Adventist belief breakdown: Belief 4

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church has 28 fundamental beliefs. I snarkily list the underlying unspoken beliefs. Belief 4 is "God the Son (Jesus Christ)".

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

Per their 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/

Links to all prior snarked beliefs are available at the bottom of this post.

Note on underlying beliefs: Multiple Adventist beliefs have the same unspoken underlying beliefs. Kindly forgive The Gentle Author’s copying and pasting prior relevant snarks when this happens.

Adventist Belief Four

4. God the Son (Jesus Christ)

“God the eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs:

First, note that “Jesus Christ” is in parentheses and Adventists in no way intend it to remind you of the vulgar blasphemous exclamation “Jesus Christ!”.

Second, there is a nonhuman being who has and always will exist. We call him God. He's somewhere in Orion’s Belt, and also everywhere else too, according to our plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White. (“The atmosphere parted and rolled back; then we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The holy city will come down through that open space.” https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/3.95#95)

Of all the world religions with gods, only the Protestant Christian one is the correct god. Of all the Protestant denominations, only one has god’s Endtimes Truth, and that's us, Adventists. Yay us!

Now this god is made of three parts, called the Trinity, which we Adventists decided to believe in in 1957. Before that we argued about it. Our plagiarizing prophetess’ husband didn't believe in the Trinity. https://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/Trinity-in-SDA-History.pdf

We’re talking about the “son” part of god here. This part has always been the son. This 1/3 of god came down to earth and became a human named Jesus Christ.

Definitely not like other incarnations: This incarnation is wholly unlike all the other incarnations other religions have. For instance, it's not like: Vishnu incarnate, Mithra incarnate, Horus incarnate, Maitreya incarnate, Dalai Lama incarnate, and the rest of the incarnates here: https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/religion-general/incarnation

Three very learned people on how Hindu incarnation is or ain’t like Christian incarnation: Per Wikipedia, two Christian theologians “Oduyoye and Vroom” argue that Hindu incarnation is totally definitely different from Christian incarnation. (In The Gentle Author’s experience with accidentally debunking Adventism, two learned people saying a theological thing is definitely absolutely not at all like another theological thing means the two things are pretty damn close.)

Mercy Oduyoye is a Methodist African theologian with Masters in theology from Cambridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Oduyoye

H. M. Vroom, with such a fabulous last name, is probably the person who wrote all these theological papers, and appears to not have their own Wikipedia page, alas: https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/H.-M.-Vroom/2085485896

Meanwhile, there is a Jesuit priest named Noel Sheth, who is from India, a graduate of Harvard theology, and an expert on languages and religions in India. Well, that guy says Hindu incarnation is not properly understood by Oduyoye and Vroom and kinda IS like Christian incarnation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnation

Source on Friar Noel Sheth: http://buddhist-buddha-christianjesuitjesus.com/styled/index.html

So you can choose to believe the person from Ghana and the person named Vroom, from who knows where, on this issue. Or you can believe the guy who was born, raised, educated on the subcontinent where Hinduism exists. Or you can decide you don't know and that's fine too.

Early Christians argued what incarnation means: Now, the early Christians debated what the hell “incarnation” meant until 451 CE, at the Council of Chalcedon. (Not to be confused with the gemstone chalcedony.)

At that Council, all other beliefs “were defined as heresies. This included Docetism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Adoptionism, and Sabellianism”. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnation_(Christianity)

Adventists don't bother telling you all that.

Adventists pretend the early Christian church was totes like current Adventism. So they omit the six different incarnation theologies deemed heresies in 451 CE. Also they omit that there's scholarly debate by very educated scholars on Hindu versus Christian versions of incarnation, the similarity of.

Adventists prefer to overlook all that and preach vegetarian End Times things instead.

“Through Him all things were created,”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: Yup everything was created “through" this particular 1/3 of god, but also per Adventist belief 3, god the father “is creator”.

So god the father is creator, and somehow “through” god the son “all things were created”. Whatever the hell that means.

Undoubtedly there are learned scholars debating what the hell this exactly means, and likely it has been debated since even before 451 CE. This blog post is getting too long so the reader can research that if they want. Have fun.

About creation: Don’t forget that all things were created 6,000-10,000 actual years ago and all sciences that point towards an earth any older are from Satan. Satan made it up to trick people into not literally believing in the Bible, so that people will go to hell.

