Editor’s note: The final 11 objections, 99 through 109, are “odds and ends.” We will take these 11 miscellaneous objections in two large bites.
Objection 99: Seventh day Adventists, perhaps even more than most other religious bodies, carry on a vigorous foreign-mission program. But why impose the Christian religion on the people of other countries? Why disturb and disrupt their program of living?
Christians have been commanded to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. This is what we call the “Great Commission”:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age” Mat. 28:19-20
And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Mark 16:15.
He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Luke 24:46-47.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8
Christians obey our Master only if we undertake missions, so this is not an objection to Seventh-day Adventism but an objection to any form of Christianity that seeks to follow the Lord’s command. Almost all Churches have undertaken foreign missions at one time or another, and several still do.
It is of course true that Christianity should never be “imposed.” Protestants have generally not tried to use force in their mission work. Although the Roman Catholic Church has sometimes used force to convert the heathen or, after the practice of the Muslims, has used official or quasi-official oppression to make things so uncomfortable for non-Christians that they convert simply to get relief. However, many Catholic missions have gone beyond the borders of Christendom to make converts, to remote places where there was no protection for the lives of the missionaries, much less the means to compel the natives to accept Christianity.
Certainly, there can be nothing wrong with Christian missions when the methods used are persuasion, teaching, example, and meeting physical needs so as to build bridges and gain trust.
The Christian missionary is constrained by the love of Christ to go forth as an ambassador for Christ to persuade men to be reconciled to God. He goes to share with them what has transformed him and given him hope for life everlasting. The missionary is one who, having received freedom from the guilt of sin, must bring the story of pardon to others. The missionary is one who, having learned the good news that Christ died for ours sins and rose again and now sits at the right hand of God to make intercession for us, longs to tell others this glorious good news.
The Christian missionary believes that all people are more alike than different, despite glaring cultural and racial differences, and that the problem with all peoples and all human societies is sin. Sin is a universal malady. A current criticism is that native cultures are being contaminated with non-native ideas, transforming the native culture into something entirely different. That the gospel transforms cultures is a feature, not a bug. There is a power that goes with the gospel, even the power of God. The fact that the gospel produces better people and better societies, with fairer and more just institutions, is the best proof of the truth and value of the gospel message.
[Editors note: This objection is now much more widespread and fashionable than in F.D. Nichol’s day. The prevailing ideology in Western institutions, including government, big business, academia, the media, the professions, international corporations, the United Nations, and international NGOs (non-governmental organizations), etc., is that it is wrong for people from the Christian West to evangelize Christianity in the non-Christian world. Marxist intellectuals assert that evangelism is a form of colonization or cultural imperialism, and hence wrong and unjust. But, notwithstanding the prevailing ideology, Christians must obey their Master, and that means carrying out the Great Commission.]
Objection 100: It is clear there must be something wrong in the Adventist system itself, when so many leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
It is true that a great many people who at one time joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church have left it. This fact is widely known because the church publishes its membership statistics. About 42% of people who join the Adventist Church leave it at some point before they die. Consider this article from the Adventist Review, November 6, 2024, in which our long-time Director of Archives and Statistics, David Trim, talks about the numbers of accessions and losses in membership:
“Trim pointed out that, “2023 saw the highest number of net accessions of any year in church history, exceeding the 1.383 million added in 2018.” The number of accessions is now back on the same level as it was before the challenging years of 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Although church members may rejoice over a large number of new members added to the fellowship, church growth is a function of both accessions and losses. In 2023, 836,905 people who were alive and well decided to leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church. That was the third highest year for net losses, after the peak in 2019, when statistics show 1,107,514 people left.
“Trim showed a slide displaying membership data for the 59 years since 1965. In almost six decades the church has accepted 45,117,980 people into membership. In the same period, 19,392,486 members have chosen to leave, he reported. “More than four of every ten church members are slipping away,” Trim said, while urging both General Conference Executive Committee members and church members to “be their brother’s keeper, and their sister’s too.”
