I’m writing this with a heavy heart, reaching out to my brothers and sisters who suffer insensitivity and arrogance when asking sincere questions concerning Seventh-day Adventist doctrine. If this is your situation, I am so sorry. Please forgive us.

Perhaps you have asked questions that were quietly troubling you about the Sabbath, the judgment, or Ellen White. Although confiding your doctrinal doubts in all sincerity, perhaps you were brushed off, patronized, rebuked or even denounced. Frustrated in getting answers to vital questions, you may have become disappointed and eventually embittered. At that point you felt betrayed and filled with pain and confusion, leaving you wondering whether the time has come to abandon your beloved Adventist heritage.

Before you do that—and even if you have already taken that step—please let me share with you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, information that I think can be helpful to you.

I acknowledge there is a problem. Just yesterday someone approached me after church seeking help with a friend who had left the Adventist Church under the above circumstances. She had grown up SDA, attended our schools and remained a faithful member. Her crisis began when she read something in the Bible that seemed to directly contradict Ellen G. White. It was something too important to ignore. So she approached her godly mother, who insisted that nothing Ellen White ever wrote contradicted the Bible, and thus her daughter must be mistaken. This elderly saint was unable to explain just how her daughter was mistaken, nor was she interested in searching out the truth. Instead, she admonished her daughter for “harboring doubts about the Spirit of Prophecy” and urged her to drop them. When her daughter said she really needed to get the truth clarified in her mind, the mother lectured her, scolded her, slandered her motives and ultimately denounced her as a doubter of the faith—in danger of being lost.

I believe that this daughter is the victim of spiritual abuse, unintended yet devastating. If you have suffered this yourself from Seventh-day Adventist friends or family, I plead with you again: Please forgive us, for we didn’t know what we were doing. We were only trying to help you by warning you. Don’t forsake us—at least not yet. Give us a chance to answer your questions; that’s what this website is all about.

I know firsthand of what I speak, having suffered spiritual abuse myself from well-intentioned fellow Seventh-day Adventists. I’ve survived it by God’s grace and now have committed myself to do my part in remedying it.

Here’s my story, if I may share it with you. Back in 1979, I was a young evangelist filled with zeal for the message and mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (as I am no less today). I proclaimed from town to town the message of truth as it is in Jesus. I told people that if they belonged to a church that violated Scriptural fundamental beliefs, than please consider joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church, because everything we believe is found in the Bible—and the Bible alone.

I meant that with all of my heart, and scores who attended my meetings responded to my challenge. They left their longtime spiritual heritage to join the Adventist family of believers. Life was great, and I had a fruitful and fulfilling ministry.

Then suddenly I found myself in a great spiritual crisis, facing the same challenge I had brought to others. It happened after some young pastors for whom I was to hold meetings came to me with questions about fundamental SDA beliefs. Specifically they wondered about the investigative judgment and whether it really began in 1844. They asked if it was even appropriate for believers in Jesus to have their salvation threatened—or at least called into question—by being subjected to the scrutiny of judgment.

I opened my Bible with these guys and found that I didn’t have the answers they needed. So I did what everyone who gives Bible studies is supposed to do—promise to look for Bible answers and get back to them. I went to the conference president asking his help in finding answers. He didn’t care to open his Bible with me. Instead, he said: “We already know from the Spirit of Prophecy that the judgment began in 1844. God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me—and for you. Our job is to go out and preach the SDA message.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing,” I responded. “But these guys have sincere questions, and they are wanting our help. They just want some Bible answers from us.”

The conference president told me that if I really wanted Bible answers, I could get them from Ellen White’s reliable interpretations of Scripture. He urged me to put my faith in her prophetic revelations instead of trusting my own private interpretation.

I told him I had already searched diligently in Ellen White’s writings for the Bible answers, but that these guys were raising questions for which she wasn’t offering any help. The president said they were on dangerous ground and I shouldn’t venture out there with them. He even forbade me from studying the Bible with them.

I asked him: “You’ve assigned me the responsibility of holding meetings with them in their churches, so isn’t it my job to help them? How can I refuse their request to study the Bible? Besides,” I added, “I need to have these questions answered for my own peace of mind. Can you help me?”

The president responded with another dire warning about doubting Seventh-day Adventist truth and the inspiration of Ellen White. He then phoned the Ellen G. White Estate in Washington, DC and set up an appointment for me to visit them and get straightened out.

I willingly went, hoping to find Bible answers. Instead I got platitudes and further admonitions. I went home without the answers I so desperately needed to continue living the life and sharing the message of a Bible-based Christian Seventh-day Adventist.

Meanwhile, some people at conference headquarters started questioning my motives and the state of my heart. They couldn't understand why I needed to see something in the Bible for myself in order to believe it. They thought I was putting my own private interpretation above the wisdom of our current SDA leaders and the pioneers of our past. They didn’t seem to realize that I had no reason to make theological trouble for myself, just when my ministry was beginning to take off. Newly ordained, at 28 I was the conference evangelist, assistant ministerial director and a member of the conference executive committee. It was politically smart for me to keep any questions to myself, especially with two toddlers to feed and a little house in the country to pay for. Causing trouble for my career in ministry was the last thing I wanted to do.

Actually, it was the next-to-last thing I was willing to do. The last thing I could dare to do was to betray my conscience by playing politics instead of searching for truth. Yet things weren’t looking good for me, especially when people my wife counseled with got her alarmed about my spiritual quest—to the point that she was ready to end our marriage if I didn’t stop questioning Adventist truth.

