📖 Galatians Intensive — Unit 12: Brothers in the Core — Seventh-day Adventists

Anchor: Romans 14:1-6; 15:7 — with Colossians 2:16-17 (and the contrast of Galatians 1:6-9) (NKJV)

A Word Before We Begin

This final unit takes a different turn. In the three units before it we learned why certain teachings are "another gospel," with which we cannot share the fellowship of the gospel. Now we must guard against the opposite error: treating every believer who differs from us on lesser matters as though he preached another gospel. The very root-test that exposed the cults will, in this case, vindicate true brothers. So we come to the Seventh-day Adventists not as a cult to be refuted but as fellow Christians to be understood — while still speaking honestly about real and important differences. As always, we test by the Word of God and speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

Who Are the Seventh-day Adventists?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church grew out of the Millerite movement of the 1840s. William Miller had predicted that Christ would return in 1844; when He did not, the day became known as "the Great Disappointment." Out of that movement a body formed that came to observe the seventh-day (Saturday) Sabbath and, in time, organized as a denomination in 1863. Ellen G. White was a founding and shaping figure. Today the Adventists are a worldwide church of many millions, widely known for their schools, hospitals, and emphasis on health. Our task is to weigh their teaching honestly: first where they stand on the root of the gospel, and then where we differ.

Where They Stand on the Root

Here is the decisive matter, and it sets the Adventists apart from the groups in the previous units. On the root of the gospel they stand with historic Christianity. They confess the Trinity — "one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons" (their official statement; their early pioneers were not all Trinitarian, but the church settled this and affirms it plainly today). They confess the full and eternal deity of Jesus Christ and His bodily resurrection. They confess the substitutionary atonement — that God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us." And, decisively, they confess that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ: in their own words, "Salvation is all of grace and not of works." On who God is, on who Christ is, and on how a sinner is saved, the Adventists keep the true Christ at the root and grace as the gift. By the root-test of Unit 8, they pass where the cults failed.

Where We Differ (1): The Seventh-day Sabbath

The Adventists keep Saturday, the seventh day, as the Sabbath, and hold it binding upon Christians. Here we honor their conscience but we differ, for Scripture treats the Sabbath as a shadow fulfilled in Christ: "let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ" (Colossians 2:16-17). And the day on which we worship is exactly the kind of matter on which Paul says believers may differ: "One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind" (Romans 14:5). We believe the Lord rose on the first day and that Christians are free in this; an Adventist believes the seventh day still binds. Some Adventists have pressed this further, teaching that Sunday worship will become the "mark of the beast" in the last days, and that we would gently urge them to lay aside. But the day of worship is not the root of the gospel; it is, in Paul's own words, a matter for each conscience.

Where We Differ (2): Ellen G. White and the Spirit of Prophecy

The Adventists regard Ellen G. White as having had the gift of prophecy, and they value her writings highly as what they call the "Spirit of Prophecy." Officially they call her a "lesser light" pointing to the "greater light" of Scripture, and they affirm that the Bible is the final authority. In practice, however, her writings have carried very great weight. Here we hold firmly to sola scriptura: the canon of Scripture is closed and sufficient, and no later writer's words may stand as an authority beside the Bible. This is the distinctive most likely to cause trouble, and we would lovingly plead with our Adventist friends to let Scripture alone be the final and sufficient word. Yet a mistaken estimate of a teacher, serious as it is, is not the same thing as denying the gospel, and many Adventists do treat the Bible as their final court.

Where We Differ (3): 1844, the Investigative Judgment, and the State of the Dead

After the Great Disappointment, the Adventists came to teach that in 1844 Christ entered the Most Holy Place of a heavenly sanctuary to begin an "investigative judgment," reviewing the records of professed believers. We find no biblical basis for this teaching; it grew as a reinterpretation of a failed date, and our deeper concern is that it can cloud the assurance that belongs to all who are in Christ. For the atonement was finished at the cross — "It is finished" (John 19:30) — and "by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14). This is the most serious of the Adventist distinctives, and we would plead with them about it; yet the church itself affirms the finished cross and salvation by grace, and most Adventists rest their hope on Christ. The Adventists also teach that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection (often called "soul sleep") and that the finally lost are destroyed rather than tormented forever (conditional immortality). These are real differences, held by some other Christians as well, and worth careful study; but they do not overturn the gospel.

Another Gospel, or a Brother in Error?

Why, then, do we say "no fellowship" to the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Latter-day Saints, and the prosperity gospel, but "brothers" to the Seventh-day Adventists? Because the test is the root. The cults changed the root — a different God, a different Christ, or a gospel of works and gain — and so Paul's solemn word fell upon them: "even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8). But the Adventists keep the root: the true and triune God, the eternal and crucified Christ, the finished atonement, and salvation by grace through faith. Their errors — a day, a teacher, a sanctuary doctrine, the state of the dead — are real and worth contending over, but they are not the root, and they are not another gospel. And the same apostle who pronounced the curse also wrote, "Who are you to judge another's servant?... Let each be fully convinced in his own mind" (Romans 14:4-5). To treat a true brother who errs on secondary matters as though he preached another gospel is to fall into the opposite extreme from indifference — the extreme of sectarian harshness. This is not a novel judgment. In 1955 and 1956, the evangelical apologist Walter Martin, together with Donald Barnhouse, undertook extensive doctrinal dialogues with leading Adventist theologians, testing them point by point against the very root the cults deny. The result, published as Questions on Doctrine (1957), concluded that Adventists held the essentials of the gospel and stood inside the circle of historic Christian faith — a conclusion that provoked real controversy, since not every evangelical was persuaded, and caution about certain Adventist distinctives persists among some to this day. But the substance of that verdict has held: unlike the Witnesses or the Latter-day Saints, one may be a Seventh-day Adventist and a true follower of Jesus Christ, and to such, fellowship should be extended.

Receiving One Another

So we receive the Seventh-day Adventists as brothers and sisters in Christ. We do not pretend the differences away; we may reason earnestly with them about the Sabbath, about Ellen White, and about 1844, glad to be corrected by Scripture or to persuade by it. But we do not unchurch them, nor withhold the Lord's Table from a believing Adventist, nor treat them as we must treat the cults. "Receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God" (Romans 15:7). And here the whole course finds its balance. We guard the gospel jealously against every other gospel — that is the lesson of Galatians and of the three units before this one. And we love every true brother generously across our lesser differences — that is the lesson of Romans 14. The root-test keeps us from both ditches: from calling a cult a brother, and from calling a brother a cult. May God give us courage for the first and grace for the second, that in all things Christ may be honored and His true church may stand as one.

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