Cultish: Is Seventh Day Adventism A Cult? Pt. 2

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Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here at Koltish. Believe it or not, we are at the end of the year again.

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01:14

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Koltish, Entering the Kingdom of the Kolts. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here.

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I'm joined by Andrew, the super sleuth of the show and your super secret headquarters. Good to have you back for part two of chapter two.

01:27

Thank you, man. I'm excited. This has been years in the process to get this episode going, this series actually going.

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And I think it's great and I can't wait to do more, right? More of this content discussing the

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Seventh Day Adventist. Yes. So we are sort of recreating a great controversy of our own, pun intended. We are joined back by Colleen Nikki.

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Thank you for coming back here. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. Excellent. Before we jump in, just real quickly, where can people find you with your ministry?

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Tell us, tell everyone real quickly about that. You can find us at proclamationmagazine .com

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and there are links there to all kinds of material that will help. Okay, excellent.

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And so we were kind of talking this series, chapter two is called Is Seventh Day Adventism a

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Kolt? We are in part chapter one. Definitely check that out. For some reason, you're jumping on in this episode for the very first episode.

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You can listen to it, but it might be good to get context, listen to the past three episodes, including the first chapter.

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We were talking about LNG White, the Millerites, kind of giving that linear timeline to kind of explain how

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Seventh Day Adventism came together. In the second one, we've been talking about, the second chapter, we've been talking about Walter Martin, his relationship with the

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Seventh Day Adventist church, and also talking about the book Questions on Doctrine, which was sort of a accumulation of what they clarified with Walter Martin.

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And we kind of explained that in chapter one. So let me go ahead and I'm just going to go ahead and play this clip so we can continue the conversation.

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Really, we're going to have our own questions on doctrine, specifically with the

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Seventh Day Adventism, what they believe, but we're going to use this clip from the John Ankerberg show as a catalyst into part two.

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So again, this clip is three minutes, 45 seconds, but it's important to listen to give context.

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Actually, yeah, let's go ahead and just play the clip and we'll be back with you shortly. Plunge in here,

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Walter. Why don't you maybe start us off with some of the questions that you have already submitted to the denomination because you are saying that you've heard some things and you are reassessing what you were told the first time around, as well as some of the contemporary events that are happening right now.

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Where would you like to start tonight? Walter Ankerberg I think that you have to begin with the background we have already and also with the fact that the

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Seventh Day Adventist denomination today, to whom I addressed my questions, responded quite differently than the denomination in 1956.

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Ankerberg How so? Ankerberg In 1956, Ruben Figuer, who considered questions on doctrine and the dialogue, he said, to be the most important single contribution of his entire tenure as president.

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Ruben Figuer began in his later life to deplore the fact that there was a strong movement within Seventh Day Adventism to undercut what they had worked so hard to establish in questions on doctrine.

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And so I, after a number of ex -Adventist ministers came to me, after I received literally hundreds and hundreds of letters, documents, boxes full of documents from all over the world –

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Australia, New Zealand, England, the United States, you name it – they're stacked up that we had to go through with people doing research on this subject.

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And they all were telling the same story, these ministers and these people all over the world. They were saying, we believe questions on doctrine.

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We cited questions on doctrine. We presented our views in the light of questions on doctrine, and we were disfellowshipped.

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We were removed from the church. I'm now painting houses, and I was a former teacher.

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I was doing this. Now I'm doing such and such. What went wrong? So I thought it would be a good idea to ask the question, what went wrong?

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So I addressed three questions to Neil Wilson. Ankerberg Who is the president of the

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General Conference? Mr. Wilson didn't have time to discuss it with me, so he referred me to somebody else, who didn't have apparently the time to discuss it either, and they referred me to somebody else.

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By the time I did get a response, the first question, I asked three questions, three primary questions.

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I asked them the question that I thought was tremendously important, which is, do you still hold the questions on doctrine?

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And the answer was, yes, same as Mr. Johnson has said.

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I thought, that's strange. All these people can't be wrong, or something's wrong in the communication system.

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Second question, do you regard the teachings of Ellen G.,

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the interpretations of Ellen G. White of the Bible to be infallible?

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That is, the infallible rule of interpreting Scripture in your denomination. If, for instance, an issue comes up where you're debating something, and Mrs.

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White speaks on it, is that the infallible voice? Ankerberg Is that the end of the debate? Is that it?

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That question was conspicuously left unanswered, and I was referred to other materials which were rather superficial.

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And I asked a third question, asked them about questions on doctrine, and why the book went out of print, and since then

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I have formulated now a whole new series of questions. All right.

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Go ahead and just, Colleen, Nikki, I'll let you decide who wants to go first. What are your immediate thoughts on that clip, as we kind of jump into the second part of this conversation?

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Well, first of all, the answer to the question that was left unanswered is, absolutely, she is the last word.

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Not just doctrinally, but in practice. We don't have Sunday school. We have

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Sabbath school in Adventism. And you go to any adult Sabbath school class where they're debating an issue, and it's the guy who says,

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Sister White said, that has the last word. The room goes silent. The issue is dealt with.

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Mic drop. I would love to read a quote to you from Ted Wilson, the current president of Seventh -day

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Adventism, the son of Neil Wilson, who would not speak to him. This was actually shared in a

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Sabbath message on July 3rd of 2010. He said, the same spirit that moved the holy men of old has again, in these last days, raised up a messenger for the

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Lord. My brothers and sisters of the Seventh -day Adventist Church, the Lord has given us one of the greatest gifts possible in the writings of the spirit of prophecy.

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Just as the Bible is not outdated or irrelevant, neither is the testimony of God's end -time messenger.

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God has, I'm sorry, God used Allen G. White as a humble servant to provide inspired insight about scripture, prophecy, health, education, relationships, mission, families, and so many more topics.

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Think by model. Let us read the spirit of prophecy, follow the spirit of prophecy, and share the spirit of prophecy.

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The spirit of prophecy is one of the identifying marks of God's last day remnant people and is just as applicable today as ever before because it was given to us by heaven itself.

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As God's faithful remnant, may we never make of none effect the precious light given us in the writings of Allen G.

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White. And just to dovetail with that, later in that same sermon, he also said this about Allen G.

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White, while the Bible is paramount in our estimation as the ultimate authority and final arbiter of truth, the spirit of prophecy provides clear inspired counsel to aid our application of Bible truth.

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It is a heaven -sent guide to instruct the church in how to carry out its mission. It is a reliable theological expositor of the scriptures.

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The spirit of prophecy is to be read, believed, applied, and promoted. Let me repeat a conviction of mine, a personal conviction.

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There is nothing antiquated or archaic about the spirit of prophecy. It is for today and until Christ comes.

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This is the man who is still at this moment the president of the General Conference of the

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Seventh -day Adventist Organization, and I kind of refuse to call it a church. That's why I always say organization.

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Go to hirebond .com forward slash cultish and sign up today and become a member. It seems that when he's describing this, it's subtle because I'm just, again, it's like,

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Hey, the Bible is good. But like when you're reading that, I'm hearing that for the first time,

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I kind of had an idea of where it's going. It seems to me that he's not saying like, thus sayeth the

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Lord, quote unquote, but he's saying like, you need my exegesis of it.

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So he's not just exegeting the text for the sake of exegeting the text. Andrew, you guys are going through John right now, right?

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That's correct. Okay. So, I mean, you think about with Pastor Wade, when he's going through there, his goal as a pastor is just to tell everyone, this is what

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God's word says, not to say my commentary is authoritative. That would be a red flag for sure.

