced him”). But that DOESN’T mean a simultaneous universal viewing of the parousia event around the globe. John of Patmos may have been alluding to a passage of Ezekiel that specifically refers to events that occurred in the 6th century BC: “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Son of man, set your face toward Teman, and speak out against the south, and prophesy against the forest land of the Negev, and say to the forest of the Negev, ‘Hear the word of the LORD: thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am about to kindle a fire in you, and it shall consume every green tree in you, as well as every dry tree; the blazing flame will not be quenched, and the whole surface from south to north will be burned by it. And ALL FLESH WILL SEE that I, the LORD, have kindled it; it shall not be quenched.”‘”” (20:45-48). Obviously, to say that “all flesh will see” something is exactly the same as saying that “every eye will see” something. Was the prophesied fire of the forest of the Negev visible from around the planet? No. Was it actually visible from the entire land of Israel? No. What does “all flesh will see” mean? Simply this: that whoever at the time saw or later heard about the conflagration would perceive that the hand of God had been involved in the event.
The Bible has a lot of seemingly “universal” passages that were absolutely local. One of the most spectacular can be found in the first four verses of Micah: “The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah– the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. Hear, O peoples, all of you, listen, O earth and all who are in it, that the Sovereign LORD may witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. Look! The LORD is coming from his dwelling-place; he comes down and treads the high places of the earth. The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope”. The message was addressed to all peoples, but something tells me the Chinese didn’t receive it, at least at that time. The Lord is said to tread “the high places of the earth”, but something tells me that didn’t include the Aconcagua or the Everest. The announcement is made that the mountains would melt and the valleys would split apart, but the prophecy doesn’t actually portray orogenesis. How do I know this? Precisely because the context prohibits it. The very first verse circumscribes the prophet’s message to Samaria and Jerusalem, and the verses after 4 present the actual meaning of Yahweh’s treading upon the mountains of the earth. It was the feet of Assyrian and Babylonian soldiers that were to bring devastation to Samaria and Jerusalem, Israel and Judea. That’s exactly what the passage means. This was no “partial” fulfilment. It was the entire fulfilment. It happened exactly as the prophet announced, but Yahweh’s treading of the earth was not literal, and it was entirely localized.
Much more could be said, but the above suffices. Many proponents of false religions, such as SDAism, quote the Bible out of context and uphold certain preconceived faulty interpretations as if they were God’s intent, when it is obvious that was never the case.