Defeating Adventism #29 – Seventh-Day Adventists and the Christian Connection / Connexion

This is the twenty-ninth video in the series of Defeating Adventism. This video briefly discusses the Seventh-day Adventists citation of the Christian Connection. The Seventh-day Adventist church is reluctant to label the Christian Connection as non-Christian for their views against the Trinity because some of their founders (Joseph Bates & James White) were members of the Christian Connection.

[clarkent]

The fact that James White and other pioneering Adventists would not be granted membership according to contemporary membership requirements, proves the fungibility and amorphous character of SDA theology... THEY JUST MAKE IT UP AS THE GO ALONG🤧

[wesdale]

Thank you, well researched materials. ❤

[elmerarts]

Hey brother please do more sda self contradiction
Stay safe and Godbless

[davidmoorman]

Let me ask you a serious question my man...

In John 20:21-22 when Jesus appeared to His Disciples in the upper room after His Resurrection did Jesus breathe another person on the Disciples or did He breathe His OWN Holy Spirit on the Disciples?

Galatians 4:1-6 gives you your answer.

Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 👉Spirit of his Son👈 into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
Galatians 4:1‭-‬6 KJV

Good night!

[angelahollandlmftfreethera]

Thank you again! I was so excited to see another SDA video come out so soon since the last one. What a treat! So, having been raised as a 3rd generation SDA, I understand their mindset. SDAs all think that they’re Christian and would be shocked to hear anything else. However, they can come face to face with Biblical truth right in the scriptures but, if it disagrees with their SDA dogma, they’ll do all their classic double talk to explain it away—Like James White’s views are true (because they’ll never disagree with celebrity SDAs) and they’ll then try to say that the Bible isn’t really saying what it is actually saying. For me growing up SDA, this was awful cognitive dissonance that you just live with & try make sure you shelter yourself and your kids from ever hearing any anti SDA perspectives. Anyway, God bless you and keep these videos coming! 👌🙂

[terrygodgirl]

This channel is absolutely a gem in exposing the errors within Adventism. I am considering sharing this channel with my SDA friends

[MichaelJohnson-cmwp]

Michael Heathman,
I am so glad to see you posting again..Your laser guided, heat seeking guided missiles for comments against the heretics is so good to see!!

[SusanEpp-qc]

That's what i was taught as a kid. I remember aaking my mom when i was around ten what they ment when they said the word Trinity. My mother told me just like Daddy is the head of our home so i God the head. Then she fills the role of Jesus in our family unit. Then to complete the family they got me and the Holy Spirit completes Gods family. Good thing for her I'm an only child.

[amazonwarrior]

Thank You, great video and information

[rogermetzger]

I previously watched at least one or two videos in the series, “Defeating Adventism” - enough to understand that the main point of the series is about pointing out how some SdA doctrines differ from “traditional Christianity”. The title of this video, however, caught my eye because I thought maybe I could learn something new (to me) about the connection (pardon the pun) between the Christian Connexion and the SdA organization.

The history mentioned in this video was already well known to me.

Listening to this video, however, did make me want to point out a few things that some other viewers might miss.

Religion is the sum of those beliefs, practices and prohibitions that pertain to a person’s concept of the highest powers of the universe.

I’ve done extensive study - beginning in the 1950s - of several world religions. I’ve done extensive study - beginning in the early 1980s - about a variety of ostensibly Christian denominations. As I look for information online about not only the current beliefs but the history of those denominations, I quite often find statistics. Those statistics are almost always labeled, “Number of Adherents”.

The word, “adherents” reminds me of barnacles on a ship - they “adhere” to the hull of the ship so they go where the ship goes. But they are neither a part of the structure of the ship nor do they have anything to say about where the ship is sailed.

This video seems to be predicated on the premise that members of a religious organization or “denomination” (or “cult”, if you prefer) are merely “adherents”.

Well, my paternal grandmother who died in the 1950s and my maternal grandmother who died in the 1960s were both Seventh-day Adventists. I never discussed this question with them but it is entirely possible that they were both “adherents” of the organization.

My parents were also Seventh-day Adventists - i.e. they were members of the organization - but I never thought of them as “adherents”.

Dad repeatedly told me, when I was a boy, “Read for yourself, study for yourself and think for yourself.

After her mother (my grandmother) died, my mother told me that her religion (please see the definition of “religion” above) was “very different” from that of her mother. I don’t know for sure whether my mother’s mother was narrow-minded in the sense that she read only Seventh-day Adventist literature but that may have been the case. (My paternal grandmother was illiterate.)

Does the person who made this video really think he should decide what literature Christians should and shouldn’t read??!

The first methodist groups in England referred to themselves as methodist “societies” - not as methodist “churches”.

I’ve had a number of methodist friends over the years. Some were relatively “conservative”. (Free Methodists, for example.) Some were relatively liberal/progressive (Some but not all United Methodists, for example.) Over the last few years, disagreements among methodists have become so pronounced that it seems likely there will soon be yet another methodist denomination.

Please think about this: If methodists “societies” had never evolved into “Church” denominations, would it be easier, in the twenty-first century, to avoid the hierarchy and creedalism and dogmatism that is causing so many problems for methodists?

The person who made this video should, of course, be free to refer to whomever he wishes as “heretics”. (Do you know of anyone who reads for himself, studies for himself and thinks for himself who hasn’t been - sooner or later - called “heretical”?)

