Our subject this morning is Seventh-day Adventism. And the most common question people always ask about this group is whether or not we should classify them as a cult. And that is a loaded question. In the middle of the 20th century, Walter Martin was arguably the most famous expert on quasi-Christian cults. He wrote, I think, a string of books on the subject. Starting in 1955, I was only two years old at the time, he wrote a book called The Rise of the Cults. And then he wrote individual volumes on Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian science. And of course, his best known book, a book that's still in print, is The Kingdom of the Cults. a very thick resource published in 1966. It's still one of the standard works on what the cults believe. It's probably a book you should own if you don't have it. Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults. And in the early 1960s, actually in the late 1950s, Walter Martin was working closely with Donald Gray Barnhouse, the famous preacher, Presbyterian pastor in Philadelphia, one of the great preachers of the 20th century, Donald Gray Barnhouse. He was the founder of Eternity Magazine. And Eternity wanted to do a series on the cults and other groups and so on. And at the time, Seventh-day Adventism was almost universally classified as a cult. In fact, one of the other standard works on the subject of cults is another book you should have. If you want to get two books on it, these are the best two. Book published in 1963 by Anthony Hokema titled The Four Major Cults. And Hokema listed Seventh-day Adventism as one of the four quintessential quasi-Christian cults. The others, of course, that he dealt with would be Christian science, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism. But Donald Gray Barnhouse and Walter Martin said, you know, one of those groups is not like the other. And starting sometime in the mid-1950s, they undertook a study of Seventh-day Adventism specifically to see whether it's appropriate to classify this group as a cult. And they met with Seventh-day Adventist leaders and read modern Seventh-day Adventist books, and they came to the conclusion that Adventism is heterodox, meaning that they teach several doctrines that are unbiblical, and they even muddle some of the central doctrines of Christianity, but Martin and Barnhouse said they're not so far off as to be classified as a heretical cult. After all, they said, Seventh-day Adventists don't deny the deity of Christ like the Jehovah's Witnesses, They don't have a fanciful or extra biblical view of the supremacy and eternality of God like the Mormons. They aren't Gnostics like the Christian scientists. And Walter Martin said that the differences between Seventh-day Adventism and evangelicalism are really no greater than the differences between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. And so Martin and Barnhouse said the label cult doesn't really fit here. And they made this opinion known in a famous article that was published in Eternity magazine in 1956. It was titled, Are the Seventh-day Adventists Christians? And the article essentially gave a yes answer to that question. They said, and I'm quoting here, Adventists hold all the basic doctrines of Christianity. They said we shouldn't be so quick to classify them as a cult. And at the time, That article was extremely controversial. In fact, it unleashed a debate that really has lasted even until now. It became one of the biggest controversies Donald Gray Barnhouse ever was embroiled in. But over time, it seems to me, the view of Barnhouse and Martin has more or less become the dominant opinion. You ask the average evangelical leader today if he considers Seventh-day Adventism a cult and he's gonna hedge on it probably and or maybe just say definitively. No, I don't think they're a cult Now, almost a decade after that article in Eternity, Walter Martin's most famous work, The Kingdom of the Cults, included then a section that contains a relatively mild critique of Seventh-day Adventist doctrines. And Martin sounded almost apologetic for having included this in a book on the cults. He wrote this, quote, it is perfectly possible to be a Seventh-day Adventist and be a true follower of Jesus Christ despite their heterodox concepts. unquote. And at times over the years, we read Walter Martin on this subject, he sounds almost like a defender of the Seventh-day Adventist movement. In fact, most of the Seventh-day Adventist websites that are online like to quote Walter Martin in defense of their movement to say, see we're not really a cult. But the 1970s then became a time of great turmoil within the Seventh-day Adventist movement. A huge debate was provoked within their movement when some leading Seventh-day Adventist teachers began to adopt more evangelical doctrines. They looked at the subject of justification by faith and said, This doesn't quite match up what scripture says, doesn't quite match up with what we've been teaching. And they started asking some hard questions about the trustworthiness of the movement's main prophetess, Ellen White. They pointed out that some things she said actually contradict themselves, some things she wrote were plagiarized, and they said maybe she's not such a trustworthy source. And so this unleashed a kind of controversy within the movement. Some Adventists reacted to that controversy by simply digging in deeper. and others adopted a kind of more flexible approach to Seventh-day Adventist teaching and tried to sound more and more evangelical. But no one who stayed in the movement ever overtly rejected Mrs. White's prophecies or renounced her influence on the movement. She's still to this day held in high esteem by all Seventh-day Adventists. Walter Martin in his declining years watched that controversy that conflict in the Seventh-day Adventist movement and he was disappointed that the majority of Adventist leaders actually stiffened their necks and became more and more hostile towards evangelical principles and in fact the ultimate effect of all that controversy was kind of a revival of interest and emphasis on the writings of Ellen White among Seventh-day Adventists. She was repeatedly appealed to by pretty much everyone on all sides of the controversy as authoritative. And the arguments inside the movement always seemed to be about how to interpret her prophecies, not about whether she was a false prophet. And the debates always ended before anybody in the movement would ever repudiate anything she said. And so in a 1985 television interview, Walter Martin said this, quote, And this is not well known because it wasn't written in print, but he did say this, and this is an exact quote. He said, I fear that if the Seventh-day Adventists continue to progress at this rate, then the classification of a cult can't possibly miss being reapplied to them. In the writings of Ellen White, they have an interpreter of Scripture, a final court of appeal that tells them what Scripture means. They judge Scripture by that, even though she has made doctrinal errors in the past, even on the deity of Christ, and the doctrine of the atonement, and on other things. And he said, it's folly for any group to raise a person like that to a position of authority. And as far as he was concerned, the Seventh-day Adventists, he said, would deserve to be classified as a cult if they were going to put the writings of a modern rogue prophet on the same level as scripture. I think he was reevaluating his opinion on Seventh-day Adventism when he died. But today, that question is asked all the time. Should we classify Seventh-day Adventism as a cult? And the problem with the question is, it depends on how you define the word cult. By most definitions, and the definition I would prefer, a cult is an authoritarian elitist sect who teach that salvation hinges on membership in that group, and yet they depart from one or more essential points of the ancient ecumenical Christian creeds. Now, frankly, I don't think it's too far-fetched to classify Seventh-day Adventists as a cult based on that definition. I think in one way or another, to some degree or another, they fit every characteristic of that definition. Now, I realize, of course, that lots of people, including virtually all Seventh-day Adventists, will argue