Seventh Day Adventists
I. Introduction
In this article we will examine the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA), there teachings and so-called prophet, Ellen White. In my opinion, the SDA is not a Christian denomination but a cult which has forfeited the grace of God through its insistence on keeping the Mosaic Law as a requirement for salvation.
The SDA was founded in New York in 1831 by William Miller. The name of the cult is based on the practice of ‘keeping the sabbath’ or ‘seventh day’, and on the emphasis of the second advent of Christ. Miller believed that Christ would return in 1843 after misinterpreting Daniel 8:14. After the non-occurrence of this event his followers changed the dates for the next twenty or thirty years and eventually gave up trying to predict the second Advent. However, some Adventists insisted that this date marked the beginning of the ‘Investigative Judgment’, the time when Jesus Christ was supposed to have entered the ‘Holy of Holies’ in the Heavenly Sanctuary. This doctrine, as we shall see later, is extremely heretical.
From the 1840s until her death, Mrs Ellen White (formerly Ellen Gould Harmon) experienced trances, visions and angelic revelations, and became known as the ‘spirit of prophecy’ and spiritual authority of the SDA. Opinions about White’s claims and predictions vary within SDA circles. Some claim her revelations are as valid as the apostles, and that her interpretation of Scripture is infallible (without error), whilst others no longer see her as fundamentally important to the SDA. Although individual Adventists may not hold White as important, in June 2000, and May 2002, the General Conference of the SDA voted to more aggressively affirm and support the ‘Spirit of Prophecy through the ministry of Ellen White’.
Near the end of her life White herself claimed that:
There is one straight chain of truth without one heretical sentence in that which I have written.
Ellen White. Letter 329A, 1905
Over the past hundred years her writings have been studied intensely. It has been discovered that she copied large amounts of other people’s writings and claimed them as her own, a blatant lie and gross example of plagiarism on a major scale. Much of White’s writings contain her own ideas about food, herbs etc, and frankly, she makes some rather stupid claims, however, it is the doctrines which contradict the Scriptures which are of importance. Some of those doctrines are as follows:
II. Investigative Judgment.
This idea claims that the atonement work of Christ was not finished on the cross, despite the fact that Jesus Himself proclaimed ‘it is finished’. This SDA claim is the ultimate heresy and insult to the atoning work of Christ. According to White, Jesus did not enter the Holy of Holies when he ascended into heaven just prior to Pentecost, but some 1800 years later. White says that Jesus began to investigate people’s sin at this time. In this so-called revelation she claims that only at the close of His ministry will Christ remove sin from the people, and after this he will place them onto Satan who will bear their sins forever.
This revelation could not have come from God as it contradicts many Scriptures. Hebrews 9:8 - 12 speak of Christ entering the Holy Place, not in 1843, but when he gave his life for us. Also, nowhere does Scripture say that Satan will bear our sins. It is Christ himself who bears our sins (Isaiah 53:11, 1 Peter 2:24) not Satan.
III. Forgiveness of Sin
According to White, Jesus’ death on the cross does not cancel (forgive) sin. She states that;
The blood of Christ, while it was to release the repentant sinner from the condemnation of the law, was not to cancel sin…it will stand in the sanctuary until the final atonement. (Patriarchs and Prophets, p.357)
This doctrine is both heretical and self-contradictory and is tied to the SDA teachings about keeping the Law. Scripture teaches that, when a person surrenders their life to Christ through faith that:
…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)
Furthermore, when one repents through faith in Christ they are cleansed from ALL sin.
1 John 1:7 states:
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)
To preach that Jesus is still atoning for sin is like saying the cross was useless. This is a totally different gospel which is no gospel at all.
3. Assurance of Salvation
If judgment for sin is not dealt with until the second coming, no person can know they are saved, because Christ is investigating everything we do every day. Our salvation is then up to our performance, not on Christ’s work.
In White’s own words,
Those who accept the Savior, however sincere their conversion, should never be taught to say or feel that they are saved. Those who accept Christ, and in their first confidence say, I am saved, are in danger of trusting to themselves.
(Christ's Object Lessons, p. 155).
The Bible specifically contradicts these ideas. Christ finished the work of dealing with sin on the cross and we are guaranteed our salvation when we surrender our lives to Him by faith in His promises. (Colossians 2:13-15, Ephesians 1:,13-14, 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, 5:17-21, John 19:30). Christ intercedes for us in heaven, which means to pray for us, and nowhere in Scripture does it suggest that he is atoning for sin while in heaven. The atonement was finished on the cross.
IV. Exclusivity
From 1844-1851 White revealed that anyone who was not an Adventist by this time was cut off from salvation forever. She took this false prophecy from the story of the five foolish virgins (Matthew 25). Adventists obviously no longer hold to this doctrine, however, many Adventists teach that only Adventists have eternal life.
V. Keeping the Law
White claimed that God told her that we must keep all of the law to be saved. In her words;
Those only who through faith in Christ obey all of God's commandments will reach the condition of sinlessness in which Adam lived before his transgression. They testify to their love of Christ by obeying all his precepts.
Manuscript 122, 1901, quoted in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Vol. 6, p.1118.
This again is deceptive and contradictory. Biblical Christians, by their faith in Christ, have obeyed the entire law because Christ has fulfilled the law and we are in Christ. But this is not what White means. Rather, her claim is that we must keep the law as Jesus kept the law, and only then will we reach a state of sinlessness. Contrary to this, Scripture states that:
For by one sacrifice he (Christ) has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebrews 10:14)
The tenses of this verse are without contradiction. At the moment a person is born again they are declared perfect in Christ, and from that moment they are being made holy, that is, transformed into His likeness and what they have been declared to be.
