Editor’s Note: Here are the final seven objections. We posted the first “Answers to Objections” on July 24th, 2023, so it has taken 119 weeks, over 2 years and three months, to get through all 109 objections. It was sometimes a slog, but also an interesting exercise. Among other things, I learned that styles of writing, rhetoric, and argumentation have changed a great deal in the 80 to 90 years or so since Nichol answered these objections.
Objection 103: Seventh day Adventists are proselytizers or “sheep-stealers.”
To proselytize is "to win over to a different opinion, belief, sect, or party.” As we noted in answer to Objection 99, Christ’s great commission was, "Go you therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, an the Holy Spirit." Matt. 28:19. So to the charge of proselytizing, we are happy to plead guilty, since that is exactly what Jesus wants us to do.
Now to the charge of sheep-stealing, which we take to mean bringing those who are already Christians, but of other denominations, into the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. Here again we plead guilty.
Adventists are Protestants; we see our mission as the completion of a stalled Protestant Reformation. The Reformation brought the Christian world back to the crucial doctrine of justification by faith, and dispelled many of the errors of the medieval period, including salvation by works or by the sacraments, the Lord’s supper being the real body and blood of Christ, sacramentalism, confession to an earthly priest, the celibate priesthood, purgatory, indulgences, monasticism, the veneration of Mary, praying to the saints, collecting and venerating relics, etc.
But the Reformation stopped short of other important Bible truths, such as that the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment is Saturday, the seventh day of the week, not Sunday, that there will be a pre-advent judgment, that the dead are unconscious in the grave, and that there will be a resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming of Christ, and that Christ mediates for us in the heavenly sanctuary. It is our urgent goal to share these truths with other Christians not of the SDA denomination.
The Three Angels’ Messages
The urgency of our mission to other Christians is found in our interpretation of the Three Angels’ messages of Revelation 14. We believe we are called to teach and explain the three angels messages not only to the lost, but perhaps especially to other Christians, who need to be told of “present truth,” meaning unknown or little know Bible doctrines that are now, in these last days of Earth’s history, of great relevance.
Revelation 14 states:
“Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people—saying with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water’” (Revelation 14:6-7).
“Fear God and give glory to Him” is an acknowledgment that Adventists are called to be salt and light in an era of atheism. We are called to glorify God in an age that is practically, and often officially, atheistic. Adventists often note that the year 1844, which brought our movement into existence, also saw important writings by Charles Darwin, who established a universal atheistic origins narrative, and Karl Marx, who furthered the idea that government and other important human institutions should be based upon an officially atheistic philosophy.
“The hour of His judgment is come” refers to the opening of the investigative judgment in Heaven. Judgment begins in the house God (1 Peter 4:17); between 1844 and the close of probation just before the Second Coming, the case of everyone who has ever claimed Christ comes up for review. We are living in the anti-typical Day of Atonement, when the sins of those whom it is determined are saved through the grace of Christ are removed from the sanctuary and put onto the scapegoat, which is Satan. It is a most solemn time. Adventists believe it is our duty to warn other Christians of what is now taking place in the heavenly sanctuary.
“Worship Him who made heaven and earth, sea and the springs of waters” refers to the creation narrative of Genesis chapter one. God created the world in six literal, 24-hour days, and rested on the seventh day. God made the seventh, or Sabbath, day holy, and in the Fourth Commandment, He commanded us to remember that Sabbath day. And yet everywhere we see Christians forgetting the Sabbath day, failing to worship the Creator on the day He set aside and made holy. Adventists believe we must call other Christians back to worship on the true Sabbath.
The second angel’s message we also view as having special relevance to the Christian world: “Another angel followed, saying, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication’” (Revelation 14:8). Babylon is symbolically or figuratively the Roman Church (1 Peter 5:13; Rev. 17:5; 18:2) Fornication or prostitution, in the sense used here, means idolatry or false worship. (Judges 2:17; 8:27, 33; 1 Chron. 5:25). The Roman Church certainly forced her false doctrines on Christendom during the 1260 years of papal supremacy (from 538 to 1798), but Adventists believe that the call to come out of Babylon applies not just to Rome, but to the Protestants who continue to cling to Rome’s false doctrines, chiefly Sunday sacredness and the unconditional immortality of the soul. Babel also means “confusion,” and we call on Christians to leave the churches that are doctrinally confused.
