The Cult of Seventh Day Adventism
Mar 5, 2022 13:16:45 GMT -5
Post by schwartzie on Mar 5, 2022 13:16:45 GMT -5
SDA is a CULT
Indictments
We indict Seventh-Day Adventism on four main counts, leaving out lesser (though none the less false) theories.
Indictment #1 – Attitude Towards the Atonement
Seventh-Day Adventism denies the Biblical Doctrine of the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ as the only means of man’s salvation.
This is the first serious indictment. We shall prove it from Mrs. White’s own writings, so that we may not be accused of misrepresentation or exaggeration:
The ministration of the priests throughout the year in the first apartment of the sanctuary (which sanctuary Mrs. White places in heaven and not on earth!-Ed.) . . . represents the work of ministration upon which Christ entered at His ascension…. For eighteen centuries this work of ministration continued in the first apartment of the sanctuary. The blood of Christ, pleaded in behalf of penitent believers, secured their pardon and acceptance with the Father, yet their sins still remained upon the books of record.-The Great Controversy.
Can it be unreasonable for us to inquire, What in the name of all that’s reasonable does this mean? Sins pardoned and yet still on the books!
(a) Seventh-Day Adventism denies the finality of the work of Christ on the cross, hence it makes Christ’s last cry on the cross, “It is finished,” to be a lie!
As in typical service there was a work of atonement at the close of the year, so before Christ’s work for redemption of men is completed, there is a work of atonement for the removal of sin from the sanctuary. This is the service which began when the 2,300 days ended (according to Mrs. White this was in the year 1844! Evidently the nineteenth century was more wonderful than we had imagined!-Ed.). At that time, as foretold by Daniel the prophet, our high priest entered the most holy to perform the last division, of his solemn work to cleanse the sanctuary . . . in the new covenant the sins of the repentant are by faith placed upon Christ, and transferred, in fact, to the heavenly sanctuary . . . so the actual cleansing to cleanse the sanctuary. . . in the new covenant the sins of moval, or blotting out, of the sins which are there recorded. But, before this can be accomplished, there must be an examination of the books of record to determine who, through repentance of sin and faith in Christ, are entitled to the benefits of His atonement. The cleansing of the sanctuary therefore involves a work of investigation–a work of judgment. Those who followed in the light of the prophetic word saw that, instead of coming to earth at the termination of the 2300 days in 1844 (as Prophet William Miller had so dogmatically and widely proclaimed.—Ed.), Christ then entered in the most holy place of the heavenly, to perform the closing work of atonement preparatory to his coming.—Ibid.
We have given this extended quotation on purpose to show a fair specimen of Mrs. White’s writings and teachings. Here then are the facts–William Miller prophesied that Christ would come (hence the name Adventist) in 1844, but He did not! So Mrs. White steps in to save the situation. A mistake has been made–it was not to earth but to the “heavenly sanctuary” He came. Why? Her fertile imagination was equal to the question-to complete the work of atonement, and to carry on something she calls “investigative judgment,” all preparatory to His coming to earth at some later date! She assumes therefore; (i) there is a sanctuary in heaven, though the Bible says nothing about it being in heaven; (ii) there is sin in heaven, though the Bible says nothing about it; (iii) that in some mysterious way not explainable the sanctuary has to be a kind of “mediator” and bear the sins of the believer for at least a time; (iv) this sanctuary needs cleansing nevertheless; and (v) this cleansing and investigating began in 1844. We find it difficult to decide whether to be shocked at its rank heresy, or to pity the one who can write such balderdash. But there is worse ahead.
Indictment #2 – Satan the Sin-Bearer
Seventh-Day Adventism declares Satan to be the joint sin-bearer, and the vicarious substitute of the sinner.