There is nothing strange or new here. Christ gave the parable of the sower to shed light on this very matter of departures from the church. (See, Matt. 13:18-23) That parable forewarns the evangelist that only a fraction of those who initially accept the gospel will persevere until the end.
Yes, there have been and there will continue to be defections from the Advent movement. Those who view this movement objectively are impressed not that some leave it but that so many stay, seeing that our members are called upon to meet high standards of conduct, and an in-depth knowledge of the Bible. Adventist doctrine can be studied for decades without approaching the mastery of it.
Outside observers have told us that we might gain and hold more members if we did not call upon them to abstain from caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, pre-and extra-marital sex, sodomy, and Sabbath labor, and if we did not dwell upon such sobering doctrines as the investigative judgment now taking place in heaven, Sunday-keeping as the eventual mark of the beast, the nearness of the time of trouble, and the soon Second Coming of Christ. But if we lowered those standards and/or de-emphasized those doctrines, we would be betraying our mission.
Objection 101: When Seventh day Adventist ministers go into a community to hold a series of lectures, they conceal their denominational affiliation. They thus hope to draw into their audience people who would not come if they knew that Seventh-day Adventists were conducting the meetings. This is a form of deception. There is something wrong with a religious body that is afraid to identify itself as soon as it begins to carry on any activity in a community.
One of the most striking facts that stand out in the Gospels is that Christ concealed His identity on a number of occasions. For example:
"And Jesus said unto him, See thou tell no man; but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." Matt. 8:4.
"And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straightly charged them, saying, See that no man know it." Matt. 9:30.
"Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ." Matt. 16:20.
We hear no Christian expressing misgivings and doubts about the ministry of Christ, or declaring that He was ashamed or afraid, because He concealed His identity for a time. Hence, concealing one's true identity is not in itself a proof that one is either ashamed or afraid. There may be altogether reasonable grounds for such concealment. On Matthew 16:20, the noted Methodist commentator Adam Clarke observes:
"The time for his [Christ's] full manifestation was not yet come; and he was not willing to provoke the Jewish malice, or the Roman envy, by permitting his disciples to announce him as the Saviour of a lost world. He chose to wait until his resurrection and ascension had set this truth in the clearest light, and beyond the power of successful contradiction."
Although His many miracles bore witness to the divine imprimatur, it would have hindered His ministry had he proclaimed, before his crucifixion and resurrection, that he was the Messiah, the divine Son of God. Christ's followers, including Seventh-day Adventists, must be permitted to use Christ as their guide in all matters, including the issue of how best to promote the truths of prophecy and Bible doctrine.
Unfortunately, Adventism’s critics were able to saddle us with an image of deluded fanaticism, a picture of fanatics sitting on housetops, wearing “ascension robes,” and awaiting the opening of the heavens. As we have previously discussed, the ascension robes story is a myth, as are most similar stories. (In his book, The Burned-Over District, Whitney R. Cross writes, "Nor does any scrap of genuine evidence substantiate the myth of the ascension robes," dropping a footnote stating: "My own research substantiates Nichol's conclusions [in] The Midnight Cry.”) But nevertheless these stories created a widely-believed negative picture of Adventism.
Hence, Adventist evangelists have sought to have people see them as Christian preachers before announcing their Adventist connection. We believe strongly that the Scriptural truths and doctrines that we preach should have a chance to be preached to un-prejudiced, un-biased minds. Many who have attended Adventist meetings frankly admit that they have changed their ideas about us and are glad that they first came to the meetings not knowing who was conducting them.
In decades past Adventists could not have gotten a crowd out to hear them in certain localities had they revealed their identity at the outset, but this has become less true as the 20th Century turned into the 21st. Today, Adventists are better known for their hospital system, their health practices, for Sabbath-keeping, and for advocacy of religious liberty. Accordingly, Adventists are currently less reticent to admit their denominational affiliation at the beginning of meetings or Bible studies rather than at the end.
