Defensive Adventist Friend
I recently reviewed your podcast, “10 Questions and Answers on Seventh-day Adventism”. Could you please send me the pamphlet you mentioned? I was fascinated by their stance on abortion.
I have a very close Seventh-day Adventist friend, and we have recently had some conflict over doctrine. I’ve noticed that she and some members of her church don’t fully understand what they are representing. I pray that she might leave it behind, but when we talk about things such as Sunday worship, she has stated that I am worshipping on the “wrong day”. I have also stated that Ellen White does not pass the test for being a prophet but is a false prophet.
I love her dearly and find it difficult at times when she makes a statement and I ask where in the Bible it supports her view. She can become very defensive. I appreciate your advice to be patient and understanding, and so I am encouraged by that.
Thank you for what you all are doing. I will consider going to your website to donate to your cause.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Laura, thank you for writing. We will be happy to send you the pamphlet!
I feel for you with your Adventist friend. She does not know the truth about the biblical covenants and the purpose and place of the Sabbath. The Lord will give you wisdom. I’m going to attach a link to an article that may help you understand the Adventist worldview:
No Magic, No Disembodied Spirit
Everyone quotes 1 Thessalonians 4 to try and substantiate the belief regarding bodies and souls and advocates just reading and accepting the plain words of the Bible. Well: the Bible says that the saved when Jesus returns will be “caught UP together with them (the dead in Christ who rise first) in the clouds to meet the Lord IN THE AIR.”
We don’t have to wonder which direction He is going. He comes from heaven to collect His faithful ones via His angels who gather the saved together as a group ready to ASCEND with Jesus back to heaven. There is no hint that any immaterial, disembodied soul/spirit magically rejoins a body in this process of ascending to heaven; it’s not necessary—immortality and incorruption is divinely conferred on the saved at the time of Jesus’ coming not only as the reward for their faithfulness but in order to fit them for entry into heaven where no taint of sin, death, or corruption can abide.
There is also no suggestion that at this time Christ establishes His reign on earth. That happens later when the New Jerusalem descends from heaven onto an earth made new.
I Corinthians 15: 51-53 confirms that only at Christ’s second coming do mortals “put on immortality”. Before that, no human has any semblance of immortality, otherwise he/she would be taking on a characteristic of God “who only has immortality”.—1 Timothy 6:15,16.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing. First, we do not use 1 Thessalonians 4 as our central passage to teach that humans have bodies and immaterial spirits. The two central passages I use are John 4:24 and 2 Corinthians 5:1–9.
John 4:24 contain the words of God Himself: the incarnate Lord Jesus as he answered the Samaritan woman who asked him whether the right place of worship was Mt. Gerazim (the Samaritans’ sacred place) or Jerusalem (the Jews’ sacred place). He responded without directly addressing her but by giving her an answer that encompassed the bigger reality:
“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”—John 4:24 LSB
In one sentence Jesus, God the Son Himself, identified the essence of God—spirit, not material body—and identified how true human worshipers are to worship Him: in SPIRIT and in truth. Spirit is immaterial. This is the part of ourselves that is born dead in sin, under wrath until we believe (Ephesians 2:1–3; John 3:18, 36). Truth is cognitive and data-based. We perceive truth in our minds; we process truth with our brains and neural pathways. Truth is related to our spirits and informs our spirits because our material and immaterial parts are connected, but we have spirits that can know God and worship Him truly, or they can Not know God. Our spirits are born disconnected from God—dead in sin—and must be born again.
Indeed ,it was this spiritual death that Adam experienced in Genesis 3 when he ate the forbidden fruit and died. It is his dead spirit that we inherit, and in this way we all inherit Adam’s sin nature. We cannot worship God without our spirits being brought to life through faith in Jesus’ finished work.
Furthermore, we cannot interpret “spirit” as “breath” when we read Jesus’ definition. We do not worship God in our respiratory systems. God is not “breath”, and we do not worship God with the air in our lungs and noses. We worship in our immaterial spirits that are created in God’s image: immaterial identities that know God—or that remain dead in sin.
