What makes 7th day adventist a cult

She would speak with that musical voice, making short comments upon what she was seeing. Then as she saw the darkness in the world, there were sad expressions as she spoke of what she saw. This continued ten or fifteen minutes. Then she caught her breath, breathed deeply several times, and then, after a little season of rest, probably five or ten minutes, during which time Father spoke to the people, she arose and related to the congregation some of the things that had been presented to her.

Ellen White claimed that a supernatural being in the form of a young man guided her through these visions. Adventists today refer to this as "the spirit of Prophecy. If these visions were not demonic, it was all simply play-acting on her part, because her visions are muddled, ambiguous religious-sounding gibberish completely lacking in the clarity and authority of divine revelation. Anyway, Ellen's visions became the means of regrouping Adventists after the Great Disappointment.

She said the Lord had revealed to her that those who remained faithful and expectant would soon see the Lord in glory and be taken immediately to heaven, but the door of salvation was now permanently closed to those who rejected William Miller's teaching or lost faith after Miller's predictions failed. Her prophecies regularly indicated that the Lord's coming was very near.

She said the angel promised her that she would be one of those living who would witness the coming of Christ.

But her visions over the next few years kept revising the timing. She blamed the delays and missed predictions on the unbelief of people who doubted her prophecies. Ultimately she more or less dropped the subject of when the Lord would return. Of course, it goes without saying that she was dead wrong. She died almost exactly a hundred years ago July 16, , and the Lord still hasn't returned, so these were false prophecies all around.

By , the Whites had fully embraced Saturday Sabbatarianism. So naturally, as her predictions about the timing of Christ's return receded from prominence in her predictions, Sabbatarianism became the issue she stressed as most importance. In her mind, this issue, rather than belief in William Miller's timetables, became the definitive mark of a true believer.

A few short years after she declared the door of salvation closed to everyone outside the cult, Mrs. White evidently began to realize that if she held firmly to the claims she made in that prophecy, there would no way to recruit new members.

Also, as time passed and babies were born to church members, there was the dilemma of how to get those children past the closed door and into heaven. So Ellen's prophecies took on a very elastic property. Her visions were subject to frequent revisions and re-interpretations. Ellen herself soon disowned the idea that the door of salvation was permanently closed. I mentioned that her character seems questionable. It wasn't just the changeable prophecies that cast doubt on her integrity.

When we covered the history of the movement, I read a few firsthand accounts of people close to her said who she was a rank hypocrite. She wasn't completely honest about how much she cheated on her own rules about dress and diet.

She'd hide the fact that she didn't follow the same rules she imposed on her followers. One of her personal assistants left an unintentionally humorous account of how she repeatedly caught Mrs.

White sneaking around, eating oysters and other forbidden foods and indulging in several petty acts of unsanctified behavior during a journey to California by train. And it's clear from what Ellen White wrote about herself that she was a hopeless narcissist with overblown delusions of grandeur. But here's the thing: The writings of Ellen G. White are nevertheless revered by Seventh-Day Adventists as equal to Scripture in their authority, accuracy, and reliability.

Although most Seventh-Day Adventists will try to downplay the stress they place on Ellen White's writings, they do in fact believe Mrs. White was divinely inspired and her books are revelations superior to every other resource and every other truth claim outside the Bible. And since they read and interpret the Bible through the lens of Mrs.

White's supposedly inspired works, her writings in practice have a higher authority than Scripture. Scripture simply cannot be used to correct Mrs. White's errors, because Scripture is interpreted by what she wrote. If you think I am exaggerating, let me read from an article published in Ministry magazine, October Since its first issue in , Ministry has been the key periodical written specifically for Seventh-Day Adventist pastors and church leaders.

This article was written to confront a trend that peaked some 35 years ago, when some ministers in the denomination were beginning to raise legitimate questions about the reliability of Mrs. White's writings. The article, written by Ron Graybill, a leading Seventh-Day Adventist historian and apologist, reflects the denomination's official position with regard to Mrs.

White and her works. The article is titled, "Ellen White's role in doctrine formation," and it says this: We believe the revelation and inspiration of both the Bible and Ellen White's writings to be of equal quality.

The superintendence of the Holy Spirit was just as careful and thorough in one case as in the other. White's writings in our church. Why should a distinction be made? In the first place, Ellen White clearly placed the Bible alone in the category of standard and rule for doctrine. Then there are practical reasons for making the distinction. Only if we refrain from using Ellen White as a normative authority for doctrine can we hope to meet other Christians on a common ground and expect them to see the validity of our doctrines.

If you follow his argument, he is saying, quite clearly, that Mrs. White's writings are equal to Scripture in every sense that would matter. But her writings must nevertheless be kept distinct from Scripture, because that's the only way "to meet other Christians on a common ground. White to be as authoritative as the Bible, because that would undermine Seventh-Day Adventist attempts to solicit agreement and endorsements from evangelicals. Now I realize it may sound like I'm putting a cynical slant on his argument, but that is clearly what he is implying.

