Morning. I'm going to try and start on time because we have a lot to cover. And this is I'm going to try and wrap up Seventh-day Adventism today. So let's begin our time in prayer. Heavenly Father, I'd like to again thank you for your goodness. Thank you for the beauty of the day. Thank you for the extra hours rest. And Lord, I just pray that you give us wisdom as we look at Adventism and Seventh-day Adventists and and Lord, that we would be able to recognize from your word what is true, what is good, and that we would cling to that. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, where to start? Normally I'd say just pick up from last week, but you know what happens is I go home and I get thinking about other things that I really should add in. So this got longer again. And where we were last week, We talked about the investigative judgment. I'm going to do this one for a moment. Do you see the headline? This is from July of 2020. Nashville survives prophesied nuclear disaster. Anybody read the newspaper anymore? You saw that? Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one on that mailing list. because yeah, I get a lot of this type of stuff too. And this week I got one. And so I said, okay, I've actually got to deal with this because this comes out, I mean, Adventistoday.org is actually one of the publications of the Adventist. And one of the things that they were pointing out here was that this was Jeff Pippenger. He's a former Adventist. And notice they highlight the former Adventist there, but that he had made this prophecy and they immediately disfellowshipped him. In other words, he was excommunicated for making another prophecy. But I'm gonna go full circle. When we started, the whole Adventist movement came out of who? Remember a guy, Baptist pastor, William Miller, right? And what was he doing? Prophesying, setting dates. And so the movement has continued to keep aspects of that all through it because everybody says, well, the Jehovah's Witnesses, they've set dates for the return of Jesus. And so you look at the Worldwide Church of God, they set dates for the return of Jesus. The Adventists, particularly Seventh-day Adventists, will say, oh no, we never have. So we have to look at that because remember I said you've got so many different moving parts on this one. So this one, this guy was basically thrown out of the church. We had nothing to do with it is what the Seventh-day Adventists would say. That said, the email I got this week led you to a video. The video was an hour and 20 minutes long. I'm going to save you from watching an hour and 20 minutes. I shortened it down to six minutes of excerpts from it. I want to do that to begin with because it'll allow us to actually take a look at this. While this specific warning of this particular event was written nearly 120 years ago, new statements concerning this event revealing the location have only now come to light. Before this, nobody knew where this particular judgment would fall. The Lord desires this warning to be published abroad, for surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants, the prophets. While it is not a new revelation that God will judge the cities of earth, what is new is that this 117-year-old warning contains the name of the very first city to be affected. But before we discuss the author, I want to share with you that for 111 years, Those who had access to these writings from 1904 only had access to these two statements. It was not until the year 2015 that four more statements concerning this dream were made available to the public. And these additional statements give a lot more information, including the name of the first city to be affected by these judgments. The woman who was given these dreams in 1904 by the time of her death in 1915 had received over 2,000 visions and dreams. Many of these visions also took place in public even before entire congregations. She wrote more than 5,000 periodical articles and 40 books. She is the most translated female author in history and the most translated American author ever. Her writings include thousands of pages on health and physiology of the human body as revealed to her by the creator himself. In the last 115 years that have passed since the time of her death, science has confirmed many of her divinely revealed insights and has yet to discover even more. Since her death, 105 years have passed. It was not until recently, in 2015, that 50,000 more pages of her writings were released to the public for the very first time. Among these 50,000 pages are the four additional statements concerning this judgment soon to fall, including the name of the first city to be impacted. The next newly released statement I want to look at is from January 21st, 1905. She writes, when I was at Nashville, I had been speaking to the people. And in the night season, there was an immense ball of fire that came right from heaven and settled in Nashville. There were flames going out like arrows from that ball. Houses were being consumed. Houses were tottering and falling. Some of our people were standing there It is just as we expected, they said. We expected