For the Record: Why I LEFT Adventism | Former SDA Pastor Haroldo Camacho | Episode 1

All right so brother thank you for being here let people know who you are and your background as it pertains to the 7th Day Adventist Church before we get too far into it uh so yeah who is aralo kamacho I was born in Kena the indias Colombia uh many years ago Kena is a Colonial Town it still has those wall uh uh it’s a walled City the old city is still has uh ancient walls built by the Spaniards to protect the city uh from the uh English and Portuguese and many others uh who wanted to invade uh kahena and steal the gold anyhow um that’s where I was born I was

Born into an Adventist home my dad was a convert from Catholicism he had been an alter boy back in his town uh my mother was also a convert from Catholicism and the uh Adventist Church used the educational system quite effectively to pull young people into their educational system and it was so that they um took my dad and mom as young people to their school which was just starting back in 1946 1947 in the city of medin Colombia and that’s where my parents met my father trained in the ministry and my mother basically trained on how to be a Minister’s Wife uh they

Got married and then they went my dad’s first assignment or first call was to Pastor the 7th the Adventist Church in Kena Colombia and then he went to various places uh my dad was a very independent uh Pastor a minister he was given um an assignment to be the president of the um North Atlantic Colombia Mission as it was called back then and so I was acquainted with my dad’s travels and much of what he did we were um three brothers and later on a girl came along but I was the one who got more interested in my father’s uh work even in those early years uh but

Fast forward and my father migrates with the entire family to the United States he finishes uh theology at what was then and this will date me was then Washington missionary College in Tacoma Park Maryland eventually I think that turned out to be CU and I don’t know if CU is still in existence I think it is um but that’s what it was originally Washington missionary college and my dad finally got his theology degree from there and um he ministered in various places as um evangelist as Church Pastor I was like his right hand uh my dad uh was a very powerful charismatic

Preacher um he knew how to hold audiences attention and at that time instead of PowerPoint and those uh things way back then we’re talking about the early 60s evangelist use what’s called black light and the general conference printed a whole bunch of um flannel figures to put up on a blacklight board they were very impressive the figures of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 and Revelation uh were all um printed and I would cut out these figures and my dad would use these in the Evangelistic meetings and I would be the one in charge of uh putting on the light the the figures on this black

Board it was literally a black flannel board and there was a neon light sort of a special they call it a black light um that was sort of an incandescent light because these things were had colors in them and it was spectacular they were large figures and it Drew people’s attention and I I remember I’ve forgotten them now but all the dates of Nebuchadnezzar is the head and me of Persia and uh Greece and Rome and then the um the stone cut out from the mountain which adventis interpret I think um wrongly they interpret as the second coming of Christ well but at that

Time I you know I was um in full um connection with Adventist Doctrine and so I I knew and I learned the whole thing right from the start um I believed it uh in you know with all my heart as a as um a young man I decided then to go into the ministry and my dad did not want me to go into to the ministry and as the years have passed I have only guessed why he didn’t and um uh that that was a very interesting part of my life trying to figure out why my dad didn’t want me to go into the ministry but I remember that when he preached the Prophecies of Daniel and

Revelation and all this stuff and um he he was very good but he became really really enthusiastic and we were in Colombia preaching uh he he was in in Colombia preaching uh in churches without air conditioning and sweat R down his face and I said we because I was his right hand and then he got a church in the Bronx New York and uh yeah no air conditioning there either there but uh when my dad preached about the Cross of Christ he became really intense and he would call people to come to the Cross of Christ to receive forgiveness of sins and unwittingly it

Was he who introduced me to the gospel although he remained and he never questioned um the Adventist Doctrine in a way that uh I I found out about no I I never did he died a young man he died in 1971 at the age of 54 um but I was at the Seminary at that time so that’s how my life from a very Catholic country such as Colombia and a very traditionally Catholic cities such as kahena and barania where I lived some of my time as well came this um young intense Adventist boy uh young man wanting to follow in my father’s uh footsteps I finished my bachelor degree

Bachelor’s degree in theology at Atlantic Union College which is now um uh has now passed on that no longer exists uh very good teachers I remember particularly my English and writing teachers were great great teachers uh Dr odley Stafford um excellent teacher literature it was quite open-minded as far as the um English Majors were concerned they could read whatever they wanted it practically and Dr Stafford who was the head of the department would not censor them but uh the theology Department was very conservative you may recognize some of the names

Smes you may recognize some of the names uh my major theology Professor was Ralph lson does that ring a bell to you yeah um so we’ve cited him periodically here and there uh but I know who you’re referring to okay and my college President was none other than Herbert e Douglas now he we uh refer to quite a bit on the platform um a a lotted light in the SDA World incredible uh we used to call him the head because of his initials h and it was whatever the head said it had to be done and uh the head uh was quite um I remember admiring him a lot because of his

Eloquence his memory his delivery his Charisma um yeah Herbert e Douglas uh had a he grew to a large uh stature in my um in my personal thinking and admiration uh of uh Douglas the uh the the president of the University somehow I was kind of like one of his favorites and he would every now and then call me into his office and ask me how I was doing um in those days it was the mid 60s we were of course in um New England near Boston and the Civil Rights Movement had taken off all throughout the Northeast and eventually it began to influence Atlantic Union College and those social

Issues began to creep in through the students not through the faculty and um that really got on um hd’s uh um Dr Douglas’s nerves uh how um some students were being influenced uh by these movements when we have our own uh special uh movement uh and message to give to the world and and so those were interesting times uh I of course at that time um did not become a social activist although in my heart I began to read and I began to have a tendency uh towards it and I know that’s not the scope of our conversation but um uh I was quite sympathetic to the uh writings of um Dr

