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Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the truth that's been once delivered to all the saints.

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And so at The Apologetic Dog, 1 Timothy 6 .20 is where my heart's at, something that I want to ground us in scripture, where Paul tells

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Timothy, guard the gospel deposit that's been entrusted to you. We do this by avoiding pagan philosophy, irreverent babble.

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We do this by exposing contradictions within worldviews that claim to have knowledge and know the truth.

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And we say no. We stand on God's word at every point and turn. And so today, I have a very special guest that I'd love to introduce to you,

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Myles Christian, where context is king. Isn't that right? That's a fact.

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That is fact, folks. Myles, I found your channel not too long ago, and I was very impressed with answering

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Adventism and just all the features and things that you have going on. And you're a new channel. You're a new kid on the block.

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But as I talked to you, I was like, man, he knows so much more than me when it comes to the YouTube world and production -wise.

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And so I look forward to hopefully more stuff in the future. But I was very intrigued with your testimony, where you come from.

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And so I'd love for you to tell people more about who you are and what your channel is all about.

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Yeah, totally. Well, thanks for having me. I am a former third -generation

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Seventh -day Adventist. I always preface with that because in the Adventist world, that's kind of like a big thing to be multi -generational.

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If you know their history, you'll kind of know why that's a little bit of a big thing. But I'm a former third -generation

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Seventh -day Adventist. My dad is a pastor in the Seventh -day Adventist church. I was educated in their institutions.

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And so I was raised Seventh -day Adventist, obviously. Had a pretty radical conversion.

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I don't know how much time you want to spend specifically on my testimony. I keep telling all these live streams that I go on that I'm going to do a video, which

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I am. But I want to put a lot of thought and effort into that specific video. And so it's taking a little bit longer.

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Eventually, I'll be able to point people to that because it is a little bit of a lengthy discussion. But the cliff notes would essentially be that I became pretty nominal with my

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Adventism, basically based on the theology itself, producing a feeling of, well, the feeling that the law, as the

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Bible tells us, is supposed to produce. Condemnation, guilt, await. Shackles that essentially, the more

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I looked at, the more I felt unworthy, depressed, etc., which is a great thing.

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But the problem is, is the gospel never actually swooped in underneath that, as we would understand in our law gospel distinction.

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And so like all groups, they have intermixed the law with the gospel. They are essentially mono -covenantalists.

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There's essentially only one fundamental covenant. So they kind of pull the wool over a lot of Christians' eyes in this area who maybe aren't as learned.

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But for those that are, if you don't understand their covenant theology, you're really going to struggle to understand why they have a false gospel.

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But basically, due to the weight of that, I was unable to really bear that any longer.

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So I became pretty nominal in my faith. I would have still said I was a Seventh -day Adventist.

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I would have still said I was a Christian. All that good stuff. College came around. I went out to eat with a friend one day.

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Pretty normal thing to be doing, so it wasn't anything out of the blue. But while we were there, he actually segued into a gospel presentation.

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And he asked me if he could share the gospel with me. And I actually told him, you know, I'm a Christian. I know the gospel.

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And in our day and age, especially, no, I wasn't offended because I've always kind of been like,

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I've always been like a deep thinker and into deeper conversations and stuff like that. This, though, was an area that I didn't feel comfortable enough because I was nominal.

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And not just that, but I was nominally SDA. So in my mind, before he even says anything, it's, you're not a true

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Christian. You don't understand the light that God has given for this time, this present truth, that sort of stuff.

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That's kind of subconsciously working underneath the surface. And so I really just anticipated kind of saying that to then transition just into the next thing to keep the day going.

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And he actually asked me, he said, well, can you share the gospel with me? And I was like, well, that wasn't the response that I was anticipating to get.

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So I did. I shared with him the Adventist gospel. What does that look like?

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Well, we can get into that a little bit, I think, maybe in our part two discussion, since we're going to talk about works righteousness.

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So I mainly say that because that's a whole thing in and of itself. And then we'll never actually get to the end of what

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I'm saying here or into what we plan to talk to tonight. But I basically presented to him the

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Adventist gospel. He said, well, do you care if I share something different with you? And it resonated with me, man.

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It was completely different. And you have to think too contextually. Think about it, a person who their whole life thinks they know the truth, thinks that what they've been taught growing up is correct, all those sorts of things.

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Even if you're having doubts, even if you're in a phase of nominalism, hindsight's always 20 -20.

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So if you think about it like in the moment, it was a very heavy thing to think, my dad's a pastor,

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I know Jesus, I believe in Jesus, I know the gospel, to then be told something so drastically different that, like I said, in a phase of nominalism, actually sounded like good news.

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Because he didn't just say, you know, he didn't give an easy believism presentation. It wasn't just, hey, say this prayer with me here at the table and get your ticket punched so you can go to heaven.

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That's something much more radical, that in Seventh -day Adventism, you don't have an immaterial aspect to your being.

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You are merely a product of a physical nature. Your soul is a combination of the breath of life and a body.

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When you die, they essentially affirm soul sleep. They'll want to say state of the dead, because they don't want to be associated with Jehovah's Witnesses.

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But it's essentially the same thing. Your breath goes back to God, your body goes into the ground, and you basically cease to exist, and your existence is essentially in the mind of God.

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It's not that you're a conscious, aware being. So to hear something like, your problem is actually that you're born spiritually dead.

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You're actually a slave to sin. And this guy presented the gospel of grace, essentially.

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That your real problem is that you're actually spiritually dead, and there's literally nothing that you can do about it.

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You're stuck in a conundrum, and there's literally only one way out of that conundrum. It's not just a conundrum, too, that you're spiritually dead and can't do anything about it.

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It's actually that you're a guilty criminal. And there's really no hope for you. Because here's what the requirement is.

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So there was the insertion of the law that I was very familiar with. But then when the gospel came up underneath that, as it made the gospel actual good news, is that, well, there's really good news.

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And that's actually that in the person of Jesus Christ, God himself, the second person of the Triune God, entered into his own creation, not to vindicate the law of God and silence the accusations of Satan in this great controversy, like the

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Seventh -day Admonisher teaches, but rather to demonstrate his wrath, his grace, his mercy, all of these attributes and these various things.

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And that really the purpose of the law is to show us why we need a Savior to convict us, the standard

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Reformed understanding of the threefold use of the law. That was very different than the use of the law that I was taught growing up.

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I was taught the law, the purpose of the law is to show us what we have to strive to essentially, we have to get to a point where we can, and by the law, they mean the

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Ten Commandments, we have to get to a point where we, through the aid and help of the Holy Spirit, demonstrate a faith identical to what

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Jesus had. So it's essentially semi -Pelagianism. You need the cross opened up the door to salvation, making salvation a possibility, and Jesus's life demonstrates that you too can live a life in perfect obedience to the the law of God.

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Now you have the helper, the Holy Spirit, who's able to come alongside you and empower you to do something you couldn't previously do.

