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Colleentinker
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Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 11505
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:41 pm: |     |
Adrian, I KNOW what you mean. We have a member of our FAF Bible study who was a born-again evangelical Christian before marrying a really sincere-about-God Adventist. This person (the Christian) became SDA when they married the SDA, but they didn't know the doctrines deeply. All they knew were the public definitions the pastors and Adventists gave them.
Anyway, about a year and a half ago, this couple finally "SAW", and both left Adventism. They attend our Bible study, and the one that was originally Christian keeps gasping and saying, "I had NO idea they believed that...that's TERRIBLE!"
This person has been extremely reactive to the "state of the dead" issues, and they now believe the disbelief in human spirit is totally warping and changed EVERYTHING for the Adventists. This person sees the state-of-the-dead doctrine to be totally dangerous, false, heretical, and the reason Adventists use words that sound Christian but are possessed of deviant definitions.
No, you're not over-reacting. You are exactly right on.
Colleen |
Doc
Registered user
Username: Doc
Post Number: 596
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 4:34 am: | |
Totally dangerous, false, heretical, deviant. Do they really believe that?
Yes, that is the reaction I am getting from my English (and Hungarian) Evangelical friends. So now I have to figure out what to do with this information. I am sure God has not made this so clear to me for no reason. |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 562
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 12:09 pm: | |
I'm going to change my personal views about adventism,...again. I'm not going to classify them as orthodox, but I'm going to remove the label "conservative" and replace it with the label "liberal".
Two books were instrumental: "Christianity and Liberalism" by Gresham Machen (1924) and "Steps to Christ" by Ellen White. I was surprised to find how the God of liberals is almost identical with the God of adventism.
Previously to this discovery I saw adventism as being primarily the religion of Pharisees, now, without denying the Pharisaical spirit of adventism, I'm starting to see it as primarily the religion of Sadducees. As you remember, the Sadducees denied the existence of the spirit, angels, etc. A strong anti-supernaturalism dominated their thinking.
The surprise comes when in the middle of a religion that people think is far from liberal, a conservative religion, affirming miracles, Jesus' incarnation, death and resurrection, they discover suddenly at the core a liberal element that is like a dagger in the heart.
I have much more things to say about this. If people are interested I can start a new thread about this, I was highly surprised to see how liberal Ellen White was in "Steps to Christ". One reason many adventists are looking at us as not being true adventists in our adventists days is because we had not shared the liberal views that in general adventists have. We had not bought the idea that "God is love" and his love informs his justice to the degree that his love accepts imperfect obedience as perfect and, out of his mercy, he saves all adventists who try to be good. A liberal god is so loving that he can't condemn people to hell for eternity and surely all people who try to be obedient and live a moral life are beneficiaries of his love that trumps justice. Even pagans who are open to the manifestation of God's love in nature and live as far as they can according to what they understand to be God's moral requirements will be saved, apart from any personal knowledge and faith in Christ's sacrifice. Sure, believers have the advantage to see the demonstration and manifestation of God's love in Christ, but it's not essential to believe in Christ's substitutionary atonement for salvation. Why? Because God is love, salvation is not primarily salvation from his wrath against sin (that's the scary part propagated by nasty people like Jonathan Edwards that scary people with hell), but from bad behavior. The problem is moral, man's heart need persuasion to return to God.
Because of these assumptions, adventists don't feel the burden of sin, the burden of the condemnation of the law, their need to escape that condemnation through Jesus'. Even if their theology speaks about being perfect, God will judge them not according to naked justice, a stern Judge, according to a perfect standard, but will judge them mercifully, his mercy usually winning against justice. If they will be found wanting, still imperfect, still sinning, God's mercy will do the rest. How can be otherwise, since God is primarily love? His love is so great that even his justice must bow before it.
Fine, but this is the liberal god, not the God of the Bible. Certainly not a holy God.
Gabriel |
Hec
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Username: Hec
Post Number: 1204
Registered: 3-2009
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 12:21 pm: | |
I do my best and Jesus makes up for the difference.
