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When did the Seventh-day Adventist Church Become Evangelical?

There is an editor around here who insists on reverting the article on the Seventh-day Adventist Church to an outdated, naive and foundationless claim that the entire Seventh-day Adventist Church is evangelical. That is not the current opinion of any respected expert on pseudo-Christian cults. The support the pro-Adventist editors have produced as evidence to sustain their claims is laughably bad:

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51653.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082902036_pf.html

Walter Martin, founder of the Christian Research Institute, and his most recent successor, Hank Hanegraaff, are considered the greatest authorities on the evangelical status of Seventh-day Adventists. I want to know why their opinions are not being considered.

http://www.everythingimportant.org/Walter_Martin

http://www.equip.org/free/DW030.htm

http://www.equip.org/free/CP0602.htm

--Perspicacious 02:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is on the edge of being an evangelical Christian denomination. In 1960, cult expert Dr. Walter Martin placed Ellen G. White and many leading Adventists among the evangelicals. He thought they represented the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Martin later thought of revising his opinion because new and substantial evidence indicated that the most influential segment of the denomination was largely controlled by a duplicitous, profit-oriented, cultic leadership.^[1] From this point onward, evangelicals became aware of sharp divisions in Adventism.^[2] Writing for Christianity Today, for instance, Kenneth R. Samples, in his article, The Recent Truth About Seventh-day Adventists, divided the Seventh-day Adventist Church into three irreconcilable factions: evangelical, traditional, and liberal.^[3] It is said of the theologically liberal Adventists that they deny key foundational Christian doctrines.^[4] A problem in past evangelical evaluations of Adventism has been the failure to recognize its theological diversity. Adventism is anything but monolithic.^[5] It never was monolithic. Curiously, if we were to partition the church according to the writings of Ellen G. White, then Seventh-day Adventism has seven faces.^[6] --Perspicacious 12:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I can not find anywhere that Walter Martin classes the Seventh-day Adventist Church as cultic in any of your sources. Can you find me a direct quote that positions the denomination as cultic? The Adventist Currents interview explores the idea that the church may have changed positions but never comes to that conclusion. As such, there is no way of saying Martin classes Adventists as a cult. Neither does the http://www.equip.org/free/CP0602.htm page which has no author mentioned. MyNameIsNotBob 06:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I did not say that the Adventist Church is cultic. I said that The Seventh-day Adventist Church is on the edge of being an evangelical Christian denomination. For justification of the exact words I selected, see Christianity Today, February 5, 1990, p. 18. "Are Adventists evangelicals? Walter Martin thought they were close."^[7] --Perspicacious 12:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Funnily enough your new found resource site has an article quoted here and above, which actually agrees that Adventism is Evangelical. Thanks for that. But thats not the end of it. Your everythingimportant.org site is not considered valid research for wikipedia. However, your new found site, equip.org has exactly 5 articles on Adventism. How does that make him as you say the "greatest authority"? Ansell 07:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Should we include what the Watchman Fellowship has to say about the Seventh-day Adventist Church?

Walter Martin is an important historical figure and cult expert who wrote many books. Most remarkably, Martin did a truly amazing thing. He overturned the near unanimous opinion of Christian evangelicals in the 1950s to the opinion that Seventh-day Adventism is not a cult. There are organizations that still label the Seventh-day Adventist Church a cult today but I don't consider them as objective or as influential as was Walter Martin. Kenneth R. Samples, who wrote The Recent Truth About Seventh-day Adventists for Christianity Today was, at the time, a correspondence editor for Christian Research Institute. ^[8]

When Walter Martin died, the control of Christian Research Institute, founded by Martin, went to Hank Hanegraaff. CRI is a large organization with a nationally syndicated radio program (The Bible Answer Man) and they publish a very respectable journal on the cults. Hank Hanegraaff's influence is seen, for example, in the way he updated Walter Martin's book, The Kingdom of the Cults.