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You have to get to a point eventually to where you can stand before Almighty God without an intercessor. So it's sinless perfectionism to the max, and that was the understanding of the law that I had.

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So you can imagine when somebody comes in and says, no, no, Jesus paid it all, literally, Jesus paid it all, and he didn't just pay it all.

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He paid it all and then wants to give you an upgrade that you don't deserve. He's not just, you're not just going to get what you, you're not just going to not get what you do deserve, which is mercy.

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You're actually going to get essentially an upgrade. You're going to be given something you don't deserve on top of God's mercy, which is the righteousness of Christ.

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You can be seen as righteous in Christ. So that really stuck with me and stayed with me obviously to this present day.

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I wasn't converted on the spot, but about a year and a half down the road, I got into some other things after that and then actually had a pretty radical, what

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I'd say like a regeneration or born -again experience. And I just all of a sudden had a word now.

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I read through the Bible in like two or three weeks. I was obsessed with reading the Bible. And in doing that, my initial pull, which again, being like a baby

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Christ, you don't sometimes make the connections that again, with hindsight and maturity, you can look back and kind of see like, oh, wow, it's just,

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I guess, testimony to God working. I didn't really make the connection of like, well, this church has a false gospel.

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So I can't go back to that. There was still a lot of stuff, obviously in my subconscious of like, well, I need to go back to the remnant church, which is exactly what we're going to talk about tonight.

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But I had a pull to want to go back to my tradition. And so I did for a season, but now with the

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Holy Spirit dwelling within me and actually reading the Bible through a completely different lens and understanding now, it became very hard to defend these things.

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One by one, they started falling. And so that kind of led my journey out of that after being regenerated.

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So you grew up in the Seventh -day Adventist church, SDA. Yep. And in college, you had someone present the gospel of grace and it rocked your world.

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And so you started looking into these things and started studying scripture, it sounds like, for the first time. Things in context, right?

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Because that matters. Yeah, well, so I went to an

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SDA university actually after this whole thing. This was actually at a secular university. I was on a track scholarship, so that kind of influenced that.

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But it was about a year and a half. Yeah, I ran track and field.

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And so, okay, right on. I did long jump and I was a sprinter. But I went to a secular university at first.

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And so it was there that this friend presented that to me. And then it was about a year and a half after that, that I had a pretty radical conversion.

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And then about three months after that is when I realized, okay,

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Seventh -day Adventism is not true. There's no way I can do this anymore. So I just started attending a non -denominational church, continued studying the

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Bible, reading that sort of thing. But then came time to figure out what I... I dropped out of school for a season.

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So it was in that season of life that all this happened. So I was at the time figuring out, okay, what do

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I want to major in? When do I want to go back to school, et cetera? And so actually upon that happening,

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I decided to go to an Adventist university, not as an Adventist anymore, but specifically because they had a good education program for the field

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I was going into, but I also saw it as a mission field and had a burden for Seventh -day Adventism. So that's where that started, essentially leading to...

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That was eight years ago, nine years ago, now leading to the YouTube channel.

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Right. Which I want to allow people to hear you explain more about because I found your channel and I loved it because you want to continue to help people out of this restoration movement, right?

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Where there's a lot of different sects of people that claim to be the one true church and, hey, you need to come listen to us to hear these deeper truths.

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So where can people find a lot of your content? I'll let you talk on that for a second. You can just go on YouTube and just type in, answering

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Adventism in the search bar and the channel will pop up. Heck yeah, man.

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We got to get you a website one of these days. That's in the works, man. Of course, it's like,

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I am of the opinion, move at the snail's pace if the snail's pace is making more progress than the rabbit pace.

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So I'm moving at a snail's pace, but there will eventually be a website at some point, which will also be like and serve as an educational resource hub.

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Well, that makes a lot of sense. Really build that foundation, and you're doing something right.

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You have over a thousand subscribers in just a few months' time. I noticed that and I was like, I need to talk to this man.

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I've watched a lot of your content. You have a heart in evangelism and helping people out of these groups that have a false gospel, and we do that out of love and grace, not to say, hey, listen to how smart

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I am. It's like, no, we care about the truth. We care about the true Jesus being the second member of the triune

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Godhead. It's like these things matter, and so I see your heart in that, and maybe you've seen a few of the things that I've done on my channel.

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I engage with debates, interviews. I was on the Cultish podcast talking about the

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Church of Christ. They are a type of restorationist movement, a

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Campbellite movement, and I believe they have totally added and imported works into the gospel of grace.

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Pretty much they look at Jesus and say, hey, thanks. That really helps me along my journey. It's like, man, everything that you were going to, it's like, no, you're a sinner.

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When you look at the law of God, you have not only fallen at one point of that, but you've shattered the whole thing.

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You need a perfect Savior, and look to Him, not yourself. Look to Him alone in faith, and that's ultimately how we're made right with God.

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And so we keep talking about this restoration movement and how it birthed all these different groups, and this is ultimately where Seventh -day

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Adventism comes from, right? So can you speak to that a little bit of how the whole movement kind of came about during that time period?

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Yeah, so there's like the real in -depth granular version, which is a whole show, obviously, in and of itself.

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Speaking of cultish, Colleen Tinker and Nikki Stevenson from Former Adventist Fellowship were actually just on the cultish podcast, and they did two whole episodes dedicated to that.

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So if you want a more in -depth discussion on that, that's just one of the many places that you can go to get that.

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So I'll kind of give you the flyover. They obviously don't or don't want to like formally associate themselves with the

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Restorationist movement, but they are. Practically speaking, they are. They arose during what was called historically the

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Second Great Awakening, specifically out of the Millerite movement. So the

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Millerite movement was an Adventist movement. The Adventist movement is not made up of just the

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Seventh -day Adventists. You kind of have to know the history of the Advent general movement to understand the place that the

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Seventh -day Adventists have. They have a unique history in that umbrella movement.

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But it's the mid -1800s, the earliest being like the 1830s, really through like 1835 to 1844 was like a really big time specifically for the

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Adventist movement. But I mean, you had Joseph Smith and the Mormons around the same time. Joseph Smith died actually in September, the

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September before the Great Disappointment of the Adventist movement, which took place that October. So Joseph Smith died right around the time that this was really hitting itself off.

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So really that whole period of like the burned over district too, like the northeastern peninsulated states in the mid -1800s.

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And so they were birthed out of the Millerite movement, which was basically a false,

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Miller was like a false prophet. He had a false date set, multiple dates set for the return of Christ.

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He basically went through the Bible and created a whole hodgepodge, a terrible hermeneutic of Biblicism, which is not to be confused with Sola Scriptura.

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The idea of me and my Bible, no creed, but the Bible. We disconnect from history.

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It's just me. And essentially, well, whatever you arrive at, that's then what the Bible objectively said.

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My Bible, me under a tree, no creed, but Christ. That's what I hear from the past crowd. Yeah, exactly.

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And they all have to use this because you can't look back at history and say, well, the entire church went apostate basically from the first century and we're here to restore it.

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So you have to have that sort of attitude or you're not going to be able to support the idea that you literally sprang up in the 19th century.

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They like to point to the Reformation and trying to equate the Reformation to the same thing. That's just a fundamental misunderstanding on their part to what the

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Reformation was and that whole thing. But they were birthed out of the Millerite movement, which Miller basically said that through this terrible hermeneutic that Christ was going to return in 1843.

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He basically found any place in the scriptures that he could that had numbers that would work. He inserted all sorts of dates.

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They were essentially historicists in their eschatology and basically made all these time prophecies out of verses in the

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Bible that have nothing to do with time prophecies and said he arrived at the date of Daniel of 1843.

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The primary key text in all of this was Daniel 8 .14. And unto 2300 days and then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.

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They have to use the King James Version of the Bible because it says days, not evenings and mornings. There is a difference there linguistically, but that's the essential...

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So are they King James -only -ists in that regard? They're not. They are the whatever -version -suits -me -ists.

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Gotcha. Now, I watched you do a video, Miles. I watched you do a video on context as King because when you actually look at the whole context, it totally undoes what they're trying to do with that one proof text.

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100%. Well, contextually, and that's the very first video I actually uploaded onto the channel, it was an internal critique of the

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Adventist position. And this has been known for a long time. It wasn't like mind -blowing revelation, but it was packaged in such a way that was short, to the point, very clear, succinct, and no one else was really doing that.

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And so it was really to highlight the point that this foundational pillar text of which Ellen White said was the foundational pillar of the initial

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Advent movement, as well as the Seventh -day Adventist church, Miller also understood this to be the foundational pillar because that's the date, the period, the 2300 days was what they were converting using the day -year principle to arrive at the year 1843.

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Well, when that didn't happen in the spring of 1844, a crackpot by the name of Samuel Snow, you guys can do your own digging on him.

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I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, he claimed to be Elijah the Prophet. So just all sorts of fanaticism and quackery.

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But either way, the guy claimed that it was going to be specifically October 22nd, 1844.

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So that's the new date that they had. So then that obviously came and went. And on October 23rd, 1844, the day after what is now known as the

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Great Disappointment, there was a small band of people that essentially refused to admit that they were wrong.

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William Miller eventually gave it up. He said, okay, I was wrong. They went back to their other movements, the majority of these people, because they were an ecumenical

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Protestant movement that came from like Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc. Most of them just went back to those churches.

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The people who didn't were called the Little Flock initially. That's what the

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Seventh -day Adventists were born out of. They're the group that refused to admit that the date setting was wrong.

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This is because a guy by the name of Hiram Edson, on the day after the Great Disappointment, claimed as he was walking through a field to go meet with the other members of the

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Little Flock, that he was taken into vision, the heavens were opened, and he was shown that Jesus was entering into the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary for the first time.

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He then said that this revealed essentially that they weren't wrong about the date, they were wrong about the event and location.

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William Miller was saying that the 2300 days and then the sanctuary will be cleansed. The sanctuary was the earth, because the earthly sanctuary wasn't standing anymore.

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So it was going to be the earth being cleansed with fire. Hiram Edson said no, he wasn't wrong about the date, he was just wrong about the event and the location.

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It wasn't that Jesus was returning to earth on October 22nd, 1844. It's that Jesus was moving from the holy place to the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary.

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That's what it then pivoted into and is now formally known as the Investigative Judgment Doctrine. We will get into that in part two of this stream because that has a huge pivotal role in their salvation model.

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It is one of the foundations, if not the foundation of the movement. If 1844 falls, it proves they're built on a lie, it proves that Ellen White was a false prophet, it just it decimates the entire system.

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So that's essentially in a nutshell where they came from and what they were birthed out of. Now we're talking about Seventh -day

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Adventism and how it's a restoration group. Something that all the restoration groups have in common is they all claim to be the one true church.

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So when I deal with Church of Christ, they literally are like, we're the Church of Christ, go read

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Romans 16 and 16, that's in our name, that's who we're talking about. We're like, well that's a form of begging the question, you have to demonstrate what the

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Church of Christ is. That's talking about the nature of the church, the ecclesia, the called -out ones, and we're trying to have a conversation of what that looks like, you know, not just quoting a verse and saying it says what it says and it means what it means.

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Just begging the question. Now I want to be very careful how

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I say this. A lot of these groups, they kind of have some type of schtick or some type of zing that says, hey we're the one true church, look to us.

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All these other ones are false people trying to claim to be the one true church. Now with everything that you just said earlier, what's kind of their claim to fame of being the one true church, or why is it them above everyone else?

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So it's going to be the book of Revelation as well as the writings of Ellen White. So I'm going to read to you, the way that the

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Seventh -day Adventist church works is, they're of course, they're one of these no creeds but the Bible, which is a creed, but it's one of those.

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Plus, but plus, they're 28 fundamental beliefs. So it's essentially a creed, the 28 fundamental beliefs.

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They don't call it a creed. What they really mean by this is that unlike the historic Christian creed, which haven't changed and don't change, their fundamental beliefs, they'll update over time because they have a whole concept around what's called present truth, aka relative truth.

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So it's just their version of relative truth that basically as time goes on, this is how they've dealt with all the false prophecies, all the failures.

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Oh, it was a conditional prophecy. Oh, that was present truth for then and not for now. Yeah, that sort of thing.

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So I'm going to read from their fundamental beliefs. I'll read to you, this one is fundamental belief number 13, which is about the remnant and its mission.

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And then I will read you fundamental belief number 18, which is the one regarding Ellen White, and you'll see where they're getting this from.

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And we'll look at a couple of their proof texts to try to bolster their view. Yeah, totally. So belief number 13 is the remnant and its mission.

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It says, the universal church is composed of all who truly believe in Christ. But in the last days, a time of widespread apostasy, a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

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That is the key right there. This remnant announces the arrival of the judgment hour, proclaim salvation through Christ, and heralds the approach of his second coming.

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This proclamation is symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14. It coincides with the work of judgment in heaven, which is talking about this investigative judgment that I just talked about, not the judgment most

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Christians are thinking about, and results in a work of repentance and reform on earth. Every believer is called to have a personal part in this worldwide witness.

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So that's what it says about the remnant's mission. What you have to pick up out of that is a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

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They're not defining this, though, the way that you're thinking when you hear those things. But we'll get to that momentarily.

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Next, I'm going to read the gift of... Yeah, so we'll get into that. I'm going to read fundamental belief number 18 now, which is about the gift of prophecy.

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Okay. And it says, it says, quote, the scriptures testify that one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is prophecy.

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This gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church, and we believe it was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G.

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White. Her writings speak with prophetic authority and provide comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction to the church.

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They also make clear that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching experience must be tested. So then even in the footnote of one of the proof texts, they have 2

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Timothy 3, 16 and 17, which is pertaining to scripture. And you'll notice the verbiage was almost identical.