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So there's a distinction there. Yeah. That's what it seems. He seems to be implying there that it's my comment, my sort of prophetic commentary or exegesis of God's word.

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God's word is infallible, but my prophetic exegesis of it is what you need me to have that to get a thorough understanding of God's word.

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Is that what he's implying in that quote? For sure. And he says inspired counsel.

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He doesn't mean that the way that some might take it. He doesn't mean it like she's a wise woman who has wise counsel for us.

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He means God took her to heaven or showed her envision things he wanted us to know.

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And so she has a direct word from the Lord and all of her counsel on food, on marriage, on child rearing, on clothes, on anything.

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And she says even her letters that she writes to people are inspired by God. All of it came from heaven.

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So it's more than commentary. Right. There was a, I'm sorry.

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There was an ad hoc committee at the general conference who wrote in the Adventist Review and in Ministry Magazine in 1982.

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And this is right after they had developed the 27 fundamental beliefs, which have now become the 28 fundamental.

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So this statement came out two years before the Walter Martin interviews with John Ankerberg. And they said, we do not believe that the quality or degree of inspiration in the writings of Ellen White is different from that of scripture.

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And I was actively taught that as an Adventist. She is inspired just like the

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Bible writers. Yeah. And if you can get your hands on their 28 fundamental beliefs, but can you start with that first chapter on the word of God that the whole chapter is written to prepare you to accept

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Ellen White, the way that they talk about how the Bible was inspired and to what extent it's inspired and what kind of room is there for errors.

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They set the stage. They even use great controversy words, you know, talking about the controversy between good and evil and they're setting people up to believe scripture is similar to her.

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Yeah. Real quick, just very, very quickly, because, and this is a fire hose of information for a lot of people, maybe we could give just a very quick CliffsNotes LinkedIn bio summary of two different terms because we're talking about Ellen G.

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White being the authority. Remind everyone what the great disappointment was, but also the investigative judgment, because those two things are very part and parcel indicative of Ellen G.

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White's authority. Just very, very quickly, give everyone a quick reminder of that. Okay.

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Well, the great disappointment occurred on October 22, 1844, when William Miller and his followers who were expecting

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Jesus to return that night were disappointed because he didn't return. And there was a small group of people who coalesced into what became the

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Seventh -day Adventist organization. And they said, oh no, we didn't have the date wrong.

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No, what they said was, we didn't do wrong in setting a date and we didn't have the date wrong.

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We had the event wrong, where William Miller eventually said, I was wrong. And other people left the movement and either went back to their churches or spun into agnosticism, whichever.

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These people said, but we want to make a statement. So they had a couple of visions,

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Ellen White's being the definitive one, but the first one being by a man named Hiram Edson the after the great disappointment where he supposedly saw heaven opened and Christ, this might sound like, you know, gobbledygook, and it is a little bit, going from the holy place of the heavenly sanctuary into the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary.

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And he opened the books of heaven and started going through the records of all of those who professed Christ, not the unsaved, those who professed

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Christ and finding out if they had been keeping the law, if they had confessed all their sins, and that began what is known as the investigative judgment, which is currently, according to Adventism, and Ellen White is the one that established this, going on today in heaven.

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And this is the one unique doctrine of Seventh -day Adventism that is not shared by any other organization.

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And the end game is that when Jesus finally finishes going through all the records of those who have professed

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Christ, he will take all the confessed sins of those who have confessed all their sins, even their forgotten ones, because the forgotten ones can keep you out.

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He will place them on the head of Satan, the scapegoat, who will go into the lake of fire and be punished for them.

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So in the end, even Satan is the final sin bearer. Adventists won't say it that way, but that's the function.

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Did that help? Yes. Very much so. Andrew, did you have a question? Yeah, I have a question with regards to the spirit of prophecy and that quote that you're reading earlier.

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So how do they talk about it now? If Hebrews is one of their definitive books to go to in the

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Bible, right there at the beginning it says, long ago and many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, right?

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We just hold onto that statement. But when we have Ellen G. White, if the spirit of prophecy is supposed to be alive today in the

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Seventh -day Adventist organization, we find that she had over 5 ,000 articles, 40 books, about 25 million words, right?

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Over 2 ,000 visions and dreams. So, so much. Like in some of these visions were four hours long.

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So how is the spirit of prophecy alive if that's not occurring anymore? And I find this interesting because even in the

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LDS organization, we have Joseph Smith, a bunch of visions, right? A bunch of things. But he was one of the only ones who actually had many of them, right?

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Like there's other revelations with the ending of polygamy, quote, unquote, and the blacks entering the priesthood in 1978.

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But before all that, like the main bulk of it was all Joseph Smith, right? So it seems the same way with Ellen G.

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White. So how can you say the spirit of prophecy is alive if nobody is having visions or dreaming dreams?

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How do they, how do they get around that? And how do they explain that to their members? I mean, if I was part of the SDA and that was supposed to be one of my fundamental beliefs,

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I'd be like, well, what's going on? You know, why aren't I seeing something, you know?

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I wondered that. I wondered that. But Ellen White said that we, we represent the Church of Laodicea in revelation and Laodicea is a lukewarm church.

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And so I thought, well, we must be in the last days because no one's prophesying. But they, they canonize her.

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They won't say they do, but they do. Her words are living. She has a quote.

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And this quote appears on the screen when you go to the ellenwhite .org website to look for her online writings.

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And she has a quote that says, my words will live on. They're kept on file. And long after I am dead, they will speak as long as time shall last.

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And she calls them living. Well, this is also we talked about this in part one.

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That would be indicative why even after her passing, while she is still main, the primary source of authority versus other similar organizations who have a fragmentation upon the death of the leader and who their successor is.

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Yeah. Yeah. Just confirm. Yeah. So another question I have when it comes to that John Ankenberg show between Walt and Martin, and they're definitely going back and forth for sure.

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What was the overall takeaway like after that was completed? You can, again, if you want to watch the, that whole conversation, just look up YouTube, look up on YouTube, a

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Walter Martin, seven day Adventism and Walter Martin seem to be very gracious, but very assertive that there's a lot of things that were problematic with questions on doctrine.

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People were being fired. It was no longer being published by the seventh day of Ventism. They were questioning stay at the end.

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There are specific questions that they meticulously left in unanswered.

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What was the fallout of that show of that meeting versus when

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Walter initially met with a seventh day Adventist all these years when was the fallout of that show that happened, excuse me, that happened?

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I never heard about it until I left Adventism. Me neither. Not a word. Did not know it happened. Really? Really did not know.

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It's really pretty brilliant. They don't address their critics. They don't acknowledge them. They don't let their people know that they're out there.

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If you happen to fall upon them, they'll have conversations with you. In fact, I believe they have a book that they've written or a study that they're doing with Adventists who discovered

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Dale Ratzlaff that that goes step by step through the book, Cultic Doctrine, and they're able to retain members who are starting to have questions.

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So they have a plan in place for dealing with it, but it is not a public matter. They won't discuss it.

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I knew nothing about John Ankerberg. I didn't even know he existed until I left Adventism and saw this video.

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They just don't say anything. It's an interesting thing because Adventism didn't know about Walter Martin.

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They didn't know that they had been removed from the classification of cult and they were so proud, but the fact is

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Adventism historically suppresses the reality of Christians and their activities in the world.

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I did not know until I left Adventism about, for example,

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Jim Elliott and the Alka Indians. I had never heard that story. That was in the news back in the day, about the time of Walter Martin, I might add.

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So I didn't know about a lot of Christian missionaries, didn't really know about William Carey, didn't know, you know.

