The Real Sin of Adventism
by Curtis Forrester
While I myself did not agree with many of the fundamental teachings of Adventism, I found the dissenters more objectionable. Much of what they focused on was trivial misunderstandings. They seemed to howl over whether or not the dead are conscious when clearly we have just no idea. I don’t even care. I know that after I die the next thing I will see is my savior. If it happens after I’ve fed a few thousand worms or happens when my “soul” rises to heaven, what do I care? I do wonder, however, how I can enjoy myself in heaven after I die when all my memories are decaying in my body…but that’s food for another thought…or worm…
The tone on many of the websites is bombastic and sensational. This often kept me from reading what they had to say, and meant that I was left to dig up my own evidence or to continue to only hear the side of the Adventist theologians. Though the National Enquirer may from time to time have serious news, because of the general sensationalism it is dismissed as more hoax than news.
The real issue in discussing Adventism is what they have done with Jesus Christ and His Eternal Gospel. Paul said that if anyone – even someone who claims to be a prophet – preaches a different Gospel that person was accursed. That church is accursed. The issue is Jesus. The issue is faith. The issue is peace, assurance, and power.
Paul declared that we are dead to the law. The woman who wished to be joined to another was bound to her husband for as long as she lived, and there was no way out. The husband could not be lawfully killed, so she was stuck.
We desperately wanted – needed – to be free from the law and from its condemnation. Even if we somehow find the fortitude to start to meet the full standard of the law, yet because we did not yesterday we still stand condemned. But what the law could not do weak as it was in the flesh, God did. Since we could not live perfect lives, Christ was sent.
The great story of Romans 7 is that though the husband – the law – could not be killed so that we are free, we have been made to die with Christ and baptism is our declaration with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, and the life I now live I live by faith in Christ”. The claims of the law demand the penalty: death. The claims of the law have been satisfied in Christ and we now stand free from the law and free from its condemnation. We were bound to the law as long as we lived, and now – being dead – are no longer under the law.
The old covenant was a system of laws and commandments. We were directed to obey, and a blessing would proceed from that obedience. But disobedience would result in a curse. All have sinned and fallen short. The new covenant is a life no longer bound to the old covenant laws and commandments, but bound to Christ. The result is life, peace, joy and power – a power that we could never obtain while under the law.
The real sin of Adventism is not in their peculiar sanctuary doctrine, or their vegetarianism or belief about post-death or even the fact that they believe they had a prophet. It is not in what they say that is not Biblical. It is in how they twisted Christ. It is in how what they say cloaks a part of the gospel. It is in how they distract the new convert from full dependence and joy in Christ to a slow progression of law-focus. The Sabbath, that God’s remnant people are law-keepers, that they have the spirit of prophecy. That Daniel 8:14 means X or Hebrews 6 doesn’t mean Y or any of the other distractions that slowly erode faith in Christ and joy in his salvation and the power that comes from the thrill of understanding the Everlasting Gospel of salvation by Christ alone. The sin is in “converting” people through seminars that are filled with facts that are rarely fully understood, can hardly be remembered and plant the seeds of fear and extremism – and again: distract from Jesus Christ in subtle ways.
Martin Luther would no doubt have strong words for us today. He would marvel, with Paul, at how we are turning so quickly from Christ for another Gospel. The close of the 2300 years – if anything – is a restoration of the gospel that had been all but lost and trampled into the ground by 1500 years of papacy and corruption. If 1844 inaugurated anything it ushered in a new era of understanding of the timeless truth of Jesus Christ, His Cross, and His salvation and of His Spirit that He promised and sent.
See Gal. 2:19, 20; Rom. 6, 7; Col. 2:13, 14
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