Seventh-day Adventist belief breakdown: belief 6 of 28

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church has 28 fundamental beliefs. I list the underlying unspoken beliefs and snark when possible. Belief 6 is "Creation".

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.

Adventist Belief Six

6. Creation

“God has revealed in Scripture the authentic and historical account of His creative activity.”

Unspoken underlying assumptions: There are a bunch.

• First, that an immortal all-powerful being exists and humans call this being god.

• Second, of all the world’s gods, only the Christian god is the real one.

• Third, out of all the world's holy books, only the Protestant sixty-six book Bible version is the correct holy book. And there's a lot of holy books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_texts

• Fourth, a Protestant Christian worldview. Attempted summary of Protestant Christian worldview/wall of text: There is a heaven where an immortal god lives who gives a damn about humans. (Spoiler: Adventist plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White wrote that heaven is in the constellation Orion.) The earth used to be perfect with no death. Humans used to be immortal but broke the perfect world by disobeying god. And disobeying god is called “sin”. Also there is an immortal being called Satan, made by god, who lives to trick humans into forever-death by tempting them to sin. After humans sinned, God made it so those humans AND all their descendants (who didn't sin, yet, because unborn) will die because unstated reasons. Now sin causes everything bad in the world from cancer to serial killers to obligate carnivores, but sin causes death especially. Because unstated reasons, only a combo human-god 1/3 of god living a perfect life and dying to the other 2/3 of god pays for all the sins of all humans for all time. That the human-god rose from the dead, returned to heaven. One day god will bring heaven to the planet earth. If one psychically apologizes to this god for disobeying god and tells god one accepts the 1/3 of god’s sacrifice, that human will live immortal in heaven with all 3/3 of god forever after God brings heaven to planet earth. And then god will make a new perfect earth with no death AND god will do the Adventist version of hell; because unspoken reasons god will resurrect all the people who don't psychically accept god’s sacrifice, force those people to kneel and tell god “Yes, you told us all about this”, then burn those people to forever-death.

• God had humans write all of the above into a holy book called the Bible. It's humans’ job to tell everyone all of the above. After everyone on the planet earth hears and decides to psychically accept or reject the 1/3 of god human-god death sacrifice for sin, ONLY then can god bring heaven to earth. So the sooner everyone is told, the sooner god can return.

• Finally, the sixty-six Protestant version of the Bible is historically, literally true. All evidence to the contrary is from Satan. Satan’s goal with all that fake evidence is to trick humans into NOT believing the Bible is literally true, and therefore NOT believing in god, and so humans will NOT obey god and will go to Adventist-hell forever-death.

• Satan wants humans to wind up in Adventist-hell forever-death. God wants humans to be immortal in heaven. The earth in the meantime—aka right now—is a big fight between god and Satan over where humans wind up. Humans can only end up in forever-death, or forever-immortal-heaven.

Everything clear as mud? That's enough to be getting on with.

“He created the universe,”

Unspoken underlying assumptions:

First, god’s pronouns are he/him.

Next, god created the entire universe. All of it.

“and in a recent six-day creation”

Unspoken underlying assumptions:

The Ussher Chronology: In 1650, per Wikipedia, The Gentle Author’s favorite source, one James Ussher, a scholarly nerd (who also had the really cool titles Bishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland), calculated how old the earth is if one reads the Old Testament literally. This Biblical lore expert and consumate nerd hyperfocused for years on the maths of exactly when the earth was made if the Old Testament is true. He finally came up with October 22, 4004 BC.

That's right, folks, the earth was literally made October 22, 4004 BC, per a super knowledgeable hyperfocused nerd named James Ussher who seriously knew his shit on all things approximating dates of the Old Testament thangs.

“Published in 1650, the full title of Ussher's work in Latin is Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees").”

Folks call it the Ussher Chronology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology

Geeky tie-in: In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s book Good Omens, Pratchett and Gaiman say James Ussher was wrong. By a quarter of an hour. Ussher’s abbreviated thesis title “Annales Veteris Testamenti” is somewhere in that book too, probably in a footnote. The Gentle Author recommends both the book and the television series.