this. Others were wringing their hands in agony and crying unto God for mercy. You knew it, said they. You knew that this was coming and never said a word to warn us. They seemed as though they would almost tear them to pieces to think they had never told them or given them any warning at all. From this account of her dream, the location of the judgment is unmistakable. She wrote that this immense ball of fire settled in Nashville. Ellen White was a co-founder and member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. So when she wrote, some of our people were standing there, she is speaking about Seventh-day Adventists. So enraged were those in the city against the Seventh-day Adventists that she writes, they seemed as though they would almost tear them to pieces because the Seventh-day Adventists had never told them or given them any warning at all. There is yet another but subtle clue identifying the location of this judgment to be the Parthenon building in Centennial Park. Just after Ellen White wrote this ball of fire fell where they were casting buildings, whirl, she says of the same ball of fire in the next sentence that the ball came right to the building and crushed it. So why, when describing the location where the ball of fire falls, would she write that it was around multiple buildings in one sentence and a single building in the next? In this particular instance, it makes sense if we understand that at one time in the past, there were indeed multiple buildings at this location, but presently, there is only one, the Parthenon. Twice, she writes, the wrath of God will come upon all cities. So why focus on the event in Nashville? It is because Nashville is to be a warning to all the cities of earth. After writing that these judgments will come one after another, she adds, and if the terrible punishment in one city does not cause the inhabitants of other cities to be afraid and seek repentance, their time will come. When the Lord ariseth to shake terribly the earth, he will not cease until his work in punishment is done. The seventh-day Sabbath was given to be a sign whereby we acknowledge that He, the creator of the Sabbath, is our God. But when Christians dispense with the Word of God and instead honor, acknowledge, and reverence the day of the sun, Sunday, which the Roman Catholic Church claims to be the day that honors the false Trinity God, then we may know this is the sign or mark of the papacy, the beast power. This end-time crisis over the Sabbath is the Mark of the Beast crisis, for it will force all upon the earth to make a decision whom they will obey. For know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey? When the Sunday laws that forbid buying and selling for all who refuse the mark have been enacted, then all will be brought to make a choice for life or death, the law of God or the law of the papal church in the place of God. Then when all have made their choice human probation will close just as did the door of the ark in the days of noah And the offer of mercy will be forever gone So why haven't these messages? Concerning nashville and the three angels messages gone forth prior to today They couldn't have gone forth before 1844 But since then the three angels messages have been going forth But the messages concerning Nashville couldn't have gone forth before 2015, because prior to that time, nobody knew what city these dreams describe. OK. Raise any concerns? Um, what was what stood out? There should be one statement in there that stood out to you has been way off. Maybe, maybe more. Yeah, but one probably more than others. The false Trinity God. You heard that wording? Yeah. And See, what's happened is that within Seventh-day Adventism, if you listen to the official statements, the official doctrine that they have today, they would say that they ascribe to the Trinity, the same Trinity that we do. And yet, if you follow what Ellen White and her husband taught, they actually held to a different God, a God, the Trinity was more of a title than it was an actual relationship. And so, you've got people within the Seventh-day Adventist Church that are pushing towards saying that the Seventh-day Adventist Church needs to repent, that it's the one that's not warning people, and you have to get back to Ellen White's teachings. So the guy that was on screen here, he has not yet been disfellowshipped from the Seventh-day Adventist, but they will. So what they do is every one of these ones that becomes an offshoot gets disfellowshipped as they say that they're going against the doctrine that they're teaching today, and yet they still hold to Ellen White, which means that if you go back to Ellen White's teachings, you end up with a lot of this type of stuff. See the contradiction that comes all the time on this? I mean, this was another news article, because this was about the one that you saw at the beginning about the prophecy of the nuclear disaster, And the guy that was writing this wrote this for a news media. And he also admitted in the article that he was a member of the Seventh-day Adventists. And in the middle of all of that, he also, of