It was seen also that while the sin-offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice, and the high priest represented Christ as Mediator, the scapegoat typified Satan, the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will finally be placed. When the high priest by virtue of the blood of the sin-offering removed the sins from the sanctuary, he placed them upon the scapegoat. When Christ, by virtue of His own blood, removes the sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary at the close of His ministration, He will place them upon Satan, who in the execution of the judgment must bear the final penalty. The scapegoat was sent into a land not inhabited, never to come again into the Congregation of Israel. So will SATAN be forever banished from the presence of God and His people and he will be blotted from existence in the final destruction of sin and the sinner.–The Great Controversy
Dr. D. Anderson-Berry gives but a just estimate of this rigamarole in his book when he says:
We have the choicest doctrine of the Gospel, justification by faith, utterly contemned and set at naught. Nay, more, as if that were not enough to damn their doctrine, they dare to substitute for Christ’s finished work on the cross, SATAN’S vicarious suffering in bearing away the sins of the people of God into a land of utter annihilation. It does not lessen, the blasphemous grossness of the idea to say that it is wholly imaginary, the figment of the addled brain of a hysterical woman. It merely explains it!
If ever there was a “damnable heresy” (see 2 Peter 2: 1) surely it is here! Mrs. White professes to found all this teaching on Leviticus 23 and the book of Daniel. We confidently hand both books, yea, the whole Bible itself, to any mature, sane-thinking Christian and challenge him to find anywhere in the whole sixty-six books of the Divine Library, one jot or tittle of evidence or proof (set forth according to fundamental and eternal principles of exegesis), for such consummate trash. It seems an insult to offer such stuff for the serious consideration of a reasonable mind.
With this, compare the following few texts (selected out of a vast number) from the Word of God itself, and then ask yourself, reader, which you are prepared to believe and stake your soul’s destiny upon.
“without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb 9:22).
“it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17: 11).
“ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things . . .But with the precious blood of Christ. . .” (1 Pet 1:18-19).
“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. . .”
(1 Peter 2: 24).
“having made peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20).
“But now in Christ Jesus . . .ye are made nigh by the blood of Christ”
(Eph 2:13).
“He that believeth on Him is not condemned” (John 3: 18).
“There is therefore now NO CONDEMNATION to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1).
“Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3: 24).
“The blood of Jesus, Christ His (God’s) Son cleanseth us from ALL SIN”
(1 John 1: 7).
Indictment #3 – Christ’s Humanity
Seventh-Day Adventists teach that the Lord Jesus Christ inherited a sinful, fallen nature.
It may surprise and pain the reader to learn that the above-statement is actual FACT. If such is a foundation-stone on which the Seventh-Day Adventist church is founded, how can it stand? Such is not the Christ we have learnt to know–not the Holy Lord of Holy Writ.
The following extract, taken from one of their own publications–Bible Readings for the Home Circle, makes this astounding statement (p. 115, 1915 edition):—
In His humanity Christ partook of our sinful, fallen nature. If not, then He was not “made like unto His brethren,” was not “in all points tempted like as we are,” did not overcome as we have to overcome, and is not, therefore, the complete and perfect Saviour man needs and must have to be saved.
In other words they say, If you do not accept our teaching on the “sinful, fallen nature” of Christ, you have no Saviour! This writer continues: —
The idea that Christ was born of an immaculate or sinless mother,* inherited no tendencies to sin, and for this reason did not sin, removes Him from the realm of a fallen world, and from the very place where help is needed. On His human side, Christ inherited just what every child of Adam inherits–a sinful nature. On the divine side, from His very conception He was begotten and born of the Spirit. And all this was done to place mankind on vantage-ground, and to demonstrate that in the same way everyone who is “born of the Spirit” may gain like victories over sin in his own sinful flesh. Thus each one is to overcome as Christ overcame (Rev. 3:21). Without this birth there can be no victory over temptation, and no salvation from sin, John 3: 3-7. (Their italics.)
——————————————————————————–
*This, the writer perfectly well knows, is a doctrine which is held by no body of evangelical Christians–it is Roman to the core.
Let us examine somewhat carefully the above teaching.
The Scripture tells us that we are partakers of God’s holiness (Heb. 12:10); God and Christ are one (John 10: 30); yet above we are assured that Christ “partook of our sinful, fallen nature!” What a contemptuous denial of Scripture! Are we not distinctly told that He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners?” How could He be at once “Holy” and “undefiled” and at the same time partake of our “fallen nature;” inherit what we as sinners inherited, and yet be “without sin” (“sin apart,” R. V.; see Heb. 7:26; 4: 15)?