that Adventism doesn't fit that definition. And the truth is, if you don't want to label them a cult, I'm not going to argue over terminology. But I think that's a terribly misleading and useless point to make. Because whether you label Seventh-day Adventism cultish or not, The fact is, they are a dangerous and sub-Christian faction that steers people away from the simplicity of the true gospel. They saddle their people with the yoke of the law. in precisely the same way the Galatian heretics were doing. They try to blend works with grace. And as the Apostle Paul says in Romans 11 16, if salvation is by grace, then it is no longer of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. But Paul says, if it is of works, It's no longer of grace. You can't mix the two. You can't blend works into the gospel and keep the gospel sound. Galatians 2.21, if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. And in short, the gospel that is preached in Seventh-day Adventist circles is a damning and damnable false doctrine. And that's what I want to show you. I don't care whether you call them a cult or not, as long as you acknowledge that they twist the gospel in such a way that what they teach falls under the curse Paul issues in Galatians chapter 1. Now, let's start this morning with the history of the movement, and the point I hope you'll see is that the roots of Seventh-day Adventism are corrupt to begin with. It grew out of false teachings, false prophecies, false promises, and false excuses for those failed prophecies. It was based on an almost fanatical expectation that the Lord would return to earth on a specific day. And when that didn't happen, the movement nearly died and would have died until Ellen G. White, who was a very deluded woman who claimed to be a prophet, she concocted a new explanation for what really happened on the day they believed Christ was going to return. and her prophetic pronouncements then became the glue that bound just a remnant of these fanatical followers together. Even though many of her pronouncements were demonstrably wrong, she managed to gain the unwavering devotion of this desperate remnant, and on that rickety foundation the entire movement was founded. And so the movement began in a decidedly cult-like fashion. And in my judgment, even though Seventh-day Adventism has managed to give itself a veneer of respectability, it still retains all the distinctive features of a cult. Here's how it all came about. In the middle of the 19th century, just before the start of the American Civil War, there was a widespread awakening of interest and expectation with regard to the second coming of Christ. There was lots of talk about the second coming that penetrated really every... level of American society. The energy of all that expectation even exceeded what we saw, some of you will remember, in the 1970s when Hal Lindsay's book was at the top of the bestseller list and lots of people were obsessed with the second coming. It was an even greater fervor than that in the middle of the 19th century. And one of those who took a keen interest in the subject was a New England farmer who was also a former army captain and sometime Baptist preacher. His name was William Miller. Miller came to the conclusion through just a personal study of scripture that the Bible reveals the exact time of Christ's return. He based that on Daniel chapter 8. He read Daniel 8.13, which says this, Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot? How long will the defilement of the temple be trampled underfoot, in other words? And he said to me, quote, for 2,300 evenings and mornings, then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state." That's Daniel 8, 14. And that prophecy, by the way, was literally fulfilled in history. 2,300 days is about six and a half years, and that is exactly how long the persecution that was led by Antiochus Epiphanes lasted. and after that the temple was cleansed and in fact the liberation of the temple from Antioch is epiphanies is the is it's the very event that is celebrated at Hanukkah the Jewish Feast of Lights that's easier way to say it but William Miller this Baptist farmer slash preacher, had no training, he had no qualification to teach, he had no real skill in theology, Bible history, hermeneutics, biblical languages, he was ignorant of all of these things. In fact, William Beterwolf, who was a early 20th century Presbyterian evangelist, wrote a book on Seventh-day Adventism, and he says this, I love this quote, he says, Miller was as ignorant of Hebrew as a hottentot is of the Klondike. And William Miller read that passage from Daniel 8 and decided that the 2,300 days really stands for 2,300 years. And the cleansing of the sanctuary, he said, refers to the judgment of the world by fire at the second coming of Christ. And so he also decided that the place to start counting was 457 BC, which was the year the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was issued by Artaxerxes I of Persia. And so if you start there, 457 BC, subtract 457 from 2300, you get 1843. It's that simple, he said. Christ will return sometime between March 21st, 1843 and March 21st, 1844. He said we have to go by the Jewish calendar here. So that was the time frame he gave. March 1st, 1843 and March 1st, 1844. March 21st. Now, some of his followers picked up on this and he began to garner a large group of devoted followers who declared that, you know, this is true and anybody who rejects it, all the churches that reject this teaching are Babylon. And they began to urge Christians to leave the established churches. One of Miller's most influential followers was a preacher named Charles Fitch. who preached a sermon on Revelation 18 verses 4 and 5, which is about, you know, Mystery Babylon the Great. And he quoted verse four, come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins. And he told people this, quote, if you're a Christian, come out of Babylon, meaning leave any church that doesn't follow the Millerite doctrine. And he said, if you intend to be found a Christian when Christ appears, come out of Babylon and come out now. So they're emptying the churches, the solid churches of their people and garnering followers by basically stealing sheep from churches. By the way, if a lot of that sounds familiar, it should. Basically, you could look at it like this. William Miller was the Harold Camping of his day. Harold Camping, you know, said the same thing. He owned a network of radio stations based in San Francisco, and he decided that he had figured out the exact day Christ was going to return. And he began to broadcast on his radio network that people should leave the mainstream churches. He said, the church age is over. Christ is coming. He made his prophecies and revised the dates and he was wrong and finally died. It was pretty much the same thing with William Miller. Here was an unqualified Bible teacher with an overabundance of self-confidence and a much bigger audience than his message deserved, and multitudes got swept up in the excitement. But March 22, 1984 came and went without the return of Christ. Miller was devastated. He said he knew he'd made a mistake, but he reviewed his calculations and he couldn't see where the error was. And so his followers began to suggest alternative interpretations of Daniel's prophecy. Maybe the date should be reckoned, they said, by the Karaite Jewish calendar instead of the rabbinical calendar. And one Millerite named Samuel Snow finally proposed a new deadline that was about seven months later. He declared with an aura of great certainty that the return of Christ would occur on the 10th day of the seventh month of the present year, 1844. And he came to that reckoning, he said, with a Karaite calendar and determined the date to be October 22nd, 1844. And that became the new Adventist orthodoxy. They said, that's the latest possible date for the return of Christ to earth. And Miller pushed his rhetoric up even a notch further. He said, this is God's truth. It's as true as the Bible, he said. These are exact quotes from his sermons. There is no possibility of a mistake in this time. Those who reject this light will be lost. Those who do not accept this argument are backsliders. And here's how one Seventh-day Adventist resource describes what happened in those days. Quote, Adventists sold their land. Businessmen closed their shops. Farmers left their farms idle. Potatoes remained in the ground unharvested. Apples rotted in the orchards. Yours in the blessed hope, they signed their letters. The message went from city to city, town to town, village to village, to the furthest part of the land. Every Millerite waited with joyous longing for Jesus to return to planet Earth. As October 22nd, 1844 dawned, believers assembled in their homes, tents, and churches, praying, praising, and waiting. It won't be long, they thought. The bridegroom will appear. but the bridegroom did not appear. The day had ended and Jesus had not come. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Their hopes dashed, they wept unashamedly till dawn the next day." Adventists even to this day refer to that event as the Great Disappointment. It decimated the movement. By most accounts, the majority of Miller's disillusioned followers drifted into other dissident groups rather than return to the churches where they had left, Babylon. Many of them joined the Quakers. Others became deists. Others concluded all religion is a sham. But a small remnant of this group of fanatical Millerite believers stayed together and began again to investigate alternative interpretations and different explanations for the great disappointments. Miller himself seemed totally disappointed. He tried to back quietly out of the limelight and acknowledge that he had been wrong. He gave up trying to predict the date of the Lord's return and he didn't seem persuaded by any of his hardcore followers alternative theories about what might really have happened in 1944. He never gave up his belief that the bodily return of Christ was near. He seemed to lean to the view that there was some kind of error in the biblical chronology, maybe a scribal error that got the numbers wrong or something like that. And he died just about five years after the Great Disappointment. On his gravestone it says, at the time appointed the end shall be. And the whole movement probably would have died and faded into obscurity at that point except for the rise of a self-styled prophetess who took over leadership among this remnant of true believers and began to shape Seventh-day Adventism into the movement that endures today. The woman who assumed leadership among most of the Millerites was Ellen Gould White. Her maiden name was Harmon when she took over. It was Ellen Harmon. She was raised in a Methodist family, but at the height of this excitement over Miller's dates for the return of Christ, her parents embraced Miller's views on the second coming, and the family started regularly attending Millerite meetings. And at the time of the great disappointment, Ellen Harmon was a 17-year-old girl. Within a month after the failed deadline, she claimed she had a vision in which she saw faithful Adventists filing into heaven. And that claim, of course, was immediately embraced by the faithful Adventist remnant. They believed it was a true prophecy and it justified them. And in the words of John Gerstner, she had a job for life as a seer and the Adventists had new assurance. Until her death in 1915, she was the outstanding Adventist leader. Now, this marked a significant change in direction for the Adventist movement, and it wasn't a turn for the better. Let me quote Gerstner once more. He says this, Miller was succeeded in the leadership of the Adventist movement by a person who was in every respect different from him. For one obvious difference, it was a woman, Mrs. Ellen G. White, succeeding a man. For another thing, it was a visionary succeeding a rather sober student. Where Miller always attempted to ground his witness on his exposition of the Bible, Mrs. White went beyond the Bible with her numerous revelations. Where Miller was mistaken and admitted it, Mrs. White denied any error. While Miller was frankly disappointed, Mrs. White turned defeat into victory by reinterpretation. Now, there are several photographs of Ellen White at different stages of her life online, and I have to say that I think she has a kind of creepy look. She has, you know, crazy eyes, a kind of piercing stare, and she always seemed to prefer to look heavenward, you know, off to the side rather than looking directly into the camera lens. And everything about her prophetic words, her mannerisms, even her facial expressions, more or less fit the caricature of what you would expect the self-important founder of a weird cult might be like. And she was not lacking in brazenness from the start to the finish of her career. Near the end of her life, she would write this, quote, I'm now looking over my diaries. There is one straight chain of truth without one heretical sentence in that which I have written. Now, obviously, when you have a living prophet whose declarations and interpretations of the Bible are supposedly authoritative, Scripture can't really function as your final authority. And so Ellen White became the last nail in the coffin that sealed the cultish character of the Adventist movement. When she was 19 years old, Ellen Gould Harmon married an Adventist preacher named James White. At the time, Adventists worshiped on the first day of the week like virtually all other Christians from the start of the Apostolic Church. But not long after they were married, someone gave the Whites a tract written by a Seventh-day Baptist, and they were persuaded that all the Old Testament Sabbath restrictions are supposed to be binding on Christians, and that the church should meet for worship on the Jewish Sabbath rather than on the first day of the week. And one of her famous visions soon confirmed this matter for them. She saw the heavenly sanctuary, she said, with the fourth commandment marked by a halo. The fourth commandment, of course, is thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And that vision, or the report of that vision, was sufficient to persuade the early Adventist movement that Sabbath law is the greatest of all the Ten Commandments. And it wasn't until nearly 15 years later that the group adopted their official name, the one they hold even today, Seventh Day Adventists. And then two years later in 1863, the group formally incorporated. At the time, they had 125 congregations comprising about 3,500 followers across the eastern half of the United States. Ellen White consistently claimed for her visions and prophecies an infallible authority, really making her declarations equal to that of Scripture. She published a magazine, The Review and Herald, And each issue featured a prophetic letter from her. I'll quote you part of one of this. This is from an 1882 article titled, The Testimonies Slighted. She wrote this, In these letters which I write, in the testimonies I bear, I am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do not write one article in the paper expressing merely my own ideas. This is what God has opened before me in vision. the precious rays of light shining from the throne." So she's clearly claiming divine inspiration for what she writes. Her husband died in 1881. She was 54 years old at the time, and by the time her husband died, she had led the Adventist movement for nearly four decades. And it was about that time that she set to work on her best-known book, The Great Controversy. She claimed that book recorded what she had received in some of her most important visions. She introduces the book with this claim, quote, in this vision at Lovett's Grove in 1858, most of the matter of the great controversy, which I had seen 10 years before, was repeated and I was shown that I must write it out. So again, she's claiming essentially divine inspiration for this book. Mrs. White, like William Miller, was a dilettante theologian. She had no qualifications to teach or to make doctrinal pronouncements. In fact, she herself made a great deal of claiming that she had only a third grade education. In fact, she told people for years that she didn't know how to read. In fact, she said that her ability to produce written material of a fairly high caliber was the proof that her prophecies came from God. Now, later researchers have proved that she could actually wee quite well, and as it turns out, large portions of her work were clearly plagiarized from