Central to Seventh-Day Adventist theology is the idea that God is vindicating His character against accusations from Satan which started in heaven prior to the creation of the earth. This is coming from Ellen White who they believe was divinely inspired and corrects inaccurate interpretations of scripture.
According to their great controversy narrative—God the Father, at a point in the distant past, called the heavenly host of angels together to let it be known that he had ordained that Jesus, the Son, was to be equal with Himself. This was in anticipation of the creation of the earth and Jesus would be the Father’s co-worker and associate in that creation. This is to say Jesus was made equal with the Father and given authority He did not previously possess prior to this event.
This triggered jealousy within Lucifer who felt as though he should have been the one to be exalted and made equal with God leading to him making accusations against God the Father’s character, the 10 Commandments, and sought to overthrow God’s governance by setting up his own government in heaven. He also claimed that the 10 Commandments were not fair and that God is a tyrant. Lucifer then began spreading these accusations to other angels in heaven which lead to God the Father having to hold a heavenly council meeting to decide on how to quell this.
It was then decided that, instead of eliminating Lucifer outright, God the Father would allow things to play out and take the path of clearing His name from these accusations. White claims that if God would have put an end to Lucifer’s rebellion by blotting him from existence, it would have validated his accusations that God is a tyrant and would lead to angels obeying from fear instead of love. Instead, He would let Lucifer measure his strength against Jesus. This began what they call the great controversy between Christ and his angels and Satan and his angels, leading to war in heaven, with Lucifer and a third of the angels falling from heaven, Lucifer becoming Satan, and being banished to the earth.
This was followed by God the Father and Jesus creating man on the earth who would be on a probationary test to see if they could keep the commands of God. If so, then they would be rewarded with eternal life. But Satan tempted man, leading to his fall, extending the great controversy from heaven to earth. This resulted in Jesus proposing a plan to the Father that He then accepted for Jesus to incarnate, ransoming fallen man, and silencing Satan’s accusations that the 10 Commandments can’t be kept. Jesus would take on fallen human flesh, keep the law perfectly, and prove that fallen sinners, with the same help and power that Jesus had, can keep the law of God and prove Satan’s accusations are false—silencing Satan and vindicating God and His government.
From the SDA standpoint, those that come to Jesus are then siding with Him in the great controversy and He will help them keep the law so that they too can silence these accusations of Satan and vindicate God’s character in the great controversy—which is what the gospel of Adventism is really about.
Speaking on this vindication, SDA historian George R. Knight comments on twnetieth-century SDA theologian M.L. Andreason’s Last Generation Theology (LGT). While critical of LGT one of the positives he attributes to it is God’s vindication:
Its strong points [Last Generation Theology] were its concern with sanctification, its insight that God’s justification in the eyes of the universe is more important than the justification of individuals, and its understanding that Satan accuses God of created a law that no human could obey.
George R. Knight, A Search For Identity: The Development of Seventh-Day Adventist Beliefs, pg. 149
This is to say—this belief is central to all of SDA theology. It’s foundational to the way they see and view what’s going on in the world. The great controversy is the lens of the Adventist worldview.
None of this is coming from the Bible and cannot be substantiated from the scriptures. It presents a false Christ that isn’t real (Matthew 24:24, 2 Corinthians 11:3-4) and a storyline that is foreign to the Bible. Jesus was not exalted to be made equal with the Father. Jesus is the Almighty God, one with the Father and the Spirit from eternity to eternity. God is not vindicating His character nor is He beholden to anything or anyone in creation to prove that He is who He claims.
God’s character was clearly demonstrated in the Incarnation and at Calvary (John 3:16, Romans 3:24-6, 1 John 4:9-10). This was of God’s own freewill and was the foreordained plan of God from eternity past (Acts 4:27-8), not because He had to clear his name from pre-earth accusations of a creature, but for His own purposes and own good pleasure. In Adventist theology, God is really on trial and needs His creatures to bail him out.
The SDA Church needs to stop claiming they “only believe the Bible” and that they hold to “no creed but the Bible.” This pre-earth origin story is foundational to their entire worldview and cannot be divorced from it without the movement collapsing.
