HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2011 / OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER / LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October November December 2011
VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4
D E P A R T M E N T S
LETTERS to the Editor
Fear! Fear! Fear!
I loved "Fear, fear, fear!" (July/August/September, 2011). If there's one word that conveys the Adventist experience, that would be it. The fear that I lived with as a historical Adventist on a continual basis was crushing and took years for me to overcome.
Reading Carolyn Macomber's article reminded me of this horrible fear that I endured on a daily basis. Sometimes my joy over leaving that fear-based religion is so intense that any other concern simply falls away.
Garden Grove, CA
Persecuting God's remnant people
Dear misguided proclamators,
I am so happy you have a cause to trample; it makes me giddy that Satan is working so hard to work against the Adventist church. This tells me that Jesus is truly coming soon. I was visiting with my dear mother this week in Arkansas and found this magazine in her pile of mail. My father was an Adventist pastor and passed away almost two years ago, and this magazine defiles everything he stood for, but I am sure you're happy about that. I understand that in the last days there will be organizations like yours that will seek to undermine and persecute God's remnant people.
However, I will be praying for you and all those who may be led astray by your teachings. In the mean time please don't send this magazine to my mother. She requests that you remove her from your mailing list.
Harrison, AR
Read from cover to cover
Ever since attending one of your seminars at The Chapel in St. Joseph, Michigan, where my wife and I are members, we have been receiving your Proclamation! magazine. There are few magazines I read from cover to cover, but yours is one!
I'm a retired (I don't like that word) pastor of Berrien Center Bible Church (four miles east of Berrien Springs, Adventist "mecca"). Your magazine has been a real eye-opener of Adventists' beliefs…
Content in Christ,
Berrien Springs, MI
Following "mother church" to perdition
Please remove us from your mailing list. What a pathetic form of Christianity you have. Why don't you read your Bibles and have a Christ-centered theology? It seems you are very bitter against Adventism. From what I read in your magazine, none of the ex-Adventists ever were into reading the Bible but worshiped in form each week, with no conversion. [Ellen G. White] was not perfect, nor did she claim to be perfect. Neither were Moses, Joshua, David, etc. The Bible comes first, and it seems in your upbringing you somehow missed that [point] and only had a form of godliness.
By the way, nowhere in the Bible are the Ten Commandments done away with or modified. What set of rules (guidelines) do you think God will be operating by in the new kingdom we will inherit? Might be good to practice them. It certainly won't save you but does shed light on where you have placed your allegiance. You seem to be following the "mother church" right down the road to perdition the same as all the other "New World Order" churches. Please remove us from your mailing list.
West Richland, WA
You outdid yourselves
Thanks so much for this issue (July/August/September, 2011) of Proclamation! You really outdid yourselves. This is the best issue I have ever read. I think the reason I feel this way is two-fold: the personal stories and the "filling in the gaps" in my transition from being an Adventist to learning all the truths of the Bible while shedding the untruths of Adventism.
I loved the cover article ("He Shall Never Die") and the articles by Nicole Stevenson and Delina McPhaull. Your response to one of the letters on page 28 was an eye-opener for me. I had not yet figured out that the great controversy was not true. Thank you for telling me that new-to-me truth. Richard Peifer's article also opened my eyes to a new view of Revelation.
Thanks so much!
Gold Bar, WA
Evangelical perverts
Your belief in an eternal hell is the key indicator that your teachings are nothing but a sham. Sorry about that!
If your teachings on hell were true, then Revelation 21:4 could never take place.
You people are really stupid. There's more.
Oh, and thank goodness we are not, in your mind, evangelical. The evangelicals I know are ordaining queers and performing same-sex marriages, not to mention the ordination of female lesbians. Thanks again for not lumping us in with those evangelical perverts!