After publishing the above quotation with these and other comments in The Indian Christian for January, 1927, we received a letter from the Editor of Oriental Watchman, the official organ of the Seventh-Day Adventist people in India, in which he sought to explain the teaching which he says, is orthodox to the very core!” We can only give short extracts as the letter covers more, than five type-written pages. He says:—
I wish to affirm definitely just the contrary to your conclusion by saying that if Jesus did not take our fallen nature in His own person (his italics) by His incarnation, fallen humanity is left without a saviour…
There was but one kind of humanity in the world that Jesus could have taken, and that is fully described in Romans, chapter three, where Paul describes it as sinful and fallen, and beyond all hope if left to itself.*
He who was holy and undefiled, had sin imputed unto Him. The sinful nature which He bore was not that which came by the sins of His own doing, for it is written of Him: “Who did not sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (I Pet. 2: 22), but they were the sins of imputation–sins committed by others which were laid upon Him.
——————————————————————————–
*He apparently does not know that: “Sin is no property of humanity at all, but the disordered state of our souls” (Faussett).
W. Kelly says: “Not a trace of evil was in Christ. He was man as truly as the first Adam–Son of man as Adam was not, but Son of Man which is in heaven–a Divine Person, yet none the less a Man. But for these very reasons He was capable and competent, according to the glory of His Person, to be dealt with by God for all that was unlike Him in us. Had there been the smallest taint in Him this could not have been done. The perfect absence of evil in this one Man furnished the requisite victim; as in Himself and all His ways the divine nature found satisfaction and delight. Would He then bear all? Be willing to go down to the depth of the judgment of all men, according to God’s estimate of the evil of our nature? The entire, unbroken, unmitigated judgment of God fell upon Him in order to deal with it and put it away forever. No less, I believe, is the force of Christ’s death for us.”
He also quotes 2 Cor. 5:21, and draws attention to Isaiah 53.
So, then, we are to understand that Christ carried the burden of imputed sin His whole life long, not only on the cross, for it was at His birth He inherited His human nature.
Again if Christ inherited a sinful, fallen nature, when did He disinherit it? Do they teach that He who is the same yesterday and today and forever, has taken His “sinful, fallen nature” to God’s right hand?
Let us now turn to orthodox teaching on this point. Dr. I. M. Haldeman of New York says of Christ:—
He was begotten of God from the seed of the woman, by and through the Holy Ghost. That which was begotten was not a person, but a nature—a human nature. This human nature was holy, Scripture calls it “that Holy Thing.” It was the holiness produced by and out of the Holy Ghost. It was the holiness produced by and out of God. It was, therefore, in its quality the holiness of God. Since its quality was the holiness of God, there was no sin in it, and no possible tendency to sin. This holy, sinless human nature was indissolubly joined to the eternal personality of the Son.
Dr. Griffith Thomas on Romans 8: 3* says: “Observe the wonderful fulfilment of this verse. Thus we have the Deity of Christ, ‘His own Son,’ the Incarnation ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh,’ that is, He was like us in all things except sin—Christ’s flesh was not sinful, never the seat of sin; and His atonement ‘for sin,’ which means ‘as an offering for sin’.”
Dr. C. I. Scofield says: “Our sins were borne ‘in His body,’ but not in His nature.”
Were the teaching of-the Seventh-Day Adventist church true we would have a monstrosity—Deity inheriting a sinful nature!
If this could have been so there could have been no sinless sacrifice, no hope for sinners, no Saviour. And how could it have been written: “The prince of this world cometh, and hath NOTHING, in Me” (John 14: 30). Further the Scripture says, “In Him Is No SIN” (1 John 3: 5)!
——————————————————————————–
*Rom. 8: 3 is nicely balanced. “Sinful” necessitates “likeness.” “Sinful flesh” would have meant that He Himself had needed a Saviour. “Likeness of flesh” would have meant that the Humanity of the Saviour was unreal—later the Docetic heresy (C. F. Hogg).
Indictment #4 – Soul Sleep
Seventh-Day Adventism believes in Soul-sleep after death and Conditional Immortality.
