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Adventism: Not Restoring, Not Reforming

TBC Staff

Seventh-day Adventism has historically believed itself to be the heir of the Protestant Reformation in that it combines the foundational teachings of the historic Reformation confessions into a cohesive whole of truth. Geoffrey Paxton, in his groundbreaking work The Shaking of Adventism (1977), devotes his first chapter to this issue. He states the Adventist position succinctly.

“Yet the fact is that the Seventh-day Adventist sees himself as standing in a unique relation to the Reformation. He believes that God has called him to carry forward the message of the Reformation in such a way as no other Christian or Christian body is able to do. In his opinion the Seventh-day Adventist Church is God’s special heir of the Reformers.  Only through the Adventist Church can the work of the Reformation be carried to its God-designed end” (Shaking, pg. 18; italicized original).

As shown by Paxton, Ellen White supported such a perspective as well: “The Reformation did not, as many suppose, end with Luther. It is to be continued to the close of this world’s history. Luther had a great work to do in reflecting to others the light which God had permitted to shine upon him; yet he did not receive all the light which was to be given to the world. From that time to this, new light has been continually shining upon the Scriptures, and new truths have been constantly unfolding” (The Great Controversy,1950, pgs. 148-149).

Adventism is to be the completion of the Reformation and finish the mission of spreading the gospel to the world (Revelation:14:6-7). Moreover, Adventism would become “the guardians of the Protestant heritage in a climate of modernism and spiritual declension” (Shaking, pg. 19). As historic Protestantism would fall into apostasy, Adventism would arise to preserve and propagate the gospel of Christ. To Adventism would fall the Divine mandate to spread the true gospel throughout the world.

As with all restoration movements, the goal is to reclaim and restore truth from error. On this Adventism is no different than the other restoration movements of nineteenth century America. Three other restoration movements arose in the 19th century to restore biblical truth, if not the church itself. They were the Stone-Campbell Movement, Mormonism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Adventism also sought to restore lost biblical truth, not merely the gospel (called “Present Truth”).

Religious movements who have as their goal the restoration of true New Testament Christianity are often guilty of adding more to the faith than they are correcting. Often the focus is restoring what was forgotten or neglected in a particular understanding of apostolic church practice and doctrine. For example, Mormons have “reinstated” proxy baptism for the dead. However, such efforts are really additions to the Christian faith out of proportion to any evidence gleaned from the New Testament regarding the practice itself. Therefore, the reinstated doctrine is totally out of proportion to any New Testament indication of its importance. 

Another thing that often occurs with restoration movements is the addition of new truth to Christian practice and doctrine. In other words, it is not enough to renew and restore old doctrines and practices, but in the process endeavoring to do so invariably embodies a new reality and importance in itself. This is often seen in the movement becoming a special people, a restored church for the last days adhering and showing fidelity to true biblical doctrine. The message becomes identified with the messenger so the messenger (the church) becomes the focus. 

A final aspect of restoration movements is their propensity to become so against the stream of Christian theology and tradition that they diverge from almost every essential teaching of historic Christianity, hence earning the title “pseudo-Christian cult.” While it would be irresponsible to label every restoration movement and effort cultic, it remains that such efforts can easily lead to a cultic mentality without the movement actually being a cult. In others words, the perspective of believers in the restoration message of a particular group is essentially cultic in that they divide the world into “us and them.” Assuredly, one doesn’t have to be in a cult to do this.

Adventism is never reticent to cite the incompleteness of other denominations in terms of truth. Time and again Adventism teaches how Christians have incomplete revelations of God’s truth, particularly the Sabbath/Sunday issue. I remember when I attended and was converted through Adventist “Revelation Seminars.” I recall how a couple of sessions picked elements of truth in particular Protestant churches that were biblical and used them to preach the total package of Adventism as the true church, the remnant church. This eclectic shopping approach is convenient for the uninitiated, but it is done to prove Adventist distinctiveness.

In the Adventist version of restorationism, the position of the Reformation gospel that Adventism is supposed to champion is compromised by the Investigative Judgement and by the lack of coherent understanding of justification by faith absent law. The steady onslaught of the Moral Influence Theory, and confusion on whether Christ had a sinful nature, do compromise orthodox Christian teaching on Christ’s substitutionary atonement on the cross. 

[TBC: For the full text of this lengthy article, please see:]

https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/2024/02/01/adventism-not-restoring-not-reforming/

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Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

Dave Hunt

This is the child’s make-believe game: “Let’s imagine. . . .” Surely Dawkins can’t be serious, but he is, and his entranced audience loves it! We don’t know what really happened, admits Dawkins tentatively, but let’s play a fantasy game and imagine it just might have been like this.

This is science? Spare us! But it’s the best atheism has to offer, showing the bankruptcy of evolutionary theory. Incredibly, Dawkins has built a worldwide reputation as a brilliant scientist on this sort of fantasizing.

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Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

Dave Hunt

Dawkins talks about “Mount Improbable” as though it really exists and he has explored it from top to bottom. His invention has become so real to Dawkins that it now defines for him and his large following how evolution and natural selection supposedly work. His readers and listeners think that they, too, understand how it all works, and they love it. Come along with Richard Dawkins as he continues his fantasy journey climbing Mount Improbable:

“So we can’t help wondering, why didn’t Nautilus . . . evolve a lens? . . . [He gestures to the model. . . .] You see that although we’ve got one big peak there, there are also various other peaks on the way. There are quite a lot of them. . . . When the ancestors of Nautilus got to this point, that way up hill looked just as inviting . . . evolutionarily, as that way. . . .

“Evolution has no way of knowing that if you travel up that way, you’re going to end up with a lens. . . . So . . . perhaps Nautilus has got itself trapped . . . and is unable to escape because . . . the one thing you cannot do on Mount Improbable is ever go downhill.

But let’s imagine what the ancestors of the squid and octopus did when they got to this junction here. They just happened to go up this way [uses his hands to illustrate walking up Mount Improbable], and they started evolving a lens. And we [humans] did at a different time in history.

“How might the lens have evolved? Well, let’s imagine [And he mocks faith in the essential Creator?] that it started with just a single sheet of some transparent material. And all that this is doing—it’s not “a lens yet—is just protecting the eye [What eye?].

“[Demonstrates, using optician’s lenses.] So this is the next stage in evolution. [Inserts second lens.] If an animal had an eye like that [How would it get it? Dawkins doesn’t tell us!] it would have a very, very clear view of its world and could tell exactly what its predator was. [Emphasis added]”

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Should Gentiles Return to their 'Hebrew Roots' (Part 2) with G. Richard Fisher

T. A. McMahon
G. Richard Fisher

On our website: https://www.thebereancall.org/content/t-mcmahon-g-richard-fisher-part-2-0
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Tom: Thanks, Gary. Today, I’m in conversation with G. Richard Fisher. Dick is a retired pastor and coauthor of The Confusing World of Benny Hinn, and a long-time contributor to the Personal Freedom Outreach Journal, and as I’ve said, I’m continuing to say, it’s just an excellent apologetics magazine. Dick, thanks again for joining me on Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Dick: Good to be here.

Tom: Dick, we really covered a lot of territory last week, so I’d encourage our listeners who haven’t heard Part 1 of this series to, you know, it’s on the internet, it’s on our website, and you need to go there. We’re talking about the Hebrew Roots Movement, which is—Dick, as you said last week, this is something of recent, what, 1980s, this movement?

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I’m in conversation with G. Richard Fisher. Dick is a retired pastor and coauthor of The Confusing World of Benny Hinn, and a long-time contributor to the Personal Freedom Outreach Journal, and as I’ve said, I’m continuing to say, it’s just an excellent apologetics magazine. Dick, thanks again for joining me on Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Is Nihilism the Logical End of Atheism?

TBC Staff

What happens when nihilism is taken to its logical and philosophical conclusion? “Human rights are just like heaven and like God. It’s just a fictional story that we have invented and spread around. It may be a very nice story… but it’s just a story. It’s not a reality.”

So says Noah Yuval Hariri, a historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Homo Deus (“Man God”), along with many other bestselling publications, including children’s picture books.

...be warned: There is no redemptive story arc; no happy ending—either in Harari’s TED Talk or his nihilistic worldview.

Harari couldn’t sound more assured in his assertions that both God and human rights are fictional.

But his remarks are just that: assertions. Harari is asking us to believe him but offering no evidence for his assertions.

Worse, he is exposing the dangerous and nihilistic logical endpoint of this worldview. Namely, that if there is no God or higher power, then even the most fundamental moral boundaries that the vast majority of human nations have subscribed to are null and void. No moral evil is ultimately out of bounds in a world without a higher power or objective moral foundation. Not terrorism, not pedophilia, not murder. Not only that, but if God is fictional and human rights are fictional, then so is mathematics, reason, and love, not to mention human meaning and purpose.

Noah Yuval Harari faces a predicament known as the is-ought problem—and it’s not the first time he has stumbled on this point, as previously highlighted by Intellectual Takeout.

Specifically, in the realm of morality, unless there is a moral standard that transcends human cultures, we could justify many terrible deeds as our human tastes shift from one era to the next. Moral relativism might be a convenient framework for people who want to live without moral restraint, but over the long haul, it has no power to hold people or civilizations back from the most wicked deeds imaginable.

While many secular philosophers see this as a problem, Harari promotes it as some kind of triumph. So did his intellectual antecedents—men like Friedrich Nietzsche. The horrors of the 20th century loom in recent history as examples of what this line of thinking can justify.