course, emphasized that the guy who made that prophecy has been kicked out of the church. And then he says, this is not the first time the Adventists have been in this lane before. You familiar with the Branch Davidians? David Koresh? I mean, that goes back a few decades ago, right? And there was a lot of people killed in that one. And everybody immediately said, well, that's a cult. Where'd that cult come from? The full name of it is Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist. You rarely saw that in the media, just that you saw Branch Davidian. And what was it? Offshoot from the Seventh-day Adventist, a group just like the groups that are involved with this that say, we're not following the teachings of Ellen White. In other words, our church is veered off from Ellen White. So it keeps coming back to Ellen White over and over again. It's interesting, the guy who wrote that article for the media, he says, the Advent Christian Church no longer tries to scare people out of their socks and has never set a date for Christ's return. Just leave that hanging out there for a minute. We gotta keep going, okay? So yeah, you've got, Some within the Seventh-day Adventists that would teach that, I mean, this ball of fire is supposed to hit Nashville, Parthenon in particular, they're actually sending out warnings. And in particular, if you're on some of the pastoral lists that are out there where they're sending stuff, they've been sending these warnings out to pastors. And so that's how I ended up getting that one this week. And all of this, as I said, has hinged around a person, Ellen G. White. This is a lady, lived in Portland, Maine. And through her preachings and writings, she guided and formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Over her lifetime, testimonies for the church expanded from 16 pages to nine full volumes. In 1863, she received a vision about human health and her followers adopted her health regulations as part of their practices, rejecting meat, coffee, and medication in favor of natural remedies. So what's a box of cornflakes doing up there? came about from Seventh-day Adventists. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was an early adopter of Seventh-day Adventist teachings, particularly the teachings of health and food with Ellen White. And he believed that incorrect eating and drinking would lead to impure thoughts. He actually believed that spicy food in particular would lead to impure thoughts. And he invented cornflakes in 1894 to help with this problem. And we've been eating cornflakes ever since. So the quote that I read to begin that, not the stuff that's in red, but it's on black on screen, is all quotes from SDA sources current this year. And so I'm gonna go back up to the top and say, little heat is given to the Bible and the Lord has given a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light. And this statement was given to show how she perceived her role. So this is the Seventh-day Adventist saying that this is how she perceived her role, was that she was a light leading to a greater light. She was raised as a devout Methodist, but her family was forced out of the Methodist church when she accepted William Miller's preaching about the imminent return of Jesus. She became inspired by a message from God just a couple of months after the Great Disappointment, and that was the one where William Miller had predicted when Jesus was gonna come back. She was encouraged that what they'd learned about Jesus' little return was indeed correct, but setting a date for it was in error. And notice this is the SDA today saying that she from the very beginning believed setting a date was in error. We keep that because it has to go with that other statement that I read you in the news. And in 1846, Ellen married James White, also a former Millerite. The two joined with others who continuously studied their Bibles about Christ's return and accepted the seventh day, Saturday, as the true Sabbath. Because in 1847, Ellen White had a prophetic vision confirming her new belief. She claimed to have been shown the law of God in a heavenly sanctuary, and the fourth commandment concerning the Sabbath was surrounded by a halo of light. And from that, she said that that showed that we had gotten away from that we have to celebrate the Sabbath on the exact timing as the Jews. Okay, so that again is things from the Seventh-day Adventist today. So we talked about food, nutrition. This is, and I could have given you this from a number of different sources, but this was on a Seventh-day Adventist church website right now. In other words, you can look it up right now. and it gives you the dietary rules. And you say, well, are these just dietary suggestions? No, they teach them as dietary rules given by, not God, sort of. They're given by Ellen White. God told Ellen White to say that this is what good Christians would do. So, dos, grains, fruit, nuts, vegetables are the diet chosen for us by our creator. Okay, that's just at the top. I don't have time to read all this. We'll get bogged down too much. But all the elements of nutrition are contained in fruits, vegetables, and