This indictment will not take up much of our time, as we deal with both these heresies elsewhere in this booklet (see separate articles). Mrs. White says:—
Upon the fundamental error of natural immortality rests the doctrine of consciousness in death, a doctrine like eternal torment, opposed to the teaching of the Scriptures, to the dictates of reason and to our feelings of humanity.
The theory of eternal punishment is one of the false doctrines that constitute the wine of the abominations of Babylon.
. . .They received it from Rome as they received the false Sabbath.
Will the Seventh-Day Adventists explain then why Paul could use such language as, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord”; and, “to be with Christ, which is FAR BETTER”? Will Mrs. White tell us what “natural immortality” means, and who is so foolish to preach it, when we see thousands dying around us every day? Will Mrs. White or any of her disciples dare to set up “the feelings of humanity” against the plain Word of the Living God-“These (i.e., sinners) shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal”? (See the article on Soul-sleep).
Indictment #5 – The Sabbath
The fourth indictment is that Seventh-Day Adventism tries to force the believer back under Law and so away from Grace, by their Sabbath teachings.
As the Seventh-Day Adventists materialized the sanctuary in heaven, they were forced to materialize everything. So besides an actual sanctuary in heaven, with candlesticks, curtains, table of showbread and ark, they were forced to add within the ark the two tables of stone, and call upon all to put themselves under the law. Mrs. White at first refused to believe that the Fourth Commandment was more binding than any other. Elder Bates urged its great importance until Mrs. White had a convenient vision, in which she asserted she was taken to heaven, and shown the sanctuary and its appointments! A description of her vision is given: “Jesus raised the cover of the ark, and she beheld the tables of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written. She was amazed as she saw the Fourth Commandment in the very center of the ten precepts, with a soft halo of light encircling it.
The Adventists have found a handle for their teachings in the erroneous way Christians speak about the first day of the week (the Lord’s Day) as if it were the Sabbath.
The Adventists claim that Christians being still under the Law of Moses, are bound to keep the “least of its precepts,” and therefore must keep the Sabbath. They also state that Protestants acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church, away back in the year A.D. 364, at the Council of Laodicea, changed the Sabbath or Seventh day to Sunday or the First day. Neither statements are tenable when judged in the light of Scripture and early Church history.
Continued at link
Indictments
We indict Seventh-Day Adventism on four main counts, leaving out lesser (though none the less false) theories.
Indictment #1 – Attitude Towards the Atonement
Seventh-Day Adventism denies the Biblical Doctrine of the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ as the only means of man’s salvation.
This is the first serious indictment. We shall prove it from Mrs. White’s own writings, so that we may not be accused of misrepresentation or exaggeration:
The ministration of the priests throughout the year in the first apartment of the sanctuary (which sanctuary Mrs. White places in heaven and not on earth!-Ed.) . . . represents the work of ministration upon which Christ entered at His ascension…. For eighteen centuries this work of ministration continued in the first apartment of the sanctuary. The blood of Christ, pleaded in behalf of penitent believers, secured their pardon and acceptance with the Father, yet their sins still remained upon the books of record.-The Great Controversy.
Can it be unreasonable for us to inquire, What in the name of all that’s reasonable does this mean? Sins pardoned and yet still on the books!
(a) Seventh-Day Adventism denies the finality of the work of Christ on the cross, hence it makes Christ’s last cry on the cross, “It is finished,” to be a lie!
As in typical service there was a work of atonement at the close of the year, so before Christ’s work for redemption of men is completed, there is a work of atonement for the removal of sin from the sanctuary. This is the service which began when the 2,300 days ended (according to Mrs. White this was in the year 1844! Evidently the nineteenth century was more wonderful than we had imagined!-Ed.). At that time, as foretold by Daniel the prophet, our high priest entered the most holy to perform the last division, of his solemn work to cleanse the sanctuary . . . in the new covenant the sins of the repentant are by faith placed upon Christ, and transferred, in fact, to the heavenly sanctuary . . . so the actual cleansing to cleanse the sanctuary. . . in the new covenant the sins of moval, or blotting out, of the sins which are there recorded. But, before this can be accomplished, there must be an examination of the books of record to determine who, through repentance of sin and faith in Christ, are entitled to the benefits of His atonement. The cleansing of the sanctuary therefore involves a work of investigation–a work of judgment. Those who followed in the light of the prophetic word saw that, instead of coming to earth at the termination of the 2300 days in 1844 (as Prophet William Miller had so dogmatically and widely proclaimed.—Ed.), Christ then entered in the most holy place of the heavenly, to perform the closing work of atonement preparatory to his coming.—Ibid.
