In one sense, yes. In another, no. It depends what we mean by the question.
In Adventist theology the 10 Commandments existed prior to the creation of the earth. They are the foundation of God’s government and Eternal Covenant with creation (what they would call the Covenant of Life). In their view, heaven and the angels were created long before the earth and humanity and the 10 Commandments were governing there. How angels and spirits are to not commit adultery or obey their parents, we don’t know.
Ellen White, who the SDA Church believes was divinely inspired and correcting of inaccurate interpretations, speaking about what allegedly took place in heaven before the creation of the earth, stated that:
Satan grew bold in his rebellion, and expressed his contempt of the Creator’s law. This Satan could not bear. He claimed that angels needed no law; but should be left free to follow their own will, which would ever guide them right; that law was a restriction of their liberty, and that to abolish law was one great object of his standing as he did. The condition of the angels he thought needed improvement. Not so the mind of God, who had made laws and exalted them equal to himself. The happiness of the angelic host consisted in their perfect obedience to law.
Ellen G. White, Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 1, pg. 22 (1SP 22.3)
This is to say that in the Adventist Church’s pre-earth origin narrative, branded as the Great Controversy Between Jesus Christ and Satan, the rebellion of the Devil in heaven was over the 10 Commandments. These laws that were exalted to be equal with God himself. And all of the angelic host was in perfect obedience to them. But nevertheless, the 10 Commandments being eternal in Adventism works itself out in this fashion.
The Bible doesn’t teach this, though. While there is moral reflection of God in the 10 Commandments (ie: lying is wrong because God is not a liar) and God himself is eternal, the 10 Commandments were explicitly given at Sinai as the “words of the [Mosaic] covenant” (Exodus 34:28). It nowhere describes them as words of an eternal covenant made with all of creation, humans, angels and all sorts of beings on other worlds.
Adventist scholarship has long tried to appeal to Christian theologians in history to say they are not alone in this thinking. But this appeal is superficial because none of the individuals they appeal to had a great controversy worldview that defined the meaning of “God’s law being eternal.” These individuals did not mean what the Seventh-day Adventist Church does. For example, Protestant reformer Francis Turretin, in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, when expounding upon the Reformed understanding of the law of God writes:
Hence arises a manifold difference between the moral law and others both in origin (because the moral is founded upon natural right [Romans 2:14-16] and on this account is known by nature; but the others upon positive right and on this account are from free revelation) and in duration. The former is immutable and eternal; the latter mutable and temporary. In regard to object, the one is universal embracing all; the others particular applying only to the Jews (the civil, indeed, inasmuch as it regarded them as a distinct state dedicated to God; the ceremonial, however, referring to their ecclesiastical state and state of minority and infancy). In regard to use, the moral is the end of the others, while the others are subservient to the moral.
Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, pg. 147
What Turretin and other Protestant reformers were saying was that what is found in the law of nature is a reflection of the Creator. God has given all people’s a conscience and natural law is written upon that conscience which either convicts or excuses a person when they do right or wrong (Romans 2:14-16). The Creator himself wrote that into the created order itself such that mankind has a natural, internal moral compass. That moral compass can become seared and calloused leading to it not properly functioning anymore (Romans 1:18-30)—developing a reprobate mind.
This moral compass is a reflection of how God would desire for us to operate as His image bearers in His world. And since God himself is eternal, these Reformers understood that these moral imperatives are eternal. For example, as mentioned earlier, God did not arbitrarily decide that lying is wrong, but rather, it is wrong because God himself is not a liar. God is not a thief, a murderer, etc. They were not saying that these eternal precepts existed in a primordial way governing other beings on other worlds prior to earths creation.
Since the extra-biblical Great Controversy narrative informs how the SDA Church interprets the Bible, they end up taking a concept and pushing it beyond it’s rightful construct to try and support a very elaborate narrative that is nowhere found in the Bible—namely, that Lucifer began rebelling against the 10 Commandments which are exalted laws that are made equal with God himself, starting a “great controversy” over that law. A controversy that has now spilled over into the earth where Jesus had to come and vindicate the 10 Commandments from these accusations made by Satan. All of this is fiction.