King in fact one book I read rather surreptitiously was Where Do We Go From Here chaos or Community excellent book still a good read to this day I think I still have his book somewhere here in my library but that was Atlantic Union College and Douglas was trying to steer the ship of that educational institution through the liberalism of The English Department and the um the social issues which crept in to the theology Department to the theology students as well as to all the other Majors uh we wanted to find out what was going on in Boston and uh and

Follow that movement so those were my years at AU I um I learned Greek we had a very good Greek teacher and that will come up later in our discussion uh I hope we had a very uh um I forgot what his name was Yamashiro Dr Yamashiro Japanese and uh he barely mastered English but he was really good at Greek and yeah I did well in Dr yamashiro’s class and um I learned how to use uh a lexicon and I learn the basics of uh Greek grammar o the conjugations for the verbs in in Greek and learned to really like to study the Bible with um with the Greek in fact I have here the New

Testament that I use the Greek New Testament that I used in Dr yamashiro’s class don’t ask me how old this book is it goes back to 1966 67 um and uh yeah I also also became an English minor but didn’t quite finish the units um to um to get my English minor I just got the theology major I got stuck on Edgar Allen po anyhow I needed to read more Edgar aleno and read uh and write uh more reactions to his writings anyhow that is how it went up to the SE to my college graduation from Atlantic Union College at that time there was also another famous name in Advent literature I

Haven’t heard you mention him also a tremendous Adventist apologist Dr wamp very influential uh with his uh students um yeah he knew the doctrine up and down so my formation in Adventist um Doctrine and theology was solid I I was a whst and um fully believed I mean I walked around campus miles with the little book I don’t know if they publish it anymore um the little book called The Sanctified life and I used to take that little blue book into the cafeteria and instead of talking to the girls I would be reading the stifi life in order to control my

Lust ah yes so I um one day I came in to class late this was I think Dr um W’s class although I it would have been another professor that I’m trying to remember his name anyhow I came to a class late and I usually would sit in the front but this time I sat in the back and uh there I was it was this type of desk that had a writing a wooden Writing Tablet so that you could take notes on the tablet and I was about to take out my piece of paper and start taking notes when I look down at the tablet and I see the following inscription is it true that Harold

Kamacho is ready to be translated that hit me hard that was what I was projecting that somehow I was better than others and uh I considered myself ready for for translation so I was a real whst I knew the quotes I knew the verses uh when the character of Christ is perfectly reproduced in the in his people then he will come to claim them as his own and many others I mean I used to know the um Spirit of prophecy books better than the Bible and I think such is the testimony of many former Adventists or if they are honest Adventists today who are Orthodox Adventists um that they

Know the um this Spirit of prophecy books and quotes better than the Bible but that was my formation miles that was my

Formation well yeah yeah uh every every advertis Pastor whether they know it or not is a general conference employee but it is another thing to be an employee of the General Conference as um a a as the level of general conference is concerned I was not at the general conference level far from it I was a conference secretary for the Southeastern California Conference and I’ll I’ll talk a little bit about that a little bit later um but uh the Seminary I went on from um from and from Atlantic Union College uh right away to um to Andrew Andrew Seminary uh with high expectations of of

Uh becoming a pastor soon after my graduation and uh I wanted to be an evangelist um uh so that was my main reason of course uh for going to to the Seminary I did not have a questioning mind miles uh until I got to the Seminary and it was at the Seminary where um the bubble began to shatter unintentionally by one of the most conservative professors at um at the Seminary it was uh a gentleman by the name of Thomas blinko b l i NC e o e Thomas Linko and he taught Sabbath theology um yeah Thomas Linko I remember that in one of his classes I think it was Sabbath theology

Class he handed out an assignment and the assignment was to choose any one of the New Testament passages that made reference to the Sabbath and show from this passage how the Sabbath is still binding on Christians today and show from and support that was the thing that was a thing that nailed me that was a thing that busted the bubble in my mind although the bubble quickly healed itself but not totally um so the assignment was to choose a new testament passage and he had a string of New Testament passages and a paper up in front of his desk where you had to sign up um underneath

The text that you wanted to to use for your study and you had to do an exegesis of the p passage he said you have to parse out every verse um in uh in the passage from the Greek uh into English pars out the verbs uh pars out uh the nouns show where there are uh conjunctions and adjectives and adverbs and I love that I had done well in um in Greek uh back in college so yeah I was ready for that but I stalled on the passage I wanted to choose and I would go up to his desk and see all the other passages the Sabbath was made for men and that meant for the

Sabbath and you know several others there aren’t that many but there were several and I noticed that there was one passage that um didn’t have many signatures underneath it Hebrews 3 and 4 there remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God I said there it is there it is uh I don’t know why others haven’t chosen that passage but that’s the one I am going to choose and of course Dr blinko had said Dr blinko was a a tall blanky thin man with thick glasses so thick you could see an enlarg enlarg balls of his eyes you know it’s when Dr blinko spoke to you you could see his

Eyes popping talking to you and in the class where he had given this assignment Dr blinko had said I must warn you not to use any non-adventist commentaries you may not use any Protestant or any so-called Evangelical commentaries do not go to these commentaries you must only use the Bible the Greek and of course support your findings with the spirit of Prophecy I I only later found out why he was so adamant and intense about using or not using uh Adventist um commentaries well I said I’m going to do this assignment right I’m going to start from Hebrews 1 and go through each

Chapter clear through chapter five and six and I’m going to parse out the whole whole thing so I did it and as I went along uh and began looking at the picture it stood out to me that Jesus is better than anything that happened in the Old Testament Jesus is better than almost as if Jesus is the substitute for or Jesus is the Fulfillment of Jesus is the better blood um Jesus is the better Tabernacle Jesus is the very Temple and and so on and especially the beginning of Hebrews is that Jesus is the very icon econ of God the very substance of God and it exalted Jesus above all things