Second Corinthians 5:1–9 describes our immaterial identities even more clearly:
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord– … we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.—2 Corinthians 5:1–9 LSB
Paul explicitly describes what happens to a believer when he or she dies. First he establishes that “we”—the immaterial identity that is US—lives inside a mortal tent. When we die, this mortal tent, our body, leaves “us” unclothed and uncovered. We do not wish to be exposed but to be clothed. Paul explains that when we die on earth, the believer is ABSENT from the body and PRESENT with the Lord. He does not describe HOW this looks or works, but we know that, as Jesus said, when we believe and trust Him, we “pass from death to life and do not come into condemnation” (John 5:24).
We are placed in Christ and made alive with His life when we believe, sealed with His indwelling Holy Spirit. That union with Christ does not end or pause when our bodies die. We remain alive, in Christ, safe until the resurrection. In the 2 Corinthians passage Paul even says we would RATHER be absent from then body and at home with the Lord. He is not talking about a time of pausing our existence or a time of temporary annihilation. He is talking about a continuous existence. WE exist apart from our mortal tent bodies. Furthermore, as verse 9 states, whether we are absent or at home, we make it our ambition to be please to Him. We cannot have an ambition nor can we please God if we do not exist. We make it our ambition to be pleasing to God whether we remain in our mortal tents or whether we are at home with the Lord. We EXIST!
As for 1 Thessalonians 4:14–18:
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of [the] archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.—1 Thessalonians 4:14–18 LSB
Read the words carefully, noticing verb tenses.
Verse 14: God will bring with Him “those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.”
Sleep is used of death because the person has not ceased to exist! Those who sleep are alive, and their brains work throughout the times of their sleep. Jesus is using a metaphor that reassures His followers that the dead are not GONE. They have not ceased to exist, even temporarily. Sleepers are unaware of their immediate surroundings on earth, but the sleeper is alive.
This verse says that God brings with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Hm—those who are with the Lord as described in 2 Corinthians 5:1–9. “Brings” is present tense. When God brings Jesus to gather His saints, He brings the dead in Christ WITH HIM.
Verse 15: Those who are alive when Jesus returns will not be caught up before He has brought the righteous dead to resurrected life.
Verse 16: Jesus will descend with a shout. The voice of the archangel will shout, and the trumpet of God will sound, and the dead in Christ will rise FIRST. God creates resurrection bodies for the dead in Christ who are coming WITH HIM, and in a moment the dead have their immaterial spirits and their resurrection bodies rejoined. God gives the righteous dead their glorified bodies BEFORE the living rise to meet Him.
Verse 17: THEN we who are alive will be caught up TOGETHER with them in the clouds to meet the Lord, and we shall always be with the Lord.
Verse 18: Comfort one another with these words!
There is nothing magical about this description. This is a clear explanation of how people are resurrected. The spirits of the righteous who have died in Christ return WITH HIM, and immediately God creates glorified bodies and unites their bodies and spirits together. This is not magic and not imagination. This is God’s word and revelation to His people! This describes how Jesus was resurrected.
As for Christ’s earthly reign, read Revelation 20. The Lord Jesus reigns on earth for 1,000 years before the last battle that precedes the final, eternal state when the Holy City descends and God dwells eternally with His people.
No one is innately immortal except God. He grants the redeemed immortality when He grants them resurrection, but our immortality is not ETERNALITY. We all had beginnings. God did not. The fact that we will never die means that we will enter immortality, but we do not have immortality by nature. Furthermore, no one has an “immortal soul”. The Bible never says that. It does say that our immaterial identities do not cease at death, and even the wicked are kept “under punishment” for judgment (2 Peter 2). But death, when the body separates from the spirit, is not defined as “ceasing to exist”. Rather death is SEPARATION. We are no longer functioning as whole humans as God created us to be. Resurrection restores our humanity as we were intended to be—and our new birth when we believe restores our eternal life.
It is Jesus who said that when we believe we pass out of death into life:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
We enter eternal life when we are born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit. We receive our resurrection bodies when Jesus returns to gather us to Himself. But WE are not our bodies. Rather, we inhabit bodies!
Here is an article that may help you process the biblical sources:
Write to: LifeAssuranceMinistries@gmail.com
- Adventism Misrepresents Paul (Q3 L9) - August 19, 2026
- We Got Mail - August 19, 2026
- What About the Soul? (8/15–21/26) - August 13, 2026