other authors. Now, to be fair, Seventh-day Adventist apologists today will point out that in the introduction to the Great Controversy, she acknowledges that she has made use of others' published works, and that she sometimes even quotes without documenting her sources. She seemed to think that was an acceptable practice. And Adventists to this day like to refer to it as literary borrowing rather than plagiarism. But to be perfectly candid, both Ellen White and her Adventist apologists grossly understate the amount of material she borrowed without documenting her sources. She was a pathological plagiarist. There are a few other inconvenient facts that debunk her claim that she was a prophet. For one thing, she frequently revised or contradicted her own prophecies. One of the big ones came with her very first vision in 1844. She claimed that the door of mercy was now shut for everyone outside the remnant who had stayed with the Millerites after the Great Disappointment. Even the Millerites who had followed Miller but abandoned their hope after the Great Disappointments, he said, even those people will be permanently shut out of heaven. In effect, Ellen White and most of the Adventists at that time, the original Adventists, were saying that no one outside their sect could ever be saved. The door of salvation was permanently closed. That's what they taught. Of course, the more time that passed, the more that prophecy proved unwise because the group needed to gain followers. And they couldn't do that if the Day of Grace had passed. In an article written in 1883, she made this admission. She said, I did hold in common with the Advent body that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. But, she said, it had since then been revealed to her that the way of salvation really was still open. She had another vision. I wish we had PowerPoint here because I would show you a picture of this. She had a vision in which she was told that Adventist women needed to wear a certain style of outfit. known as the reform dress. It was basically a black dress cut off short. Now, when we say short, I don't mean like a mini skirt. It was about that far above the ground. Dresses in those days typically dragged the ground. She said, cut your dresses off short and wear pants underneath. So they wore these parachute pants. And it was hideous looking. There are pictures on the web. I have a few. Again, if we had PowerPoint, I'd show you. It was ridiculous looking. It was bulky and uncomfortable. But in 1867, she said this, quote, God would now have his people adopt the reformed dress, not only to distinguish them from the world as his peculiar people, but because a reform in dress is essential to the physical and mental health. And she warned her sisters in the faith not to neglect her words on this, quote, I have done my duty, I have borne my testimony, and those who have heard me must read that which I have written and must bear the responsibility of receiving or rejecting the light given. If they choose to venture to be forgetful hearers and not doers of the work, They run their own risk and will be accountable to God." So she's clearly teaching that this is some kind of official and authoritative pronouncement women must wear this outfit. I found an interesting passage from a Seventh-day Adventist pastor who lived in that era. And he wrote this about Mrs. White's dress restrictions, quote, I was married at Battle Creek in 1867 to a young sister of 19. It was at the height of this short dress craze. Of course, as a minister's wife, she reluctantly put on the dress and wore it for eight years. So I know all about it, he says. It was a shameful thing and it brought ridicule everywhere. On the street, people would stop and gaze at her and mock. I have seen troops of boys follow her, making fun, till she would step into a store to hide from them. We were both ashamed of it, but God's prophet said it was His will and we must bear the cross. He says, the issue was clear. Reject the light and meet the frown of God. So, quite largely, the faithful ones put on the dress. But, he says, it was a failure. The pants were hot in the summer, and in the winter the ankles were wet with snow. Husbands were mad, brothers would not go out with their sisters, and outsiders sneered and called them freaks. Girls with this dress on in school were avoided and ridiculed. But for eight years, Mrs. White wore it and urged it. I have often sat in the desk with her when she wrote it and preached on it as a Christian duty. If God ever gave her a revelation about anything, he did about that. For so she said strongly over and over. This guy's angry, isn't he? He says then, but at length she saw it was a mistake and a failure, so she went away to California and quietly laid it off herself and never wore it afterward. Of course, she was plied with requests for explanations, but she simply refused to give any." There are websites that list many more of Mrs. White's failed prophecies. There are books that document her plagiarisms. Most objective people would simply write her off as a charlatan. And many of the conflicts within Seventh-day Adventism that took place, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, stemmed from the fact that virtually all the research into her history discredits her in one way or another significantly. But cult loyalty is hard to break. And the end result of all those debates has been a renewal of loyalty to Mrs. White among practically everyone who has stayed in the Seventh-day Adventist movement. Seventh-day Adventist apologists have found various ways to defend or explain away or reinterpret or make excuses for the many discrepancies in Mrs. White's work. But the controversies have nevertheless left that movement shaken. If you want to study the various controversies of recent years, let me recommend an article titled, The Shaking of Adventism by Jeffrey Paxton, P-A-X-T-O-N, The Shaking of Adventism. And another good place to start is the Wikipedia entry on Desmond Ford, D-E-S-M-O-N-D, Ford. Desmond Ford was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor in Australia who began in the 1970s to question some of the cult's core teachings. He became very close, he moved very close to evangelical orthodoxy, but he never really let go of some of Adventism's anomalies. He was excommunicated by the Adventists, and he's still alive today. He runs an independent ministry. He's much closer to the truth than when he began, but he still rejects what Scripture teaches about hell. He still teaches the doctrine of soul sleep. He still holds to seventh-day Sabbatarianism, and most significantly, although he acknowledges the huge errors in the writings of Ellen White, he declines to call her a false prophet. He says he regards her writings as pastoral but not canonical. It just shows you how hard it is to let go for a cult follower like this. And therein lies the difficulty of critiquing Seventh-day Adventism. Beliefs within that movement seem to be very pliable, even when they acknowledge, as all reasonable people are forced to do, they acknowledge that the roots of the movement were seriously tainted with erroneous claims, false prophecies, unfulfilled predictions. Nevertheless, they are loath to reject the tradition. they're unwilling to leave the group. And that kind of blind unshakable loyalty is one of the things that makes a cult like this so dangerous. A fear of leaving the movement behind. That is itself one of the main characteristics of all cults. But the distinctive doctrines of Seventh-day Adventism are where the movement's most sinister effects are seen. As you might detect from my brief historical overview, the dogmas of the movement are pretty much subject to individual interpretation. And prophecies, if they don't come true, are always subject to reinterpretation. Although Ellen White is revered as a prophetess, and she's without controversy the chief architect of the denomination's dogmas, no one really believes everything she said. She made countless ridiculous pronouncements about health and clothing and diet and quack medicine. She said, for example, that eating butter or eggs or meat would keep your prayers from going high. She forbade the use of tea and coffee and pickles and mustard and pepper and cinnamon. She must have been a lousy cook. But she was also either dishonest or totally inconsistent. She said in one place, quote, no butter or flesh meats of any kind come on my table. Cake is seldom found there. But a year later, she wrote in a letter to her family, quote, we had a quarter of venison cooked and stuffing. It was tender as chicken. We all enjoyed it very much, unquote. And then, about five years after that, she wrote this, quote, two years ago, I came to the conclusion that there was danger in using the flesh of dead animals. And since then, I have not used meat at all. It is never placed on my table. But she went on to describe eating fish, drinking beef broth, chicken broth, and especially eating oysters. She seemed to love oysters. Although, in a few places, she railed against oysters as well. And then a decade later, she declared without qualification, quote, I do not preach one thing and practice another. I do not present to my hearers rules of life for them to follow while I make an exception in my own case, unquote. But then, three years after that, her personal secretary, a woman named Fanny Bolton, described an incident where she got separated from Mrs. White in a train depot. And she said this, writing a letter to a friend about the incident, quote, Elder Starr hunted around till he found her behind a screen in the restaurant, very gratified in eating big white raw oysters with vinegar, pepper, and salt, unquote. Now, the personal secretary who had devoted her life to Mrs. White was understandably confused and disillusioned. She wrote this, quote, I kept thinking in my heart, what does this mean? What has God said? How does she dare eat these abominations? But on the cars out to California, they're on the train going to California, W.C. White came into the train with a great thick piece of bloody beefsteak spread out on a brown paper, and he bore it through the tourist car on his own two hands. Sarah McInterfer, who is now with Ellen White as her attendant, cooked it on a small oil stove, and everyone ate of it except myself and Marion Davis." Who, she adds this, Marion Davis, I found out afterwards, she was more the author of the books purported to be Sister White's than Mrs. White was herself. So it turns out she was using a ghostwriter as well. Now, if that eyewitness testimony is true, and there's no reason to doubt it, it seems clear, doesn't it, that Mrs. White was a thoroughgoing phony. No one today would regard her medical advice as anything other than the typical superstitions of that era. But her ideas about diet and healthy living nevertheless left a permanent mark. And that's why so many Adventists today are vegetarians, or health food aficionados, or practitioners of alternative medicines, or purveyors of holistic health fads. There's a document online with this curious title, quote, a history of Seventh-day Adventist work with soy foods, vegetarianism, meat alternatives, wheat gluten, dietary fiber, and peanut butter. Sounds interesting, but I didn't read it. All of that is rooted in Seventh-day Adventism's hopeless entanglement in Old Testament ceremonial and dietary laws. It's an arbitrary and very selective application of Moses' law, but it is a very close equivalent of the Galatian heresy. Remember, the Apostle Paul had that very error in mind when he wrote Galatians 1, 8, and 9, where he says, if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. In other words, this is damnable heresy. It's the rankest form of legalism and virtually every significant doctrinal error that is found in Seventh-day Adventist teachings is in some way derived from this legalistic tendency. Let me give you just a brief overview of some key Seventh-day Adventist doctrines. And I'll start with what they get right. First of all, they do generally hold to an essentially Trinitarian view of the Godhead. That wasn't always true. In the earliest Adventist hymn book, they included, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity. They changed that line, God in three persons, blessed Trinity, to something else that had nothing to do with the Trinity. So they seem to be maybe originally uncomfortable with that idea, but today's Seventh-day Adventists are solid Trinitarians. They don't deny the deity or the true humanity of Christ, although they put a twist on Christ's humanity that I think is full of mischief. I'll try to come back to that before we're finished. But right now I want to talk about what they get right. They believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ and of course his literal visible second coming. They still believe that's going to happen. They are basically literalists when it comes to interpreting scripture. They're six-day creationists. They're also premillennialists, teaching that Christ will return and establish a literal earthly kingdom on earth and rule and reign for a thousand years. They teach baptism by immersion, and they formally affirm the authority and the inerrancy of Scripture. And let's be honest, that is a lot of categories where they would agree with what we teach. It's easy to see why some people would be reluctant to classify them as a cult. It is quite true that they're not nearly as far off track as most of the other major cults, but we have this against them in that one way or another, they compromise or corrupt or confuse virtually every key doctrine of the Christian faith, including those doctrines that they formally affirm. For example, their confession that Scripture is inspired and inerrant and authoritative, that's good in as far as it goes, but that confession is severely compromised by the notion that Ellen White is a prophetess who received fresh revelation from God, and her revelations then become the lens through which the rest of the Scripture is interpreted. And it gets worse. One of the major conflicts regarding Mrs. White's prophecies that surfaced kind of in the 1970s dealt with her teaching that Satan, not Christ, bears the ultimate penalty for sins for redeemed people. In fact, I would say this, in my view, is the grossest of all the blasphemies in the Seventh-day Adventist doctrines. In her book, The Great Controversy, Mrs. White wrote this, quote, 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. The scapegoat bearing the sins of Israel was sent away into a land not inhabited, Leviticus 16.22. So Satan, bearing the guilt of all the sins which he has caused God's people to commit, will be for a thousand years confined to the earth, which will then be desolate, without inhabitant, and he will at last suffer the full penalty of sin in the fires that shall destroy the wicked. Thus, the great plan of redemption will reach its accomplishment in the final eradication of sin and the deliverance of all who have been willing to renounce evil." So Satan, not Christ, is the ultimate sin bearer. Now that, of course, nullifies the biblical teaching that the work of Christ on the cross resulted in full atonement for the sins of his people. Seventh-day Adventists are forced then to reinterpret Christ's statement in John 19.30 when he said on the cross, it is finished. They can't make good sense of Hebrews 10, 12. When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. And in fact, the central distinctive and most novel doctrine of Seventh-day Adventism is the idea Ellen White concocted to explain the great disappointment. She claimed, here's what happened on October 22nd, 1844. Jesus began a whole new phase of his atoning work. He's now completing the atonement that wasn't, by her view, wasn't finished on the cross. Here's how the Seventh-day Adventist doctrinal statement says it, quote, in 1844, at the end of the prophetic period of 2300 days, Christ entered the second and last phase of his atoning ministry. It is a work of investigative judgment. which is part of the ultimate disposition of all sin typified by the cleansing of the ancient Hebrew sanctuary on the day of atonement." Now what do they mean by investigative judgment? The idea is that what Christ is now doing is judging the lives of professing Christians, both the living and the dead, This idea, of course, was an offshoot of the original idea that the door of salvation was already shut and the return of Christ was very near and he'd already begun his judgment. After 150 years, the