And uh I am grooming on this stuff as I am uh reading it because I hadn’t seen this emphasis before in any of the Adventist stuff that we had been asked to read or write and then I began to get right into Hebrews 3 and Hebrews 4 when uh the writer of Hebrews talks about believing and by faith and today if you hear his voice and then at the end is therefore there remains a sabbatismos for the people of God well sabbatismos is a word that the writer of Hebrews made up it is not found anywhere in ancient Greek literature or in the rest of the New Testament is Moose the the

Word was made up by the writer to the Hebrews there remains a sabath is M for the people of God and as I stood back and look at faith in Christ believing in him all of a sudden I had one of these Eureka moments and I said Eureka be believing in Christ for salvation is the new Sabbath rest and I said this is great I’m going to write this stuff down and so I wrote my paper with a great deal of enthusiasm as you can see and I said Dr blinko is going to love this he’s even going to ask me to present it to the class that is how um fooled I I was how

Um uh gullible I I was so I wrote this paper showing that Christ is the Sabbath believing in him is the Sabbath that remains for the people of God but then I had to show support for this from the spirit of Prophecy and that was the hardest part of the assignment to to find some statement that would even have something to say about Christ being the Sabbath that believing in him is how we rest uh unto salvation um and I found I forget what I found and I wish I would have kept that paper Through The Years uh but what happened is this I turned in my paper

And uh back then miles of course you have a computer I don’t know if you remember the old typewriters I got this little Smith Corona typewriter one of the first Portables and uh yeah it was quite something to write on the Smith Corona because you made a mistake you had to take out the little white out type of thing and overwrite it and stuff it was ill and mess but hey I I wrote my 10 12 paper p paper on Hebrews 3 and 4 I was anticipating my a and and becoming um one of Dr blinko um presenters so a few days later the uh the papers uh were handed

Out and uh we all had a a box in which the Seminary professors put in our our work when it was graded and it was finished so I the Dr blinko announced that the papers were in the boxes so I went to my box and I found a yellow uh piece of paper somewhat like that written in red please see me wow I wasn’t expecting that please see me and I said is it possible that my paper was so good that he wants to congratulate me personally I said I was so so gullible so ingenious about this whole thing that he so I made an appointment with the secretary and I showed up in his office

At the appointed time and uh so I walk into his office secretary closest the door behind me and of course I’m I’m only 5′ five I’m not a tall guy maybe at that time I was a little taller um and I sat down and Dr blinko rises from his chair all 6 foot something of this lanky man he leans over his desk and glares down at me pointing his finger I’ve had several ad this uh uh people Point their finger at me but he points his long finger at me and says brother kamacho I am very disappointed in your paper it felt as if a cop had stopped me and worse you know all the physical

Stuff that happens to you when a cop stops you that’s what happened to me when this huge figure leans over me his eyes popping out his face red with obvious anger and he remains standing and he tells me didn’t I tell you not to consult Protestant commentaries

How do you defend yourself from that and I said Dr blinko I didn’t believe me it’s all there in the Greek it’s all there I did not consult one single Bible commentary not even the Adventist commentary I just did the Greek and the exeresis on the Greek passages it is clear to me that when we believe in Christ unto salvation we enter his Sabbath rest and he stopped me brother kamacho I am giving you one more chance to rewrite your paper so that it meets the spirit of Prophecy guidelines for our belief in Sabbath theology what you have done is not

Acceptable then you thrust the paper back to

Me that that was the beginning just a little pin into my Adventist bubble dream of that this is the church that believes in scripture alone this is the church that teaches that the Bible and the Bible only is God in inspired Revelation so I went back and I said you know it was a spiritual experience for me like Lord what am I supposed to do with this cuz I have to be true to my conscience I cannot make the Greek say anything else than what it says and in another occasion we can get into it uh where word by word then parse it out and and you show how uh the Greek

Um to use a word that Dr Stafford taught us back in college indubitably the Greek leaves no doubt that the writer is talking about a better Sabbath and the Sabbath is Faith in Jesus Christ how can I go back and say that it is not so these are the type of cises that these Liars because that’s who they are and as I look back on on Dr blinko um Dr blinko uh shock at the fact that I had used Protestant commentaries he knew he knew the meaning of the Sabbath he knew that by faith in Christ we enter into his rest which is salvation and the seventh day Sabbath

Points to that and it seizes with this better Sabbath he knew they all knew I had other teachers there at the Seminary that you may have heard of uh some I would say more honest than others I remember Dr deran who taught the doctrine of Christ uh he didn’t teach much Adventist theology uh he taught uh a a um Christ that was um coexistent from eternity with the father very on christology Dr deran then we had Dr lundell uh who taught on justification by faith um so those were other teachers that I that I had but these they still came down on Adventist Doctrine at the

End of the day and they knew better they had been to uh non-adventist universities in Europe in Geneva and Switzerland and France they knew better and yet they told us lies they believed the lie so did Herbert duas and I have often asked myself how could such an intelligent man have believed such a lie and be become such a strong promoter of of the Adventist greatek controversy lie and so on but yeah to finish the story with Dr blinko I was the one that blinked of course um I did not have an answer as to why Ellen White had to Trump the Greek why I had to confirm what the

Scripture says with Ellen White so I found other lame statements from Ellen White and so on and at the end of the day he gave me something like a c minus uh in Sabbath theology but he opened my eyes Smiles uh he he um um put in this little seed in my head that adventism is not about scripture alone no matter how much Greek no matter how much Hebrew and if one takes the Greek and the Hebrew seriously there is no way that you are going to believe the Adventist lie uh you have to either buy into this independent Narrative of Ellen White or set your feet squarely on on