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Did you know Corrie Ten Boom? I did. You did? I didn't know about Corrie Ten Boom, but they don't talk about this because they don't count if they're not

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Adventist missionaries. Would it be the same for hospitals? That's interesting.

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You mean, I'm sorry, how do you mean? Well, there's a lot of, you mentioned there's a lot of Seventh -day Adventist hospitals.

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There's also a lot of charitable Christian organizations. You think of the Christian history behind the

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Red Cross, for example, but specifically I think they're called Mercy Ships, where they go alongside the shore of Africa and people that have like cataract issues with a cleft lip.

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They'll just do just scores and scores of these operations. They're just Christian organizations all around the world.

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I mean, I don't know, maybe that's, they only view, well, only Seventh -day Adventism are doing that, but that's not in light of all the other

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Christians. Interesting. That's really interesting. I didn't know that the Red Cross was a Christian organization as an

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Adventist, and I didn't know about the Mercy Ships. You know what we did have in Adventism, and this is what's played up, they have the whole, besides their extremely prevalent missions program, they have a hugely active missions program, mostly health missions, by the way, but they have a program in their schools, both in their secondary boarding academies, but especially in their colleges and their medical centers, like Loma Linda, of student missions, where they send their students on short -term mission trips with the school, and they call them mission trips, but they really end up being excuses to travel.

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The people, you know, they find themselves going to exotic islands and African nations they would never go to otherwise, and it ends up being a place where, for example, dental students can perform operatory procedures that they are not allowed to perform in the

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United States because of licensure. So they can go on the mission trips, they can get all this experience and do things that they're not allowed to do here without the same kind of supervision, but they're called, you know, mission trips, and then they kind of reel people in with the with the health message, which is their quote's right arm of the gospel.

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Isn't it true that right now in Africa they're offering people free health care if they join the Adventist Church? Is that Africa?

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We recently heard about that. We recently heard that. I don't remember the details, and I can't remember exactly what the circumstances were, but I did hear that, yes.

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But we heard a lot about ADRA, which was the Adventist Disaster Relief Association, and so whenever there was a disaster, the

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Adventist would go in, and so we'd get reports back on all of that, but we really didn't know what was going on in the

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Christian Church, and in fact, when I left and people would recommend books or sermons by very well -known pastors,

25:03

I had no idea who they were talking about. I didn't know. Yeah, no, that's good.

25:08

I appreciate you sharing that. So why don't we just do this? We're going to have our own sort of version of questions on doctrine.

25:17

Andrew and I, we're going to have, we're going to just kind of go through. Andrew, you did some research here, and so I want to set this as a catalyst, and we're looking at what defines, what makes something a

25:29

Christian organization versus a non -Christian cult. You know, we look at the basic fundamental essentials of the faith, you know, justification by faith alone, the doctrine of the

25:39

Trinity, specifically the deity of Christ, and I think one of the main dividing lines is described perfectly in 2

25:47

John 1 verse 9. I'll just read the English Standard Version that says, anyone who goes ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have

25:58

God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. So even in that text, there's a distinction.

26:06

I actually like the translation that says that anyone who goes too far, I think that's a more accurate depiction.

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26:51

So Andrew, you had written out in your Super Sleuthing, because I had you focus in on this last week or the week before,

27:00

Christ's human nature, sinful or sinless. Tell them about some of your research you did, and then let them know what questions do you have for Colleen and Nikki.

27:10

Yeah, the question would be is what do you Seventh -day Adventists truly hold today, when it comes down to the brass tacks of what they teach?

27:21

Do they believe that Christ took on a sinful human nature, or do they believe that he was impeccable, which was without the ability to sin and not in a fallen human nature?

27:35

So I actually have a quote here directly from the book 28 Fundamental Beliefs, and this is on the chapter number four,

27:43

God the Son, and they pose that question. Could Christ sin? Christians differ on the question of whether Christ could sin.

27:51

We agree with Philip Schaaf, who said, Had he, Christ, been endowed from the start with absolute impeccability, or with the impossibility of sinning, he could not be a true man, nor our model for imitation.

28:04

His holiness, instead of being his own self -acquired act and inherent merit, would be an accidental or outward gift, and his temptations an unreal show.

28:16

Carl Ulman adds, The history of the temptation, however it may be explained, would have no significance, and all the expression in the epistle to the

28:25

Hebrews, he was tempted in all points as we, would be without meaning. They believe it's ridiculous to think that Christ was impeccable in his human nature.

28:34

They might try to say he had the pre -fall nature of Adam. Some of them say that since questions on doctrine.

28:42

Before questions on doctrine, probably no one would have said that, but since questions on doctrine, and they morphed the teaching on the nature of Christ.

28:51

But the fact is, here's where they fall off the boat, and nobody talks about it, because it's an assumption underneath Adventism that most

29:01

Christians don't know to examine. The issue with Jesus is, he was fully man, but he was conceived by the

29:11

Holy Spirit. He did not have to be born again. We who inherit the spiritual death of Adam, primarily, and Eve, you know, but Adam is the one credited with our spiritual death.

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We who inherit that have dead immaterial spirits, according to Ephesians 2, 1 to 3.

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We're born by nature, children of wrath. So we have to be born again.

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So for an Adventist, that is not even on the table. They don't even know to talk about that. So when they talk about Christ's impeccability or not impeccability, it's all example.

29:47

It's all, he showed us how to do it. He showed us how to avoid sin by prayer and depending on the

29:53

Holy Spirit. And if he could do it, so can we. And because everything's so physical, even in the

29:59

Fundamental Belief book on this same chapter, they say that Adam had an advantage that Jesus didn't have.

30:06

Yes. Because he was born into paradise. So he didn't have 4 ,000 years of physical deterioration in his body.

30:15

They see sin, inherited sin, as being essentially genetic.

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Something you inherit from your parents. That's why some people kind of get a tendency to alcoholism and some people get tendencies to other things.

30:29

It's just the 4 ,000 years of degenerate human nature and it comes in through the gene pool.

30:35

So then the fix has to be physical as well because the sin is physical.

30:42

In John chapter 3, when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, Nicodemus misunderstands what

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Jesus is saying. And he says, well, can I go back into my mother's womb? I'm a grown man.

30:54

Is that indicative of how Seventh -day Adventists misunderstand being born again, given their commitment that everything is material?

31:06

I would say yes. But I would say that there is a significant difference. And that is, which

31:12

I didn't understand as an Adventist. It was later that I started to see. When Jesus said to him, are you the teacher of Israel?

31:18

And you don't know what I'm talking about? And it was after we left that I realized, of course,

31:25

Nicodemus knew the prophecies in Ezekiel that said, I will put a new spirit in you and I'll put my spirit within you.

31:32

I had never heard those texts as an Adventist. Nicodemus did have some knowledge of the prophecies.

31:41

But yes, he took it physically. And that's why they have to redefine the idea of being born again.

31:46

They can't completely dismiss it because it's in Scripture, but they talk about it as a mental ascent, a renewal.

31:54

So when you get to that chapter in this book, they talk about being born again. And then even again, if you need to, if you fall away and you come back, you can be baptized and be reborn again.

32:05

It's a do -over. Yeah, it's a do -over. Every time you sin, basically, you can be born again, again. How do they interpret

32:11

John 114, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us? I mean, the world, the immaterial became material.

32:18

So you have something that's fully immaterial, but also fully material in the beauty of the incarnation. How do they interpret

32:26

John 114? Or is it the clear word, a Bible? Yes, it is the clear word.

32:32

Does that give any sort of interpretation on John 114, or what are your thoughts on that? Oh, I'm not even sure what it says.

32:39

As an Adventist, I knew the text.