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So for them, their claim to being the remnant church is the phrase that you'll find in Revelation, which says the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.

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So those will be the two, Revelation 19, 10, and then Revelation 14, it's actually six through essentially 12.

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So it says, then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, you must not do that. And I am, I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus, worship

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God for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So they use this to say, okay, so the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

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So what is the spirit of prophecy? So the messages of the three angels. So this is essentially the key here.

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You have to remember Revelation 19, 10, and it's again, mainly because of the phrases, not because of the context, none of that stuff is taken into consideration.

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It's the phrases because the spirit of prophecy is a buzz phrase in Adventist culture for the writings of Ellen White.

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So you're now getting into what essentially the testimony of Jesus is and how they're defining it.

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Most commentaries, for example, theologians to the past have understood the testimony of Jesus to essentially be those who are affirming the gospel.

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That's not the way they are defining it, nor is that how they're defining the faith of Jesus. It goes back to what

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I was telling you earlier about manifesting a faith that looks like the life of Christ, meaning you're living a perfectly obedient life.

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That's the point you have to get to. So this end times remnant that this, that Revelation is talking about is this end times church who is marked by having this spirit of prophecy, which they claim was manifested in the writings of Ellen G.

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White. The second thing being keeping the commandments and the faith of Jesus, which is what you're going to see here.

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So they say, then I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel. They love this phrase.

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They claim to preach the, some translations will say the everlasting gospel. So you'll hear them say, no, no, we preach the everlasting gospel.

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Well, the everlasting gospel as they define it is in contrast to what Paul says in Galatians 1.

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It's a different gospel, but they love to latch on to phrases like this. And then they don't define them for people.

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So people think, oh yeah, it's biblical. So it says, then I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who do all on earth, to every nation and tribe and tongue and people.

29:37

And he said with a loud voice, fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has come and worship him who made heaven and earth and the sea and the springs of water.

29:47

So there's two things here. They point to this and say, see, it's the hour of his judgment has come. So they use this to now segue into the investigative judgment that they're the ones heralding the investigative judgment message.

30:01

And that's what the first angel's message was about, because this is a unique message of present truth for the last days church, which is what they are.

30:09

So who's heralding this. They then tie in the Sabbath to say, see, it's also referencing the creation, worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.

30:19

So what's the identifying mark of the creator? Oh, it's the seventh day Sabbath. So then oftentimes here, they'll jump to Genesis now or to the

30:27

Exodus to say, see where it says that yeah, yeah, yeah, that exact, that exact thing.

30:35

So that's, that's used to bolster inserting the Sabbath in here, which is the other aspect of the one true church.

30:42

But if you keep scrolling and another angel, a second followed saying fallen, fallen is

30:48

Babylon, the great, she has made all nations drink the wine of her passion, of her sexual immorality. They'll then say, which this is basically just coming from their fundamental beliefs book.

30:58

That's the official. This is the official exposition of their own fundamental beliefs.

31:05

So that's where this is coming from. This isn't me just spouting this out and just saying this, this is their own position.

31:13

You lived it for years. So you're giving us some deep insight into this. Correct. And people have to understand in this movement, eschatology is foundational.

31:23

It's not a secondary issue. It is the gospel. It is the gospel. So as you're seeing like that phrase above the everlasting gospel, they're saying that, see, there's more to this than they'll say.

31:35

Yeah, of course, Jesus died for our sins, all that stuff across. They don't believe the atonement is finished, by the way, they think it's still going on in heaven.

31:41

It's this long drawn out process. But this is how they weasel around. They don't define terms or they don't talk with people who understand what they're saying when they say this.

31:51

But the second one about Babylon is supposedly apostate Protestantism, which is what you and I are a part of.

31:58

It's basically the Protestant churches that they say just stopped reforming.

32:06

They did a good job initially, but then they stopped. They didn't go far enough. So they claim to be the continuation of this.

32:14

So the part of this message, by the way, the angels are supposed to represent their church. They're the ones heralding this message.

32:20

So it's representative of them. Yeah. And so the second message here is the call to come out of the apostate churches.

32:28

They'll claim Babylon is a biblical representation of doctrinal confusion and sexual immorality is a representative figure for idolatry or intermixing with false gods.

32:40

So they say that essentially the apostate Protestants are still attached to Rome because they keep the papal

32:46

Sabbath. So we're still and we haven't gotten some of us, they would say you have not fully, you're still wrong on the state of the dead, but they'd say you've got baptism correct.

32:56

So the reformers didn't give up their infant baptism and baptism by immersion.

33:02

And so that still needed cleaned up the state of the dead, eternal conscious torment, all that still needed cleaned up. So they think they're the continuation of this, but that's what the second message, the second message is.

33:12

Then the final one and another angel, a third followed them saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast in its image and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand, he will also drink the wine of God's wrath poured full strength into the cup of his anger.

33:23

And he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels in the presence of the lamb and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

33:29

And they have no rest day or night. These worshipers of the beast in its image and whoever receives the mark of its name. Obviously, they never focus on that final part about the torment being forever and ever.

33:39

But nevertheless, this they then point to to say it's talking about the Sabbath. It's a final heralded warning that if you don't come out of Babylon and join the remnant church, you will eventually be given the mark of the beast, which they say is

33:56

Sunday worship, the papal Sabbath. It will come at a point when there will be a decree after apostate

34:02

Protestantism, spiritualism and Roman Catholicism. Never mind the Orthodox, the

34:07

Coptics, the Assyrian Church of the East. They just get tossed to the wayside. This is a strictly Western zeitgeist.

34:15

All three, essentially the whole world is what it eventually gets to is going to come up against the Seventh Amethyst because there's going to be a one world government that will form out of the

34:23

American government where the Pope is at the head of that. This is the deadly wound being healed and he rises back up to power.

34:31

And he'll essentially be at the head of the United States government and he'll mandate a Sunday worship law where he will mandate everyone to rest on Sundays.

34:40

And in doing so, the Adventist at this point will have to take a stand not for Jesus Christ in the gospel, but for the seventh day

34:48

Sabbath. So that mark of the beast will be at a point in time where you will have to stand for the seventh day

34:57

Sabbath after this papal decree comes down. And it will be at that point you have to make a decision. If you choose to adhere to this, you'll be given the mark of the beast.

35:05

And they are heralding this final message of come out of Babylon and start keeping the seventh day Sabbath. They claim the commands that are talking about there in Revelation where it says these people are marked by those who keep the commandments and the faith of Jesus.

35:20

They claim that's the 10 commandments. They'll then say, who else is keeping the fourth commandment specifically the seventh day?

35:27

And then they'll say, oh, see, they're all cool with keeping nine of the commandments, but not the fourth commandment.

35:33

So they say that that is that in the spirit of prophecy as defined by them, which is essentially the

35:39

Holy Spirit supposedly speaking through an end times prophet that they say is Ellen White. Those are the things they point to to say that they are the remnant.

35:47

Man, that's a whole lot to digest. Well, they do week -long seminars.

35:54

I mean, they do week -long end time seminars. This is one of their biggest evangelistic outreaches. They won't put their name typically on it, but the popular names are like It Is Written by John Bradshaw, which goes like city to city.

36:04

It's a week -long thing. They've been doing this for decades, literally since the inception. This is one of the primary things that Ellen said that they needed to go around and be doing to grow the church.

36:13

And so they give these end time seminars, and they won't tell you who they're affiliated with. Typically, it's on like Wednesday or Thursday of that week that you find out what it is.

36:21

And it's typically when they're getting to this portion of the message. So after you've heard all this now, the peak gets to the point where it's like the

36:29

Sabbath is the seal. You need to come out of these churches or you're going to go to hell. Did I understand you correctly?

36:35

Sunday worship is kind of the mark of the beast, or how did you say that? It will be.

36:41

And they'll often be like, no, we don't say that because they love to get hung up on the forest or the trees for the forest.

36:49

They love to miss the point, I think sometimes like purposefully because they can't deal with what's actually being said.

36:54

So if you're getting hyper specific, no, it's not Sunday worship that will be the mark of the beast.

37:00

It's that when this decree comes down, you're going to obey the beast and worship his image.

37:06

And that's what the mark of the beast is. So that will essentially be though adhering to this international

37:14

Sunday mandate. So I have a question. You'll be the man to totally answer this.

37:19

So what do they do in those verses and acts where you have the early church gathering together on the first day of the week and you kind of see the

37:27

Apostle Paul almost preaching and they're partaking of the bread, which is probably the

37:33

Lord's Supper. What do they do with those verses? How do they explain those? So then they get into what we would call like cognitive dissonance, because then they'll flip and say, well, right, but they weren't keeping

37:43

Sunday. Nowhere does it say they were keeping Sunday holy. It says they were meeting on every day of the week. So then you have to ask the question back at them though.

37:50

Okay, well, if that's the case, then what's the big deal about us meeting on Sunday? If it's really just, well, they were meeting on every day.

37:58

A lot of them are demonizing Sunday because they associate it with Rome. They have a historical revisionism. They basically think that the church went completely, like all the restorationist churches, it went completely apostate after the first century, typically due to Roman Catholicism.

38:12

And then God raised up some group during the second great awakening in America to correct the whole world and the whole church because it all went apostate and all went awry.

38:21

Do they think Jesus resurrected on Saturday? No, no, no, no.

38:26

They actually use that to say evidence for the Sabbath. They say he rested on the Sabbath in the tomb. Yeah, well, that's interesting.

38:35

You're kind of opening up a whole new world for a lot of those people that probably don't even know about Seventh -day

38:40

Adventism even existing. And so I couldn't help to think about this scripture. I'd love for you to help me out here,

38:48

Mr. Miles, Mr. Answering Adventism. So you got the Apostle Paul saying, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or regard with festival or a new moon or Sabbath.

39:01

These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. So it sounds to me like they're trying to judge me for not observing the

39:10

Sabbath. So they have to account for this scripture. What do they say here, Apostle Paul? This is a common proof text that they have a script that they've been responding to since the pioneers.

39:22

You can read Longborough, Ellen's husband. They've had a script on this verse for a long time.

39:29

One thing I'll preface with saying on this for the Adventists that watch this, I challenge you to go and look at all of the times that Sabbath is used, not only in the

39:39

Old Testament, but specifically in the New Testament. And I want you to go and fact check

39:45

Ellen White and see how she defines the use of Sabbath here in conjunction to all the other places that she mentioned

39:51

Sabbath in scripture and what she claims it means there. Because grammatically, you can even just look this up in a lexicon.

39:58

This doesn't require a Koine Greek degree or being able to read Greek. You can simply look at the linguistics of this.

40:05

The term that's used here is no different than any other place that the weekly Sabbath is used in scripture.

40:10

So the first point that they'll take umbrage with, and they'll want you to use KJV here because they think that it's saying

40:16

Sabbaths in the KJV somehow changes the ultimate meaning of what's being said here.

40:22

This is coming down to their false dichotomy between the Decalogue and the rest of the law.

40:29

Most Reformed people are going to hear that and go, well there is a distinguishing factor to some degree between the

40:34

Decalogue and the rest of the law. Not in the way that the Seventh -day Adventists are saying, folks. It is not the way that Reformed people understand that.

40:42

We don't have time to get into that tonight, but that's important to understand because this is a essential foundation for their whole framework.

40:49

Because they'll use, for example, well let me get to the verse first, then I'll say the the bolstering that they do.

40:55

They'll say here that this Sabbath is talking about the festival Sabbaths. That's why they think that it being plural in the

41:02

KJV, I believe it's the KJV, says Sabbaths instead of Sabbath. And so they'll oftentimes say, well you need to use where it's a translation that says

41:10

Sabbaths because that changes the type of Sabbath. It's not talking about the weekly Sabbath singular.

41:16

It's talking about the festival Sabbath. Well there's a number of issues with that. One, that would be redundant because then we would be able to read the verse as, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a festival.

41:29

The festival Sabbaths are already included in the festivals that Paul already mentioned. So if it were

41:34

Sabbath, the festival Sabbaths, by the word Sabbath, you'd have, that'd be redundancy. It doesn't make sense. Second off, the use of that word sabbatone that's there is consistent throughout all of scripture as always including the weekly

41:47

Sabbath. Also the phrase festival, new moon, or Sabbath is a constant phrase as a whole that's used throughout scripture and it's always used to essentially signify weekly, monthly, and annually.

41:59

So that's essentially what Paul is getting at here, is that let no one judge you in any of those things.

42:06

But their response to that is essentially that, that it's talking about the ceremonial or festival Sabbaths, not the weekly

42:12

Sabbath. And they'll point to places like Deuteronomy 34 and say, see what Moses wrote down was distinguished from God's law, which was written by his own finger on tablets of stone as the

42:24

Ten Commandments. What Moses wrote down was the law of Moses, which was on parchment and it was only the ceremonial stuff.

42:30

Then they'll point to the Ark of the Covenant and say, see there is a distinguishing factor. The Ten Commandments were in the Ark of the

42:36

Covenant, but the book of the law that Moses wrote was written on parchment on a book outside of the

42:43

Ark, showing a distinguishing factor between the two. The problem with that is if you keep reading,

42:48

I believe it's Deuteronomy 34, if you keep reading, Moses penned the entire

42:53

Torah in the book. So it not only had the Ten Commandments, it had the whole Ten Commandments twice. It had Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

43:00

So it doesn't work. It doesn't work basically. But that's the argument that they're going to give for this is that it's essentially talking about the weekly

43:06

Sabbaths. That's what was nailed to the cross, not the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, because that is an eternally binding thing.

43:15

This also gets into their whole origin story, their pre -earth creation narrative, and why Satan rebelled and centered the world.

