MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR DALE RATZLAFF
OCCURRED MARCH 2, 2024
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“We owe him so much!”
BY COLLEEN TINKER, EDITOR
There may be no former Seventh-day Adventist more widely known or deeply loved than Dale Ratzlaff. His personal integrity and commitment to truth led him not only to sacrifice his career and his Adventist identity, but they also led him to found Life Assurance Ministries. He launched Proclamation! magazine in 2000, and through it and through his preaching opportunities he dedicated his life to teaching the biblical gospel of the new covenant in Jesus’s blood. Because of Dale’s commitment to exposing the errors of Adventism and to revealing the Lord Jesus’s finished atonement, countless Adventists have been born again into Christ and have left their counterfeit religion to become part of the true body of Christ.
How It Began
Dale was born on September 14, 1936, to devout Adventist parents in Shafter, California. His father, the youngest of 12 sons who were raised strict Mennonites, became an Adventist before marrying Bessie Smith, the daughter of an Adventist pastor. They worked as self-supporting Adventist missionaries in Panama until the verge of World War 2 when they returned to the mainland and worked as teachers in the Adventist school system.
His mother was his only teacher (except for his fourth grade year) until he went to academy. That fourth grade year he experienced what would prove to be a life event: he met a sweet third-grader named Carolyn Mundall. They became friends, and that relationship proved to last his lifetime.
That same year two more events changed Dale’s life. The family moved to North Carolina to escape the evil influences of the city, and just months after moving, Dale’s father died of a rare, aggressive cancer. Crushed beneath impossible hospital bills with no insurance and no income stream sufficient to support her daughter Opal and her son Dale in their isolated house with no electricity or running water, Bessie decided to move to Fortuna, California, close to family friends, where she taught at the Adventist church school.
Feeling the pressure of helping to provide for the family, Dale worked full time during his junior high summers for a dairyman, bailing hay and learning to work even when wanting to quit.
By the time he was a sophomore at Modesto Union Academy, he was reunited with his childhood best friend, Carolyn Mundall, but he was separated from her for another year when, the summer after his sophomore year, he took off to work full time at a large chicken ranch to support his mother and sister. When he refused to work on Saturday one week, his boss fired him, and Dale felt exhilarated that he had been faithful to his convictions in spite of the persecution of losing his job.
Dale and Carolyn decided they would both go to Monterey Bay Academy (MBA) for their junior and senior years and shared a fervent commitment to Adventist evangelism. Hard work was never far from either of them, however. The summer before his senior year at MBA, Dale loaded and hauled hay for his cousin Harry Ratzlaff in Sabastopol, California, and for several dairies in the area. Because he had taken a year off, Dale was 18 years old that summer and was allowed to drive Harry’s Autocar hay truck and trailer.
His senior year was memorable; he loved physics and advanced math, and he and Carolyn excelled in Adventist doctrines, drawing time charts and explaining the Adventist versions of the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. As a graduation gift, he gave Carolyn a luxury-bound, gold-embossed set of Ellen White’s Testimonies for the Church. He spent the following summer working as a colporteur selling Adventist books under a supervisor who clandestinely ordered meat and asked Dale not to tell anyone. Dale, though, would not touch meat. He was thoroughly Adventist.
The next year Dale enrolled at Pacific Union College in a pre-medical program, and he and Carolyn were married the next summer. Eventually Dale dropped out of college, unsure what his career path should be. He went back to hauling hay, and during those years he and Carolyn adopted their sons Bruce and Mike. Eventually they moved to Arizona, and it was there that Dale met the Lord.
He had become deathly ill with diphtheria, and quarantined in a motel because the local hospital had no isolation facilities, he realized he was not ready to die. He had lived an ascetic and disciplined life, but 1 John 1:9 came to his mind: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
For the first time Dale realized that if he was to be clean from sin, it had to be God’s work, not his. He admitted that he was a sinner and trusted that God would forgive and cleanse him. In his helplessness, he trusted the Lord and had peace for the first time. This encounter changed the course of his life.
