Seventh-day Adventist belief breakdown: belief 8 of 28

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church has 28 fundamental beliefs. I list the underlying unspoken beliefs and snark when possible. Belief 8 is "The Great Controversy".

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.

8. The Great Controversy

“All humanity is now involved in a great controversy between Christ and Satan regarding the character of God, His law, and His sovereignty over the universe.”

Unstated background assumptions, summarized: God exists. Only the god in the sixty six book Protestant Bible is the right god. Only the sixty six book Protestant Bible is the right holy book. The Bible is literally true. Creation took one literal week, all evidence to contrary is from Satan who by the way was made by god and is evil now. The world was perfect, no death. Humans disobeyed god, so god put sin in the world, because making all humans, animals, plants suffer, die for two humans’ disobeying god is absolutely fair.

Sin is A Thing and causes death and things like thorns on roses. God sacrificed 1/3 of himself to 2/3 of himself because of sin and humans can psychically accept that sacrifice for their sins. Then they get to go to heaven when god brings heaven to earth. Everyone else goes to Adventist hell, aka burns to death.

Heaven, by the way, hangs out in the Constellation Orion right now per Ellen White, the Adventist plagiarizing prophetess. Apologies for the long link. https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/13961.2810001?hl=Orion&ss=eyJ0b3RhbCI6MjAwLCJwYXJhbXMiOnsicXVlcnkiOiJPcmlvbiIsInR5cGUiOiJiYXNpYyIsImxhbmciOiJlbiIsImxpbWl0IjoiMjAifSwiaW5kZXgiOjIwfQ%3D%3D#2810008

Translation: God made Satan who rebelled against god and now god and Satan fight over human souls. Ish. It's REALLY all about if god is fair tho. Humans are the pawns in this battle. Oh and there's other planets full of unfallen aliens plus all the angels who are watching god and Satan battle this out, per Ellen White the Adventist plagiarizing prophetess. Apologies for another long link. https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/130.2253?hl=Other+worlds+unfallen&ss=eyJ0b3RhbCI6NDEsInBhcmFtcyI6eyJxdWVyeSI6Ik90aGVyIHdvcmxkcyB1bmZhbGxlbiIsInR5cGUiOiJiYXNpYyIsImxhbmciOiJlbiIsImxpbWl0IjoyMH0sImluZGV4IjowfQ%3D%3D#2282

These aliens and angels have literally nothing else to do besides watch the consequences of sin on planet earth. Ellen White doesn't say if they place bets on us. I would if I were them.

“This conflict originated in heaven when a created being, endowed with freedom of choice, in self-exaltation became Satan, God’s adversary, and led into rebellion a portion of the angels.”

Translation: God made Satan with free will. Satan rebelled. God kicked him out of heaven. Satan convinced 1/3 of god’s angels to join him and they got kicked out with him too and those angels are demons now.

Any mathematician now knows that Satan = 1/3 as convincing as god, I think that means?

“He introduced the spirit of rebellion into this world when he led Adam and Eve into sin.”

Unspoken assumption, literally not in the Bible but hardcore built into Christian lore: That talking snake that talked Eve into eating that fruit god said don't eat? That snake was Satan.

Also per the Adventist plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White AND John Milton's fictional poem Paradise Lost written 160 years before Ellen White was born… That snake was gold colored, had wings, flew. This is not biblical. This is totally coincidental and definitely not Ellen White plagiarizing Paradise Lost.

Solid defense denying Ellen White plagiarized Paradise Lost, per official White Estate, is here. It's absolutely proof; a 1953 scanned typed letter from Arthur White saying John Andrews said that in 1858 Ellen White said she never read Paradise Lost. https://ellenwhite.org/media/document/1444

Just kidding. This is third-hand hearsay evidence, inadmissible as evidence in American courts and therefore should be taken as “evidence” with approximately a bucketful of salt. This is shitty, shitty “evidence”.

Oddly specific examples of Adventist plagiarizing prophetess Ellen White’s plagiarism of Paradise Lost can be found here: https://nonsda.org/egw/egw102.shtml

“This human sin resulted in the distortion of the image of God in humanity, the disordering of the created world, and its eventual devastation at the time of the global flood, as presented in the historical account of Genesis 1-11.”

Unspoken underlying assumptions: Two humans called Adam and Eve disobeyed god. God plopped sin into the formerly perfect world. How considerate.

Stated underlying assumptions, actually taught in Adventist educational systems, and “proven” by lying grifters teaching conspiracy theories as fact: Young Earth Creationism is true. The Bible literally, actually happened. All evidence to the contrary, whether from archeology or science, is from Satan.

“Observed by the whole creation,”

Unspoken underlying beliefs: There's other unfallen beings out there on other planets, besides the angels and god and demons and Satan. All and sundry watch the shit going down on earth in horrified fascination. We don't know if they eat popcorn while watching us and our shitty sin-filled lives, but they should.

You'd think the gory in-real-life horror show that's Earth would be over by now because surely the point has been proven since Jesus. Or one would assume, at least, that any empathetic watching aliens would puke and quit watching, sick of it all. For once you've seen a couple thousand years of humans, animals, and plants suffer and die because sin, you've seen them all suffer and die. Sin results ain't changed much in the (alleged) 6,000-10,000 years since Eve and Adam sinned.

It's like reading that gory torture-porn work by the Marquis De Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom. A determined reader becomes inured to its horror and finds De Sade lost creativity in his revolting, unlikely, torture-porn murder scenes. He gave up on originality, killed off multiple fictional folks in that book in basically the same damn way.

Anyways my point is that Ellen White’s aliens watching shit from sin go down on earth have either quit watching by now and developed severe PTSD, or they're fascinated by the macabre. Like me, when I read The 120 Day of Sodom. (All the reader of this blog needs to know is that “sadism” is named after De Sade for a damn good reason.) But I digress.

“this world became the arena of the universal conflict,”

Translation: The fight over god’s reputation is going on on earth.

“out of which the God of love will ultimately be vindicated.”

Translation: We humans are the pawns in this fight. Cheers, y'all. It's all about God and how he's very very loving tho. In fact, he’ll lovingly resurrect all humans when he returns to earth then lovingly burn most of them to death in Adventist hell, in his great mercy. Leaving the poor smucks dead ain't an option because unspoken reasons.

“To assist His people in this controversy, Christ sends the Holy Spirit and the loyal angels to guide, protect, and sustain them in the way of salvation.”

Translation: The human pawns in this great battle about god being loving or not, the ones who psychically apologize to god for their sins, well they get angels and the 1/3 of god called the Holy Spirit to help them cope with all the shit sin causes. Yay them

(Gen. 3; 6-8; has something to do with this belief

Job 1:6-12; has something to do with this belief

Isa. 14:12-14; has something to do with this belief

Ezek. 28:12-18; arguably has something to do with this belief

Rom. 1:19-32; has something to do with this belief

Rom. 3:4; has something to do with this belief

Rom. 5:12-21; has something to do with this belief

Rom. 8:19-22; has something to do with this belief

1 Cor. 4:9; has something to do with this belief

Heb. 1:14; has something to do with this belief

1 Peter 5:8; I had to fucking memorize when I was a kid and it is amongst other verses that still terrify me in the dark

2 Peter 3:6; literally is pointless filler reiterating previous verses

Rev. 12:4-9.) has inspired psychedelic art of a beautiful woman with stars and sun and dragon ever since it was written

End snark of belief 8.

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, “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:

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/seventh-day-adventist-belief-breakdown-21d

Belief 7, “Nature of Humanity”, is snarked here:

https://talesfromacult.substack.com/p/seventh-day-adventist-belief-breakdown-e2c