Former Adventist Shares POWERFUL Encounter With Jesus

So our guest today and I’ll bring him on just a second is Miles Christian many of you know him from his uh YouTube channel answering adventism or his his ministry um and what we’re going to do today now I know we get into a lot of deep theological stuff on this channel but what we’re really looking at today is the personal side of of faith and living it out and we’re gonna we can’t avoid theology right but what we want to hear is what was his personal experience now your experience if you’ve been in da if you got friends that are in seventh day

Adventism your experiences may be different but we want to hear and learn from what miles has to share with us today so we’re going to kind of keep it on that kind of personal faith journey and I want to let you know we will be taking questions we’ll be so so throughout the uh throughout the interview as things come up just go ahead and put your questions in the chat Deb’s G to Mark the ones um the the questions that are out there we’ll try to get to as many of those questions as we can after we hear uh miles testimony about about his life about how he came

Came through all this and what he’s doing today so let us bring on our good friend miles welcome sir thank you for having me always a good uh good time to be here yeah I appreciate it man I’m a really appreciate what you what you’re doing and I think where you came from can be very helpful uh for folks out there who are maybe dealing with some of the same issues um so thank you appreciate it yeah thanks for having me you know I just remembered too so I talked about my book but you were super helpful to me in the writing of the book and you’re actually quoted in there so you’re going

To be famous um uh but I remember you said something about um because Galatians apparently has a pretty big role in the history of SDA you called it the what you call it the the red pill yeah it’s it’s definitely if I could if I had a nickel for every former now former Adventist to the book of Galatians was their Gateway out of adventism I’d be a very wealthy man wow yeah that’s that’s really interesting so yeah so anyway thanks for your help with that that’s cool that there’s that kind of connection I hadn’t even thought of that when I asked Yan so um good all

Right so let’s get into it um what I’d like to do as much as we can we’ll kind of let the Holy Spirit lead the conversation um is I kind of want to work our way if we could chronologically through kind of just your story your experiences with SDA um so let’s start with kind of give us a little background on your um your early SDA faith and and your experiences like did were you raised in it or or how how did how did that all happen yeah so um well I’ll preface with this because you mentioned there in the the intro the the CW cult and so that that’s going to be

Uh it’s gonna be very off-putting for a lot of the Adventists in the in the audience um we talk I didn’t make a statement so that that’s true that’s true um when we talk about it in this context we’re obviously not talking about about like a Jim Jones type um secluded Island drink the Kool-Aid type thing talk about um deviating from Christian Orthodoxy while claiming to be a part of Christian Orthodoxy and so um I just wanted to put that out there just because I know there’ll be a lot of Adventists in the uh in the audience that were offut by that but my story is

A little bit um it’s going to be a little bit unique for a couple of reasons um I I was born and raised in seventh adventism though my dad is an Adventist Pastor so I was a pastor’s kid or am a pastor’s kid um because he still is and so that gave me a unique experience within the Seventh Adventist movement and I don’t mean that um I was raised in a like what they would consider like a real fundamentalist or they use the terms conservative and liberal um but they’re they’re not meaning the same thing that we do like politically speaking um there there’s a

Spectrum within adventism and so I was raised in a pastor’s home but it was a pretty basic uh what what you could classify as like Evangelical adventism um that’s what some of them have have labeled it um which is sort of this like hybridized version um what I call Neo adventism so a lot of my audience is going to be familiar with that term Neo adventism um it’s sort of like a hybridized version of taking some aspects of evangelicalism and um trying to combine them with uh the unique components of seventh day adventism so I was ready raised in a pretty standard home um for

The most part um we did uphold the they they have a lot of teachings around um lifestyle Temperance and diet and so maybe we’ll get into some of that more later but um we did adhere to those types of things so we followed the health message we were vegetarians plant-based diet those types of things um but for the most part it was pretty standard in terms of my general experience I had a great time in 7th day adventism um I have lots of fond memories um in sth day adventism um and when it comes to taking things seriously um that there’s kind of a trajectory

Here so I don’t know how far you want me to to get into that before you’ll have some more questions so you can you can stop me when you feel necessary but okay um I I’ve always been a very uh introspective person so I I can recall times when I was seven eight years old where I was thinking really deep existential questions um by myself sitting there playing or whatever it may be and and thinking these really um sort of epistemologically Deep um how I I actually exist right now what is existence I’m seeing all this stuff around me these sorts of things which I

Think are a little peculiar for like a seven or an eight-year-old um but I I’ve always kind of been that way I still am that way to this day um I’m I’m a particularly deep thinker and so as much as I could as a seven-year-old eight-year-old niney old 10y old up through like your youth um I was a practicing Seventh Day Adventist um and I did take it as ser serious as I could at that age um I didn’t feel like I was just kind of going through the motions I actually have a uh a notebook in my office across the way um which is my journal from when I was uh I think it’s

Nine through 11 years old um and so I’ve I’ve reminisced over some of those things and it’s been rather fun but um even just scanning through there you can clearly see an an individual while young and remedial um still has um some sort of is really grappling with these things um regarding faith and so um for the most part I was a pretty standard uh you know like outgoing uh Seventh Day Adventist youth I was very involved in things like Pathfinders I was educated in Adventist institutions all the way up through the Collegiate level minus High School um and I obviously attended

Church with my dad um but I also got to see a lot of behind the scenes type stuff um that a lot of the leoty within adventism are not witnessing um I got to go with my dad to what they call like ministers Retreat or like ministers meetings um which I have my own theories around kind of what that stuff is I I oftentimes refer to adventism on my platform as a uh a corporation not a church it operates a lot more like a an organization or a business there’s a lot of red tape and Bure Bureau uh bureaucracy and so the the ministers meetings were really a time for the the

Higher ups to convey down to the salesmen the pastors um the sort of messaging and this the sort of stuff that the organization is now passing along down the pyramid and so I got to go to things like that and kind of experience that side of adventism as well so just in terms of experience um I had a great time as a Seventh Adventist I I really believed those things and as I got into my my young adult years so like from like teen to like 17 18 19 years old um I I really became kind of exhausted with a lot of it um I would ask questions about certain things and

In my experience and this is still kind of what I see today and I’ve talked with lots of other people about it as well there’s definitely a discouraging of critical thinking and what I mean by that is asking questions that are actually critical of seventh day adventism it’s not that they’re going to you know Advocate against going to college or something like that but um there there seem to be a sort of tiptoeing around the really eggshell subjects sure and so I remember just some early things like um you know when I’m like 11 or 12 years old I had

Friends in my neighborhood for example and I remember thinking to myself you know this systems theology teaches that they were like Sunday Christians they were these apostate Protestant Sunday Christians and I remember just thinking basic things like you know why why are they gonna all of a sudden hate me you know in the end times this movement teaches that one day the whole world is going to be stirred with enmity towards Seventh Day Adventist especially especially the Christian world and it just those sorts of things did not make sense to me and when searching for

Answers to those questions I I was never really satisfied were there were there typical I guess what they call thought stopping statements like the world is Babylon don’t even deal with it kind of thing yeah and obviously it’s not it wasn’t maybe worded exactly that same way but yeah exactly of like well you know we don’t need to necessarily worry about that we just need to trust God’s going to be with us it will be fine so there’s kind of like a a steering of like a red herring like moving away from like the real thing that’s being asked about to

More like well we don’t need to fear because God will be with us well that’s not what I’m asking I didn’t ask about being fearful or like what should we do when this happens I’m asking there there seems to be a logical disconnect between what’s being claimed and getting to that point and it’s always this sort of like uh and this is still kind of the excuse they give today of this like well it’s going to be like a miracle it’s going to be this false Miracle um the whole world something’s just going to happen and they’ll point to things like covid-19

Now uh the pandemic to see look how fast things can just totally change it’ll be something like that where they’re all of a sudden just gonna like hate Seventh Day Adventist so early on I was I was I would ask questions and that’s just one example um and like I said I’ve always just kind of been inquisitive and I didn’t find some of those things uh particularly convincing um and so as I got into my young adult years and I really started to like grow in my my level of awareness and my thinking and my um my understand understanding I obviously was starting to try and

Grapple more with what we believe and like why we believe it um and it I basically got to a point where I was pretty exhausted I’d say as like a a a youth um I was just kind of uh really just kind of Getting off-put By by a lot of it and kind of feeling like that the hamster on the treadmill and we’ll get to this eventually but um you know looking back it’s it’s because adventism is really a gospel desert um there there is no the gospel is not there um at least systematically speaking and so like from an organizational standpoint so so what age were you at when you

Started feeling that kind of restlessness um probably like yeah like yeah like 12 13 um 14 because in adventism so that they’re really big on like you get baptized they typically don’t want you to get baptized before like 10 I don’t know if it’s still that way um but it’s typically around there that Adventist youth will will get baptized and so in adventism it’s it’s a little bit more than just like your standard like Baptist Believers baptism type thing you take vows to the SDA Church um and so when you do that especially my dad being a pastor he was

