Bible Truths for Seventh-Day Adventists (SDA), part 4 – What is Truth

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Seventh-Day Adventism teaches that the sins of God’s people are put on Satan, and Satan takes them away, paying the full penalty for sin: “Satan [is] the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will finally be placed. . . . Christ . . . will place . . . the sins of his people . . . upon Satan, who, in the execution of the judgment, must bear the final penalty.”[1]“Satan, bearing the guilt of all the sins . . . [of] God’s people, . . . will at last suffer the full penalty for sin[.] . . . Thus the great plan of redemption will reach its accomplishment[.]”[2]

 

6.) The true church teaches that Christ completed the work of atonement or redemption when He died on the cross, and all believers have had their sins perfectly and forever atoned for by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. “[T]hrough the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all . . . this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God . . . for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb 10:10-14). On the cross, Christ said: “It is finished” (Jn 19:30), because the work of atonement was complete there. All believers “were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” and can testify: “we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement” (Rom 5:10-11). “Jesus Christ . . . loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rev 1:5), they can say, because they are “redeemed . . . with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1:18-19), and “theblood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). Immediately after His ascension in the first century, Christ entered “the holiest of all . . . heaven itself,” for He had already “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself . . . by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb 9).

 

Seventh-Day Adventism teaches that Jesus Christ did not complete the work of atonement on the cross and that His blood has not taken away the sin of believers. Christ supposedly did not even initiate the final work of atonement until 1844, and atonement will not be done until Satan bears the final penalty for the sins of the world: “The blood of Christ . . . was not to cancel the sin . . . it would stand on record in the sanctuary until the final atonement . . . [when] Satan shall suffer the final punishment. Christ’s work for the redemption of men . . . will be closed by the removal of sin from the heavenly sanctuary and the placing of these sins upon Satan, who will bear the final penalty.”[3] Writing in the 1800s, Ellen White stated: “For eighteen centuries . . . penitent believers[’s] . . . sins still remained upon the books of record. . . . [B]efore Christ’s work for the redemption of men is completed there is [yet] a work of atonement for the removal of sin . . . [only] in 1844 . . . Christ . . . entered . . . the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary to [begin to] perform the closing work of atonement . . . [w]hen Christ removes the sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary [at the end of the world] . . . [and] He will place them upon Satan[.] . . . Satan . . . must bear the final penalty.”[4]

 

7.) The true church teaches that Jesus Christ intercedes as High Priest for all of His people (Jn 17:8, 20), guaranteeing their salvation to the uttermost and making their eternal home in heaven certain (Jn 17:24). Christ “is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25), being their “high priest for ever” (Heb 6:20). Nobody can be saved in the sight of the holy God without Jesus Christ as Mediator (Jn 14:6; Ac 4:12), for only “through him” can “we . . . have access . . . unto the Father” (Eph 2:18).

 

Seventh Day Adventism teaches: “Those who are living upon the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above are to stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator.”[5] “Jesus ceases to plead for man” during “the time of reckoning with His servants.”[6]

 

8.) The true church teaches that at the moment one receives eternal life through faith in Christ God miraculously destroys the dominion of sin (Rom 6:14) and gives all His own a new nature (2 Cor 5:17), but not until heaven is anybody sinless: “[T]here is no man that sinneth not” (1 Ki 8:46). Anyone who thinks he is sinless will be damned: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8, 10). Salvation is not by striving to make oneself inwardly perfect but by faith in Jesus Christ, and the sinner is counted perfectly righteous judicially before God because of Christ’s righteousness credited to the believer, not because of success in the impossible task of making oneself inwardly perfect (Eph 2:8-9). Christ will supernaturally make His people perfectly holy in heart at His coming, but they will not be inwardly perfect until then. All Christians are judicially righteous (justified) now (Rom 5:1), and the Holy Ghost is transforming them inwardly now (2 Cor 3:18), but they can still all say with the Apostle Paul: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect” (Phil 3:12). Believers can say, “now are we the sons of God,” but only “when [Christ] shall appear, we shall be like him” perfectly (1 Jn 3:2).

 

Seventh-Day Adventism teaches that people can become sinless, and becoming perfect is essential to salvation—failure to be as inwardly holy on earth as the saints will be in heaven means damnation. Grace is not defined Biblically as God’s free and unmerited favor saving guilty sinners, but “grace” is the ability to do works to make oneself perfect and earn salvation: “As the Son of man was perfect in His life, so His followers are to be perfect in their life.”[7] “Those only who through faith in Christ obey all of God’s commandments will reach the condition of sinlessness in which Adam livedbefore his transgression.”[8] “The Lord requires no less of the soul now, than He required of Adam in Paradise before he fell—perfect obedience, perfect righteousness.”[9] “[H]uman beings may in this life attain to perfection of character.”[10] “One defect . . . [not] overcome . . . makes the man imperfect, and closes against him the gate of the Holy City. . . . In all the redeemed host not one defect will be seen.”[11] The Adventist must make himself perfectly inwardly holy on earth or he will never be saved, because there will be no inward transformation that makes the SDA inwardly perfect when Christ returns—if he has not made himself as holy as a heavenly being now, he will never be saved: “The saint in heaven must first be a saint upon earth. . . . Many are deceiving themselves by thinking the character will be transformed at the coming of Christ; but there will be no conversion of heart at his appearing. Our defects of character must here be repented of, and through the grace of Christ we must overcome them while probation shall last.”[12] “When Christ shall come, He will not change the character of any individual,”[13] and “God will accept nothing but purity and holiness; one spot, one wrinkle, one defect in the character, will forever debar them from heaven[.]”[14] After all, if one is to be accepted before a holy God without a mediator, he has to make himself sinless.