grains. And, you know, so we've got all that. Almonds are preferable to peanuts, but peanuts in limited quantity, like details. Remember when I said the attributes of a cult last week? One of them is to control even just small details of your life, right? That's one of the potential attributes of a cult. And this is why people immediately start looking at this type of stuff, go, cult? So harmful? I mean, if you want to eat nuts and fruits and stuff, that's not harmful to you. Eat olives. Olives may be so prepared as to be eaten with good result at every meal. OK, I can deal with that. I like olives. But I mean, this is the type of stuff. And when properly prepared, olives, like nuts, supply the place of butter and flesh meats. I copied it right from their site. So I'd say it's fresh meat. eaten in the olive is far preferable to animal oil or fat. Okay, so that's on the do side. And again, that's word for word right off the website. The next section I had to abridge it. I had to shorten it up because it's way too long. There is far more don'ts on the list. Things that you should not be doing. Point A, avoid meat. Cancers, tumors, and all inflammatory diseases are largely caused by eating meat. We have plenty of good things to satisfy hunger without bringing corpses upon our table. Meat is the greatest disease breeder that can be introduced into the human system. We all got a problem, right? Okay, so this right here, where are these quotes coming from? This is all Ellen White. So this is on a current Seventh Day Adventist website, and they're citing things from Ellen White. And they would teach you that she was speaking on behalf of God regarding this, that she was a prophetess. I mean, look at the later one. Not an ounce of flesh meat should eat our stomachs or should enter our stomachs. God's people are to take a firm stand against eating meat. I mean, so over time, she had more and more, she kind of started off in some of her earlier stuff saying a little bit of meat might be okay. But by the time you got later stuff on her, like no meat whatsoever. But that's only one section. B, avoid too much sugar. No one can have good digestive powers and a clear brain who eat largely of sweet cookies and cream cake and all kinds of pies. Okay, I'm in trouble. And I mean, a lot of this down there. From the light given me, sugar, when largely used, is more injurious than meat. So meat was pretty bad already, but sugar's even worse. Okay? And I'll do the last one now. Plain, simple pie may serve as dessert, but when one eats two or three pieces merely to gratify an inordinate appetite, he unfits himself for the service of God. Okay. I won't do C. I'm going to D. Less reliance on dairy products. And again, this was that you're butter bad. I mean, you know, that's the best way to summarize that. Far too much sugar is ordinarily used in food. It gets back into that one again. Cakes, sweet puddings, pastries, jellies, jams are active causes of indigestion. Especially harmful are custards and puddings in which milk and eggs and sugar are the chief ingredients. So again, all these things you're not supposed to eat. This is one of the reasons, remember I said back in the first day when we were doing this that I had a friend that was Matt Westrate, that was Seventh-day Adventist, that he would never have a meal with me? Well, here's the reason why he would never have a meal with you, because you're not going to follow all of these things in so doing. E, avoid tea, coffee, and caffeine-laden drinks. You know, tea, coffee, and drinking is a sin. There's an opening right there for you, right? So, so far, do you all feel condemned by the Sabbath Day Adventists? Just a bit? Okay. F, avoid condiments, mustards, pepper, spices, pickles, and other things of like character. They make the blood feverish and impure. Avoid vinegar. I mean, do not eat between meals. Oh boy. Okay, the snack is wrong. And yeah, okay. So that's just touching on a few things. I could have spent a lot more time on that. We just don't have the time. But do you get an idea how it's trying to control every aspect of your eating? All from Seventh-day Adventist current teachings because they still hold to all of Ellen White's teachings, even no matter what they've said about other doctrine. We're going to get back to more details on Ellen White. Because Ellen White, yes. If you backed up 50 years ago, you would be pretty much, you know where she said it was a sin, right? That if you were a Christian, you had to be doing this. Now they've kind of moderated to the say, you should be. If you're a good Christian, you should be doing this. So they won't use it as a first tier level, but it was. For many decades, it was. And so you still have the people that are saying that the church has become apostate now because they don't hold that as a first tier. That's where it's showing up. And that's why it's so hard because what you read about Seventh-day Adventist changes by the decade. So if you pick up something that was written 25 years ago, Today's Seventh-day Adventist will say, well, that's not exactly what we hold to now. And even when I was