KASPARS OZOLINS | Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation,
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Life Assurance Ministries Board Member |
In a recent episode of the Adventist podcast Seeking What They Sought, well-known Andrews University professor Richard Davidson introduced himself in the following way:
“I’m a fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist. As JoAnn’s mom liked to say, the Adventist system and Adventist doctrines must be seeping into our very genes and chromosomes by now after four generations.”
Remember those words carefully as you read on.
Erik Edstrom, Sean Lehnhoff, Jesse Churchill, and Anthony Lyder are four Millennial Adventist friends who have known each other since high school. They host the podcast Seeking What They Sought which features long-form interviews and discussions with major Adventist thought leaders. They have interviewed numerous well-known Seventh-day Adventist voices on their show, up to and including former General Conference president Ted Wilson. Their current series, which has been going on for a while, is an investigation into the investigative judgment (no pun intended). After an introductory episode, they have since hosted Ivor Myers (3ABN speaker), Carlos Muñoz (Amazing Facts host), Larry Geraty (former La Sierra president), and Ty Gibson (director of Light Bearers). In their latest episode, they interview Richard Davidson, an Old Testament professor at Andrews University.
Each guest is ostensibly invited to help these young Adventists wrestle with that most unique and complex Adventist doctrine: the investigative judgment (also called the “pre-advent judgment”). In their introductory episode, the hosts freely confessed their confusion at the doctrine (a feeling they further acknowledged is widespread within the church). The purpose of inviting these major figures in current Seventh-day Adventism is evidently to get some clarity about this doctrine which is so central to their faith. Yet in their interviews, all of those guests, whether traditional or progressive, have only further muddied the waters.
Let’s consider Davidson’s interview as a representative case.
Confronted with the Investigative Judgment
In his interview, Richard Davidson first gives an overview of his life, highlighting specifically how his doctoral studies at Andrews University coincided with the infamous Desmond Ford crisis in the early 1980s. Ford’s mammoth 991-page manuscript eventually came into Davidson’s hands by means of his (then) closest theological friend who told him: “Dick, I dare you to read this and stay an Adventist.” Amazingly, his friend would eventually leave Adventism as a result of Ford’s teaching and start an evangelical church. He even encouraged Davidson to follow him in this. Yet as Davidson relates the story, his friend’s leaving also coincided with Davidson’s first teaching post at Andrews University.
Davidson recalled reading the manuscript night after night (after teaching at the seminary during the day) and “getting more and more morose, because I didn’t have answers to the questions that were raised there.” Eventually, he had to stop reading at the behest of his wife because, as he explained, “I was getting pretty hard to live with, with all these doubts and uncertainties.”
Yet Davidson remained an Adventist. We are not told in this interview specifically how he got past his doubts about Adventism, only that he claims that “the sanctuary doctrine caused me to fall in love with Jesus more than I ever had before.” In fact, throughout this entire podcast series, as I listened to interview after interview, I found myself wondering how these podcast hosts could ever hope to seek what their guests were seeking, if for no other reason than that the lengthy explanations their guests offered about the investigative judgment sounded so confused and contradictory.
Why a heavenly sanctuary?
The four seekers began their investigation in this podcast interview by reading Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Belief #24 (“The Investigative Judgment”) and then plainly asked their guest: “Why do we even have this belief? Why do we think there is a sanctuary in heaven and what does that mean?” Note carefully that this basic question was asked after no fewer than eight episodes had been devoted to the topic, including hours of discussion with major Adventist thought leaders who are household names among Adventists.
Davidson’s initial foray into the discussion is fascinating. He states the following: “Typically, when I talk to people about the sanctuary and seek to understand what they think of regarding the sanctuary, they see it as a place where God is solving the sin problem.”
Could there be a chance that this “mistaken” view arose because Fundamental Belief #24 itself states that the investigative judgment is “part of the ultimate disposition of all sin”? In fact, that’s what Davidson himself admits: “When I learned about the sanctuary doctrine, that’s where we started. We started in Hebrews 8, this text [with] the ministry of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected…and so you go right into the sanctuary as a place for the sin problem to solve.” In my view, Davidson is only one individual in a very long line of Seventh-day Adventists who have toyed with this original doctrine and reconfigured it, repackaging it so that it might continue to seep into yet another generation of Adventists.
So why must there be a heavenly sanctuary, according to Davidson?