Hec |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 563
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 3:46 pm: | |
Perhaps many former adventists had scratched their heads wondering why adventists can live so peacefully under the yoke of terrible doctrines like the Investigative Judgment without going nuts.
Answer: the liberal god. God is love by definition, he must be merciful, even for the lost, he will show mercy by annihilating them.
In Christianity, at the end two groups will experience God in two different radical ways:
1. the saints will experience God's eternal presence in his mercy,grace
2. the damned will experience God's eternal presence in his justice manifested by wrath against sin and sinners
These two different ways of living in God's presence have nothing in common with each other: saints don't experience God's justice and wrath toward their sin, the wicked don't experience God's mercy and grace toward them in Christ. There is no intersection, that's a given.
Adventists reject eternal punishment. Until recently I thought that the difference of view reflect different degrees of perceiving God's justice: some think that God's justice requires a different amount of punishment than others think. Still the experience of talking with adventists on this subject plus one quotation from "Steps to Christ" show that the difference is not in degrees but in kind.
In the adventist understanding, the wicked will experience at the end a mixture of God's justice AND GRACE, MERCY. While in Christianity, hell is stern retributive justice, without grace mixed in it, in adventism the annihilation view of hell is justice mixed with grace. In fact, annihilation is a more merciful act than people guess. Consequently those who subscribe to this view perceive the Christian God as being terribly unjust and unmerciful, with other words, thousands of years different than the loving God they worship. After all, how the Christian God can lack love so much that he will torture people in hell for eternity?
And it's not just the fact that this God tortures for an indefinite period of time some people. It's the fact that he's torturing them that's not acceptable. Apparently adventists accept God tormenting people for a limited time, but this is rather a concession due to the necessity to punish sin. But in the adventist view, annihilationism is a lesser evil, a way of temporary and drastically limited torture necessary for God to show mercy in a strange way toward sinners by saving them from a bigger and unacceptable torture: heaven.
In the second chapter of "Steps to Christ" Ellen White says about the fact that the wicked will not be allowed entrance into heaven:
quote:He would be a discordant note in the melody of heaven. Heaven would be to him a place of torture; he would long to be hidden from Him who is its light, and the center of its joy. It is no arbitrary decree on the part of God that excludes the wicked from heaven; they are shut out by their own unfitness for its companionship. The glory of God would be to them a consuming fire. They would welcome destruction, that they might be hidden from the face of Him who died to redeem them.
Notice that for the wicked heaven is a place of torture, eternal life = eternal torture or eternal hell, consequently the wicked's annihilation is practically God's merciful way in saving those sinner's from eternal hell. Even the wicked will welcome destruction, he will welcome this merciful act.
The first conclusion is that for an adventist, God is all merciful, all loving, and both categories, saints and sinners will receive what they want, being saved from torments, one way or another. The wicked will never be confronted with God's justice in full manifestation, they will be mercifully spared from God's holy presence. In adventist understanding there is practically no hell. Even the temporary hell is a merciful way of escaping a bigger hell and torture that a sinner living in heaven will suffer.
The second conclusion is that Ellen White's conception of God is very liberal. Twice in the paragraph she's using the words "to them", "to him", speaking about a pure subjective internal experience that has nothing to do with the objective external reality. In the Bible, God is presented as utterly holy, a consuming fire, somebody from whom even the angels hide their faces while saying "Holy, Holy, Holy". For Ellen, heaven is subjectively hell for the sinner, God is subjectively a consuming fire, "to them a consuming fire." As heaven is obviously not hell in itself, objectively, meaning an external reality, but only subjectively, experienced by the wicked as hell, so God's glory is not objectively a consuming fire, but only subjectively, experienced as consuming fire. Did you catch this?