time of judgment has sort of stretched out and it's been modified and reinterpreted in various ways that ultimately have a tendency to co-mingle justification and sanctification. And in fact, if you lay this doctrine alongside Ellen White's statements in The Great Controversy, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that this doctrine encourages the most oppressive kind of works-based and perfectionist thinking. Ellen White said, for example, quote, those who are living upon the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above are to stand in the side of a holy God without a mediator. Their robes must be spotless. Their characters must be purified from sin by the blood of sprinkling through the grace of God. And by their own diligent effort, they must be conquerors in the battle against evil. Now, do you see there how she mingles works with grace? The grace of God and their own diligent efforts. That is the very idea Paul cursed. Nevertheless, Ellen White says, quote, he who is found wanting will be cast out. But all who upon examination are seen to have the wedding garment on are accepted of God and accounted worthy of a share in his kingdom and a seat upon his throne. This work of examination of character, of determining who are prepared for the kingdom of God, is that of the investigative judgment, the closing of work in the sanctuary above. She says, when the work of investigation shall be ended, when the cases of those who in all ages have professed to be followers of Christ will have been examined and decided, then, and not till then, probation will close and the door of mercy will be shut. So, in other words, as long as this investigative judgment is going on, no one's justification is a complete and final reality. It's not a settled issue. Adventists are therefore made to feel and believe that they need to work for Christ's final approval. Quoting Mrs. White again, quote, while the investigative judgment is going forward in heaven, while the sins of penitent believers are being removed from the sanctuary, there is to be a special work of purification, of putting away of sin among God's people on earth. So in other words, while Christ is doing his judgment in heaven, we must be putting away sin here on earth in order to be ultimately justified. Justification, therefore, hinges on complete sanctification, just like in Roman Catholicism. And like Roman Catholicism, Seventh-day Adventism has no place for justification as a past tense settled guarantee. You can't know you're justified in this life, and that means there's really no possibility of true assurance. According to Mrs. White, quote, it is impossible that the sins of men should be blotted out until after the judgment at which their cases are to be investigated. So your sins haven't been blotted out yet. That would be impossible, she says. And Adventist teaching thus destroys the possibility of settled faith. It saddles people with the yoke of the law, and by polluting the gospel message with law, it demolishes the truth of divine grace, because you can't have works and grace together. This system fails to see the atoning work of Christ as finished and fully sufficient, and it muddies every doctrine it touches. Now, there's much more to say. Seventh-day Adventists reject the doctrine of eternal punishment, They deny the immortality of the human soul. They teach the doctrine of soul sleep. In other words, the idea is that every human soul dies or goes out of existence at death, and Christ simply resurrects those souls whom He judges worthy of eternal life. I mentioned earlier that Seventh-day Adventism and their teaching on the humanity of Christ is twisted. I promise to come back to this. Ellen White insisted that Christ took on humanity's fallen nature. She said, he didn't sin, he resisted every temptation, but his nature, she said, was as fallen as yours or mine. In her words, quote, he took upon his sinless nature, our sinful nature. He bore the infirmities and degeneracy. the race. He took our nature and its deteriorating condition." Now that's really bad theology. That corrupts not only the doctrine of Christ's humanity, but also the doctrines of original sin, the priesthood and mediatorial work of Christ, the principle of substitutionary atonement, and the glory of Christ as God incarnate. It also contributes to the works-based soteriology of Seventh-day Adventist doctrine, because the basic idea of this teaching is this, that Christ's ability to overcome sin, even with a fallen nature, demonstrates to us the possibility of living in perfect obedience to God's law. If Christ could do it, we should be able to do it, too. His life, therefore, becomes merely an example for us to follow. He's not our substitute. He's our example. Seventh-day Adventism is full of that kind of confusion, clumsy errors, contradictory ideas. It's inevitable when people who are unskilled in doctrine, unstable in the faith, untrained in the Bible's original languages, untaught in basic hermeneutical principles, when they imagine that they are hearing directly from God and have the arrogance to invent a whole new religion, This is the kind of confusion that results. It's a muddled mess. And the recent turmoil within the Seventh-day Adventist movement is the predictable fruit of that. It's foolish for true evangelicals to relax their guard and think Seventh-day Adventist errors are minor flaws that we could just smooth over with a little bit of nuancing. If the Galatian heresy was a damnable error, and the Apostle Paul was as clear as possible on that, then the Seventh-day Adventist teaching is likewise damnably wrong. And whether we call this movement a cult or not, we have a duty to warn people away from this confusion and the twisted, legalistic, works-based doctrine it produces. It obscures the simplicity of the gospel. It undermines the authority of Scripture, and it dishonors Christ. That's reason enough to reject it emphatically. Now, you probably noticed I barely mentioned the Sabbath issue, and I haven't really addressed that error much at all. There's a reason for that. Frankly, if the worst error of the Seventh-day Adventists was their insistence on observing Saturday as the Sabbath, I'd frankly be happy to treat that as an indifferent matter. In Romans 14.5, Paul says, one person esteems one day better than another while another esteems all days alike. Everyone should be fully convinced in his own mind. And in Colossians 2.16, he says, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. That's a single verse that debunks the whole Seventh-day Adventist system, by the way. But if that were the only issue, the Sabbath, I wouldn't make much of an issue of it. But the Adventists go much further than just saying, our day of worship is Saturday. They often imply that Sabbath keeping is the essential mark of every true believer. And Sunday worship is basically the mark of the beast. In other words, you can't be saved if you don't recognize the Saturday Sabbath. Mrs. White wrote this, quote, the Holy Sabbath is and will be the separating wall between the true Israel of God and unbelievers, unquote. And she claimed that was revealed to her in one of her famous visions. So she claimed divine authority for that. In short, the Sabbath is to Seventh-day Adventists what circumcision was to the Galatian heretics. It's the same thing. But as I hope you can see, quarreling about the Sabbath with Adventists doesn't even address the biggest problems with their doctrine. The biggest problem is that their doctrine essentially eliminates the biblical promise of justification by faith alone. It does away with the principle of sola fide. They're wrong on the Sabbath, of course. And if you want my arguments on that, you can download a message I did a few years ago on the Fourth Commandment. But here's my short answer. When Seventh-day Adventist doctrine makes the Fourth Commandment the most important of all the Ten Commandments, they contradict Scripture. Mrs. White had this theory about how Sunday became the day of worship for Christians. She said Roman Catholicism wrongly changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. She said, quote, The Pope has changed the day of rest from the seventh to the first day, and he has thought to change the greatest commandment in the Decalogue, and thus make himself equal with God, or even exalt himself above God." Now notice, she expressly calls the fourth commandment the greatest commandment in the Decalogue. What did Jesus say about that? You remember? Matthew 22, 35, a lawyer asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And what was Jesus' answer? Matthew 22, 37, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. That's Jesus' pronouncement. Now remember that the Pharisees made Sabbath observance the token of their whole system. It's fitting that the Seventh-day Adventists have done the same thing, because Seventh-day Adventist doctrine has everything in common with the teaching of the Pharisees. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders. They place a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear. It's a pernicious form of legalism, works religion. It's the distilled essence of works religion. Let's not be quick to soft sell their errors. It's a serious error. It's a soul-destroying error. And for people entangled in this system, it's an oppressive, spiritually stifling, enslaving, fear-inducing, faith-stealing form of religion. Seventh-day Adventists have always been very media savvy. In fact, the growth of the cult during the 20th century is largely attributable to the influence of their daily radio broadcast called the Voice of Prophecy. Their publications have blanketed the globe, and they're pretty slick-looking. Many Seventh-day Adventist preachers are gifted communicators, and for the past 50 years or so, they've desperately been trying to gain acceptance among evangelicals, and to a very large degree, they've succeeded in that. So they're really good at PR. But what your Seventh-day Adventist friends desperately need to hear is the gospel with a clear articulation of the principle of justification by faith alone and a clear affirmation that the atoning work of Christ is finished. This is, in fact, the very thing the true Sabbath pictured. that there is a true Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his." That's Hebrews 4, verses 9 and 10. And it's talking about the rest we enter by faith in Christ. That's the true Sabbath. It's a rest from the very kinds of works that get so much stress in the Seventh-day Adventist system. They're the ones who haven't really entered into the Sabbath. Christ right now is not judging us. He's making intercession for us. He's not working to complete the atonement in the heavenly sanctuary. He offered one sacrifice for sins forever and then sat down on the right hand of God. He's seated there right now, according to Scripture, until God makes His enemies a footstool for His feet. Seventh-day Adventist system is quite simply a whole new religion, nothing like anything the early church believed, unknown in any era of church history until the 19th century. Its message is a new and totally different gospel, and that means it is an accursed system. Whether it's proper to call it a cult or not is really beside the point. It's a system of deceit and confusion and it leads people astray. It's wrong to gloss over an error like that and pretend that it's not really of any importance. It is eternally important because what is at stake is the gospel and that's a truth we can never compromise. I promised I'd finish early. I really did. Okay, they want me to take questions. Should I take questions? Do you have a question? Okay, the question is, can one be in the system and be saved, right? I think so, but not, it's like any other kind of nearly correct system, or even Roman Catholicism. I don't doubt that there may be true believers scattered here and there in the Roman Catholic system. The more they know about their doctrine, the less likely it is that they're truly saved. But I can understand how someone who's confused And yet, you know, believing with a childlike faith can be in a system like that for a time. I wouldn't say that I would automatically assume that everybody in the Seventh-day Adventist system is not saved. What I would assume is that in their system, they're not going to hear the gospel. And so what they need to hear from me still is the gospel. And if they see it and really believe the gospel, I think they'll eventually get out of that system because Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. Yeah, she's asking me to repeat my definition of a cult, but before I do, let me say this. My notes, every word I gave you and a little more that I skipped over, we're gonna put online with this message. So when the sermon comes online, you can download my notes and get everything verbatim. A cult is an authoritarian and elitist sect who teach that salvation hinges on membership in their group And yet they depart from one or more essential points in the ancient ecumenical creeds. So a cult is an authoritarian and elitist sect who teach that salvation hinges on membership in their group. And yet they depart from one or more essential points in the ancient ecumenical creeds." Okay, so the question is, how could someone in this movement be saved if they haven't really heard the truth? Yeah. Yeah, no, what I said was they don't hear the gospel. The gospel isn't proclaimed. But in any... I think sometimes even in Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, if you listen long enough, you'll hear enough scripture that it could actually awaken your heart to the truth of Christ. So you're asking me, can someone who is saved then subsequently belong to a cult like this, join a cult like this? I think even that sometimes happens, because people come to Christ with very little knowledge. And when I first became a Christian, it was from reading the scriptures in my room. And I knew I needed to find a church where the Bible was preached and taught and believed, but I didn't really have a good idea where to start looking. I looked at several different kinds of churches. And I had very little grasp of sound theology. I had to learn, you know, most of the basic doctrines. I think if I had, you know, stumbled into a Jehovah's Witnesses congregation and thought for a while this is the way to go, eventually I would have seen the error of it. Any believer, I think, ultimately would. But I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that someone who's a true believer can, for a time, be duped by a cult, especially a cult like this. that does get so much right. I mean, they proclaim that the Bible is the Word of God. They interpret it with a fair degree of literalness. A lot of what they say isn't in and of itself wrong. It's how they put all that together to formulate their gospel that then becomes a kind of oppressive legalism. You know, the Galatians were troubled and deceived, and some of them followed the heretics, those people in the Galatian churches. And Paul himself said, you know, I'm worried about you. I'm concerned about you. But he said, I think the best of you. I'm not willing to believe, you know, that you're not believers. But if you pursue this path, you know, that will ultimately prove that your faith isn't real. And I think you could probably apply that to almost any false doctrine. They do, and they'll read various translations. I think I read somewhere that there are two specific Seventh-day Adventists translations of scripture, but I actually don't know. Yeah? Actually, that does happen. People in the movement who read the Bible do encounter the gospel or find things that don't jibe with what they've been taught and they come out of the movement. We have a number of people here at Grace Church who have come out of Seventh-day Adventism. There must have been, since it was announced that I was going to be doing this seminar, there must have been at least half a dozen people at Grace Church, some of whom I knew but didn't know much about them, who told me, I used to be Seventh-day Adventist but came out of it. Yeah, they would say that the cross is, in a sense, it's the start of Christ's atoning work, but not the finish of it. And again, it's a muddled mess. I don't know that every Seventh-day Adventist teacher would articulate it the same way. That's one of the problems with Seventh-day Adventism. It's simply not that clear. And when you consider the roots, you can understand why it grew out of the teaching of a couple of