Script scripture uh so that remained a doubt um I dared Not To Doubt because I still believed in all of uh Ellen White’s manipulative warnings that if you doubt in the testimonies and if you doubt in this Doctrine and all kinds of stuff you will be lost and so the seed was sown as to um how the Adventist Church at the highest level in the Seminary discards scripture and substitutes it with whitis with the false uh

Narrative wow that’s a that’s a big one and of course you know you warned me that this is where we were going uh because one cannot talk talk about these things without uh reliving a lot of the pain a lot of the emotions uh it cost me my uh my first home my first marriage um which has repercussions to this day with um my children from that marriage so yeah this was not done in a in a vacuum is uh had a lot of personal uh struggle but at any rate um I left that question mark in OB bance I left it standing there and uh my mother who was still living at the

Time knew the uh General Conference I forget what his title was uh man in charge of sending people to what was called the mission field I think it’s still called the mission field uh and and again I will say in parenthesis I have been disconnected from adventism for a while so I have I have lost um track of Who’s Who and and all of that stuff uh but anyhow that was Elder BOS who was a friend of the family he had met my father while he was still in Colombia there bash at that time I think was something in the inter American Division and he had visited us our in

Our home in barania uh and so albash was now in the general conference and my mother blessed her heart um she said to aler BOS uh why don’t you send aralo a call to the mission field and I had been already between my Junior and Senior year at Atlantic un College I had been I had been to the jungles of Peru I was sent to a city called Chayo and this was a booming Lumber City in the Amazon basin uh right next to River the river ukali river which was one of the main tributaries to the Amazon and at that time the 7 church had a um a mission station with these flying

Airplanes um in in the jungle and uh yeah I uh I went to Chalo for three months and as a student missionary and taught uh various classes English music uh Bible in the Adventist School in Chico the elementary and secondary school I was barely older than those kids over there I have great memories of those wonderful kids and then on the weekends I would go to the U Mission Station um and fly with Clyde Peters some of you who may be listening may remember some of this this is good advin his mission story history Clyde Peters an incredible man A Generous Heart uh an incredible

Pilot um and uh he flew these Cessnas 172 over the jungle and he knew them like the back of his hand we used to land in Far Away Indian Villages uh he would fly over the uh little grass Runway uh to scare off the pigs and the dogs and the chickens and so on and so the villagers would come out and chase them away and make sure there are no rocks or anything and we would zoom in uh and land at these air strips and deliver food and dental services Clyde Peters was also a dentist um and just uh I grooved on on that uh as a young man preaching I used

To preach in Spanish and then I would have two translators um one into sha language and another one I think it was in Campa uh uh indigenous languages and just had a great time these people treated us so beautifully uh in spite of their poverty and and um of course they they were phds in the jungle they knew the jungle and how to travel through the jungle and so on so I had that experience with me um if anybody ever wanted to be a missionary man it was I I had been to the jungles and tracked in the jungles and seen the snakes and many other stories I could tell you when I was just

A young man going to Union College three memorable months over there so later on after after I um started um my um I was called to be an associate pastor in M marinic uh which is Northern New York City and I pastored there and it was throughout this time that my mother was talking through Elder BOS about sending me to the mission field and So eventually I I was sent um to the mission field which is a big thing I was sent to uh Peru I was sent as an evangelist and once I got there the mission president uh very nice man Mission president told me you know

All the Americans that come here and uh want to be evangelist but here they do what we want him to do and we need a youth leader right now we think you’d make a good leader and I had never been much of a Pathfinder but one of the requirements was to be a major guide um I I don’t know if you remember those classes uh it’s before your time miles but uh if you were a good Advent as youth you had gone up through all the progressive classes busy bees and um Helping Hands and whatnot you learn to tie different knots and memorize various verses and so on and you learn to March

I’ never been much into that and then the last thing was to be a major gu guide uh you got a pin and if you were a major guide man you you were something else uh so I was uh officially invested as a major guide without having ever been uh in any of the classes that led up to it but anyhow I tried to um do my best preaching and I did preach the Adventist Doctrine and I held Evangelistic campaigns and I traveled all over Northern Peru and then I was called to teach at the seminary in Lima and I had been receiving Ministry magazine and even though we were miles

Away from all the struggles uh I was blessed it was like a re-encounter with the gospel by um reading um Des Ford’s articles on Ministry magazine on the gospel and I really grooved on that and I wrote to Des Ford while he was in Australia uh I guess he had been exiled over there I forget just the um chronology of where he was sent but I wrote to Des for while he was in Australia and he wrote back to me uh encouraging me to continue studying the gospel and um I would mograph I don’t know if uh you are my hearers I I’m sure some of the hearers are older um stuff

Was mimeographed it was one of the first copy machines except it didn’t have a camera it had a big roll and you stuck the paper on this roll and you put a little ink and you move this handle and the Hand the the paper would come out with copies of mograph copies sort of a bluish purplish um copy of what you done he sent me mograph copies of stuff that he had written and I would translate the these into Spanish and hand them off to my students this was stuff on justif ation by faith so the love for the gospel was growing all the time and I found myself

Preaching more and more on the gospel on Christ’s death on Christ substitutionary life on our behalf and of course this was a new emphasis among my students and they loved it um my issue was that this gospel does not adjust does not correspond with what adventism says is the gospel how do I uh make these two mesh so that my preaching is one and the same thing how do I mesh in Adventist theology into the gospel this question bothered me a lot I studied and I tried to find ways and you know how do you make the investigative judgment talk about ad33 and it was it’s an a oximoron the

Two cannot dwell together these two cannot sleep in the same bed the bed is to narrow there is only room for either the gospel or Ellen White with her books you cannot have them sleep together in the same bed one will shove out the other and so the more I uh talked about the gospel and studied it on my own of course students begin to ask questions and the question is and what about the Sabbath that is the question whenever someone is coming out of adventism and has his eyes opened the question always comes back to okay so this gospel thing is wonderful

