Ever since I can remember I had a picture of Jesus in my mind. Like most of my Adventist friends, I learned Bible stories and knew the heroes of faith from a young age, and I am thankful for that.
As I learned those stories, I developed a concept of Jesus and my relationship to Him. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my internal picture of Jesus was uniquely Adventist. From hours of poring over Uncle Arthur’s volumes of The Bible Story, from sitting in Sabbath School and Adventist elementary school and academy, from my Sabbath School lesson papers and the books my parents bought me at the yearly sale on the last night of campmeeting, and from growing up in an Adventist home with two parents who worked at an Adventist hospital, I absorbed a certain understanding of Jesus.
I knew that my Adventist classmates and the Adventist adults I knew shared a similar concept. He was “100% God and 100% man”. He was the “second person of the Godhead”.
He was the “Friend of children”. In fact, as I moved toward my teens, it became more comfortable simply to say “God” when I referred to Him; “Jesus” really was for kids.
Jesus was loving and meek. He never treated anyone disrespectfully or uttered a complaint. He was forgiving and gentle. He came to “show us the Father”. He understood me because He was human. He could plead my case before God the Father because He experienced all the temptations I experienced. He died for me, and it made Him very sad when I was disobedient or disrespectful, or when I didn’t help my mother when she was tired or didn’t act lovingly to my classmates. In fact, if I was naughty, He would turn His head away from me, shutting me out, and I would grovel in guilt and beg Him to forgive me.
While He died for my past sins, He also died to uphold the law, allowing His crucifixion to demonstrate the depths of sin to which people would plunge if they ignored God’s commands.
Most of all, He was my Example. He showed me how to defeat Satan by using the Bible to answer the devil’s temptations. He showed me how to pray without ceasing so I would have the strength to resist sin as He did. He demonstrated the perfect obedience to God’s law that came from relying on the Holy Spirit’s power that God gave Him at His baptism.
In fact, Jesus had no advantage that I didn’t have as a human because He set aside His “God-power” and took my sinful nature so He could be just like me. Referring to Jesus, Mrs. White states, “…He took upon Him our sinful nature” (Review and Herald, Dec. 15, 1896). She further says, “He took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature…” (Medical Ministry, p 181). His life proved to me that I, too, could rely on power God would give me to resist temptation and honor God by perfect obedience and by living a life of perfect love just as He did. In fact, His perfect life and perfect sacrifice made it possible for His perfect character to be reproduced in me if I was willing to deny myself and overcome sin by embracing His eternal, holy Law—the transcript of God’s own character.
Jesus’ death made it possible for me to be saved, but unless God could see I was committed to His law and was showing an increasing trend in my life toward love and obedience, He would not make up the difference between my imperfection and His holy standard when He came to my name in the judgment.
These were the things I knew about Jesus as an Adventist child.
Why am I writing this?
One of the most frequent responses I hear to the articles in Proclamation! goes something like this: “Why do you always criticize? We all love Jesus and believe in Him. Why don’t you just focus on the gospel and stop attacking Adventism?”
Here’s my answer: Who we believe Jesus to be shapes everything else. If we understand Jesus to be different from the way He has revealed Himself in Scripture, we have a faulty foundation. If our foundation is faulty, we’re not building on the Rock but on sand (Matt. 7:26, 27). We are placing our faith in a false, distorted gospel (Gal. 1:6-7). As Paul Carden of The Centers for Apologetics Research said at the February, 2010, Former Adventist Fellowship conference in one of his answers on the question and answer panel: “If you are believing in the wrong Jesus… you’re not believing unto salvation,” even if you sincerely think you do!
I know that in spite of the words I used as an Adventist, I did not believe in the Jesus revealed in the Bible. I believed, rather, in a Jesus shaped and interpreted by Ellen White—and I didn’t even know it.
Because I know how I and dozens of other former Adventists to whom I have talked used to understand Jesus, I know I must share Jesus as I now know Him to be from Scripture.
In order to understand how we acquired this “distorted Jesus”—and to demonstrate that these notions are not anecdotal but are intentionally instilled from earliest childhood in the most disarming ways, I have examined a variety of Adventist children’s books, both current and classic.
Who do Adventists say He is?