Young Earth Creationists use this Chronology but generally don't credit Ussher: Young Earth Creationists ever since 1650 have taken Ussher’s hard work as read, therefore factual, but handwave it from that oddly specific date by saying the earth is “six thousand to ten thousand years old” because oddly specific date is oddly specific and frickin weird. Of course, they rarely credit His Grace, the Most Reverend Bishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland James Ussher for his super hard work. Heck, most Young Earth Creationists have never heard of James Ussher nor his chronology.

(For the curious, Armagh as in “Archbishop of Armagh”, one of Ussher’s titles, is geographically the northern half of the island called Ireland. The Church of England, generally called Anglican church, split the globe up into smallish geographical areas, a bit like counties, called a “diocese”. Anglican church leaders preside over dioceses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbishop_of_Armagh_(Church_of_Ireland))

“the Lord made “the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” and rested on the seventh day.”

Attempted translation: We Adventists officially believe the planet earth, and everything on it, was “recently” made by god. We particularly like the verbage in this one Psalms 146:6 phrase so we put that in there. By “recently”, we mean 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. We argue between ourselves if the planet and universe was originally there and maybe that's how some things appear to be old, (this is called Old Earth Creationism), BUT the important thing is that god made the planet earth and humans. In six actual, literal days.

We use the weasel word “recently” to handwave away scholarly people trying to figure out exactly how things happened. By keeping it vague, we get more tithe-paying converts. But the one of the hugest things to know is The Humans Did Not Evolve. Nope, hell no, nope, no.

And another hugest thing in this belief is that after making the planet earth and everything on it and the humans, then god took a break, resting, on the seventh day. This is very important.

”Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of the work He performed and completed during six literal days that together with the Sabbath constituted the same unit of time that we call a week today.”

Attempted translation: So it was a week. As in, “there's 52 of them in a year” week. As in, “seven days make up one of these” week. God definitely absolutely made the earth and everything on it in one week.

I even heard an Adventist pastor claim that the fact humans have a seven day week is totes proof of a literal one-week creation, “because there's no reason to have seven days grouped together”. It never occurred to him that there's a full moon every 28 days, and it's handy to split 28 days into four groups of seven.

Anyways, all evidence to an old earth is from Satan.

Note: Readers who are looking for an exhaustive list of Young Earth Creationist claims with handy brief debunking may find one here. http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html

Also god rested on the seventh day and that's super hella Important.

”The first man and woman were made in the image of God as the crowning work of Creation,”

Translation: So god created humans, two of them, “in his image” which we Adventists don't define here. The Important bit is that humans are the best top most importantist creation and kinda sorta like god. And god made them.

Humans did not evolve. Nope. Nope. Nope.

“given dominion over the world,”

Translation: We have this phrase to cater to the people who believe “Jesus is coming back any day now so drill baby drill and use up all the oil and don't worry about climate change”. Climate change is a hoax people like this phrase. And yes it's a phrase from the King James Bible used to justify all the human things humans do on the planet earth.

“and charged with responsibility to care for it.”

Translation: We Adventists include this phrase for all the folks who give a damn about the environment. It's implied from Revelations 11:18 phrase. In context, it is talking about god's bringing heaven to planet earth where he will go about for “destroying those who destroy the earth”.

“When the world was finished it was “very good,” declaring the glory of God.”

Translation: The world was made by god, and he himself said he did a very good job on it. And that the earth is so damn awesome that it plainly shows how glorious god is.

(Gen. 1-2; 5; 11; Exod. 20:8-11; Ps. 19:1–6; 33:6, 9; 104; Isa. 45:12, 18; Acts 17:24; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2; 11:3; Rev. 10:6; 14:7.)

This little list of Bible verses is Adventists virtue signaling that all their beliefs are 100% from the Bible and justified by the Bible. Chances are that The Gentle Author has at least half of them memorized from a childhood of Adventist Bible verse memorizing.

End belief six 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. Ellen White claimed that these texts were her visions from God. https://www.youtube.com/@TesttheProphet

All prior Seventh-day 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

Belief 4 is snarked here:

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

Belief 5 is snarked here:

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