43:21

It's called the Great Controversy, but that's their response to that. Satan is the great scapegoat, right? I learned that from your debate on Marlon's channel.

43:28

Yeah, yeah. Terrible stuff, man. Terrible, terrible stuff.

43:33

We won't get lost on that. I want to recommend people go not only to your channel, Answering Adventism, but you participated in at least one debate that I know of on Marlon's channel,

43:44

The Gospel Truth. Y 'all check that out. I didn't listen to all of it, Miles, but I was shocked with what

43:49

I was hearing, though, for sure. It's bad stuff, man, and it's hard because you have to understand...

43:59

Well, let me preface with this. This is exactly why I started my channel, because this group is bigger than Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

44:07

You see entire ministries to Jehovah's Witnesses, to Mormons, not to Seventh -day

44:12

Adventists. They've taken the Walter Pass from Kingdom of the Colts because Walter put them in the appendix, and he said,

44:20

I wouldn't recommend them, but I wouldn't classify them as a cult. Most people don't know the history behind that. They don't understand that Walter Martin changed his mind after the book was already out, after he realized that they were pulling the wool over his eyes.

44:33

So they've taken that, and they've run with it, and that has given them kind of this hiding in plain sight justification, but they are much bigger than both

44:43

Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, far more international. They are in 206 countries. They boast 21 million members internationally.

44:51

That part of Revelation that we read that says the remnant will be made up of all tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations, that's what they used to bolster that, is to say, look how many countries we're in.

45:00

We look like all tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations. So this movement is huge. They have done a good job of being silent, of making relationships with evangelicals.

45:09

Little do they know that Ellen White taught that the apostate Protestants are actually worse than the heathen, that our prayers are an abomination to God, and the method of evangelizing them should not be done through outright telling them that.

45:27

It's almost like an offshoot version of Islamic taqiyya. We want to build relationships with them so that we can start proselytizing them, essentially.

45:37

And so that's why my channel was started, essentially, was because I want to equip the body of Christ to be able to fend this stuff, to be able to be aware of its deceptiveness and its craftiness, and educate

45:50

Christians on what this movement essentially teaches and believes, because as you're seeing, there's a lot here.

45:56

It's a very meaty, weighty subject matter that unless you really are able to have the lens, so back to what

46:02

I was initially saying, you have to have this great controversy paradigm and understand that because that is the lens that they're getting all of this through.

46:13

Well, Miles, thank you so much for all of your hard work and willing to be transparent with people.

46:20

And I can feel your love for these people, especially with how you're choosing your words graciously, and you're wanting to give them the evidence to say, go look for these things to yourself.

46:31

And you and I know we trust God with that. We trust God and His sovereignty in having divine purpose, even with YouTube channels like these.

46:38

And so that resonates a lot with me. And we were talking about the Sabbath being kind of crucial to their paradigm.

46:46

And a while back, I was given the task to preach on the fourth commandment.

46:52

And the more I delved into it, I was like, man, there's so much you have to bring up.

46:58

And like you were saying, the best way I know to categorize the law, the 613 commandments of the

47:04

Old Testament, is you have to understand the threefold distinction. And that's not just anachronistic to press onto the

47:10

Jew. The Jews saw that, okay, every law has a moral aspect to it and a judicial consequence if you do break one of the commandments of God.

47:19

And so we're really saying after Christ has fulfilled the law, right? That passage that we looked at in Colossians 2,

47:25

Paul is starting to bring out a ceremonial aspect to the law and say, and the substance belongs to Christ.

47:33

And so I think, and I definitely want to hear your thoughts to this, the Sabbath, especially the fourth commandment, there is a principle that's pointing to Christ.

47:42

He is our Sabbath rest. He says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden,

47:47

I will give you rest. The Sabbath was actually pointing to me. And I believe it's Hebrews maybe three and four that talks about how this

47:54

Sabbath rest is for the people of God when you're looking to Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith.

48:00

What do you think about that? Yeah, so that's a key part, man. And you're right, it is

48:06

Hebrews three and four. And really the kicker on that is context. Context is king.

48:11

Because if you don't understand the real framework around the book of Hebrews, what's the overarching thematic context that's going on?

48:27

Well, the most succinct way would be to say it's a compare and contrast of what makes the new covenant better than the old covenant.

48:34

Well, the old covenant biblically is always referring to the Mosaic covenant. It's not referring to Abraham.

48:40

It's not referring to Adam. It's not referring to Noah. It's not referring to David. It's referring to Moses. And there's a compare and contrast taking place between what makes the new covenant better than the old.

48:50

So he doesn't only focus on the Sabbath, but he focuses on all the aspects why Jesus is a better high priest.

48:56

He's after the order of Melchizedek. He's not a Levitical Aaronic priest like the Seventh -day Adventist Church has Jesus doing the

49:01

Levitical Aaronic priesthood work and wearing the Levitical priesthood garb in heaven, by the way. But in chapters three and four, it talks about why

49:10

Jesus is a better Sabbath rest and that Joshua could not give to the people what

49:17

Christ is actually able to give people. They love to point to Hebrews 4 .4, I believe it's 4 .4,

49:22

and say, see, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. And that's all they'll quote to say, see, the

49:28

Sabbath is still binding. It's that sort of thing. But if you read through contextually, the point that the author is making is that the

49:34

Sabbath, just like all of the law, and the Adventist Church agrees with this to some degree, they just draw the line somewhere arbitrarily.

49:41

They don't want Jesus to be a fulfillment of all of the substance or all of the substance to all of the shadows.

49:49

The Sabbath, the line's drawn off there. It's not that there was a shadow with the old covenant, old creation.

49:55

It's that, well, that's still binding, but circumcision, that was a type and a shadow. Everything else was a type and a shadow.

50:02

But when it comes to the Sabbath, they want to draw the line. Well, the line doesn't draw there. The Sabbath was a type and a shadow of Christ as well.

50:09

And just like you said, it's a type of entering into ceasing from one's own works, entering into God's rest, which is what the author then mentions, is that the

50:19

Sabbath rest that remains is God's rest. And that's entered into by faith in the

50:24

Messiah, ceasing from one's own works, trusting in Christ, essentially the perfect sacrifice, the perfect priest, the perfect king, et cetera.

50:33

I do think that there is a general equity to the fourth commandment, which we're not going to get into general equity tonight, but I'm pretty sure you know what that is.

50:43

I do think there's a general equity to that. And so the apostles had the authority, which we were talking about these in passing a little bit earlier.

50:51

The apostles had authority, just like they did with circumcision, to abolish that or to change the day that the church was meeting or establish the day the church was meeting.

51:01

Sunday has to do with the resurrection of the Lord and the new creation being inaugurated.

51:07

It's the eighth day motif. So you can read the early church fathers on that, but it's the concept of the old creation

51:14

Sabbath was on the seventh day. The new creation Sabbath is on the day that Christ inaugurated essentially the new creation.