OR god created the world and universe to look old to challenge human beliefs so that humans have to blindly believe without evidence that the Bible is literal. (Read: The Gentle Author was taught god actually did this.) In which case, this god should be properly named after a trickster god. “Loki” would do.

(Go watch Loki, it's fun.)

The Adventist church and grifters who support the Adventist church, and other grifters who spread Young Earth Creationism lies make millions in tax-free money promoting the pseudoscience Young Earth Creationism.

“[Through god the son] the character of God is revealed,”

This means, in plain English, that Adventist pastors hand-wave away all the atrocities god did, commanded, and enabled in the Old Testament. They say that Jesus made a new covenant. Therefore Old Testament genocidal baby-killing god the father is REALLY actually loving, like Jesus was, except for when Jesus wasn’t loving.

“[Through god the son] the salvation of humanity is accomplished,”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: There is a thing called “sin” that causes all the bad everything that happens in this world. Everything from worms specially evolved to live inside a living mammal’s eyes, to cancer in babies, to thorns on a rose, to every single death of everything—all that is caused by sin. And also all the horrible things humans do, that is caused by sin.

It started when the first human woman ate a fruit in an ancient garden 6,000 to 10,000 years ago and then gave some more fruit to her husband. Because she ate it, sin came into the world. It's also why people are farmers and why women have painful births.

Sin requires blood to be spilled to make up for it somehow because reasons. Why, is literally never stated in Adventism. It's The Rules. But anyways it's why the Israelites killed so many critters in their Tabernacle and then in their Temple.

They definitely didn't kill so many male critters because a farmer only needs one male and a bunch more females to have a functional farm. Nope.

Because 1/3 of god became the human Jesus Christ, and sacrificed himself to the other 2/3 of himself, his blood pays the penalty for all the sins. Why did the Israelites had to kill all those poor animals when Jesus’ blood is the blood that actually counts? Because reasons. It's The Rules. Anyone way back when the Israelites sacrificed all those animals, literally everyone who saw a sheep get killed in the Temple automatically thought how Jesus would come die. It's foreshadowing.

“and the world is judged [through god the son].” 

Unspoken underlying beliefs: Satan, an immortal being created by god who decided to become evil, claims that no human can be perfect so therefore sin is normal and ok because reasons. This proves god has unrealistic expectations of humans, and is unjust, says Satan. Jesus became a human, lived a perfect life and proved Satan wrong. Thus the world is judged, because Jesus is perfect, therefore humans can claim to be perfect through his blood magic. Because ineffable reasons.

”Forever truly God, He became also truly human, Jesus the Christ.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: First, Jesus’ pronouns are he/him.

Next, here the Adventists repeat what the Chalcedonian 451 CE Council decided the definition of Jesus Christ’s incarnation means:

“we [all 520 church leader dudes at the meeting] all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the Self-same of a rational soul and body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian_Definition

These words were argued and debated over and Mean Important Things, and are way over The Gentle Author’s head.

“He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: There's another 1/3 of god, not the father, but the holy spirit. This 1/3 of god made a girl named Mary get pregnant. Mary had never had a penis inside of her vagina. And the holy spirit didn't use a penis to get Mary pregnant either. No penises at all were involved to get Mary pregnant with Jesus, and that is very important. The kid that Mary gave birth to was fully god and fully human and named Jesus Christ.

“He lived and experienced temptation as a human being, but perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: Jesus never sinned but was tempted just like everyone ever. His life absolutely makes all the atrocities Old Testament god did become “righteous” and “loving”.

”By His miracles He manifested God’s power and was attested as God’s promised Messiah.”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: Jesus performed miracles that defied nature. This definitely happened. In no way are they stories embellished with every retelling by followers. These miracles absolutely proved Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Never mind that Jewish people say Jesus definitely wasn't the Messiah for a whole bunch of legit reasons. https://medium.com/@frankbreslin41/why-the-jews-couldnt-accept-jesus-as-the-messiah-or-god-61f222ddbe0c

Never mind that no non-biblical writer circa 30s CE noticed nor documented Jesus’ miracles. And, yes, there were writers and historians around then. Marcus Velleius Paterculus is one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velleius_Paterculus

Others are listed here. I counted 15 unique individual writers and quit counting: https://historum.com/t/list-of-early-writers-who-could-have-mentioned-jesus.124043/

He suffered and died voluntarily on the cross for our sins and in our place,

Unspoken underlying beliefs: This 1/3 of god had to die because god says the sins of the world require a blood sacrifice, for reasons never ever specified. It's The Rules. So that 1/3 of god volunteered to sacrifice himself to the other 2/3 of himself, for all the people in the world.

