Seventh-day Adventist belief breakdown: belief 15 of 28

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has 28 fundamental beliefs. I list the underlying unspoken beliefs whilst snarking as possible. Belief 15 is "Baptism". Includes post-baptism gender roles snark.

Jul 19, 2024

Accompanying image is from Wikipedia article on baptism. It is a pre-Adventist, so pre-1844 CE, depiction of a documented ancient early Christian baptism technique that would scandalize plenty of Adventists I grew up with. There are dudes’ skins showing and it ain't baptism by immersion. pearl clutching intensifies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism It is:

“By Masachio, Baptism of the Neophytes ,1425–1426 (Brancacci Chapel, Florence). This painting depicts baptism by affusion [baptism by pouring onto the head, first documented as a baptism practice in Christianity circa 100CE, an historical fact denied by the Adventists I grew up with]. The artist may have chosen an archaic form for this depiction of baptism by St. Peter.”

Intro info: 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/

Seventh-day Adventists refer to themselves as “SDA” or “Adventist” for short. My writings do too.

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

Exhaustive source to debunk the Adventist pseudoscience called Young Earth Creationism (YEC), and scholarly source showing Adventist prophetess Ellen White’s plagiarized “visions from god” sources, are also at bottom of this post.

Onto snark of SDA belief 15!

15. Baptism

Preliminary unspoken assumptions: There is an immortal being who made everything including the earth and everything on it. This being is all powerful, all loving, all knowing. Adventists call this being “god” and use he/him pronouns to describe god.

First, god made immortal beings called “angels”. God and his angels live in a utopian paradise called “heaven”. It’s a real physical place, a city. Per Adventist plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White, heaven is located in the Constellation Orion:

“…we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The Holy City [heaven] will come down through that open space.” Source: https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/28.326

God has rules that he wants all living sentient beings to live by. Disobeying these rules is called “sinning”. An angel named Lucifer rebelled against god’s rules for living, and convinced 1/3 of god’s angels to him him. This caused a huge disagreement in heaven, as bad a disagreement as any political propaganda tactics that ever split a family in half.

There was war in heaven between Lucifer and his angels versus god and his angels.

God won. He kicked Lucifer and Lucifer’s angels the hell out of heaven. Lucifer is now on planet earth. He is called Satan, and the angels who agreed with him are demons.

God made the earth and everything on it in six literal days around six to ten thousand literal days ago. God created an immortal sinless couple on planet earth in a perfect deathless garden. They were vegetarian, so ideally Adventists should be vegetarian too.

Satan deceived the couple to disobey god’s rules for living. Because they disobeyed god, god made (or let, depending on which Adventist you talk to, and it's Important) sin enter planet earth.

Because unspoken and never ever explained reasons, sin on planet earth means “the effects of sin” is everywhere on earth. Death is the result of sin. Everything unpleasant on planet earth, from snake bites to cancer, is “the effects of sin”. All living things on planet earth now suffer and die because two humans once disobeyed god’s rules on how to live.

God had no other options but to have this happen.

Also because unspoken reasons, if a god-human lived a perfect sinless life on planet earth and then died, and was resurrected by god from death… well, that oddly specific thing happening is a sufficient punishment for sin, for all humans’ sins ever.

God comes in thirds and yet is still one. This is called the Trinity. Adventists decided to believe in the Trinity in the 1950s and argued about it before that.

Each 1/3 of god has a name and function. There's God the Father who created everything, God the Holy Spirit who functions as a conscience in every human, and God the Son. God the Son became a wholly man and wholly god-human being, lived a perfect sinless life on planet earth as the human Jesus Christ about 2000 years ago. He died, and was resurrected from the dead. He is now in heaven in Constellation Orion.

Because Jesus sacrificed the 1/3 of himself to the other 2/3 of god, the penalty of death for sin is paid for. All a person has to do is tell god that they accept Jesus’s punishment for their sins, and then do their best to follow their conscience.

Note on Jesusing: This exact “And then do the best to follow their conscience” phrase is used so much in this blog post that I shall summarize it as “Jesusing” as the blogger Roll To Disbelieve coined the term. “Jesusing” means going to church, praying, reading the Bible, singing hymns, trying to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading by following one’s conscience, repenting and trying to stop new sins, trying to convert other people to your flavor of Christianity.