What of the argument that human rights are secular, not theistic?

Actually, human rights, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and similar documents, have distinctly Christian origins…Nick Spencer, author of The Evolution of the West, agrees. He says, “In the sense that the Declaration of Human Rights doesn’t draw explicitly on any religious doctrines of course it’s thoroughly secular, but if you lift the lid you find an awful lot of Christian workings underneath the bonnet.”

So while Harari, an atheist, might gleefully credit atheism or nihilism with “freeing” us from the obligation of human rights, what he actually does is the opposite.

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2024/01/nihilism-logical-end-atheism/

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Question: How does God grant people repentance?

TBC Staff

On our website: https://www.thebereancall.org/content/question-how-does-god-grant-people-repentance
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Question: The amount of time you invested in your careful writing of What Love Is This? was well spent. How I needed this information! I have one question.... In 2 Timothy:2:24-26 Paul talks about God granting people repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.... What is this talking about? Would you address this passage sometime?

Response: Here is that scripture: “In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth...that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.” Obviously, Paul doesn’t believe that some are predestined to heaven and others to hell, or such a general prayer for sinners would be both senseless and blasphemous. 

Christ commissioned Paul to go to Jews and Gentiles “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts:26:18). Paul declared that “the god of this world [Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not...” (2 Cor:4:4). And he warned that during the reign of Antichrist God will send upon those who “received not the love of the truth...strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned...” (2 Thes:2:10-12). They willfully rejected the love of the truth to follow Satan’s lies. In sending them a strong delusion God is only helping them to believe the lie they wanted to believe. “Sinners are taken captive at his [Satan’s] will” because they willingly believed his lies in rejection of the truth.

Therefore Paul suggests a specific prayer for the lost: that God would help them not to believe the lie they want to believe but would help them to understand and in repentance admit the truth. The prayer Paul suggests does not ask God to sovereignly regenerate sinners and give them the faith to believe the gospel—but to help them to understand and admit the truth. What they do with that understanding will be up to them, for they must from their hearts embrace the truth in order to “recover themselves out of the snare of the devil....”

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The amount of time you invested in your careful writing of What Love Is This? was well spent. How I needed this information! I have one question.... In 2 Timothy 2:24-26 Paul talks about God granting people repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.... What is this talking about? Would you address this passage sometime?

Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny—The Atheists’ “Explanation” for Eliminating God

Dave Hunt

In the first of these three comedy shows, Dawkins “explains how the eye evolved” as though it were a scientifically verified fact instead of pure speculation. Listen as he takes us on a guided tour of Mount Improbable in his video series:

“Nautilus [a mollusk that has a pinhole “for an eye”] has a pretty poor eye compared with its relatives, the squids and octopuses, because they do have a lens. So we can’t help wondering, why doesn’t Nautilus have a lens? Why didn’t it evolve a lens? Well, I suspect that Nautilus may have got itself stuck on a little peak some way up Mount Improbable. [Emphasis added]”

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Global Positioning Lobsters

TBC Staff

Global Positioning Lobsters

Homing pigeons are valued because of their highly developed sense of direction, and this includes the ability to read the Earth’s magnetic field. Some other birds, turtles and even a few salamanders have also shown this same ability. However, bees, ants or people are not born with this ability.

Until now, those animals classified as “lower animals” on the evolutionary scale were not expected to have such navigation abilities. However, this ability has now been confirmed in – of all things – the Caribbean spiny lobster. Researchers collected more than 100 lobsters from various locations; each lobster was tagged with a number indicating the exact location of their discovery. They were then placed in closed containers and boated about in circuitous routes for an hour so that they would not remember the direction of home. To further confuse the lobsters, some of the containers contained magnets. Each lobster was then fitted with a removable hood so that they were effectively blindfolded. They were then placed in a large tank to see which direction they would naturally seek. Typically, the lobsters would begin trying to walk home, aiming to within three compass degrees of where they were captured.

Scientists were surprised that a so-called “lower invertebrate” has a navigation system as sophisticated as a homing pigeon. But they shouldn’t be surprised. The same wise Creator made both creatures.

Isaiah:40:22
“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in…”

https://creationmoments.com/sermons/global-positioning-lobsters-3/

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Question and Response

TBC Staff
Our Q&A section is primarily pulled from the Dave Hunt archives. Although some references may be dated, we believe there is timeless value within the messages.
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Christianity didn't begin in a lie

TBC Staff

“Christianity did not originate in a lie; and we can and ought to demonstrate this as well as believe it.”

Further study… showed that the book (Acts) could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement.”

Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (d. 1939, Former atheist, Scottish archaeologist, New Testament scholar, a foremost authority of his day on the history of Asia Minor)

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