Within three days he was completely recovered, and gradually Dale was convicted of his next big step: he had to re-enroll in PUC and take theology.
Questions
The more Dale dived into his Adventist theology classes, the more questions he had. For example, in Greek class he couldn’t make Ephesians 2:8,9 harmonize with Ellen White’s statement that we should never say we are saved. He couldn’t make Daniel 8:14 connect, as Adventists insist, with Leviticus 16, nor could he make the 2300 day time chart fit with Daniel 8:14 in context.
One day he asked his Spirit of Prophecy teacher, Leslie Harding, “What was trampled in 457 BC that was ‘untrampeled’ in 1844?”
Dr. Harding’s eyes became cold, and he answered, “Dale, aren’t you studying for the ministry? You should not be asking questions like that!” Dale then went to his Greek teacher, Dr. Fred Veltman, and asked the same question. He responded, “Dale, the investigative judgment is not a biblical doctrine.”
The questions and problems compounded the more Dale studied. He was a top student, however, and when he graduated, he was called by the Southern California Conference and sponsored to attend Andrews Theological Seminary. His first year at Andrews presented one disappointment. Dr. Alexander, who taught “Atonement”, failed to finish his class curriculum. Dale had hoped to have his confusion regarding Adventism’s incomplete atonement and the 1844 investigative judgment theology harmonized with Scripture, but Dr. Alexander failed not only to explain this but also to finish the class lesson plan. Dale came to suspect the professor purposely failed to finish.
As the years passed and Dale moved from an intern pastorate in Santa Monica, California, he and Carolyn moved with their sons to Monterey Bay Academy. As he took up his new job as a Bible teacher, his questions intensified. When he was revising a study guide to teach Romans 4 , 5, and 6, Dale became convinced that Jesus died to save the ungodly, not godly people. He realized that we inherit the imputed sin of Adam, and that when we trust Jesus, we receive the imputed righteousness of Christ. It was the gospel clarity of Romans that caused Dale to see cracks he could not patch in Adventist theology.
During his years at MBA Dale first realized that Ellen White, whom he loved, had plagiarized widely. Within one week he received both Desmond Ford’s manuscript explaining that the investigative judgment could not be found in Scripture but was solely the product of Ellen White’s writings, and a package of tape recordings of a secret meeting held in the basement of the Glendale Adventist Church in Southern California. This meeting of Adventist officials and Pastor Walter Rea contained Rea documenting his volumes of evidence that Ellen White and her secretaries had plagiarized huge amounts of material, even in her “testimonies”, visions, and dreams.
Dale suddenly realized that the prophetess and the church he had trusted and loved had intentionally deceived the people and had covered up the dishonesty that the leaders had known was there all along.
Things came to a head for Dale and Carolyn while he was pastoring the Watsonville Adventist Church in the Central California Conference. Dale’s parishioners had been canvassed by conference officials to gather “evidence” against Dale and his doubts about Ellen White with the goal of having Dale removed from his position. Dale asked for private meetings with several pastors and conference officers to present his research and concerns, but he realized most of these men knew of the problems but refused to act on them. Privately they advised him:
“Dale we both know the doctrine [investigative judgment] is wrong. It is not our fault, and we can’t do anything about it. We are too old to go out and find employment outside of the church. Consider the church to be your employer. Do what you can with a clear conscience, and don’t make any waves.”
The elders of the Watsonville church wanted Dale to continue as their pastor, but they knew he couldn’t unless he found a scriptural way to teach the investigative judgment using sound hermeneutical principles. The elders paid for Dale to go inquire of Dr. Graham Maxwell in the Loma Linda School of Religion, and three of them went with Dale as well.
Maxwell defended the doctrine on the basis of Ellen White’s having inspired insight into the application of the biblical text. In fact, multiple times Maxwell stated the real reason Adventists cannot reject the 1844 doctrine:
“If she misled us here,” he said, “then she probably misled us elsewhere.” He repeatedly suggested that Dale simply display his loyalty to Adventism. He asked him to select his words so he could be “honest” with his disagreements yet convey his loyalty to the organization.
