Seventh-day Adventist belief breakdown: belief 13 of 28

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has 28 fundamental beliefs. I list the underlying unspoken beliefs whilst snarking as possible. Belief 13 is "The Remnant and its Mission".

Jun 01, 2024

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 Adventist doctrine of pseudoscience Young Earth Creationism, and scholarly source showing Adventist prophetess Ellen White’s plagiarized “visions from god” sources, are also at bottom of this post.

On to Adventist belief 13 underlying assumptions and snark!

13. The Remnant and its Mission

The universal church is composed of all who truly believe in Christ,

Translation: We Adventists call “all who truly believe in Christ” to be “those who adopt Adventist-like tendencies, or talk politely to us, or do good that we approve of in the world”.

We assume that these are people who follow their conscience, which is actually 1/3 of god called the Holy Spirit talking to them. Those who follow their conscience fully will become Seventh-day Adventist.

In no way is this any way like the No True Scotsman fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Unspoken underlying beliefs: There is an immortal all-powerful being we call “god”. His pronouns are he/him. He made everything, knows everything from the beginning, and has rules humans ought to live by. Disobeying god’s rules is called “sinning”.

God lives in a perfect place called “heaven”. Per Adventist plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White, heaven is in Orion’s Belt:

“…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.” Source: https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/28.326

God made everything. First, god made immortal perfect powerful beings called “angels”. One angel rebelled against obeying god’s rules, and god booted him and all the angels who agreed with him from heaven. This being is immortal, supernatural, and called Satan. The other former angels are called demons. They hang out here on earth. These are supernatural evil beings warring with god.

After god made the angels, god made the universe and the earth and all that is in them. He made two perfect immortal humans. There was no death then. This was six thousand literal years ago and all science evidence to the contrary is from Satan.

Satan convinced the two humans to disobey god’s rules. So then death entered the world as a result of sin. All humans, animals, plants, microbes now suffer and die because two humans disobeyed god’s rules. Thorns, sickness, thistles, painful childbirth and all unpleasant earthly things are the result of sin. God had no other option than to make this happen.

God had humans write a holy book telling humans how to live. That is the 66-book version of the Protestant Christian Bible. All other nonBible holy books are from Satan.

Now god is one and comes in thirds. One third is called “God the Father”, one third is “God the Son”, one third is “The Holy Spirit”. This is called the Trinity. Adventists decided to believe in the Trinity between 1910 and 1950. Before that they argued about it. Fun little tidbit: The SDA plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White’s husband didn't believe in the Trinity. Source: https://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/Trinity-in-SDA-History.pdf

Now because reasons, if a human lived a perfect sinless life on planet earth and then died and rose again from death, god could accept the sinless person’s death as punishment for sin for all humans. So 1/3 of god became a human-god hybrid on planet earth called “Jesus”. Jesus sacrificed himself to the other 2/3 of god. Then he rose from the dead and is now in heaven.

Now anyone who tells god “I accept Jesus’s punishment for my sins” can live forever with god in heaven, after god brings heaven to planet earth. When god does that, he will resurrect all humans on planet earth, take the ones who told god they accept Jesus’s punishment into heaven, and burn to death all the other humans.

In the meantime, god and Satan fight over where humans wind up forever. They'll either go to Adventist hell (resurrected then burned to death), or live forever in heaven with god.

All things that can convince a human that they don't need to follow god’s rules are from Satan and his demons. All evidence that the earth is older than 6,000 years is from Satan. Secular syncopated music is from Satan. Meditation is from Satan. Wearing a lot of jewelry is from Satan. Being a non-celibate LBGTQIA+ person can be a sin if that person has any sex outside of a heterosexual marriage.

but in the last days,

Translation: God is bringing heaven from Orion’s Belt to planet earth. First, a bunch of bad times will happen. These are “the last days”. The last days started in 1844.

a time of widespread apostasy,

Translation: After 1844, people will be doing more and more things that Adventists believe are sin. A thing is a sin if one feels guilt or shame for doing the thing. Those feelings are god speaking to them via their conscience. So if a thing is a sin, god will tell them it’s a sin. They'll be told the truth and have to follow it. If they reject the truth, they’re rejecting god.

Beliefs and thoughts are sin too.

Generally speaking, most secular entertainment, dancing, gambling, alcohol, drug use is sin. So is believing that being non-celibate unmarried LBGTQIA+ is ok, believing in a world older than 6,000 years (after hearing the truth of Young Earth Creationism), teaching any science showing a world older than 6,000 years (after hearing the truth of Young Earth Creationism), going to church on Sunday (after hearing the truth that one should go to church on Saturday), etc.

Pretty much everything that ain't Adventist is a sin. Also, the more truth one learns, the more things are sins. So The Gentle Author contends it’s ideal to not hear all the truths.

a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Translation: We Adventists who keep the seventh day Sabbath are that remnant.

This remnant announces the arrival of the judgment hour, proclaims salvation through Christ, and heralds the approach of His second advent.

Translation: We try to convert everyone to Adventism.

This proclamation is symbolized by the three angels of Revelation 14;

Translation: Back in 1844 when Jesus did not come to earth, we thought these Bible verses could be used to prove that Adventists are god’s End Times Only Truth.

We use three angels in our art a lot.

it coincides with the work of judgment in heaven

Translation: So heaven has a tabernacle that's exactly like the ancient Israelites’ tabernacle described in the Bible book of Exodus. It has the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. In 1844, Jesus went into the Most Holy Place with all the books of records of all humans’ actions and thoughts on earth. Because heavenly angels kept those records and god, who knows everything, needs to review these records again because reasons.

So Jesus is reading those books to decide whether each human goes to heaven or Adventist hell (resurrected, then burned to death). Jesus has been reviewing these books since 1844.

and results in a work of repentance and reform on earth.

Translation: We Adventists try to convert people.

Every believer is called to have a personal part in this worldwide witness.

Translation: If you become Adventist, you need to try to convert people.

(Dan. 7:9-14; Isa. 1:9; 11:11; Jer. 23:3; Mic.2:12; 2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Peter 1:16-19; 4:17; 2 Peter 3:10-14; Jude 3, 14; Rev. 12:17; 14:6-12; 18:1-4.)

Translation: These are the verses that make us look Jesusy and make people who assume the Bible is an authoritative source hella more likely to convert to Adventism. These verses are probably vaguely related to the topic of church, or worship, or End Times, or remnant, or 3 Angels.

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: