Conference News

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VOLUME 14, ISSUE 1

D E P A R T M E N T S

MINISTRY News

FAF conference 2013 Friday, February 15, was the first of three days of the eighth annual Former Adventist Fellowship Conference at Trinity Church in Redlands, California. About 90 people participated in the weekend which was entitled “Living By The Spirit” and featured keynote speaker Jon Rittenhouse. His four topics were, “The Multifaceted Ministry of the Holy Spirit”, “He’s the Source!”, “Living Under the Influence”, and “The Foundation of Faith in Jesus Christ”.

Gary Inrig, Trinity’s senior pastor, delivered the Saturday “Morning Scripture” and used Hebrews to demonstrate that Jesus and what He inaugurated in the new covenant is better than all the shadows of the old covenant. Gary also spoke Saturday evening about Jesus instituting the new covenant as He celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples, and then Gary led us in communion and a short time of sharing.

Dale Ratzlaff gave two talks during the conference on “In Christ Truths”, emphasizing that when we are born again, we are already seated with Christ at God’s right hand (Eph. 2:4-7) and can know that all of God’s power and riches are already ours. Dale also gave the keynote address at Friday evening’s public meeting to which the community was invited. His talk was entitled “Three Adventist Doctrines That Compromise the Gospel”. The contents of that talk appear in this issue of Proclamation! in Dale’s article “Without the Central Pillar ‘there is no reason to exist’”.

Carolyn Macomber from The Chapel, the E.V. Free church in St. Joseph, Michigan, presented a powerful talk on fear in which she divided the attendees into groups and had them write down the fears that shaped their experiences as Adventists. After sharing the groups’ results, she gave us Scripture passages that remind us that God is greater than our hearts and is our confidence and assurance.

Colleen Tinker gave a talk entitled “Sabbath Questions and Answers”. She set the stage by sharing a chart of God’s covenants, demonstrating that the Mosaic covenant, unlike God’s covenants with Adam and Eve, Abraham, David, and the new covenant, was conditional. God’s other covenants were unconditional. Then Colleen shared some of Adventist’s current favorite Sabbath arguments and showed from Scripture how those arguments are unfounded.

Paul Carden, executive director of the Centers for Apologetics Research and the general editor of Rose Publishing, attended the conference and gave his own story Friday evening of how he came to see Adventism to be dangerous.

Elaina Matthews, a 22-year-old vocal performance major from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, shared her powerful faith story of how she came to realize that she was depending upon the Sabbath for her security instead of Jesus. She shared how she was born again one evening when she read Ephesians 2, and she punctuated her testimony by singing “Before the Throne of God Above” and “Blessed Assurance”.

Julius (Hap) Botelho from Redlands, California, gave his faith story on Saturday. In a moving testimony, he shared that two uniquely Adventist attitudes had shaped his relationship to religion. First, he learned to argue everything, a skill honed in Sabbath School classes where it was a point of pride to stump the teacher with a better argument than he had. Second, he learned that the Bible was almost impossible to understand except by Adventist theologians, and even they disagreed. Two years ago he read the first of three installments of “Why Seventh-day Adventists are not Evangelical” by Louis Talbot in the July-September, 2010, issue of Proclamation! That article made him realize that he did not actually understand who Jesus really was and what He really did. He began to study and has come to know that God is not looking for him to get it right; rather, God has chosen him and has given him peace and life through Jesus...the real Jesus of Scripture—which actually can be taken at face value without arguing about what the words mean.

The third faith story was given by Raul Lopez of Santa Ana, California. Raul converted into Adventism with his wife Margaret when they were a young couple. They spent many years in the church, but even though he was very involved, he was spiritually dry. Then they began attending a Christian church, and life changed. Raul is active in Bible studies, and he and Margaret love worshiping and sharing with their new church family. Raul said that now he is so happy he wants to stand on the roof top and shout his love for God!

