Doctrine of Adventism, Answers

Doctrine of Adventism, Answers

1. THE ADVENT OF THE LORD

That Jesus Christ will come gloriously at the end of time is a common belief of all Christians. The dissension on this issue begins when the problems of the reason and time of his coming are raised, because while Catholics believe that he will come to judge (Mt 16, 27), not knowing when (Mt 24, 36), some sects, based on very obscure texts of Scripture, attempt to set the date and resurrect the idea of ​​a millennial kingdom of the Lord.

This form of the coming of Christ seduced some of the first Christians, even Fathers of the Church. The desire to have Jesus among them again, to reign bodily and visibly for a thousand years on earth; and that “Maranatha”, Come, Lord!, always in their mouth, made them interpret the vision in a too literal way, full of allegories and symbols of Saint John; and in chapter 20 of the Apocalypse they believed they found hope for the fulfillment of these desires.

This idea was soon abandoned and considered heretical for not having a solid exegetical basis on which to support it, and definitively, by Saint Jerome, practically judged and sentenced: “let this fable of a thousand years finally end.”

The millennial doctrine, resurrected by some historic Protestant churches in their early days, was soon discarded by them as well. However, at times when faith in some sects declined, and in order to awaken them, it was preached again.

Today, based on the terrible circumstances that the world is going through, and based on them as signs of the end of times, the old idea has been dusted off again in some Protestant denominations, among those people who forget that the final hour is known only by the Father and do not want to recognize that in fact Christ is already among us in his Church, in the Eucharist and in so many other manifestations of his power and glory; and that his kingdom, with its two phases, present and final, is already developing in this world in the first of them, according to the testimony of Christ himself (Mk 1, 15; 12, 34; Lk 17, 21).

2. SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM

One of these millenarian sects is the one mentioned in the epigraph. His doctrine is not based only on that desire to see the Lord and enjoy a thousand years of happy life. It is much broader. It seeks nothing less than to find in the Sacred Scriptures the foundations that explain the development of the churches; the origins and mission of Adventism; the events that will take place not only at the end of time, but those that will extend to the world beyond; set the date of the end of the world and the beginning of the millennium; establish a doctrine regarding the human soul and final retribution; and a morality, or rather life practices, that are rigorous and segregated. It rejects being just another denomination: it wants to be the only one, the true Church. For this reason, he feels a certain contempt for all other Christian beliefs and a poorly concealed hatred for the Catholic Church. It tries to base all this – according to its followers – on the Bible, but in reality giving the sacred texts a meaning as arbitrary as few to date had dared to launch, and giving a dogmatic value to the writings of its founder, supported by her supposed visions and prophecies.

Although they claim otherwise, they remain in Protestantism, since they remain faithful to the principles of the so-called Reformation: the Bible alone, without Apostolic Tradition, and free examination. But they mix their ideas with others taken from Judaism: the celebration of the Sabbath and the rigorism and scrupulousness in some life practices, with a Pharisee atmosphere.

3. MILLER AND HIS FAILED PROPHECY ABOUT THE ADVENT OF THE LORD

William Miller (1782-1849) was the initiator of the sect. Born into a Baptist family, he lost faith in his youth. Upon recovering it, and being admitted back into his church, he dedicated himself to the study of the Scriptures. Concerned about the advent of the Lord, he believed he could determine its date with some figures that appear in the book of Daniel and he considered that they made reference to the coming of Christ. His calculations led him to set this for 1843. This is what he prophesied in his preachings and in his book: “Evident proofs from Scripture and History of the second coming of Christ around 1843.”

Not happy in his predictions, neither in that year, nor when the date was transferred by his disciple Snow to October 22, 1844, was his prophecy fulfilled.

Faced with the failure, his followers tried to find an explanation, a formula that would decipher his non-compliance. After accepting that the advent was very close, without setting a date, they found someone who could elaborate not only an explanation but an entire religious doctrine: the one known today as Seventh-day Adventism. This was the work of a woman of truly extraordinary qualities: Ellen Gould White.

4. H. G. WHITE, RESTORER OF MILLER’S DOCTRINE AND FOUNDER OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM

H. G. White was a woman of a very long and active life. Born in 1827 and initially affiliated with Methodism, she later followed the doctrines of Miller, and through her marriage to an Adventist preacher she became a fervent propagandist of these ideas. She traveled incessantly throughout America, Europe and Australia and wrote tirelessly. Endowed with a powerful gift of organization, the doctrines and expansion of Adventism owe everything to her. She died in 1916. We are especially interested in her hypersensitive character as a visionary and prophetess, which was surely influenced by the environment at that time in North America.

It was a time when “prophets” abounded. In 1844, J. Smith, the founder of the Mormons, died, who with his visions and preachings managed to drag, in a portentous exodus, thousands of followers throughout North America, from east to west, until founding a theocratic State on the shores of the Salt Lake. This era also saw the emergence of Mary Baker Eddy, the founding “prophetess” of Christian Science. Many other prophetic and eschatological sects swarmed in an atmosphere of enthusiastic fervor and awaited the next arrival of the Lord. Missions were given, sometimes, in almost deserted places, to which people came from very far away, camping around the preacher and in an atmosphere of fighting between each other to see which ones presented the most prodigies and who brought with them the most converts, who went from one confusion to another with astonishing ease and increasingly exalted manifestations. In this environment, alleged revelations were frequent.

H.G. White was influenced not only by this, but also by a serious blow suffered in his childhood, which could have been the origin of mental imbalances. Protestant writers such as Canright, who knew her for more than twenty years, affirm that her visions were the effect of nervous illness, and G. W. Ridault says that she was a self-deceived fanatic, whose doctrines make her readers faint-hearted and sad, producing doubts in them; and she said of herself that she was afraid of being unfaithful. This author lists up to thirty-eight times that she says in her works that she had the gift of inspiration. In fact, from the first pages of “The Great Controversy” (we will always cite this book by the Pacific Press Edition. Mountain View, 1954), through “The Jewels of the Testimonies” and “The Road to Christ”, among her most extensive works, down to the briefest of her articles, it is very common to find these phrases: “Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit they were revealed to me…” “The Lord has told me…” “The Lord wants…”

This woman tried to solve the problems that had arisen from Miller’s calculations and the identification of the Sanctuary, mentioned in the passage from Daniel, which Miller interpreted. Doing an arbitrary exegesis of a text, of undoubted metaphorical meaning, by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, in which he mentions the Sanctuary of heaven, Mrs. White located it there.

The idea of ​​Christ’s entry on October 22, 1844 into the heavenly Sanctuary to purify it is the most fantastic thing that could have been concocted and well manifests the novelist imagination of Sister White, who to reinforce her arguments indicated that she had known all of this through a vision that had been granted to her. Her disciples gave her the title of “Spirit of Prophecy,” by which she is known, and is commonly cited among her people, and Adventism, with a series of doctrines linked to it, was constituted into a new religion.

5. MAIN DOCTRINES OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM

Although we have already exposed some of them and expanded on them later to show their inconsistency, we believe it is appropriate to give them here recapitulated and in order:

1. Currently the judgment has already begun in the heavenly Sanctuary, reviewing the life of each one. Once this is finished, Christ will come to earth, having already begun the precursory signs that He announced in the Gospel regarding His coming. With it the millennium will begin.

2. In it Christ will resurrect the righteous, taking them with Him to heaven for a thousand years. The demon will be tied to the earth, empty for this time.

3. After the millennium Satan will be released, the wicked will be resurrected; Christ, the righteous, and the heavenly city of Jerusalem will come down from heaven. The final battle of Satan and the wicked against her will take place. One and the other will be annihilated, and the earth, purified by fire, will once again be a paradise, the eternal kingdom of God with his people.

4. The human soul, which in itself is not immortal, remains unconscious in the grave with death. In the resurrection, immortality will be a prize granted to the righteous and denied to the wicked, whose souls will be annihilated. Therefore, hell does not exist.