We have given this extended quotation on purpose to show a fair specimen of Mrs. White’s writings and teachings. Here then are the facts–William Miller prophesied that Christ would come (hence the name Adventist) in 1844, but He did not! So Mrs. White steps in to save the situation. A mistake has been made–it was not to earth but to the “heavenly sanctuary” He came. Why? Her fertile imagination was equal to the question-to complete the work of atonement, and to carry on something she calls “investigative judgment,” all preparatory to His coming to earth at some later date! She assumes therefore; (i) there is a sanctuary in heaven, though the Bible says nothing about it being in heaven; (ii) there is sin in heaven, though the Bible says nothing about it; (iii) that in some mysterious way not explainable the sanctuary has to be a kind of “mediator” and bear the sins of the believer for at least a time; (iv) this sanctuary needs cleansing nevertheless; and (v) this cleansing and investigating began in 1844. We find it difficult to decide whether to be shocked at its rank heresy, or to pity the one who can write such balderdash. But there is worse ahead.
Indictment #2 – Satan the Sin-Bearer
Seventh-Day Adventism declares Satan to be the joint sin-bearer, and the vicarious substitute of the sinner.
It was seen also that while the sin-offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice, and the high priest represented Christ as Mediator, the scapegoat typified Satan, the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will finally be placed. When the high priest by virtue of the blood of the sin-offering removed the sins from the sanctuary, he placed them upon the scapegoat. When Christ, by virtue of His own blood, removes the sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary at the close of His ministration, He will place them upon Satan, who in the execution of the judgment must bear the final penalty. The scapegoat was sent into a land not inhabited, never to come again into the Congregation of Israel. So will SATAN be forever banished from the presence of God and His people and he will be blotted from existence in the final destruction of sin and the sinner.–The Great Controversy
Dr. D. Anderson-Berry gives but a just estimate of this rigamarole in his book when he says:
We have the choicest doctrine of the Gospel, justification by faith, utterly contemned and set at naught. Nay, more, as if that were not enough to damn their doctrine, they dare to substitute for Christ’s finished work on the cross, SATAN’S vicarious suffering in bearing away the sins of the people of God into a land of utter annihilation. It does not lessen, the blasphemous grossness of the idea to say that it is wholly imaginary, the figment of the addled brain of a hysterical woman. It merely explains it!
If ever there was a “damnable heresy” (see 2 Peter 2: 1) surely it is here! Mrs. White professes to found all this teaching on Leviticus 23 and the book of Daniel. We confidently hand both books, yea, the whole Bible itself, to any mature, sane-thinking Christian and challenge him to find anywhere in the whole sixty-six books of the Divine Library, one jot or tittle of evidence or proof (set forth according to fundamental and eternal principles of exegesis), for such consummate trash. It seems an insult to offer such stuff for the serious consideration of a reasonable mind.
With this, compare the following few texts (selected out of a vast number) from the Word of God itself, and then ask yourself, reader, which you are prepared to believe and stake your soul’s destiny upon.
“without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb 9:22).
“it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Lev. 17: 11).
“ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things . . .But with the precious blood of Christ. . .” (1 Pet 1:18-19).
“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. . .”
(1 Peter 2: 24).
“having made peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20).
“But now in Christ Jesus . . .ye are made nigh by the blood of Christ”
(Eph 2:13).
“He that believeth on Him is not condemned” (John 3: 18).
“There is therefore now NO CONDEMNATION to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1).
“Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3: 24).
“The blood of Jesus, Christ His (God’s) Son cleanseth us from ALL SIN”
(1 John 1: 7).
Indictment #3 – Christ’s Humanity
Seventh-Day Adventists teach that the Lord Jesus Christ inherited a sinful, fallen nature.
