Discovering the Adventist Jesus | thebereancall.org

I don’t remember exactly the moment I first heard someone say that as an Adventist, she had believed in a different Jesus from the one she had come to know as a no-longer-Adventist Christian. I do remember that I felt a mixture of emotions when I heard those words.

My dominant response was, “Different Jesus? I believed in the same Jesus all Christians know.” Adventism endorses an orthodox statement about Jesus and the Trinity, after all! I had always believed Jesus was God.

A different Jesus? No, I didn’t think so. At the same time, I knew something significant was different about the Lord I had come to know from the Jesus of my past.

As I began to experience Jesus as my Life and my Redeemer, however, I began to look more closely at where my previous understanding of Jesus originated. I discovered that the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist church did not believe in the Trinity. James White and Joseph Bates had both been members of the Christian Connection, a group which organized in 1820.

The “Connection” was non-Trinitarian, as was James White, who was ordained as a minister in the organization. In 1842 James heard William Miller preach “and became an enthusiastic adherent of the Second Advent faith.”2

James White published the following statement in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald in 1852: “To assert that the sayings of the Son and his apostles are the commandments of the Father, is as wide from the truth as the old Trinitarian absurdity that Jesus Christ is the very and Eternal God.” 3

In 1877 he published a tract entitled Christ in the Old Testament. In it he made this statement: “The work of emancipating, instructing and leading the Hebrews was given to the One who is called an angel. Exodus:13:21; 14:19,24; 23:20-23; 32:34;Numbers:20:16; Isaiah:63:9. And this angel Paul calls “that spiritual Rock that followed them,” and he affirms, “That Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). The eternal Father is never called an angel in the Scriptures, while what angels have done is frequently ascribed to the Lord, as they are his messengers and agents to accomplish his work.”4

James White was not the only early Adventist to hold anti-Trinitarian beliefs. Most of the early pioneers, in fact,denied the Trinity. J.N. Andrews, for whom the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, is named, wrote this in 1855:“The doctrine of the Trinity was established in the church by the council of Nicea, A.D. 325. This doctrine destroys the personality of God, and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The infamous measures by which it was forced upon the church—which appear upon the pages of ecclesiastical history might well cause every believer in that doctrine to blush.5

R.F. Cottrell published this statement in 1869:“But to hold the doctrine of the trinity (sic)6 is not so much an evidence of evil intention as of intoxication from that wine of which all the nations have drunk. The fact that this was one of the leading doctrines, if not the very chief, upon which the bishop of Rome was exalted to the popedom, does not say much in its favor.” 7

Cottrell’s concern that the Trinity was a fabrication of the Catholic Church was echoed by other early Adventist pioneers as well,and today there is a growing movement within Adventism to return to the non-Trinitarian position of the early Adventist church. Their primary reason for their return to this position is that it is the true Adventist view because it was the official doctrine of the founders.8

While Ellen White grew up believing in the Trinity, she changed her views in adulthood. No doubt James influenced this change, but she claimed that her visions established her unorthodox beliefs. Early in her career she was overtly Arian, and although her later views endorsed “a heavenly trio," she never taught an orthodox Trinity. 9...[White believed] that Jesus was not always God, but that the Father exalted Him to that position—implying also that Jesus remained less than the Father. Further, she clarifies that Satan believed he had equal rights to be thus exalted, and he became angry because the Father chose Jesus over him.10

It is generally acknowledged [by SDAs] that the publication of the book The Desire of Ages in 1898 marked the turning point when Ellen White left Arianism and non-Trinitarianism behind and espoused the full deity of Jesus. Yet both in the years immediately preceding the publication of this book as well as in following years she published numerous statements that continued to reveal her lack of understanding that Jesus was fully God and uncreated, and that the Trinity is an expression of one God in three persons.11

Adventists say, however, that Ellen White grew in her understanding and, in her later years, changed and adopted an orthodox view of God. This general understanding, though, is not supported when we look at all the evidence.

In her later years Ellen White consistently expressed the Trinity in tritheistic terms—as if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three separate beings united in a group known as “God”. Further, she repeatedly expressed the idea that these three “Worthies”, “dignitaries”, or “living persons of the heavenly trio” would assist, help, and otherwise co-operate with humans in their efforts to live holy lives. The burden of perfection always lay with the human; the “heavenly trio” was there to help them develop a “character that is after the divine similitude”. 