5. Adventists should observe the Sabbath as a feast day, instead of Sunday. The imposition of this practice owes much to another supposed vision of Sister Ellen.

6. They should observe and preach peace everywhere. They are exalted pacifists.

7. They will have to follow a naturopathic vegetarian lifestyle not only in food, but also in the application of medicinal remedies.

8. They will observe strict prohibitions on alcohol. coffee, tea, tobacco, etc.

It is unfortunate that a basically Christian doctrine, since they have Christ as God and Savior, for whom they seem to profess such a deep love and who practices many virtues, can fall into such deep and dangerous errors and such a degree of devaluation “by turning their ears away from the truth and turning them to fables” (2 Tim 4, 4) of imaginary millennia, visions and prophecies.

6. THE ADVENTIST INTERPRETATION OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL

The advent of the Lord and the purification of the Sanctuary

Since Miller’s prophecy failed in 1844, it seemed unnecessary to insist on this date and the way in which it was obtained. However, since this information was not discarded, since it did not serve to signal the coming of the Lord, it was used by Mrs. Ellen White to mark the beginning of another function of Christ, the purification of the heavenly Sanctuary, we will deal with it.

Adventists always choose the most obscure books of Scripture to try to base their doctrine, and within them, the passages that are most difficult to interpret or that admit a variety of interpretations.

The book of Daniel is among those of this class. It belongs to the so-called apocalyptic genre, which has its own style: visions full of images, metaphors and allegories, use of figures with the appearance of chronological precision that sometimes only have a symbolic value, and all of this wrapped in a high literary style.

This book tells history and exposes prophecy, and within it it seems to predict events not far from the time of the prophet, together with others that seem to refer to the end of times. Clearly determining which ones refer to one period and which to another is an arduous problem that requires many studies, despite which extremes will always remain unclarified. If in such books it is difficult to find an exact chronology for the fulfillment of their prophecies, it will be even more difficult to try to synchronize them exclusively with current times.

It will be easy to understand how firm doctrines cannot be established on such books, much less ones that are in open opposition to others clearly determined in the Bible. It is a general criterion in exegesis to interpret the dark texts by the clear and universally accepted ones in a single sense, and it is to openly fail to comply with this rule to establish a doctrine such as that of the advent of the Lord on a fixed date, 1844, based on a very obscure text, when there is another as clear as the testimony of Christ himself about the absolute ignorance of his coming. (Mt 24, 36)

There are several chapters of the book of Daniel that we are interested in remembering here because of the interpretation that Adventists make of them: chapter II, dream of the statue; VII, vision of the four beasts; the VIII, vision of the ram and the goat, and the IX, the seventy weeks. But it is especially VIII and IX from which Miller drew his calculations.

The dream of the statue and the visions of the beasts and the ram and the goat are correlative and refer to the empires that were to succeed the Babylonian: the Medo-Persian, that of Alexander and that of the Seleucids. In these visions floats the shadow of a terrible persecutor (the small horn that appears in several of them). This sinister being has always been identified with Antiochus IV (reigned 175 to 163 BC). He looted the temple, prohibited the practices of circumcision and the Sabbath, erected the abomination in it, stopping the perennial sacrifice and oblation, filling it with prostitutes and Hellenistic orgies and leaving Jupiter consecrated with a statue, which probably represented the physiognomy of Antiochus himself, to whom the worship was directed, since he appears on coins deified with the Greek title, but of Egyptian origin, of Epiphanes. “Theos Epiphanes” (God Manifest). True type of the Antichrist.

For Adventists, none of this so clear, and so proven by History, has any value. The little horn is the Catholic Church, for them the true Antichrist, as we will see.

7. MILLER’S CALCULATIONS ON THE DATE OF THE ADVENT AND THE PURIFICATION OF THE SANCTUARY

In chapter VIII of Daniel the little horn, to which we have been referring, grows enormously; and, after its terrible destructive function has been described, Daniel hears this dialogue between two saints:

-“How long will the vision last (concerning what was announced): the perpetual sacrifice, the desolating transgression, and the trampled sanctuary?”, and it was answered:

-Until two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings.” They are as many years (as in Num 14, 34 and Ez 4, 6). Thus, that number of years would extend far beyond the Jewish era, deducing that if the sanctuary was the earth, its Purification would be that of fire at the second advent of Christ. If he got the starting point of those two thousand three hundred years, it would be easy to know when such purification would be and, therefore, the date on which Christ would come.

Miller thought he found their starting point in the next chapter of the same book. There it is said: “Seventy weeks have been decreed upon your people and your holy city to put an end to the prevarication… Know it, then, and understand it well that from the issue of the order to rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed prince there will be seven weeks. And sixty-two weeks…”. (Dan 9, 24 and 25)

Miller maintains that the word “decreed” literally means discounted. Where to discount them? Of the two thousand three hundred years, because the four hundred and ninety years of the seventy weeks (of years) are part of them. Both periods must begin together. On the other hand, if the seventy weeks date from the moment in which the reconstruction edict is issued, finding the date of this establishes the starting point of two thousand three hundred years.

The decree that Miller takes is that of Artaxerxes in the year 457; and thus 2,300 years, minus 490 = 1,810, plus thirty-three years of the life of Christ, 1843. On the other hand, 2,300 years, minus 457 of the decree = 1,843. This would be, then, for Miller the date of the Lord’s advent to purify the sanctuary of the earth.

8. ANSWER

There is no reason to convert the two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings into years, since if this is done in Num. 14, 34 and Ez 4, 6, it is clearly indicated there; a sign that when “day” was said it was not customary to always interpret “year”.

On the other hand, we have already spoken of Antiochus Epiphanes, and this vision of Daniel seems to coincide exactly with what was to happen later to him. In the year 168 BC. C., Antiochus desecrated the temple and suspended worship, as we have already seen, which was renewed in 165, a little more than three years later. Consequently, those two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings are well explained, without the need to resort to transforming them into years. There are one thousand one hundred and fifty days, which is the approximate time it took to restore worship, taking into account that it was celebrated in the temple in the “morning” and in the “afternoon” (1,150 days equals 2,300 counted as “evenings and mornings”).

There is another error in setting the date of the decree of reconstruction of Jerusalem in 457. The true edict of reconstruction is that of Cyrus in the year 538. The works began on this date, which had to be suspended due to quarrels with the Samaritans, which gave rise to a new decree of Darius, recognizing that Cyrus’s had never been revoked. In 515 the temple was dedicated. The decree of Artaxerxes (457) does not refer to the reconstruction of Jerusalem but to part of its walls, and to the return of Ezra to this city with a caravan of Jews who had remained in Susa. The first decree, that of Cyrus, being the most important, would, in any case, be the one that should have been taken into account.

Regarding the seventy weeks of Daniel, although it is true that they have been considered by many exegetes as a messianic prophecy, it is no less true that there is still division among some on the following points: whether it refers only to the messianic times or can refer to that of the Maccabees; whether to the ruin of Jerusalem by Titus or to the end of time; if an anointed one, who is there said to be killed, refers to Christ or Onias III, who was anointed as High Priest, and was killed in 171 BC; and finally, whether the seventy weeks are a vague period of time and not exactly mathematical. There are so many difficulties that arise in the interpretation of this passage that it is impossible to fix an exact date like the one Miller intended to indicate.

Finally, the events came to confirm the error in which he was, since his prophecy was not fulfilled.

9. THE PURIFICATION OF THE SANCTUARY ACCORDING TO H. G. WHITE

With the failure of the predictions, a reason had to be sought to explain the delay in the coming of the Lord.