It may surprise and pain the reader to learn that the above-statement is actual FACT. If such is a foundation-stone on which the Seventh-Day Adventist church is founded, how can it stand? Such is not the Christ we have learnt to know–not the Holy Lord of Holy Writ.
The following extract, taken from one of their own publications–Bible Readings for the Home Circle, makes this astounding statement (p. 115, 1915 edition):—
In His humanity Christ partook of our sinful, fallen nature. If not, then He was not “made like unto His brethren,” was not “in all points tempted like as we are,” did not overcome as we have to overcome, and is not, therefore, the complete and perfect Saviour man needs and must have to be saved.
In other words they say, If you do not accept our teaching on the “sinful, fallen nature” of Christ, you have no Saviour! This writer continues: —
The idea that Christ was born of an immaculate or sinless mother,* inherited no tendencies to sin, and for this reason did not sin, removes Him from the realm of a fallen world, and from the very place where help is needed. On His human side, Christ inherited just what every child of Adam inherits–a sinful nature. On the divine side, from His very conception He was begotten and born of the Spirit. And all this was done to place mankind on vantage-ground, and to demonstrate that in the same way everyone who is “born of the Spirit” may gain like victories over sin in his own sinful flesh. Thus each one is to overcome as Christ overcame (Rev. 3:21). Without this birth there can be no victory over temptation, and no salvation from sin, John 3: 3-7. (Their italics.)
——————————————————————————–
*This, the writer perfectly well knows, is a doctrine which is held by no body of evangelical Christians–it is Roman to the core.
Let us examine somewhat carefully the above teaching.
The Scripture tells us that we are partakers of God’s holiness (Heb. 12:10); God and Christ are one (John 10: 30); yet above we are assured that Christ “partook of our sinful, fallen nature!” What a contemptuous denial of Scripture! Are we not distinctly told that He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners?” How could He be at once “Holy” and “undefiled” and at the same time partake of our “fallen nature;” inherit what we as sinners inherited, and yet be “without sin” (“sin apart,” R. V.; see Heb. 7:26; 4: 15)?
After publishing the above quotation with these and other comments in The Indian Christian for January, 1927, we received a letter from the Editor of Oriental Watchman, the official organ of the Seventh-Day Adventist people in India, in which he sought to explain the teaching which he says, is orthodox to the very core!” We can only give short extracts as the letter covers more, than five type-written pages. He says:—
I wish to affirm definitely just the contrary to your conclusion by saying that if Jesus did not take our fallen nature in His own person (his italics) by His incarnation, fallen humanity is left without a saviour…
There was but one kind of humanity in the world that Jesus could have taken, and that is fully described in Romans, chapter three, where Paul describes it as sinful and fallen, and beyond all hope if left to itself.*
He who was holy and undefiled, had sin imputed unto Him. The sinful nature which He bore was not that which came by the sins of His own doing, for it is written of Him: “Who did not sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (I Pet. 2: 22), but they were the sins of imputation–sins committed by others which were laid upon Him.
——————————————————————————–
*He apparently does not know that: “Sin is no property of humanity at all, but the disordered state of our souls” (Faussett).
W. Kelly says: “Not a trace of evil was in Christ. He was man as truly as the first Adam–Son of man as Adam was not, but Son of Man which is in heaven–a Divine Person, yet none the less a Man. But for these very reasons He was capable and competent, according to the glory of His Person, to be dealt with by God for all that was unlike Him in us. Had there been the smallest taint in Him this could not have been done. The perfect absence of evil in this one Man furnished the requisite victim; as in Himself and all His ways the divine nature found satisfaction and delight. Would He then bear all? Be willing to go down to the depth of the judgment of all men, according to God’s estimate of the evil of our nature? The entire, unbroken, unmitigated judgment of God fell upon Him in order to deal with it and put it away forever. No less, I believe, is the force of Christ’s death for us.”
He also quotes 2 Cor. 5:21, and draws attention to Isaiah 53.
So, then, we are to understand that Christ carried the burden of imputed sin His whole life long, not only on the cross, for it was at His birth He inherited His human nature.
Again if Christ inherited a sinful, fallen nature, when did He disinherit it? Do they teach that He who is the same yesterday and today and forever, has taken His “sinful, fallen nature” to God’s right hand?