Kind of the one that was like catechizing me to then baptize me and so going through that there’s this very serious emphasis about your adventism has to be your own it can’t just be your parents and um those types of things and so it’s around that age where for me I was like I’m I’m you know I really do y I believe it I I understand these these things Etc and so I uh I followed through with that and and was baptized but it was a little bit after that so yeah probably somewhere around I don’t know 13 or 14 yeah I’m thinking about you know some of the things you’re

Mentioning are parallel to being raised in a Christian home um in that you know you start to question things and some Churches it depends on the church some will shut down the questions yep uh and that’s always that as me I have a little bit of a contrarian mindset that God’s working with me on uh but so that would be the most frustrating thing in the world why can’t you explain this to me you know yeah um so I so I get some of that but it’s interesting I’m trying to I’m trying to kind of track the parallels of uh I don’t know what you’d want to call it mainstream Christianity

Versus uh SDA so are when you do you recall as you were growing up was there what role did scripture play in the things like the catechism and and and all the like membership and all that was there a lot of were they a lot of like pushing you to get into the scriptures and explaining things like why scripturally why Christians are going to hate seventh day Adventists yeah so I mean one thing I will credit the Seventh Adventist movement for and I’m I’m grateful for is that they are to their credit bullish on the Bible now we have to get into just because you’re bullish

On the Bible doesn’t mean you understand and handle the Bible correctly um but that’s one thing that I I do appreciate is the fact that I I grew up around the Bible believing that the Bible is the word of God these types of things that Jesus is god um we have to get into those those words and what do they mean which you and I have talked about this before in the past how they have a a different worldview than Christians and that worldview is actually what defines terms for them but just in the generals um I I wasn’t in like a hostile you know agnostic or atheistic type household to

The scriptures and so um I was I was I was pointed to the Bible Etc now when you talk about catechism and catechesis um oftentimes you’ll get a lot of Adventists that poo poo on that term that sounds Roman Catholic these types of things but all that means is teaching and the way that catechesis happens in seventh day adventism is not through like the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Augsburg confession larger and smaller catechism um it happens through their Sabbath School quarterly so their worldwide church has a quarterly that they put out where the whole worldwide

Church is going through it at the same time it has lessons for you to do at home to then prepare you for Saturday where you meet at church for Sabbath school and go over the final lesson and kind of tie things off before then receiving the quarterly for the following week to then repeat the same thing so catechesis happens that way so I was pointed to the Bible but this really gets to the issue of hermeneutics and the fact that even though the Bible was being pointed to the way that the Bible is handled it in in seventh day adventism is not through sound biblical

EX Jesus and hermeneutics um they will tell you the leadership I talk about this all the time on my platform the leadership will tell you the only approved hermeneutic in the Seventh Adventist Church is the historical grammatical method they don’t utilize the historical grammatical method so U we’re not going to Trail off into all that right now but the point being is I was pointed to the Bible but the problem is is the average Seventh Day Adventist is not equipped to be able to actually handle the Bible properly it’s really just a matter of proof texting and

Hopscotching all over the Bible then making assertions after citing a verse so there was a lot of that and so even early on I was still able to kind of see like eh so I was reading the Bible Etc but I would argue at the time I didn’t have the spirit I wasn’t indwelt by the spirit so I didn’t really understand these sorts of things because I believe the scriptures are clear that um without the spirit you’re not going to be able to discern and really understand these sorts of things so um it was kind of a a Bittersweet thing yeah that that makes sense yeah and I think it’s a tough time

Anyway for for kind of anybody uh to be growing up you grow up into whatever particular Faith or lack of faith that your household is in and you have to start to find your way and at least for me I’ll just speak for me personally I was nowhere near intellectually mature enough to you know to discern these things um and so that I mean that led to my own problems and we always we we all hear about that especially late teens early 20s people start to search for their own faith and I think that’s a good thing but so when you got to that older age and you started being a little

More Discerning were there specific events or was there like a specific teaching or something anything that jumps out in your mind that made you say I wonder if there’s I wonder if this is right I wonder if there’s another way um not that I can recall like off the top of my head um for me it really just became that I got Advent fatigue which is a phrase that you’ll hear in some pockets of Advent ISM um I just became really fatigued cuz you have to understand Robert that in in adventism while there’s a big emphasis on the second coming a lot of what you’re not

Going to know from the outside looking in is that the second coming is not really a glorious event in adventism they’re obviously going to tell you oh yes it is we long for it Etc but tied with it is Get Ready Get Ready Get ready are you doing enough are you doing enough probation’s going to close are you ready are you ready which really is getting at there a prepared people Doctrine um sinless perfectionism are you ready to stand before God without an intercessor Satan’s going to be accusing you and Jesus is only going to be able to advocate for those people who have

Demonstrated that the law can be kept perfectly in silence Satan while they may not verbatim bring that up all the time that is the driving force behind the second coming and so there’s constantly this heavy emphasis on sanctification and are you doing enough and kind of getting lambasted and Rak over the coals now like I said I didn’t grow up in a super like fun alist uh strain of seventh day adventism so it’s not like that was being beat all the time but I was hearing that stuff at the seminars at the they used to call them like Evangelistic Crusades I don’t know

If they still do but I used to hear it at stuff like that you hear it in the Sabbath School quarterly you hear it at school you hear it from other people so you’re getting it from other avenues than just your house obviously and so okay that EV let me pause you real quick because from the outside I don’t I didn’t follow some of the things you just said and maybe you could unpack a little bit what is you mentioned something called I think you mentioned probation so if you could like give us a little framework of this it sounds like a Works based what’s the framework

Theologically about this pressure that you were feeling yeah so to get really technical about it and I didn’t know this obviously at the time but seventh day adventism they’re they’re they’ve borrowed from the reformed tradition so I’m reformed in my theology um they have borrowed the covenant theology framework from the reformed tradition but then they have filtered it through their great controversy worldview now we don’t have time to get into all that you and I have talked about that a little bit before in the past we have tons of material about that on our website in

Video for people to check out if they want to understand that more more seriously fancy Banner there we go oh wow yeah yeah the the the runner but uh so you have to kind of understand the great controversy worldview to really understand sth Day Adventist theology around soteriology and these sorts of things and so they affirm what is technically called covenantal GN nomism okay so it’s this idea which was very prevalent in in the first century for example where you’re in the Covenant by faith but then you’re kept by your obedience so it’s a misapplication of

The role that obedience plays um and Adventists oftentimes really struggle to get this and think that when you’re disagreeing with this that you’re somehow disparaging dis or obedience that you’re advocating for Lous or or lawlessness or these sorts of things but because of that covenantal GN nomism that’s a result of their covenant theology not making a distinction between law and gospel they don’t distinguish between Covenant of works and Covenant of Grace So when they talk about probation they’ll oftentimes point to some of the Puritan reformed

Theologians or even like first century reformers like John Calvin Etc and they’ll say look they talked about Adam and Eve being on probation which is correct because Adam and Eve were in the Covenant of works but the Covenant of Works essentially ends there the Covenant of Grace is instituted in Genesis 3:15 and the rest of Redemptive history is it various administrations of the Covenant of Grace and what they don’t understand are you so you’re saying if I’m let me just kind of filter that a little bit you’re saying that they thought they’re of the belief that

Works are in effect are part of this are part of our Salvation they are now you’re going to have to get we’re going to have to get into the weeds a little bit on that because Adventists are going to of of course insist we don’t teach Works salvation we don’t teach Works salvation but what works group says that no Works group says we teach Works salvation of course not so we have to get into what we mean and so basically when it comes to probation because they don’t understand a distinguishing between law and gospel the Covenant of works and the

Covenant of Grace they intermingle those two things together such that they basically think that all human beings are on probation no differently than Adam and Eve failing to understand that Adam and Eve were in a unique covenantal relationship in the Covenant of works and the second Adam Jesus comes he fulfills the requirements of the Covenant of works that Adam and Eve failed to uphold and he fulfills that such that he can then essentially impute to you his righteousness through the Covenant of Grace so that you can be seen as though you upheld the Covenant

Of works perfectly and enter into God’s presence so because in order to ENT enter God’s presence you have to be completely holy you have to be not a sinner essentially and so they fail to distinguish that and I I’m going to be getting into some more content this year actually on covenant theology specifically because this is a really important topic but probation they see Jesus coming and essentially he he did fulfill they’ll say what the what the first Adam failed to do but they’ll claim that he gives a second probation that’s the language Ellen White used we

Have an article on this on our website for those that want to check it out in more detail answering adventism domcom and in the search bar up top just type in the word probation and you’ll find the article um and you can read about it all there so they basically teach that mankind is on a second probation that Jesus came to buy mankind more time to essentially do what the first Adam failed to do you need to get to a point where you can keep the law and all of this stuff is Downstream like I said from this great controversy worldview and just in a nutshell to give people an

Idea of what I’m I’m meaning when I say that we believe Robert that the Bible is the the revelation of Redemptive history correct yeah so the Adventist Church would agree except the Adventist Church has an extra part of Redemptive history before the Bible so when they read Genesis 1 they’re not talking about the creation of everything they’re talking about and see the creation of the earth there’s a huge pre-earth expanse of time who knows how long they don’t say how long it was where there was all sorts of stuff going on that they supposedly have

