HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2009 / JANUARY/FEBRUARY / STORIES OF FAITH

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2009
VOLUME 10, ISSUE 1

---

D E P A R T M E N T S

STORIES of Faith

Amazed by the Bible

Berit Fischer

 

I'd like to share what has made me revise my understanding of the Bible and, therefore, also to change my position towards Adventism. I want to make it clear that I do not want to attack the Seventh-day Adventist church. This account gives my personal experience, and I encourage each one to do his or her own study of Galatians.

Iwas baptized in 1992 and spent eight years as a student and co-worker at different schools connected to the church.

Nearly three years ago I got a letter from a person I regard highly. It challenged me because it went against what I had learned as an Adventist about the letter to the Galatians. I was encouraged to study Galatians thoroughly, and this study has changed my Christian experience! I have come to the cross and understood more of what Jesus really has done for me.

 

Studying Galatians

The study of Galatians led me further to study the issue of the covenants, something about which I knew little. With the aid of the Bible, a concordance, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised would lead us to the whole truth, I slowly began to understand. I have looked up about 150 Bible texts that have to do with this topic. I have read a great part of the New Testament over again. Books and chapters like Galatians, Romans, Hebrews, 2 Corinthians 3, Ephesians 2, and Colossians 2 have taught me new things.

Adventism teaches that Jesus abolished the "ceremonial laws" but says the Ten Commandments are still binding for Christians. The New Testament is clear that the old covenant is gone. The law was a separating wall between the Jews and the gentiles, and Jesus came to tear this wall down (Eph. 2: 11-22). The law was the tutor that should lead people to Christ, but, as Galatians 3 says, because Jesus has come, we are no longer under a tutor. To continue focusing upon the law means that we have not found Christ and accepted His sacrifice for us. This fact is so vital to understand!

When I began to read about the covenants, I came to see that the Ten Commandments are inseparable from the law and the old covenant. The Bible told me that the Ten Commandments were a part of the whole law to which Jesus came to make an end. I was totally shocked! To claim that the expression "the law" means the Ten Commandments, I learned, was not correct because the Decalogue only represents a part of the law and is never called "the law" by itself. The expression "Ten Commandments", however, is used three times in the Old Testament (Ex. 34:28, Deut. 4:12,13, and Deut. 10.4,5) and there it is described as the covenant! The Ten Commandments are referred to as the covenant between God and Israel, and the Sabbath was the sign of this covenant (Ex. 31:16-18). If, as Hebrews 8 explains, the old covenant is gone, then the content and the sign of the covenant also must be gone, I reasoned.

 

Adventists "distinctives" are old covenant

It cannot be, I thought; the Decalogue is not our "law"? How does God then make people understand what is right and wrong? And most importantly, the Sabbath is a part of the commandments, and it surely is still valid since a Sunday law is to come! How can this be?

I prayed to God that he would teach me with His Spirit, and I was just amazed as God revealed His grace and power to me through His word. I found a key to understanding in Jesus' introduction of the new covenant (the Lord's Supper, see Jn. 13) to His disciples. As the Decalogue was linked to the old covenant, Jesus now linked a new commandment to the new covenant: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (Jn. 13:34). By this Jesus gave His followers a higher standard than the law.

 

Sabbath and the New Testament

I still wanted to prove from the New Testament that the Sabbath requirement is valid. After all, I had been to two Bible schools and knew all the "proof-texts". When I opened the concordance, however, I was surprised by how few texts there are in the New Testament about the Sabbath. After reading most of the letters and the Gospels, I had new questions:

• Why is the fourth commandment itself not repeated even once in the New Testament?
• Why is it that nowhere in the New Testament is Sabbath-breaking condemned as sin?
• If Sabbath-keeping is so important for a follower of Jesus, why did Jesus not mention it in his Sermon on the Mount or in any of his teachings?
• Why did not Jesus, the apostles, or Paul command Sabbath keeping?
• Why is the Sabbath not mentioned in Revelation if the Sabbath will have such significance in the end time?

Acts 15 was interesting. After a dispute among the first Christians concerning the gospel and the law, the apostles came to a conclusion about what they were to teach the gentiles. "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell." (Acts 15:28-29) Sabbath-keeping, tithing, and unclean foods were obviously not considered as requirements any longer!

Furthermore, Jesus did not command the Sabbath. He said He was the Lord over the Sabbath and that we are to come to him and find rest (Mat. 11: 28). Neither did Paul instruct the gentiles and the new churches about the Sabbath nor condemn Sabbath-breaking, but he "esteemed all days alike" (Rom. 14:5). Paul expressed concern for the Christians who still were observing days, months, seasons, and years (Galatians 4.10) and warned them of legalism. Like Paul, I have come to understand that all days are alike when it comes to worshiping God.

I have come to see that the Sabbath was a picture of Jesus. The Sabbath was fulfilled in Jesus, and in Him I may find rest 24 hours a day, all week long! Jesus is our Sabbath-rest according to Hebrews 3 and 4. In the end of this world's history I believe the focus is to be upon a person, Jesus the Creator, and not on a day. The Bible actually doesn't say that "Sunday-keeping" is the mark of the beast or that the Sabbath is the seal of God.

 

Not a true prophet

One of my first conclusions following my study was that Ellen White (EGW) cannot be a true prophet of God since she gives Sabbath-keeping, tithing, and vegetarianism salvational importance. (If you don't believe me, check her writings on your own.) This realization set me mentally free to look up some of the criticisms that have been raised against her. I learned that research sponsored by the General Conference and by independent scholars has proven that EGW copied from other sources without giving credit, even claiming the material was what she received in vision from God.

As Ellen White is the source for the Adventist teaching of the sanctuary, 1844, and the investigative judgment, I have renounced this teaching as well. I fully reject EGW and Uriah Smith's understanding that the atonement was not completed at the cross. At the cross Jesus cried out, "It is finished", and the Bible is full of texts that show that salvation is a completed fact since the cross!

To discover that most of what I have believed in is not biblically correct left me with mixed feelings. It is not easy to leave a church that shaped my identity, education, and social network. At the same time I really want to belong to God and follow what the Bible says. When I accepted that many of the Adventist doctrines are unbiblical, it was like an unseen burden fell off me! I felt so relieved! I am saved and can be a Christian without the complicated EGW-based theology! Jesus has promised that the truth shall set us free, and I praise him for setting me free from legalism and false teachings!

Because of my study, I concluded that I had to resign my membership from the Seventh-day Adventist church as I no longer can believe and support its main teachings. This has not been an easy decision because I know it will disappoint and hurt many. For those of you who might worry that I now have gone completely astray, I'd like to assure you that God knows my heart and knows that I belong to Him and want to do His will. I rejoice in the salvation that Jesus Christ has given me, and I want to love and serve Him who is greater than all laws and commandments and has made me into a new creation in Him! †

 

Berit Fischer works part-time as a registered nurse. She and her husband August, a native of Austria, have two children: five-year-old Christopher and one-year-old Christine. They live in Hokksund, Norway.

 

---