having conversations with Matt Westray decades ago, at that time he was saying, well, we don't elevate Ellen White as much as she perhaps had been in the past. Okay, take that quote from a few decades ago. I'm gonna read you some actual Seventh-day Adventist quotes and see if you think that he's telling me the truth. So Ellen White was, and again, this is quotes again from Seventh-day Adventist sources, current ones, a highly regarded pioneer of Seventh-day Adventism as she played a key role in the formation of the denomination. And her impact is still recognized today, both by Adventists and others, and the Smithsonian Magazine named her as one of the 100 most significant Americans of all time. By the time she passed away, her writings came close to 100,000 pages. This included 24 published books, 5,000 articles, and more than 200 informational leaflets. Did you notice in that video that I ran that it said that some of her writings just came to light in 2015? You say, well, if she published that much stuff, why is there some stuff that, and she was supposedly speaking on behalf of God, why was there some stuff that was not published? You have to ask the why question. Her estate still controls all of her writings. And somebody within the Seventh-day Adventist found out that Nashville was named because the two prophecies that they had released had been generic. They've been general. And they found out that Nashville had been named. And that's why in 2015, they actually, without permission from the Ellen White estate, went to publish a bunch of stuff that they had seen privately. And they got sued by the Seventh-day Adventist Church trying to stop it from being published. And when they realized that they were going to lose in court on that, and it was going to end up still being published, they then backed off and said, all of it can be released. And so that was why it was released in 2015. And so suddenly you ended up with not just what they had historically for Ellen White, you ended up with a whole bunch more older documents being released only in 2015. Continuing the quotes from the Seventh-day Adventist, she was widely recognized as having the prophetic gift and was always careful to point her readers and listeners to God and the Bible as the source of truth. So remember, this is being cited today that, you know, she was always careful to point to the Bible, not to, you know, her own authority. Much of her advice is still relevant today and has helped many people improve their lives and deepen their Christian walk. Though many people praised her eloquence in writing and speaking on spiritual topics, she did not see herself or her writings as holy or equal to scriptures. Again, that's a quote from this year. They're saying that she didn't hold her writings holy or equal to scriptures. And yet in the same breath, they also say that they were God inspired. Ellen White was not only one of the founding mothers of the Advent Christian Church, but also a prophetess whose inspired writings continue to guide and impact the Advent Christian Church today. In 2015, on the centennial of her death, the Advent Christian Church affirmed, catch this wording, affirmed that Ellen G. White's writings were divinely inspired, are Christ-centered, and are Bible-based. So are they holding her writings co-equal to scriptures? They're saying they're definitely based in, that if you contradict it, you're saying you're contradicting a revelation from God, you're contradicting the Bible. And notice on the chart that's over there, Ellen White was an inspired messenger of profit. This was done as a survey amongst the Seventh-day Adventists. And the blue was done in 2013. In 2017, 2018, it was done again. And that was in the yellow to ask amongst Seventh-day Adventist people, in other words, the people that are part of that denomination, do you agree with the statement Ellen White was an inspired messenger of profit? Notice that you get at the high end of that. that embrace wholeheartedly that statement over 72%. So the majority of people in the Seventh-day Adventist Church wholeheartedly embrace that she was an inspired messenger or prophet. So they're going to accept what she said as coming from God. And how often do you read the writings of Ellen G. White? In other words, if I asked you, how often do you read the Bible? And by the way, I do like doing anonymous service. So many of the groups that I do things in, I actually will pass out stuff where people can anonymously, because I get to find out a lot about people that way when I'm out doing seminars. And a question I've often asked is questions like that, you know, how often do you read the Bible? And this is one that's been done on large scale for how often you read the Bible. But this particular one was narrowed in to those that were Seventh-day Adventists to ask, how often do you read the writings of Ellen G. White? And if you look at the daily or more than daily, 16%, the more than once a week, 21%, and about once a week, 19%. That's more than a majority right there. So is Ellen White considered to be very important to people that are in the Seventh-day