In Exodus, chapters 25, 26 and 27, the sanctuary commanded to be built by the Lord to Moses is described with its dependencies, and among them the holy place and the most holy place, but this sanctuary or the temple of Jerusalem that replaced it, could not be, according to Adventist doctrines, the place that Christ would purify on his coming, since in 1844 the temple did not exist. That is why Miller believed that it would be the earth with fire that would be purified. H. G. White looked for the solution. As the Epistle to the Hebrews (8, 1-2) speaks of the functions of Jesus as High Priest in the sanctuary of heaven, made not by the hand of man, these data gave the founder of Adventism the opportunity to establish this new and curious theory, which did not disavow Miller’s, basic for the doctrine of the sect; Miller just had the wrong sanctuary. Christ entered the sanctuary of heaven in 1844 to purify it.

How is it possible to purify a holy thing like heaven? If even the righteous enter it completely purified, it would be necessary to admit that it is the very presence of Christ that stains the sacred place.

To this end, Adventists say that just as the priest in the old law was stained by the sins of men that he carried with him every day when entering the sanctuary, so the heavenly one is stained by the sins that Christ had atoned for. Sister White would later say that the sin to be purified in the heavenly sanctuary is the violation of the Sabbath law, so important to her. Therefore, according to her, Christ entered the holy place on the day of his Ascension and remained there until 1844, the date on which he entered the most holy place to purify it, because on that date the two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings ended.

10. ANSWER

If we analyze the Adventist doctrine we will see that only this question is original in it, since the other doctrines are found in other religious beliefs from which they were taken. This is, therefore, the cornerstone of his entire system and despite this the weakest, since it does not have any scriptural support. Mrs. White herself had to reinforce it with the argument of a supposed vision.

First of all, the theory assumes insufficiency in the sacrifice of Jesus, and Scripture tells us of a unique and perfect sacrifice, adding that where sins have been forgiven there can be no oblation for them. (Heb 10, 14 and 18)

The very possibility of assuming that Christ can stain the Sanctuary with his presence, even for the sins of men, is absurd and blasphemous.

Whatever the metaphorical meaning of the Sanctuary that Jesus passes through, the truth is that Christ, on the very day of his Ascension, entered the Sanctuary once and for all, achieving eternal redemption (Heb 9, 11-12). Therefore, there is no such shifting from place to place in order there, aided by the angels, as Adventists maintain, to be engaged in reviewing the records of each person’s actions; such an office, because it denies his omniscience, amounts even in its mere supposition to blasphemy.

11. THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES

It is a topic that Adventists like to deal with insistently in order, applying it to the current moment, to try to demonstrate the imminence of the Lord’s advent. It is true that Jesus, when affirming his Parousia, exposed certain signs to discern it (Mt 24; Mk 13; Lk 21; but for Mrs. White and the Adventists all somewhat strange phenomena of nature are related to those described in the synoptic apocalypse. The interpretation that the former makes of the “dark day” is curious, a dense darkness that enveloped some regions of northeastern North America on May 17, 1780, relating it to the 1,290 days of Daniel 12, and to the eschatological discourse of the Lord; the shower of shooting stars observed in the United States on November 13, 1833. relating it to Mt 24, 29 and Rev 6, 13; and even the Lisbon earthquake, to Rev 6, 12. Any catastrophe, war or calamity, and unfortunately there are many, is always pointed out by them as a sign of the end of times.

In that speech the Lord certainly wanted to express that his coming would be preceded by extraordinary phenomena. But what is important in his words is not only those signs, in which some seem to refer to the ruin of Jerusalem and others to the end of time, but also two consequences that Adventists seem not to notice. One, the absolute ignorance of the date, and another, the duty to always watch, regardless of cosmic signs, which is an index of the precious parable of the faithful and prudent servant.

To maintain, therefore, as a dogma, for the moment in which we live, an advent on a fixed date or, at least, in the short term, based on supposed cosmic signs, which, on the other hand, have always existed, is to go against the word of God, to go against human experience. These two sentences of the Lord will always remain: “No one knows about that day and hour” (Mt 24, 36). “Watch!” (Mark 13:37).

12. THE ADVENTIST INTERPRETATION OF THE APOCALYPSE

The millennium and the Antichrist.

The “style” of Adventist interpretation.

Adventists say that they always interpret the Bible in the literal sense, and nothing is more inaccurate than this. We will present some examples to demonstrate it.

H.G. White, in “The Great Controversy,” in the chapter entitled “The Deliverance of God’s People,” referring to the entry of the righteous into heaven, describes Adam’s entry into it. The meeting between the two Adams: Christ and Adam. “The Son of God stands to receive him with open arms, and when Adam perceives the signs of the nails, he does not fall into his arms, but prostrates himself, exclaiming: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain! The Lord lifts him up and invites him to contemplate the Edenic abode. He admires the trees that once made him delight and the vines and flowers that his own hands cultivated. The Savior takes him to the tree of life, takes its fruit and offers it to him to eat. Adam, surrounded by all the redeemed of his family, throws his shining crown at the feet of Jesus, and falling on his chest, embraces the Redeemer. He then plays the golden harp, and through the vaults of heaven the triumphant song echoes: “Worthy is the Lamb! The family of Adam repeats the chords and throws their crowns at the feet of the Savior, bowing before Him in adoration. The angels witness this meeting…), etc.

It may be objected that this is not about doing biblical exegesis, but about writing a literary page; but then she should be more careful with her appropriations of inspiration and revelation that she has been making about it since the first pages of that same book.

In case this example is not convincing, let’s look at another clearly exegetical one. This is the interpretation of chapter 13 of the Apocalypse. We will put Mrs. White’s interpretations in parentheses. It says like this:

“I saw another beast coming up from the earth and it had two horns like those of a lamb” (the beast represents a nation. Going up from the earth is as much as arising, growing spontaneously, and not because it has overthrown another nation; the horns are like those of a lamb, they represent youth: young nation); “he spoke like a dragon” (speaking represents legislating); “and causes the earth and those who live in it to worship the first beast” (the authority of this nation will be used to impose some observance in homage to the Papacy).

When the mainline churches of the United States – continues H.G. White – influence the State to impose their decrees and institutions, then Protestant America will have formed an image of the Roman hierarchy, and the infliction of civil penalties will come of itself.

“The beast makes everyone have a mark on their right hand or on their forehead and no one can buy or sell unless he has his name or the number of the beast” (the mark of the beast is the celebration of Sunday, instead of the Sabbath, for Adventists). Thus, the interpretation for them is clear: a young people that is formed or grows, legislates in homage to the Papacy on Sunday rest. These people are the United States, and this is the subject of one of the “inspired” chapters of the “Great Controversy,” the one marked with the number 26, and entitled “The United States in Prophecy.”

This should no longer be said to be literature, because Uriah Smith, one of the most favored exegetes in the sect, in his book “The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse,” vol. II, “The Apocalypse, Pacific Press.”, 1949, admits this interpretation of “the prophetess” (pp. 207, 208, 219, 250, 296 and 297).

13. THE MILLENNIUM

The doctrine on the subject, very extensive, we believe can be reduced, without loss of clarity, to the following points:

During the millennium: The coming of Christ, with the resurrection of the righteous and their transfer to heaven, will inaugurate that period. During it, the reign of the Son, preparatory to the eternal reign of the Father. Judgment of the wicked and fallen angels. The earth returns to chaos, and Satan and his angels, bound to it, are reduced to contemplating its desolation.

After the millennium: Christ, with the righteous, descends from heaven with the heavenly Jerusalem. Satan is unleashed, and together with his angels and evil ones they will fight against her and against God, but they will be annihilated. Pain and death, suppressed from the earth, which, purified by fire, will be transformed into a paradise. The Son hands over his kingdom to the Father, who will reign eternally on earth with his people.

