What Adventist Believe

[Hobie]

The following list comes from Steve Wohlberg's (an SDA pastor and theologian) website and is good overview of Adventist beliefs...

We Believe
The following is not meant to be the formation of a creed, but is rather a statement of beliefs based on solid biblical teachings. We invite all readers to follow the example of the noble Bereans who, nearly two thousand years ago, “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

• The Bible (Old and New Testaments) is fully inspired by God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16)
• God created our world in six literal, 24-hour days, and rested on the seventh day (Gen. 1; 2:1-3; Exodus 20:11).
• Satan (a fallen angel), led Eve into sin (Gen. 3:1-6; Isaiah 14:12-14; Rev. 12:9)
• Jesus Christ is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14)
• Jesus Christ has revealed to the entire human family God’s loving character (John 3:16; 14:9)
• Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man (John 1:1-3, 14; 1 Tim. 2:5)
• Jesus was born of a virgin and died on the cross for the sins “of the whole world” (Matthew 1:23; 1 Cor. 15:3; 1 John 2:2)
• On the third day (Sunday morning), Jesus rose from the dead, as predicted in advance by the Scriptures (Luke 24; 1 Cor. 15:3,4)
• God is not prejudiced against any race, color, or nation (Acts 17:26; Rom. 2:11; Rev. 7:9)
• Eternal life is a free gift through Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:23)
• God’s love brings a sinner to repentance (Rom. 2:4)
• God calls all to repent and believe in Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21)
• We must be born again by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 3:6,7)
• Believers in Jesus should be baptized by immersion (Mat. 3:16,17; Mark 16:15; Acts 2:38,41)
• We should follow God’s Word above man’s traditions (Mat. 4:4; Col. 2:8)
• We should treat everyone with love and respect (Eph. 4:25, 5:1, 9)
• We should keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27)
• We are living in “the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4,10)
• By His grace and motivated by love, God’s end-time people will keep the Ten Commandments and the faith of Jesus Christ (John 14:15; Rev. 14:12)
• Christians should endure tribulation “to the end” (Mat. 24:13; Acts 14:22)
• The Antichrist of prophecy is “already in the world” (1 John 2:18; 4:3)
• The major Protestant Reformers were correct about the Antichrist.
• Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and fallen humanity (1 Timothy 2:5)
• Jesus will not return secretly, but openly and visibly for all to see (Mat. 24:26,27,30,31)
• There will be “a resurrection of the dead, both the just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15; John 5:28,29)
• Jesus Christ is “the seed of Abraham” (Galatians 3:16)
• True believers in Jesus Christ – Jews and Gentiles – become part of Abraham’s seed, “the Israel of God” (Gal. 3:28,29; 6:14-16)
• Our final home is the New Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22-24; Rev. 21:1-4, 10-27)
• All the lost will end up in “the lake of fire, which is the second death” (Revelation 20:14,15)
• God will make a new heaven and a new earth for His people to live in, where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:9-14)
• The truth of the Bible is bigger than any church or denomination.
• The Bible is our final authority.

 

[Hobie]

Here is a good explanation of what Seventh-Day Adventist believe from Wikipedia that I worked on and in which I am a editor, and has on the doctrines which Seventh-day Adventists have which are the central doctrines of Protestant Christianity:

The Trinity, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, creation, the second coming, the resurrection of the dead, and last judgment.

In Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (1957), four authors outlined the core doctrines that they share with Protestant Christianity.

"In Common With Conservative Christians and the Historic Protestant Creeds, We Believe—
1. That God is the Sovereign Creator, upholder, and ruler of the universe, and that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

2. That the Godhead, the Trinity, comprises God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

3. That the Scriptures are the inspired revelation of God to men; and that the Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice.

4. That Jesus Christ is very God, and that He has existed with the Father from all eternity.

5. That the Holy Spirit is a personal being, sharing the attributes of deity with the Father and the Son.

6. That Christ, the Word of God, became incarnate through the miraculous conception and the virgin birth; and that He lived an absolutely sinless life here on earth.

7. That the vicarious, atoning death of Jesus Christ, once for all, is all-sufficient for the redemption of a lost race.

8. That Jesus Christ arose literally and bodily from the grave.

9. That He ascended literally and bodily into heaven.

10. That He now serves as our advocate in priestly ministry and mediation before the Father.

11. That He will return in a premillennial, personal, imminent second advent.

12. That man was created sinless, but by his subsequent fall entered a state of alienation and depravity.

13. That salvation through Christ is by grace alone, through faith in His blood.

14. That entrance upon the new life in Christ is by regeneration, or the new birth.

15. That man is justified by faith.

16. That man is sanctified by the indwelling Christ through the Holy Spirit.

17. That man will be glorified at the resurrection or translation of the saints, when the Lord returns.

18. That there will be a judgment of all men.

19. That the gospel is to be preached as a witness to all the world."[38]

The theology of the Seventh-day Adventist Church resembles that of Protestant Christianity, combining elements from Lutheran, Wesleyan/Arminian, and Anabaptist branches of Protestantism. Adventists believe in the infallibility of Scripture and teach that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The 28 fundamental beliefs constitute the church's official doctrinal position

 

[Hobie]

Now here is a bit of the history on 'Questions on Doctrine', that give a background of the tension with certain parts of Calvinism, especially as Adventist background is Wesleyan/Arminian with the other elements of Protestant Christianity...