32:47

I think it was even a memory verse. And I understood that Jesus was

32:52

God and that God became man, but that was a kind of a qualified understanding.

32:58

I mean, I understood that he gave up a lot of his God qualities. I did not understand this

33:03

Colossians text that said the fullness of deity dwelt in him bodily. So the whole kenosis idea for me as an

33:11

Adventist was he gave up his ability to really know what people thought. He gave up his omnipresence.

33:17

He gave up even his omnipotence, you know, unless God granted it to him for a moment. So he became just like us.

33:24

I was actively taught that he had no advantage we don't have. So when he met a temptation, he was on an equal playing field with us.

33:34

And what he did, we can do. And there's a background here that I think is really important when we're talking about the nature of Christ.

33:42

Ellen White had this vision, I think you referred to it, this four -hour vision called the

33:48

Great Controversy Vision. She had it at the funeral, at a funeral. And in this vision, she saw that there was a war in heaven before God ever created earth.

33:57

And that Satan accused God of being unfair because he gave them a law that they couldn't keep.

34:04

So the assumption is that the Decalogue was in heaven, that the Ten Commandments given to Israel were actually in eternity past.

34:12

And so I'm not sure how the angels dealt with adultery. That's another topic. But he said

34:18

God's law wasn't fair. And so God sent him out. He didn't want to come across as being a dictator,

34:25

I'm summarizing. And so he decided he was going to let this play out on earth and watching worlds, watching creatures, not just angels, people on other planets.

34:36

We're going to watch this play out on earth to see if God is fair and if his law really can be kept.

34:42

And so Jesus comes and he provides a way for us to get the Spirit so that we can now keep the law and vindicate

34:51

God to watching worlds. And the Spirit is power, not life. So if Jesus comes and he's able to keep the law because he's

34:59

God, well, that's not showing God's fair because that's God keeping God's law. We need to show

35:04

God's fair. We need to show that we can keep God's law. And so Jesus comes in sinful fallen nature and he is able to access power from the

35:14

Holy Spirit and he's able to keep God's law perfectly. And now because he's died and he sent the

35:21

Holy Spirit, we're able to access that same power, provided we don't grieve him away with our sin.

35:27

We're able to access that power and keep God's law and vindicate God to these watching universes, watching people and the people here on earth.

35:36

And what this actually ends up doing in practice is reversing what the

35:42

New Testament teaches us about the gospel. The law was intended to increase sin and to show us we couldn't please

35:50

God. That's the purpose of the law. And Jesus came and did what we couldn't do.

35:56

Jesus came and lived a perfect sinless life because he had spiritual life from the moment of conception and did not have to be born again.

36:04

He is the perfect sacrifice. He perfectly paid for our sin and took away the tool of the devil, which is the law by which he could accuse us.

36:16

He fulfilled it. It's no longer a tool in the hand of Satan. But Adventism completely reverses it and says we come to Jesus and then we go to the law and find

36:25

God. Instead of the law takes us to Jesus and there we become alive in Christ.

36:31

It reverses it. I've got one. Go ahead Andrew. It reminds me of it's a it's the complete opposite of 2

36:37

Corinthians 5 21. It says for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

36:46

If I were to be the person who is using inspired commentary and creating the clear word Bible, I would change this to be like for our sake in order to uphold the commandments of law we are shown that Jesus was himself fallen yet perfect in the ways of the law so that you could too to inherit righteousness later.

37:07

Yeah like that's kind of what the belief is that I'm getting here with the great controversy this pre -war that or not war but there's a this argument that happened prior in heaven.

37:18

Jesus was showing people that they can do it because he did it but that's the point of the gospel is that you can't do it that's why he came to do it.

37:28

You know so you can inherit his righteousness so that's a that's pretty intense man that's intense.

37:34

So another question on doctrine I have real quickly pun intended of course when it comes to because now you're mentioning the law and you know it's interesting as you have a group like the

37:44

Hebrew Roots or other organizations who have a distortion of the law that ends up being a burden and a weight and maybe we can get into that in a little bit but if we really kind of dig into it at its core if we really unroot this at the core at the root core of all this would the how they apply the law be at the sabbath dietary restrictions every aspect of that does that fundamentally come from their misunderstanding of the godhead of the trinity and of the dist of their category areas between the material and the immaterial

38:22

I would say absolutely related because number one if you have a physical god if you have a physical

38:29

Jesus if you have a Jesus and a and a Lucifer who are closely enough related

38:35

Ellen White never actually said they were both angels but she implied it very strongly and that Jesus is exalted to be the son that the law was present in heaven before creation then everything is measured by performance by activity by obedience by function and Ellen White was shown that the ten commandments are in heaven with a golden halo around the fourth commandment so the fourth commandment is the seal of God which marks people as the ones who will be saved when

39:09

Jesus comes back if you're not keeping the seventh day then you know but this is all related to the physicality of of of reality

39:20

I mean you should hear the conversations about well what if you live really far north and the sun doesn't set for months you know what do you do with the sabbath then it's a very physical thing that creates a lot of logistical issues and Ellen White's answer to that question was well there are better places to live hmm yeah wow

39:40

I mean like even in even in heaven how do you obey the sabbath I mean uh well yeah yeah

39:47

I mean almost as a physical place near Orion's belt or something but she insisted yes and she insisted that there would be days and weeks in heaven and that we were taught and great controversy says

39:58

God will keep the sabbath with us for eternity I mean never mind the fact that eternity has nothing to do with time that's not how we learned eternity we sort of learned eternity as the endless time it was all physical interesting and related to the food

40:15

I just want to say this Richard Rice has been on the faculty of religion at Loma Linda University for years he retired two summers ago in 2020 and in 2009 he was interviewed in a movie called

40:32

The Adventists put out by Journey Films and this is a little quote there's just a little clip of this you can actually find it on YouTube Richard Rice professor of religion says this speaking of the

40:49

Adventist focus on diet and health doctrinally is kind of interesting I think it may be related to another aspect of Adventist belief and that is the fact that human beings are essentially physical that is to say there is no part of us like a soul or a spirit that lives independently of the body so we are physical beings from beginning to end and the future beyond death is a resurrection of the body it is not an immortal soul that keeps on living so once you've emphasized the body to that degree then you begin to realize that taking care of the body is an extremely important thing to do so yes yes the health message is all about physicality oh no that's no that's very very

41:36

I appreciate you sharing that next category of a question on doctrine is the atonement you need when you just uh so when you think about that and Andrew you did so I'll let you jump in with what questions you have about your research just a thought

41:50

I have real quickly there's a combination of the of the material and the immaterial when it comes to the atonement you have

41:58

Jesus Christ who's God come in the flesh who died physically on a cross physically shed blood when you think about all the accounts of the crucifixion and all the the gory details but there's also something spiritual that was happening as well too the father was turning you know his face against the son all his wrath was being poured out on him and now all these years later us sitting together we have our sins are forgiven in exchange for the righteousness of Christ so we're physical beings we're material beings but we also have the righteousness of God's son who died 2 ,000 years ago who's now sit at the right hand of the father so you see that blending in and this is fundamental