14. APOCALYPSE AND CHRONOLOGY

One of the pet peeves of Adventists is numbers and chronology. We have already indicated that in the prophetic books it is difficult to establish this; but it will be even less so in the Apocalypse, where the development of the action is not rectilinear, but in cycles. Although this book contains the History of the Church, according to the Catholic interpretation, from the first advent of Christ to the end of the centuries; Although it has been called “the gospel of the Resurrection and the triumphs of Christ,” it is not about making a chronological parallel between the visions of Saint John and the historical events of the Church.

Literal millenarianism lacks scriptural foundation. Only in Rev 20, 6 does a figure appear, which seems to be a symbolic number, which could have been suggested to Saint John by the Jewish notion of the life of the world, which was believed to be six thousand years, corresponding to the six days of creation, plus another millennium of rest, and then eternity.

It can be a way of speaking, like “seventy times seven,” that indicates an indefinite figure, in this case, time.

Jesus’ phrase: “I will raise them up on the last day” (Jn 6:39) does not seem to imply that he will raise them up a thousand years before the last day, as Adventists claim regarding the righteous.

The coming of the Lord and the Judgment appear in Saint Matthew (25, 31) as succeeding each other immediately or as mutually included.

In summary: millenarianism appears as a strange element in the whole of the New Testament, and even irreconcilable with many statements of the Apocalypse itself. It is, therefore, according to the Catholic interpretation, an indefinite period, in which Satan is chained by the grace of Christ, after his Resurrection and triumph of his Church. This grace is for the human race the first resurrection, the second being the corporal resurrection, at the end of time. All this is more authentically biblical than, by insisting on literally interpreting a figure in an already difficult verse, not only having to invent so much fantasy, but, what is worse, destroying hundreds of very clear verses, and with it a large part of Christian doctrine.

15. THE ANTICHRIST

It is the role that Adventists reserve for the Catholic Church, and more specifically for the Pope. To them, the Church is a gigantic system of false religion, the work of Satan’s power, a monument to his efforts to sit on the throne and reign over the earth according to his will. The identification with the great harlot of verses 4 and 6 of chapter 17 of the Apocalypse: “Clothed in purple, adorned with gold, pearls and precious stones, having in her hands a cup full of abominations, of the filth of fornications and intoxicated with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus”, who are for them the defenders of the freedom of religious ideas and the reformers of Protestantism.

“The Pope – they continue – is “the man of sin”, who calls himself “Lord God, the Pope”. In a word, he is the Antichrist, identified with the beast of the Apocalypse.

Always using numbers and cabalistic speculations, which they are so fond of, they try to make biblical interpretations based on arithmetic operations to demonstrate this identification. For example: If a text from the Apocalypse (13, 3-5) talks about a persecution of the beast for 42 months, they search throughout the Bible for some figure that is similar. They find in Daniel (7, 25) one that, although it refers to the already mentioned persecution of Antiochus, they prefer to relate it to the Antichrist. Of that period that is spoken of there as “a time, times and half a time”, which can be three and a half years, or forty-two months, or 1,260 days, they transform the number of days into years. Obsessed by papal rule, they take a date, that of the beginning of this predominance – according to them, 538 -, and another of its decline – according to them, 1789 -, when Pius VI was taken prisoner by Napoleon. 1,260 years pass between one date and another. Thus, the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse on this matter are already fulfilled.

In reality, the date 538 does not correspond to any fact of papal predominance. The year before, during the campaign for Italy, Belisarius had deposed Pope Silverius.

16. THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

According to Adventists, Popes are called “Vicarius Filii Dei.” Well, taking from this formula the letters that in the Roman numeral system had the value of figures and adding them, the result gives the number 666, that of the beast of the Apocalypse (13, 18). So,

V I C ar I V s f I L I I D e I

5+ 1 + 100 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 50 + 1 + 1 + 500 + 1 = 666

It is useless to argue that Saint John wrote in Greek and not Latin, that the Popes are called Vicarius Christi and not Vicarius Filii Dei, etc. They cling to the number of the beast, taking it as seriously as the aforementioned book by Uriah Smith, where we find this information, is considered serious among them (pp. 250, 254).

There are those who, in the same plan, have begun to verify the value of the Latin letters of Mrs. White’s name with the same result; which we, out of delicacy, omit in this edition.

17. ADVENTIST DOCTRINE ON THE SOUL AFTER DEATH

Adventist doctrine in this sense is not very clear. It does not determine exactly whether with death the soul is completely extinguished or remains in a state of total unconsciousness until the resurrection. However, this last explanation seems to be the one most frequently used.

But whether one or the other, the truth is that in his doctrine the soul separated from the body is nothing, and that immortality is not absolute, but conditional. If the soul of a resurrected person is that of a just man, he will have immortal life; If it is that of an evil person, it will be annihilated.

According to them, this doctrine “is imposed by the Bible.”

18. THE SUPPOSED BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE AND ITS REFUTATION

Before adding the texts that they use most frequently to demonstrate that their doctrine is contained in the Bible, we must make an observation. We believe it is a mistake to base all arguments that Adventists use on this subject on the Old Testament, or primarily on it. The entire Bible is divinely inspired, but not all of its books contain the same degree of revelation. This runs throughout Scripture and progresses, until it reaches its fullness in the New Testament. Thus, although immortality already appears hinted at in Genesis (15, 15; 25, 8; 25, 17, etc.), it does not appear with the same clarity as in the countless New Testament texts. The same thing happens, due to lack of a complete revelation, with the concept of the afterlife, very vague in the first books, until becoming clear in the prophetic and sapiential ones. This line goes from considering that man’s life comes from the breath of God (Gen 2, 7), to affirming that God created man for immortality (Wisdom 2, 23); that the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God and are not touched by the torments of death (Wisdom 3:1-4), and that eternal pain and infamy are reserved for the wicked (Dan 12:2).

To demonstrate that the human soul is not immortal and that when a man dies his soul remains, at least, in the most absolute unconsciousness, they use two types of arguments: one, the use of scriptural texts, such as, for example: “the dead know nothing… and there is no thought, work and wisdom in the tomb where they lie…” (Eccles 9, 5 and 10); or use the etymological controversy about the words that express the senses of spirit, soul, life, breath, etc.: “nefesh”, “ruah”, etc., in Hebrew.

To the biblical quotations presented we will answer that, apart from being able to refer to their meaning, to the fact that in the tomb there is no science or works that allow one to change one’s life, and therefore merit, these texts of Ecclesiastes cannot in any way be used as demonstrative of the mortality of the soul, since in chapter 12, verse 7, of that same book it is stated that the spirit upon death returns to God. When interpreting a hagiographer, one should not take into account just one text, but the entire context, and even more so, the general doctrine of the book.

Another error is to base a doctrine of its importance on the etymology of the words. These should not be interpreted only by etymology, but by the meaning they had at the time of use and the special meaning that the person who used them could give them. We all know that over time words expand or reduce, they change their original meaning, and it is difficult today to pretend to count even the slightest nuance of a word written thousands of years ago. Furthermore, we should not be interested in words or nuances of them, but rather in doctrine in texts and contexts, which clearly tell us the meaning of the immortality of the soul, and we find this amply in the books of Sacred Scripture.

That unconsciousness of the dead, that languor, that “not knowing anything in the grave”, must have been something very relative, when the spirit of Samuel, evoked by the fortune teller, gives advice to Saul.

Reuniting with parents (Gen 15, 15) seems to be a desirable fate. Balaam, inspired by saying: “May I die with the death of the righteous and may my end be like theirs,” utters a phrase that seems to expound a doctrine of afterlife. And when Jacob thinks about going to join his son in Sheol, it is evidently that he believes that there they will be able to recognize each other (Gen 37, 35).

It is impossible to make an analysis of all the light that the Old Testament sheds, as it would take many pages to fill. Suffice it, then, to consider that it gives us some ideas about permanence beyond the grave, divine justice, retribution; And if they are not as clear as those of the New Testament, it is because complete revelation fell within the mission of the Messiah.

