Chapter One: How It All Began

Some time before Christmas, several years ago, my mother gave me a card she got in the mail.  It gave a website from a man named Herschel Hughes who felt that he had been given a message from God for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  I had been on my own journey of discovery since May of that year regarding some of the foundations of the church I had been born into as a fifth generation Adventist. I was in medical school in Loma Linda in the 70’s when Ron Numbers and Walter Rae had made their disturbing discoveries of Ellen White’s widespread plagiarism and gross inaccuracies. Ron Numbers was one of my professors when his book was published. I watched with deep concern when their accurate discoveries were labeled as disloyalty, and Ellen White was vigorously defended. I listened with amazement to the explanation that plagiarism was a common practice in her time even though she had frequently ascribed the materials she had copied from others to visions received by her directly from God.  I had always given her the benefit of the doubt that she had a prophetic gifting but was just human and had gone astray. I didn’t feel any urge to study into the problem myself though I was well aware of the information that was being made public.

My heart has always been pulled to Jesus and those unpleasant issues didn’t attract me.  They seemed to be a distraction from the desire I had to be close to the Lord. During the late 80’s thru early 2000 I was captured by the passionate, life

-changing experience of being baptized and possessed by the Holy Spirit.  It was not until May of 2005 that I began to see glimpses of the roots to problems that seemed to be recurring themes in the lives of people I loved. Cleansing Stream (a program developed by Jack Hayford, then senior pastor of Church on the Way, Van Nuys, California. Their website can be visited at: http://www.cleansingstream.org/) taught me much about breaking the power of the enemy in our lives. As I studied in earnest I began to see certain errors of teaching and belief in our origins and realized they were clues to what was holding some of us back from freedom and deliverance. It disturbed me that we were not applying the principles from Cleansing Stream to those problem areas. In fact if the subject was even mentioned people reacted very strongly in various ways.  But whatever the reasons given, the end result was a refusal to discuss, study or deal with the inroads of the enemy into our own camp. God began showing me areas where I needed further study whether anyone else was interested in delving into the questions or not.  It was while I was in the process of my own study, that had resulted in a 213-page compilation of material, that I first listened to the message God gave Herschel Hughes. ( Appendix 1)

Surprising to me was that his message paralleled my own quest.  And God began revealing others to me who had been given the same call to study subjects that have needed change from the very foundations of Adventism. A copy of Dr. Hughes’ message is included in Appendix 1 at the end of this study along with the website link to an audio presentation he gave in a local SDA church.  I would encourage you to listen to the message itself.  It gives a much clearer picture of the person giving the prophetic word and the circumstances of how he received it. After a two year hiatus from a Southern California Seventh-day Adventist church I felt that the Lord was sending me back. I was somewhat mystified by that since I was quite happy where I was, but I followed the Lord’s urging and returned.  This church was unique among most Adventist churches in that it acknowledged and moved in the gifts of the Spirit. The church had been thru some difficult trauma and had a promising new pastor who was eager to pursue the leading of the Holy Spirit already begun in that church. He had instituted what he called a “prophetic council” that was patterned after the model of the early church mentored by Paul. “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two--or at the most three--should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret.  If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.”1 Cor 14:26-29 (NIV) He encouraged people to practice and gain experience in hearing God. The council was a gathering of others who were also trying to walk out the instructions for the church found in the New Testament.

I had already presented the information I had gathered regarding Ellen White to the pastor for his consideration. He called a small group together to discuss it and felt that at some point it may be good to present the material to a larger group interested in studying more deeply into the subject. But nothing more was said about it after that time.

Sometime in September 2005, one of the young women in the church felt that she had received a message from God predicting a powerful, destructive earthquake in Southern California in October, just one month away. She was invited to present what she felt she had heard  to the prophetic council to evaluate its content. The consensus of the council was that the earthquake would be spiritual rather than literal. And as I look back now at their conclusion I believe they were being prepared for what was coming to the church.

It was in October that I listened to Hughes’ message and was convicted that he had, indeed, heard from God and his message was a message of mercy and warning that needed to be taken seriously. It was reassuring to me that I was hearing the same details in my own spirit and immediately wrote him an email telling him of my own journey and asking if it would be possible to connect with him and his wife. They lived within an hour of my home. I heard nothing from him. I sent the website link to the pastor and asked him to listen to the presentation. I’m not certain that he listened but he did make a copy of the written transcript. Finally the pastor decided that he would read the written transcript to the prophetic council on January 17– just to be fair. This was now January 14, 2006. The subject was presented in such a flippant way at church that people laughed. It was obvious that it would not be taken seriously, so I went into prayer. The next day, Sunday, January 15, three months after I had written to Herschel Hughes, he called me on the phone and said that the Lord had highlighted my email and impressed him to call me. He had received thousands of emails, understandably many of them rather unpleasant, and had not responded to any but mine. I explained to him what was happening at church in two days and asked if he would be willing to present his message in person to the prophetic council. He agreed to do so.

While there was some antagonism and anger evident at the meeting, for the most part people were respectful. After a question and answer period they asked him to leave so a response could be formulated with just the church members and leadership present. No one wanted to make a decision about whether the message was from God or what to do with it, but to their credit they did come to a consensus to study further into the points of conflict identified in his talk.

The pastor called me later and asked if I would take all of the Friday night meetings in March 2006 to do just that. I realized the subject could barely be touched in that short time, but I agreed to try.  The week before I was to start I learned from one of the church board members that all of the Friday night meetings in March had been reassigned to other speakers though no one had informed me. I called the pastor and he had changed his mind and no longer felt the issues deserved so much time. He did, however, offer me one Friday night in March. I realized that very little could be accomplished in that period of time, but trusted that if God wanted something else to happen He could make it happen. So, along with my prayer partners, we went into fervent prayer. 

The evening in March came and I decided to present an overview of the problem. It was an introduction to the subjects that needed further study. At the end of the study the pastor had brought an overhead slide that was intended to diffuse any “confusion” my talk may have caused and redirect the church back to the agenda he had already established for the church. Then, much to my surprise, he called me back up to the front to field questions. At the end the pastor asked me, on the spot, if I would teach a series of classes on these subjects. He then asked me when I wanted to start, where I wanted to teach and what time the classes would be held. So it was established that a series of classes would meet in the church every other Saturday afternoon at 3:00 PM. God had opened a way.

These classes have now been completed. They resulted in much controversy and discomfort in the church, but they also resulted in the freedom and deliverance of over forty people. The studies have now traveled to several countries and are being used by missionaries who have encountered the teachings of Adventism that are making inroads into their mission fields.

If you have ever wondered why Adventist teaching and belief  are in such contrast with the rest of Christianity I hope that you will allow yourself the intellectual freedom to investigate the reasons for those differences. The greatest joy in this experience for me were the testimonies of those who faithfully came to the classes. They had discovered Jesus in a deeper, more personal way than ever before. The light in their eyes and faces was, and still is, clearly evident.

The majority of my life was spent as a content Adventist. I am not coming at this from a disgruntled or disaffected perspective. My history  in Adventism was very positive. And I am not in the least bit inclined to castigate the people or the organization that nurtured and loved me. But what I do care about is the pursuit of truth, wherever that leads. I believe that the Bible can be trusted and that it is the only safe guide for the development of our Christian beliefs and doctrines.

It has been surprising to me that when a number of non-Adventists have read the studies they have expressed their own needs to be released from legalism in their own traditions. I’m hoping that these studies (there are five subjects: An Introduction, The Sabbath, The State of the Dead, The Investigative Judgment, and Ellen White) will also be helpful to non-Adventists who want to understand what Adventism contains at its core. But I am speaking primarily to Adventists who have felt the pull to study more deeply into the origins and foundations of their beliefs. Because I am from those roots I will identify myself with that history and use the pronouns we and us.

Most of us have been well indoctrinated into the key texts and scriptures used to support the fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventism. But as I have studied the Bible over the years I have often bumped into texts that jarred me into seeing that many beliefs I had considered inviolable cannot be supported by scripture. Those are the ones dealt with in the message Dr. Hughes gave in January, 2006 to a somewhat reluctant audience. Some of you have run across scriptures that have affected you the same way. For others it will come as a complete surprise that there is even a question of soundness in the doctrines of Adventism. Because of the ways I was taught to interpret the Bible, I am still being surprised by scriptures that have been hidden to my eyes for most of my life. Commendably, part of the heritage of Adventism includes love and respect for the scriptures. We have been taught to test all things by the word of God. 

My surprise, as I have subjected the troubling teachings to the Bible, has been finding that what I thought I knew is not even in the Bible. And just like you, when I have been confronted with something big that cuts across my presuppositions, it has created tension and discomfort internally.  It takes courage to undertake an honest study of the word of God when it has the potential of shaking up our comfortable, familiar surroundings. Though there may be some unpleasant aspects to studying with a genuine desire to know the truth, it will bring unexpected rewards. I believe that God is inviting us right now to sit at His feet and let Him disentangle us from anything that is not truth. 

We are standing in a kairos (prophetically significant) time in Adventist history.  From many corners of the Christian church at large I am hearing that God is calling people and groups to reinvestigate their foundations and clean out the debris and falsehood that has been allowed to creep into the purity of the gospel. This is a time for truth. Just as Paul was constantly calling the church back to sound doctrine so the Holy Spirit is calling the church to worship in truth and spirit. Adventism, too, is being given the opportunity to confront errors that have had a grip on us for far too long. We don’t have to live with them anymore. We don’t have to wait for the General Conference to make an official edict in order to investigate these subjects for ourselves. In fact we are commanded to come under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Himself; into His classroom where He will lead us into truth. The mistakes of our spiritual parents don’t have to affect our freedom in Christ. Though it will not be an easy process it can produce a pleasing harvest to the Lord.  We stand at a crossroads.  We can take the challenge and allow God to make us one of those miracles of transformation.

Being an Adventist is not like being a Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or any other evangelical denomination. The others have never been listed as cults. Adventism has been, and is listed, with the cults by a number of experts. So when we confront the spirit of Adventism to cast it off it is not equivalent to getting rid of the spirit of Methodism, Baptists, Presbyterians or any Christian denomination. Walter Martin, a noted reference regarding cults, held interviews in the 1950’s with four Adventist theologians, one of whom was a frequent houseguest of ours during that time in Redding, PA.  There was much debate, some of it rather heated.  Those discussions resulted in a book called Questions on Doctrines. It was published in 1957 at Martin’s insistence as a statement of orthodoxy to Christian belief.  It was under the condition that this book be published that Martin would, with provision, remove the Seventh-day Adventist Church from the cult status. Up to this time Martin had included Adventism with the cults in his well known book The Kingdom of the Cults.

There was so much uproar from Adventist church members about Questions on Doctrine, which refuted much of what Adventists taught, that very shortly after its introduction it was removed from publication. Unfortunately, Martin’s book, which gave Adventism a guarded nod as a Christian denomination, had already been published.  In an interview with Doug Hackleman from “Adventist Currents” (Appendix 2) Walter Martin stated that he was very seriously considering reinstating the church’s cult status.  He wrote a letter to the GC president asking three critical questions (Appendix 3).  The decision to place the church back into cult status hinged on their answers to those three questions.  The questions were never answered (Appendix 4) and shortly thereafter, in 1989, Walter Martin died.  There are other experts in the cults, notably David W. Cloud and Anthony Hoekema, who strongly disagreed with Walter Martin’s conclusions and felt that he had created great confusion in the body of Christ and had betrayed the evangelical community. (Appendix 4)  They continue to consider Adventism a cult.  Interestingly, it is the very doctrines mentioned in the message we heard from Dr. Hughes and those covered by these studies that are cited as the offending doctrines by those questioning Adventist’s claims to be a Christian denomination. It seems reasonable to investigate why evangelical Christians would consider Adventism to be a cult and not, say, the Baptists, Assemblies of God, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. so that if there is validity to the charges they can be corrected?

It feels threatening to questions beliefs that have defined our lives. But refusing to do so suggests fear that the teachings cannot stand up under scriptural scrutiny. The group that heard Dr. Hughes present his message came to a unanimous decision to look at the problem areas thru the lens of the Bible. That is the decision of integrity. And so, we will begin our study with the first part of that message which serves as a spur to look at the problems. We needed to look at them far before this; but we can start now. ii

In the next chapter, we will discuss why we should even bother with this. If you have been an Advenist all or much of your life, you probably see the Sabbath as a given. But perhaps there is more to discover than you have considered before. There is much more to come.

problems. W

e needed to look at them far before this; but we can start now.