I'm insisting on this because I think that this is one important key in understanding why many of our friends remain unimpressed by our attempts to show them the "ugly face" of their own doctrines. When we attempt to ask them how can they live while knowing that maybe their case is judged in heaven, they don't feel threatened by this thought. That's because they don't have a belief that they deal with objective justice, they think that they deal with objective love and mercy and whatever will be their objective performance before God when their name will come at the judgment bar, this will not have to meet an objective standard of holiness. Rather, the objective reality in their understanding is that God is loving, merciful, and they will experience his mercy, even if, only in an exceptional case, condemnation will be their fate.
The liberal view of God functions as a valve, making impossible for the pressure to rise to the degree that their system will explode. When we try to rise the pressure in their recipient, they simply release the hot air through this liberal valve. Only when God takes care of this valve, when adventists are confronted with the holiness of God in the Bible, the valve stops functioning, the pressure increase and people are led to their knees and cry mercy.
Gabriel
(Message edited by Jackob on August 03, 2010) |
Asurprise
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Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 1332
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 4:30 pm: | |
Hec; that's what I used to think too, as an Adventist. In fact, ALL the false religions have that in their make-up to a greater or lesser degree. (For example, in Islam, a person's good deeds must outweigh their bad ones.) So that sums up Adventist thinking in a nutshell.
What they don't realize is, God is a holy God and a person has to be AS GOOD AS GOD to make it to Heaven. Since our righteousness is filthy rags, there's only one way to Heaven. Accept the perfect, finished atonement of Jesus! The trouble is, ALL the false religions teach that their followers have work they MUST do themselves in order to be saved. |
Colleentinker
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Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 11514
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 5:18 pm: | |
Jackob, what excellent posts! You are 100% correct. Absolutely.
I had not thought it through in quite the way you described this reality before, but you are totally right. I have pondered for quite some time that Adventism is actually liberal rather than conservative, that all the "legalism" is just window-dressing on a highly liberal, relativistic view of Scripture and God.
But your applying the liberal view of God to the Adventist definition of God's justice, mercy, wrath, and hell is very insightful.
Yes--hell is about the wicked finally receiving God's wrath and vengeance against sin. The Bible never leaves us a loophole to say God is "so loving he wouldn't torture anyone forever." Rather, the Bible keeps repeating the statement, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." In fact, this reality is the basis for the clear instruction in Romans 12 never to take our own revenge because God's vengeance is certain.
When Adventists say God is merciful and loving and "would never punish eternally," they totally dismiss the cross. God actually provided a way for people to avoid His wrath—and He did it in a completely self-sacrificing way. He didn't just change the consequences of sin (which can't be changed at any rate, because that consequence is a law as fixed as is planetary rotation and gravity). He took into the Being of the Trinity in the person of the Son the Trinity's own judgment on human sin.
God's grace IS eternal—and one can only experience it through Jesus, believing God's words and promises and falling before Him in repentance and submission.
The denial of hell is a denial of the nature and fact of sin as well as a denial of the absolute justice and mercy of God. He's not just manipulating events, deciding who will and who won't suffer. He provided eternal grace by giving His Son.
Hell is not primarily about "sin". Hell is what happens to people who reject the Son—the Sin-bearer who took their sin. People suffer eternally not because God is unjust but because they refuse His absolute justice which places them in His debt...without any payment exacted except belief and surrender to Him.
He asks of us what He gave us of Himself: ALL that we are.
Colleen |
Hec
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Username: Hec
Post Number: 1208
Registered: 3-2009
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 7:37 pm: | |
Could any one explain where in the Bible (either correct, manipulating verses, or what you have) can they find that theory of "I do my best and Christ makes up the difference?" This is a very strong position in the SDA organization.
Hec |
Dennis
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Username: Dennis
Post Number: 2065
Registered: 4-2000
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 7:42 pm: | |
If one doesn't get Genesis right, it certainly clouds the entire Bible. I just had a conversation with a devout Adventist last week who insisted that skunks and badgers had the same breath of life put into them as with human beings. Thus, their dying just like animals is not unique if they were also created just like animals. The secular evolutionist and the Adventist both agree that man is not a dualistic being (body and soul). Since Seventh-day Adventism is a very physical religion, seeing is believing. Likewise, the evolutionist cannot see the human spirit in any laboratory dissecton.