42:37

Christian orthodoxy we've only known each other for a little bit we've talked in passing a couple times prior to this episode this is doctrine we're in uniformity on for sure where does what what is the atonement like in seventh -day adventism and what what from your perspective makes it a deal breaker that would put it into the category of a non -christian cult where do you begin right well um jump in any time nikki okay because this is the complex thing this is what this is one of those two complex things that stump the writers of questions on doctrine the fact is that jesus's death in adventism was a physical death period they um i understood his physical death to be a representative death in fact i recently read that quote in one of their sabbath school lessons uh which they circulate to the whole world on the same sabbath every year you know they they all learn the same thing that his death represented jesus's um forgiveness of human sin so it wasn't literally i never heard as an adventist anything about imputed sin and imputed righteousness so i mean i heard the words but i it wasn't explained to me that way so when jesus died as an adventist i thought of him basically doing a demonstration he was demonstrating that sin was that bad that we would kill god that sin was that bad that we would let an innocent person suffer that he was that good that he would suffer without crying and weeping and condemning and being and swearing and that um then he went into the grave and um god sent an angel and finally said your father calls you and it was an angel who called him out so the spiritual reality was basically it was the symbol it was a symbol and it was like a starting point it's like if you believe jesus died for you and you say okay i believe that then you have like the ticket to get in like you can buy a ticket to disneyland but if it rains or you get deathly ill you won't go so we could buy in that jesus died and he suffered innocently but it didn't mean we'd be saved we had to actually replicate his obedience that made him worthy to be a sacrifice in order to be saved it was an example his death was an example primarily now they might say it was a substitute but it was primarily an example well and it it was a step one step one or i don't know it was definitely plan b because they didn't know adam was going to fail really they didn't plan for it for this until after he had already fallen yeah um but i think my answer to that question i have such a hard time knowing how to answer that because i'm so very aware of the fact that the adventist jesus is a different jesus right so when i when i try to think of him and and the adventist jesus and what he did have been any kind of reflection of what my lord did it's like a completely different subject but he the adventist maybe how to how to maybe how did adventist then think of the atonement you're you're talking about how you think about it now given your lord this was your mindset prior to this or like an average person say you're someone's messaging you guys get messages all the time from active adventists for example i'm sure maybe who are asking questions how do they view the atonement like when well what's their mindset when they're talking about jesus dying on the cross terminology difference how does the adventist think of that he made a way he made a way and so um and depending on how much you know about the investigative judgment because after the whole questions on doctrine thing it wasn't taught as clearly to the younger generations but you would either believe well both groups would believe that jesus was in the tomb dead dead on the sabbath honoring the sabbath keeping the sabbath and so there was no deity that was anywhere when he said today you'll be with me in paradise the comma was in the wrong place he was telling them the truth that day that eventually he would be with him in paradise so jesus is dead in the tomb and then like you said the angel calls him out and when he resurrected or when he went back to the father he brought his blood with him yeah where where he then is applying it in the investigative judgment yeah and if you confess every sin and you remember to confess every sin then that sin will be blotted out with his blood but if you return to it you know it's no longer blotted out and that will stand against you and you will not know you will not know if you've been saved you will not know until you've been resurrected and the investigative judgment is over god will then tell you whether or not you made it and so to say that i'm saved when i told my sister i'm saved i know i'm saved the god saved me i'm going to be with him forever she called me arrogant because in adventism to say that you're saved is to say that you've attained perfection and their entire chapter in um the fundamental beliefs book where they talk about they call it the experience of salvation it's not even titled the gospel the experience of salvation is really a long convoluted chapter on sanctification and the perfection of your character so that you can be fit for heaven there are some progressive adventists especially here in southern california who um find that whole business of the blood being applied to your sins ongoingly to be a little reprehensible so they teach here some of them that jesus's blood paid for everybody's sin at one time everything so we are born under the forgiveness of the blood everybody's born forgiven but you can opt out you don't have to follow jesus you can choose not to honor him and that way you will not be saved because god wouldn't force you to be saved you know so they it's a a form of universalism from which you can opt out so it's kind of like either that or that it's not the word atonement is very vague and um the cross is a bloody mess that's really embarrassing for adventists they don't know what to do with it and ellen white actually said wrote it's a sin to say you're saved so all of this all of this is confused because they don't understand the new birth all of this is confused because they don't understand they're spiritually dead we didn't understand what the big deal with easter was no why are the christians so excited about easter it's pagan yeah yeah resurrection meant nothing except a promise of a body coming out of the grave by and by and then you'd find out whether you're going to be saved or lost and so it was really a little scary hey what's up everyone we love that you are enjoying our content on a weekly basis but this program cannot continue and wouldn't be possible without your support so if you want to go to the cultist show .com

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and check out all the awesome merch back to the show andrew um what you did you did a lot of research i'm taking a look at a lot of your uh super sleuthing notes what were your observations and in light of what they're saying what questions do you have yeah i mean they pretty much explained uh the research because you know they they lived this so uh my question would be is like what is their definition of atonement like we we know it as the reconciliation of god and humankind through the sacrificial death of jesus christ there's like a reparation payment that uh took place for example with jesus christ his death on the cross the sacrifice that happened where that was enough to please god through faith in jesus christ by the grace of god i can stand justified through the righteousness of christ when i stand before the father after my death because solely of what christ did there is peace that is brought about through this relationship between god and man like the atonement is simply that it's a reconciliation which means it's final like jesus says on the it is finished uh with his work like if if you add anything to that like paul says in galatians you don't have the gospel anymore there is no atonement so my question is is because i know there's a lot of people that are probably listening to this too and maybe they're s they're sdas and they're like wait what but i believe that you know like is it possible to be a seventh -day adventist in in believe in that atonement but also then not believe that you have to worship on the sabbath because i see that as a uh fundamental distinction i talked to a lot of lds people and they say no we believe in grace we believe in grace but then i ask him must you be baptized in order to be saved must someone lay hands on you in order to be saved and they don't see the the distinction is it the same thing with the sda like you have to worship on the sabbath i don't worship on the sabbath like uh well the sda like you know on the saturday i don't do that so according to them i would have the mark of the beast um yeah is is that can you be an sda i guess guess what i'm asking is can you be an sda and truly believe in the atonement of christ consistently because if you say you have to do x or y or z other than the work of christ you no longer have the biblical definition of atonement i would say if you are an

52:50

Adventist and you truly have the biblical definition of atonement why are you still there because everything they say about god is is heresy it's offensive if you truly know god you know aw tozer said what comes into your mind when you think about god is the most important thing about you if you really know god you can't sit in the presence of of false teaching and be comfortable there so i would say if you're comfortable in Adventism and you believe you have a biblical doctrine of atonement go find a non

53:27

Adventist Christian and study the bible with them and see do you really believe the same thing they do because the

53:34

Adventist will tell you we believe the same thing but we don't they don't really you know when um one thing i one thing i would say is that sometimes like the the person

53:46

Steve Pitcher that wrote that article about Walter Martin true Christian who was deceived into Adventism on partially on the recommendation of Walter Martin partially because he didn't really know what they meant behind their vocabulary and when he finally started realizing what happened he said

54:03

Adventism stole my joy in Jesus for 15 years and he left and he lost his family his family his wife abandoned him and kicked him out put all his stuff on the front porch essentially so um the fact is people who are true

54:18

Christians who are deceived into Adventism can know the true meaning of atonement but when they start finding out and we've talked to more than one

54:26

Christian in this category when they start finding out what Adventism teaches it's like what have i done and they have to leave yeah but i'm not sure if a person grows up in Adventism it takes a miracle of God to reveal that atonement and it's only from it really i've never known it to happen for an

54:49

Adventist unless they decide they're willing to let go of their Adventist worldview to say i really want to know what scripture teaches which is a really big deal because it's not just a worldview that you're losing it's your entire culture because in Adventism your teachers your parents your grandparents your dentist your doctor your everybody is

55:12

Adventist everybody you know one of the ways i've come to understand it's kind of a picture metaphorical way of understanding

