Adventist belief breakdown: Belief 1

Adventists have 28 fundamental beliefs written out in pretty language. Here's those beliefs in plain snarky English. I overuse the History In The Bible Podcast as a source.

All beliefs are from official Seventh-Day Adventist Church website, Adventist.org. https://www.adventist.org/beliefs/

Per this website, Adventists reserve the right to change or update beliefs.

Therefore, this page is archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240127045827/https://www.adventist.org/beliefs/

This is Seventh-day Adventist (SDA, or Adventist) belief one debunked (as much as I can).

“BELIEF 1: HOLY SCRIPTURES

“The Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, are the written Word of God, given by divine inspiration.”

Unstated underlying beliefs: There is one god. This god communicates with humans, by this manuscript, the Protestant form of the Bible, which has 66 books in it. The other books included Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox Christian versions of the Bible, well, those books do not count. https://www.historyinthebible.com/supplementary_pages/books-of-the-bible.html

And the epistle of Barnabas, the gospel of Peter, and the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gnostic books discovered in the 20th Century, the other early folks called Marcionites and Montanists that the early church called heretics… All their teachings and books, Adventists don’t believe in them. Adventists don’t mention them either.

https://www.historyinthebible.com/episodes.html

Nope, out of all the versions of the Bible out there, and out of all the world religions out there, and all the holy books on the planet Earth, ONLY the 66 book Protestant Bible is The Truth Version.

“The inspired authors spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

1 Peter 1:21, KJV says: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost

(Read: The Gentle Author has this verse living rent free in her head since childhood. It's attached to a tune.)

Translation: We Adventists like the pretty phrase “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”, so we paraphrased it in this belief of ours. It is vague enough that we use it to hand-wave away any blatant contradictions, errors, mistakes, et al, in the Bible.

See, those errors are introduced by human authors who wrote things down wrong, or whatever other words SDA pastors use to hand-wave away the things. But the bits of the Bible we Adventists pick and choose for ourselves, those bits are The Truth. Humans didn’t goof up when they wrote THOSE verses.

Oh and Ellen White, our plagiarizing prophetess, uses this fancy language to handwave away the things: “Alleged discrepancies and factual errors are only fatal to views of inspiration that demand perfection in human language and in the human instrument presenting the divine message.” https://whiteestate.org/about/issues1/unusual/apparent-discrepancies-and-contradictions/

“In this Word, God has committed to humanity the knowledge necessary for salvation.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: There is such a thing as salvation. This means there's a heaven, a hell which we Adventists say is annihilation (read: God in his great mercy will resurrect all the dead humans who didn’t Adventist well enough, make them kneel down and tell God “Why yes, you told us so”, and then God mercifully burns all the not-Adventist-enough sinners to death). Also there is such a thing called sin, and there’s Jesus who died for humanity’s sin. Also you have to be born again. (Read: Are you Catholic? You don't have to be born again to achieve salvation, per y’all’s doctrine. Born Again-edness is a Protestant thing. The Gentle Author’s knowledge fails on how other versions of Christianity achieve salvation.)

“The Holy Scriptures are the supreme, authoritative, and the infallible revelation of His will.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: The 66 book Protestant Bible, not the other versions out there, is The One True Truth of the one and only god. And we will use the handy vague phrase humans “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” to hand-wave away errors and stuff and things. We will pick and choose what things apply today.

Today, Adventists insist the clean versus unclean meats thang in Leviticus 11 definitely still applies, apparent New Testament verses to the contrary be damned. And all the clobber Bible verses used by anti-LBGTQIA+ humans apply today. The verses about not wearing mixed fibers in clothing, killing folks who pick up wood on the Sabbath, sacrificing animals, a pregnant woman drinking bitter waters to have an abortion if her husband says she cheated, et al? Those verses don’t apply.

“They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the definitive revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God’s acts in history. (Ps. 119:105; Prov. 30:5, 6; Isa. 8:20; John 17:17; 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17; Heb. 4:12; 2 Peter 1:20, 21.)”

Unstated underlying beliefs: The world is literally only 6-10k years old. All things described as happening in the Bible are authentic literal historical events. All evidence and belief to the contrary is from Satan.

Also bonus list of Bible verses in parentheses that probably back up this belief. So we use the Bible to prove the Bible is “the trustworthy record of God in history”, yay circular thinking, which we accuse actual science believers of doing.

And y’all probably won’t look up these verses. It’s a type of virtue signaling, for we are virtuous. Here it means: “Adventists know the Bible and use lots of its verses to prove things.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling

End SDA Belief 1 debunked!