Fundamentalist Christians, Adventists, and Jesusing: Fundamentalist Christian and Adventist too often teaches that, Jesusing cures everything wrong with one and all ills of society. If first attempts at Jesusing do not succeed, one is advised to Jesus harder. One is never told when to try other things in the case that Jesusing does not solve their issues. No, the problem is that they are not Jesusing hard enough.

Telling god that and doing that is called in Christianese being “born again” or “being saved [from sin]”. Jesusing is called “walking with god”.

Also, god had Bronze Age humans in the Middle East write down things that god did with his chosen tribe, the Israelites. These writings were collected into manuscripts and are published today as the Bible. It is a factually true record of what happened, and is how god talks to humans today. It is an authoritative instruction book for all things about god, god’s rules about how to live, and how to be saved. Of all the holy books in all the world, only the 66-book Protestant form of the Bible is the actual book from god.

God’s will come to planet earth and bring heaven with him. This is called “The Second Coming”. Adventists don’t count god’s making planet earth as “god coming to planet earth”. Nor do they count god’s showing up in multiple Old Testament stories as “god coming to earth”. Nope. Per Adventist theology, the “First Coming” of god to planet earth was when Jesus was born. God’s Second Coming will occur after all humans have heard about god’s last true church, Adventism. This will happen “very soon”. The harder Adventists work to tell everyone about Adventism, the sooner god will return to earth.

Resume preliminary unspoken assumption:

God’s second coming will be in the clouds, physically real, visible to all on earth, and heaven will be settled onto earth. God will resurrect all humans. The ones who follow their conscience the best they can, and the born-again True Christians [definitely the same as the True Scotsman fallacy] will receive immortal young bodies. They will live forever with god in heaven.

God will burn to death all the rest of the humans. Extra bad ones will burn longer. Satan and his demons will be burned to death. Then god will make a new heaven and earth, with no death or sorrow. So all beings will be vegetarian.

Because unspoken never explained reasons, Satan wants humans to go to Adventist hell (to be resurrected, then burned to death). God wants humans to go to heaven. So right now humans are peons in an invisible war between God and Satan on where humans wind up forever after god’s Second Coming. Adventists teach:

the dead are in oblivious soul sleep
those who followed their consciences will go to heaven, even if they never heard of Jesus or Adventism
the dead know nothing
Communications from the dead, including common dreams humans have about loved ones who are dead, are demons impersonating the dead person. Note: Humans who are dying frequently see people who have died. This is a common, normal part of the dying process caused by lack of blood flow to the brain. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathbed_phenomena This Adventist theology causes unnecessary terror that real demons are physically present in a dying person’s room.
god will do the most loving thing for every person who has died in every individual case, whether that person would be happiest forever immortal with god in heaven or happiest burned to death in oblivion Adventist hell.
Adventists cannot speak to specific specifics of individuals because they are not god
pets probably do not go to heaven

How to be deceived by Satan and go to Adventist hell: Lots of things are deceptions from Satan, say Adventists. All science that shows an earth older than 6,000 - 10,000 actual years is from Satan. All archeological evidence that does not support a literal interpretation of the Bible is from Satan. Not working super hard to tell everyone about God’s Last End Times True church, Adventism, is from Satan. Being tempted to eat unclean meat, like pork, is from Satan.

That should be enough to get on with. On to the belief 15 text!

By baptism we confess our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,

Translation: There is a thing that Adventists do called “baptism”. It is an act to publicly tell people that the person getting baptized believes that the 1/3 of god called Jesus is god, actually lived, really died, was bodily resurrected from death, and that they believe Jesus’s death paid the penalty for the baptized person’s sins.

and testify of our death to sin

Translation: Being dunked under the water physically symbolizes “death to sin” which is also known as “being born again”. There are Bible verses comparing Jesus’s death sacrifice for sin to being “buried underwater”. It symbolizes physical death and hope of future resurrection, Jesus’s death and resurrection, washing away of sins in the water of baptism, a fresh start free and clean of sin—all at once. Nifty.

and of our purpose to walk in newness of life.