Insight into because God revealed this stuff to Ellen White so this pre prear or narrative is what informs their understanding of Redemptive history so since we don’t share that with them we start at the beginning with Genesis and we deduce from there forward whereas in their model they’re bringing stuff already to the Genesis account from this pre-earth expanse so why did Jesus come in their model well Satan began accusing the Ten Commandments in heaven and Jesus came to silence these accusations because Satan started this great controversy with Jesus over over the Ten

Commandment law that he said this law was not fair it can’t be kept these sorts of things but but are you just shifting back to you as a late teen whatever education or catechism you went through are these things spelled out for for you as SDA or these things you are we hearing some things that you kind of work out later I’m I’m curious how much of this is part of the educational process my articulation of it now was definitely not something I would have been able to articulate the same way as like a 13 or 14-year-old but the general concepts I knew were there this prear

Expanse like for example they have and they’re they’re probably targeted I would guess to like 11 to 13 year olds like young youth books um and I can’t remember the name off the top of my head um I’ll probably remember after we get off the call it’s been a minute but they have books about this pre-earth origin story like a graphic novel um it’s okay what is it called so I was exposed to it through stuff like that but obviously it makes its way into the Sabbath School quarterly I mean just this past year I was keeping up with with some of the the

Quarterly and and they’re talking about this stuff about Satan’s accusations in heaven and yeah I mean this is this is commonplace knowledge in in adism this is not like obscure or sort of like hidden information okay so so that makes more sense now when you’re talking about fatigue and you’re talking about feeling like oh my gosh I have to keep up and try to keep things perfectly and all that yeah and there’s again when you don’t have a law gospel distinction you end up abusing the law you end up using it in a in a false way and so as I as I started going through my well let me

Actually finish there on probation just because I know we don’t want to leave people hanging basically the basically this second probation Jesus procured for you a second probation and on this probation you have to basically demonstrate to all these watching intelligences because they don’t believe humans and angels are the only you know they they believe there’s all sorts of other creatures on other other worlds and they’re all watching it on the earth as this great controversy is going on over God’s law and it’s ultimately all centers around this which is why they’re so gung-ho on

The law the law the law and they’re constantly talking about law because they think the law has been um attacked and that that the reason that the law is attacked now on Earth is because Satan started in heaven and these sorts of things okay and so while on probation um you can basically come to Jesus and he will give you a an ability that you didn’t previously have before he will Empower you through the spirit to be able to do that without the spirit what you wouldn’t be able to do which is keep the law and they’ll they’ll claim you know that it’s not you’re not keeping

The law to be saved you’re keeping the law because you are saved that type thing um but what it ends up producing is a constant looking to yourself what am I doing what am I doing am I doing enough what am I doing what am I doing what am I doing has it been enough these sorts of things and so um that that produced in me just fatigue eventually and so I became pretty Al in my adventism I would say now let me pause you real quick there this is your experience I understand that and now since then you’ve had exposure to lots more stuff is it your is it your

Understanding that that’s a fairly common thing this fatigue that you’re talking about oh absolutely especially now with answering adventism I mean I talk with thousands of Adventists and former Adventist every year and so um oh yeah absolutely I mean like I said that I didn’t coin that phrase that that’s a phrase that you’ll hear in Adventist circles okay all right just curious yeah that because that sounds like if that’s the general overarching framework of theology a lot of people would respond with that sense of oh my gosh I can’t do this anymore yeah and I mean of course

You’re G to get the you like I said you have a spectrum and you’re definitely going to get the ones who are confident they they really think they’re keeping the law perfectly and they think they don’t sin and they they think that they’ve they’re vindicating God and U they’re delusional but um you know John says they’re a liar and the truth is not in them but um for the most part that the honest speaking Adventist I can’t even tell you the amount of people I’ve come across who quietly when they’re honest and they’re not like publicly in a group setting or anything like that

That are honest and and have the fatigue that number far outweighs the sort of Pious holier than thou um I’m sinless um at least in in my experience in North America I can’t speak for you know other regions in other countries but for the most part in in America so I became pretty nominal um I would have still said that I was an Adventist I would have still said that I was a Christian um but I I started to kind of just get interest in in other things like you know like basketball and like you know those those sorts of things playing with my friends and just kind of like me you

Know I was still reading the Bible periodically Etc but I wasn’t really as like um entrenched in it if you will and then I went to high school and like I said I did I went to a public high school um and the same thing happened just through there I would said I was an Adventist we were still going to church um I wasn’t going to my dad’s church at that time actually I was living with my mom um still going to an Adventist Church um pretty pretty just like no different really than nominal Christianity you know um that sort of thing so was doing that and then the

Real turning point was in college um I I again I would have still said I was a Christian I was an Adventist Etc but I wasn’t really spending a lot of time in these matters and this is one of those is as I’m sure you’re aware if you don’t spend a lot of time talking about religion theology Etc it’s not something you’re just like itching to be talking about with people you kind of get uncomfortable and you’re kind of like uh uh you don’t really feel equipped enough to be able to have like a thoughtful discussion on such sure so I was definitely in that boat um it wasn’t

Something that I was like going around really talking about but you know this is just my own personal belief and this is what I believe Etc type thing and so uh I was on the track team in University I was was on a track scholarship I ran track in high school and then got a scholarship into to college um and one day a friend who was on the basketball team he asked me if I wanted to go out to eat with him we shared the weight room with the basketball team the track and basketball team did and so it pretty normal that was pretty standard pretty normal day um so we went and did that

And while we were there he randomly just asked me if he could share the gospel with me which immediately I kind of was like uh I was like well I’m a Christian you know know the gospel Etc and that was kind of my my my juke to try and like move the conversation along because again politics and religion tend to be the two things that yeah make people just all of a sudden kind of uh shell up and this question which I now look back with hindsight and see was Providence he instead of moving along he said oh interesting would you mind sharing the gospel with

Me oh wow and that opened up what began about a yearslong path to eventually a pretty radical conversion so I proceeded to explain to this guy which I’m going to use technical terms now that I didn’t know then but I basically proceeded to get into all sorts of eschatological Prophecy with this guy um because in adventism that’s what the gospel is it’s that in the end there’s going to be this big controversy over the law of God specifically the fourth Commandment did you know that the the law has a seal kind of like a presidential seal it has its name of of the one who gave it all

This sort of standard talking point stuff that you hear in adventism I was going for about 10 minutes on all this stuff before he stopped me and he said hey can I just share something a little more simple with you and he proceeded to actually share the biblical gospel with me um and it it was um it was profound because it was things I’d heard before so many times but there was just something about the way he explained it that made it go past beyond my ears to my heart and while I wasn’t converted there on the spot it stuck with me it was one of those things where afterward I didn’t

Want to talk to anyone for like two days because I was just like so deep in thought about like what I heard and what I was thinking about like I just wanted to kind of recluse from everybody and just really think about this because I remember it really hitting me in such a way that was like I’ve heard all this stuff before but I’ve never heard it like that what he described was not my understanding of of what Christianity is but you didn’t when you heard it you didn’t instantly think that’s wrong there was something inside of you that said maybe the opposite or that left you

Open to what how how he put it well it was really the fact he used the Bible so I’m like well I I’ve read the you know I’ve read the Bible I grew up around the Bible I’ve heard these things I’ve heard that Jesus died for my sins I I’ve heard these things but what he was able to describe which if we were going to get technical was really the truth about justification imputed righteousness um the the double Grace that God gives to the believer um these sorts of things The Great Exchange um being clothed in Christ righteousness right now in full Union with Christ um these sorts of

Things now he wasn’t using those terms but he was able to explain it to me in such a way that it just resonated with me different ly and so I I attribute that to when a seed was swn and over time God gave increase now like I said I I was not converted there on the spot um I didn’t like make a profession or anything like that there on the spot but that really stuck with me now this is going to sound interesting um but it’s it’s the facts despite that happening I did end up getting enticed by Eastern religion so I was running around with some friends at the time who um we were

All really into like electronic music and so at the time um they were all into Eastern thought and Eastern religion which is kind of just a big umbrella like new age type stuff um and so I ended up actually getting enticed by that and in that world there’s a flavor and strain of that where they’ll tell you you know you can still believe in Jesus and these types of things and so I still would have considered myself like a follower of Christ or a Christian or you know I would have used these terms but I didn’t really actually understand what that meant um while I was kind of

Embracing and EMB bibing some of this Eastern thought and so I went down that road for a while that actually introduced me to the world of drugs recreational drug use because a lot of pockets in that world utilize drugs in a sort of spiritual and and religious way and so I ended up going down that road for a a season which eventually brought me to a point where and this is where I really attribute my my conversion and I want to preface with this Robert just because I think it’s really important um I feel like a lot of Christians often times hear testimonies like this and

They start to wonder well I didn’t have a radical testimony like that am I really a Christ I don’t want people to think that I I I hope my kids for example have a boring testimony I hope they basic yeah exactly and so I don’t want people to hear this and sort of think that like every person has to has to have this sort of experience this is just the way that the Lord had had ordained that I would come to him and so um yeah about a year after that discussion with that friend um I was at a house one night and they were hosting a you could call like a house Rave if