In contrast with representative Ellen White quotes, the orthodox teaching of the Trinity affirms three things: 1. God is three persons. 2. Each person is fully (not a part of) God and is of the same nature. 3. There is one God. 

Tritheism, on the other hand, will acknowledge that God is three persons and that each person is fully God, but it will not say there is one God. Instead, tritheism affirms three separate beings who are gods. This belief has similarities to the ancient pagan religions that had multiple gods, and it destroys the sense of “ultimate unity in the universe; even in the very being of God, there would be plurality but no unity” (Bible Doctrines, Zondervan, 1999, p. 114).

I have finally understood why my perception of Jesus while I was an Adventist was substantively different from my experience with Him as a born-again Christ-follower. In spite of orthodox-sounding words, I was taught as an Adventist, at a functional and philosophical level, that Jesus was fallible. I was taught that He could have sinned. I was taught that He gave up (or refused to use) His divine power when he became a man. I was further taught that anything He did, I, too, could do—if I learned to access the Holy Spirit properly and resist sin as Jesus did. I was taught that He had no advantage I did not also have.

Although Adventism publicly declares words about Jesus and the Trinity that sound orthodox, in practice those words have different meanings than they have for most Christians. Ellen White’s persistent Arianism and non-Trinitarian teaching permeate Adventist theology, and functionally Adventists are tritheists with [another] Jesus whom God exalted (to Satan’s chagrin)—a Jesus who could have failed in His mission to earth and who may not have existed eternally as the Mighty God.

Adventism’s “leaves” have mingled well with the leaves of the true church. Most people today cannot tell that Adventist “leaves” are different from the church’s. If one traces backward down the branches to the original root, however, Adventism will be seen for what it is: a shoot from the ancient heresy of Arianism. The reason the Adventist church cannot truly change, cannot teach the pure gospel, cannot introduce people to the eternal, powerful, sovereign God the Son is that the root of Arianism still nourishes it. No matter how Adventism cleans up its public language and alters its doctrines, it is still an organization sprung not from the root of the apostolic church but from the look-alike root of heresy.
Endnotes

1 http://www.ucc.org/aboutus/shortcourse/chrchu.html
2 The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald XXXI, February 18, 1868, p. 147
3 James White, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 08/05/1852, Vol. 3, No. 7, p. 52
4 James White, Christ in the Old Testament,Oakland, CA: Pacific Press Pub. Assoc., 1877, p. 11p. 11 quoted in Elmer Wiebe, WHO is the Adventist Jesus? Xulon Press, second ed, 2006, pp.86-87
5 J.N. Andrews, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 03-06-1855, Vol. 6, no. 24, p. 185
6 The word “trinity” was not capitalized in the original source.
7 R.F. Cottrell, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 07-06-1869, Vo. 34, No. 2, p. 11
8 The Seventh-day Adventist paraphrase of the Bible, The Clear Word (TCW) (available in their Adventist Book Centers), contains many altered verses which diminish or delete the references to Jesus’ deity. For example: John8:58, TCW changes “before Abraham was, I AM” (eternalness) to “I existed before Abraham” (allowing his prior creation); Col.1:16, TCW changes “By Him all things were created” (creator)to  “through Him the Father created” (only a channel—not source of creation); Col:1:15, TCW changes “He is firstborn over all creation”(nature) to “He has the right to be placed over all creation(promoted authority); Col:1:19, TCW changes “It pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell” to “…the Father acknowledged Him as fully God, in spite of His human nature”; Rev12:7, TCW adds “…God’s Son Michael and the loyal angels fought against the dragon…”; Jude:1:9, TCW adds…the Lord Jesus Christ, also called Michael the Archangel…” Excerpted from DeliberateDistortionsin SDA’s “Clear Word Bible”, Verle Streifling, c. 1996, revised 1999, 2002. (Retrieved from http://www.ratzlaf.com/currupt.htm)
9 Ellen G. White (EGW), Spiritual Gifts,Vol. 3, P. 37, Par. 2-3
10 EGW, Early Writings of Ellen G. White, p. 145, Par. 1
11 EGW, The Signs of the Times, 02-05-1894, “God’s Love Unmeasured,” par. 10

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