Breakout session presenters included Dale Ratzlaff fielding questions about Adventism and “In Christ Truths”, Richard and Colleen Tinker with a presentation on the human spirit, Martin Carey with a seminar on the underlying implications of contemplative prayer, and Jim Valentine, director of Christian Apologetics and Research Information Services (CARIS), with a presentation on some of the less-known “Industrial Strength Ellen White Quotes” that show she was not a true prophet.

The general sessions were live-streamed again this year, and videos of the sessions are online here: http://www.youtube.com/user/FormerAdventist#g/u.

The weekend ended with lunch in the clubhouse of the housing development where a local former Adventist, Kit Satre, lives. The day was cool and sunny, and the venue was beautiful and spacious. It was a wonderful time of debriefing and sharing, and several really significant conversations occurred. That afternoon two people trusted Jesus. One was the wife of a staunch Adventist pastor, and the other was the son of a former Adventist pastor who has been attending Trinity Church for about five months. The woman articulated that she finally knew she was sealed, and the young man stated that he was no longer Adventist, that Jesus Christ was his Lord and Savior, and that he didn’t have to do anything to earn his salvation except to trust Jesus.

Statements from attendees

The following comment is from a former Jehovah’s Witness couple who attended the conference: “Thanks so much for inviting us to attend the FAF conference.…We met and mingled with lots of people and we LOVED hearing their stories. That is by far our favorite part of the whole thing—seeing God’s work in each person and how our stories are all so similar. It’s faith-strengthening when you find others who have found Jesus in Scripture alone and you see that God worked in their lives as individuals, not as a collective (like our cults taught us—JWs teach you can’t have God outside the group; we’re sure that yours said that as well; it was never a personal relationship. It was a relationship to the religion). We also learned some things about Adventism that we didn’t fully understand before.”

This statement is from a young Christian woman who works at Loma Linda and is dating an Adventist:

“I just wanted to say a big thank you for allowing me to attend part of the conference last week. I really had not realized how much I really needed it. Your session about the Sabbath made me realize how much the legalism of the Adventist Sabbath doctrine had gotten to me, despite my best intentions not to let it become legalistic for me. I really needed to hear your message, and it was just amazing to me how God orchestrates these things! And I know it was amazing for [my boyfriend] to attend on Friday night and realize that Former Adventists are not all people that have been hurt by the church and are trying to air their dirty laundry. Later that weekend he expressed to me how flabbergasted he was when I first came to him months ago explaining that I wanted to start studying with him because parts of Adventism seemed unbiblical. He had always been taught that the Adventists are the ones that know the Bible the best because they actually keep all the commandments. Wow, I had no idea at the time that he’d been so shocked when I’d first said that. Now I realize that he probably had all kinds of EGW alarm bells going off in his head warning him that I was probably tempting him with the evils of questioning! We both still have a lot of studying to do, but I do think it was really beneficial for him to hear perspectives from people that had held the Adventist church as dearly as he had and to hear the biblical reasons why they left. It was amazing for me to gain a better understanding of some of the Adventist doctrines. It’s very interesting that they don’t explain a lot of that to you as an “outsider” checking out the church. I truly wonder how many new “converts” really understand what they are getting into when they join. Very scary and sad. As I listened to the sessions, I realized that the messages I had taken away from some Adventist sermons were not what was intended...as a Christian, I took them at face value without even realizing some of the underlying doctrinal messages.”

We praise God for his faithfulness and blessings and for glorifying the Lord Jesus at this year’s conference! †

Life Assurance Ministries

Dale Ratzlaff teaching Dale Ratzlaff taught on "in Christ" truths.

Worship leader Sharon Strum (center) with Pam Rathbun (L) and Catherine Owens.

Colleen and Richard Tinker led a breakout session on the human spirit, shown with Woody Granger.

Paul Carden, executive director of the Centers for Apologetics Research, with his wife Lisa.

Carolyn Macomber spoke on combatting fear with God's word, and Joanie Yorba-Gray was on call to pray with people as they needed it.

Nicole and Carel Stevenson led the breakout sessions for the teens.

Jim Valentine, director of Christian Apologetics and Research Information Services (CARIS) led a breakout session on how to use Ellen White's quotes to warn Christians.