The third angel’s message, “Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation . . .” we believe to be yet in the future. Adventists believe that the mark of the beast will be enforced Sunday worship, and we call on all Christians to avoid this mark.
So, yes, Seventh-day Adventists believe that a very important part of our purpose and mission as a denomination is to bring the Bible truths we have discovered to other Christians. There is no way that we can avoid or gainsay this charge.
Objection 104: In their opposition to Sunday laws, Seventh-day Adventists are callous to the needs of the working man and woman, and are blind to the fact that the very stability of the country is endangered by the godless course of millions who give no day in the week to God. It seems that Adventists are more concerned to protect themselves from persecution than to support the workingman or to morally uplift of the country.
We agree that working people need a day off once a week, and we agree that the world would be greatly improved, morally, by universal Sabbath-keeping. We are strongly in favor of all workers being allowed to keep the Sabbath of their choice and conviction. Adventist lawyers connected with our religious liberty departments have defended the rights of Sabbath-keepers (and Sunday-keepers) in law cases too numerous to recount, including in the famous 1963 Supreme Court case of Sherbert v. Verner.
But we believe state compulsion is not the way to call men to worship on the Sabbath. Worship must be freely engaged in out of personal spiritual conviction, not something compelled by the state. Compelled worship is not worship at all, but a mockery of religion. The state can pass laws that govern man’s actions towards other men, but attempts to use the government to enforce actions or beliefs that are between a man and God, that attempt to regulate religious duties, invariably end in persecution and tyranny.
As students of Bible prophecy, we believe that the religious intolerance and persecution that characterized the Medieval period will be revived and that there will be a mighty religio-political combination that will attempt to force men to worship against their consciences on Sunday rather than on the Bible Sabbath. Compelled Sunday worship, we believe, is the very “mark of the beast” that the Third Angel of Revelation 14 is warning us about.
Certainly, many sincere and earnest men have advocated for Sunday-laws across the decades, but their sincerity does not make their course less wrong. It is tragic that misguided zeal should cause men to become the persecutor of other men who are also striving to do their duty to God as they understand it. Christ foretold just such a tragedy when He declared that the time will come when he that "kills you will think that he does God service." (John 16:2)
True Christianity never seeks to force worship upon anyone. We would be disloyal to Christ if we did not strive to make men aware that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not a gospel of state compulsion.
Objection 105: Seventh-day Adventists, in their opposition to Sunday laws, show themselves to be in league with the disreputable elements of the country.
Do some oppose Sunday laws for “disreputable” reasons, such as a desire to keep their businesses open to reap the most profit? Perhaps. But we are not “in league” with such persons. To the contrary, our reasons for opposing Sunday laws are scripturally sound, and promote liberty of conscience.
Objection 106: Seventh-day Adventists teach that only they will be saved.
Nonsense. We do not hold this position at all. This is so far from being the truth that Ellen White has written that even the ignorant heathen, with no religious education at all, can be saved:
"Among the heathen are those who worship God ignorantly, those to whom the light is never brought by human instrumentality, yet they will not perish. Though ignorant of the written law of God, they have heard His voice speaking to them in nature, and have done the things that the law required. Their works are evidence that the Holy Spirit has touched their hearts, and they are recognized as the children of God." - The Desire of Ages, p. 638.
If we are willing to concede that some even among those who lived and died without ever having heard the name of Jesus Christ can yet be saved, how much more are we willing to concede that our neighbors of different Christian denominations can also be saved?
Objection 107: Seventh day Adventists are calamity howlers.
It is true that we seek to awaken people everywhere to the seriousness of the times in which we live. Yes, we do endeavor to show them to the signs of the times, and help prepare them for history’s soon-coming climax, and the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That said, we also see a bright world beyond this one, even a "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Indeed, as the shadows deepen over this world, and men's hearts increasingly fail them for fear, only those who believe in the Second Advent of our Lord and Savior can truly be joyful.
Only the Prince of Peace provides a means of escape from this doomed planet. That is why we preach Christ's soon coming. Our hope is in God, that He will deliver His children and take us to heaven to be with Him always.
