Roots of Seventh-day Adventism
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Important messages
Miscalculated
prophecies and a blow in the head
In eight words, this is the story of the roots of
Seventh-day Adventism. It is the second in a series of three articles, in which
I am making an attempt to give the reader a basic knowledge of three major
cults, all having their origins in the United States. They are the Mormons, or
more formally, The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. The second cult is the Seventh Day Adventists and the third sect is the Jehovah Witnesses. I
entitled the first article, “The God of Mormonism” and you can read or review
it at the following link: http://calltocommitment.blogspot.com.es/2015/06/the-god-of-mormonism.html .
Let me list a
number of characteristics and ideas that these three groups have in common.
1. The founders had unstable spiritual beginnings that show no evidence of a biblical new birth, therefore they are not born or taught by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said that without the new birth it is impossible to “see” the Kingdom of
God (Jn.3:3). The apostle Paul tells us that the “natural man”, that is, man
alone without the Holy Spirit, cannot understand the things of God (1 Co.2:14).
Any person in that position is doomed to be led by his own mind into multiple
kinds of error (not to mention the fact that demon spirits will capitalize on
the attempt.). You will see all of them making an effort to fit the unspeakable
mysteries of God into the natural human mind, and rejecting all that their mind
cannot contain. This is the basic problem.
2. All
of the founders of these sects were people exposed to the gospel, but who rejected
the established churches of their day. They were anti-church people, who found a
new revelation. They taught that the churches were going in the direction of apostasy and could not guide their flock into truth.
3. The founders were largely ignorant
people with no good theological background or training.
4. You will find that none of them accept
or teach salvation that comes purely by the grace of God. They are all “works”
oriented.
5. All of them point to and are highly
dependent upon extra-biblical literature and teaching, without which no one can
be properly enlightened in their particular views of Christianity, and they
emphasize experiences, such as visions and dreams, through which they received
light concerning their callings and claims.
6. Physical and outward things, such as
food, days, baptism, and many like things play an important part in their
presentation of “salvation”. Authoritarianism plays a huge role in their
government and no kind of individualism is accepted. No move is made without
the express approval of leadership. A personal relationship with God and the
personal leading of God is not tolerated.
7.
They
all experienced rapid growth and today number in the millions on a world-wide
basis.
 |
| William Miller (1782-1849) |
Millerites
In this article we will take up Seventh-day Adventism,
a cult which developed at about the same time and in the same area as
Mormonism. The Adventists were first known as Millerites, because they were
followers of a single man, William Miller (1782-1849).
Miller was taught by his mother until the age of nine,
attended the East Poultney District School (New York State), but received no
formal theological training. After marriage, he took up farming, rejected his
Baptist background and became a Deist. Later
he tried tentatively to regain his Baptist faith with the determination to
harmonize the contradictions of his own religious experiences to his own
satisfaction. He started to participate in the church.
Miller’s Bible study began to focus on end-time
prophecy and concluded that Christ would return between March 21, 1843, and
March 21, 1844. His views were largely rejected by his church, but having
opportunity to publish them, he soon gained the attention of multitudes, who
were called Millerites by the public, but preferred to call themselves
“adventists”. March 21, 1844, passed without incident and Miller recalculated
to April 18. Again, April 18 passed and October 22 was proposed. People
followed him in droves, sold property, alienated themselves from their local
churches and waited… all in vain.
Estimates of his followers vary greatly from 50,000 to
500,000. These were all brought to great disappointment, some went back to
their Baptist churches, some became Quakers or Shakers, and others were totally
disillusioned with Christianity. Yet
diehard Adventists continued, convinced that they were on the right path and
God would give light. Various “spiritual” interpretations came forth to explain
the failed prophecies, claiming that the 1844 prophecy had true significance.
Later, Ellen White had much to teach about this prediction. Today, the Seventh-day
Adventist Church numbers around 18 million members, still claiming the legacy
of William Miller!