But the entire exercise in labeling Seventh-day Adventists as heretical falls apart if, instead of thinking that members of that organization are “adherents”, we think of them (or at least some of them) as people each of whom has studied the Bible enough to have developed their own beliefs and practices and who share SOME of those belief and practices with other adventists.

In the early nineteenth century, most U.S. citizens, if they had heard any preaching about the second advent of Jesus, seem to have been influenced by the congregationalist preacher/philosopher, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) to adopt postmillennialism - the belief that Jesus would return AFTER a thousand years of peace and increasing prosperity.

In the early 1830s, William Miller (a baptist farmer-turned-preacher) introduced the belief that Jesus would return BEFORE the millennium. Miller expected the redeemed to reign with Jesus on Earth during the millennium but his premillennialism was VERY different from that being taught by the majority of premillennialists in the United States in the twenty-first century.

Beginning in the 1840s, some “second adventists” (as they were called then) introduced the belief that the redeemed will reign with Jesus during the millennium - but in heaven (not on Earth). Many of those second adventists also began to rest on the same day of the week the Lord had rested - and so came to call themselves “Seventh-day Adventists”.

My first recollection of the Lord’s supper from when I was a small boy included the invitation for anyone to participate who was “a baptized Christian”. In that context, nothing was said about what “mode” of baptism had been employed or by whose “authority” a person had been baptized.

As a general rule, I’m willing to consider someone to be a Christian who considers himself a Christian. I’m not sure I even need to insist that only people who have been baptized are Christians. I do reject the label of “Christian” for people who say they have no sin but I entirely reject the idea that it is up to me or anyone else or any group of “fundamentalists” to decide who is and who isn’t a Christian.

[gospeladventist]

I am not going to defend the Christian Connexion by any stretch of the imagination, but I am not sure that our salvation depends on being able to properly describe the Trinity. There are many different theories of the Trinity floating around evangelical and protestant circles and some of them are better than others, but it is a mystery that may be beyond our human comprehension. I have never heard anyone in the Seventh-day Adventist Church claim that Jesus did not share the same divine nature as the Father. The debate was over what it meant to be "the only begotten Son" of God. There are some today who still believe that Jesus is not as eternal as the Father which means that He was somehow brought into existence by the Father who was eternal. Since He radiates out from the Father He shares the same divine attributes while maintaining a distinct personality.

If James or Ellen White had ever denied the full deity of Jesus then their ministry would "unchristian" at best. However, both agreed that Jesus had a divine nature which qualifies them as falling within orthodoxy. I think Ellen White grew in her understanding of the Trinity as she got older. Somehow the late 19th Century Ellen had a deeper understanding of theology than the mid-19th Century Ellen.

[malcolmnoel]

Can you really defeat adventism ?
First you have to defeat Ecclesiastes 12: 13, 14
Second you have to defeat John 14:15.
Third you must defeatRevelation 22:14
Fourth you must defeat Hebrews 4 : 4, 9
Fifth remember to defeat Isaiah 8:20.
Sixth you must defeat 1John 3:4. because this text defines sin. as the transgression of God's law.
Remember to defeat Isaiah 66:22, 23
because this text says that the seventh day sabbath WILL BE KEPT IN HEAVEN ...not Sunday.
You have to defeat Proverbs 28:9 because this text says that those who reject God's law...even their prayers is ABOMINATION.
And please remember to defeat Mathew 15:9...because Jesus say when you " mess" around with one commandment that your WORSHIP IS IN VAIN.
So yuo are fighting a losing battle.

[paraquepossamos]

Ellen White was aware that James didn't believe in the Trinity. One reason I'm confident she knew is because she is recognized as a prophetess. Moreover, being married to him further supports this knowledge. It's a complex situation that raises questions.

[AcademyApologia]

*ADVENTIST, * this video is for you. Did James White and Joseph Bates die as Christians? Why are James White and Joseph Bates still celebrated in Adventist literature as anti-trinitarians? Would Jame White and Joseph Bates be admitted to your chruch today if they denied to take baptismal vow #1? Why won't your church tell you the "Christian Connexion" is a non-Christian religion?
The foundations of the Adventist chruch are rotten.

[nonconformist]

The importance of the 4th commandment and our prophet Moses White out-power anything that any apostle ever have had in mind on so called Biblical dogma. and if you don't believe us, oh boy we will for sure know that you are part of the "Mark of the beast" Sunday worship club.

[claire]

I have had other Adventists try to convert me to an anti-Trinitarian view. It is no longer a mainstream view of the church but anti-trinitarianism run deep in the church especially in Australia. The reason I was given was that ‘the pioneers didn’t believe in it’.
Another reason why I started questioning. Why so much confusion about what is truth when we are supposedly the ‘remnant’ who holds the ‘whole truth’? Is God the author of confusion? I think not.
Thank you for these videos. They are giving good explanations for the problems I have witnessed in my church and the little niggles and questions that have arisen in me, that knowledge that something just isn’t right.
I jus keep praying that God will lead me into all truth that is in Him, to not be deceived.

[johngreene]

I never knew any of this when I was an Adventist. Praise the Lord, He got me out of that church!

Based on this plus what you just presented in 117, the major founders and leaders of the SDA including Ellen White were anti-trinitarian at the beginning--and promulgated a major heresy in denying the trinity.