The publication of Questions on Doctrine grew out of a series of conferences between a few Adventist spokespersons and Protestant representatives from 1955 to 1956. The roots of this conference originated in a series of dialogues between Pennsylvania conference president, T. E. Unruh, and evangelical Bible teacher and magazine editor Donald Grey Barnhouse. Unruh was particularly concerned because of a scathing review written by Barnhouse about Ellen White's book, Steps to Christ. Unruh had sent him a copy of the book in 1949. In the spring of 1955 Barnhouse commissioned Walter Martin to write a book about Seventh-day Adventists. Martin requested a meeting with Adventist leaders so that he could question them about their beliefs.

The first meeting between Martin and Adventist leaders occurred in March 1955. Martin was accompanied by George Cannon and met with Adventist representatives Le Roy Edwin Froom and W. E. Read. Later Roy Allan Anderson and Barnhouse joined these discussions. Initially both sides viewed each other with suspicion as they worked through a list of 40 questions. Central to these concerns were four alleged items of Adventist theology: (1) the atonement was not completed at the cross; (2) salvation is the result of grace plus the works of the law; (3) Jesus was a created being, not from all eternity; and (4) that Jesus partook of man's sinful, fallen nature at the incarnation.

By the summer of 1956 the small group of evangelicals became convinced that Seventh-day Adventists were sufficiently orthodox to be considered Christian. Barnhouse published his conclusions in the September 1956 issue of Eternity magazine in the article, "Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians?" In it, they concluded, "Seventh-day Adventists are a truly Christian group, rather than an anti-Christian cult."This greatly surprised its readers, and 6,000 canceled their subscriptions in protest.

Following this announcement, Adventists were gradually invited to participate in Billy Graham's crusades.

 

[Hobie]

In 1960, Walter Martin published his own response to Questions on Doctrine, entitled The Truth About Seventh-day Adventism, which had wide circulation. From June 1960 till July 1961 Adventist magazine Ministry published a long series of responses to Martin's book, which are available online. Other evangelicals besides Martin who argued for the acceptance of Adventism as an evangelical Christian group were Donald Barnhouse, E. Schuyler English, and Frank Mead.

Many conservative Evangelicals disagreed with Martin and Barnhouse's positive assessment of Adventism. The leaders of this view included a large amount of Reformed writers. Differences associated with the Calvinist-Arminian dispute were a major part in the debate (Adventism is soteriologically Arminian), but Martin did not regard conformity to Calvinism as a test of Christian orthodoxy.

In 1962 Norman F. Douty published Another Look at Seventh-day Adventism and Herbert Bird, Theology of Seventh-day Adventism, both of which argued that Adventists were still a cult. Dutch Calvinist theologian Anthony Hoekema grouped Adventism together with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science in his 1963 publication The Four Major Cults. In this book Hoekema praises Adventists for moving away from Arianism, but argues that Questions on Doctrine failed to truly repudiate the doctrine of Christ's sinful nature, and similarly failed to remove ambiguities and inconsistencies regarding the atonement....

Much of the controversy had centered on the nature of the incarnate Christ and the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin. Regarding the Nature of Christ on Earth, the prelapsarian position was accepted by the authors of QOD as a 'sine qua non' for acceptance with the Evangelicals. Froom had attempted to support this in QOD with a number of quotations from the writings of Ellen White. He used a "cut and paste" technique before digitization was available. In 1978, Ralph Larson published a short pamphlet entitled "The Fraud of the Unfallen Nature", in which he painstakingly dissected out the clauses pasted together by Froom and decisively demonstrated that in almost every instance the excerpts taken from her writings, in context, said exactly the opposite. He went on to show that Ellen White endorsed the postlapsarian position, either directly or by implication in over 400 quotations. The main use of her writings to endorse the opposite position had come from the famous "Baker Letter", written by E. G. White to a Tasmanian pastor who had taken a Christological position of Adoptionism, which was a variant of Arianism. At that time (1890s) the SDA position on the Trinity was moving away from the Arian position of some of the pioneers, such as Uriah Smith. Whilst supporting the equality and divinity of the three members of the Godhead, Ellen White prudently avoided using the term 'Trinity', as the term had variable interpretations by different religious groups, including Catholicism. She had simply warned Baker to be careful how he described the human nature of Christ, lest people were to believe that He was a created being, and therefore take the position that He was a sinner. Larson later published "The Word Was Made Flesh" in which he devoted a chapter to the misquoting of Ellen White on Christology (Available at The Word Was Made Flesh: One Hundred Years of Seventh-Day Adventist Christology, 1852-1952: Larson, Ralph: 9781572580329: Amazon.com: Books).

Meanwhile, evangelicals were concerned that the withdrawal of QOD signified a doctrinal retreat by Adventists and called for the book to be reprinted. In an interview around 1986 with Adventist Currents, Martin himself said:

"If the Seventh-day Adventist [Church] will not back up its answers with actions and put Questions on Doctrine back in print... then they're in real trouble that I can't help them out of; and nobody else can either." QOD was not republished until Andrews University Press independently chose to reprint the book in 2003 as part of their "Adventist Classic Library" series. This new edition contained annotations and a historical introduction by George R. Knight.

 

[Hobie]

Here is the Adventist Church site with the Fundamental Beliefs... https://adventist.org/beliefs