Translation: “Walking in newness of life” is a Bible verse phrase. Besides reading the Bible and praying to god every day, and keeping Saturday Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday every week, it means to follow one’s conscience as much as they possibly can. The conscience is the 1/3 of god called Holy Spirit leading them. Things to stop doing includes but is not limited to:

stop thinking thought crimes like private sexy thoughts (thinking private sexy thoughts is the same as cheating on one’s spouse in god's eyes, per Jesus)
stop eating pork and all unclean seafood
stop having a same-gender lover if one is homosexual
stop drinking all alcohol
stop watching porn, even in moderation from consensually posted photos by adults for adults
stop masturbating
stop doing anything that might “cause another to stumble”, a Bible verse phrase used to control many different behaviors amongst Adventists, especially clothing and jewelry and makeup on girls and women

Thus we acknowledge Christ as Lord and Saviour,

Translation:

This is a reiteration of sentence 1. Baptism is the religious rite Adventists do to symbolize they believe Jesus is 1/3 of Trinity god, died for their sins, saved them from their sins, was resurrected from death, will return to earth with heaven. It means they will follow their conscience which is the 1/3 of god called the Holy Spirit, they'll follow Jesus’s teachings, and they hope to live forever with god in heaven.

become His people,

Translation: Become practicing Adventists.

and are received as members by His church.

Unspoken underlying belief: This person will attend Seventh-day Adventist churches for the rest of their life. They will be assigned roles to volunteer in the church. There are well-established gender roles for both men and women.

If they're a woman, they'll be voluntold (strongly suggested to by leadership, and Bible verses are used to shame the person if they do not want to do it) to teach children in Sabbath School and organize child care activities.

For instance, talented vocalist Joyce Bryant was an Adventist. Instead of hiring her for her singing talents, the Adventist church refused to help her with her equal rights activism, refused to hire her as a celebrity singer even though they had other celebrity Adventist singers like the Wedgewood Trio. Instead, the Adventist church sent Joyce Bryant to teach kindergarten.

“They [The Adventist church] eventually sent her to Washington DC, where she worked in a kindergarten class and used her beautiful voice to entertain the kids.” https://www.factinate.com/people/facts-joyce-bryant

Women who convert to Adventism might be a secretary for Adventist organizations, or a nurse, or a teacher. They'll be encouraged to take Adventist vegetarian food prep classes.

Very few women will be pastors, and no women pastors can be ordained per Adventist doctrine. Some Adventist universities offer women Masters in Divinity degrees. These highly educated women usually function as “Associate Pastors” in Adventism. Only rarely are they permitted to be hired as the only pastor of a church.

Every Adventist girl and woman, born in or converted, should expect to be slut shamed by Adventists for practically anything. It’s just a matter of time. Girls and women are told to imagine anything about her body, walk, dress, voice, face, etc., that might possibly turn on a man. And then they are taught to conceal that aspect of themselves, except don’t be TOO modest. After all, one must be pretty enough to attract a husband.

Older men in SDA leadership have a thing they do. They'll corner a girl or woman often alone, no witnesses. Sometimes a fellow creepy dude comes along. The room exit is usually subtly blocked with his body. She has to walk uncomfortably close to him or physically shove him aside to escape. Then, the man shames the woman because he was turned on by seeing her. Except the words are couched in Purity Culture Christianese. She caused him to think “impure thoughts”. She should be ashamed. She must repent. She has to walk, talk, dress, go sans makeup, avoid jewelry, imagine his and all other males’ potential turn ons and prevent anything that might turn these men on. Because she is held responsible for men and boys’ inappropriate thoughts and behavior.

A trusting soul born and raised in Purity Culture, never exposed to non-Adventist circles sufficiently enough to learn that many different things turn on different people, I was taught long maxi skirts and loose long sleeve high top shirts are modest. Definitely not a turn on. Therefore, when I first dared to date a thoroughly decent secular man, I wore jeans. The better to turn him on. As one does.

When one day I threw on my old maxi skirt with a loose top, my then-boyfriend suddenly was hot and bothered. Maxi skirts turned him on.