Justification by faith alone is wonderful and what about the Sabbath because that is what adventism is all about it’s all about Sabbath keeping a a Sabbath without Christ Sabbath without rest it’s a Sabbath of works so when you talk about justification by faith alone yah what about the Sabbath what do we do with all this stuff that we say is a must an Adventist of course figure that it is their identity uh even congregations that have left adventism and uh um confessed the Gospel of Jesus Christ and and I don’t know how much time we have left but I going to talk about the

Gospel and confess the Gospel of Jesus Christ will continue to worship on the seventh day uh the the error is emotionally driven into every emotional cell that there is and and it it is considered a cutting away of one’s identity if all of a sudden you start worshiping on Sunday like one cannot let go of Saturday observance it it is still considered like some little sin or a big sin we cannot go to church on Sunday so people will still drift over even in congregations that are so-called uh gospel oriented um Adventist congregations they will not give up

Saturday uh of servant because it is it is part of their um DNA and they think that if they give that up they will cease to exist and of course Ellen White’s writings emphasize that they emphasize the fact that yeah if you give up the Sabbath if you give up the uh the varities of the Gospel the seven varities or something they’re called like like that then um you become an apostate you become part of the uh uh of of the image to the Beast incredible incredible you know Mark Twain Samuel Clemens once said at least this quote is attributed to him it is easier

To fool somebody than to convince them they’ve been fooled that’s Mark Wayne it is easier to fool somebody then to convince them they’ve been fooled and that is our task as former Adventists um it is very difficult to convince somebody they’ve been hoodwinked they’ve been deceived but it is only the work of the Holy Spirit through the light that there is in in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and and when we talk about gospel is really a person yeah it is yeah we can talk about justification and we talk about forgiveness of sins and that is all part of the gospel of grace but uh it is the

Person um the living person of Jesus Christ who is our good

News it is very difficult when one comes back from the mission field to find a church uh they want to send you to timbuk too okay um but um eventually I I was given an assignment as an associate pastor at uh lasierra uh Church in Southern California this is uh this was a Spanish Church um that served laserra University and I served there as associate pastor um and uh at this time um I had become rather ill in uh in Peru uh with typhoid fever and very ious other things uh that I got and so when I came back I was weak and needed help and fortunately the the

Pastor uh the senior pastor at Las Sierra Spanish was a me was a friend of the family and he allowed me to recover under his um his Tage so those were difficult years um because that time off so to speak gave me the opportunity to study more and more and I realize that um this struggle between the gospel that was wanting to be birthed in me an Adventist Doctrine could not coexist uh fast forward to um a few years later after my PhD work and the the whole thing with uh uh my um sabatical for a PhD is another story but I I have an earned PhD uh from the School of Theology at

Claremont the same school where Pastor oh what’s his name you had him here just a little bit ago Steve Daly Steve Daly yeah uh the same School of Theology um he obtained a degree there and uh I think my experience Ian was a little different from from his I did of course I did not find the gospel there uh the emphasis of estc or the School of Theology of Claremont at that time was process Theology and I know that process theology found a um a spokesperson Richard rice I think he he wrote a book on on the Adventist version of process Theology and it’s interesting

Because in adventism ically any kind of gospel is uh is given a place as long as you continue to um adhere to Ellen White’s uh visions and 1844 and the 1844 movement or you don’t speak against it then you’re allowed to teach practically anything you want I mean that was provancha at Lolinda University teaching more moral influence Theology and nobody cared they they let them teach that stuff all the time so anyhow my years at Claremont did teach me one basic premise and that is you have to question what is a person’s or a denominations on or an

Agency’s a priori what is their starting point what is the basic assumption about themselves you have to question that and if if you don’t learn how to question somebody’s a priori and put your finger on the a priori the starting point what comes before a priori you haven’t done PhD work a true PhD will learn to question people’s starting points now Luther said Martin Luther he is far fast forwarding to Martin Luther Martin Luther said a true Theologian is one who is able to discern what is Gospel and what is law in the scriptures who is Ever whoever is able

To discern and make the difference find the difference between uh those texts and passages that are law and those texts that are gospel that person is a true Theologian but anyhow the a priori uh gave um more Foundation to question the aiori of uh the Adventist Church Adventist preachers and what is their starting point and uh of course as as far as I was concerned um I had to find or I had to have a a starting point uh for a reference point for questioning the Adventist Church a priori um in comes Robert binmei and Robert binm takes tours throughout

Southern California there was a club unorganized Club of Robert brims me followers and admirers in among some of the Adventist pastors and membership and when uh brimm um reserved these Banquet Hall uh rooms for his preaching the place would get full and man I wanted to go hear rooms me I wanted to hear what he was preaching and of course uh I began reading some of his um some of rimm’s uh literature um but that’s another story of my connection with brimm but anyhow uh I remember um dressing up sort of of like a spy uh sunglasses and and and a fancy

Little hat and a coat you know to attend the brims me meetings I I I I was not about to be discovered that I was an Adventist pastor at brims me meetings so I would go to these brims meetings and I would listen to brins me expound on Luther’s five soless of the Reformation of course he had that Australian draw that Australian accent by f is by F alone oh man I love that by five and of course uh his um then discourse and dialogue and critique of 7th Day adventism and and not only 7th day adventism but a large portion of protestantism and evangelicalism today

Uh to this day has drifted away a great deal from the five solos of the of the Reformation but that gave me a a foundation on which to critique uh the a priori the starting point of Adventist Theology and of course as much as Adventist like to say that they stand on the shoulders of the reformers what they actually do was they crush the so the the shoulders of the reformers so as to drown out their their voices uh adventism if if it does anything it it does away with everything that the Reformation has stood for they just give lip service to to it and use language

