There is only one common theme that runs through every single important SDA doctrine, either overtly or subtly: Denigrating and Degrading the effect of the Resurrection, or denying the Divinity of Christ.
Unless you understand that, they will stitch together an impressive and mind-numbing stew of half-verses and unrelated and out of context verses to baffle the unwary, illiterate and non-Biblically savvy. It is an extremely devious and deceptive non-Christian cult. I wasted my first 22 years in it, so I know of what I speak. If you understand how their corrupt and un-Biblical system works, you need not debate then on their specific stitched-together rambling collection of half verses and verses taken out of context, because they all are held together with the common "glue" of denying or denigrating the divinity of Christ, or the effect of the Cross, or the effect of the Resurrection. Or all three.
First and foremost, the SDA Church would not exist were it not for their multiple false predictions of Christ's return between 1843 and 1850. They devised an amazing stitched-together and botched misinterpretation of Daniel 8:14 to repeatedly falsely predict the return of Christ. Throughout the cult's lifetime, there have been a truly-jaw dropping massive number of their own theologians who have denounced the 1844 scandal and its mutant bastard child: The Sanctuary Doctrine or the "Investigative Judgment(IJ)" Many of their own top theologians have declared the entire debacle unscriptural and unbiblical. Sadly, the cult's General Conference always fires their dedicated theologians and pastors for being honest about this clearly non-Biblical doctrine. Raymond Cottrell, their most distinguished theologian, waited until his retirement to denounce this Satanic and unbiblical doctrine.
Misusing Daniel 8:14 like that denigrates Christ, how? By making his return the subject of human prediction, by binding him time wise into your erroneous scripture-sculpting and stitching fetish. Like the Bible is some sort of esoteric code that only a few insiders can crack, rather than the extremely simple and plainly-obvious story of Gospel salvation that was given to the entire world at the Cross.
The IJ was strictly a face-saving fraud, devised out of thin air to compensate for the colossal disaster of 1844. The cult now posits Jesus entered the Holy of Holy places in Heaven in that year, to commence review of our conduct to see if we have earned our salvation with good works (in particular, Sabbath keeping). This necessitates an incomplete and unfinished work on the Cross, and a severe denigration of the effect of the Resurrection. This is the REAL reason that Adventist do not worship on Resurrection Day (Sunday and Easter) and insist on their Salvation by works-based Sabbath instead. They want to cow their terrified and panicked members into huddling together in paranoid fantasy, and relieving them of their money most importantly. They instill a paranoid and panicked fear of Roman Catholicism, who they falsely claim "changed Saturday to Sunday," and that one day the Catholics will hunt them down and murder them for keeping the Sabbath. That is a fairy tale that is pure, unvarnished paranoid conspiracy theory. Hence, their Sabbath keeping is really based on virulent Anti-Papacy paranoia coupled with an Un-Biblical fetish of Salvation by Works. Again, this entirely non-Biblical doctrine of Sabbath Keeping was absolutely proven false by their own theology professor, Dr. Samuele Bachiochi.
The IJ itself led logically to many satanic cult doctrines like Sabbath Keeping, Works based Salvation, following the Levitical dietary laws, and various forms of non-Christian and heretical views on the Trinity. In fact, for the first 100 years, the cult revived the ancient Arian Heresy and outright denied the Divinity of Christ. Due to the outcry from orthodox Christendom, they watered down their Arianism, and now deceptively teach a modified Aryanism known as Thritheism (while deceptively claiming they believe in the Trinity). It still is not the Trinity that has provided Salvation "once and for all" and that is THE CENTRAL doctrine of Christianity. The Adventist anti-Trinitariansm heresy eventually spawned such overtly Satantic cults such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Worldwide Church of God and the Branch Davidians. Adventism is much more deceptive and thereby much more successful than those three satanic cults in that the genius of Adventism is to disguise mutant and unbiblical cult doctrines with a thin veneer of superficially Christian-sounding doctrines that disguise its true core. They even managed to sucker cult expert Walter Martin into believing that they were Orthodox Christianity, even though at the end of his life, Martin was ready to write a new book denouncing them as a non-Christian cult once he realized that he had been "Had."
So when they focus obsessively on the Sabbath (which in actual practice, is MUCH more important to them than the Cross or the Resurrection) beware of their perspective. Disregard their ludicrous scripture-sculpting and scripture stitching, and go right for the jugular: Their odious and anti-Christian history of teaching heretical cult doctrine denying or denigrating the Divinity and his role in the unified Godhead of the Trinity.
Last edited by LarryP2; 20th March 2014 at 02:01 PM.