Both of us were victims of first-degree spiritual abuse. A dysfunctional and toxic situation was threatening my ministry, my marriage, and worst of all, my spiritual commitment to submit my faith to God alone through the Bible and the Bible only.

I found myself sinking amid the crisis of my life. Almost panicked now myself, I arranged as a last resort to spend the winter studying at the Andrews University seminary extension in Hinsdale, Illinois. It was a soul-winning institute operated by Mark Finley, an evangelist I respected. I thought that Mark would be willing to take my questions seriously and study with me.

God bless him, he was! He sat down with me and, over our open Bibles, answered my basic questions.

Mark Finley’s explanation of the SDA doctrine of judgment was profoundly deep yet astonishingly simple. The root problem was that we were imposing our Western understanding of judgment upon that biblical doctrine. To the ancient Hebrews, judgment meant first of all vindication, not condemnation. The name “Daniel,” for example, means “God is my judge”—my vindicator and deliverer.  In the book of Judges, you don’t see a bunch of condemners going around; the judges were deliverers of God’s people. To apply this reality to the pre-Advent judgment: God is vindicating His people in heaven’s sanctuary, delivering them from the devil’s accusations. He finds all the evidence He needs to justify us in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and High Priest.

That key insight was the tipping point for me. I realized that the core Adventist teaching of the judgment was not inherently legalistic at all. Western presuppositions imposed upon Scripture had caused an unnecessary doctrinal dilemma. I was delighted to discover that Ellen White herself began picking up this theme of vindication in heaven’s pre-Advent judgment in her later writings. (Consider the chapter “Joshua and the Angel” in Prophets and Kings, the last-completed book in her “Conflict of the Ages” series.) But it was because of the Bible and the Bible alone that I chose to remain a Seventh-day Adventist.

Mark Finley, by the way, is now a vice president of the SDA world church—which I believe reflects a positive trend in the leadership of our denomination.

Now, to finish out my story: Once I realized the Gospel-based truth about the judgment—based on the Bible alone—everything else started falling into place. It took about a year to get all my questions answered. I recorded my new insights in the book Some Call It Heresy, officially published by the church. In it I explain my 1979 Gethsemane experience, and the exciting discoveries back then that led me out of confusion and continue to inspire me as a Seventh-day Adventist.  The more I delve into the Scriptures, the more thankful I am to be an Adventist. My ongoing learning adventure is chronicled in many other books officially published by the church, most recently in this year’s God Was There: True Stories of a Police Chaplain.

So that’s my story. I think it’s fair to say that I can relate to whatever anyone reading this may be struggling with in your own doctrinal frustrations. I also can assure you that Bible answers about Adventist beliefs are there for you—in fact, right here on this website. I’ve condensed and compiled for you what I’ve written since 1980 about God’s mercy and truth expressed in Seventh-day Adventist fundamental beliefs.

Before giving up on Adventism, then, please entertain the possibility that God may have led you to this website. Give me a chance to explain how SDA fundamental beliefs are soundly Biblical. As God is my witness, everything I believe is based upon the Bible, not the writings of Ellen White. And nothing I believe is motivated by or derived from law—everything is based upon grace.

Consider the seventh-day Sabbath. It’s not some Jewish ritual, as Dale Ratzlaff insists, but rather our weekly expression of resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ. That’s what the word “Sabbath” means—“rest,” literally “cessation.” We cease from trusting in our own works to find rest in the accomplishments of Jesus Christ. Jesus proclaimed Himself “Lord of the Sabbath,” so it doesn’t matter to me what Dale Ratzlaff says about the seventh day.

Dale says that it’s impossible to be a Seventh-day Adventist without being tainted by legalism. I have found that not to be true. For three decades now, I have rejoiced in Gospel freedom while serving in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Rather than being suppressed, my Gospel testimony has been published in more than 20 books (some of them “ghost-written” for Adventist leaders). In 1983 I was invited to join the staff at the Voice of Prophecy radio broadcast, later to be a scriptwriter and assistant to George Vandeman, founder of the It Is Written telecast.

While at the Adventist Media Center I wrote Adventist Hot Potatoes, after which denominational leaders invited me to join the Ministerial Association of the world church and be an associate editor of Ministry magazine. I also was made a member of the General Conference Executive Committee, the world church’s governing body. Currently I’m editor of Outlook, a church magazine serving 62,000 members in the Mid-America Union, where I also am communication director.

Based on my experience and those of so many others I know personally, I don’t see how Dale Ratzlaff can say there’s no room in Adventism for those who stand up for the Gospel and base all beliefs on the Bible alone. I don’t deny the ongoing problem of “old school” legalism, which remains a powerful—but fading—force in the church. My plea is that you stand with all of us in the Seventh-day Adventist Church who treasure God’s mercy and truth, and help us make a difference for the Gospel.

Please don’t follow Dale Ratzlaff out of the frying pan into the fire—literally. He actually teaches a fire of eternal torment for unbelievers. Do you want to subject your children and grandchildren to such horrific doctrine in Sunday school, about a God of “love” who torments lost people for eternity? Isn’t that a type of spiritual abuse all its own?

Please stay with the Adventist Church and help us make a difference. Every SDA doctrine fits a Gospel context and comes from the Bible alone. Hold me accountable on that. I invite you to challenge me publicly by responding to this blog, or you can connect with me privately via e-mail: martin@midamericaoutlook.org.

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Comments

Anonymous commented on 01-Aug-2009 09:01 PM

I like what you have written. Jesus said that men will know that we are his disciples if we love one another. A spirit of love should be the main venue of communication.

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