You will um and quite a few people there that sort of thing and after things were dying down it was probably about two in the morning um every all the guests had left and it was the people that were staying there um we we were all still there I was pretty nomadic at the time now my life had spiraled quite a bit I’m leaving out some details here I pretty much only had a backpack full of belongings to my name at that time I was kind of bouncing around I was living with various people um I got into selling drugs that’s how I was making money um and so again during all this I

Would have still said I was a Christian though uh in name only obviously um but that night they had all left and we were sitting there and we were kind of bantering around in the living room and I’m not going to repeat what was said but there was something that was said by uh a friend at the time that triggered something within me that brought a feeling over me that did not sit well with me and this was not excuse me this was not drug induced um a feeling of Filth the way he was talking something didn’t sit with me and it sent my mind back through my childhood where I

Remembered my parents telling me if you get into drugs this is what your life will be like and I kind of had one of these like Inception moments you know like a Jimmy Neutron BL Brain Blast type thing where it’s like you run through this wo up to your present moment where I then you know I’m there sitting and it’s like all it was almost like prophetic on my parents part like that’s what they said and then all these years later here I am and that’s exactly what ended up happening and ironically enough you brought up the Bible earlier in my my upbringing around the Bible my dad

Had gifted me a Bible a King James Bible I still have it it’s leatherbound it has a it’s blue and it has a rocket ship on the front it’s a kids Bible he had given gifted that to me and when I was off shelving all my stuff to be this sort of like nomadic sort of individual I did not feel okay for some reason throwing that Bible away so I never did so it was in a pocket in my backpack and when I had this realization moment and feeling of conviction I was actually compelled to go to my backpack and get that Bible and so I did and I dismissed myself from

The room and looking back I I wouldn’t do this or advise this now obviously but again this is just of how it was I was like sure I’m just going to crack this thing open and wherever I open it is like where God wants me to to read something right now for my life like almost like God send me a sign type thing sure and I cracked it open and it was Isaiah 53 and so I read through Isaiah 53 and knew that this was about Jesus and I’m trying not to get emotional um because it is it was a uh it was just a very wow it’s it’s hard Robert when if you’ve never been if you’ve never been

Down at that yeah excuse me no don’t worry about it man yeah we my wife and I do a lot of uh Ministry work in in recovery areas and there’s nobody as uh free and there’s nobody as emotional and touched as someone who has been at that low point and Jesus stooped down and picked them up yeah that’s amazing that’s y as an apologist I always say this there is no greater apologetic than a changed life yeah and when when you’re down at that level um I I I cried out to the Lord in that bathroom and said I I Surrender today is the day I Surrender Lord you can have my life

Because if not um I’m gonna die because that’s the that’s the road I was on and he save and he and he saved me amen and and he really did you know it’s that’s amazing it just yeah just I I credit it all to my Lord and I’m just grateful for you know the the grace of God because he didn’t have to do that and I remember feeling I remember feeling you know conviction and that you know if I were to die in this moment that that I would I would go to the hell that I was taught didn’t exist and that I would deserve it I wasn’t a good person and that God owed me me nothing

Aside from from that but in in a in an instant that that that conviction that Terror immediately dissipated as the Lord Jesus just wrapped himself around me wow and that’s when I knew it’s like there’s there’s no other being out there that can cause such Terror in a person and immediately bring such peace at the same time and I knew that he was real and that I had been um a rebel in his in his domain and he just extended extreme extreme Grace in my life that I I reap the benefits of today and oh praise God that’s amazing and there was a kernel something inside of you that he wouldn’t

Let go that you kept that Bible that’s great you know what I mean there’s something he he he was working in you even when you were walking away from him to say no we’re gon to hang on to that and you will need that later yeah and it’s so cool to see that in in hindsight well and the next day you know I I went to bed after that um and the next day I I woke up and things were really different um I’m I went to talk with my friends about this one of whom has has also come to know the Lord now praise God for that but they were hostile to this um they

They were like what in the world happened to you last night that type thing and I continued to now ask more questions what happened there because like I said I’m I’m I’m living somewhat nomadic at the time and I realized I had to get away from these people if I am going to make a change and thankfully my mother lived about an hour and a half from there and all I had was a backpack to my name so I moved back in with her for a season she lived in the middle of nowhere at the time which was perfect because I was able to get a job near there so the only thing I was doing was

Working and then going back to there where I knew where there was no one I mean she lived in a town of less than 50 people wow so middle of nowhere nothing and so because I had nothing to do I also had paired with that a new Hunger for the word of God that I didn’t have before because of that encounter with the the Lord Jesus in his word I had this new Hunger for the Bible and I began devouring the Bible now I began reading the Bible in a way that I didn’t read it previously um and I and when I mean I I was reading the Bible I mean I was like reading the Bible like eight or

Nine hours a day like it’s like all I was doing so I read through the Bible in like and I don’t recommend people do this obviously but I read through the Bible in like three weeks um not that I comprehended everything and understood all the you know because it’s it’s an infinite well of of wisdom and knowledge but um I really had a hunger for the word of God I all of a sudden did not find interest in things I previously did adult cartoons movies Music These sorts of things I started to feel this new off-put sort of thing you know Family Guys joking around about Jesus it’s like

Well I don’t that’s not funny I I don’t you you’re mocking this individual who radically saved me changed my life and you’re making a mockery and a joke out of this those sorts of things were these crazy changes pornography drugs no desire boom just bam wow no longer um now it’s not to say I didn’t struggle with some of those things afterward and by the grace of God I’ve been freed of those things now but the point being is the spirit began to work conviction was was coming over me for these sorts of things and so I began a journey at that point of really needing to figure

Out what happened what what what caused this radical change this freedom from things that I I couldn’t find Freedom from before and so this is g to sound crazy but I knew okay I moved my mom’s what have you I need to go to church I know I need to be going to church as a Christian you know and I’m kind of like real zealous and fired up like the new convert typically is like your cage stage where you’re just like honeymoon phase if you will just you’re so fired up you’re like you’re telling the Walmart cashier about it you’re telling people down the aisle

At the store about it right you know you’re doing that you’re handing out chick tracks you’re like doing all that sort of stuff and so I was probably a little overzealous if you will but I did know I needed to be going to church however Robert plot twist there were still vestiges of my SDA theology namely esqu ology in my thinking oh yeah naturally so after this happens I didn’t at the time make the connection that the gospel I heard that radically changed my life was not the gospel that the AVST Church gave me so I didn’t make the connection there yet and so these sort of vestiges

Of SDA theology came back to the surface and so I was like well I need to be going to an SDA church because they’re The Remnant and we’re in the end times and man thank goodness I got all this figured out out since Jesus is going to be back you know all that stuff started coming back in so I would have still considered myself an SDA at this time but now being so fired up like I was I was ready to reassess the beliefs a lot more from a much more serious standpoint as a young adult I’m like you know 20 at the time 21 at the time something like that um and so I began to really start

To dig into s SDA theology from like a systematic standpoint you said you felt like you had to go back to church did you go to an SDA church at that point yeah so now it’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a drive she lived in the middle of nowhere it’s about like 35 40 minutes away from where she lived but they did have an SDA church so that’s actually where we were going when I’d go with my mom growing up before College we would go to this little small SDA church that was planted um yeah like 40 minutes from her so yeah so we were we were going there and it was during

That process that the damn really broke and I realized oh boy um there there’s some serious problems here because I wanted to we lived my mom worked actually in a a different town not where the church was but a different town it was a Catholic town she worked for the Catholic Hospital so I actually was around a lot of Catholics when I was with my mom’s friends or like people like that so there was like religious talk taking place and um I developed friends in that area over time Etc going back and you’d get into religious conversations and those types of things

You know and so you want to be able to engage in those types of things and like I said I’m an introspective person I’m also a very Allin or allout type of person I’m not really like I don’t really like the halfway in halfway out type thing yeah and so I was like really serious about um figuring out answers to these sorts of things like the big one being well you guys are going to church the wrong day that’s the big one the Sabbath is like this this B this huge thing so obviously when you start to get into studying these things more you realize especially taking the jump from

Being committed as an8 n 10 11 year old going nominal and then having this experience and then now going back as an adult sure you’re obviously gonna gonna realize there’s a lot more Nuance going on here than maybe you understood it’s a lot more than just well look at this verse here and then making assertions at least if you’re G to engage with somebody and it was that process that ended up sending me down the road of studying what I really believed only to find out it wasn’t true that adventism is false that it is a deception Etc and that really came at the behest though of

Having to Grapple with the fact that there’s no way you can divorce Ellen White from adventism and that was really kind of okay we’ll get into that in a second sorry I have so many questions yeah that that was one of the things that was really like a big breaker of the dam for me is is kind of getting into some of that stuff now I didn’t know at the time about people like DM canright Dale Ratz laugh these sort of like notorious defectors from Seventh Day adventism um I I didn’t come across those individuals actually until um a number of years after leaving adventism