The SDA attempt to observe the Jewish Sabbath is not sufficient to classify them as creationists. Scripture is clear that the Creator breathed into man the breath of life (spirit entity); whereas with animals, they were created merely by God's command without a soul entity. Moreover, humankind was created in the spirit image of God (Christ had not yet taken on the physical human form at creation). As God's image bearers, human beings were the crowning act of creation. All in all, this is all so easy to understand, but Adventists insist upon a view about death that is foreign to Scripture. I agree that the SDA view of death is more of a "sticking point" than even the Sabbath.
Dennis Fischer |
Dennis
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Username: Dennis
Post Number: 2066
Registered: 4-2000
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 8:29 pm: | |
Hec,
Unfortunately, the liberal theology of cooperative grace (God helps man to save himself) is actually very popular in Christianity these days. This certainly reflects the Pelagian captivity of the church today. The longer we are Christians the further we move from any feeling that we are responsible for our salvation or even any part of it, and the closer we come to the conviction that it is all of God.
The reason why some believe the gospel and are saved by it is that God intervenes in their lives to bring them to faith. He does it by the new birth or regeneration. But those who are lost--and this is the crucial point--are not caused by God to disbelieve. They do that all by themselves. To ordain their end, God needs only to withhold the special grace of regeneration. Truly, salvation is a divine rescue mission from start to finish.
Dennis Fischer
(Message edited by Dennis on August 03, 2010) |
Jackob
Registered user
Username: Jackob
Post Number: 564
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 1:41 am: | |
Colleen said:
quote:I have pondered for quite some time that Adventism is actually liberal rather than conservative, that all the "legalism" is just window-dressing on a highly liberal, relativistic view of Scripture and God.
The "legalism" feature of adventism fits also very well the liberal description. When liberals tried to hijack the orthodox churches, they used Christian terminology, changing the meanings of the words. They saw themselves as saving the core of Christianity by abandoning what they thought could not be intellectually defensible in the modern age: the supernatural.
The liberals renounced to miracles, virgin birth, resurrection, and in this way they end up with a very human Christ who was no longer divine. Consequently the essence of Jesus' mission was not salvation from sin, but something else: ethics. He came not as an all-powerful God to save people from the condemnation, guilt and power of sin, but as an ethical teacher, showing people the way to leave. The permanent value of the Christian faith is ethics, the morality of Jesus, not his saving acts in history. Consequently Christ functions as an example for us, and as a teacher. More, the big orthodox doctrines of Christianity doesn't matter too much, Christ's divinity, the Trinity, the substitutionary significance of his death, justification by faith alone, all these are dispensable things.
Adventism functions in similar ways: Jesus is primarily an example, moralism is the core of the Bible message, the orthodox doctrines of the Christianity doesn't matter too much. I have yet to see an adventist admit that James White, Joseph Bates and Uriah Smith were heretics and not Christians because they denied Trinity.
Ric, Raven's husband, mentioned how strange he felt when he realized that you can be a member in good standing and believe that Jesus had a sinful human nature because the church never took an official position, but you can't be if you are persuaded that wine is allowed in the Bible. In my view, this reflects the liberal character of adventism: moralistic and doctrinally minimalistic.
At the same time, in the adventist system, it doesn't matter too much if Trinity is denied or Jesus' full divinity and unity with Father and Son. Jesus' divinity was seen from the beginning of Christianity as a key element in redemption: only somebody who is infinite can suffer infinite punishment for sins. If there is no infinite punishment, there is no need for an infinite Savior. Jesus can be as well be only a man who is indwelt by divinity, it doesn't matter.