“Oh!” I thought. Purity Culture theories promptly shattered, just like that.

Now if the Adventist convert is a man or boy, they are taught differently. Boys are taught masturbation and private sexy thoughts are exactly the same as cheating on a spouse. Developmentally normal sexual development is demonized. This causes lifelong intimacy damage.

Men might preach sermons, may be an elder, might be a pastor, may only occasionally attend church, and might put the folding potluck chairs away after potluck. Also they might pass the offering plate, and possibly help run the sound system at church. All of this is free, except if you officially work for the church.

Or one can help try to convert others to Adventism.

Also one will pay 10% of their money to the church for life. Plus extra for offerings.

Baptism is a symbol of our union with Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, and our reception of the Holy Spirit.

Translation: By doing the act of baptism, one is saying they are born again, and that they believe that god has forgiven their sins, that they know their conscience is the 1/3 of god called the Holy Spirit, and that they will follow their conscience for the rest of their lives. This is, what, the third time they’ve reiterated this?

It is by immersion in water

Translation: Adventists practice baptism by immersion. That means the person is physically supported in water by an Adventist pastor who (usually) stands in a baptismal tank full of water. The tank of water is often in front of an audience at church. The pastor immerses the person for a moment or two under water. Then they raise the person up out of the water, and the person is officially baptized. Baptisms in swimming pools, streams, rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water is common too.

Adventists have committed members who truly believe they're telling the world about God’s Last End Times Truth Church. This means they’re hella inclusive when it comes to baptism. They'll do anything to help this happen, so extraordinary stories about baptism of disabled humans in bathtubs abound.

Long rant: One may be interested in “how to baptize people” knowledge compendiums on Adventist websites like this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20240105231150/https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1991/09/the-mechanics-and-hazards-of-baptizing

Written in humble-brag format (From previous site: “On one occasion I held a baptism at a church built on a log raft that floated on the Amazon.”), these kind of “how to baptize people” compendiums include:

Exciting humble-brag stories on how local person used their knowledge and skills to prevent dudebro pastor’s death followed by “The Lord controls natural hazards. Yet He does leave a few things for pastors to figure out!” self-congratulatory virtue signaling,

Story of inexperienced pastor fucking up and killing someone, and how how to avoid that mistake: “never immerse a candidate downstream”.
Basic culture advice the pastor should've known way ahead of time.
Other shocking fuckups that should have killed people but didn't, how pastor just kept on baptizing instead of getting folks safe.
Jokes about the dead. “Baptize your candidates in the nearest suitable water but don't let the "river spirits" snatch them away downstream, especially at night!”
Pompous suggestion that it’s probably good listen to local peoples’ advice.
How to make a baptistery.

Notice there's little knowledge here on what one is to wear when getting baptized. There's nothing on where baptismal robes are sourced; what baptismal robes last the longest; how to how to launder, repair, store baptismal robes; where to source and how to sew into baptismal robes the lead weights that prevent those garments from floating atop water surfaces; etc. There is nothing about how to clean the baptistery, ensure water stays clean, without using suit-damaging sanitary solutions. There's nothing about making baptism water warm enough for comfort. Nothing about towels for people to dry off with after baptisms. Nor how to maintain a church baptistery.

That vital background knowledge and work is mostly done by Adventist women and girls. They are socialized to do all the background work in Adventist churches. They are trained to notice the things that need done, and to do them, unasked and unthanked. All routine organizational management, communication, cleaning, organizing, food prep, child cares, child education, cleaning chores, obtaining and maintaining and storing supplies for church activities—that is unpaid “women’s work”.

This is taken for granted by Adventist men in leadership. Instead, advice columns written by Adventist leadership dudebros to others is stuff like “Listen to the locals sometimes! And inspect the garments to see if the zippers, if baptism garments are available! And the ladies can't show too much skin! Also try not to kill anyone, haha!”

Same goes for the locals’ knowledge and skills. All that stuff? It’s just there to enable the dudebro pastors to dunk people.

“Praise god!” dudebro pastor taking everything for granted says.