LOCATION UNKNOWN
Wrong about the Adventist Jesus
I just finished reading the April/May/June issue of Proclamation! with your lead article on the Great Controversy theme. Do you believe you are justifiably right to knock Adventism and Ellen White the way you did? One of your most damning statements was your interpretation of Ellen White's statement taken from her book Patriarch and Prophets (PP), p. 37, quoted below and on p. 13 in your article.
"The exaltation of the Son of God as equal with the Father was represented as an injustice to Lucifer, who, it was claimed, was also entitled to reverence and honor."
Besides the fact that your footnote was wrong, your interpretation was wrong also. On p. 13, after footnote 26, you say,
"In the great controversy paradigm, Jesus was not the eternal, almighty God. Instead, God exalted him to be His equal at some time in the distant past."
And on p. 16, in your summary, you say that Adventism deceptively "teaches a ‘different Jesus', one who is not Mighty God, the I AM, but a diminished one."
I admit, the quotation from PP 37, taken in isolation alone and quoted above, may be understood the way you interpreted it, but hopefully you can see by comparing it with PP 34 and 35 below that your interpretation is not correct. Note:
"Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into the counsels and purposes of God" (p. 34).
"And coveting the glory with which the infinite Father had invested His Son, this prince of angels aspired to power that was the prerogative of Christ alone" (p. 35).
From the two parallel statements (p. 35 and 37) we can see that to "invest" is the same as to "exalt". Both of these words can be defined as "to honor". Honor may be bestowed at any time, without the idea of any new quality being bestowed at any certain time. Do you understand what I'm saying? Ellen White makes it clear in the above quote from PP 34 (and many, many other places!) that Jesus was "one in nature" from eternity with the Father.
Considering you to still be an honest person, Colleen, I believe you will admit that your interpretation was a misrepresentation of the truth, even if an unknowing one.
I realize that even growing up Adventist you may not have been aware that the [Adventist] church definitely believes that Jesus was always fully God, and that he became fully man to be the Sacrifice for our sins. The official doctrinal statements are clear on this, as are all the writings of Ellen White. I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
But, if you remain an honest person, you must now admit the truth! So I am expecting you to concede this point either in print or in private. It would be nice (transparently honest!) if you would print this mistake in the next Proclamation! issue!
Please acknowledge this as an honest mistake! Otherwise, it will be counted as willful misrepresentation and slander before God and men. (That is my humble opinion at least!) Please remain honest!
Canute, OK
Editor's response: First, thank you for pointing out the error in footnote number 26 in the Great Controversy article in the April/May/June, 2011 issue of Proclamation! Second, I addressed the issue of Ellen Whites' apparent self-contradiction in the July/August/September issue of the magazine on page 28 in an editor's response to this same question.
What I want to address here is the question of honesty. Adventism claims to base its doctrines and beliefs on the Bible alone. Ellen White, they insist, merely points people to the Bible. Yet the entire story of Lucifer and Jesus before the creation of the world, a story which is the basis for the central theme of Adventism—the great controversy—is not biblical. It is found only in the writings of Ellen White.
It is not honest to insist that Adventist doctrines are based on the Bible alone when the foundational suppositions are extra-biblical.
Moreover, I was clearly taught, as I grew up Adventist and attended Adventist schools, that Jesus was always fully God and that He became fully man to be the sacrifice for our sins. Nevertheless, the way I understood those facts was not the way the Bible explains them. I never understood Jesus as being of the same substance as the Father. I was taught that as a man He had no advantage over us. I was taught He could have sinned and did not know whether or not He would succeed and rise from the dead. I was taught He came to show us how to pray and have enough faith to resist temptation and perfectly keep the law. I was taught He came to be an example to show us how to become like Him.
I was not taught the Jesus revealed in Scripture, but I was taught the "right" words about his identity. This very subtle deception is one of the reasons most Christians do not understand that Adventists have a different Jesus and thus a different gospel. Adventists are taught to say things about Jesus that Christians would also say, but in the background, the Adventist understands those things to mean something different than the Christian understands.