From the texts of the Old Testament let us move on to complete clarity in those of the New.

In the Gospel:

The parable of Lazarus (Luke 16, 19-31) tells us how he is taken immediately after his death to Paradise, and the rich man, on the contrary, to hell. In the state in which death surprised them, this was the retribution, without intermediate states of unconsciousness.

Souls separated from bodies continue to have life; That is why God, under whose dominion they continue to live “is God of the living and not of the dead” (Mt 22, 32).

“For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” – says Saint Paul – (Phil 1, 21-24), hesitating between choosing this means or remaining in the flesh, as more necessary in attention to his own.

In (2 Cor 5, 1-9) he explains how in our body we groan, being absent from the Lord; But we have a building in heaven, and we are glad to leave this earthly tent to be with the Lord. Which shows that the reward is given when the soul is separated from the body.

“Christ died for us so that whether we wake or sleep, we may live together with Him” (1 Thes 5:10). On purpose we have written “sleep” (which others translate exactly “die”) to insist how in the New Testament texts death is always compared to a dream, for example, in the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn 11, 11-14); in (Acts 7, 60), to express the death of Stephen. In (1 Thes 4, 13-15) it is “sleeping in the peace of the Lord”, common language in every Christian from the earliest times, through the catacombs, expressed in the word cemetery-dormitory, to the present day; but it is never the state of unconsciousness that Adventists claim.

Neither scripturally nor philosophically can the Adventist doctrine on the soul be maintained. If the soul is destroyed with death, the resurrection would involve the creation of a new soul, and therefore, another person. If the soul remains completely unconscious, sometimes for many centuries, we must resort to examples such as those they use to explain this: something similar to a cut in the electric current due to the action of a switch. Apart from the fact that with these arguments they seem to want to be satisfied only with words, a soul deprived for centuries completely of all consciousness and all psychic life seems absurd, it ceases to be a soul.

Thus, any of the arguments they use are some so clearly erroneous and the others so complicated and obscure, as it is difficult to admit all of them in order to try to prove their doctrine.

The reality is that this is imposed on them as a consequence of the millenarianism that they defend. To enjoy it, this requires a period of waiting in unconsciousness, incompatible with the truth of immediate retribution for death.

19. THE RESURRECTION AND ETERNAL RETRIBUTION IN ADVENTISM. THE DOUBLE RESURRECTION AND HELL

Adventist doctrine maintains the existence of two resurrections: one, only for the righteous, destined to enjoy the millennium; and another, that of the Universal Judgment, in which the wicked will also return to life, who, as punishment, will suffer annihilation. Therefore, eternal hell does not exist for them.

There are three points in this doctrine that we will try to refute:

20. THE FIRST RESURRECTION

The strange resurrection of the righteous is intended to make them participate in the heavenly millennium with Christ. Therefore, this doctrine imposed by that of the millennium comes, and having already demonstrated this error, the falsity of the consequence is demonstrated. Furthermore, scriptural evidence is contrary to this supposed resurrection.

Let’s look at some texts:

Saint John (5, 28-29): “The hour will come when all those who are in the tomb will hear his voice and come out, some to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation.” And Saint Paul (Acts 24, 15) speaks of “the hope in the resurrection of both the just and the unjust” in his speech before the tribune Felix, without making distinction of moments or people, that is, in the sense of universal and unique.

21. HELL

This doctrine is for them a popular belief, invented by the Catholic Church at the same time as that of the immortality of the soul. They admit a punishment for the wicked, consisting of their total annihilation.

H.G. White considers “the doctrine of eternal hell as a teaching foreign to the Book of God and repugnant to all feelings of love and justice.” She should therefore prove in this order: first, that it is not in Scripture, and then, the injustice of this punishment; but she prefers to unite both supposed proofs and write three or four pages of the “Great Controversy” (589-592), with very few biblical texts (only one, from Ezekiel 33, 11, which clearly refers to the present life, prior to death, and does not prove, therefore, anything of what she wants to demonstrate with it), and to make sentimental literature, to establish with it considerations about love and mercy and establish that “the doctrine of hell is the wine of abominations of Babylon” that the Catholic Church gives to all nations to drink.”

We already said when dealing with the immortality of the soul that, due to the progression that is observed in revelation in the Old Testament, there are books in it that do not have the clarity on the subject as in those of the New Testament, with the fullness of revelation. Something of this also happens with the theme of hell. The darkness of some of these books is used by Adventists to maintain that the idea of ​​hell is foreign to the Scriptures. The other reasons they give, purely sentimental, are that there is a disproportion between sin and eternal punishment, which goes against divine love and mercy; that annihilation is more just, etc.

We will proceed in order.

22. HELL IN SACRED SCRIPTURE

In the Old Testament.

We have in it the following progressive exposition of the topic:

1. A general doctrine: God is a just judge and holy (Ps 7, 12 and 145, 17); search the hearts (Ps 7, 10; 94, ll); He rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked (Ps 5, 5.6.11; 94, 22-23), and he will judge both.

2. On top of this general doctrine we find another superimposed. Virtue does not always correspond to earthly good. Sometimes the unjust is found unpunished (Ps 10, 1-2; 94, 3-7); and the righteous is persecuted (Ps 10, 8-10; 69, 2-22). It is the problem of evil in this life, from which the existence of a reward in the next is deduced.

3. More light is added with the doctrine of the judgment that God reserves to condemn the wicked and reward the righteous (Ps 1, 5; 97 and 98; Is 24, 21-23; Ezek 38 and 39, and Mal 3, 16; 4, 3).

4. A further step towards a more positive doctrine is found in the idea of ​​an otherworldly prize reserved for the righteous and the wicked excluded (Ps 16, 10).

5. Finally, we find the categorical affirmation that eternal pain and infamy are reserved for the wicked (Dan 12:2). And above all, Isaiah 66, 24.

In the Gospel:

Well demonstrated its existence both in the penalty of damage (deprivation of the presence of God) and in that of meaning (torment), as well as its eternity, we will indicate in the quotes the words that refer to one and the other to avoid insistence and comments on it:

“Depart from Me, you cursed, into eternal fire” (Mt 25:41).

“I never knew you; depart from Me, you who work iniquity” (Mt 7:23).

“Thrown into Gehenna, where the worm never dies and the fire is not extinguished” (Mk 9, 47-48).

“As tares are gathered and thrown into the fire” (Mt 13, 40).

“The angels will separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace” (Mt 13:50).

“They will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev 20:10).

We will only insist on the word “eternal”, which some have tried to interpret as “very long duration”. Of the seventy-odd times it is used in the New Testament, it always represents the sense of infinity. Perhaps in only one case (Tit 1, 2) the meaning of “ainoios” – eternal – as “very ancient” could be admitted. In all the remaining texts, it never means something that, looking to the future, lasts a long time and then ends.

23. SUPPOSED MORAL OR SENTIMENTAL REASONS AGAINST THE ETERNITY OF PUNISHMENT

There is disproportion between the crime and its punishment. The momentary enjoyment of pleasure is not worthy of eternal punishment. This goes against divine love and mercy, say Adventists.

The penalty must be proportionate not to the duration of the sin, but to its severity. This is how human justice does it: a murder lasts a few minutes and its penalty is death or life imprisonment. Mortal sin, of immeasurable gravity when it becomes habitual, creates a terrible disorder in the soul. It is not up to the sinful man with this disorder of the soul and the judgment distorted by sin to determine what his punishment should be, in the same way that he is not authorized to impose his own punishment on the criminal in Law. Let us learn to respect God’s high judgments when his criteria do not coincide with our desires. God is unlimited mercy – says Saint Thomas -; This, however, is regulated by his wisdom, and from this comes the fact that those who have become unworthy of participating in it do not understand it: demons and those obstinate in evil.