In order to see how the words taught to children relate to the organization’s beliefs as a whole, we’ll first examine two of Adventism’s fundamental beliefs. The second Fundamental Belief of the Seventh-day Adventist organization is entitled “The Godhead”, and it says, “There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons. God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever present. He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through His self-revelation. He is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation.” 1
Moreover, the fourth Fundamental Belief, entitled “God the Son”, sounds at least equally orthodox: “God the eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Through Him all things were created, the character of God is revealed, the salvation of humanity is accomplished, and the world is judged. Forever truly God, He became also truly man, Jesus the Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived and experienced temptation as a human being, but perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God. By His miracles He manifested God’s power and was attested as God’s promised Messiah. He suffered and died voluntarily on the cross for our sins and in our place, was raised from the dead, and ascended to minister in the heavenly sanctuary in our behalf. He will come again in glory for the final deliverance of His people and the restoration of all things.” 2
The second fundamental belief as quoted above states the “Godhead” is “a unity of three co-eternal Persons,” but it does not state those Persons are one Being or one in substance (as do historic and universal Christian affirmations of faith). Further, Jesus did not merely exemplify righteousness as stated in the fourth Fundamental Belief quoted above. He was righteous and holy, and He was God. He did not merely do miracles by the Father’s power; He had the power to do those miracles in Himself. He did them, however, in submission to His Father.
Before dismissing those details as “nit-picking”, it is important to understand that the Adventist church was founded by followers of the ancient heresy called “Arianism”—the belief that Jesus is not eternal, almighty God but was created or otherwise “begotten” by the Father at some time in pre-history. James White and Joseph Bates, co-founders of the Seventh-day Adventist movement (along with James’s wife Ellen Gould White), were both non-Trinitarians, reflecting their earlier affiliation with the non-trinitarian Christian Connexion. Later, Ellen White herself abandoned her early Methodist understanding and adopted language such as the “three Worthies of heaven” and the “Heavenly Trio” to connote the three persons of the Trinity. 3
The founding non-trinitarianism and the corresponding belief that Jesus is not eternally one with the Father continues to color the way Adventists perceive Jesus. In talking with dozens of people with Adventist backgrounds over the past ten years, I have discovered that most of them shared my earliest understanding that Jesus is the meek, mild, gentle, less fearsome representative of the Godhead. We shared the early belief that Jesus is “all God”, but we didn’t understand Him to possess exactly the same essential attributes the Father has. Moreover, we perceived the Father to have a body just as Jesus did, and we understood that God exalted Jesus in past ages,—before He ever came to earth—thus triggering Satan’s jealousy and rebellion in heaven. 4
Altered Stories for children
I began with a five-book set of Bible stories written by Carolyn Byers entitled Forever Stories. Currently for sale in Adventist Book Centers, this set was copyrighted in 1989 and 1990 by the Review and Herald Publishing Association and state they are written at a pre-school listening level and an early elementary reading level. This series opens with “pre-creation” stories and ends with the new earth, and they are modeled after Ellen White’s “great controversy” worldview.
The Bible does not tell us stories of “pre-creation”. Rather, it opens with the simple words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The worldview that shapes Adventism’s understanding of Satan’s importance, Jesus’ incomplete atonement, and the eternal significance of the Sabbath, is explained in the fanciful accounts of Adventist children’s books, and these books reflect the teachings of Ellen White.
The first chapter of Byers’ first book tells the Ellen White-shaped story of creation. Throughout the story she refers to “God and His Son”:
God and His Son loved Their happy home with the angels. But Their love was so big that They wanted somebody new to love. They talked together and decided to make a brand-new world.…
It made God and His Son smile to think about people. The people would laugh and sing and play. They would think up new ideas. God would enjoy talking to them. God’s new people would be kind and loving to each other and to the animals. Then joy would ripple from their world to other worlds.
God and His Son could hardly wait to tell the angel about Their plans. At the next meeting, God told them “My Son and I are planning a special surprise. I need you to help Me by doing just what My Son says.” 5
Then Byers says Lucifer became jealous of God the Son and met with the angels to say,
“With God’s Son in charge, our freedom is gone. He will tell us what to do. We are angels. We don’t need that Son to boss us around.” 6
Byers continues by explaining that God and His Son discussed the Lucifer problem and decided that he would have to be banished from heaven. They also discussed “happiness”:
What would bring everyone everywhere happiness for all time? They decided that people should be able to choose whom they wanted to obey. To help them choose, people would be told about Lucifer… “We must let Lucifer talk to them,” God said. “That is fair. But We will not let him follow them around. Lucifer can talk to them only when they go near one spot, the forbidden tree.” 7
Toward the end of the first book, after Adam and Eve had eaten from the forbidden tree, Satan is described as laughing and laughing, claiming that the people God made, their “pretty world,” and the animals were all his. Again Byers refers to “God and His Son”; they “knew what was happening…it made them weep. God quickly sent angels to guard the tree of life.” 8
As Byers describes God’s meeting with Adam and Eve after their sin, she describes Adam and Eve as being “so afraid they did not even want to talk to God, their best friend.” 9
The first book ends with the expulsion from the garden.
What’s wrong here?
There are many problematic descriptions in this book, but the foundational misrepresentation is the use of the oft-repeated “God and His Son” in the setting of Genesis. In Genesis 1 through 3, God is never described as a separate individual from His Son. Rather, the biblical account over and over repeats, “Then God said…” before each day of creation recorded in Genesis 1. In verse 26 the plural form of the generic term for God, elohim, is translated, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” but this verse is followed immediately by these words in verse 27: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
God is one. He is not two or three. Jesus Himself confirmed this fact in Mark 12:29-31 when a scribe had asked Him which commandment was foremost of all. Jesus replied,
The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.
