Again, in his latest Endtime Issues, Samuele Bacchiocchi has made a very insightful statement about the origins of Adventism. He has stated this before.
He admits the following:
- most Adventist pioneers were anti-Trinitarians
- they believed Jesus Christ was created by God
James and Ellen White
These are his words [links are added by me]:
The history of the Adventist church reveals the struggle to gradually overcome doctrinal positions that proved to be unbiblical. For example, initially most of our pioneers were anti-Trinitarians. They did NOT believe that Jesus was co-eternal with the Father. They maintained that Christ was created by God. This is the position of the Jehovah Witnesses and of the Church of God Seven Day, both of which trace their roots to our Adventist Church. The difference is that our Adventist church eventually abandoned the heretical Arian view of Christ, while these churches remained entrenched in the original teachings of our Adventist church.
If you’re looking for a group that is closer to the original Adventist teaching, try the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Modern Adventism has corrected itself, and returned to the historical Christian faith taught by the early Christians. Many within Adventism today are objecting to this, and retain some of these anti-Trinitarian teachings … one of the reasons they cite is that the Adventist church is accepting Catholic doctrines.
Well, at least they admit that it was the Catholic Church that formulated the doctrine of the Trinity. If you read the writings of the early Christians, you’ll see that their teachings were Catholic to the core. The early Christians were not some sort of proto-Protestant, and certainly not some early sort of Adventist.
In a previous post, I said the following:
… they did not gradually understand the truth until they had lost most of it first. In a massive sweep, they lost huge chunks of the truth, going their own way, away from the faith revealed and clarified over time by the Holy Spirit. Some went so far as to even deny the Holy Spirit’s part in the Trinity. Adventism recovered a lot of the truth. But Adventism still has a way to go on its journey from that huge loss.
We should see their founders’ rejection of the Trinity as a huge step backwards in terms of sound, biblical teaching. We should see their other teachings, including the Sabbath, 1844, the Investigative Judgement, soul sleep, etc., as part of that era of confusion where they lost so much truth. The true remnant would not have lost so much, in order to gain so little.
This still holds true.