Adventists? Yes, unquestionably. And by the way, If you take those three that I just did in that category and you ask the question about how often do you read the Bible and do that amongst evangelical Christians, you get almost the same numbers. So that means that for Seventh-day Adventists, they're holding loosely as evangelicals do the Bible to the writings of Alan White. Yes. The stats for reading the Bible come out almost the same. So for many of them, to read the Bible is to read Ellen White alongside of it, to tell you how to understand the passage. And again, that comes very close to the hallmarks of a cult again, because the Jehovah's Witnesses will tell you that only they can tell you how to interpret scriptures, right? So you get the same type of idea that runs around in this. The book that's on there is a formal copy of her published works, the ones before 2015. So it's not light reading, right? Okay, Ellen White. We consider the biblical canon closed. However, we also believe, as did Ellen G. White's contemporaries, that her writings carry divine authority, both for godly living and for doctrine. Therefore, we recommend that as a church we seek the power of the Holy Spirit to apply to our lives more fully the inspired counsel contained in the writings of Ellen G. White. That was an adopted statement at the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference session that was held in the Netherlands in June of 1995. So anybody tries to tell you that they've downplayed Ellen White. No, their formal statements, even at the same time as trying to affirm traditional doctrines, has also reaffirmed that they hold to Ellen White. Not as, you know, the Bible canon's closed, in other words, this is the Bible, but Ellen White. And it's kind of just, you're always adding Ellen White to everything with the Seventh-day Adventists. And, you know, as I put on the right hand side underneath her picture, I said there are entire apologetic works written by the Seventh-day Adventist faithful seeking to justify every error that anyone has pointed out in her writings. And there's over 50 that are listed. It often seems there's greater concern that Ellen White is right than for the message of scriptures. In other words, there's whole apologetic works trying to defend Ellen White. And And I want to do the one at the bottom on there. I was shown, and this is a quote from Ellen White. She said, I was shown the company present at the conference, said the angel, some food for worms. And then this is to clarify that Sister Clarissa Bonafi, who fell asleep in Jesus only three days after this vision was given, was present in usual health, but was deeply impressed that she was the one who would go into the grave and stated her convictions to others. In other words, They were saying that that was past tense prophecy fulfilled. And then he goes on to say, some are going to be subjects of the seven last plagues. Some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus. So they're saying that Ellen White was giving this as a prophecy, part of which was confirmed right away because this lady died. But notice the last of that, that some would be alive and remain on the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus. Not one person left in that meeting is still alive. and Jesus did not come back. Did Ellen White set a date for the return of Jesus? Yeah, albeit generally, she did. She prophesied that these people would still be alive when Jesus came back. And so you still have that element that appeared really with the Millerites back at the beginning. It just became more general. It's more of the, well, within a, and by the way, that happens in evangelical circles too. I've got some books that are on my shelf that were published in the 1980s that prophesied that Jesus is going to be back. We don't know when, we don't know the day, we don't know the hour, but it's going to be before 2000. You know, so it happens there too. But here, this is where you get people taking all of Ellen White's statements and the ones that are hold religiously to her have to explain away that. And so that's why they've literally written a whole apologetic works trying to explain away that she made prophecies like this in the midst of prophecies they claim are true and valid. Ellen White's prophetic visions confirmed or defended. And again, I'll have to stress this one, the whole basis by which they religiously hold to Saturday Sabbath is because, and they hold that as a doctrine of first importance, by the way, that true Christians will worship when? Sunday on Friday night, Sunday on Saturday night. True Christians will. And occasionally you'll get somebody within the Seventh-day Adventist Church that'll kind of, well, other believers don't do that, but they're in error. So they'll hedge that, but for many years and for most of the writings and the stuff they point to for Ellen White, they'll just say that you're not a good Christian or not a Christian at all if you don't do that. Aberrant views of death, hell, and eternal punishment. That a God of eternal wrath is incompatible with a God of love and kindness. And eating and drinking certain foods is wrong. actually, as Ellen White said, sin affecting mind and soul. Questions on Ellen White before I move beyond her? Because I'm going to kind of wrap up the overall of Seventh-day Adventist. So, so far, because I asked you the question, cult or not a cult? What are you leaning towards right now? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that said that they will go to scriptures to say, well, you know, it was established in the Old Testament. It was never revoked. Therefore, yeah. So but but the basis by which the denomination adopted it in the earliest days and then have continued to was her vision. Anybody want to jump in on cult or not a cult? So you're leaning towards cult, and you can see how people that have been weighing this through, you know, and here's the reason why, by definition, if you take a very narrow or very broad definition of cult, generally a cult is leading you away from Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, leading you away from God. And if you hold to their official doctrinal statements without Ellen White, and there are some people within the Seventh-day Adventist, they're going to read scriptures, embrace the Christ of scriptures. Are you going to find that there's believers within the Seventh-day Adventist church? Yes. But is the system set up to try and lead you away? The more you closer you get to Ellen White, the more it leads you away from scriptures. And unfortunately, the longer you're within the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the more you get pressure to be an Ellen White follower. And so that's where it's really hard, because for those of us that would say not a cult, it's because I can say safely that there are some, if not many believers within the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in spite of a lot of the cultish stuff that runs around there. That's where I weigh in on it. But at the same time, dangerous. I would not send anybody to a Seventh-day Adventist church because the focus tends to be on Ellen White. And that's going to lead you away. Not officially. In other words, so the big thing that you would have is more of an internal shunning, if you will. And so it, you know, the guy that I said did the prophecy about the nuclear thing of that sort. I mean, they just made, interestingly enough, the opening statements that said that he and his group, because he had a group of other people that was with him, were all disfellowshipped. They made a public announcement to say, that a group that has been divisive amongst us has been disfellowshipped from us and never cited him by name or the group by name. So when it was done, it was just never done by name. Yeah. Sorry, I'll let that one play. I'm a little annoyed. So if you're understanding, and I agree with what you're saying, if you're understanding more than five of those, are they in batches? What does that mean? You can find the mixed bag within particular churches, but you do have churches that lean more heavily. Like, I mean, you could go to some Seventh-day Adventist churches and listen to the message and go, Amen. And then you'd have others that every other time you're going to get a reference to Ellen White, you're going to get a citation from Ellen White, you're going to, you know, so there is quite a difference between the Seventh-day Adventist churches. It does. It's a moving target. Okay, let me try and wrap the whole thing up. Summary of Seventh-day Adventists. Affirmations, denials, and teachings. And the affirmations list on that verse. The Bible is inspired in the Word of God. The Trinitarian, according to official statements, they believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God and three persons. That is the official statement of the Seventh-day Adventist. That is not the statement of Ellen White and her husband. Okay, so just showing the difference. Jesus is God and has always existed with the Father. The Holy Spirit is a person. Jesus' sacrifice was vicarious. Salvation is by grace, not works. Jesus physically rose from the dead in his glorified body. Jesus ascended bodily into heaven. Baptism is by immersion. They believe in the literal, visible return of Jesus. They believe in a literal six-day creation. And by the way, creation is one of the ones that they spend a big focus on, that they are very literal on that. and they are premillennial, Jesus will return to set up a millennial kingdom. And then, under their denials, they deny baptism by sprinkling, they deny infant baptism, they deny the doctrine of predestination, and they are very rabidly against the doctrine of predestination. They deny the immortality of the soul, they deny eternal punishment and hellfire, they deny the use of alcohol as a beverage, tobacco, and some foods, and as you saw, the some foods list should probably say many foods. Okay, long list. Other aberrant teachings. Our sins will ultimately be placed on Satan. I mean, notice I have the arrow going over. It was seen also that while the sin offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice and the high priest represented Christ as a