Explicit in the first of the two greatest commandments is the Lord Jesus Himself declaring that God is one Lord. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, announces in essence that we must know God is one Lord before we can love Him with all our heart. Jesus, who claimed for Himself the identity of God by telling the Jews that before Abraham was born, “I AM” (Jn. 8:58), declares that God is one, and we must understand this truth in order to worship and love Him properly.
While our one God is expressed in three Persons, they nevertheless are one Being. Carolyn Byers clearly portrays God as a separate being from “His Son”. She did not accidentally describe them this way; Ellen White said in the third volume of The Spirit of Prophecy that Jesus “taught that God was a rewarder of the righteous, and a punisher of the transgressor. He was not an intangible spirit, but a living ruler of the universe.” 10 She also said she asked Jesus “if his Father was a person, and had a form like himself. Said Jesus, ‘I am in the express image of my Father’s person.’” 11
Jerry Moon, associate professor and chair of the Church History Department at the Seventh-day Adventist Andrews University Seminary, confirms that Ellen White steered the church away from traditional views of the nature of God:
Thus her visions confirmed what her husband had written in 1846, that the Father and the Son are ‘two distinct, literal, tangible persons.’ The visions also disproved, to her mind, the claim of the Methodist creed that God is ‘without body or parts.’ Thus these early visions steered her developing view of God away from creedal trinitariansim…12
This series of stories by Byers establishes from the very beginning that God and Jesus are separate beings, and she implies they both have bodies. She does not refer to “God” as the Bible does. Instead, she develops the “great controversy” theme in her story by saying Lucifer told the angels they didn’t need “that Son to boss us around”. 13 Genesis never hints at such a separation between Father and Son. God is spirit, and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit share the same essence. They are one Being, and Lucifer has never been a threat to God Who is sovereign over him.
Finally, while in the flesh, Jesus says in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” God is spirit; this fact alone means we cannot reduce Him to a physical representation. Moreover, the Bible tells us absolutely no details about Lucifer’s rebellion, and it never states that Lucifer refused to obey “God’s Son” and was jealous of Him. Yet these ideas derive from the “continuing and authoritative source of truth” 14 of Ellen White’s writings. 15
From their earliest years, Adventist children learn details about Lucifer and his supposed role that are not taught in the Bible. They learn that God is separate from His Son, that each of them has a physical body, and that God exalted His Son to a position of authority over the angels. Also, they learn that God (as well as His Son) is their “best friend”, as quoted above. The Bible never describes God as our “best Friend”. He is God; we are to worship and honor Him.
Friends of God
The Bible teaches us to call God our Father (Matt. 6:9) and Jesus our Lord Christ (Rom. 1:7). The Spirit is identified as “the Spirit of holiness” (Rom. 1:4), and God as “Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28) as well as “love” (1 Jn. 4:8, 16). Jesus is described as a “propitiation in His blood” (Rom. 3:25), the “Savior of the world” (Jn. 4:42), the “author of [our] salvation” (Heb. 2:10), a “merciful and faithful high priest” (Heb. 2:17); and our “brother” (Heb. 2:11, 17). He is the Creator (Heb. 1:2) and the radiance of God’s glory; the “exact representation” of God’s nature (Heb. 1:3). The Bible never allows us to diminish any Person of the Holy Trinity by placing Him on the level of a buddy.
To be sure, Jesus did call His disciples His friends (John 15:13-14), and Abraham was called “friend of God” (Jas. 2:23). Both James and Jesus, however, define the sense in which a person is called a friend of God. Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you…I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:14-15). Lest there be any confusion, John also identifies what Jesus has commanded us to do if we would be His friends: “believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn. 3:23a; Jn. 6:29).
James clarifies,
Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (Jas. 4:4).
In no way am I suggesting Jesus is not the friend of children or of us. Neither would I hint that God was not Adam and Eve’s dearest friend. The point I want to make here is that within Adventism, the notion of God being our “Friend” is stressed from childhood on as a way of teaching that there is no need ever to fear God. He allowed people to put Jesus to death as a “demonstration” of His character of love. Instead of emphasizing that Jesus paid an atoning price for sin, Adventism teaches an undercurrent of the moral influence theory of atonement. 16 Consequently, when Adventist authors and teachers stress Jesus or God as “friend” without also teaching Savior, Defender, Protector, Guardian, and God, they teach a limited Jesus who doesn’t have the same power or authority as the Father, and a self-limiting God whose main purpose is defending our freedom and vindicating His own loving character.