To be honest I must stand on Scripture alone. I cannot ignore the fact that Ellen White misrepresented the Lord Jesus, the nature of His mission and His person, and built a false paradigm through which to interpret the Bible.
If Ellen White and the Bible disagree on even one point, I have to believe Scripture and disbelieve her. The misrepresentation that I see is that Adventism insists it bases all its doctrines on the Bible—and then spends energy defending Ellen White. If she is not essential for Adventist belief and practice, there would be no need to defend her.
God has revealed Himself and His will to us in His word. We need no other source of truth.
Picture evokes tears
We continue to thank God for your ministry. Each issue of Proclamation! is read, re-read, and filed to be read again….
"Worship Jesus Because He Is" by Richard Peifer caught my attention—not so much the article, even, but the silhouette of the young woman lost in prayer [illustrating the article]. I have looked at this picture over and over, and I see myself—not so much in worship but in despair [as I was some years ago] under an overhang of some big rock on top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. I was weeping and praying, agonizing over the pain, and in pain regarding the [Adventist] church and Ellen White in particular. It was surely a fork in the road, a time for a decision. Why this picture in this issue of Proclamation! forces itself upon my soul outside of its intended message, I don't understand, but it has encapsulated a heart-wrenching memory.
About the time of that experience, as I agonized over Ellen White, I dreamed I saw an open Bible, and I heard three words: "This is sufficient." My wife and I are beyond grateful that this is so! It is, indeed, sufficient.…
We continue to hold you, yours, and your work up to our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus. May He bless everything you touch.
Albuquerque, NM
Hatred, animosity, and stupidity
It is sad to see the hatred and animosity that permeates everything that you write in Proclamation!
Your bitterness is such that you cannot see anything positive about your Adventist experience. I'm sorry for you. I cannot fathom going through life and working at finding fault with other sincere Christians who happen to understand God's will differently than you. Please, read John 9:49, 50 [sic] and learn from Jesus how to treat other people who are doing the best they know.
That attitude is not Christian; it does not reflect the character of the one who said: "…learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Mt. 11:29).
Your frustration and unresolved youthful traumas only attract other disgruntled Adventists like yourself, and drive away the rest of us, and some might even laugh at your ridiculous "editorials".
You probably have run out of things to criticize and now come up with the ridiculous idea that if one trusts God, there is no need to study, earn a degree, educate properly our children, or take care of our health (July/August/September 2011 issue).
Don't you have anybody to read your editor's comments before you print such stupidity?
I wish you the best in your physical health, and praise God for your recovery. I will continue praying for your emotional health that in my opinion is the main problem in your life.
Sanger, CA
Thanks for Wretched Radio interview
Although I have been a visitor to the Life Assurance website [LifeAssuranceMinistries.org] for some time, it was only a couple days ago that I noticed the link near the top for the Wretched Radio interview [Colleen Tinker] did. Thank you so much for that! Although I grew up Adventist, I had never known or heard some of the beliefs stated so clearly. To hear it described by an outsider who used to be an insider was very enlightening.
Although I left the church years ago and then studied myself into Christ, the old tapes still play now and then. It helps to hear, from time to time, how aberrant some of those beliefs are.
Thank you all for your ministry. I am saddened by the angry letters in the Proclamation! magazine. There is so much denial which is hidden behind anger in order to avoid hearing the truth. I pray that more Adventists will hear the true gospel before it's too late!
Thank you again.
via email
Editor's note: Colleen Tinker's interview with Todd Friel of Wretched Radio can be heard at this link: http://lifeassuranceministries.org/WR2011-0520-Hr1.mp3
Copyright 2011 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Casa Grande, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised December 3, 2011. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
Life Assurance Ministries
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I am so happy you have a cause to trample; it makes me giddy that Satan is working so hard to work against the Adventist church. This tells me that Jesus is truly coming soon.
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I am saddened by the angry letters in the Proclamation! magazine. There is so much denial which is hidden behind anger in order to avoid hearing the truth.