The Roots of Adventism
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Important messages
Miscalculated prophecies and a blow on the head
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| Ellen White 1827-1915 |
In eight words, this
is the story of the roots of Seventh-day Adventism. 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 Jehovah Witnesses and the third sect is the Seventh-Day Adventists.
Let me list a number
of characteristics and ideas that these three groups have in common.
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.
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.
The founders were
largely ignorant people with no good theological background or training.
You will find that
none of them accept or teach salvation that comes purely by the grace of God.
They are all “works” oriented.
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.
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.
They all experienced rapid growth and today number in the millions on a world-wide basis.
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.
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| William Miller (1782-1849) |
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
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:
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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