The idea of teaching children to call God their “best friend” reflects an idea that has gained great popularity within Adventism as a result of the teaching of Graham Maxwell and Jack Provonsha who spent several decades on the religion faculty at the Seventh-day Adventist Loma Linda University. They promulgated the moral influence theory of the atonement among Adventists; this paradigm negates the centrality of the cross and eclipses the sovereign power and control of the entire Trinity, including that of the Lord Jesus.
The 1962 book Our Friend of Galilee by Gladys Rosser, published by Pacific Press Publishing Association, illustrates that this idea has been taught to Adventist children for decades. The book has 28 chapters, and 18 of them end by stating some application of the idea that Jesus is our Friend.
Chapter 8, “The Temptation”, tells of Jesus resisting Satan in the wilderness after His baptism. Completely missing the significance of Jesus demonstrating that He was the Perfect Israel who honored God during those 40 days of desert fasting as Israel failed to do in 40 years of desert wandering, the chapter omits the fact that the Holy Spirit led Jesus to be tempted by the devil (Matt. 4:1; Lk. 4:2). Instead Rosser emphasizes the idea that although Satan’s temptations seemed appealing on the surface, Jesus resisted and became able to sympathize with us. The chapter ends thus:
Then He left the wilderness and went out to show that He was a Friend to every weak, tempted man, woman, and child on earth. 17
Rosser ends the story of Jesus quieting the storm on Galilee with these words, “The disciples never forgot it. ‘No matter how loud and fierce the tempest may beat around us,’ they would say, ‘when we say, “Lord, save us: we perish,” He will hear and come to our aid. What a Friend!’” 18 (A more appropriate response would be, “What a Savior!”) Further, the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s son concludes, “How happy they were as they clung to each other. ‘Jesus healed you, son,’ the father said. ‘He is a good Friend to us. And we shall tell all our friends about Him.’” 19 Finally, Rosser summarizes the conviction of the Roman centurion at Jesus’ death this way: “A Roman centurion, who only a few hours before had helped crucify Jesus, now accepted Him as Saviour and Friend.” 20
The biblical idea of friendship with God is that when a person puts himself in submission to the authority of God as revealed through the Lord Jesus, he becomes God’s friend. The Bible does not tell us to approach God as a friend unless we have been made right with Him. Unless we are forgiven and born again, we are considered God’s enemies, by nature “objects of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). The idea of thinking of Jesus—and by extension, the Father—as our familiar “friends” is never taught in Scripture. We cannot think of Him as being just like us. Jesus did not do miracles to show us we don’t have to fear Him. He did miracles to reveal Himself as the singular Savior of the world, the eternal, almighty, Creator God who had authority over creation, life, and death—yet He took on humanity so He could pay the price for human sin (Heb. 2).
Why Jesus came
All of these very human portrayals in Byers’s books of who and what Jesus and His Father are lead to the pervasive message that Jesus’ life on earth was primarily to show us the “truth about God” in two ways: that He is man’s “friend” and that Jesus is our Example, showing us how to live.
The Bible gives us a different picture. First, Jesus is an “example”, but He demonstrated how those who are alive in Christ will serve God. He did not come to show us how to live in order to be right with God.
We cannot understand the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation unless we first understand that God is sovereign and holy, and humans are, by nature, “objects of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Paul explains: “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (Rom. 3:21-25a).
In other words, God is holy and righteous and sovereign, and mankind is hopelessly sinful, unable to obey or achieve any degree of righteousness. Jesus came to justify us by offering Himself to God as a blood sacrifice for human sin. In Jesus, hopeless sinners become God’s righteousness in Christ because He became their sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus did not merely pay for a person’s past sins, expecting to help that person resist sin in order to stay justified. Rather, He paid for every sin, both past and future, committed by every person on earth who places his or her faith in Jesus and His shed blood.
These concepts are not too deep for children. The gospel is God’s solution to the depravity of man, which necessitates one’s need of Jesus. Children must be taught that without Jesus, they will suffer the second death for eternity.
In contrast to the biblical account, the second volume of Forever Stories has God telling the angels His and His Son’s plan after Adam and Eve ate the fruit:
“My Son will go and live with Adam’s family. He will be born as a baby. He will grow up and show people what God is like. He will heal the sick. He will teach people not to be afraid of God. People will know what God is like. Then they can choose whom they want to follow.…”
“When He is a man, Satan’s friends will kill Him.
“On that day, all the angels will see that God’s Son gives everything to help people. He will even give His own life. All the people on the other worlds will see how cruel Satan is. At the same time God’s children on earth will see how to be kind and good even when others are hateful and mean.
“Everybody will know how much God loves each person. Nobody will want Satan to live. He can be destroyed forever.” 21
First, while Byers says “Adam and Eve ate the fruit”,22 she never identifies this disobedience as “sin”. God announces His plan not as a payment for sin but as a demonstration of God’s love. The picture Byers paints is that humanity has grown afraid of God as they have chosen to believe Satan. Thus, God must prove to them that He really isn’t fearsome but is willing to self-sacrifice to the point of letting His Son be killed in order to show how kind and good He is even when others are mean to Him—thus showing by example how we, too, can and must be kind and good even when we’re treated badly.