Because sacrificing all those animals over hundreds of years in the Temple didn't count. Because reasons.

[Jesus] was raised from the dead,

Unspoken underlying beliefs: Jesus rose from the dead. There is proof: Humans said they saw him after he rose from the dead. Except that science shows eyewitness testimony is very faulty and not to be trusted, so there's that which sucks. https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2020/03/08/eyewitness-testimony-reliable-or-unreliable/

Humans died because they refused to say Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and humans never die for things that are factually untrue.

Except those Heaven’s Gate humans who killed themselves to go be in a spaceship by Hale Bopp comet? They had faith so they have to be right, too.

Also “faith is the substance of things unseen”, the Bible says, so believing a thing hard enough makes it real.

“and ascended to heaven to minister in the heavenly sanctuary on our behalf.”

Underlying beliefs: So there is a physical Tabernacle in heaven. Heaven is in the constellation Orion. God had the Israelites make an exacting copy of the Tabernacle here on earth. You can read all about it in Exodus.

Also you can see a Roman carving of the Temple menorah that was looted by the Romans from the Temple. It's a real thing, carved into a thing called The Arch of Titus, and real cool. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/arts/design/menorah-on-arch-of-titus-in-roman-forum-was-rich-yellow.html

So Jesus has gone up to heaven, and he hangs out in that GOAT Tabernacle, and argues with the other 2/3 of god that because he died, blood magic rules are fulfilled, so humans who say they trust in Jesus will go to heaven.

Also Jesus is in the Most Holy Place of the heavenly Tabernacle, searching all the books of every human’s life, and checking out if they've been saved. Jesus went in there on October 22, 1844. You'd think god would be able to figure out if humans are saved or not a lot faster than [today’s date minus October 22, 1844], but nope.

Jesus is in the Most Holy Place, all by himself, studying books on how naughty humans are or are not. Kinky.

”He will come again in glory for the final deliverance of His people and the restoration of all things.”

Underlying beliefs: Jesus is physically returning with Heaven from constellation Orion. Before that, non-Adventists will make a law that everyone has to go to church on Sunday or be put to death. Then non-Adventists will torture Adventists medieval style.

Adventists will tell your teenage kids that they might be burned to death at the stake during that time, called the Time of Trouble. Also that that time will be worse than anyone can imagine it being. So on top of all the other awful stressors teens have, true believing Adventist teens get to worry if they've got enough faith to burn to death for Jesus. And feel guilty because of course they don't want to burn to death at the stake. And also spent time trying trying to imagine things worse than imaginable.

But don't worry! After the unimaginable horrors, Jesus returns and makes all the world anew! Yay!

(Isa. 53:4-6; Dan. 9:25-27; Luke 1:35; John 1:1-3, 14; 5:22; 10:30; 14:1–3, 9, 13; Rom. 6:23; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; 2 Cor. 3:18; 5:17-19; Phil. 2:5–11; Col. 1:15-19; Heb. 2:9-18; 8:1, 2.)

These are the virtue signaling verses that definitely prove all the above. Adventists theology is 100% proven by cherry-picked verses mushed together like cherries in cobbler.

Fin snark.

Why The Gentle Author calls Ellen Gould White “the Adventist plagiarizing prophetess”: Test The Prophet shows original Victorian Era books, first defining the Victorian definition of “plagiarize”. Then he shows the original authors’ books with content that Ellen White copied, including texts written earlier by others. Ellen White claimed that these texts were her visions. https://www.youtube.com/@TesttheProphet

All prior Adventist beliefs, snarked:

Belief 1 is snarked here:

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/adventist-belief-breakdown-belief

Belief 2 is snarked here:

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/adventist-belief-breakdown-belief-91e

Belief 3 is snarked here:

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/adventist-belief-breakdown-belief-961