Objection 102: Seventh day Adventists hold fanatical views on health reform and vegetarianism, and by such teachings restrict the liberty that belongs to Christians. In fact, the very distinction they make as to what is right to eat and drink brings them under the condemnation of the Bible. (See, Rom. 14:2; 1 Tim. 4:3.)
Today, after decades of research, science has answered this charge for us. There have been many long-term studies of Adventists and health, and the results are conclusive. One study done in the Loma Linda area is called Adventist Health Study-1, or AHS-1; the results are summarized as follows:
AHS-1 helped firmly establish that Adventists are a long-lived population. . . . Men in AHS-1 lived 7.3 years longer and women 4.4 years longer, on average, than their California counterparts. When looking specifically at vegetarians, Adventist vegetarian men lived 9.5 years longer and women 6.1 years longer than California men and women, respectively.
Perhaps more importantly, researchers identified several simple factors that together predicted large differences in expected longevity among the participants of AHS-1. Five main factors were identified:
1. Never having smoked
2. Having a lower (more normal) body weight
3. Exercising more often
4. Following a vegetarian diet
5. Eating nuts more frequently
AHS-1 participants who had all these factors had approximately a 10-year longer life expectancy compared to those with none of these favorable factors. This demonstrated that simple lifestyle factors were able to account for major differences in life expectancy.
This research was published in 2001 in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine (now JAMA Internal Medicine) in a scientific paper called “Ten Years of Life: Is It a Matter of Choice?”.
A study entitled, “Lower rates of cancer and all-cause mortality in an Adventist cohort compared with a US Census population,” published in the journal Cancer in March 2020 found substantially reduced incidence of Cancer among Seventh-day Adventists. “Substantially lower rates of all-cause mortality and cancer incidence among Adventists have implications for the effects of lifestyle,” the researchers reported, “and perhaps particularly diet on the etiology [cause] of these health problems.”
Paul said, "What? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?” For you are bought with a price: therefor glorify God in your body." 1 Cor. 6:19-20. We are to cooperate with God in our habits and customs for the development of perfect Christian characters. It is a known fact that right habits of eating and drinking have much to do with a good disposition as well as with a sound constitution.
Obviously, science has proven that vegetarianism is a more healthful diet, especially when combined with exercise, fresh air, clean water, and adequate rest. What right do we have—merely to indulge our appetite—to pursue a riskier diet than we need to? Flesh food was not a part of the original diet of man; it is not what God intended for us (Gen. 1:29), and it requires the killing of creatures that God created.
The objector refers to Romans 14:2. The issue in that passage was very likely meat dedicated to idols before it was sold in the marketplace. Paul elsewhere (1 Cor. 8) tells us that an idol is nothing, so he has no qualms about eating meat offered to idols, but some with weaker faith did have those qualms. Regardless how we interpret Romans 14, however, it is not for ceremonial or ritual reasons that Seventh-day Adventists discourage meat-eating, but for health reasons. We believe in maintaining the best possible health for several reasons, including:
1) health and spirituality are closely related;
2) we can only be a blessing to others, rather than a burden to them, if we are in good health;
3) we can only be of most use to our Lord, who is our Creator and Redeemer, if we are in good health.
1 Timothy 4:3 speaks of some departing from the faith, “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them which believe and know the truth.” Many scholars believe Paul is here referring to the heresy of Gnosticism. The Gnostics believed that matter is evil and that the food we eat was not made by God but by an inferior deity. They also denounced marriage as evil, because it catered to carnal desire.
That Paul was warning against the teachings of the Gnostics seems a reasonable interpretation of this passage but, again, we do not discourage meat eating for ceremonial or ritual reasons, but for health reasons, and we believe that health and spirituality are closely related.
Too many Christians want to argue that “Christian liberty” somehow excuses or licenses their own issues with appetite—or at least does not condemn them. But the Bible could not be any clearer in rebuking such an attitude. (Deut. 21:20; Prov. 23:2; 20-21; Philip. 3:19; Rom. 16:18; Gal. 5:24; 1 Cor. 9:27). The Christian is called to overcome, through the power of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, all imperfections of character, including indulgence of appetite.