Recently, Christopher Mindanao made an appearance on the "Better than We Thought" podcast with Ian Reyes, where he challenged Ellen White's interpretation of the "seal of God" and the "Mark of the Beast." As a result, the New Jersey Conference of Seventh-day Adventists approached him to investigate his theological beliefs.
On Mindanao’s Facebook page,
After discussing these issues over the course of the last two weeks, the New Jersey Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and I have come to the agreement that it would be best for me to resign from being a Seventh-day Adventist pastor.
His Facebook page was quickly changed to read former Adventist pastor.
A summary of Mindanao’s beliefs,
He does not believe that the Sabbath is the Seal of God, or that Sunday observance is the Mark of the Beast.
The Seal of God is the Holy Spirit, not the Sabbath.
The Commandments of God mentioned in Revelation 12:7 and 14:12-13 are:
Believe in the name of Jesus.
Love one another.
The Mark of the Beast is the works of the flesh listed in Galatians 5:19-21.
The early church worshiped on Sunday.
Sabbath keeping is a work of the flesh, according to Paul.
We are informed that this individual is sympathetic to the love reality deception.
Our Response
Some post-Apostolic ‘Christians’ in Alexandria and Rome blended paganism with Christianity in order to force a break with Judaism. This is how Sunday observance occurred, timid at first and then gaining momentum in the early centuries. It is not true that the Apostolic believers in the Bible worshiped on Sunday. They kept the Sabbath. Samuele Bacchiocchi’s book From Sabbath to Sunday explains how this change occurred.
There are no references of Sunday observance in Christianity prior to A.D. 100.
The first references of Sunday observance in 157 AD. are timid, and without a common reason given for observance. The resurrection of Christ is not offered as the primary motivation until the 4th century.
The Jerusalem Christian community fled the city in A.D. 70, to Pella. The Nazarene sect in and around Pella, therefore, represents the direct descendants of the primitive community of Jerusalem. In spite of Epiphanius' attempt to denigrate them as "heretics" in the rather extensive account that he gives on their beliefs, there is nothing heterodoxial about them. He identifies them with the Jews for using the same Old Testament books (hardly a heresy). I believe that these Nazarenes represent the survival of both the ethnic and theological legacy of primitive Jewish Christianity. The fact that they retained Sabbath-keeping as one of their distinguishing marks, shows persuasively that this was the original day of worship of the Jerusalem Church, and that no change from Sabbath to Sunday occurred among Palestinian Jewish Christians after the destruction of the city.
How can a day in which you rest from your work (labors) be a ‘work’? It isn’t, it demonstrates your trust in the finished work of Christ.
The New Jersey Conference is to be commended for removing a pastor who does not believe SDA biblical doctrine on matters of high significance. Such pastors ought to be fired, including those who do not believe the plain Bible teaching on human sexuality.
If he lives long enough, Mindanao will see the rapid fulfillment of SDA prophecy occurring in our world. “The final movements will be rapid ones.”
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