Also in regard with salvation, no wonder that people can be saved without even knowing the gospel. If they respond to the general moral persuasion of the Holy Spirit (not his special work of indwelling born-again believers, but his general influence on unbelievers) in a positive manner, this will be sufficient, because the problem is not a holy and angry God, not God's wrath directed against sin, the problem is in another place: people are not moral enough to fit heaven. They need moral re-education, not what Christianity understands as new birth, or spiritual regeneration. If there is no human soul, the new birth is not different from moral re-education, something that doesn't require supernatural intervention and can be accomplished using techniques that are not spiritual, but physical in nature. Like vegetarianism, physical exercise, all these things are effective outside the realm of Christian faith. Basically the exclusiveness of Christianity, of Christ's redemption is denied.
And in such conditions there is no need for an inerrant Bible. Why should be? Salvation is not based on a unique message about what somebody had done in history, Christ's life, death and resurrection. Salvation is not based on a particular belief in a particular and special revelation about Christ's person and work. Salvation is based on moral persuasion, on moral conviction, on law. Since all people have a moral sense due to the general revelation, and if response to this general revelation is sufficient to qualify somebody for heaven, the necessity for a special revelation that will proclaim something that is not found in the general revelation, something absolutely necessary for salvation, this necessity disappears. The sufficiency of general revelation, the moralistic nature of salvation, makes special revelation unnecessary in some sense. Who cares if the Bible contains errors of facts? We had access to all we need, moral persuasion, even outside this special revelation.
A lower view of sin doesn't require a higher view of Savior, a higher view of the Bible, it requires just an example, moral persuasion that will keep people motivated to do better, to push for improvement. Sin is not a big problem that cannot be removed except by faith in Christ's precious blood. To be sure, Christ's blood is not denied, but the centrality and sufficiency of his sacrifice flies under the adventist radar.
The difficulty we formers encounter with adventists is that they don't seem to take seriously their own doctrines. They are quick to charge us with not truly understanding adventism. I think that in a sense this is true, because we constantly learn something new about adventism. At the same time they are wrong because in the light of the gospel adventism fails to pass the standard. Still, I think we may grant adventists the benefit of the doubt, because in a certain way they didn't believe like we believed in the past. I think we should be thankful to God that in adventism he protected us from the liberal influences that control the adventist mindset. I believe that God overruled our upbringing and even in our adventist years God spoke to us through his Word and also through the general revelation about his majesty, his holiness, about the fact that He is a God with whom we can't play games. Because of the conservative outlook of adventism, we missed the reality that a liberal god lurks underneath. God used this conservative coat to impress on us the truths about Himself as holy, just and majestic. Next, after we were confronted with his utter holiness and perfect moral standards, he led us to the gospel in which we found our redemption from our fate. We certainly have to thank God both for the way in which he discovered his gospel to us but also for the way in which he prepared ourselves for it. At least, I can no longer claim that I was an average adventist, because I wasn't. I walked in the middle of people with whom I thought I shared a common faith, but the reality was different. My God was not the liberal God, my God was different. And because of this, adventist's solution to my sin was totally inadequate. Because the solution was not found within, it should be sought outside adventism, and the rest is history.
Soli Deo Gloria
To God Alone Be the Glory
Gabriel |
Asurprise
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Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 1333
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 12:52 pm: | |
Hec; it's allll Jesus. We don't "do our part" in order to be saved. Our very best is "filthy rags." I got a "book of Mormon" because I have a Mormon sister whom I've been trying to reach with the gospel. In one of the "Nephi" books, there's a "verse" that reads something like: "...for it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do."
The Holy Spirit indwells a person when that person accepts Jesus, but He is the One Who causes us to act like a Christian. It isn't our "acting like Christians" though, that saves us - not in part and not at all. Accepting, really accepting the Atonement (Jesus) is what saves us.
It's not something plus Jesus. We either stand in Jesus righteousness or our own. Either one or the other. ALL the cults are mixed up on this point - SDA, LDS, Islam, RCC, J.Witnesses, etc.... |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 565
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 3:38 pm: | |
Hec said
quote:Could any one explain where in the Bible (either correct, manipulating verses, or what you have) can they find that theory of "I do my best and Christ makes up the difference?" This is a very strong position in the SDA organization.
Facientibus quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam
translated
To those who do what is in them, God will not deny grace
is an old medieval "song" which was abundantly used against Luther at the time of reformation. Today's the slogan "God helps those who help themselves", Benjamin Franklin's words, are considered by many american Christians to be a Bible verse, as a poll indicated. The environment and the culture at large, not biblical reasons are more responsible for this way of reading into the Bible what is not in it.
When adventists are questioned about the biblical reasons for this view, usually the aren't able to give an answer, or, in the case of those more conscious about their own beliefs, Romans 2 is offered as an answer.
quote:For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. Romans 2:13
They point that only those who are doers of the law will be justified, but define "doers" using verses 6-8:
quote:He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. Romans 2:6-8
The key term in their understanding is the word "seek." They argue that you don't need to be a doer of the law in the sense of perfectly keeping it, but you need to be "heavenly oriented", "seeking" the things above, having the right attitude, the opposite of self-seeking, self-oriented. God sees the right orientation, the concern for the things which are right, the tendency toward obeying the law, and graciously pours his grace over you, in justification.
For a more detailed analysis of Romans 2 in context, perhaps my commentary on week 3 for the Romans lessons will be helpful.
http://www.biblestudiesforadventists.com/2010/quarter3/week3/index.html
Gabriel
(Message edited by Jackob on August 04, 2010) |
Colleentinker
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Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 11522
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 4:02 pm: | |
Gabriel, your post above is so right-on. Your analysis of Adventism is extremely accurate, and I love your explanation of God somehow guarding you with a conservative view of Him, thus leading you toward His true revelation of Himself in Scripture.
For me one of your defining statements describing Adventism is
quote:moralism is the core of the Bible message,
That totally establishes the faulty foundation they live on. Yes! The ad nauseum arguments about law-keeping being the mark of true believers grows from that belief. It's all about moral behavior. Even their incessant question, "What about the Sabbath?" reflects that bias.
It's all about moralism. As Dennis said above, the Adventist "state of the dead" doctrine is the deepest, most shaping one of all. Without "spirit", what is there besides morality?
Gary Inrig said a really profound thing at the end of his devotional talk on Habakkuk at the last FAF weekend. He said the most dangerously deceptive "thing" is a highly moral person who doesn't need God. Yet this is exactly the sort of person Adventists try to be.
Oh, they don't know that's what they're emulating...they would give lip service to "God"--but it isn't the holy, righteous God of Scripture and eternity.
Believing only in physical body without spirit is like psychological "splitting" when a person escapes horror or abuse by a sort of "fugue state" or splitting from reality. Split from what's actually going on, they "live" in the created reality of their own minds, ignoring what is actually affecting them.
That is Adventism. It is split from reality, which includes an entire spiritual realm in which God IS and which is part of their own "image of God".
This is such a dangerous "place" to be. People are being lost because they refuse to believe reality is different from their own indoctrinated world view.
It's the Matrix...and it looks so clean and good and compassionate—with all the right words—to the onlooking Christian world as well as the non-Christian world.
Colleen |
Dennis
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Username: Dennis
Post Number: 2067
Registered: 4-2000
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 8:20 pm: | |
"WHEN THE DOOR OF MY PRISON WAS OPENED"
Lynda Randle wrote, "When I met Jesus, He made me complete...I am free from the guilt of tomorrow, and I am free from the guilt of my past...I traded my shackles for a glorious song; praise the Lord, I am free at last!" Please join Lynda Randle with David Phelps as they beautifully sing "I'm Free." It is my heartfelt prayer that you will be richly blessed. As former Adventists, our awesome and sovereign God has led us out of the darkness of despair and adopted us into His wonderful family. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to this reality!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grGGxlPJZF8&feature=related
Dennis Fischer |
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