Sin not only violates justice but also violates Love and as Lacordaire said: “If it were only justice that had opened that abyss, there would still be the recourse to turn to Love; but when it is Love that is violated, to whom will I turn? We have not been uselessly loved by God; love is life or death, and in the case of the love of God, it is eternal life or eternal death.”

24. THE ANNIHILATION OF SOULS

It is not new doctrine. Already in the second century it was supported by the Gnostic Valentine and later by the Sacinians and some philosophers, and it was taken up by some modern sects because they considered it more just and efficient than that of eternal punishments.

Introduced into Adventism by Mrs. White, some of her followers have tried to find some biblical basis for it, without success, since the text they quote from Malachi (4:1): “on that day, scorching like an oven, the authors of impiety will be scorched by fire like stubble, leaving neither root nor branch”; It is seen that it refers to the “day of the Lord”, the day of judgment, and it is a metaphorical way, even through the words “day burning like an oven”, “stubble”, “root”, “branch”, to express the terribleness of that day for the wicked. The remaining texts they use are so weak to prove this doctrine (as can be seen in Luke 13, 3; 2 Pet 2, 12, and Rev 20, 15), that we believe they are not worth commenting on. On the other hand, any text that could seem dubiously affirmative of the doctrine held by Adventists on annihilation would be worthless in the face of so many statements, so clear and conclusive, that the Sacred Scriptures maintain the opposite. Annihilation is not more just than hell, because if the punishment were not eternal, its counterpart, the reward, would not be eternal either since the foundation of the eternity of punishment is the same as that of the eternity of true life.

Nor would it be more efficient to avoid crimes and outrages against God taking into account our perverse inclinations.

The thought of hell is perhaps one of the most effective, given our nature, to not offend God; and although by this very nature we tend to consider this doctrine harsh and difficult for the human mind, we will not have the right to deny its certainty. Perhaps because of these defects of our nature, Divine Providence wanted to expose and reveal it as clearly as few other doctrines are. Faced with this terrible mystery of the eternal, hell always arises in Scripture as the reverse of heaven.

25. THE SABBATH

The celebration of the Sabbath as a holiday is the point of greatest insistence among Adventists in their preaching. That is why they are called “seventh day”. It is for them the sign of the elect, the celebration of Sunday being the mark of the beast of Rev 13, 16.

Based on verse 2 of chapter 2 of Genesis: “God blessed the seventh day of the week and sanctified it,” they maintain that a natural law was implanted there, and therefore, it cannot be repealed.

They add that Jesus kept the Sabbath (Lk 4, 16; 4, 31), and that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Mt 5, 17), there being no text in Scripture that demonstrates that He replaced that day.

And, finally, they affirm that worship on Sunday is of pagan origin – the day of the sun -, and its practice was established for the Catholic Church by order of Constantine, in 320, there being no earthly authority that could change the decalogue because the words of the Lord have meaning and value of eternity (From new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath all flesh will come to prostrate before Me” (Is 66, 23).

26. THE INSTITUTION OF THE SABBATH IS NOT A NATURAL LAW

The Sabbath law has two parts. One of them, certainly, of natural law, is the obligation that we all have, due to the fact of having been created and endowed with the use of reason, through which we can reach the knowledge of moral duties, to worship God and thank Him, spending a certain time for this. Another part is positive law, which indicates the date and how to celebrate it.

The observance of the Sabbath is not a natural law, because if it were so, it would be found in all the peoples of the earth, even if only in a rudimentary way. Engraved in the hearts of all men, the natural law dictates to all that they must practice their external worship of God, but not on a specific day: the Sabbath.

Furthermore, breaking the natural law would be a sin as inexcusable as blaspheming, and all Christians, both the saints of the Catholic Church and the great figures of Protestantism, would have violated this natural law without being able to claim ignorance, since they knew the Scriptures well.

27. THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH IS OF POSITIVE (CEREMONIAL) LAW

It was not promulgated immediately after Creation, since Genesis 2:2 only says that the Lord blessed and sanctified that day, and it is one thing to confer a special dignity on it and another to impose it as a holiday for all of humanity when there were still no people.

It is unknown exactly how old the practice of Sabbath observance is and in what form and with what obligation it was celebrated before its promulgation at Sinai. Of course, in the time of the Patriarchs it was not talked about, so it is to be believed that either it was not very widespread or its practice was not well understood. A passage from Exodus (16, 22-27) makes us understand this. It is narrated in it that on the occasion of the gathering of manna in double quantity on the sixth day, the elders of the people, surprised, turned to Moses, who explained to them: “Tomorrow is the Sabbath, a day consecrated to the Lord”; and the next day: “Today is the Sabbath; eat of that today, for there will be none in the field” despite which some went out to check if it was true, and found nothing.

The law of the Sabbath, not appearing until chapter 16, verse 23 of Exodus, referring, therefore, only to the Jewish people, is proof of its positive, ceremonial character. “Proper only to this people; it suggests the division into periods of seven days, for the first time attested in Israel and unknown in the other ancient nations” (E. Power, art. “History of Israel”, in Verbum Dei, vol. I, page 215).

28. JESUS ​​BEFORE THE LAW OF THE SABBATH

The Lord, in his phrase “the Son of Man is the owner of the Sabbath” (Mk 2:28), vindicates the right not only to interpret the law, but, as its author, to dispense with it and even abrogate it. Because “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it” (more exactly, “to perfect it”), prove nothing in favor of the Sabbath, since all the force of the phrase is in its second part, “to perfect it”; and thus, in six points it perfects the law of Moses throughout that passage. Perfecting involves changing some details for others and even deleting some.

And even less could the cited text of Isaiah be invoked: “from new moon to new moon…”, because who celebrates the new moon today?

Jesus could, therefore, change the day and the way of celebrating the festival. If he did not do it publicly (the Evangelist certainly does not say that he did), it could have been to give an example of the fulfillment of the law, to which he voluntarily submitted himself while he lived: for example, circumcision. After his Death, Resurrection and Pentecost, the laws ceased, some very quickly, others more slowly, and even among the first Christians Judaic practices sometimes subsisted with purely Christian ones for some time. The truth is that with the death of Christ the ceremonial law of Moses ends, since having been established by God as a sign of the Alliance with his people, it no longer has reason to subsist in the New Alliance with all humanity; and if the ceremonial law abrogated is all that of Leviticus 23, as the Adventists themselves admit, the law of the Sabbath is also found there.

To determine the moment of Christ’s replacement of the Sabbath law, we would have to look at some of those occasions in which, after his death, he showed himself to his disciples, instructing them in many complementary teachings of the Gospel or in those many other things that he did, which if they were written down one by one the books could not contain (Jn 21, 25). Or simply, in the attitude that the Apostles subsequently adopted in the face of these events, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (Jn 16, 12-13).

29. THE CELEBRATION OF SUNDAY IN SACRED SCRIPTURE

Saint Paul condemns the Galatians (4, 10), “who observe the days (the Sabbath), the months (the new moons), the seasons (Jewish festivals, such as that of the Tabernacles, etc.), the years (the feast of the first day of theirs and probably the Sabbaths”), insisting again on this theme in Col 2, 16-17.

Two passages, one from Acts (20:7) and another from the Epistle I to the Corinthians (16:2), demonstrate how Sunday was already celebrated in apostolic times. In the first of them it is said that “on the first day of the week, when they were gathered together to break bread…”, which implies a Eucharistic sacrifice and a gathering of Christians to celebrate that day. That day, the first of the week, is precisely our Sunday. In the second, and regarding alms, Saint Paul advises: “On the first day of the week, each person set aside what seems good to him…”, and it is known how the first Christians celebrated their holidays by practicing good works. Saint Paul takes advantage of the gathering of Christians for the Eucharistic celebration to suggest almsgiving.