From the reformation and adapted to their own um uh what they call the Three Angels messages so that was um uh that was part of my trip was listening to to brims me and of course later on brims me drifted off in another Direction but he left the Bight alone he he left that imprinted in in my heart and all this time I was a good Adventist pastor but Advent you can tell an Adventist Pastor miles and and I don’t know if this has been your experience but an Adventist Pastor who no longer preaches Adventist Doctrine from the pulpit but instead preaches

Psychology preaches sociology preaches family systems how to get along in the home and all this stuff that Pastor is having a gospel crisis I I generalize saying that because that was my experience I came to to the point where I could no longer preach Adventist prophecy and Adventist Theology and and quote Ellen White I I couldn’t find it within myself to do that I had entered into my rest and then a former Adventist Pastor put a book in my hands and the book said you can be assured of your salvation in Jesus Christ when you confess his name and I entered into his

Rest and it it it has been incredible uh it has brought me all kinds of trouble but at this point no one called me on preaching uh family uh Theory or family get along or how to be a more successful person in whatever you want to do and using Bible text to support that and a great deal of Adventist preaching at least when I was around like I said I’ve been disconnected a great deal of Adventist preaching uh that uh goes to those themes is because the preachers cannot conscientiously preach Adventist Doctrine and that just makes Ted white uh Ted Wilson fume and all the

Other leaders they it fumes them but it draws people it helps people out so those people tithe and give offerings and so they cannot fire those pastors uh it’s it’s very convenient it’s very practical they want these pastors to be out there preaching the investigative judgment and all this stuff and they won’t and in my case my conscience would not allow it but even so um as time went on I had my own church uh after this La Sierra experience I went to um a church in Corona California it was a Spanish church and uh yeah those were interesting years because it was a

Little group of us of Adventist pastors who secretly we began studying the gospel together and um amazing amazing what happened during that time miles uh because we all grew and the pastors that we studied the gospel together we all eventually came out of the Adventist Church and each one found a Ministry outside of the Adventist Church

Well thanks for asking that when I was in the Seminary I did not have that Clarity it was only after I left the Adventist Church and and throughout the process of leaving the ethn church that uh I came to my sensus and said these professors lie they know the truth and they lie um and what happens here let me show you if I can here on top is SDA service record everyone who has ever um worked for the S the Adventist Church has a service record okay and uh it keeps track of the years that you have worked your description as an employer and more importantly how long

You were employed and at what percentage you were employed because the adven church sets a certain percentage of pay that’s considered 100% okay um and then every every year it it keeps track of this see here is um conference secretary regular salary with percentage of remuneration this is a percentage above your regular percentage so if you’re either a teacher or an administrator you get a percentage above of the 100% and you see this is conference secretary I was here at 154% uh when I I started I was as just as a 100% And this means a lot what you get

Extra and above your uh percentage uh you see you keep going past 150 here my status changed because I was on sabatical and um my my status changed as to what I should get when I came back as an assuch Pastor because I had a PhD now I got 150% and then when I got a conference secretary I got 154 uh perc now I I show my service record as such and I used to sign uh hundreds of these service records as conference secretary that was part of of my duty signed it for teachers signed it for pastors signed it for every employee in our conference I used to sign these

Um these service records uh so once you are in this system and because you are an Adventist teacher let’s let’s say a professor at Adventist University uh and and you have wholeheartedly uh expressed yourself that way there is no other university that’s going to hire you with your beliefs so if you are earning at 154% that is all building up towards your sustentation towards your pension and uh this is a big trial for Adventist pastors and teachers who are faced with it’s either the gospel or or what how do I support my family how do I support myself during my old

Age so it takes either a leap of faith or a push out of the denomination uh I was act uh at last in look at this it was in uh in 1992 I didn’t think it was that far back my goodness 1992 when I was asked to resign as conference secretary from the Southeastern California Conference and I was asked to resign because I was doing my job I I just want to put it that plainly it is not easy to complete a a doctorate in the Adventist Church at a non-adventist university and the non-adventist university uh I had gone to uh was in name Methodist but they were

Liberal methodists and uh anyhow uh I think Steve Daly had Broken Ground by going there I came in a year or two after Steve Daly very difficult process to be accepted into Claremont School of Theology academically um very rigorous entrance exams and the whole process is very rigorous and and um it is not easy to enter and uh then your whole world viw is um uh it’s put into question uh but anyhow I came out of there and I was assigned to be associate pastor at the Lolinda campus Hill Church in lomalinda California uh the pastor there at that time was David

Vandenberg and there was another Pastor by the name of Larry christofel they were both um admirers of the Gospel in fact Larry christofel promoted a conference back in I forget the date with um Kenneth samples Larry christofel wanted to make Kenneth examples believe that 7 Adventists were Evangelical he was the new responded to questions on Doctrine and so he invited Le um Kenneth samples over to a meeting at the lasera campus Hill I mean the lomalinda campus Hill Church and various other places and uh I don’t think Kenneth samples bought it a very nice person but that was the

Milu at that time I did not come I did not become involved in in that uh in those meetings as such I attended them and I listened carefully and I just kept quiet um I didn’t want to uh make a fuss about myself I had too many things going on in my own mind at that point so I just kept quiet and um eventually I got a call from the conference I forget who called me but I got a call from the Southeastern California Conference um saying that they needed a new conference secretary because the current Secretary bless his heart a wonderful man a heart of gold um was sick he came down with um

Something sclerosis and he died soon after that but before he died they had asked me they named me I was named conference secretary and so I said before I accept the job okay I want to tell you what my role is going to be I’m not here to be a yes man for the president a Yes Man for other people a yes man for the conference committee I am here to question your decisions I am here to offer alternative scenarios as to what your Evangelistic methods and strategies should be if you want me to serve as conference secretary I am not going to be a yes man

