COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! |
Week by week, quarter after quarter as I deconstruct the Sabbath School lessons for the Former Adventist Fact Check podcast and address their underlying worldview and suppositions, I see more clearly what is wrong with Adventism. In spite of its public claim to be based “on the Bible”, Seventh-day Adventism actually does NOT believe Scripture.
In practice, Adventism has a liberal view of the Bible. While claiming to believe it “literally”, it actually believes what Ellen White’s commentary has said Scripture means. Furthermore, Adventism ignores the context of Scripture, and it approaches it almost like a book of literature from which to glean interesting and important new ideas. After all, if Ellen White interpreted Scripture in symbolic or allegorical ways, if she changed her opinions over time, then their modern Adventist scholars have a precedent to follow. They, too, can find new ways to understand Scripture’s difficult passages.
For example, Adventism will say that the Bible commands humanity to “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy”. It will argue that nowhere does the New Testament ever claim that Sabbath was changed to Sunday, and it will then anchor the fourth commandment of Exodus 20:8–11 to Revelation 12:17 where the dragon is described as making war with the seed of the woman “who keep the commandments of God and have the witness of Jesus”.
On the authority of Ellen White, Adventism interprets “the commandments of God” in this verse as the Ten Commandments, and the “witness of Jesus” (or the “testimony of Jesus” in some translations) as the “spirit of prophecy” as per Revelation 19:10.
On the authority of Ellen White, Adventism interprets “the commandments of God” in this verse as the Ten Commandments, and the “witness of Jesus” (or the “testimony of Jesus” in some translations) as the “spirit of prophecy” as per Revelation 19:10. The “spirit of prophecy”, they claim, refers to Ellen White and her writings—which are conveniently called “the Spirit of Prophecy”.
In short, Adventism “literally” interprets the fourth commandment as a command from God for all humanity to keep the seventh day. They “literally” interpret the word “commandments” in Revelation to mean “the Ten Commandments”, and they “literally” call Ellen White’s writings “the Spirit of Prophecy” and point to Revelation 19:10 as the proof that keeping the Ten Commandments and observing Ellen White’s instructions is the mark of those who are God’s people at the end of time.
Make sense? What’s missing in the way Adventism uses texts and juxtaposes them?
The answer is obvious: CONTEXT. Extracting phrases and verses from their original context and recombining them with other verses from different parts of Scripture yields a strange mixture that has nothing at all to do with God’s original communication as Scripture was written.
This method of Bible study and interpretation is dishonest and deceives the unsuspecting.
The Sabbath School lessons are written by Adventists who KNOW that their traditional understandings of their own doctrines cannot be found contextually within Scripture. The daily studies, therefore, are carefully crafted with academic-sounding phrases that confuse the reader and soothe him or her into automatic acquiescence. The Ellen White quotations sprinkled throughout the lessons act as anchors to reassure the readers that their confusion is the result of their own lack of understanding. If Ellen White shows up in the lessons, and if the lessons are written by brighter Adventist minds than their own, then the explanations in the quarterlies can be trusted.
What We Can KNOW From Paul’s “Rapture”
Lesson 12 from the third quarter’s curriculum of 2026 has a particularly serious oversight. The week’s lessons superficially cover 2 Corinthians 10—12. Ostensibly the week focusses on Paul’s warning to the Corinthians to guard against false teachers. Ironically, Paul tells the Corinthians:
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.—2 Corinthians 11:13–15 LSB
The lesson makes much of warning the Adventist reader not to fall prey to false teachers that would lead them astray from the truth. Most Adventist readers would find no problem with this warning, understanding that they were to stay grounded in Adventist “truth” and not permit anyone to convince them otherwise.
Significantly, however, the lesson nearly ignores the passage quoted above—and it never addresses the reality that Ellen White claimed to receive her visions and views from “an angel”. This passage is a clear warning to BELIEVERS (not to members of a counterfeit Christian organization) not to be deceived by new insight delivered by teachers who receive their ideas from angels or from prophets who see angels. This passage is a clear warning to true believers against the very teachings of Adventism that the lesson reinforces to its members.
Yet there is another thing in these chapters that is significant—and of course, the lesson completely misses this.
In chapter 12 Paul tells about a mysterious but profound experience he had early after his encounter with the Lord Jesus on the Damascus road. Here is how he tells the account:
It is necessary to boast, though it is not profitable, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago–whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows–such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man–whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows– was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. On behalf of such a man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except in weaknesses. For if I do wish to boast I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth; but I refrain [from this], so that no one will consider me beyond what he sees [in] me or hears from me.—2 Corinthians 12:1–6 LSB
Paul, an apostle called by the risen Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15:8–10), is sharing with this church a revelation that he did receive from Christ. He can’t explain HOW this revelation happened, but he knows WHEN it happened—and that it DID happen. He is unable to say whether his spirit was taken to the third heaven apart from his body, or whether he was taken whole, body and spirit together—but whatever the way he was taken, he went into heaven and saw and heard things that God did not permit him to describe or to tell.