Ultimately, Byers sends the powerful message that Satan can finally be destroyed, not because he has rebelled and God has the right to punish sin, but because everybody will finally see and believe that Satan is bad. When this fact is finally clear to all humanity, it will be permissible to destroy him forever. All these ideas are a reflection of the moral influence theory promulgated by Maxwell and Provonsha and are not the fundamental message of the Bible.
The Bible is clear; the simple gospel is not the message that God can be trusted, that Jesus came to set the record straight, or that the purpose of Jesus’ life was to show us how to live or to demonstrate to us how selfish we are. Rather, Paul states that the gospel is of “first importance…that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). Moreover, mankind has nothing to do with Satan’s demise. He is destroyed because he is evil (Rev. 20:7-10). God does not depend upon human understanding, approval, or input.
Could Jesus have failed?
Although Adventists say that Jesus was fully God, they do not say He possessed all the attributes of God during His incarnation. Moreover, they say He could have sinned and He could have failed to complete His mission. God took a risk, they say, in Jesus’ coming and dying.
For example, Doug Batchelor of Amazing Facts writes,
The real risk in the redemption plan, besides the loss of man, was the breakup of the Godhead. Had Jesus sinned, He would have been working at cross-purposes with the Spirit and His Father. Omnipotent good would have been pitted against omnipotent evil. What would have happened to the rest of creation? Whom would the unfallen universe see as right? One sin could have sent the Godhead and the universe spinning into cosmic chaos; the proportions of this disaster are staggering. Yet the Godhead was still willing to take this fragmenting risk for the salvation of man. This reveals the depth of God’s amazing love. 23
There was never a risk to the universe nor a chance that the Lord Jesus would not succeed in His mission. Paul says this of Jesus in Colossians 1:17, 19: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together…For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”
All creation is held together in the Lord Jesus. This holding together has always happened in Him—even while He was on earth and in the tomb. His spirit, which is the Spirit of God, never ceased to exist, even while His body was dead. All things have always held together in Him, and His death, resurrection, and ascension were always certain. Never is there any hint in the Bible that Jesus could have failed.
In Our Friend of Galilee, Gladys Rosser describes Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. She portrays Jesus’ suffering as a struggle with Satan and the powers of darkness; the fate of all eternity hung on those hours in the garden. Here is how she describes the conclusion of His garden suffering:
All the angels had been watching anxiously. Now they rejoiced that Jesus had won. Gabriel came quickly to His side, lifting Him up in strong arms and resting that weary and fainting head upon his breast. He told Jesus that God and the angels rejoiced because Jesus was giving His life for the world. Pointing to heaven, he reminded Jesus of the many people who would be saved because of His sacrifice. Jesus was encouraged and strengthened to continue in the way He had chosen.
And because He won in the conflict with Satan, He is our best Friend when we have to meet and conquer Satan. 24
The Bible does not suggest Jesus “won” anything in the garden. It is not possible for us, still bound in time and mortal flesh, to understand fully what happened there. We do know some things, though. God was not waiting to see what Jesus would do; He is sovereign over all and omniscient. Jesus, God in human flesh, knew in advance that He would die and rise again the third day, because He told His disciples that He would (Matt. 16:21; 17:9, 12, 23; 20:19). He “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Lk. 9:51) to complete His divine mission. At the same time, Jesus the man was struggling with God over the agony He faced in becoming sin, being physically brutalized, and being separated from the Father. He suffered real temptation.
God the Father knew what was happening. Jesus’ agony in the garden, though, was not the occasion of His decision to “go through with it”. That decision was made before creation. At the same time, Jesus the man struggled to submit Himself completely to the Father’s purposes and to trust Him as He faced indescribable agony.
It is wrong to think Jesus won the victory that redeems lost souls during his struggle in the garden. His victory over sin came only when He shed His blood on the cross and paid with His life the price of sin.
One more point related to Rosser’s conclusion above: we never have to “conquer Satan”. Jesus did that on the cross (Col. 1:15). Peter tells us to “resist the devil” by standing firm in our faith (1 Pet. 5:9; Heb. 2:14, Jas. 4:7), but we can resist him because, when we are in Christ, His victory over Satan is ours.