“The heavenly sanctuary was in existence long before sin entered the universe. Its main purpose was not to solve the sin problem…The sanctuary is the place where God reveals himself as one who wants to be Immanuel. God with us. I don’t see Immanuel as just happening at the incarnation. Immanuel happened from eternity…You’ve got a real place in heaven that’s God’s house. That’s called his temple, his palace…God is not timeless. God is not outside of space and time.”
With these words, Davidson keenly demonstrates that his reconfiguration of the investigative judgment has not altered its heretical foundation one iota. The physical god of Ellen White whom she described as having a “lovely form” is the same god that Richard Davidson still proclaims decades later. The god of her husband James White, “possessing both body and parts,” is the same god that this esteemed Andrews University professor teaches about to his students, decade after decade.
Demolishing the incarnation
By now you should be sensing another deep problem with Adventism’s heavenly sanctuary doctrine: it erases and thereby blasphemes the actual incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I could sense that the podcast hosts were struggling to understand their guest’s line of thinking (ironically, just like his own seminary students do, according to Davidson). If God already has a physical heavenly home where he can meet with his creatures, what, then, is the purpose of the incarnation? This problem was on full display in the following lengthy quotation, which I have reproduced because it is simply astonishing:
“[Christ] takes on himself the form of an angel and he appears to them [the angels] and he becomes Michael the archangel. But I see that the the Trinity had this council way back before they started creating: ‘And how are we going to get across to those we create?’ I mean, they’re all one in purpose and the Father could have come and died instead of the Son. Jesus could have been the Spirit that dwelt in us. We’re not talking about different levels of beings—they’re the Trinity, they’re the heavenly trio, as as some like to call it. But I think they decided the Father would be the one who represented the ineffable glory that lives in inapproachable light to show the transcendence of God. And the Spirit would be the one who would live within us and be everywhere at once…
And the Son (the one we call the Son) would be the one who would come close to us, to his creatures. I think he didn’t take the nature of an angel but he took the form of an angel. And he walked among the angels as another angel, as it were. They all knew he was God, but he took the risk—the Trinity took the risk—to have one of their one of their beings come close and to dwell with creatures in a way that they could understand.
So to answer your question, it’s not that God needed it. It’s that he wants desperately to communicate with those he created because he loves us. And so he took the risk of coming close, of living in a house, of having one of the members of God even take the form of an angel; in every way possible that he could show us, ‘I love you. I believe I must be intimate with you because that’s what love’s all about.’ Does that make any sense?”
How could the Adventist doctrine of the investigative judgment make any sense when it undermines the very heart of the Christian faith so thoroughly? This doctrine manages to erase both the person and work of the Son: his person because it destroys any need for the incarnation; and his work because it destroys what he accomplished in full on the cross.
Seeking the Spirit of Adventism
What are today’s Seventh-day Adventist seeking to do with their own doctrinal heritage? Theirs is a movement founded as the legacy of a small offshoot of the Millerites. These individuals doubled down and fatefully refused to repent of their fanciful claims about the return of Christ in 1844 to cleanse the earth (which was the original sanctuary, it must be noted). Though they may not see it this way, today’s Seventh-day Adventists are the theological sons and daughters of an unbiblical prophetess who was shown numerous false visions by her ministering angel. Upon her death, the forefathers of today’s Adventists decided to decisively cling to those visions in 1919, thereby shackling generations yet unborn. With each new era, Adventism continues to evolve and morph, yet the founding spirit of Adventism remains the same. Not only that—with each additional compromise made by generations of Adventist leaders, scholars, teachers, pastors, and missionaries—the very nature of this movement becomes that much more deceptive, piled up with falsehoods.
As one of the podcast hosts noted in an interview with Adventist Today, the title of their show was derived from a Japanese proverb: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” He then went on to explain:
“When we look back on our founders, when we look back on this this movement of Adventism, it’s not necessarily always the best practice to just do or emulate what has been done in the past, but to look at the spirit behind it. So when we look at Ellen White or Joseph Bates or James or others, we look at the spirit behind the movement and we deeply resonate with that church movement that took place and is still taking place. And we desire to follow after that spirit.”
My earnest and heartfelt plea to Seventh-day Adventists is that they not be fooled into thinking that their religious movement is biblical simply because it evolves with “present truth”—even as that religious movement continues to be steeped in the spirit of their spiritual founders.
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.”—1 Timothy 4:1
“But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.—1 Tim 6:11
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