people who were basically homebrew theologians. So it's a lot of homebrew theology that can be explained by their scholars in various ways. But one thing I think they all have a tendency to do is blend human works with the work of Christ. His work is never seen as complete and sufficient in and of itself. We have to add our efforts to it in order to complete the work of the cross. Yes? That's a very interesting question. The question is, why is it that they don't believe in hell? I think it goes all the way back to the very roots. William Miller, the guy who really sparked the original fervor, had grown up in a Baptist family. And when he was in his 20s, I think, he was seduced by deism. which really is a kind of Socinian liberal religion that teaches that God is remote and not involved in our lives. It involves a denial of the Bible and everything the Bible teaches. You could think of deism like just liberal theology, because it was. And deists don't believe in hell. And so when he began to move back out of deism and more direction towards his Baptist heritage, one of the things that William Miller refused to let go out of deism and never actually did embrace was the doctrine of eternal punishment. So I think that's a remnant of his deistic roots, and it was picked up by his followers who regarded him as, you know, something of an expert, and it's just endured in the group ever since. I mean, let's face it, of all the doctrines in Scripture, hell is the one that most of us would perhaps like to shed, you know? If you're going to make your own homebrew theology, It makes sense to go after a doctrine like that. That's why a lot of cults deny the reality of hell. I'm going to go all the way back to the back of the room this time. I haven't followed the voice of prophecy really since... Actually, I never really listened to it. I heard it a few times. I always thought Garner Ted Armstrong with the Worldwide Church of God was more interesting to listen to, and he turned out to be a real criminal. But no. I don't know what's going on in their media. I know that now, because the Voice of Prophecy really was the chief recruiting tool for Seventh-day Adventists for most of the 20th century, they've expanded their efforts in radio and television, and now there are several radio and television programs that more or less quietly promulgate Seventh-day Adventist doctrines. Rarely do they identify themselves as Seventh-day Adventists. They use a kind of stealth approach to sort of selling their theology. They want you to like their teachers and like their program. It's all very slick and well-communicated, and they get followers. And after you've kind of gotten drawn into the system, it will be revealed that they're Seventh-day Adventists. They do the same thing with their literature. I get literature in the mail all the time. For some reason, lots of people have put John MacArthur on Seventh-day Adventist mailing lists. And they send out a lot of books, I mean, like whole books. And you get a book in the mail, and I look at it, and I can usually tell by the style of the artwork that this is Seventh-day Adventist. But a lot of times, the book itself won't reveal that. It is nothing on it says it's Seventh-day Adventist until you get fairly deep into it and it'll start quoting from William Miller or Ellen White or whatever and then you know it's a Seventh-day Adventist material. So they use that sort of stealth approach and I just don't have a lot of respect for it and so I don't follow what they do in media. Yes? How prevalent is the teaching that if you're not part of their group, you're not saved? That's one of the things that lots of Seventh-day Adventists would dispute. If you say, you know, you're teaching that if I'm not part of your group, I'm not gonna be saved. They're not as overt about that as they used to be. You know, in Ellen White's day, she basically said if, I mean, that was the whole idea, that the day of grace is closed. If you're not in our group already, you're not gonna get in even. That's how they originally started out. And they've softened that position. But they still embedded in their core documents are all these statements that Sunday worship is the mark of the beast and the wall of division between the true people of God and all the pretenders is the Sabbath question. So that's pretty deeply ingrained in their teaching even if it's not a view that's consciously held to by a lot of rank-and-file Seventh-day Adventist people. The ones you talk to may not ever tell you that, or they may not even really consciously believe it themselves, but it is pretty deeply embedded in their original teachings. The question is, if they don't believe in hell, what do they think we're saved from? The guilt of sin, basically, so that you gain entrance into heaven, not an escape from hell. In a sense, though, that's what we believe as well. When we talk about salvation, we're talking about deliverance from our sin and entry into the kingdom of Christ. Escape from hell is a side benefit, but really not the main thing. So I think evangelicals tend to use the idea of being saved, sometimes they lower the concept by making it all about hell and it's not, it's all about heaven. The question is, three months ago, one of the professors from their seminary said that the annihilationist view and the Sabbatarian view are salvific. That really is what those core documents teach, that these are the marks of division between the true people of God and all the pretenders. And I think him saying that so boldly as that just demonstrates the response that Most of the core leadership of Seventh-day Adventism have taken to the controversies within their own group. They're sort of digging in. They're taking a harder line stance on their original teachings, and that's a reflection of that. It's a ridiculous idea. I mean, Faith in Christ is what saves, and Scripture is so clear about that. For someone to, you know, trust in a doctrine like annihilationism or sabbatarianism, questionable doctrines like that, to make that the test of salvation is so far unbiblical that it amazes me that anybody would say it. The question is, if you have friends who are Seventh-day Adventists, what are three things you would tell them or ask them? I would say just one, because I like to focus in on the gospel itself, and I would probe them for an explanation of, how is it that our guilt is dealt with? That's really the bottom line question. I would point out a few things we agree on. We agree that we are sinful. We agree that we are fallen and guilty before God. How is that guilt dealt with? How can that be dealt with so that I don't have to bear the punishment. And what they will give you is a system, you know, that betrays their lack of trust in the gospel, where the simple answer to that is Christ dealt with that guilt. He took it on himself and erased it. In their view, that guilt...you heard that quote I read from Ellen White, where she said, sins aren't really blotted out until the judgment is over. And add that to their teaching that it's actually Satan who bears ultimately the guilt of sin. And they're in a state where, you know, their guilt hasn't been dealt with yet. And I like to point that out to them and say, you know, in your system, you can have no assurance, no rest, no confidence before God. And scripture is full of promises that we can have confidence before God. We can come boldly before the throne of grace, et cetera, et cetera. So that I think highlights the great difference in what they teach and what the gospel leads us to believe. Oh, where do they think people go if there's no hell? They don't believe in the immortality of the human soul. They believe that those souls that are not saved simply go out of existence. Do they believe in repentance and the forgiveness of sins? They do talk about repentance, but I don't think they see the fact that a repentant faith lays hold of forgiveness. They would see repentance as the first step in a process that we must go through in order to deal with our own sin. All right? I'm going to dismiss you. You have been listening to pastor and teacher Phil Johnson. For more information about the ministry of the Grace Life Pulpit, visit at www.thegracelifepulpit.com. Copyright by Phil Johnson. All rights reserved.