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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.
Denominations, part 30, Seventh Day Adventist
Series Denominations
| Sermon ID | 111241745465814 |
| Duration | 47:59 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Language | English |
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