Yet there are some things we CAN know from this rapture he experienced. First, Paul said this event occurred 14 years before his writing of this letter to the Corinthians. Scholars generally agree that this second letter to the Corinthians was written around 55 AD. In fact, the book of Galatians, generally acknowledged to be Paul’s first book, was likely written (as the earliest possible date) around 48 AD. Since Paul’s rapture experience occurred 14 years before the writing of this epistle to the Corinthians, that would place the even about the year 41 AD.
In other words, Paul was taken to the third heaven at least seven years before he wrote ANY of his epistles. While he wasn’t permitted to tell the things he heard, he clearly experienced and saw things that informed his ministry. The Lord Jesus very specifically taught Paul what he needed to know in order to explain so fully how the new covenant “works”, how the blood of Jesus is administered to believers, and how Jesus intercedes for us and continues to keep His covenant promises to Abraham and his seed.
In spite of the fact that Paul was not permitted to describe or tell details, there are some things that we can know because of this experience.
…we can know that when people write books or post social media descriptions of heaven and hell which they supposedly experienced, we are not to believe them. Such people are writing on their own authority, not on God’s authority. God has revealed to us what He wants us to know.
First, since we know that Paul, Christ’s chosen apostle to the gentiles especially given the job of explaining the administration of the mystery of our union with Christ and His indwelling of believers (see Ephesians 3:9), we can know that when people write books or post social media descriptions of heaven and hell which they supposedly experienced, we are not to believe them. Such people are writing on their own authority, not on God’s authority. God has revealed to us what He wants us to know. We are to trust Him and believe HIM—and we can be sure that when we see Him face to face when He returns to get us, we will experience eternal reality in a way that far exceeds our ability to imagine now. No one who claims to know what heaven is like can possibly be telling us truth. God has told us that the things He has prepared for us have not entered “the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9). We can know that what He has revealed in His word is sufficient. No human voice can tell us the truth about heaven.
Second, because we know that Paul was not permitted to tell what he experienced and heard, we absolutely cannot believe that Ellen White was telling the truth when she wrote that she saw “the lovely Jesus”. She claimed to have been toured not only through heaven but through the cosmos, and she claimed to have seen “good old Enoch” on an unnamed planet which, based on her description of it, many people believed to have been Jupiter. She further claimed to have seen Satan before he fell, describing the nobility of unfallen Lucifer and then his evil, sloping forehead and sagging skin after he became the devil. Ellen White’s heavenly visions absolutely have no authority to bind our consciences. We cannot believe her. She is an extra-biblical prophet, and she purports to describe a universe of details that Paul was not permitted to tell.
Finally—and this is important for us who have been Adventist—Paul’s rapture to heaven preceded his writing 2 Corinthians 5:1–9. What Paul teaches about death IS TRUE. Let’s look at what Paul wrote in this passage:
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– for we walk by faith, not by sight– 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
When Paul wrote that “we” live in mortal tents, that we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwellings, and that to be absent from this body is to BE PRESENT with the Lord—he means exactly what he says. He saw this reality while he was in the third heaven!
When he said that we “have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him,” he wrote this from knowing it to be true. He knew, as he said in Philippians 1:23, that this state of being absent from the body and present with the Lord was “very much better” than remaining here in the body! Paul wrote these things not from wishful thinking or from a near-death experience or a fever dream; he was literally taken to heaven, and he was an eyewitness to the things about which he wrote! We can trust the words of Paul.
Conclusion
Adventism does not believe Scripture in context. It believes a worldview derived from Ellen White’s “revelations”; it has chosen to preserve the legacy of a nineteenth-century prophetess over the eternal words which God has given us through His own appointed prophets and apostles.
Scripture does not leave room for new canonical voices. While Spirit-indwelled believers may speak forth for God, encouraging and teaching the body of Christ with His own words given to us, there is no new revelation about God or about salvation.
Jesus is our last prophetic voice; His own words and those He gives us through His chosen apostles are the words by which we live. In His prayer just before His arrest, He prayed:
“While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. … I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, [are] in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”—John 17:12-14, 20-21 LSB
Jesus stated that those who would come to faith after His death, resurrection, and ascension would know the truth through the words of the apostles. Those words of Jesus do not leave room for Ellen White to be considered an authority. The Lord Jesus appointed the apostles who would plant the church and teach us how to live in the new covenant. Paul’s warnings in 2 Corinthians 11 about revelations from angels of light are warnings to us not to fall prey to Ellen White and others who claim new light from God.
The book of Hebrews settles the issue for us: we can dismiss Ellen White as a voice of authority and look to Jesus and to the word which He has given us:
God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in [His] Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power; who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.—Hebrews 1:1–4 LSB
Reading the Bible in context reveals truth and reality. Our Adventist past loses its power when we trust Jesus and are filled with His Spirit. We can believe the Word He gave us, and the words of our former false prophet no longer bind our consciences. When we trust Jesus, we become anchored in truth. He has given us very words of life! †
- Free From the False Prophet! - September 3, 2026
- Adventist Tithing Not Biblical (Q3 L11) - September 3, 2026
- We Got Mail - September 3, 2026