51:24

So it's not the same in the sense that it's like there's judicial penal code for if you break this or it's like specifically stated, which it's not specifically stated, you need to go to church on Saturday either, even though the

51:36

Adventists like to point and say, where's the verse that says go to church on Sunday? So it doesn't say it for either day, but I don't believe that it's identical.

51:45

It's like a one -to -one as it was like a Lord's day to the old covenant Sabbath personally. But I do think the general equity is still there that we shouldn't be working ourselves essentially ragged and that the apostles saw fit to clearly establish the first day as the day, the historical record bears to that.

52:01

We have evidence in the New Testament, like you said, of them, the breaking bread is not just eating food, but the taking of Eucharist.

52:08

They were doing that on Sundays. The Lord's day, I believe, both historically and biblically is

52:14

Sundays. Adventists are going to say, we have no place in Scripture that defines it. It's obviously the Sabbath day, which is the seventh day.

52:20

So we can argue that, whatever, but that's essentially my position on that. Yeah, and I just try to tell people the emphasis on Sunday is the person of Christ.

52:30

The emphasis of the Christian Sabbath is more on a person rather than the day, even though those two go together because he resurrected.

52:37

Tell me what you think about this. This may be a poor point because you got to think, I'm new to this. So you're a wealth of knowledge to me and our listeners.

52:45

I was thinking about Exodus chapter 31, where I remember, because I preached on this a while back, on it seemed like the

52:52

Sabbath. Yeah, this seemed to be kind of a sign for the

52:58

Jewish people. And so I want you to help us understand this in the proper context, really just 13 is what

53:05

I was looking at. So the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my

53:12

Sabbath for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I, the

53:19

Lord, sanctify you. Is there something special and unique with God making this sign with ethnic

53:28

Israel? I know we want to be super careful with the continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testament, but is there something there that this is meant to be assigned to Israel per se?

53:40

So interestingly enough, the Seventh Church is what we often get labeled wrongfully as replacement theology.

53:50

The Reformed Covenantal understanding is more along, I would say, fulfillment theology.

53:57

It's not replacing anyone. It's actually an expansion. It's not replacing or leaving anybody out.

54:04

They are true replacement theologians. They think that they are true Israel. So this is me getting back...

54:10

They're a radical dispensational group. So they're not dispensationalists.

54:16

They're actually hardcore against dispensationalism, but this gets back into what I was saying about understanding their mono -covenantalism.

54:24

There's fundamentally only one covenant. There's no distinction between... Classic covenant theology is the covenant of works with Adam and Eve, and then the rest of the covenants after that were essentially administrations of the covenant of grace, undergirding even the period where, say, the law was given with Moses.

54:41

That's not the view they have. They are essentially mono -covenantalists, and they're going to point to this everlasting gospel being the overarching thing throughout all time and space that is that single covenant.

54:53

So the verse there, that's exactly what they point to because they believe and think that they are

54:59

Israel. To say, see, that's why the Sabbath... That's another reason why the Sabbath hasn't been abolished, right? It's a sign between...

55:05

This just further affirms to them when they read this because they don't read the Old Testament through the same hermeneutic that we would.

55:12

They read this and think, yeah, see, this just further bolsters the idea of the Sabbath being the sign of God's true remnant people.

55:21

Well, thank you for that. I was just throwing that out there. I was just like, I wonder what old Myles would say about that.

55:27

So no, that's a very... They love that verse, actually, because again... They love every verse that has the word

55:34

Sabbath in it. All of this stuff, well, and not just that, like the Sabbath and sign because, again, the big thing that people have to understand with this movement that you have to ask because they're so good with language.

55:46

They were able to pull the wool over Walter Martin's eye, and the reason why was because Martin didn't ask them to define terms.

55:55

They used all the right Christianese, like they will use righteousness by faith. They do not mean what you mean.

56:01

Right. And because of Walter Martin that said you got to scale the language barrier, right?

56:07

That's the big thing. So they were able to dupe him on that. Yeah, because they know the evangelical world lingo, but they bring their own dictionary.

56:17

So they don't want to get into defining terms and getting really granular. They say they believe in the Trinity. No, they don't.

56:24

They have their own concept. They affirm tritheism. They claim to believe the gospel, but then you get into it, and it's, well, it's the everlasting gospel.

56:31

Okay, well, how's that defined? Well, it includes the sacrifice of Christ, but the atonement wasn't completed at the cross.

56:37

That was the atoning sacrifice. So even on stuff like that, you'll ask them, well, do you believe the atonement is complete at the cross?

56:45

If you were curious and say, maybe you don't tell them this part, but you've researched, you've heard, oh, wow, they don't think the atonement's accomplished, and you'd ask them, do you believe the atonement was completed at the cross?

56:56

They'd say, yeah, I believe the atoning sacrifice was completed at the cross, and most Christians are going to hear that and just move on.

57:02

They're not going to stop to think because they're going to say, yeah, I believe the atoning sacrifice took place at the cross too. What they mean by that is that that was the first phase of the atonement beginning, and that it's continuing in heaven in this investigative judgment work, which they claim is the next phase of his atoning ministry.

57:20

So you get into the definition of terms, and that's where you're going to really start to piece apart and realize, this isn't quite the same, so it's no different in this area.

57:32

Wow. Well, I want to offer some encouragement to our audience, and one of the best illustrations that was given to me and taught to me about how you can detect, you know, false gospels and groups that are outside orthodoxy and outside Christianity is know the truth.

57:50

Know the real thing so well where you can spot the counterfeit, and you've mentioned things like hermeneutics.

57:56

Context is king, and it matters how you interpret Scripture. You interpret Scripture with Scripture because God is the ultimate authority.

58:04

He is the best teacher of his own words, so we let clear and understandable passage help us with the harder to understand, and this is what

58:13

I want to caution people when I hear about the Seventh -day Adventist is they seem to be building their religion in the book of revelation of all places.

58:23

Oh, yeah. That's the end. You should let progressive revelation inform us with the proper hermeneutic of what we said earlier with the

58:30

New Testament and unlocking the Old Testament, but the book of revelation, that genre is apocalyptic, right?

58:38

Highly symbolic, and so you don't start there. You start with how God has revealed his word, and you let the end be the end, you know what

58:48

I mean? And so, because I've been dealing with other things like full hyper -preterism, and they make a lot of similar moves.

58:56

Like, they start with the 70 AD, the church and the temple, and they interpret everything in light of that central event.

59:04

Yep, so it's funny, man, because so much of what you said the Adventist is going to go, I agree with that. Yeah, I agree with that, but the part they're not going to is where you said the

59:14

New Testament interprets the Old Testament, not the other way around. Functionally speaking, you may get some there and be like, no, no, no,

59:22

I agree with that, but functionally speaking, like all the other groups that are like this, they always have to do that.

59:28

They have to interpret through the unclear, and in their eyes, what is the unclear, the more unclear, like the apocalyptic literature,

59:35

Daniel, Revelation, they're going to say, oh, no, no, no, no, because they think part of the special mission is the remnant is that God has given them essentially the cracked code on eschatology.