Um so is really just through the sort of like trying to Grapple with actual Adventist history and like these sorts of things and like why why is our did this you know why am I part of a church that came about in the 1800s you know why did it come about in the 1800s and so I had the sort of folklore narratives that I was taught in adven a school about the great disappointment and William and the talking points but not a real um granular understanding connecting the dots on these sorts of things so because I had all this time on my hand Robert I got down the rabbit

Hole I started digging and I started piecing stuff together I started noticing things like man there’s such this emphasis on diet yet everything I’m reading in the Bible one nothing in the Old Testament about clean and unclean animals had to do with a a plant-based diet being healthy that delineation had to do for sacrifices clean and unclean delineations was for sacrifices not and then I get to the New Testament and all these things food doesn’t bring you closer or further away from God you can eat the meat sacrifice to the idol if you actually understand that hey it’s

Actually okay but if it’s going to cause your brother to stumble and yield your freedom for the sake of your brother right all these these things that I was seeing so heavily emphasized I wasn’t seeing that in the New Testament just reading it yet at the same time I was being told by this movement especially growing up you know we just believe a plain thus sayeth the Lord we just believe the plain reading of the Bible well where’s the Sunday law that’s not plainly there you’re having to jump all over the place and make a bunch of inference and assumptions and

And it doesn’t say anything in these in Revelation 14 6-12 about coming out of Protestant churches what it doesn’t say anything in there about the investigative judgment and predicting Revelation 109 through1 predicting the great disappointment that’s when I realiz realized okay something’s off here so I eventually got to the point where I was like okay I I just too many straws broke the camels back essentially um and I I officially left and I started going to just a standard non- denominational Church um that was actually in that Catholic town that I

Was telling you about and it was there that I it took a lot at first because I was like fearful of going in you know yeah I’m like this is like the the devil’s dead the papal Sabbath yada yada all this sort of conspiracy and so it took a little bit to get over that but I like made it through it and I was like okay cool like sweet I felt like I was making some progress and so I eventually met the youth pastor there and this guy was a godsent because he and I started meeting and we started talking and that was when I really realized like oh man I’ve got a

Lot to learn like I’ve got to untangle from all of this and I never forget we were sitting down in one of my favorite uh coffee shops in that area local place uh it’s called Joe sippers um shout out to Joe sippers and the Scooby-Doo frap which is a frappuccino that uses Dr Pepper and chocolate it’s awesome W um I was drinking a I was drinking a Scooby-Doo frap and we were talking about stuff and it dawned on me wow the thing that made me different as an Adventist from all these other people isn’t just these beliefs it’s not just like oh well we just have some different

Beliefs over here we have a different world viiew and that is where a light bulb moment went off where I had it was just like a switch was flipped and that switch has never been flipped off I can’t unse it now yeah where I realized because the reason why is I started asking him about some of this stuff about the law because the big thing is the law Adventists are just so hung up on the law because of this pre-earth origin story and what they claim is actually going on in the world so it was through discussing that stuff with him where I’m talking about Satan accusing

The Ten Commandments and stuff he’s he’s I mean he’s like short circuiting he’s like yeah I the Bible doesn’t talk about any of that like the Bible doesn’t say that anywhere and that was when it hit me that I had a worldview that was different than Christians and I now had to deprogram myself from this world viiew yet at the same time and no fault to him this is just the facts he was not equipped to be able to help me do that because he didn’t understand the worldview he hadn’t interacted with Adventists so I began digging at that point for um for resources on this and

What I found was there was virtually nothing out there that was where I came across some of these defectors from adventism that ended up gaining a little bit of notoriety in the Adventist World um and so I read kind of some of their stuff but even then it did didn’t help me process the magnitude of what it was that I was about to have to undertake and that was a very difficult process over many many many many years um and it was really through that journey and that struggle that I realized there needs to be more out there for people that are experiencing

This who they can get caught up to speed a lot quicker somebody who can cut through all this theological fog and really help a person where it’s going off the rails because theying all the same all the same language but they’re using a different dictionary they’re defining all of that stuff differently it’s being defined by this extra biblical pre-earth origin story that would be so difficult to reconcile the Two Worlds if you weren’t aware of Both Worlds and if you’re still like a babe in Christ like I was and I don’t know the technical terminology of

Justification sanctification glorification Union with Christ law gospel distinction Etc right and so at the time I really was like there needs to be something out there for people like this and I really didn’t see it and so it was years and years and years of having that lingering thought in my mind and also too kind of being a little frustrated about it as well because I’m like man I know there’s got to be other people out there that are going through this same struggle and I eventually just through prayer and sitting under sound teaching for for a number of years I

Began uh it just it actually here at this house I’m in right now um I was praying and I was going into my study one day and it hit me when I was praying about this that maybe the answer is I’m supposed to do it maybe that’s the solution maybe that is why God has brought me to this moment through this specific path because in order for somebody to effectively do what I was wanting they’re going to have to have come out of this they’re going to have to have been a person that truly had a great controversy worldview not even a former Adventist who was

Converted in and then was like eh after a few years and left I’ve I’ve met a lot of those that person’s not going to be equipped to do it and so that was when it hit me that like I’ve been complaining about this you know internally um for a number of years and I didn’t feel equipped at you know early on and I wasn’t praise God for that not happening because that would have been a dster fire um but it hit me you know after about uh eight years of being out that uh maybe I’m supposed to undertake this and so I had all these notes and all this material like I said I’m kind

Of a theology nerd I’m kind of a Allin or allout type of person and so I’ve ever since that conversion man I got bit by the theology bug I just have been obsessed with the things of God and just like studying these things and so um that after about eight years of leaving that’s where I eventually was like okay I I’m G to start something where I can just share this information it’s going to be educational and nature and the focus is not on Adventists as the bullseye they’re a concentric ring around the bullseye the bullseye has to be raising the awareness of the

Christian the Christian church to be able to deal with this to be able to communicate effectively to these individuals and help them cut through the fog and the confusion because this worldview takes a grip it’s like the fish in water you know the the fish in the water doesn’t know it’s in the water because that’s all it knows and that’s it’s that piecing that apart is a very very difficult process especially especially when you’re doing it alone and so I knew that there needed to be some sort of educational platform of some sort I didn’t know what it would

Look like that educated Christians and explained this stuff almost like a translator yeah a bridging of the the Gap there to help you understand like here’s the way they’re saying this here’s the Christians have historically understood this here’s where the rub is that sort of thing and so I had all these needed yeah yeah so I had all these notes and all this um you know stuff compiled from from years of just like studying various positions and various viewpoints and church history and just all this stuff that I was like I need to figure out a way to compile it

And so I just began praying about that and I was like you know simple prayer of like Lord if this is what you want me to do show me I I don’t know what this is going to look like I’m just just a guy I’m not I don’t have a theology degree I’m not I don’t have an mdiv I’m not a pastor Etc I don’t want to be like a teacher I’m not trying to be like you know online Bible teacher guy like join miles Church type thing right I’m not a discernment Ministry or like a watchdog blog or whatever those things are but specifically an educational Outlet well the Lord answered that prayer and it

Actually happened through my wife my wife was going to start a YouTube channel for health and wellness and in doing so she ended up not really she realized she’s like well I’m not really a camera person I think I’m more of like a behind the scenes type individual but she had all this she had all this equipment left over and I was looking at it piled in the corner one day and I was like maybe a YouTube channel that could be a perfect way to do it I’ll just put the videos out there and see what you know what happens what comes of it and that was really the the beginning phases

Now I’m a graphic designer by trade and so I knew if I was going to do this again being an Allin or allout type of guy I was like I need to build a brand for this like a logo and a thumbnail style and a color palette and so we based the colors off of the uh it’s a play on the levitical priesthood garments um which is kind of a big a big part of of um some some funny history there with with adventism but also too it’s a little bit tongue and- cheek with the uh the color of the the the woman the scarlet and and purple riding the beast in Revelation which is kind of fun

Because you’ll get a lot of Adventists that’ll say that the colors are fitting because you’re a mouthpiece peace for the Beast um but it’s a play on the levitical priesthood garments and so anyways I I spent about uh eight months doing like a formal brand build like I would for any other client out there I basically treated myself like the client and I developed a a road map and like a fiveyear plan and and all this sort of stuff and organized that got us to got us to where we are today and um yeah I started wrote up we wrote up our mission statement um figured out what the actual

Focus and the goal was and here we are today now we have a website answering adventism tocom which basically houses a lot of you know 10 or so years worth of of homework and and information for people to easily be able to access a lot of primary source documentation we are very big on this platform on my platform so you’re talking primary source as far as SDA like Ellen White’s writings and those sorts of things yeah or lots of of stuff I mean there’s often times where I have to site so for example they’ll try and appeal to Martin Luther for example

And then it’s like well we’ll counter show how they’re abusing that and so we’ll cite the actual sources um our platform is not like it’s not like a lot of the stuff on YouTube and your stuff isn’t either it’s it’s not this sort of like click farming engagement farming just political culture like what’s the current thing today that’s going to get a bunch of clicks and then it’s going to be Irrelevant in two days now we’re trying to make Evergreen content but even then it’s not content that you’re going to be able to come to and just kind of be amused like oh I’m gonna turn

My brain off and just kind of sit here and just like a lot of stuff you can on YouTube you can do that well our stuff is not really like that it’s it’s pretty meaty except you do have some fun memes on there you got that one page yeah so on the website we do because there are people that do meme Ministry now it’s funny you know people mock that people laugh at stuff like that um but we get people that reach out to us all the time from all over the world for various reasons and there have been people that have been reached by the memes the memes

Were what essentially prodded them to begin engaging and that was kind of the Gateway if you will um to getting the the ball rolling so yeah that’s kind of it in a nutshell though man about like kind of my an overview of my upbringing leading up to you know people may ask you know a lot of Adventists even um why are you so focused on adventism why don’t you why don’t you deal with uh Roman Catholicism why don’t you deal with well for the same reason that uh you don’t have to address every single thing under the sun if you decide to address one thing like I obviously

Picked this not because I’m trying to pick on Seventh Day Adventist but because of my own lived experience and own attachment it’s kind of like a Paul the Apostle type thing of his love for his Kinsmen I still consider Adventist to be in a sense like Kinsmen of mine that I care about and I want them to come to know what I came to know and experience which is the the truth of the Gospel not the word gospel even in adventism is is is very uh loaded um it really is Adventist Systematic Theology um it is not in a real understanding of the person and work of Christ and that

Through the person of Christ you right this moment can have peace with God which is the question I always lead any discussion with when I do Street evangelism or whatever and uh go out and talk to sdas out on the street um you’ll notice in the videos I always start the discussion with do you have peace with God because Paul the Apostle says in Romans 51 after talking about David and Abraham in Romans 4 about how they were Justified before God um that that justification brings about peace yeah and what does that mean that’s not just a buzz phrase that’s not just a vanilla

Term of like oh yeah the peace of God the love of God no no what does that really practically mean yeah and so I didn’t have that as an Adventist because adventism doesn’t have the gospel the gospel is what brings peace not the law and so because they intermingle the two of those things they they don’t have that and so ultimately I want Adventists to have peace that’s beautiful that’s beautiful and there’s yeah there’s a lot to untangle there we’ve got a bunch of great questions coming in before we jump over to them I wanted to ask you one more thing um let me see yeah we got a

Bunch of good questions here okay one last question for you as far as your story goes and I’m just curious about it and shut me down if it’s not relevant but I’m curious as a as the as a pastor’s kid what how your dad responded to your conversion yeah that’s a common question I get that question a lot um so here’s the thing like I was telling you my dad and if he’s watching this um I’m not trying to to impune him or or anything like that and so um but I but I will be I will be honest I would not consider him a true Adventist now we can get into all him

And I can get into to all that he knows why I would say that um because he he’s not like a lot of the very like stringent sdas who I have a lot of friends for example I have one one close friend um his dad’s an AVST pastor and it had has been hell with them like it has just been I mean cutting off just apostate these sorts of things that was not my experience at all um my my dad and I there’s no bad blood my dad would still audibly tell you now I call him out on this I’m like well that’s inconsistent with what the system says but you know he he’s big on this uh

There was a guy in the the 90s and I think even early 2000s Morris vinden he he was a a real famous like celebrity type SD who basically emphasized this sort of Evangelical adventism I’m telling you about and his big thing was always it’s all about a relationship with Jesus your connection with Jesus so as long as you have a connection with Jesus that’s all that really matters so he really has that sort of framework and so his understanding is well good you know you know praise God I’m I’m grateful God’s working in your life these sorts of things and there’s no bad

Blood there we’ve obviously had some some fun theological discussions but it’s not one of these things that like you know I get a lot of Adventists that love to speculate about this stuff and it’s just like it’s not one of these things where it’s like every time we get together we’re just like clashing theological swords and getting them bloody um it’s like well I mean we talk about like other things you know there’s other things in life like for Father’s Day we go golfing and like we don’t just always talk about adventism and theology like we’re still a father and a son so

For me I had a unique sort of experience and that’s a blessing I know because I’ve talked with so many other people that that’s not the case for them but no no real animosity yeah yeah no real animosity but I think again a lot of that has to do with just my dad’s own personality is a very like he he’s a very non-confrontational very happy go-lucky type person he he embies the sort of like Cookie Cutter what adventism tells you your character needs to be and your personality needs to be yeah he like he fits that to like a te it just like so yeah I mean it didn’t

Really um there was no like catastroph Ric or really any sort of like insightful thing I mean we talked about it I remember when I first talked with him about it and again I’d love to actually do this do a a run back of that because again that was like 10 years ago um I I would love to do a runback of that discussion from my current Vantage Point it’d be much different than when I was like you know six months out of adventism and like still um wrestling through like understanding the deeper aspects of theology Etc but I started answering adventism you know like I said

Like eight or nine years 10 years or so after leaving adventism I guess actually it’s been I guess I’ve been saying 10 years for two years now so I think it’s actually been 12 almost 12 years since I left or something like that but um I started answering adventism a while after having left and he already knew about me leaving long before answering adventism was even a thing so um that didn’t really ever come to a shock to him I don’t think I I did talk with him actually about it before starting such but um yeah not really not really anything sort of climactic

There okay yeah that’s good to hear Let me let me uh I’m gonna try to figure out a good one to oh let’s start with a little oh hold on I have that banner up forgive me I only have my learner permit for the streaming platform um here’s an interesting one some of these aren’t necessarily questions but they’re bringing up interesting comments or or um statements Melody says can I ask what does that mean one is Born Into SDA or do you have the choice to decide or choose to believe which I guess is kind of true of any religion if you’re born into a family that believes such things

Was and it sounds like your dad was a little more lack is there a general sense to that in in SDA families is it a very family oriented Community oriented group yeah no definitely um and that’s like a huge emphasis I mean at the end of the day whether whether Adventists want to accept this or not adventism as an organization is Guided by the Council of Ellen White’s writings and so Ellen White had a lot to say about the Adventist home family Dynamics roles what you should be doing with kids and these sorts of things so um there’s some good in there but there’s really a lot

Of poison as well um so I was born into a Seventh Adventist family so that’s what I mean when I say that and I guess I mean it wasn’t like you’re forced to get baptized they like they don’t do that there is this sort of like and I think this is kind of true even outside of religion just as a kid you feel the pressures of you see other people doing things and you want to you know I think that’s human nature so they don’t like force you to get baptized or anything like that if that’s the question and so but there is that sort of pressure of like that’s the world that you’re in you

Know it’s like I go to an Adventist doctor and an Adventist school and an Adventist Church and my friends are Adventist yeah and so you’re just kind of immersed in that world and that’s really all you know um you don’t really know anything different and so um they don’t like force you to stay it’s not the same as like uh they do like disfellowship people but it’s not to the same degree or level as like um Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons where they’ll do like formal shunning now I have heard of some Adventists where that takes place on an individual basis but

It seems in some of those other systems it’s almost baked into the actual system of theology whereas in adventism it’s not so much that it’s kind of just like on a case-by casee basis so um but for the most part it’s like they they do want it to be your own they want you to believe um on your own and to make your own sort of profession so like I said they they typically emphasize doing that when you go to get baptized which they try to do around with kids at 10 years old for some reason so they’re big on age of account the age of accountability idea no nobody at 10 is

You know mature enough to even question stuff that’s just your world yeah exactly and so when you get older you know it’s going to be based on your the stream of adventism you’re in you know Robert they they love to put out this narrative like part of their system is the the claim that part of the evidence that they’re The Remnant called out of apostate you know Babylon which is all of us um is supposed to be that they have this Unity that Jesus talked about that no one else has that they’re this United monolith that evidence is they’re distinct and separate from all that

Theological confusion of Babylon yet adventism is one of the most confusing there’s a huge Spectrum you’ve got the California Adventist who’s basically just like an Evangelical that goes to church on Saturday they’ll tell you that well if you don’t go to church on Saturday that’s that’s fine you have your relationship with Jesus bro that type thing all the way over to the like I mean we had people at one this one family at my dad’s church they pulled my dad to the side one time at our house and asked my dad if they would turn off uh Veggie Tales because it was deceiving

The kids vegetables don’t talk and that we were deceiving the kids by having that on at the house so that’s obviously an extreme the average Adventist is not like that but the point being is you have that all the way over to your your California Adventist it is a huge spectrum of confusion and individualism based on your geographic location So based on where you live your experience is going to be different regarding how they treat somebody who maybe if you’re like a 15-year-old in an avenus home and you’re just like yeah I’m not really believing this I I don’t really believe

It who knows what’s going to happen because again it’s going to be on a case-by casee basis yeah yeah absolutely all right here’s another good one from J Dana hope I said that right I eat clean as scripture says but you mentioned the clean was only for sacrificing but clearly it is referring to food help me understand your take because I don’t see scripture changing yeah so I I was kind of that’s one of those on the cuff when you’re talking past when I’m I’m saying that I’m thinking about this whole aous Health message around it and so I was talking