Ellen
White
 |
| Helen G. White (1827-1915) |
A number of the Adventists came from the Seventh-day
Baptist movement. William Miller was not a Sabbatarian! The two positions began
to combine and Ellen (Harmon) White (1827-1915), from the State of Maine,
accepted both positions. She had been a follower of Miller.
At nine years of age, Ellen Harmon suffered a serious
injury, having been hit in the face by a stone, and was mostly unconscious for
three weeks. The recovery was slow and she was in poor health for many years.
Her parents were Methodist Episcopalians, who came out of their church and
fully accepted the Adventist teachings. So Ellen was 17, when the Great
Disappointment occurred. In 1840 already, she heard Miller preach and became
terribly frightened, believing that she was lost. Later in a Methodist camp
meeting she “fell under the power”. She had dreams of going to heaven, meeting
Jesus and finding relief, then she would return to despair, and back and forth
she went, provoked by the predictions of William Miller and the blow on her
head as a child.
After 1844 she had many visions, which helped form her
doctrinal positions. In 1846, she married James White, who accepted her
visions, while she accepted his doctrine of the 7th-day Sabbath.
They worked together visiting the groups throughout New England who held to the
Adventist beliefs. They began to write and organize and a denomination began to
form and solidify. Ellen’s influence increased until no one dared question her
authority or inspiration. In 1863 the denomination became official.
Plagiarism
Ellen White would by “revelation” receive stinging
rebukes from the Lord Himself for certain people who opposed her “testimonies”,
and she would sometimes deliver those messages to that individual in public. She
wrote concerning health issues and advocated vegetarianism. It can easily be
proved that she obviously plagiarized the writings of other authors (copied
word for word and took credit for the writing). This was largely kept from the
rank and file members of the Adventists, but as late as 1982, an Adventist
minister exposed what he called “The White Lie”, which dealt with multiple
cases of plagiarism. Her revelations from God, actually came from other
authors!
Here is a statement by Pamela Starr Dewey in Field
Guide website on the Helen White controversy within the Adventist Church today:
In spite of the protests of the
denomination that their doctrines are all based on the Bible, the reality is
that almost all of the most distinctive aspects of the denomination's belief
system and practices are squarely based on the writings of Ellen G White. If
her credibility is destroyed, there would be many aspects of the SDA faith that
would have no basis at all. (Although I have studied Adventism, I found
this Field Guide very helpful in giving a concise overview of their history and
beliefs.)
A short list of major errors
I took this much space to tell the story of the
origins of Adventism, because it is extremely important to know the roots of
any spiritual tree. Jesus said, “If the tree is evil, it cannot bring forth
good fruit.” What I said concerning the Mormons is also true about the Adventists. Their history proves strongly the need for repentance. Instead of humbly repenting of the prophetic errors of William Miller, Ellen White proudly justified them and from that justification produced doctrines exclusively believed by the Adventists and no one else. Those teachings totally spoil what would seem to be evangelical, concerning salvation and the grace of God, on the surface. It gives a totally different meaning to what they profess to believe. Can truth come out of error? Never! There must be humble repentance from error, instead of proud justification of it. The Adventist roots are totally erroneous and therefore the
present fruit from those roots cannot be legitimate.
Because of the space needed to challenge the Adventists’ doctrinal positions scripturally, in this article, I will simply put their views before you, trusting in the biblical knowledge of the reader to recognize immediately the errors. I will then briefly refute their claims. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me concerning them. For now, let us just make a list of some of the major errors of the Seventh-day Adventists, 18 million strong in today’s world, unwilling to repent and turn from their roots:
Because of the space needed to challenge the Adventists’ doctrinal positions scripturally, in this article, I will simply put their views before you, trusting in the biblical knowledge of the reader to recognize immediately the errors. I will then briefly refute their claims. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me concerning them. For now, let us just make a list of some of the major errors of the Seventh-day Adventists, 18 million strong in today’s world, unwilling to repent and turn from their roots:
1.