55:21

Sabbath to an Adventist occurred in my head several years ago when i was in a women's bible study and we were actually in the first and second kings and we were reading about Jeroboam and how he set up the golden calves in northern the northern kingdom and i was reading a little historical footnote about those golden calves and the explanation was this the canaanites did not actually call the calves their deities they always made the calves carrying their deities and their deities and the calves represented the power and the you know the you know the power and the the forcefulness of their gods so when

56:02

Jeroboam set up the golden calves he did not put a god on them a deity on them because Yahweh was invisible so Yahweh Jeroboam still said he was doing

56:13

Yahweh worship he just gave them the golden calves to represent Yahweh so they had something to you know think about and i realized at that moment that is the

56:23

Sabbath to an Adventist they will never say Sabbath is an idol they will never say they worship it they will never say they have to keep it to be saved but their god rides on Sabbath they won't say you have to keep it to be saved but they will say you can lose your salvation if you don't keep it exactly and if you haven't learned about it yet you can be saved without it but if you have learned about it you can't be does the average you will be no the does the average seventh -day

56:54

Adventist do they understand the like every doctrinal point that we've been discussing for the last 40 minutes do they really even understand their own beliefs i've noticed something in my experience talking with uh mormonism with uh in just our ministry to the mormon church is that there's been a progressive change where 20 years ago people really knew what they believe you could go on the streets uh out at the easter pageant you could have a conversation little by little talking about is that gordon b hinkley interview that i think was a catalyst for a really post -modern shift in mormonism we started to have to bring out their own materials back before we had iphones where we could just store all the information the world on our phone um we would have a whole backpacks full of their own materials we had almost to pre -convert them to mormonism prior to explain the gospel to them no this is what you really believe is that kind of the normative when you explain these things about the atonement i mean this is the first time i've heard of that and i've always heard about seven days in passing this is very new to me what about them yeah yeah it was something i had to learn like i mentioned in our first interview together that so much of what i know about adventism came from having to climb out to learn the truth so a lot of younger folks they weren't taught the doctrines well although i do get the impression that that with ted wilson that they have material in the school system now under his reign moving back towards it but my son you're you know i didn't have it but but i do remember a few times where people tried to explain the the chart of daniel and the investigative judgment to me and it just sort of goes over my head and i i held on to you have to have faith like a child so i really don't have to know this because children can't figure this out so i just have to have faith like a child so i'd use that text to justify not really looking at it but i still held on to everything i was told in fact if i ever had a question i would say hey what did ellen white say about this or what do we believe about that it was so you don't necessarily know how to explain all of these doctrines but each person's going to have their own cocktail of what they know and don't yeah this last friday we published a story from a young 30 something woman in brazil and she has just been discovering what's wrong with adventism and i really believe she's been born again she tells how she heard the gospel she writes like she is born again she and she said she now understands that it doesn't matter whether you've heard ellen white whether you think you believe in her whether you think she's a prophet you can think you've completely dismissed her she said what i see now is that ellen white is in everything you believe she is the creator of the worldview she is the creator of the definition of reality she's the creator of the hermeneutic for bible study so no the younger adventists don't all know although i was like nikki says there are younger ones like in the 20s and early 30s now that do no more than the 40 somethings do so in other words like ellen white sort of lives in their head rent free yeah in fact it's it's kind of funny colleen has often said that for some of us ellen white came in on the mother's milk yeah and that was true of me i didn't know how i got what i got in my head i it's kind of a fun a fun little thing to say hey is this from adventism is this from ellen and figure out that no there's actually a quote that will explain why that came down to me somehow whether it's around the table at a dinner with the family listening to adults talk it's just everything and it's not just about religion it's reality it's reality it's like the sky is green you know that's blue no it's green speaking of touching everything when you're in contact with people who have been touched by ellen g white i mean this is organs this is a is almost in every single known nation throughout the world seventh day adventism when you get what are like so the message is like are there people who are actively who are leaving who are questioning who are just mad and they want to debate like what's the nature of the contacts that you get is that kind of all of the above or what's that like for for you all yeah it's all of the it's all of the above the people that write to us that email us generally have questions although you know there are some that just want to make trouble yeah they they write as well but um as nikki has said previously well over 90 of the people who leave adventism leave to go into agnosticism or atheism because if that version if that version of god doesn't work then nothing can hmm so it's a miracle when god reaches in and grabs us out i mean it just i i really feel like we're watching miracles when people come and say help me figure this out when there's nothing like nothing like it yeah go ahead no and when people are having doubts as well too a lot i'm sure you get those type of messages what what typically is this kind of that straw that broke the camel's back or just maybe the the first initial kind of paradigm shift where all of a sudden they start to question i mean you have that you both experienced that personally like what is there is there kind of a commonality between anything like a mormon is a lot of times it's the book of abraham translation or it's uh oh well galatians maybe galatians that might be the most consistent they read galatians and those who don't read galatians um it's hard to say the cognitive dissonance sometimes starts with um you know trying to figure out trying well actually trying to figure out how they know they're saved they are they live with so much anxiety so much anxiety and like a friend of ours who's now with the lord who'd been a neurosurgeon an

01:02:57

Adventist neurosurgeon he'd spent his career that way and he came out of Adventism and became truly born again as a result of getting stage 4 prostate cancer and figuring out i've got to figure this out because he said his patients his

01:03:11

Adventist patients died so badly and his Christian patients died with peace and he couldn't figure it out so i would say a lot of times it's the anxiety partly people just losing control of their lives because they're so anxious and then it also seems to come up in family settings where um maybe before they get married they consider themselves liberal

01:03:33

Adventists they can you know go out to a restaurant on the sabbath that's kind of a no -no and they're living how they want to and then they have kids and now all of a sudden they're responsible to indoctrinate their children and protect them from Babylon and one of them will buckle down and no we need to go to Adventist church and the other one will you know start questioning it and that's a really that's heartbreaking when we see that families splitting up or um i find often it's it's the this is just and yeah i don't know i might be wrong about this but it seems like often it's the husband that's more patient with the wife in the coming out process um it's kind of a matriarchal system i would say and so quite feminist under the surface yeah so the the women will will tend to be more willing to just cut it off if if the husband is is leaving it just seems like that to me and then the husbands who are patient with their wives will often see success one of the things we see surprisingly often is we get letters from people who are not

01:04:44

Adventist who are Christian who started dating in Adventist because the Adventist is so religious and spiritual and we have all these things in common but then they start you visiting each other's churches and the non -Adventist you notice the terminology it's like a non -Adventist not our people not us right they are the ones that start to think well you know they're they're normal Christians but the

01:05:09

Adventist starts getting insistent like well this is where we need to go to church i can't keep going to your church too yeah and when we have kids it has to be this and Ellen White said that Jesus would come back and if the if the kids were not

01:05:22

Adventist he would look sorrowfully at at them and say where's thy flock thy beautiful flock yeah and the parents would be blamed yeah when it comes to people who are ex -Adventist say whether it's a male or female i know for example there's a lot of other cults that are very like legalistic with how how you dress how you can wear your hair those sorts of things when a lot of people when they leave those sort of sorts of cults and they not not to say that this is justifiable i think but at some level it's understandable a lot of them swing do a pendulum swing especially women who leave a destructive cult like that where say they want to act out or be promiscuous and be able to kind of do all those things because now what one i'm quote -unquote free but i also want to vicariously rebel against the system that was enslaving me of sorts is there any sort of similarity when it comes to Adventism because even from my perspective like from the outside look and even even prior to our conversation i did see things within the organization at least being problematic as far as being legalistic uh aside from this theology that we discussed what's that like yes that is absolutely a dynamic my husband left

