I Don’t Follow Adventist Pastors
And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. Acts 17:11 NLT
I love studying my Bible near the bay or gulf in the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
In Revelation 22:8-9 John the Revelator wanted to worship an angel. What is interesting about this is that John just warned the world against worshiping a man in Revelation 13. This just goes to show how easy it is for us to worship God’s created beings instead of God only. If John had to be reminded to only worship God, we too need to be reminded not to worship and follow pastors. We must worship God and follow the Lamb.
One morning last fall, a former Adventist member on Facebook Messenger sent me a video of a former Adventist pastor who had left the church. My former Adventist friend thought that would “wake me up” to see that an Adventist pastor had studied his way out of the Adventist church. However, it did not faze me at all. You see, I don’t follow Adventist pastors. So the fact that the video was by someone who was an ordained pastor of the Adventist church did not carry any weight with me. I follow the Bible and my conscience. So when an Adventist pastor leaves the Adventist church, I am not going to follow him out of the church, being how I was never following him even when he was in the church.
A few former Adventists have accused me of being Adventist just because I was born a 5th-generation Adventist. Here are some things to consider. First I was not born a 5th-generation Adventist. We are not born Adventist. We are not born anything. I decided on my own to become an Adventist. To say that I am an Adventist just because my parents and ancestors are Adventist is to ignore the fact that many in my family are not Adventist. We all make our own choices, regardless of the choices our parents made. As a matter of fact, I do not know that my stand on every issue is the exact same stand my parents and grandparents had. We all have different ideas about Sabbath keeping, just for starters. I don’t know that we are all in agreement about the 144,000 or exactly what our diet should be like. While we are all loyal Adventists, if you put us all in the same Sabbath school class, we would have some interesting disagreements, and you might not realize we are related. That’s because we don’t follow our grandparents or each other. We follow the Bible.
Another point to consider when former Adventists claim I am only an Adventist because I was born one is the fact that millions of first-generation Adventists are joining our church family. You can’t say they are just Adventist because their families are Adventist, because they are not. So to claim that I am just an Adventist because I was born one is pretty much an attack on my intelligence. It’s saying that while millions of first-generation Adventists are smart enough to make their own choices, I am not. Besides, all those making such accusations are former Adventists. If they could leave on their own free will, don’t they think I can too?
But I digress. From an early age I fell in love with the Bible. While many former Adventists attack Ellen White in an attempt to attack Adventism, that does not faze me at all. In recent years I have not read all that much of Ellen White. Oh I believe she is inspired and has a message for our church. I lover her writings and believe she was a prophet. I read her writings, but just not as much as my former Adventist friends think I do. I am not avoiding her writings as much as I just love reading the Bible! This is also why I am not into devotional books. I just love reading the Bible. During the quarantine while churches were closed I had a couple people ask me which Adventist pastors I was following on TV and social media. I was not following any of them. I was reading my Bible. I was actually saddened to find how many of my Adventist friends were watching 3ABN more rather than reading their Bibles more.
In Genesis 2 God said if Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they would die. In Genesis 3 the serpent simply says, “You will not die,” and for some reason that’s all it took to convince Eve. God’s Word against the serpent’s word – and in Eve’s mind, the serpent’s word trumped God’s Word. Why was Eve so easily convinced? Why so easily led astray? Paul gave Timothy a clue as to why people are so easily deceived. They want to be deceived.
For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths. 2 Timothy 4:3-4 NLT
It always amazes me how I can study with someone in the Bible about the sanctity of the Sabbath, and then they go to their Sunday pastor and, without a lick of Scriptural evidence, all he has to say is “It doesn’t matter,” and they are convinced of the pastor’s word over God’s Word! Just as Eve was convinced by the simple lie “You won’t die.”
It all boils down to this.
And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. Luke 9:23 KJV
In the garden God taught Adam and Eve to deny themselves. Without one lick of evidence, the serpent said they didn’t have to deny themselves. Without one lick of evidence, Adam and Eve believed what they wanted to hear over what they knew was right. Today the Sabbath and Spirit of Prophecy are under attack because, like God in the garden, the Sabbath and Spirit of Prophecy both teach self-denial. Mankind today does not like that teaching any more than Adam and Eve did, which is why mankind is so easily led astray.
Yet I still need to practice self-denial not because it’s taught by Ellen White or my favorite Adventist pastor. I practice self denial because the Bible teaches it. Earlier I was talking about how my own family does its own thinking. We are not all carbon copies of each other. Each of us has to follow our own convictions, as Paul says in Romans 14:5, we must all be fully persuaded in each of our own minds. However we must keep in mind there is a big difference between following our personal convictions and just following our own personal preferences. Since Jesus taught self-denial, if none of our beliefs cause us to deny our own whims and preferences, then that is a pretty good indicator we are not being honest with ourselves or with God. We need to be careful not to follow other leaders, and we need to be careful not to just be following our selfish thinking either. We need to take up our cross of self-denial and follow Jesus.
I don’t follow Adventist pastors while they are in the church or out of the church. I follow the Bible. So when an Adventist pastor leaves the Adventist church it does not faze me. It does not make me question my Bible beliefs because Adventist pastors have nothing to do with my faith in God’s Word. During the quarantine while many were finding Adventist preachers on TV to follow I was reading my Bible. When former Adventist pastors are posting videos about why they left the church, by God’s grace I will just be studying my Bible.
What are you going to do if an Adventist pastor or even conference president leaves the church?
(63)