Objection 108: Seventh day Adventism is a new “ism,” and holds new and un-Scriptural doctrines.
If age is the criterion of religious worth, then both the Roman Catholic Church and Islam are on a much higher plane than all the Protestant churches, because Rome and Islam—and, for that matter, the Eastern Orthodox churches--were all established many centuries before the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. Polytheistic, idolatrous paganism would be on yet a higher plane, because paganism long preceded Catholicism, Islam, and Orthodoxy. The reader should by now be catching on that this is fallacious reasoning and, in fact, age is not the determiner of religious worth.
The seeming “newness” of our doctrines is often in the nature of having been newly rediscovered. The Sabbath was established at the very week of creation (Gen. 2:2-3), and God commands us, in the Fourth Commandment, written on the tables of stone by God’s own finger, to remember it (Ex. 20:8-11). The Sabbath was lost and covered up by the papal “sabbath” of Sunday worship, but the old truth, the original truth, is being rediscovered.
Our belief that a meatless diet is the ideal is also more in the way of rediscovering the Edenic diet that God gave Adam and Eve. (Gen. 1: 29) Likewise, from primitive times God's people have had the blessing of prophets and prophetic guidance. (See Gen. 20:7; Ex. 15:20). By giving us the gift of prophecy, we affirm that God loves and cares for Christians as much as he cared for the Hebrew nation of old. We believe that Christians should pay tithe, but then so did such men of old as Abraham. (See, Gen. 14:20).
As to our teaching un-Biblical doctrines, all of our doctrines are backed by a “Thus sayeth the Lord," as the copious Scriptural references in all our books and papers attest.
Objection 109: Seventh-day Adventists have a prophet like many other of the modern cults and “isms,” and they make of her writings a second Bible.
All through the history of God's dealing with His people there have been prophets and prophetesses. From the days of Moses and Miriam, through the times of Deborah, Huldah, and Anna, a prophetess "of a great age" in the time of Christ, even to the last years of the apostolic period, when the four daughters of Philip the evangelist "did prophesy," God has seen fit to give His instruction to the church through the agency of men and women upon whom He has placed the Spirit of prophecy. (See, Ex. 15:20; Judges 4:4; 2 Kings 22:14; Luke 2:36; Acts 21:8-9).
The Bible tells us explicitly that the church in the closing days of its earthly history will possess this gift. (See, Rev. 12:17; cf. Rev. 19:10.) So necessary did Solomon regard the gift of prophecy that he wrote, "Where there is no [prophetic] vision, the people perish." Prov. 29:18. And there is no reason to believe that in these last days, when the very elect are in danger of being ensnared (Matt. 24:24), the prophetic gift is less needed.
Further, God has given instruction to His church through prophets without adding to the permanent body of Sacred Writings. Scripture records several instances of prophets clearly having messages from God, but whose writings form no part of the Bible. (See, 2 Chron. 9:29; Acts 21:8-9)
Clearly, the presence of a prophet in a movement is not evidence that the movement is false or heretical. On the contrary, it may be the best evidence possible that God is especially directing that movement. We may also conclude that one may be a true prophet of God, giving out inspired utterances without stating that which should be considered in any sense an addition to the great standard of truth, the Bible.
It is not within the scope of this short answer to prove that the writings of Mrs. E. G. White, whom we regard as having possessed the gift of prophecy, are of God. The writings themselves furnish the best proof of their divine origin.
However, we do not therefore hold that these writings, though inspired, should be considered as a second Bible or an addition to it. In this we are consistent with our foregoing conclusions. "The written testimonies," it is explained in Mrs. White's published works,
"are not to give new light, but to impress vividly upon the heart the truths of inspiration already revealed. Man's duty to God and to his fellow man has been distinctly specified in God's word; yet but few of you are obedient to the light given. Additional truth is not brought out; but God has through the Testimonies simplified the great truths already given." - Testimonies for the Church, vol. 2, p. 605.
In closing, we desire to ask the objector two questions: If you hold that true prophets do not belong to this age, are you prepared to maintain the logical inference that God has been more gracious to men in past ages than to us who live in this most perilous time of the church? But seeing that the scriptures cited in this chapter clearly show that the gift of prophecy belongs to, and will be found in, the true church in these days, how do you explain its absence from the church of which you are a member?