01:06:45

Adventism for a time when he was a teenager clear until he was an adult and he got all the piercings and grew his hair out and got the tattoos and everything that just devastated his parents but yeah there's definitely there's definitely a pushback from all of that the drinking too is a big deal a lot of drinking problems you know it's a very interesting thing speaking of that um in our ministry our purpose is to help these people questioning

01:07:17

Adventism to become firmly grounded in Christ it's not enough to leave the organization in fact for years you know i i prayed that God would not just bring people out of Adventism but he'd plant them deeply in his word that's the only solution but if they don't do that this push this swing back is really really profound and one thing

01:07:35

Richard and I have noticed it's the funniest thing you know um there's a lot of internal joking about now we can eat the bacon and you know but it's the the formers even those who become

01:07:47

Christian have a tendency to like okay now I can drink yeah it's not okay now

01:07:54

I can't have bacon it's really interesting to me that the the drinking is an issue and you know just because we do this ministry

01:08:03

Richard and I just we have an alcohol -free home just not because we think we shouldn't have alcohol you know the

01:08:10

Bible clearly says don't drink to be drunk but it's because we're not going we're just not going to provide an environment where we'll toast the new year together because I don't want to be seen as giving somebody permission to go out and go home and have yet you know six more drinks and and I think too part of what is at play here is that these people have been traumatized exactly they were raised in unreality they were raised in a cultic system and they didn't know it yeah and so there's a lot of trauma that comes from that that is unresolved and undealt with and that will drive kind of some of these rebellious and addictive behaviors escapism you know trying not to feel it and living and I've often you know we've often said to each other haven't we that the

01:08:57

Lord shows us the truth about himself he brings us out of this incredible twisted reality but then comes the work of discovering through the

01:09:06

Holy Spirit's work of applying scripture the truth about ourselves and our own lives and we actually have to end up looking at the legacy of our

01:09:14

Adventist backgrounds and families and I have to tell you there is a ton of abuse in Adventist families and in the whole

01:09:22

Adventist system yeah not dealing with sin pushing pushing teachers who are you know doing sexual abuse to kids or other teachers just side sidelining them to another school where it can happen again instead of firing them that kind of thing is very common so there's a lot of trauma and there's a lot of need to become grounded in the fact that the

01:09:45

Lord has taken care of that in the atonement yeah yeah yeah yeah

01:09:52

I have a question it seems like there's like a path that can that can be that someone can go down when they're leaving the

01:10:00

SDA it's either the great disappointment 2 .0 like all of a sudden finding out this whole foundation of your life is a lie and then you reject all of it if the if the

01:10:09

SDA organization isn't true if lng white isn't true nothing is true go down that route but then it seems that there's also that possibility of the the great amazement of salvation you know what

01:10:21

I mean that can be discovered through Jesus Christ do you find like for example with people who come out of the

01:10:27

LDS organization that's just kind of my context that's when I can kind of compare it to you which they're all they're pretty similar not gonna lie but um they are yeah usually the people coming from uh the

01:10:38

LDS organization have a zeal right but the scriptures would say they have a zeal not according to knowledge and I would assume that would be to be similar within the

01:10:47

SDA there's people with so much zeal so with the great disappointment 2 .0

01:10:53

they can have a zeal for atheism zeal for agnosticism still not according to knowledge but do you find that those who come to Christ are very similar to you guys right they have a zeal now according to the knowledge of the word of God and they have a passion to reach uh the loss because they know the system that they came from and do you guys help people try to uh obtain that in a sense or to hone that absolutely that's why we're here makes me kind of emotional hearing you describe it that way actually

01:11:19

I feel a little teary because that's why we're here there's nothing like a former Adventist fellowship conference when you have all of these rescued people coming together and in the gospel well their annual conferences and they always have a theme and we have several speakers and apologists who come and have general sessions and we have breakout sessions uh it's from Friday morning until Sunday after church and I guess we have a potluck in the afternoon but always president's day weekend yes and and we go through unpacking

01:11:54

Adventist doctrine and replacing it with the true gospel and people come from all over the country all over the world and cry together laugh together pray together rejoice together and every once in a while we have someone come in and try to convert us back and they're in the wrong place for that because they get blasted with truth sometimes they leave early do you feel like a lot of times in when you're

01:12:20

I mean you would probably account this was your experience and probably a lot of others too when you're going through kind of the the rethinking and the deprogramming or all of a sudden you know you have the other edge of the looking glass or you have that paradigm shift in the midst of everyone else that's now all of a sudden you're on the same page of them now you're thinking the opposite way there's this real dualism between thinking like I'm crazy like I'm losing my mind when it comes so when it comes to a conference is there like this relief like oh my gosh

01:12:50

I I thought I was the only one I can't believe this tell us about that what are some examples of that oh it'd be hard to pick one huh well it would yeah

01:13:02

I would say though that that comes through with the podcast as well we get a lot of emails with people saying

01:13:08

I spend every week listening to you and I feel like I know you and I don't feel crazy

01:13:13

I've been out for 20 years I didn't know I still believe these things you know we have a weekly Bible study on Friday nights that we've been

01:13:20

Richard and I have been co -leading since 1999 and we're still doing it and now it's also with zoom since covid but we have in person as well and it's the same thing there people will join us and um suddenly they will start asking questions they'll start to see what the gospel says they'll start to see the contrast between what the words of scripture are saying compared to how they saw their proof texts as proof texts and um there's just an overwhelming

01:13:48

I I can't believe it I felt so alone um there's other people like me we had one woman who came with her husband who had never been

01:13:57

Adventist um to our Friday night Bible studies for about three years she had been out for 14 years was going to a

01:14:05

Christian church and um she remember Sharon she would sit she would sit in Bible study and she'd go oh no

01:14:14

I didn't know that oh I remember that oh you mean that's not true and it had been 14 years in a

01:14:21

Christian church and now she doesn't come on Friday nights anymore but she still comes to the conferences she still writes to us she's really active talking to Adventists and to the people in her church it's like the fire has been lit and she sees the difference and then and then there's also the

01:14:38

Sunday lunch every Sunday Richard and Colleen open up their home to former Adventists and really any Christian who wants to come and have lunch and I remember the first time

01:14:48

I talked to Colleen on the phone I said so what do you do after church you like go to Home Depot it didn't make sense to me what does

01:14:55

Sunday look like and she said come to our house and so when my husband and I drove there

01:15:00

I expected when we came around the corner that there'd be a car or two there were cars all the way up the street all the way around they have a horseshoe driveway all the way around the driveway there were a couple of Harleys or motorcycles that I thought was so cool you didn't see that in Adventism and in the house you you had to like walk sideways to get through a room there were so many people who came to know the truth and it's like a family reunion even though you've never met yeah we we lose when we leave

01:15:35

Adventism we lose a feeling of community and I realize now I call it pseudo -fellowship yeah because it's it's around untruth but you know

01:15:45

Adventists say well you know we can go anywhere in the world and we can find our food and we can find people who believe like we do and we can find

01:15:53

Sabbath school but now we have family in Christ and that's the hardest thing because you many of us really do lose family we really do even if we don't completely lose touch and many do there's a wall if they're not

01:16:08

Christians if they're not born again it's like what do you talk about there's a hostility but the

01:16:15

Lord said he will give us a hundred times what we lose in this life with persecutions and we he does give us family