59:46

So for them, it's the bedrock. It's the foundation. They were born as an eschatological movement. So in their eyes, they think, oh,

59:54

Sunday being the mark of the beast or the national Sunday mandate coming from the Pope who's the Antichrist and the man of sin, and all that stuff is just crystal clear.

01:00:03

It's just, I mean, it's just right there on the page. It says what it says, Miles. But then Colossians 2,

01:00:08

Revelation 14, 1 through 4 about not judging one who eats one food over another, Mark 7,

01:00:14

Jesus' own words with the Pharisees. It's not what goes into a person that defiles them, but comes out, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:00:20

You need the spirit of prophecy. Ellen's assistants can be able to interpret that stuff. That's not clear enough.

01:00:26

So the plain didactic passages are not the plain didactic passages for them.

01:00:33

Would they deny the perspicuity of Scripture, or is that one of those things they would say, oh, no, we believe

01:00:38

Scripture's clear as long as you're looking at it through the one true church and our prophets? As long as you're looking at it through the great controversy lens.

01:00:47

But there's a number of interesting things that you have to understand about them with Scripture. One, they don't believe that it's inerrant. This is because they have to.

01:00:54

This is because this is a sneaky way. This is one of the many ways that they've done the same thing, by the way. This is a sneaky way that they have found to be able to elevate

01:01:02

Ellen White and demote the biblical writers. So in the 1980s, a bunch of stuff essentially came out via Walter Ray, who basically dropped the bombshell, the white lie, showing all the plagiarism.

01:01:14

He was a pastor in the SDA church who basically was teaching this stuff dogmatically, was a gung -ho, full -blown, dipped -in -the -blood,

01:01:23

Seventh -Daventist pastor. And after realizing that Ellen White was a fraud through plagiarism, he basically went to the church leadership and said, hey, we have a problem here.

01:01:33

I've been doing a ton of research on this. Little did they know. And we've got some issues.

01:01:39

How do we deal with this stuff? Well, they didn't want to deal with it. He said, well, okay, if you don't want to deal with it, you're just going to try and sweep this under the rug.

01:01:46

I'm going to publish this stuff. And so he did it. And it's literally just, I mean, I have the book. It's just all the side -by -side stuff of all the stuff that she plagiarized.

01:01:54

Stuff that's so obvious, it's like you can't even tell which one you're reading between going between the two of them.

01:02:00

And it's countless things. It's not just like a one -off type thing. And so because of this, they had to shift, not just,

01:02:07

I don't know if they've ever actually held to inerrancy. However, they did hold to verbal inspiration, like plenary verbal inspiration until all of this.

01:02:18

Then they shifted to their own unique position, which is thought inspiration. So they don't believe the scriptures are inerrant because that would put

01:02:26

Ellen White outside of the bounds of being able to qualify because they like to try and test her up against biblical prophets.

01:02:33

To say, see, she's in line with biblical prophets. And so in order to do that, you have to be able to address all of the false prophecies, which they'll say, well, some were conditional or whatever excuse they give.

01:02:46

But then the second one being, it can't be that the words are inspired because Ellen White writes contradictory words.

01:02:53

So they had to shift to this position of thought inspiration, which is the idea that God is not actually giving his words and speaking,

01:03:01

God breathed through the inspired pen of the author.

01:03:08

It's actually that God is impressing upon the minds of the author, the thoughts he wants them to have, and they use their own words to best convey the general idea.

01:03:19

And the general idea is communicated effectively, but sometimes there's error in the words because it's man's words.

01:03:26

That just sounds like a really long way of just saying, did God really say that?

01:03:31

Yeah, basically. It's all, like I said, it's all to keep Ellen White alive. All of the shifts and stuff has always been about, obviously not directly saying this, but it's lowering the biblical prophets to elevate

01:03:44

Ellen to the same level as the biblical prophets. Because that's essentially, again, this is the supposed mark of the once your church.

01:03:51

This is where they get their visions of validation from God on certain doctrines, etc. Miles, you are a wealth of information.

01:03:59

We're going to have to pick this up. We're going to have to get more into this, and then hopefully before too long, we can talk about more of their soteriology of how they view salvation.

01:04:09

And a lot of these groups that claim to be Christian that are actually outside of orthodoxy, one key tenet, a lot of them will damage the person of Jesus or touch on how to receive the biblical

01:04:22

Jesus by faith alone. And so maybe we can get a little bit more into that next time. Miles, is there any last words that you would like to encourage our audience with?

01:04:32

Yeah, like I said, you can check out my channel Answering Adventism. You can just search it on YouTube, and the channel should pop up, typically uploading things about twice a week.

01:04:41

The goal of my channel is specifically targeted at Christians, not necessarily Seventh -day Adventists.

01:04:47

A lot of the information that's being posted on there is not going to be mind -blowing revelation. I don't claim to be a pioneer, the first one doing this.

01:04:53

I'm not. I'm one of many in a chain of people. I'm just trying to be relevant to the current day and age to essentially equip the body of Christ to be able to effectively be able to engage these people, because more than likely, you probably know somebody who's a

01:05:07

Seventh -day Adventist, because again, they are a lot more prominent than the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, et cetera.

01:05:13

So that's essentially the position that my channel is coming from, seeking to glorify the triune God through the gospel of grace.

01:05:19

Taking that to Seventh -day Adventists, not always, let's say the easiest words to say, it's not always the easiest thing to hear.

01:05:28

I'm a little rough around the edges sometimes. I think that there is a healthy component to tough love, especially having grown up in that world.

01:05:39

Tough love is not really happening in that regard. And so coming from that world, I know that sometimes people kind of need a shaking.

01:05:45

This is a serious matter. We're talking about a different gospel, a different Christ, a God that cannot save because he's not real, it's an idol, and a gospel that cannot save.

01:05:54

So this is a serious matter. So check out the channel. Hopefully it's a blessing to you. Hopefully it's beneficial. And we will definitely, like you said, pick up on this some more in future videos.

01:06:05

Absolutely. Apostle Paul, Ephesians 4 .15, said, Speaking the truth in love.

01:06:10

And so sometimes we do have to say those hard truths. And Miles, I think you do a fantastic job.

01:06:17

So I encourage everyone, go check out Answering Adventism with Miles Christian here.

01:06:23

So man, thank you so much for coming on, and I can't wait for us to team up again. Let's do it.

01:06:30

All right. I just want to thank you all for tuning in to The Apologetic Dog. I hope you enjoyed this content.

01:06:35

Please like and subscribe. That just helps the content get circulated. I'm having a blast getting to kind of take the reins with this ministry, and God has just opened up doors for me to network and meet wonderful people like Miles.

01:06:50

And so I just want to thank you all for tuning in. I have a number of events, other episodes coming up in the near future, and I will inform you more about that in upcoming episodes.