It is fundamental and decisive in this regard that at the end of the apostolic era – when Saint John writes the Apocalypse – we find that in an inspired book there already exists the word itself, which, to designate “Sunday” will be current in the Church to this day: “Day of the Lord” (Rev 1, 10). And already in the time of Saint John, the last surviving apostle, the celebration of this day of worship in the Church was so perfectly established that it has even received the classic name, which it will retain throughout history.

There is an interesting testimony from a pagan. Pliny, governor of Bithynia in the year 96, wrote to Trajan: “Christians have a fixed day to meet and praise their God.” If the Christians had gathered on the Sabbath, the date of the Jews, so well known then throughout the world due to the dispersion of this people, Pliny would not have been surprised by this “fixed day.”

That this day was Sunday is proven by the epistle of Barnabas, from the end of the first century. “Let us celebrate,” he says, “the eighth day for joy, since on it Christ was resurrected.” The Didache (70-90), the apocryphal Gospel of Peter (150), Meliton of Sardis (2nd century) and many others testify to the same thing.

Special mention deserves the letter of the distinguished martyr in the time of Trajan, Saint Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, to the Magnesians, perhaps referring to some recalcitrant Sabbath-observers, who then still remained, probably written in 107; says: “If those who have lived according to the old customs reach the newness of hope, they should in no way observe Sabbath, but live according to Sunday, in which our life also had its origin through Him and through His death.”

30. THE SUPPOSED PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE CELEBRATION OF SUNDAY

It has no reason to exist. Most of the names of the days of the week still have pagan names; Sunday retains the name of the day of the sun in many modern languages. Saint Justin, in his Apology (year 152) noted that the day of the Christian festival coincided with what the pagans called the day of the sun. This is nothing more than a pure coincidence and further proof that in the time of Saint Justin it was already a practice that had been established for many years among Christians.

31. CONSTANTINE AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

After what has been said, it would not be worth refuting the Adventist idea that the celebration of Sunday is due to its implementation by Constantine, in 320. History is there to demonstrate that the only thing this Emperor did was sanction for his entire empire a festival that had been celebrated for centuries among Christians.

A curious note is provided by Tertullian about some flourishing churches in Africa in the second century. In some of them, in addition to the Sunday festival, some Christian meetings were sometimes celebrated on Wednesdays and Fridays, because fasting was observed there, and within them, a special liturgy. Thus, Sunday was a holiday in all cases, and in others, certain ceremonies were held on Wednesday and Friday. As for the Sabbath, there is no further remembrance; All recollections of him had been erased.

32. ADVENTIST PRACTICES

With Adventism we are faced with a systematized doctrine, propagated with efficient and economically abundant means, practiced within a perfect organization, with severe discipline, professed by more than a million followers, with a marked tendency to growth in number. It is interesting, therefore, after knowing its doctrines, already explained, to look at the way of practicing them. Therefore, we refer to its organization, worship, life practices, propaganda, dangers that these ideas contain for the vulgar Catholic and possible reasons for their expansion.

33. ORGANIZATION

The sect is congregationalist; Therefore, each community constitutes an independent church, united to the others at the level of each nation by the National Conference and at the world level, by the General Conference. He divides the world for his action upon it into two hundred and eighty-two districts.

The ministers of these churches are the pastors and the elders (presbyters), without these positions having a priestly character, since they lack the Sacrament of Orders. They are positions conferred by their own assemblies to those who have more status or seniority in their churches (presbyters, in the sense of elders) or certain religious preparation and studies (pastors).

34. DISCIPLINE

The discipline of the sect is very severe. Any contravention in the life practices indicated by it may give rise to its expulsion. The value they give to the prophecies of their founder and the decisions of the General Conference, for them “the highest authority of God on earth,” are endorsed by an infallibility so absolute that this subjects them to an incomparably greater dependence than a Catholic can have with respect to Rome.

To enter Adventism it is absolutely necessary to answer affirmatively to this question: Do you accept the spirit of prophecy as it has been manifested within the final Church through the mystery and the writings of Mrs. White? (Church Manual, Article 18).

35. WORSHIP AND LITURGY

Worship is celebrated on Sabbaths. Songs, reading of the Bible, comments on it, washing of the feet, public reconciliation and the Supper. This, in reality, is not a sacrament, nor is Baptism. These are the only two sacramental symbols that they preserve. The first is celebrated with bread and unfermented grape juice, symbolizing the body and blood of the Lord, in memory of his death, and representing his constant, although purely spiritual, presence in the soul of the believer. Baptism, for adults only and by triple immersion, symbolizes the death to sin of the old man and the resurrection of the new, as well as the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

The Sabbath school, in sections for children and adults, and within these, divided into grades, has well-planned programs from a didactic point of view.

The payment of tithe is obligatory, apart from other collections held on the occasion of their meetings or cults.

36. MISSIONS

All Adventists are by essence missionaries of their doctrine, because awaiting the next coming of the Lord and depending on the preaching of this message having spread throughout the entire world, it is natural that they give the predominant place of their activity to this propaganda. They have missions in three hundred and eighty-five countries of seven hundred and fourteen languages ​​and dialects, thousands of schools and an intense missionary spirit within their churches thanks to the voluntary missionary youth organizations (J.M.V.) and the “Share your faith” movement (C.T.F.).

However, a great lack of spirituality is observed throughout the religious life of the sect, as all its main sources have been cut off; the sacraments, mainly the Eucharist, the lack of devotion to Mary, the concept of the soul, etc. For this reason, his writings on religious or spiritual topics have a very limited field.

37. ADVENTIST MORALS

In general, their morality is austere and based on the orthodox principle that the human body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. But, as exalted and fanatics, they seem to want to demonstrate that they have discovered this doctrine, and they attribute to Catholicism the belief of not giving any importance to the body, in the divine plan of salvation, giving it all to the soul. With this doctrine, “reinvented” by them, they not only maintain that food must be used moderately to successfully fight against the flesh, which constitutes an irrefutable truth and a doctrine of the healthiest spirituality, but, exaggerating and exorbitant the facts, they go so far as to prohibit the consumption of many of those and various drinks, trying to base all this on Scripture. It seems that in them the virtues have gone crazy, as Chesterton observed when speaking of the virtues separated from their true Catholic trunk, and by feeling isolated and wandering in disorder they cause quite a bit of havoc.

They attempt to base abstention from alcohol, as well as tobacco, on the Bible, because “nothing impure will enter heaven” (Rev 21, 27). In their exaggerations, they go so far as to claim that in Scripture wine and grape juice are the same thing, and that the Lord, in his Last Supper, certainly used the latter and not exactly wine; and in her anti-alcoholic mania, Mrs. White goes so far as to say that through wine Satan not only sets traps in all the affairs of life, but also makes them reach the altar. The prohibition of eating meat also seems to have an alleged biblical basis – perhaps Gen 1, 29 -; but, whatever text they tried to support it, the truth is that it would always be in contradiction with Rom 14, 14; Col 2, 16-20; 1 Tim 4, 2-5; Luke 7, 34; Acts 10:15, and Mark 7:18, which clearly refer to all cessation of legal impurity of food.

But, in reality, the vegetarian regime, as well as the use of physiatric medicine remedies, are due to a supposed revelation by H. G. White. In 1864, when her husband was seriously ill, she had this divine inspiration, and with it she not only imposed the diet regime on the sect, but also founded medical work on similar principles. He founded the “Western Institute for Health Reform” in 1884, intended to train the cadres of evangelical missionary doctors, and was the beginning of Adventist medical work, which currently exists: 150 hospitals and clinics and several thousand doctors, nurses and health workers. Although most of the classical remedies in Medicine are banned in these institutions, they are still an important Adventist achievement and, above all, a wonderful means of propaganda for their ideas.

38. PROPAGANDA

Missionary fanatics, their propaganda is insistent, going door to door offering publications on topics that attract the reader’s curiosity. Also very intense through both the press and the radio.

