Finally Understand God’s Rest!
Colleen and Nikki, I want to thank you for all the work you do for the former Adventists, helping us understand the gospel and much more. I am in the process of listening to your study of the book of Hebrews, and I finally understood what it means to enter God’s rest in Chapter 4. I left the church this summer, but I am still in touch with people from the church. Somebody suggested today to watch an Adventist video on the sanctuary service. I watched it, and it made my brain burn and my blood boil; it had a lot of Ellen White’s unbiblical teachings. It is almost two hours; I don’t know if you have so much time to waste, but I would love to hear your comments on this presentation.
Thank you very much.
May the Lord bless you and your ministry.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I listened to perhaps half of the video you sent. It was pure Adventism, and I was struck by something. The main teacher said that in order to understand what Jesus is doing now, we have to look at the Old Testament sanctuary and figure out where He is and what He’s doing. But this approach is BACKWARDS. The tabernacle service for Israel was a directive for worshiping Yahweh—a just God who could not overlook sin without blood sacrifice. Yahweh also forbade Israel to sacrifice human sacrifices. Unlike the pagans who offered their firstborn to the fire gods Molech and Chemash, Israel was commanded to REDEEM their firstborns. The tribe of Levi, who served the temple, were God’s substitute for sacrificing the firstborns of Israel —who, He said, belonged to Him. Yet they were redeemed by the Levites who served the Lord as a tribe in the temple.
No, we understand what Jesus is doing by looking at the what the New Testament tells us about the laws concerning the tabernacle and the priesthood. Hebrews, 2 Corinthians 3; Galatians, Romans, Colossians—these books explain that Jesus is the reality that the tabernacle and the law foreshadowed. We don’t look backwards from Jesus to see what He’s dong; we look forwards from the Old Testament to see what Jesus has done and where He is now as the New Testament reveals Him.
The New Testament tells us exactly who Jesus is, what He has done, and what He is doing as well as what He will do in the future. We don’t look at the shadows to discover the identity of the person casting the shadow. We look at the Person Himself—and suddenly we see the details clearly. The shadow only tells us that Someone is there—it lets us know that we are about to see Someone. Now we look at that Person directly. The shadow no longer helps us understand.. He has all we need, and He reveals all we need!
No Need To Meet with Adventist Pastor
I have been watching your Youtube videos and testimonies for quite some time. I found Jesus three years ago through a Youtube video series of a non-denominational church, and the Lord has been leading me mightily. He has helped me see the great error I lived in most of my young life (I’m 29 now), within the Adventist frame of mind. I’m free now but my family, church family, and friends are all not very happy.
Before I watched your videos, I already was seeing the disconnect and non-existent power of the Holy Spirit in the Adventist denomination, so I began doing my own research on religion, specifically the similarities within JW, SDA, Mormonism( LDS), and Christian Science. I researched those together, because I had heard a testimony of a Mormon who turned to Jesus, and the way he described his life and beliefs sounded so much like my own at the time.
I have done Bible study with my Adventist pastor, because they want to understand what my issues and “doubts” with the church are as I asked for removal of my name from the church. Yet even with that study, in which they fully agreed with mostly everything I said, they want me to meet with them again with another person to review why I’m making this decision. I have some good resources, but since you have already gone through this with Adventist leadership, I wanted to ask for extra assistance (I don’t know anyone that has made this decision) perhaps on how they likely may approach this and how I could best present and uphold the truth of Jesus Christ.
I truly appreciate and love your boldness for the Lord by posting your stories online, being brave and standing strong for Jesus!! Don’t ever stop doing that!! The number of people you will help break free through your testimony, you may never know!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you so much for writing! Your story is familiar—and yet it is uniquely yours. But the dynamics are familiar!
First I want to say this: you do not owe your Adventist pastor any more meetings. These kinds of requests from the pastor to “understand” your doubts are typical of Adventist pastors. They are not requesting meetings to “understand”; they are requesting these meetings in order to entrap you into discussions which you cannot fully explain or answer. They are doing this in order to keep you inside Adventism. They are intending to confuse YOU, to back you into a corner with questions which you cannot answer.
There are, of course, answers to their questions and explanations, but they are deliberately deceptive. They do not take your arguments at face value but address your statements with responses shaped by the Adventist worldview. The reason you cannot resolve these conversations is that you and he are speaking from completely different worldviews. Your pastor, whether or not he says he agrees with what you say, does NOT agree under the surface. He does not believe that humans have an immaterial spirit that is born dead in sin, disconnected from the life of God. He does NOT believe that the Ten Commandments are the actual words of the Mosaic covenant (Exodus 34:27, 28) which do not apply to the new covenant and the church. He does NOT believe that the Lord Jesus finished His atonement for sin on the cross and has been seated at the right hand of the Father since His ascension. He does believe that 1844 marked the beginning of something significant, and he does believe that Jesus is engaged in a heavenly judgment now.
He will not say out loud that these are his beliefs, but everything he says is skewed to fit inside that great controversy worldview.
I know this sounds blunt, but you have to see that the Adventist pastor is in the same category as a Mormon bishop or a Buddhist priest. He is not Christian. He does not believe that salvation is a matter of a dead in sin person being given the faith to trust and believe the Lord Jesus’ finished work of atonement on the cross. He does not believe that salvation is entirely a matter of either being alive by grace through faith in Jesus—or of remaining condemned and spiritually dead because of unbelief.
That pastor believes that the seventh-day Sabbath is required by God if a person is ultimately to be saved. He believes that giving up the Sabbath would cause one to forfeit his salvation. But even deeper, he simply doesn’t believe that being spiritually born again is the only requirement for salvation—because he doesn’t believe humans have spirits that are born dead and must be made alive by God Himself when we trust the Son.
The pastor is a priest of a false religion, and you are under no obligation to go and see him any more. You have told him what you believe and what you want—your name dropped from membership—and it is his responsibility to honor your request. His refusal to honor your request and to continue to try to entrap you with arguments is, by all standards of interpersonal dynamics, rude. You need to relate to him as to a priest of a pagan religion. You do not need to go and engage in religious discussions with him. Since he has refused to listen and honor what you say, he has established that he is opposed to your desire to leave for the sake of the gospel of the Lord Jesus. You are not obligated to go and discuss the gospel with a man who does not want to hear what you say.
I believe that meeting with him the first time was polite and was a way of telling him the difference between Christianity and Adventism. That was appropriate to do. But to keep going back is to place yourself in the presence of a teacher of evil, and the Lord does not ask you to do that.
I do want to invite you to consider, if you wish, joining us Friday evenings for our online FAF Bible study at 7:00 PM Pacific Time. If you would like to join us via Zoom, just email this address and request a Zoom link for the Bible study.
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