Let us now turn to orthodox teaching on this point. Dr. I. M. Haldeman of New York says of Christ:—
He was begotten of God from the seed of the woman, by and through the Holy Ghost. That which was begotten was not a person, but a nature—a human nature. This human nature was holy, Scripture calls it “that Holy Thing.” It was the holiness produced by and out of the Holy Ghost. It was the holiness produced by and out of God. It was, therefore, in its quality the holiness of God. Since its quality was the holiness of God, there was no sin in it, and no possible tendency to sin. This holy, sinless human nature was indissolubly joined to the eternal personality of the Son.
Dr. Griffith Thomas on Romans 8: 3* says: “Observe the wonderful fulfilment of this verse. Thus we have the Deity of Christ, ‘His own Son,’ the Incarnation ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh,’ that is, He was like us in all things except sin—Christ’s flesh was not sinful, never the seat of sin; and His atonement ‘for sin,’ which means ‘as an offering for sin’.”
Dr. C. I. Scofield says: “Our sins were borne ‘in His body,’ but not in His nature.”
Were the teaching of-the Seventh-Day Adventist church true we would have a monstrosity—Deity inheriting a sinful nature!
If this could have been so there could have been no sinless sacrifice, no hope for sinners, no Saviour. And how could it have been written: “The prince of this world cometh, and hath NOTHING, in Me” (John 14: 30). Further the Scripture says, “In Him Is No SIN” (1 John 3: 5)!
——————————————————————————–
*Rom. 8: 3 is nicely balanced. “Sinful” necessitates “likeness.” “Sinful flesh” would have meant that He Himself had needed a Saviour. “Likeness of flesh” would have meant that the Humanity of the Saviour was unreal—later the Docetic heresy (C. F. Hogg).
Indictment #4 – Soul Sleep
Seventh-Day Adventism believes in Soul-sleep after death and Conditional Immortality.
This indictment will not take up much of our time, as we deal with both these heresies elsewhere in this booklet (see separate articles). Mrs. White says:—
Upon the fundamental error of natural immortality rests the doctrine of consciousness in death, a doctrine like eternal torment, opposed to the teaching of the Scriptures, to the dictates of reason and to our feelings of humanity.
The theory of eternal punishment is one of the false doctrines that constitute the wine of the abominations of Babylon.
. . .They received it from Rome as they received the false Sabbath.
Will the Seventh-Day Adventists explain then why Paul could use such language as, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord”; and, “to be with Christ, which is FAR BETTER”? Will Mrs. White tell us what “natural immortality” means, and who is so foolish to preach it, when we see thousands dying around us every day? Will Mrs. White or any of her disciples dare to set up “the feelings of humanity” against the plain Word of the Living God-“These (i.e., sinners) shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal”? (See the article on Soul-sleep).
Indictment #5 – The Sabbath
The fourth indictment is that Seventh-Day Adventism tries to force the believer back under Law and so away from Grace, by their Sabbath teachings.
As the Seventh-Day Adventists materialized the sanctuary in heaven, they were forced to materialize everything. So besides an actual sanctuary in heaven, with candlesticks, curtains, table of showbread and ark, they were forced to add within the ark the two tables of stone, and call upon all to put themselves under the law. Mrs. White at first refused to believe that the Fourth Commandment was more binding than any other. Elder Bates urged its great importance until Mrs. White had a convenient vision, in which she asserted she was taken to heaven, and shown the sanctuary and its appointments! A description of her vision is given: “Jesus raised the cover of the ark, and she beheld the tables of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written. She was amazed as she saw the Fourth Commandment in the very center of the ten precepts, with a soft halo of light encircling it.
The Adventists have found a handle for their teachings in the erroneous way Christians speak about the first day of the week (the Lord’s Day) as if it were the Sabbath.
The Adventists claim that Christians being still under the Law of Moses, are bound to keep the “least of its precepts,” and therefore must keep the Sabbath. They also state that Protestants acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church, away back in the year A.D. 364, at the Council of Laodicea, changed the Sabbath or Seventh day to Sunday or the First day. Neither statements are tenable when judged in the light of Scripture and early Church history.
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