Mormon similarity
Gladys Rosser, however, did not invent the idea that Jesus conquered Satan in Gethsemane. Ellen White wrote,
The humanity of the Son of God trembled in that trying hour…The awful moment had come—that moment which was to decide the destiny of the world. The fate of humanity trembled in the balance. Christ might even now refuse to drink the cup apportioned to guilty man. It was not yet too late…
The woes and lamentations of a doomed world rise before Him. He beholds its impending fate, and His decision is made. He will save man at any cost to Himself.…
Christ’s agony did not cease, but His depression and discouragement left Him. The storm had in nowise abated, but He who was its object was strengthened to meet its fury. He came forth calm and serene. A heavenly peace rested upon His bloodstained face. He had born that which no human being could ever bear; for He had tasted the sufferings of death for every man. 25
The idea that Jesus won “in the conflict with Satan” in Gethsemane, that He “tasted the sufferings of death for every man” in the garden, is amazingly similar to the Mormon doctrine that Jesus paid the price for the sins of the world in Gethsemane. They say that Jesus shed His blood in His sweat as He struggled in the garden, and Mormon leaders say that Jesus’ “most challenging experience came in Gethsemane.” 26
Elder Bruce McConkie of the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles wrote this in 1985, by his own admission echoing the words of the Mormon prophets and apostles:
We do not know, we cannot tell, no mortal mind can conceive the full import of what Christ did in Gethsemane.
We know he sweat great gouts of blood from every pore as he drained the dregs of that bitter cup his Father had given him.
We know he suffered, both body and spirit, more than it is possible for man to suffer, except it be unto death.
We know that in some way, incomprehensible to us, his suffering satisfied the demands of justice, ransomed penitent souls from the pains and penalties of sin, and made mercy available to those who believe in his holy name. 27
The Ellen White-endorsed idea within Adventism that Jesus won the victory over Satan and human sin in the garden is eerily similar to the Mormon doctrine of Gethsemane. To think Jesus’ suffering in Gethsemane was where the true work and decision for atonement was done is not biblical. Christian theology never sees Jesus’ struggle in the garden as part of His sacrifice for sin. While He experienced the most intense human struggle, He did not defeat Satan nor was he the sacrifice for sin in Gethsemane. Those saving acts happened on the cross (Col. 2:15). Adventist theology says His sacrifice on the cross was separate from the atonement which He applies in heaven. The Bible teaches His sacrifice and atonement are synonymous and were finished on the cross (Rom. 3:25-26; Heb. 9:11-28).
At no time did Jesus waver from His purpose: to shed His blood on the cross for the sins of humanity and to reconcile fallen humanity to God (2 Cor. 5:19), and He always knew He would rise from death. God sacrificed in the incarnation and death of Jesus, but He did not risk the existence of the Trinity.
Jesus’ purpose
Isaiah foretold that Jesus would bear our griefs, carry our sorrows, be wounded for our transgressions, bring us peace with His chastisement, and heal us with His stripes (Is. 53:45). John the Baptist announced that Jesus was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” The writer of Hebrews asserts, “through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives”(Heb. 2:14-15). Jesus said of Himself, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”(Jn. 3:14-15).
Adventism, however, teaches its members from childhood that Jesus came to demonstrate God’s character and to teach us to be obedient and loving just as taught in the moral influence theory.
Carolyn Byers tells the story of the crucifixion like this:
At the top of a little hill, soldiers nailed Jesus’ hands and feet to a cross.
Jesus hated the wickedness of those around Him. He longed for quiet and peace. He could have run away. But He didn’t. God could have saved Him. But God didn’t. Jesus died so that everyone everywhere could see what Satan is really like. And what God is really like (emphasis mine).
That afternoon Jesus died so that people could choose to follow Him. And be saved. 28
Never in her books does Byers state that Jesus died to pay the price of sin as that would be contrary to the moral influence theory which is obviously the basis of her theology. Moreover, she states as her first reason for Jesus’ death the revelation of Satan’s true nature; the second reason is the demonstration of God’s character. Although she does say He died so people could be saved, she never states how a person becomes saved. Her only emphasis is the demonstration of what Satan is like compared to God.
Undergirding the “demonstration theory” articulated by Carolyn Byers, Arthur S. Maxwell, in his classic ten-volume set The Bible Story, which is still currently sold in Adventist Book Centers, has been teaching Adventist children since 1957 the essence of how to get to heaven: have a heart full of love. In the eighth volume, Maxwell, the father of the promulgator of the Moral Influence theory among Adventists, tells the “sheep and the goats” parable. He characterizes the goats as “little, selfish people who never give a thought to other people’s needs and sufferings.” 29 These, Maxwell emphasizes, will share the devil’s punishment.
“So it is love,” he says, “that makes the difference. It is love that separates those who are saved from those who are lost…Love is the passport to heaven. If we do not have it in our hearts—if we do not show it by gracious words and kindly deeds, we shall never enter the kingdom of God.” 30
Maxwell then admonishes his readers to think about someone they know whom they should feed or with whom they should share their water or clothes.