The colporteurs – sellers of Adventist literature – are astute propagandists and the founder admired them so much that she called them “missionaries who consecrate themselves to God to give the last message of warning to the world.”

Printed propaganda is huge and clever. They have printing presses and publishing houses in all the countries of the world, publishing millions of copies of their publications in all languages. In countries where they do not enjoy freedom of propaganda, their publishing houses operate covertly, publishing works and magazines in which, without clearly defending the main doctrines of the sect, they deal with works that they practice, such as vegetarianism, anti-alcoholism, pacifism, etc., from a point of view that claims to be scientific or moral.

Radio propaganda has recently taken on great importance. In North America there are many hundreds of stations that broadcast several weekly talks for countless listeners, and correspondence courses through the broadcast “The Voice of Prophecy.” Something similar in South America with “The Voice of Hope”, in our language, and in Europe through Radio Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, etc.

39. DANGERS CONTAINED IN THE PROPAGATION OF THESE IDEAS

We are not going to deal with the dangers of a religious nature, which have already been largely exposed. We are referring mainly to the dangers of social order.

Their exalted pacifism often puts them, especially in times of war, in serious situations.

With the practice of the Sabbath something similar to the above happens in the work order, by refusing to work on that day.

The constant preaching of the end of the world, based on catastrophes, wars and calamities, as a sign of the end of times, can engender true collective psychoses of alarm.

The use of one’s own medical remedies, to the exclusion of those universally recognized as highly efficient by all Medicine, can have serious consequences in the treatment of many diseases.

And the terrible fanaticism to which they reach has often given rise to incidents of great significance, some of which we will see shortly.

40. HATRED OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Because Adventism is considered the only true church, it feels contempt for all other religious ideas, which transforms into true hatred of the Catholic Church.

His animosity towards the Catholic Church seems to be discovered by Colinon, in his work “False Prophets and Sects of Today”, in the fact that Adventism believes that the more it deviates from it at present, the more original it will be, and in this being the original church is where its card of nobility is based.

One of its writers already said that the Adventist church starts from the moment the last blow of the hammer sounded on the cross of Christ, and all the efforts of Mrs. White in “The Great Controversy”, dedicating more than half of that 800-page book to it, is in this: connecting the first years of Christianity with the first rebellions against the Church and continuing with the reformers: Hus, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, etc., until the church that she founded. The truth is that none of those mentioned were in agreement with the doctrines of the others, and that H. G. White is not in agreement with Protestantism either. We cannot explain this attitude of Mrs. White; but she will explain it to us, as always, with a curious theory: They all brought to Protestantism something new, some progress, and if this was not towards unity among them (as anyone has to recognize), it was towards the unity that today maintains the only true church, the final church: Seventh-day Adventism.

Their hatred of the Catholic Church has led some to provoke incidents, which demonstrate how far fanaticism and preaching against “the Antichrist Pope” can go. A young Italian, Bruno Cornacchiola, an Adventist fanatic, conceived the idea of ​​assassinating the Holy Father with a dagger on which he had engraved with his hand: “Death to the Pope.” Miraculously converted, he had to send Pius XII the weapon and the books that had inspired such a purpose.

It would, of course, be unfair – says Colinon – to heap all the responsibility for these acts on Adventism: but it is quite characteristic that Cornacchiola became an Adventist because – he himself said – it was the sect that seemed most anti-Catholic to him (ob. cit., page 146).

41. POSSIBLE CAUSES OF THE EXPANSION OF ADVENTISM

It is strange to see how doctrines full of errors and practices so difficult to comply with are carried out by men who must be assumed sincere, even though they are obstinate and have their critical faculties atrophied and their will paralyzed.

Could it be the doctrine of the coming of the Lord and the millennial kingdom that, in these troubled times, attracts people with the offer of such great and impressive perspectives?

It can certainly be a factor, as can pacifism, clever propaganda, and so many other doctrines and practices already analyzed; but it’s not all. There are other facts that should be kept in mind.

In our days, which claim to be characterized by atheism and materialism or, at least, by religious indifference, there is the strange paradox of many millions of beings who, sometimes under this guise, feel enormous curiosity about the spiritual and supernatural. There is also at this time an enormous lack of religious training and culture. The great leaders of the sects know that every follower begins by being curious and in need of knowledge.

This constitutes fertile ground for a good sowing of their ideas, an intense propaganda against the Catholic Church, and sometimes, not without reason, against the defects of Catholics, which, after all, as human beings, we have; and the freedom of religious ideas, which as a propagandistic posture at first, they usually use in their preaching, is the work that on these masses of indifferent-curious people, under the effects of a suitable climate, can yield great harvests.

Father Cirilo de Dinan, a deep expert on Adventism, said that many went to this sect because they found in it a warm and fraternal community, in which the subject was directly and immediately interested in their work of evangelization, they were made to read the Bible and pray in their language.

Perhaps after a certain time, staying in that warm community, you will discover internal struggles, envy and even divisions; but the first impression received, and this is indelible, is that of great fraternization. This factor is the right climate. One of its greatest powers of attraction.

Daniel Rops raises the problem of the growth of sects with this question: Is it not due to a certain rationalist aridity in the exposition of our faith and a lack of our fervor?

From the ideas of these Catholic thinkers we can draw these two consequences: our responsibility and our attitude towards the problem of sects and make a serious examination of conscience on the following points: our conduct as Catholics, exemplarity and charity; meditate on our formation, religious culture, especially biblical; participation of the laity in the liturgy, with the use of the vulgar language, just as the Church now has it; a serious and intense activity in the apostolate assigned to the laity and studies on the most efficient form of preaching, etc.

Charity towards our brothers who are in error must have a very special place in the examination of our conscience and will help us to establish the most correct attitude regarding it. It will have to be extreme, but without the slightest hint of contemporization or compromise, which would be contrary to it. It will be a total dedication, as the beautiful phrase from the prayer of Saint Irenaeus said, in helping our brothers to “take them out of the grave that they have dug for themselves, and abandoning their shadows, they return, through their conversion, to be begotten legitimate children of the Church of God.”

The ground that the Adventist conquers today, with infinitely greater reason, the Catholic will be able to conquer, taking with him, not a little fraternity, but all the charity of Christ and all his complete doctrine, not in pieces and in tatters, as the Adventist proclaims it to the world today.

FINAL NOTE

We have tried to explain clearly and briefly the fundamental doctrines of Seventh-day Adventism, as well as their explanation, not only biblical, but also psychological. It gives a lot of light to judge these theories, to know the historical moment in which they were formed and the specific people who participated in their formation.

The exalted anti-Romanism that the classic books of this religious confession breathe is largely the result of the atmosphere of the time. If Mrs. White were alive today, it is possible that she would have spoken differently; because in the classical Churches born of the “Reformation” the measles of such language has passed. But, in fact, Adventism was born then and crystallized like this.

To the same degree (keep in mind that we write in Spain, although not only for Spain), a bitter anti-Hispanic virus is poured into the classic writings of Adventism. (Anti-Catholicism and anti-Hispanism! Bad environment to train men and women in Spain.

Those are the facts that hurt us. That we regret. But along with those facts, we readily acknowledge that we have met Adventists who are excellent people and perfectly intentioned. That is why we insist that we do not judge people, but rather ideas. Precisely when we see these people, it hurts us doubly that these ideas are spread. Because they see that they are deceived and “poisoned”.

Our reaction, as Catholics, must be ardent and immediate, going to the heart of the matter. And the solution, in our opinion, can be no other than a thorough Catholic formation – founded on the Bible – such as that which the Church advises us with renewed insistence.

The Secretariat of “Catholic Faith” offers its methods -precisely biblical-, which are benefiting many thousands of our brothers, not only in Hispanic lands, but in many other nations of diverse origin.

The authentic Word of God will ultimately unite us within the true Church of Christ, with all souls of good faith.

Author: Mariano Aboín Pintó

Fountain: Apologetica.org