01:16:25

I mean like I'm sitting here we're talking to two brothers we've never met in person I know but it feels like he's given us family yeah like I think about and I appreciate you sharing that so much like I remember like one of the driving forces behind cultish was seeing shows like Scientology the aftermath or they did a series on Jehovah's Witnesses and seeing and there's other documentaries that are out there that shows the disconnect from ex -cult members of the when they go through the abuse but when they get disfellowshipped disconnected they become a suppressive person and seeing the grief and the severance and the trauma that goes through that but the only thing these groups have in common these support groups have in common is the fact that they've they have a shared trauma like you've been like both of you have been through some things and seen some things and you know people who are going through those things too but you have something that those people don't have which is like the joy of Christ where even in the midst of persecution tribulation even being misunderstood like that's one of those hurtful things like being misunderstood by people that you love and care for and want to know the truth and you know like there's nothing

01:17:45

I can say out of my mouth like I can't hold down the truth that's in my heart and I want you to know the truth but everything that's coming out there there it's just a different language to them because they don't understand and like the fact that you're sharing this it just it really touches me just because this is something that's the real one of the main missions and catalysts of cultists from its inception is to be able to show people who are in ex -cultists we don't just want them to get out of the cult we want them to jump out of that burning building but we want to be like the firemen like with that little net to hopefully catch them by God's grace yeah yes yes yeah very well said and I mean that's why it's so important to us that you guys would do something like this series because you know we've talked a lot about Walter Martin and some of the stuff that went on in the 50s and in the early history of Adventism but sitting where I sit it's for me it's where my family lives yeah it's where my siblings are it's where people

01:18:49

I really care about are trapped and and several have friends who are not

01:18:56

Adventist who are Christian and their Christian friends don't know anything other than the fact that oh they you know have some food things and they go on Saturday but but you know we're we're fine they're fine and and I feel like my loved ones are cut off from the gospel that's the phrase and so gospel to have

01:19:16

Christians caring it's going to it's going to mean a lot down the road as as one by one these people begin to see what's true because there are other

01:19:26

Christians who are saying now wait I heard something help me understand what you believe about this and then they can take him to scripture yeah man

01:19:34

I love that so much yeah it's funny that I'm sorry no no you go you go you're good

01:19:39

I was just gonna say real quick we often say it's really kind of funny that God must have it's as if God knew what all the heresies would be because there's an answer for every one of them in the

01:19:49

Bible who knew I love it I love it like it literally says regardless of uh what maybe even your guys's family's positions is believing in the soul or the immaterial the beautiful thing is what the word of God says is actually true like in Hebrews 412 it says for the word of God is living and active sharper than any two -edged sword piercing to the division of the soul and the spirit of the joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart right so regardless of the beliefs of a false system it's not true but we know that God's word never returns void it accomplishes exactly what it's supposed to do like you supposed to do yeah like you said um

01:20:27

God knew all the heresies right but what that means is that yeah that what that means is he knows all of the answers right and what we need to do is just be faithful with the word give the word and rely in faith on God right trusting in him in his will in order to have peace in our lives and joy in the midst of suffering and then pray for our loved ones pray for those who are in other false assemblies and just see how

01:20:56

God works in our lives like you said there's now people shoulder to shoulder like essentially in your house

01:21:01

God is doing things he literally split the soul and the spirit a miracle occurred and he brought someone to saving faith they were born again it's the exact opposite of SDA doctrine is of these people exactly like even though Ellen G White failed

01:21:18

God never failed and he never will fail to bring about his kingdom like Matthew 18 or Matthew 28 18 through 20

01:21:26

God is essentially giving the great commission to the disciples he doesn't say now command them to observe the sabbath no he's he's telling them to preach the gospel to them that the kingdom of God is invaded earth because now there's a spiritual redemption that occurs through the blood of Jesus Christ where you can worship

01:21:43

God in spirit and in truth not on this mountain not in that mountain not at that church or necessarily at that church with regards to one specific localized organization giving you a body of truth but worship worshiping in what in spirit spirit and in truth and it's an amazing thing that we have through Jesus Christ and that's that's the gospel of the kingdom right to go go and preach that let

01:22:06

God do his work cutting in between the soul and the spirit and bringing to people about knowledge of saving faith that's the

01:22:12

Holy Spirit does right convicts the world of sin and righteousness and I praise God for you too because you are that voice right like God working through you to be that voice to people that are stuck in that false assembly that's how

01:22:25

God works through his people he says how beautiful are the feet that spread the good news and he has shaped you and your whole life and your experiences to be able to speak to this certain group of people that he can speak through you in love and that's that's great

01:22:39

I love that so much thank you thank you for that encouragement yeah yeah absolutely I feel like we've really covered like this is good

01:22:48

I feel like this really sums it up um maybe I can just ask one last question as we wrap up here and maybe you can kind of give me both your thoughts to go together

01:22:57

I want to just read one uh verse that just came to mind I felt prompted to write to read this is

01:23:05

Luke chapter 4 verse 18 this is where Jesus goes and he picks up the scroll from Isaiah and he reads this passage he says the spirit of the

01:23:15

Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the and recovery for the sight of the blind to set the oppressed free

01:23:32

I'm on the internet and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor being the entire journey both of you have been on both being a seventh -day

01:23:42

Adventist now being on the other side what is this verse like how does how does this passage resonate with you and your mission of why you both are doing what you're doing with uh both your ministry and being on this podcast it's a perfect text it is the

01:24:00

Lord sets you free you know you find him you find the truth and the truth sets you free and and it it is a prison you know even if you don't know you're in a prison it's the prison to be in a false system that is has created walls all the way around you preventing you from knowing

01:24:18

God and Christ came to destroy all of those walls and all of those barriers and that's we pray that through this ministry that we're able to help him break down those walls you know that text um

01:24:35

I find really meaningful in a way I don't know how to explain because as Adventist I read the words but it never dawned on me that Jesus was saying that was a messianic prophecy here

01:24:51

I am here I am and as an Adventist that just didn't mean anything to me here

01:24:56

I am and he stopped short of the day of jubilee you know the passage in Isaiah that requires so he's he's saying everything he said up to what

01:25:05

I'm here to do now is done and I didn't realize that's what he was saying and I and I just think it's so amazing that he is alive he is the the object and the subject of prophecy of the old testament and he has come and has taken away that veil of the law that second

01:25:27

Corinthians 3 talks about setting us free the captives we were captives under the law and his fulfilling the law and setting us free is a paradigm shift in all of history and he's brought us into that and this is the work he's created in advance for us to do

01:25:47

Ephesians 2 10 it's just amazing to me how it all fits together I didn't see that unity between the old the new

01:25:54

Jesus and those who are his body it's amazing to me no thank you thank you for sharing all right well thank you both for coming on and doing this long -awaited extended series with us the two chapters four episodes in total real quickly as we are wrapping up here one last time where can people find you both and your ministry your podcast tell them about that real quickly you can go to proclamationmagazine .com

01:26:24

you'll find back issues of the proclamation magazine used to be a print article so it's there in pdf form and we also have weekly blogs that come out there are transcripts for our podcast links to our podcast and links to our youtube channel with videos from past former

01:26:38

Adventist fellowship conferences yeah and if you want to email you can write to formeradventist that's singular formeradventist at gmail .com

01:26:49

excellent okay we'll have and also we'll make sure that we share have links uh in our descriptions too when this episode drops all right well uh if you i'm sure you already have but uh you don't really need our permission but go ahead and comment on our social media let us know what you thought i'm sure we'll be getting lots of dms both positive and negative about this but this is an important it's important that we have a conversation about this so we appreciate you taking the time to discuss this and as always as we wrap up here a program like this cannot continue without your support there's a lot of uh hours uh put into this conversation from its inception to its completion uh people who are producers in the back cameras all that sort of stuff so i would ask that prayerfully consider supporting our ministry go to the cult to show .com