I’m going to be a question question man and of course they like that the the the people that interviewed me said that’s precisely the kind of person that we need well what was going to be my surprise when soon after I was installed in this beautiful office on the second floor of um the the conference office there near laserra University it’s probably old building now but um it the the building was relatively new beautiful carpet beautiful desk it was you know wow like um I felt like I should feel I have arrived but I didn’t feel that way okay I was there to

Promote Adventist theology but at the same time I was there to question even and even though I didn’t say I’m here to question your theology I was there to off for various Alternatives so to my surprise a few days after uh I am in my in my office trying to learn from my secretary what my job was in comes the conference president and he says araldo I need to write an article for the union paper on um something he mentioned some topics I and I said to him you want me to write an article for you well with your PhD uh skills and writing abilities you should

Be able to you know fire off these things I I it takes me too long to write these articles and I know that you could you know write these articles right away and and and you know I’ll sign my name to them and I looked at him and I said if there’s one thing I learned to in my PhD work is you know the Integrity of one’s writings needs to be respected so if I write something it’s going to carry my name and you’re going to find have to find somebody else to write your articles for you so that was how I got started with the conference president in in Adventist Administration there’s a

Conference president there is a conference secretary and a conference treasurer um they are considered to be uh three among equals okay on paper three among equals and they are the officers of the conference and uh I I didn’t get started off on the right foot with um uh the president because I wasn’t about to spend I said to myself the moment I write one article for him that’s going to be my job I’m I’m going to be his um his man you know writing stuff I I I don’t want to do that he needs to be responsible for his own stuff so I could tell he was rather

Miffed uh about that uh but anyhow um I was there I was three among equals Etc and uh we used to have officers meetings okay and um at one of the uh uh officers meetings we were discussing workers meetings because every year the the conference um sponsors a weekend at a campsite um and and brings in a uh a preacher that will you know motivate uh the pastors uh to preach the Adventist message okay so we were discussing this in in a group let’s let me put it that way in a group it it was in essence a public meeting we were discussing as a group and I had

Said that I would be there to question and so they were talking about bringing in various evangelists of you know great Renown I forget what names they were proposing and I said well why don’t we have have a weekend devoted to studying um the gospel of grace as we find it in Christ’s um life death and Resurrection for the Forgiveness of sins why don’t we bring somebody that will bring out the meaning of Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and uh yeah I was talking like this and I noticed that people were looking at each other like you know who

Is this guy here and after the meeting this group meeting um the the uh conference president comes to me again I you know I I’ve had bad encounters with tall lanky men he’s tall and with a big finger like that he comes into my office and there in the background is Las Sierra University I can see the the steeple of the laser church and some of the buildings the theology buildings in the back and uh he utters these words he says kamacho if there is one thing you need to know about Adventist Administration if you ever want to get ahead in Adventist Administration do not get

Involved in

Theology do not get involved in Theology and then he added and that is true of all Adventist administrators across the board in Adventist Administration in the North American Division welcome to Adventist

Administration well that’s a good question and um um first of all I want to talk about the word gospel because not only adventism but a lot of other sects and even Mainline denominations today have redefined the meaning of the word gospel uh one of the um facts that um theologically sent me away from adventism was the meaning of the word gospel the actual meaning of the word gospel now we all know that um we all know that in Greek the word gospel is um Evangelion and it means good news okay but the atmology the root or the word that eelan translates from the

Hebrew has a very specific meaning and and this is what Adventists do not understand and do not wish to understand or are too closed minded or have the veil of Ellen White all over them to understand the very simple meaning of the word god gospel and uh a study of um Isaiah 52 again an exegetical study of Isaiah 52 and 53 showed me that the word gospel has a very specific meaning uh and I’m reading here from Isaiah 52:7 how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news who Proclaim peace who bring Good Tidings who Proclaim

Salvation who say to Zion your god reigns now the word gospel here which is translated I think this is the NIV translates it good news is a very specific Hebrew word uh here we are in the Hebrew Hebrew reads from right to left uh how beautiful up on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news and this is the word that adventism doesn’t understand it’s basar this is uh this is a conjunction DM who brings good news who proclaims Peace So peace has to do with the um basar this proclaims is anounces okay and then it says uh who brings Glad Tidings of good

Things now here again is the word basar it’s not Glad Tidings is good news basar and here is the word Tob so it’s basar Tob to is like a superlative in Hebrew whenever you find to it makes the precedent or the antecedent makes it into a superlative so who brings good things it is how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who announces basar who brings incredibly great news of Salvation now this was a military term basar is a military term it comes from the battlefield it was the Cry of the messenger who ran from the field of battle to announce to the city the

King’s Victory so as the runner approached the city he began it he began to shout basar basar bassar and his shout would Echo from the nearby mountains and on the walls of the city those that were watching and listening would then shout to the people who were dying of hunger and thirst inside the city they would shout basar basar and the cry meant the King has roded the enemy the king is Victorious the King King has won the victory it is a fat ACC complete it is a done deal the King has won and then Psalm 24 shows what happens the king would then arrive at the city and the

Soldiers that were with the king would shout to the soldiers inside the city lift up your Gates and let the king of glory come in and glory in Hebrew means Bounty it means whatever was one by the king let the king of glory come in and who is the king of glory the the Lord of host is the king of glory and basar is an announcement of a victory one is not of of something that is to come it’s of an event that has already happened and in those days what would happen is that the king would ask his um soldiers to inscribe on a huge Stone uh called a Stella or a Stella uh to

Inscribe upon the stone how the victory was won by the king and then what we find in Isaiah 52 is that and you see your Watchmen lift up their voice voices together they shout for Joy when the Lord returns to Zion what happens is that this Stell this Monument to the king’s Victory is found in Isaiah 53 and that is why the prophet writes it in the past tense it’s all in the past tense and he writes here how the King won the victory this is Jesus taking on sin on himself he took up our pain our suffering he was pierced for our transgressions Etc we know is by his