The problem with Maxwell’s admonitions—the problem that plagued me throughout the first decades of my life—is that neither he nor anyone else explains how to generate that mandatory, salvific love. In fact, Maxwell confounds this issue by completely inverting the biblical teaching about love. On a page illustrated by a color drawing of a glowing Ten Commandments with the word “LOVE” written in gold spanning the tablets, he says,
There would be no mansion for anybody who did not have love in his heart. And love is shown by keeping His commandments.
“If you love Me,” He said, “keep My commandments.”
Again, “If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” 31
On the following page Maxwell summarizes his point:
If you want your heart to be God’s home, if you want Him to live with you and keep you all your days, this is the way. All you have to do is to love other people as much, or more, than you love yourself. And when God sees this love in your heart He will come, by His Holy Spirit, and dwell with you and be your Comforter, guide, and Friend the rest of your life 32 (emphasis mine).
Truth sets us free
I despaired of ever being able to experience that selfless “love for God and love for man” that was the mark of someone worthy of heaven. I comforted myself with the Ellen White phrase, oft-repeated in her works, that “love is a principle”. 33
God’s word finally revealed to me the subtle deception behind Maxwell’s—and Ellen White’s—words. It is not “love” which Jesus said is necessary in order to see the kingdom of heaven; it is being born again of the Spirit.
In His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.…Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (Jn. 3:3-7). In his letter to the Ephesians Paul expresses it as follows: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…But because of his great love for us, God…made us alive with Christ…it is by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:1-5).
Paul expressed the same truth in his letter to Titus: “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures…But when the kindness of God our Savior…appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:3-6).
Ephesians 1:13-14 explains how this new birth happens: “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.”
In other words, the gospel—that Jesus died, was buried, and rose on the third day according Scripture—is the message of salvation. Accepting the fact that we are utterly depraved and in need of a Savior, believing that the Lord Jesus died to pay the price of human sin—including my own—and rose again to give us life, results in our being born again by the indwelling Holy Spirit “who is given as a pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:14a).
This gospel, which “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16), is not a demonstration of God’s character, a revelation of Satan’s character, or a mandate to love so God will give us His Spirit. No! This gospel is the singular news that the Lord Jesus, the almighty, eternal, omniscient, infallible Savior and Substitute, took human flesh and became sin for us so we might “become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). His body and blood opened a new, living way to the Father (Heb. 9:19-20).
Only after we are born again and become God’s adopted children (Rom. 8:15-16) will we have love in our hearts “because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Love is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). Arthur Maxwell had it upside down; we do not live with love so God will put His Spirit in us. Instead, we humble ourselves before the Lord Jesus and receive Him. Then God places His Spirit in us—and only then do we experience love.
Double-minded?
So, you may be asking, why make all this “fuss” over details? Isn’t it enough that we all believe in Jesus? Why divide over whether the gospel is about God’s character or whether Jesus defeated Satan in Gethsemane rather than at the cross? As long as we agree that Jesus is God’s Son and the “Savior”, why worry about whether or not He has the same essence as the Father and the Spirit, or whether He died to pay a sin-debt or to demonstrate God’s forgiveness?
The reason we focus on these differences is that one set of understandings describes Jesus as He is revealed in the Bible. The other set of understandings teaches a false Jesus of the anti-gospel Moral Influence theory. Children who grow up learning the Bible stories with the great controversy worldview woven into them, who learn that Jesus was gentle, mild, and abused for the purpose of exposing Satan’s evil and God’s goodness—these children learn to call this unbiblical person “Jesus”. They learn all the right names and titles: Savior, Son of Man, Son of God—but they learn these names describe a fallible, limited god who is not the same as the mighty, eternal, unfailing Son of God described in Scripture.
Adventism has capitalized on the fact that Ellen White has made contradictory statements about Jesus depending from whom she plagiarized. On the one hand, she has written that He is the Savior, the Substitute, the Son of God whose life is original, not derived from another Source. On the other hand she has written that he shared in the man’s sin nature, that His atonement was incomplete; that He is Michael the archangel.
Holding these contradictory beliefs together makes one double-minded. Jesus cannot be both God in flesh, our sinless Substitute who died as our once-for-all sacrifice for sin, and a man with a fallen nature and suppressed deity who demonstrated to us how we, too, could achieve a saving righteousness by overcoming sin in our own fallen natures.
Yet these conflicting beliefs “work” for Adventists because, when evangelical Christians ask them questions, they use the “orthodox” statements they learned from Ellen White. Concurrently, they believe they must follow Jesus’ example in order to overcome sin and be saved.
In mathematics, if one adds a positive and negative number of the same value together, the result is zero; it is never a positive nor a negative number. They cancel each other.
The same is true with Jesus. One cannot believe both that He is our Substitute and Savior who paid the price of death for sin demanded by God, and simultaneously believe He did not complete the atonement at the cross and that His purpose was merely to demonstrate God’s character. To hold these two beliefs is to cancel the significance and power of Jesus in one’s life.