If both the Bible and "the revelation and inspiration" of Mrs. White's writings are indeed "of equal quality"and if you're willing to be honest and up front about what you believe what would "common ground" have to do with anything? Faithful evangelicals who truly believe in the authority of Scripture don't downplay our conviction that the Bible is the Word of God in order to find "common ground" with unbelievers.

They come regularly in the mail from Seventh-Day Adventists who promise that reading it would awaken John MacArthur to a whole new understanding of the truth.

It's a level of veneration Seventh-Day Adventists rarely show for Scripture. So that's the first characteristic of a cult: extrabiblical revelation. They do base their belief system on a gnostic-style secret that they have been made privy to through the visions of Ellen White.

What about characteristic number 2? Bear in mind that Mrs. White's very first vision, and her first influential prophecy, was that early declaration that the door of salvation was closed to everyone but the Millerites who remained faithful and still believed the prediction even after the Great Disappointment. They were the only ones going to heaven. She claimed she had this vision in December of , just weeks after the Great Disappointment. Here, in her own words, is how she recorded that prophecy.

She said: While praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell on me, and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world.

I turned to look for the Advent people in the world, but could not find them when a voice said to me, "Look again, and look a little higher.

On this path the Advent people were travelling to the City, which was at the farther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path. This light shone all along the path, and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the City, they were safe.

But soon some grew weary, and they said the City was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Others rashly denied the light behind them, and said that it was not God [who] had led them out so far. The light behind them went out leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus, and fell off the path down in the dark and wicked world below.

It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another. All of these practices are unnecessary for the New Testament believer, and harmful to our Christian liberty, which Paul calls our "prize" in Colossians:.

In summary, the church's fraudulent beginnings, false doctrines, legalistic requirements and restrictive governing practices lead to the conclusion that the Adventist religion is not orthodox Christianity.

It operates as a cult-like organization founded on the teaching of false prophets and holds to views contrary to the plain teaching of scripture. Though the Seventh-Day Adventist church may count many true Christians among its ranks, those believers have been deceived and are being mistaught concerning the Bible, salvation, eternity and the Christian life.

Therefore, w e strongly recommend any believer caught up in Adventism to flee this false church and seek for true Christian fellowship elsewhere, preferably in a church that holds to orthodox, biblical truth. This pattern suggests that Satan was at work at one time to establish these false churches in an effort to confuse and mislead new believers during the Great Awakening period of North American Christianity.

Together, these four false religions continue to deceive many today. Email Facebook Twitter. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a cult in this way: …"a small religious group that is not part of a larger and more accepted religion and that has beliefs regarded by many people as extreme or dangerous.

But as Jesus predicted and Peter repeated: Matt. It would simply be God being God. There was so much cognitive dissonance in my life that thinking became difficult. The publication of my first novel resulted in the loss of friends, harassment, vandalism, and threats. It was a horror novel—worse, an erotic horror novel—called Seductions. Sadventism teaches that fiction in general is wicked, so you can imagine its attitude toward horror fiction.

I became depressed and began drinking heavily. I spent years in a fog. But I came out of it. Then I decided to learn for myself what I did and did not believe. If it was not the intention of Mrs. This attitude differs from that of scholars who highly regard the writings of Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and so forth. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever written a book aiming to show that Calvin or Luther was always correct doctrinally and in personal life and ethics.

White and Her Critics , to demonstrate the immaculate nature of Mrs. I know of no SDA literature that hints that Mrs. White was ever wrong. This has led, and can only lead, to the notion that there is an intrinsic affinity between her writings and those of the Bible. This attitude toward the writings of Mrs. White corresponds in some measure to the regard with which other movements hold the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and Joseph Smith.

White was inerrant. Evangelicals normally reserve inerrancy for the Word of God alone, and extend this neither to Calvin nor Mrs. Contemporary evangelicals who interrogated SDA could profitably have phrased their inquiries about Mrs. White err at any point theologically or in ethical and personal life, or was she inerrant in all of her teachings, pronouncements and ethics?

No one will say this about Calvin, Luther, or any other Protestant leaders. SDA claims its teachings are based upon the Bible. In each instance the biblical passages are listed at the end of each statement showing the grounds on which their convictions are founded. Without biblical backing, however, are statements 13, 14 and These deal with one of the touchiest segments of SDA teaching—the 70 weeks and years and the cleansing of the sanctuary.

The date , which involves the years, and the cleansing of the sanctuary are pivotal to SDA faith. Destroy these and certain conclusions are self-evident.

There would then be no adequate basis for the existence of SDA. But there are no definite statements in the Bible which support the views of SDA at this point. Their conclusions are derived from the teachings of Mrs.

White, in turn, are the result of her interpretation of the Bible. Even this consideration, complex as it is, does not determine whether SDA is evangelical. One acid test marks off Reformation theology from both sacramental theology and all other viewpoints.

This has to do with soteriology.