End rant.

and is contingent on an affirmation of faith in Jesus

Unspoken underlying action: So the person has to verbally tell a pastor or Adventist elder that they believe Jesus is god, existed, lived a sinless life on planet earth, died, was resurrected, is in heaven. And that the person has been born again.

and evidence of repentance of sin.

Translation: A person trying to convert to Adventism who publicly does bad things has to appear to apologize for doing the bad thing and appear to stop doing the bad thing. This includes stop addictions, stop getting caught abusing people, say they are sorry for “sexual immorality” while leaving self-incriminating details out, stop getting caught doing anything.

Generally, a woman is held to a higher moral standard than a man. She is encouraged to stay with her abusive cheating husband For Jesus (TM) and constantly low-key judged for sluttiness if she's an unwed single mom.

Now, if someone has skills the church wants, then as long as plausible deniability exists, and the person is male, the church will accept pretty much any behavior so long as the person doesn’t wind up in jail or on the news doing something that looks bad for the church. Then the goal is “protect the person, and make the church look good”.

In practice, the Adventist church will geographically relocate child molester pastors and teachers; avoid reporting child abuse and molestation cases to secular authorities; use Bible verses or other methods to silence people this person stole, cheated, or abused; coerce other members stalked and sexually assaulted by the member to not report to secular authorities; coerce members actively harmed by this person to “forgive” and “not cause division in god’s Church Family”, etc. The goal is to look good publicly and protect abusive male leadership members.

If it's a fairly well behaved ordinary Adventist child born and raised in the church, the child will be groomed and pressured and indoctrinated to get baptized (usually) sometime between the ages of 8-14. After, the children are groomed into existing male and female volunteer church support roles.

It follows instruction in the Holy Scriptures and acceptance of their teachings.

Translation: Adventists believe their 66-book Protestant version of the Bible has Bible verses that supports fully immersing a human into water as the only acceptable act called “baptism”. If this was done in another church, that's ok. As long as the person was fully immersed. Sprinkling, infant baptism? That's deceptions from Satan.

(Matt. 28:19, 20; Acts 2:38; 16:30-33; 22:16; Rom. 6:1-6; Gal. 3:27; Col. 2:12, 13.)

This collection of Bible verses is Adventist virtue signaling. Amongst folks who discuss different styles of Bible studies, this is called “cherry picked” or “proof-text” Bible verse studying.

This collection of verses is used attract humans who believe the Bible is authoritative. It totes proves that Adventists definitely absolutely follow god’s book called the Bible.

Few people actually look up the verses. Some verses will directly apply to the belief topic, some don't. The people simply see the cited list of verses and assume the verses (1) definitely apply to the topic and (2) all the verses can all be mushed together to form biblically authored lifestyle rules and beliefs and (3) verse context, cultural context of people the document was originally written to, etc., doesn’t particularly matter.

End snark of SDA belief 15!

Why The Gentle Author calls Ellen Gould White “the Adventist plagiarizing prophetess”: Test The Prophet first defines “plagiarism” using sources from the American Victorian Era. He shows original books published in the Victorian Era that Ellen White plagiarized from. Then he shows the these writings in Ellen White’s books, where she claims they were her visions from god. https://www.youtube.com/@TesttheProphet

Why The Gentle Author says Young Earth Creationism is pseudoscience: One can find an exhaustive list of Young Earth Creationism claims debunked here. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

I was taught about 80% of these claims as fact by the Adventist church. It continues to spread this pseudoscience as “real science” to tens of thousands of SDA students. This hamstrings their knowledge of reliable sources, critical thinking, value of peer-reviewed studies. It primes one to view anecdotes and conspiracy theories as valid “factual evidence”. This contributes to one falling for other pseudoscience, multi-level marketing scams, and actively harming themselves and their children by anti-vaccine and anti-science actions.

All prior Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, snarked:

Belief 1, “Holy Scriptures”, is snarked here:

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

Belief 2, “The Trinity”, is snarked here:

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

Belief 3, “God the Father”, is snarked here:

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

Belief 4, “God the Son”, is snarked here:

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/adventist-belief-breakdown-belief-0d8

Belief 5, “God the Holy Spirit”, is snarked here:

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

Belief 6, “Creation”, is snarked here: