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Colleen Tinker, Feature, Letters to the Editor

I Associate My Bible with Adventism—I Don’t Want To Go Near It!

I have to admit that since I decided to leave Adventism—which was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make—I have been weary of opening my Bible. All my Bibles are SO Adventist (in my mind). I now recognize that I associate the Bible with Adventism. It almost scares me. Because I feel SO DUPED by Adventism, I am now scared to believe another interpretation. Because I no longer trust anyone or anything, I don’t trust myself when interpreting God’s word because for all those years I genuinely thought God was helping me understand Scripture.. 

 When I was an Adventist I was SO SURE of what I believed, and of what “truth” was. I had read and studied the KJV five-and-a-half times, front to back in 12 years—but through the Adventist lens, of course. Pastor Ivor Myers’ Phototheology gave me a passion for reading the bible (a response which I was 1000% sure came from God and was a DIRECT answer to prayer since I had asked God to give me a desire to study the bible). But of course, it was all Adventist doctrine. 

So now I don’t even trust that God answered my prayer then, since the answer was Phototheology which ultimately got me 100 layers deeper into Seventh-day Adventism than I was before that prayer.. 

I also was EGW’s biggest fan; I read sooo many of her books, many of them several times front to back during those 12 or 13 years.

I have now become VERY apprehensive about opening my Bible because I am still in pain— mourning, I think. I left the 19th of February this year, so it’s very recent. My (biological) brother, who got me into Adventism—after two years of Bible study and endless conversations —got me out. That was a miracle. I thank God for that—for freeing me. I feel like I can now finally learn how to live, breathe, walk, BE.

But I went from being an almost-Bible-scholar, FIRMLY rooted in Scripture and the truth—to being utterly LOST as to what the Bible says (except for the gospel). 

I would love to connect with people who are in my stage of grief because I do feel alone sometimes. 

My brother is very busy, and his experience in Adventism was very different from mine.

I was all into Walter Veith, Randy Skeet, Pavel Goia, (do you believe those miracles were from God?), Doug Batchelor, Ivor Myers, Barbara O’Neill. (What is your opinion on her advice???) I did absolutely everything she said, but now I am eating all kinds of food again—slowly—but that has also been a huge trauma, not knowing what to believe about health anymore, either..

I think I watched every Ivor Myers sermon. I almost became a member of Living Manna Online Church.

Overall, though, I am starting to learn who God is from scratch. I somehow have to erase everything I know about the Bible and “truth” before I can start learning what real truth is. All I know now is the true gospel. And for now, I think that’s enough. 

I associate my used-to-be-favorite Bible with Adventism and don’t even want to go near it.

—VIA EMAIL

Response: I am so, so sorry—and I understand exactly what you are saying. The grief of leaving Adventism is overwhelming. I truly felt I was losing my personal identity—everything I knew, everything I was and did—I was thoroughly Adventist in my very person! 

I have a question: Have you ever read a whole book of the Bible through from beginning to end with no accompanying lesson or commentary? Have you ever just sat down and read through John, for example, or Romans, or Hebrews? 

I ask because it is not surprising that deceivers and charlatans use the word of God and appropriate it to “prove” their alternative religion. When we understand what happened to Adam and Eve, that Eve was literally deceived by the serpent’s just slightly misquoting God’s command and inserting a barely-noticeable addition, we can see that evil will always seek to counterfeit God. Evil attempts to blind us to God’s divine nature and eternal power, and he does it very often through the slight twisting and misrepresenting of God’s word. 

Now let’s use our email correspondence as an example. When I write to you, I am literally sitting down and “speaking” directly to you and to the things I know about you that you have revealed to me. I am telling you specific details about my own journey through coming out of a very, very deceptive cult that used Scripture as a deceptive tool to proof-text its heresies. I am telling you things that are my own thoughts and experiences, and I am not attempting to deceive you or to twist reality. I am not trying to confuse you or overwhelm your brain. Ha! At the same time, you are being very honest with me. I believe the very words you have written to me, and I resonate with your experience because I have walked a similar path out of the same religious background. I believe your words. I do not assume you are being dramatic, that you are attempting to get me to believe you need help when in reality you are just trying to “use” me. NO! I know you are telling me absolute truth. I believe your words. And I trust you also believe my words. Our words are the means our Creator gave us to communicate reality with each other—and this ability to use words to communicate truth is exactly what God has uniquely given humanity created in His image.

God has literally given us His own words in the Bible. He communicated by His Spirit to the Bible writers whom He chose, and He gave them the truths He wants us to know. Evil slightly misuses God’s words. It will take portions of His word out of context and recombine those portions with other portions which are also taken out of context. The result is that evil presents us with an entirely NEW idea: an idea that God never said, yet the evil interpreter tells us that those words are exactly what God said because he has USED God’s words out of context to convince us of something God never said. That is how the serpent deceived Eve—and that is how Adventism has deceived its members. They have developed a whole system of proof-texting from one text to another, stringing texts together that are not found together in the Bible and then telling us that those re-combined texts are God’s words! That is not true—even thought the actual WORDS are found in the Bible. But God did not give us those words strung together out of context! The deceiver has taught us something God never said while attributing that message to Him. It is incredibly subtle and evil. 

But God is sovereign, and He is stronger than deception, and He comes and finds us in our confusion and reveals Himself to us. He came and found you, and you have had the courage to respond to Him. He has given you a love for Him—and He will not drop you. He will reveal His own truth and His own words to you as He teaches you to trust the Bible. 

Here’s what I suggest you do. Buy a new Bible. Get a translation that you like, but make sure it’s one that is accurate and is not a paraphrase. I recommend that you get a New American Standard 1995 version (not the 2000 version), or a Legacy Standard Bible (that’s a newer translation that is very similar to the NASB95 version except it uses the literal name of God—Yahweh—instead of the LORD designation and a few other more literal renderings). You could even get an English Standard Version. It is also good. NASB95 and Legacy Standard are a bit more literally word-for-word, but the ESV will also be good even though it is a bit more nuanced for more conversational English. But whichever one you choose, get a new Bible. You need to start with none of your Adventist underlinings and marks. Start over fresh!

Now, pick a book to start slowly reading. I recommend that you begin with one of the following: John, Romans, or Hebrews. Ask the Lord to guide you and to show you what He wants you to read. Then get a notebook. Begin copying the book that you choose into the notebook. Copy slowly, a few verses at a time, and notice the verb tenses, the prepositions, the speaker, the audience, the CONTEXT. Copy on one side of the notebook; on the other facing page, make notations of questions or of things that you notice. Write them on the facing page. You may not find answers immediately, but you will begin to notice things you haven’t noticed before. 

Ask the Lord to teach you what He wants you to know. He absolutely will do that! Ask Him to teach you to trust Him. The Holy Spirit KNOWS the mind of God and the mysteries of God. Natural humans do NOT know God’s thoughts. When we trust Him and submit our minds to His word IN CONTEXT, reading it using the normal rules of grammar, vocabulary, and context, the Lord will teach us what is real and true. He will NOT TRICK US! 

You will be surprised how much you will see that you never “saw” before. The Bible is the only thing that rewires our deceived brains. It takes time to unlearn what we spent years learning—but I can tell you this: God redeems our Adventism! I believe that I see and understand details of the gospel and of Scripture that I never would have had to know if I hadn’t had to unlearn and relearn EVERYTHING. I believe that one of the surprising blessings of coming out of a cult and learning to trust Jesus is that He teaches us His word with a depth that most Christians may never experience. We aren’t starting from a neutral playing field; we are starting from a deeply distorted worldview. God faithfully shows us what is real, and the depth of insight and the joy that comes is not possible to describe. Another surprise is that although we learned the Bible from a deceptive “skew”, the Lord fixes our understanding, and in some ways He “fast tracks” us as He reveals what whole passages or ideas REALLY mean as He unfolds the context. 

I understand your despair, but know this: God is with you. This journey you are on is by His direction and His will. Remember to thank Him for calling you to Himself. Thank Him for showing you that Adventism is false, and thank Him that He is teaching you now and guiding your life. Ask Him to remove the EGW lens from your understanding, and ask Him to remove the spirit of Adventism from your heart and to place His Spirit where Adventism had been. And praise Him. Listen to worship music. You can find great collections of worship songs on YouTube (and other online music services). I recommend groups such as CityAlight; Shane and Shane; Keith and Kristyn Getty, and the worship sets from The Village Chapel to name a few. These groups tend to have rich theological songs that speak truthfully about the Lord Jesus, the gospel, and the truth of God’s word. Listening to rich worship songs was a great antidote to depression as I transitioned out of Adventism. I grieved deeply, but the Lord Jesus is more than enough! He is worth all the loss and change, anger and shame—and He gives us Himself in all those places where we had treasured the fruit of Adventism.

As for all those prayers which seemed to be answered by Adventism—ask God to redeem all that. The fact is that now, all these years later, I thank God that I was Adventist and that He rescued me from it. As I previously mentioned, I believe I understand Scripture much, much more deeply now than if I had never been Adventist, than if I had never had to understand HOW and WHAT was wrong with those slight deviations from proper context. The Lord has always known the journey He was leading you on, and He has always intended to draw you to Himself and to redeem all that Adventist deception. You can thank Him for what He is doing that you cannot yet see!

I pray that the Bible in context will prove to be a great source of joy, peace, and insight for you as the Holy Spirit teaches you to trust the words exactly as they are written. I pray that the Lord Jesus will comfort your heart and hold you in His love. He will not drop you. †

Write to: LifeAssuranceMinistries@gmail.com

Colleen Tinker
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