Wounds we are healed we like sheep have gone astray the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all so the word gospel has no other meaning in scripture other than the victory of Christ on our behalf have taking on our sin and giving us the goods the Bounty of his grace of his righteousness and feeding us with his righteousness it is a done done deal it has been done there is no other meaning to the word gospel you cannot say the gospel of the Three Angels message or the gospel of his second coming like ADV this literature has it the the the gospel of the second coming or a special

Gospel to give to the world in these final days if it isn’t done if it hasn’t been accomplished it is no gospel at all and when I realized this huge difference between the meaning of the word gospel in the Old Testament by the way it was also used for the announcement of the birth of a male child the the father uh would take the male child from uh the um um I forget the name of the person who had helped G to give birth and he would hold it in his hands and lifted up high and the father would announce basar basar it was a a u the the name uh The Cry of the birth of a

Male child to bad you know Society was so um male chauvinistic in those days but that’s what it was incredibly enough the word basar has has its origins in another meaning and it means flesh it comes from the time when the Hunters went out and they brought benison or whatever it was that they H hunted and they brought it to the family they brought flesh to the family and so the word flesh turned into basar into good news and that is incredible because when we partake of the sacrament of Christ’s body we are eating we are partaking of his flesh which which is our good news

And there you see the Lutheran comes out on me without really wanting but that’s that’s good uh Protestant Reformation theology so that that is that then means justification you have been declared saved you have been declared righteous a city that had perhaps condemned by whatever sins it had when the king saved and and earned a victory on behalf of the city it was the justification of the city and so the cry was given the announcement was given basar this is also the word used in the story of the four lepers when the Assyrians came toh take over the city in

Samaria the four lepers were outside the city and they said if we stay out here we will die we might as well take our risk with the um Assyrians and they went to the camp and the camp was empty and there were pot there were meat on the pots and all kinds of goods they say to each other this is the day of basar this is the day of good news now what happens with the Adventist gospel is that they have changed the biblical meaning of the word gospel and they have Hoodwinked people into thinking that they have the gospel um I was looking at the North American

Manual let me see this other thing here I don’t think I can find it where’s the North American policy in the whole Manual of the North American policy working policy for workers you do not find one in all 851 Pages you do not find one reference to the Cross of Christ Adventists do not like to talk about about the shed blood of Christ or the Cross of Christ that is not the gospel and so one quickly learns to discern without knowing a great deal of theology when you hear the word gospel are they referring to Christ’s substitutionary life death and

Resurrection on my behalf are they talking about Christ taking my place on the cross or not if it isn’t that they are preaching another gospel and that is how one very quickly can discern between a true gospel denomination or preacher or whatever literature and one that does not how do they talk about the go gospel if they talk about the gospel referring to Christ Living dying rising from the dead on my behalf to grant me eternal forgiveness of sins and Assurance of Salvation that is good news that is Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 52 if it is something that’s going to

Happen in the future even if it’s happening right now it’s p meat being sold to you for a very high price so don’t eat it it’s bad for you only the gospel as the announcement of Christ’s Victory on our behalf is our bread is our flesh

The Adventist Theology of the investigative judgment and the blotting out of sins and all of that kind of stuff that is tossed back and forth today and the Adventist doctrine of sanctification and justification I once heard uh a sermon by Ted Wilson I think in his inagural address uh talk about uh that there can be no justification without sanctification or something like that where they join together and uh he was um I think echoing Ellen’s uh um definition of justification and um and sanctification where she says something like uh justification is our title to Heaven our

Sanctification is our fitness for heaven so you cannot really show the title without having the fitness and that is really a camouflage version of Roman Catholic theology Roman Catholic theology is all about infused Grace graa infusa uh which as you participate throughout life as a good Roman Catholic in the sacraments Grace is infused by the Holy Spirit into you you uh so that you can become a better person uh you can be Sanctified and once uh somewhere along the way where you have uh lived this perfect life um living out all of The Graces of uh the spirit that has been

Poured out in into your heart uh then at some unknown Point uh God declares you righteous God justifies you and uh Adventist Doctrine is an echo of this uh with its doctrine of sanctification which is called imparted righteousness uh and uh imparted righteousness overrides imputed righteousness they can talk about imputed righteousness all they want uh but if they make uh if they make imputed righteousness sub servient or depending on uh imparted righteousness they are preaching nothing but Roman Catholicism and uh I find it very just so funny almost funny but it’s not funny

Funny but it’s just how adventism calls the Pope the Antichrist not knowing that they’re really preaching Roman Catholic theology when they preach infused Grace when they preach about this imparted righteousness of Christ and the fitness of heaven and you cannot have the title without the fitness of heaven so it is the devil’s Doctrine in Disguise what what else can I say it it’s so purpose the whole soulle purpose of adventism is to cast down Christ from his Mercy Seat as Savior no matter how much they talk about a Heavenly Sanctuary no matter how much they talk

About the day of atonement and the investigative judgment it’s all a false narrative it uses biblical language to fool you and it’ll be very difficult to convince you that you’ve been fooled but you have and again the easy way to tell is when these people are preaching the gospel whether they are Adventists or who whoever they are when they say they are preaching the gospel is are they referring to Jesus life death and Resurrection on my behalf or are they preaching their own particular uh little Doctrine so you know what else can I say except that

Going back to Dr blinko yes Dr blinko I have entered into my rest and that is why the writer to the Hebrews says today when you hear his voice today when you confess his name as your savior today you enter into an eternal Sabbath that you will not have to receive weekly or you will not have to have Vespers to push it away for another week you enter into Christ Eternal Rest by entering into him today