Sabbath
Keeping. Saturday is to be kept as the day of worship for Christians and to
neglect to do so is regarded as disobedience. Mrs. White saw this in a vision
in which she was caught up to heaven and a voice said, “Remember the Sabbath to
keep it holy.” They claim that Sunday worship was introduced by Constantine in
320 A.D. I will simply state that the writings of the early fathers, from 70
A.D. to 300 A.D. show clearly that Christians met on the first day of the week,
long before Constantine and Romanism.
2.
Soul
sleep. Adventists claim that at death the soul sleeps and awaits the
resurrection at the last day. Thereby they are stating that a believer, after
death, will be unconscious over the centuries and not consciously in heaven in
the presence of the Lord. This is obviously an attempt by the devil to
discomfort God’s people and can easily be disproved. Apostle Paul taught that
to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
3.
Christ
in being made flesh took on man’s sinful nature.
That is a blasphemous and damnable heresy. Christ took on human flesh, yet
without sin, states the apostle. The nature of any being, animal or man, will
obligate his behavior. To say that Christ had a sinful natures is equal to
saying that He was a sinner… that is blasphemy and negates the necessity of a
Lamb without spot and blemish to pay, not fur His own sins, but for ours.
4.
We
are kept saved by keeping the law. Therefore those who do not keep the Sabbath
(on Saturday) will be lost. As always works enter into salvation for all the
cultist movements. “By grace are you saved through faith and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast”.
This is the entire purpose of the gospel; to provide salvation for us, who are
not able to obtain it by keeping the law. Perfection is required in the Kingdom
of God and we, at best, are imperfect. For every true believer, mercy triumphs
over justice.
5.
Investigative judgment. Beginning on October
22, 1844, Christ entered upon the “judgment phase” of His ministry, whereby He
blots out sin. Christ entered the Holy of Holies not at His ascension, but in
1844. It is a complicated attempt to excuse the huge error of William Miller in
his third and last prediction of the second coming of Christ. The idea is to
try and say that something did actually happen, though there was and is no
physical evidence. Let’s simplify the whole matter by just stating that again,
this is just mindless heresy.
6.
Satan
is the scapegoat for our sins. This is a mistaken doctrine on the sending of
the scapegoat into the wilderness (Lev.16). It makes Satan co-redeemer with
Christ in stating that Satan had something to do with taking away our sins. We
can see that Satan certainly had something to do with this heresy! This
discredits Christ and mars the work of salvation. Simply, it’s another
Adventist blasphemy.
7.
The
mark of the beast in Revelation is Sunday keeping. Ridiculous! Read all that
the book of Revelation has to say about the beast and its mark. See if you can
find a hint anywhere that it has something to do with worshiping on Sunday.
John was worshiping on Sunday, when he received the Revelation. See chapter
one: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day”. Early church fathers used the
same term “Lord’s Day” to speak of the first day of the week, when Christ was
raised from the dead, met with His disciples always on that day after the
resurrection and when, for that reason, His followers began to meet on that
day, as suggested in the book of Acts and the writings of Paul.
8.
There
is no eternal hell, but only annihilation for the damned. They will cease to
exist. A direct contradiction of Scripture. This is very similar to teaching by
the Jehovah Witnesses. No wonder, their founder, Charles Russell, attended
Adventists’ meetings. Just one verse from the mouth of the Word of God made
flesh Himself: “These will go away into ETERNAL
PUNISHMENT, but the righteous in eternal life.” (Mt.25:46).
9.
There
are many dietary laws in Adventism and many practice vegetarianism. Pork is
forbidden. Jesus turned His disciples totally away from food restrictions and
minimized their importance, but you will find among both the Mormons and the
Adventists that food and outward religion has a great deal of significance.
And the list could go on and on. We are exposing
totally man-made, scripture-twisting teaching. In conclusion, Seventh-day
Adventism is a sect, always has been and always will be.
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