VI. The Seal of Salvation
The Bible clearly teaches that the Holy Spirit is that by which we are sealed for salvation (Ephesians 1:14), but White teaches that it is in keeping the Sabbath that we are sealed. She states;
The enemies of God's law, from the ministers down to the least among them, have a new conception of truth and duty. Too late they see that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is the seal of the living God.
Great Controversy, p 640
White uses the phrase ‘too late’ in reference to her belief that the mark of the beast in Revelation 13, which the Antichrist forces everyone to receive, is to worship on Sunday. Therefore, all who worship on Sunday are doomed to hell. Many SDA members reject this teaching, however, they still hold to the ‘Sabbath’ as being the true seal of salvation.
Scholars say that White also claimed many other strange visions from God which are not really important. For example she claimed that Adam was twice as tall as modern people, that saints are given wings, that she received wings, that Jesus’ brothers were older, and that she knew the exact day and hour of Jesus’ return.
Was Ellen White a false prophet? We could be generous and suggest that perhaps 10% of what she claimed was true. However, a true prophet of God must be 100% accurate. Any prophet who claimed to be speaking the words of God and was even 1% wrong, was considered to be a false prophet and stoned to death. White claimed that every word she claimed was from God was genuine and beyond human critique. White was obviously a deluded woman, a person seduced by demons who helped to establish a cult which preaches a totally different gospel. But the evidence against the SDA is not confined to what White claimed, but upon their insistence that Christians must keep the Sabbath and obey the Law.
It is important to recognize that not all SDA members follow Ellen White’s teachings. In the past twenty years many SDA churches have rejected most of White’s teachings and tried to become more like evangelical churches. Note also, that the SDA often use a paraphrased version of the Bible called the ‘Clear Word Bible’ which incorporates many of Whites teachings into the actual text. This ‘bible’ was not written to be used as a real Bible, however many SDA members consider it to be true Scripture.
VII. Law and Grace
We turn now to the issue of whether or not it is possible for SDA members to be considered true Christians without rejecting their insistence on Sabbath observance and keeping the Law. The real issue here is about Law and Grace and it is to this issue mainly that I claim the SDA as a cult regardless of all which we have already studied. We will see that the issue of adding law to faith and grace is not new. Paul had to write about it wherever there were Jewish Christians. For Paul, the gospel is a new life in Christ apart from the law, a life lived by faith in Christ alone. If we add one law to this faith and say it is also essential for salvation, then we completely cancel grace and we insult the death of Christ as being insufficient for salvation. This is the real issue.
In order to understand the importance of this issue we must first define what the gospel is. The word gospel simply means ‘GOOD NEWS’. In order to understand the ‘good news’, we need to know what it is being compared to. So, what is the ‘bad news’?
The bad news is that God standard is perfection, a perfection which can only be found through faith in Christ, either retrospectively as in the case of Abraham and the OT saints, and since the death and resurrection of Christ. The letter to the Hebrews states that:
If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical Priesthood – and indeed the law given to the people established that priesthood – why was there still need for another priest, one on the order of Melchizidek, not in the order of Aaron? (Hebrews 7:11)
The point is simple: Only a perfect priest can make the people perfect. The Levitical priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sins, but Christ was sinless. Hebrews 10:1 states,
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. (Hebrews 10:1)
And about Jesus Christ it states;
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebrews 10:14)
Before Christ fulfilled the law by giving his life as a sacrifice for sin, the only way a person could be considered perfect was by observing ALL of the law. The bad news was in trying to keep a covenant which required total obedience without the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit to help you live it. The SDA pick and choose a few commandments and consider these to be the ones they must keep. The Galatians chose to add the law of circumcision as necessary for salvation and Paul told them:
Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4)
Paul also writes:
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law. (Galatians 3:10)
Whether the particular law is circumcision, keeping the Sabbath or any other, if anyone teaches that keeping the law is necessary for salvation, they have rejected Christ and fallen from grace. To such people the Apostle Paul had the harshest warning, twice using the word Anathema, to be eternally cursed (Galatians 1:8-9)
SDA teach that the food restrictions of Leviticus 11 must be observed entirely, plus the Ten commandments, and that a person’s salvation depends on these observances. During the Investigative Judgment Christ is checking to see who is keeping the commandments.
But Scripture states regarding Christians:
Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath Day. These are a shadow of the things which were to come, the reality, however, is found in Christ. Galatians 2:16-17
Paul is specifically speaking about the dietary regulations, festivals and commands of the Mosaic law. All of them were but a shadow of what was to come in Christ, they pointed to Him and are absolutely fulfilled in Him, including observing the ‘Sabbath Day’.
VIII. In Conclusion.
The SDA have ‘fallen from grace’, they ‘preach a different gospel’. Parts of that gospel are new, such as the heresy of Investigative Judgment, Mark of the Beast and Sabbath as a Seal, but their adding law to grace is as old as Christianity itself. Christ never came to abolish the law, He came to fulfill it by establishing a new covenant in his blood. The law will always stand because it is there to reflect the glory of God against sin. All who reject Christ remain under the curse of the law. But the new covenant is apart from the law. Entry into that covenant requires us to approach God empty-handed, and to live by faith alone in Christ.
If we add a single Levitical Law as necessary for salvation, we are claiming that the death of our Savior was not enough. This is the greatest insult to the person of Jesus Christ and points to our performance for salvation, rather than His sacrifice. The Apostle Paul’s warnings in Galatians that those who add law to grace are ‘eternally cursed’ (Anathema) stand as a testimony of how serious this issue is.
I pray this article has been helpful for you in clarifying the teachings of Seventh Day Adventists. I ask that you please share this article/video with anyone you know who is a part of this cult for they are in serious danger of the wrath of God. The video series on World Religions and Cults can be viewed from my YouTube channel @stevecopland6001.
Steve Copland