Dale was shocked. When he returned to Central California, conference president Charles Cook asked him if he could teach all 27 fundamental beliefs. Dale said he could not teach the investigative judgment. Cook immediately suspended his employment and stated, “Dale, your main fault is you are too honest.”
Freedom
The day Dale tendered his forced resignation, he experienced an unprecedented sense of emancipation. He was DONE with the hassle and the questioning, the pressure and the politics and the refusal of Adventist leaders to admit the truth.
When he arrived home, Carolyn watched through the window as he started up the lawnmower, pushed it around the yard, and literally jumped into the air crying, “I’m free! I’m free!”
His conscience was clear.
No longer allowed to pastor their church, he and Carolyn began home Bible studies with people from the congregation who wanted to study the Sabbath. Meanwhile many members were attempting to destroy them. Some accused them of stealing money from the church, but auditing proved they did not. Others accused their son of stealing the church’s sound equipment, but the real thief was eventually discovered.
They received no letters of apology, but they did receive one addressed “To the Church of Satan” from a member of their past church.
Free from Adventism’s restrictions and employment requirements, Dale determined to study without consulting Ellen White. He decided to put all his EGW books in the garage, and for six months he would not look at them. He began to see new beauty and harmony in the Word, and by the end of the six months, the Bible had become a completely new book.
The Bible study that Dale and Carolyn did with those interested in pursuing it with them became the core of Dale’s first book Sabbath In Crisis, later updated and renamed Sabbath In Christ. This book remains one of the premier resources for addressing Adventist Sabbath arguments with inductive, contextual Bible study.
After leaving Adventism Dale’s ministry expanded. He pastored in Sedona, Arizona, and then he became a pastor in a Christian Missionary Alliance church in Glendale, Arizona. During this time his study and writing continued. While attending a Bible study with an Adventist doctor and his wife, Dale was first presented with a copy of The Clear Word, a paraphrase of the Bible by Adventist religion professor Jack Blanco which incorporates Ellen White’s doctrines into the biblical text without any textual support or admission of tampering.
Shocked that Adventism would allow such a thing, Dale compiled his research about Ellen White and her sources and writing that he had done before leaving Adventism, and he wrote his second book, The Cultic Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventists.
In 2000 Dale and Carolyn founded Life Assurance Ministries, Inc, and began publishing Proclamation! magazine. He has written four more books, Truth about Adventist “Truth”, Truth Led Me Out, Gospel Transformation—What the Good News Does in Your Life, and Romans Alive.
Dale’s example of integrity under pressure, his willingness to leave all that he loved in favor of biblical truth, and his trust in God have shaped his life and have helped thousands of Adventists to hear the pure gospel. Only in the kingdom will we know the full fruit of Dale’s personal commitment to truth and his acting with integrity as he has helped so many to understand the lies of their past and know the real Jesus of Scripture.
Home
Dale went home to the Lord on January 5, 2024. He is survived by his wife Carolyn Mundall Ratzlaff, his two sons Bruce and Mike, and their wives Denise and Sandy. He has four grandchildren, one of whom is already with the Lord, and soon one great-grandchild.
Dale’s example of trust in God’s word and his love for the God of the word has left a legacy that has shaped not only his own life but Life Assurance Ministries and all those it has touched. He has taught us that “Truth can bear the test of investigation.” The darkness cannot hide the light of truth.
Just days before he died, Richard and Colleen Tinker visited Dale and Carolyn. As Dale lay in the rehabilitation hospital, he whispered to Richard, “Tell them thank you for all their support.” Dale was always moved by the responses of those who benefited from Life Assurance Ministries; he never took people’s support for granted.
Life Assurance Ministries board member Kaspars Ozolins said, in words which sum up our collective response to Dale, “We owe him so much.”
We thank God for Dale Ratzlaff. †