Children who are taught to understand Jesus and salvation according to the great controversy paradigm which shapes Adventist children’s literature learn the “right words” about Jesus, but they learn a false, weak effigy of Jesus. Adventist children are being taught to be double-minded, believing contradictory things about the Lord Jesus that render Him powerless, limited, weak, and even embarrassing.
Either we believe in the biblical Jesus or we believe in a false Jesus. Paul wrote, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:20). A false Jesus is not spiritually neutral; belief in the wrong Jesus does not lead to believing unto salvation. Paul rebukes the Corinthian believers for their gullibility in accommodating those who preached “a Jesus other than the Jesus [he] preached” to them (2 Cor. 11:4). He also rebukes the Galatian believers for “turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven [or the General Conference president or E. G. White] should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Gal. 1:6-8).
I pray you will ask the Lord Jesus to reveal Himself to you as He really is—the One Isaiah described this way: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6).
Bow before the One of Whom all those in heaven sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Rev. 5:12) and whom Thomas acknowledged as “my Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:28).
Say with me, “Jesus is my Lord!” †
Endnotes
- Seventh-day Adventists Believe, 2005, Pacific Press Pub. Assoc., p. 23.
- ibid., p. 43.
- Tinker, Colleen, “Discovering the Adventist Jesus”, Proclamation!, May/June, 2007, p. 11-12.
- In fact, Ellen White has written all of these ideas in her works. They do not appear only in one place, but her non-Trinitarian statements and descriptions of Jesus reflecting an Arian bias appear from the earliest days of the Adventist movement to the first decade of the 20th century. For more details and sources, see “Discovering the Adventist Jesus” by Colleen Tinker in Proclamation!, May/June, 2007, p. 10-17. Access online at www.LifeAssuranceMinistries.org. See also www.CultOrChristian.com
- Byers, Carolyn, Forever Stories, vol. 1, Review and Herald Pub. Assoc., 1989, p. 11.
- ibid., p. 15.
- ibid., p. 23.
- ibid., p. 59.
- ibid., p. 60.
- White, Ellen, The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 3, p. 47, par. 1. (Retrieved from: http://egwwritings.eu/writings/)
- White, Ellen, Life Sketches of James White and Ellen G. White, 1880, p. 230, par. 3. Retrieved from http://egwwritings.eu/writings/
- Journal of the Adventist Theological Society (JATS), Spring 2006, “The Quest for a Biblical Trinity: Ellen White’s ‘heavenly Trio’ Compared to the Traditional Doctrine,” by Jerry Moon, Andrews University Theological Seminary. (Retrieved from: http://www.atsjats.org/publication_file.php?
pub_id=241&journal=1&type=pdf) - Byers, Carolyn, vol. 1, p. 15.
- Seventh-day Adventists Believe, 2005, Pacific Press Pub. Assoc., p. 247.
- White, Ellen G (EGW); Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3; P. 37, Par. 2-3. EGW, Early Writings of Ellen G. White, p. 145, Par. 1. EGW, The Signs of the Times, 02-05-1894, “God’s Love Unmeasured,” Par. 10. EGW, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 07-09-1895, “The Duty of the Minister and the People,” Par. 14.
- In this view, the purpose and result of Christ’s death was to influence mankind toward moral improvement. This theory denies that Christ died to satisfy any principle of divine justice, but teaches instead that His death was designed to greatly impress mankind with a sense of God’s love, resulting in softening their hearts and leading them to repentance. Thus, the Atonement is not directed towards God with the purpose of maintaining His justice, but towards man with the purpose of persuading him to right action…It was largely taught by the liberal churches. (Retrieved from: http://www.theopedia.com/Moral_Influence_theory)
- Rosser, Gladys, Our Friend of Galilee; Pacific Press Pub. Assoc., 1962, p. 39.
- ibid., p. 57.
- ibid., p. 52.
- ibid., p. 114.
- Byers, Carolyn, vol. 2, pp. 8-9.
- ibid., vol. 1, pp. 6-8.
- Batchelor, Doug, The Trinity, Amazing Facts, 2009, p. 29-30.
- Rosser, Gladys, pp. 98-99.
- EGW, The Desire of Ages, Review and Herald Pub. Assoc., pp. 692, 694.
- http://www.truthandgrace.com/Gethsemane.htm
- McConkie, Bruce, “The Purifying Power of Gethsemene”, Ensign: May 1985, p. 9. Retrieved from http://www.lds.org.
- Byers, Carolyn, vol. 4, p. 63.
- Maxwell, Arthur S., The Bible Story, vol. 8, Southern Publishing Assoc., 1957, p. 189.
- ibid., pp. 190-191.
- ibid., vol. 9, p. 67.
- ibid., p. 70
- “This love is not an impulse, but a divine principle, a permanent power.” The Acts of the Apostles, p. 551. “True obedience is the outworking of a principle within. It springs from the love of righteousness, the love of the law of God.” Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 97.
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