About the clean and unclean distinctions for example when you talk about Noah so they’ll point to the story of Noah for example and they’ll say uh that evidences that um the clean and unclean meat distinction um and it’s like well no that the clean and unclean meat distinction with with Noah had to do with sacrifices it was those sorts of things and if I remember correctly I was mentioning that when I was just talking about when I first started really digging into the Bible and reading the emphasis that they place on those things the Bible does not yeah the way they

Talk about it as that it’s a nutritional or bacterial health issue correct and the Bible never says a thing about that it only says that it’s ritual it’s ritually clean and we know this because in the Torah it talks about hey if you touch something dead you’ll be unclean until evening Y and was about bacteria it’s not like bacteria go away when the Sun goes down you know that’s what I was trying to get at with clean and unclean bacterial B bacterial um this idea of like because they have all these studies you know and and it’s interesting there’s a I’m going to doing some more

Content on this at some point as well um they have influenced a lot of the even the secular world around some of these studies around red meat um and it it causing health issues and these sorts of things uh people would be shocked to learn that a wear Institute in California is actually uh a sponsor of a lot of that stuff but yeah that that’s essentially what I was getting at there and especially then when you get into the New Testament um you definitely see a a different picture painted in in if we’re just talking exclusively the New Testament you itely see a different

Picture painted there from the the ritualistic aspect of the nation of Israel yeah and I would want to also draw a distinction in the sense that there’s nothing wrong with eating vegetarian it’s if you want to do it go for it yeah absolutely I mean but but the point is that if you’re trying to tie it into a theological basis and you’re making up the connection that’s not good well not just that but I mean the Apostle Paul explicitly says to the Corinthians that eating Foods any kind of foods whatever they may be doesn’t bring you closer or further away away

From God so the avenus model fundamentally is claiming food does bring you closer to God because what’s the closest you can get to God total Union with him in in eternity essentially well they claim that that eternity the the new heavens and the new Earth they’re under the impression that that is a Return to Eden and so they claim that Adam and Eve had a plant-based diet and so if you’re going to be in the new heavens and the new Earth and you’re returning to a plant-based diet now on probation you have to demonstrate that you can abide by that diet yeah and like and like you

Said Paul says in Romans 14 right for the kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking y right yep well I don’t care what the diet is in heaven I don’t I I I care about Jesus yeah that’s why I care about being I don’t care I don’t I wouldn’t care if the diet was beans every day or what you know okay I don’t care whatever that’s I don’t care about what we’re eating there yeah right okay let’s see uh here’s what comment from Deborah true when you study the holy scriptures objectively without influence from I assume that means Ellen White yep uh but the guidance of the Holy Spirit

You’ll find truth biblical gospel is so simple SDA teaches a different gospel so she’s given you a props she agrees with you she is she’s one of our members shout out Deborah Robert I want to read a quote on this actually um if you don’t mind on this this exact subject because I think it’ll really help people understand again when we use terms like gospel that can be kind of nebulous for some people because because people are plugging in who knows what into that and the core problem with adventism is their inability to distinguish between the law

And the gospel and again that’s coming down from their covenant theology I want to read a quote here from John cahun’s Treatise on Law and gospel for those that don’t know John cahun was a um 18th century uh minister in the Church of Scotland but from chapter 7even which is titled the difference between the law and the gospel he says quote by the law here is meant the moral law as a covenant of works and by the gospel is meant the gospel in its strict and proper sense to know the difference so as to be able to distinguish a right between the law and

The gospel is of the utmost importance to the faith Holiness and comfort of every true Christian it will be impossible otherwise for a man so to believe as to be filled with joy and peace in believing if he does not know the difference between the law and the gospel he will be apt especially in the affair of justification to confound the one with the other the consequence will be that in his painful experience bondage will be mixed with liberty of spirit fear with hope sorrow with joy and death with life if he cannot so distinguish the gospel from

The law as to expect all his salvation from the grace of the gospel and nothing of it from The Works of the law he will easily be induced to connect his own works with the righteousness of Jesus Christ in the affair of his justification this was the great error of the Juda in teachers in the churches of galatia I was just that they mingled the law with the gospel in the business of justification and thereby they so corrupted the gospel as to alter the very nature of it and make it another gospel that is the issue with seventh day adventism they’re going to tell you

We believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins we believe that he resurrected we believe he was sinless but the problem becomes Robert how that practically gets walked out yeah and practically walk out they make it way more complicated than it is because they’re intermingling law with gospel this is probably what Derek is talking about when he says I remember being about 10 and worrying about when the investigative judgment will get to me so he’s kind of confirming what you said this sense of I don’t know if Doom is the right word but this sense of having

To constantly be on you know working for something well investigative judgment real quick that’s is that the that was the um idea if not mistaken that when was when was it 1844 I think Ellen White talked about that’s when Jesus moved from the outer Temple to the inner temple in heaven yeah so to really understand that teaching you have to understand their broader Sanctuary Doctrine the investigative judgment is one step out of seven steps so they basically take the Old Testament and people for for who are interested in this go to answering adventism

Answering adm.com and type in sanctuary doctr in the search bar and there’s an article titled what is the SDA Sanctuary Doctrine and it’ll get you caught up to speed but basically the sanctuary Doctrine is they look at the Old Testament Sanctuary service and they take the seven components of the sanctuary and they make it a typological model for what Jesus is walking out in so for example Step One is he comes to our camp the Incarnation so the Israelites had a camp right the Earth is the antitypical camp so he comes to our camp that’s step one and he

Had to come and weave together a perfect robe of righteousness and develop a perfect character such that he could then give you that robe of righteousness then he moved to step two which is the altar of sacrifice that’s the cross so the altar of sacrifice they see as a picture of the Cross he then moved to yeah this is interesting because it’s almost like when you watch a movie or read a book that’s historical fiction it’s all based around real people and real events but they make up yeah yep it’s based on a true story yeah based on a true story but they add all sorts of

Details to spice it up for film yeah that’s exactly what the aous great controversy world view is it’s an adaptation of the biblical narrative using the names words and figures but distorts all of those things through this ends of this storyline that doesn’t come from the Bible but then step three is the labor so they believe that Jesus fulfilled the event of the of what the labor pointed to in his resurrection then they have Jesus work in the Holy place so that the priest walked through this he was in the you know the camp in the outer court and then he went to the

Altar of sacrifice and then he went to the Laver then he went inside the holy place that was the Ascension where he goes into the Heavenly holy place and then in 1844 is when he moves to the most holy place which is where he quote unquote Begins the investigative judgment so the investigative judgment is step five out of their seven-step Sanctuary model and so to really understand it you really have to understand the sanctuary but it’s the claim that it is a and you have to also understand their understanding of a threefold phase of judgment so they

Believe if you’re 10 you’re not getting any of this no you’re just going to get the vestiges of it so they’re gonna they have ways that they boil it down for like a a remedial audience to understand you know they’re not breaking it down like this for the kids now I was going to seminars and stuff though where this is being taught so I’m not able to comprehend it all theologically speaking but I was immersed in this and hearing this stuff and so vestages of it were coming into my mind but the the investigative judgment is basically phase one of a three-fold phase of

Judgment they teach that prior to the second coming there will be an investig a judgment that’s only for professed Believers it’s not for the wicked it’s only for professed Believers spanning back to the time of Adam Jesus supposedly began investigating the life record of every person who’s placed their faith in God in this investigation he’s essentially seeing who is and isn’t worthy of his atoning benefits you have to understand that when the Seventh Adventist Church uses the word atonement that is synonymous for investigative judgment I want to read a small quote

Here really quick so people can get it this is from the book salvation Contours of Adventist soteriology it’s on the shelf behind me right there that blue book this is a scholarly work from the SDA church this is from SDA Theologian John Pauline this is all in the subject regarding the investigative judgment very beginning he writes quote one of the most debated topics in Christian theology is expressed in these questions why the cross what really happened at the cross the answers to these questions have been widely debated under the general heading of the atonement but

When seventh day Adventists approach the matter of atonement an immediate dilemma is perceived when Adventists talk about atonement they refer specifically to what Jesus is doing now in the Heavenly Sanctuary on the other hand when Scholars outside the SDA Church discuss the atonement they refer specifically to the cross of Jesus Christ and what God was doing there close quote so he acknowledges yeah the difference so when they talk about atonement they’re talking about the investigative judgment which is why their fundamental belief on the investigative judgment says that in

1844 Jesus began and a second phase of the atonement the altar of sacrifice was only where the atoning sacrifice took place and you and I talked about this the last time that we were together I believe how you have to listen carefully when you ask them for example do you believe the atonement took place at the cross they’ll say we believe the atoning sacrifice took place at the cross right but atonement wasn’t accomp completed there right you get some Advent of Scholars that say we believe in a completed incomplete atonement at the cross literally that’s their wording

Um because they believe in two phases and the investigative judgment is where Jesus is looking over the books to see who out of the people who have professed to believe in him truly are followers of his and are essentially genuine and serious now the question obviously becomes is that are they saying then that Jesus is learning information well no we have an article on that too you can read that article as well that’s not what they’re claiming because down or this is essentially Downstream from this core idea that God is vindicating his character from Satan and these

Accusations so the reason the investigative judgment and all seven steps of the sanctuary are happening is ultimately it’s how God has chosen in their model to clear his name from Satan’s accusations so the investigative judgment is about God showing to all these other intelligences that he is who he says he is that he’s fair and that his law can be kept man it’s some of the weight of that starting to hit me because what that means is thanks for dying on the cross but it wasn’t quite enough we’ve got some more work to do and that such an insult Ellen

White said it opened the door okay the cross opened the door it made salvation a possibility this is why I’ll always say on our platform all the time Jesus is not a potential savior if you enable him to be such Jesus is a powerful Savior and I can speak about that from personal experience right he actually saves people and I don’t think a lot of Adventists really stop to think about what that means it’s not that he makes something a possibility and then you come alongside him in a joint effort to try and bring something about or to to ultimately make something come about

As an end conclusion we talked about this a little bit the last time I was with you too they talk about the con meeting the conditions of the Gospel yeah you have to meet the conditions so he’s done his part but Ellen White said you have to co- labor alongside him and now do your part and then it’s that joint effort that will eventually get you to being saved wow right now you’re on probation and it’s being looked at to see if you’re really really serious and now they have arguments in their movement over how perfect is perfect but if we’re going by the book I’ve shown

This I don’t know how many times it’s very clear Ellen White highest Authority in the movement outside of scripture I know that we can talk about which one’s higher and that sort of thing she’s the avenus pope but um outside of scripture she’s higher authority than any other aous Theologian any adven Ley and I can show you it’s on our website in video Etc quote after quote after quote you have to have a character identical to Jesus’s before probation closes because once the investigative judgment ceases Jesus is gonna cease being a mediator and Ellen said you’re gonna have to

Stand in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor so you have to be in a condition identical to Jesus because what will be happening is the time of trouble is going to start on the earth and she called it the courtroom scene Jesus is then going to become The Advocate where he’s going to be pleading his case before the father for all the people that made it through the investigative judgment meaning they had a sinless record they they demonstrated the law can be kept and Jesus will be able to silence Satan to say look the law can be kept look at all these people

That did so but the people who didn’t have a sinless record Satan’s going to be able to point at them on the earth and say look they’re sinning ha See I got them and those people won’t make it so you have to be as sinless as Jesus was when he ceases being a mediator and probation closes and she says this over and over she says that probation now has been granted for you to develop a character for eternity because your character is not going to change at the second coming she didn’t understand glorification at all yeah apparently or or yeah or though she doesn’t understand

What the word gospel means either yeah she tried to Short Circuit she tries to like put glorification before the resurrect like that you could get to a glorified State now you should be getting sdas every day then that are getting to the glorified State who are yeah and we’ve talked about this because they talk out of both sides of their mouth on this their fundamental beliefs book says you know some people have this erent belief that glorification can be achieved before the second coming these people are wrong Oh you mean Ellen White we’ve done videos on that where it’s

Like well the people in your movement that believe this it’s because they’re reading Ellen White yeah it’s like quote after quote she’s verb him saying you’re not going to have a change of character at the second coming that’s what probation now is for here’s a here’s a timely comment from Vern Cara so he’s in the middle of another conversation he said SDA doesn’t have the gospel that is a baseless accusation and I think we’ve just shown that’s not baseless yeah well Vern can go check out the mountain of content my homework is out there for anyone to to

Look I stand by my homework and again we have to get into what do we mean by the gospel um I I I encourage people to tune into our our live show this coming week um we’re going to be talking about do are Christians an Adventist United and we’re going to be getting into exactly this their Three Angels gospel which they appeal to Revelation 146 through2 and basically import all sorts of stuff in there and they claim that they have the Everlasting gospel you and I Robert only have the gospel but they have the Everlasting gospel Herbert Douglas one

Of the sda’s uh lots of people don’t like him but they can say what they want he was a brilliant a brilliant man um he’s since passed but he was an SDA Theologian he wrote a paper titled what is the Everlasting gospel we’re going to be looking at that I’ve done that a number of times before but um he explains in there how Revelation apparently states that at a point in the end times there need to be a restoration of the fullness of the gospel and that’s what the SDA Church allegedly has so the fullness of the Gospel includes 7th day sabbatarianism the health message the

Investigative judgment all of the SDA system of theology so that’s what I’m saying is when you use the word gospel in adventism it’s not referring to the good news about the personal work of Christ and how you as a sinner can have peace with a holy God through faith in him they would classify that as a limited gospel that’s one of these gospels that allows people to be a sinner and still be a you know a follower of God and a weak God who can’t change their character and he’s he’s not powerful enough to make them sinless and all these sorts of tropes you hear but

When they use gospel they’re not plugging in there what Christians mean I can guarantee you that yeah yeah wow all right let’s take one last question here and this is a good one we’re going to close on a seventh day question okay uh Jamie Russell uh does miles think we should evangelize the messianics in Israel and tell them the new Sabbath is Sunday or is he a dispensationalist and there are and he didn’t that’s all I have well no and I said in the the the interview earlier I am reformed so by definition I’m not dispensational I’m I affirm covenant

Theology which I know who Jamie is he’s a Seventh Day Adventist um Jamie your system stole from my theological tradition they stole all their Sabbath arguments from my tradition and so um no I affirm covenant theology I’m not a dispensationalist but if I see here’s the difference Robert if I was evangelizing a Messianic Jew I’m not gonna start talking to him about the Sabbath I’m gonna start talking to him about Jesus yes the gospel that Jesus is the Messiah that’s foretold of in your Old Testament can I show that to you I care about the Messianic Jew coming to

The person of Jesus not my understanding of the Sabbath yeah that’s beautiful so what so what is the the Sabbath is the I mean it’s the whole names sake of the movement sth day adventism is it is it your position now that you’ve kind of come come out of that and you’re looking back is there a sense of um oh I got to be careful with my words here uh is there a sense of almost idolatry of that particular Doctrine is oh absolutely attached to okay yeah because it’s like that I talk about that a lot too that they have so in their system and again Ellen White overplays her hand on this

For example so she says for example all of Heaven is keeping the Sabbath um the angels are keeping the Sabbath which then begs the question of well uh what they get themselves in conundrum on this and it’s it’s interesting to see where they go but you have to then ask the question okay well then is the day a part of the substance of the Sabbath is the seventh day substantively part of the Sabbath such that you you can keep the Sabbath without the day well they’re going to tell you no because their whole thing is the the seventh day so then you have to ask are days a part of

Creation well yes okay but your model is saying the Angels were around before the creation and they were keeping the Sabbath before the creation and Lucifer began attacking the law which included the seventh day Sabbath so angels are apparently on a different timeline but it’s a different seventh day than us well then I’ve heard the argument well no they’re keeping it in substance okay thank you for admitting then that you can keep the Sabbath in substance and not the seventh day yeah how angels are are not committing adultery and obeying their

Parents when neither of those things apply to them is is beyond me but um I the reason he’s asking that question is because he knows that I am a and you and I talked about this actually when you and I got together last time um I’m actually a first day sabari um but that doesn’t mean the same thing the a teach just on a different day because again the the Crux of the matter is distinction between law and gospel that’s that’s the that’s the key so that’s why I can recognize if somebody doesn’t agree with me on that okay at the end of the day we we’re we still

Share the same gospel we still properly recognize that the duty of the law is to point us to Christ um and so if we have

Quablo Sabbath yeah basically I’m just willing to go as far as to say that there is still a day that points us to the substance which you rest in Christ rest for your soul in the gospel I think that’s what Hebrews 4 is getting at but I would also argue that um based on some grammatical stuff in Hebrews 4 um it’s a both and not an either or that the author basically says there’s still a day that memorializes what it is that we have in substance and it points us to the greater reality which is the Eternal rest of God that Christ entered into ahead of us and so there’s a day that

Memorial moralizes that but that day is not the substance that day is a memorial it’s like if I’m going down the interstate and there’s a sign for like a sitgo that’s not the sitgo itself that’s just a marker that’s pointing to the substance of the thing and so I’m willing to just call that thing the first day the Sabbath because that was the day that Christ in uh the new creation entered his rest he accomplished the new the the new creation um on the first day and this then gets us into the sort of old creation new creation and looking Genesis to Revelation and so um I’ve

Gotten into all that stuff on my on my channel but that’s basically what I’m what I’m getting at beautiful all right so everybody uh if you if you haven’t already become interested enough head over to answering adventism domcom uh and this is a super well organized website I go there sometimes for resources too um so uh this is Miles Christian he’s a good friend of our of our program thank you so much for tuning in this has been a really exciting and interesting conversation for me as a guy on the outside trying to understand what’s going on there so I think in in

In in I’ll close with the same question I opened with and you guys can decide it is seventh day adventism a denomination of Christianity is it a cult is it something in between uh I’m not going to make a statement I’m just going to leave those questions hanging for you guys to think about so thanks so much man I appreciate your time today miles yeah great to be here thanks for having me you have blessed us thank you for sharing sharing your story which gives all the glory to Jesus that’s awesome Amen all right thanks everybody take care