mediator, the scapegoat typified Satan, the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will be finally placed. as the priest in removing the sins from the sanctuary confessed them upon the head of the scapegoat, so Christ will place all these sins upon Satan, the originator and instigator of sin. And these are all Ellen White's writings that are being cited there. Their sins are transferred to the originator of sin. And I don't have the time to go through them this morning, but the verses that I wrote down at the bottom contrast those statements to these verses in scriptures. You're gonna see that they're glaringly in error. So that's in the other aberrant teachings. Jesus is Michael the Archangel as a title for the Son of God, not as a creative being. And they basically, Job's witnesses hold to that as well. Worship must be on Saturday, I've already said that one. October 22nd, 1844, Jesus entered the second and last phase of his atoning work, the investigative judgment, which I dealt with a week ago. The fate of all people will be decided based upon this investigative judgment. soul sleep and death, the wicked are annihilated, and Ellen G. White, a founder of Seventh-day Adventism, was a God-gifted messenger with the spirit of prophecy. It's a mixed bag. Any last question? I can't believe I actually get through all this. Yeah. How do you find, what's a good entry way of engaging with the SBA? How do you find, what's a good beginning to start a conversation? Is it taking a particular doctrine? Do you have a certain question? Do you have a certain scripture in your guidance? it's a moving target because you don't know the seventh day Adventist person you're talking to, to how far into this they are. So a lot of it is really determining where they're getting their doctrine from. And if it's Ellen White, you have to, she's the elephant in the room. I mean, you end up having to deal with her because if not, that she gets cited as being the authority to say, this is our proper interpretation of scriptures. And so, you know, it's one thing to be able to show somebody from Scripture something, but if they keep saying, well, you have no ability to interpret that, it's only Ellen White's interpretation, you're not going to go far. So at times you have no choice but to actually deal with the major issue, which is Ellen White. So next week, since I get to start something totally new, the search for and lessons from the Tower of Babel. Why am I going to do that? I had a lot of different things I could start in on, but some of you know by now that I have a biblical archaeology museum, that I do archaeological research in the Middle East, and there's a reason behind what I do. And I figured the best way to start off is to actually deal with an issue that shows up in a lot of different fashions. I mean, you look at the picture on the right, Jonah, you know, being eaten by a fish over there. But a whole lot of people are treating the Bible as if it's fiction these days, right? And when you're talking to people, when you're witnessing to people and sharing your faith, a lot of people just write the Bible off as a book of fairy tales. You know, that's why I have it down there in the bottom, you know, in the category of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. And so the more supernatural the story in the Bible, the more likely people are to treat it that way. And the Tower of Babel is one that shows up over and over again for that. And so I want to take you on a journey to see, is the account of the Tower of Babel as given in scriptures, does it align with what we find in archaeology? Does it have a reason? for why it's there? Is it just one of those stories that moves beyond afterwards, barely talked about the rest of the Bible? What about the setting? We ended up spending many years doing research on this, and we started in Iran and ended up in Iraq last year. And so I'm going to take you through the scriptures. I'm going to take you through things that have been taught and how they've been taught, even things that you may have learned in Sunday school at some time. Because I mean, I grew up going to church and I have memories of the Sunday school papers. And so and how did that align with what the Bible teaches to what we find in archaeology? all of that. So I'm going to tie it all together. So that's going to start, Lord willing, next week. And it's going to take us a few weeks to go through that, because it's going to even touch on some events that happened way after the Tower of Babel and how what happened at Babel affected those events in Scriptures. Let's end our time in prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your goodness. Lord, even as we've looked at denominations and other beliefs and And Father, again, that we would search your word, search scriptures, that we would embrace that which is good and true and right, and Lord, be willing to share that with others. Father, give us wisdom as we do that. Help us to be gracious. Lord, just thank you for this time that we have today to worship you, and that we will worship you in spirit and truth. In Jesus' name, amen.