Is it really possible to deceive people using the Bible? How is that possible?
Seventh-day Adventist TV evangelists, such as Amazing Fact’s Doug Batchelor and 3ABN’s Danny Shelton, wave Bibles around, and claim to be a "people of the Word". The devil also could quote Scripture. So does Adventism. I do not fault the Adventist laity for deing deceived, but lay the blame squarely with the organization and those who receive pay to promote its false teachings.
How is it that Adventism appears to be able to produce a quote in support of everything they teach, and yet it still promotes doctrines that are, upon further examination, unbiblical? How can this be?
It is precisely the method that Adventism uses that makes them much more dangerous than their siblings, Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
There are three primary cultic approaches to circumventing the truth of Scripture:
- Jehovah’s Witness approach: Re-write the truth out of it. For example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own translation of the Bible (in which the word "grace" has been removed or changed).
- Latter-day Saints approach: Add to it and cancel out the truth. Latter-day Saints have their addition to Scripture, — "another testament of Jesus Christ".
- Seventh-day Adventist approach: "Re-interpret" the truth out of it or Filter the truth out of it. Seventh-day Adventism adds "commentary" that teaches interpretations and interpretive principles (like viewing eyeglasses) which negate the plain truths of Scripture.
Many Christians (if not most) do not recognize #3, the approach Adventism takes. They are well-aware of #1 and #2, the JW & LDS approach… no re-writing Scripture, no additions to Scripture. But the SDA approach is equally cultic, although perhaps a bit more subtle. LDS attaches "new scripture", but SDA attaches commentary/interpretation, which has the same effect as LDS’s "addition", however it twists regular Scripture and uses Scripture to cancel out the truth of Scripture. Got that?
If we read the Scriptures end-to-end we see the grand theme of man’s utter failure and God’s plan of salvation repeated over and over. It is clear. It is like looking at the cycle in a stock chart on a monthly basis. Within this grand theme are mini-themes. These might be like the daily stock charts. Within these are micro-lessons specific to the occasion. In our stock-trading equivalent, this would be like the minute-by-minute charts. All of these cycles fit together to produce a whole vibrant range of activity clearly understood by looking at the macro level. Adventists yank out a verse at the micro level, totally ignoring the macro level, and then build fake Adventist macro doctrines on them. The results are the same as if an institutional or swing trader (month/week) started using day-trading data for their long term investment strategy.
The Bible is very clear about what the gospel teaches. Read in entirety it presents the "big picture" — the grand theme of man’s utterly sinful nature, and God’s plan of rescue. Adventism instead takes Ellen White’s "day-trading" building blocks and creates a totally different plan of salvation — the cultic doctrines that it teaches. The result is spiritual bankruptcy. For the institutional trader basing long-range financial investment decisions on day-trading charts it means financial disaster. The chart is there, all right. It may indicate increased value for the day, but if the long term chart is going in the other direction, misinterpreting the long-term trend by relying on the chart for the wrong charting period (month vs day) will quickly make financial ruin of such a careless investor — in our case the careless student of God’s Word.
Seventh-day Adventists do precisely the same thing with the Bible. It isn’t that they don’t use the Bible. They yank out individual, often apocalyptic verses, and totally reinterpret them to come up with bizarre "doctrines" such as 1844 and the "investigative judgment". How do we know? Because, using the investing example I provided above, no matter how you choose to interpret the day-trading chart, in-the-end it will never violate the monthly chart. That is a fact. In the end a single Scripture will never violate the integrity of the grand themes of the Scripture as a whole. In the end, Ellen White is a false prophet if she violates the grand themes of Scripture as a whole, and more specifically in her case, adds to the gospel message. She not only added to it, but changed it!
A case in point is the death and resurrection of Christ, and the totality of its contribution to God’s plan of salvation. It was not some side show. It is the centerpiece of God’s rescue mission. When Jesus said, "It is finished!", He was not announcing that he had just completed one phase of His mission, and that after that he would take a vacation until He was awoken back up in 1844! The book of Hebrews in no way, shape or form, supports the Adventist contortion. Adventists go to ludicrous extremes to try to rationalize a supposedly critical role that they alone play to a world filled with "Babylonian harlot" churche — the name they call the Christian world. That is how they treat Christ’s "bride",the body of Christ, the organization that God the Son came to this earth and died in humiliation for!
There are only two religions - Christ and Satan. How do we know that Adventism is of satanic origin? It matters not that Adventist can improvise a theme piecing together scriptures — if that theme contradicts the grand theme of Scripture as a whole. A single day-trading chart in one direction still does not violate the grand theme of a monthly stock chart. It will never provide you with a totally different destination outside the pattern of the long-range chart. That is how we know that Adventism is a counterfeit.
Since we know that Adventism promotes a false gospel (along with many other false doctrines), and that we can indeed trace that to Ellen White, we know that both Adventism and Ellen White are false. They are instruments of Satan — the master of lies. And Satan always coats his lies with truth, as he did in the Garden of Eden. Everything Adventism teaches is not a lie. She uses truth, or rather misuses truth, in order to draw us on until we become the victims, ultimately, of her lies. But she baits her trap with truth.
This is why Adventists refuse to discuss the "grand themes" of the Bible instead substituting, for example, Ellen White’s "Great Controversy" rendition of Milton’s "Paradise Lost". They then attempt to demonstrate how their individual cultic doctrines support those "grand themes".
Instead of showing a willingness to jointly learn, they change the subject or wave around individual verses, yanked out of context and reinterpreted to say anything they want to. And then they proclaim that they alone are people of the Word. SDA Pastor Kevin Morgan refers to the gospel of the Bible as a "truncated gospel"! It is "missing" Ellen White’s so-called "present truth".
When former Adventists try to dialog with Adventists on these subjects, Adventists treat it like a game where one wins and the other looses, instead of a joint study experience where both demonstrate a true willingness to give up cherished notions subject to the unfolding of Scriptures.
As former Adventists, we are the ones who have done the giving up of the cherished views we grew up with, in result to the study of Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit. And that is why they simply will not address the "grand themes" of Scripture, that their "micro views" must support if they are to be correctly interpreted.
Over and over and over again I have tried to discuss subjects such as the "body of Christ" — a "grand theme" for sure — with paid SDA professionals, only to have them screech to a halt dead-in-their tracks rather than to participate in any genuine joint study and learning. What I see is them participating only so far as they make progress promoting their pet Adventist view.
To break out of this "prison" we, as former Adventists, had to be willing to let go of our cherished Adventist upbringing and depend totally on Jesus to lead us where He feels is best placing our total trust in Him.
When we dialog with other Christians within the "body of Christ" our hearts fill with joy as we converse with other members of the "bride of Christ" who are doing the same. That, in a nutshell, is why it is so hard to truly study with an Adventist.
As we see here, they want to be our "teacher" and teach us rather than jointly approaching the Word with a contrite heart and letting God be our teacher. After all, they are the "remnant church" with a message for a lost world of "Babylonian harlots". We are the ones who have "apostasized"! What we already learned was false doctrine, And that is what the Holy Spirit led us to give up.
Until we truly understand this, when we try to dialog with these hearts of stone, we are casting God’s "seed of truth" on stony ground.
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