The CRI article ^[9] agrees exactly with what Kenneth R. Samples wrote for Christianity Today: The Seventh-day Adventist Church is divided into three irreconcilable factions: evangelical, traditional, and liberal.^[10] The CRI article states very clearly that the theologically liberal Adventists deny key foundational Christian doctrines.^[11] It's plainly evident that CRI does not accept that faction as evangelical. Yes, Hank Hanegraaff considers the evangelical faction in Adventism to be most sizable part of Adventism numerically. But don't forget Martin's published interview and the historical fact that he thought of revising his published opinion to reflect his more negative impressions,^[12] and his untimely death. As Ken Samples wrote, "Are Adventists evangelicals? Walter Martin thought they were close."^[13] As anyone can plainly see, I'm trying to present an accurate picture and the supporting links you endorse (state.gov and washingtonpost) are a laughable joke. --Perspicacious 13:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Strangely enough. There are legal reasons why you should not be referencing your personal site, everythingimportant.org, not only is this page here plagiarism/copyright violation, a serious academic and legal offence, it contains a link to this pdf document [14], what is the licensing agreement for you reproducing this 1957 document on your site. As you should know as a website owner, copyright is a serious offence. Ansell 07:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

My pages are permissible by the fair use doctrine:

"The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." ^[15]

Note that my use is religious, not of a commercial nature and is for nonprofit educational purposes.^[16] --Perspicacious 14:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Can you make all your comments in a chonological order under each subheading, you seem to enjoy making comments within comments from a few days ago so that other readers have to go fishing for your edits. If you want us to listen to you, make it easier please.

Also, lets go through the argument about the Seventh-day Adventist Church being a cult and the various authors positions on the topic. Walter Martin was the person who dispelled the 1950s opinion that Adventism was cultic. In 1980 (as per the Adventist Currents interview) he questioned where the church stood after the church opted to remove their response to the 1950s criticism from print. NEVER ONCE did Martin say that Adventism was now cultic. Kenneth Samples in his prologue to Dale Ratzlaff's book The Cultic Doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist Church mentions the three factions within the Adventist church, however Samples still claims that the Adventist church is still evangelical. Ratzlaff also lists problems with the three controversial Adventist doctrines but still denies that the Adventist church is cultic, he only says some of their doctrines are cultic. All of your references therefore support the position that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is evangelical.

Further, the introduction is not the place to deal with this unless their is a conclusion and that is to be summative. The history of the issue is not to be discussed in the introduction. Try the relevant section in the article. You will find that this issue is already discussed in the article anyway. Thanks for your concern. MyNameIsNotBob 22:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

References

1. ^ http://www.everythingimportant.org/Walter_Martin
2. ^ http://www.equip.org/free/DW030.htm
3. ^ Christianity Today, February 5, 1990, Kenneth R. Samples, The Recent Truth About Seventh-day Adventists, p. 18-21.
4. ^ http://www.equip.org/free/CP0602.htm
5. ^ http://www.everythingimportant.org/viewtopic.php?t=1143
6. ^ http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html

A Divergent Adventist View

• Threats, Intimidation and the Kingdom of God - A report on the hypocritical duplicity of Seventh-day Adventists.

The opening paragraph

I would like to see the opening paragraph improved. At present there are two main issues I would like to see addressed:- 1. The references for evangelical. I personally don't think they are needed, and that if references are needed then either the information doesn't belong in the opening paragraph or the references belong further in the article where the information is more fully understood. 2. The apparent logic sequence from "investigative judgment" through to the Sabbath and the state of the dead. The way it reads suggests that all subsequent doctrines are based on the first.

What do other people think? -Fermion 06:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the introduction could do with some major work. Most featured articles have about three paragraphs in their introduction. I see your point about placing references futher down the article, but they do need to be placed somewhere, as can be seen from the discussion above. The most recent article I have seen is by Kenneth Samples [17] which continues to identify Adventism as evangelical, despite classing part of it as cultic. You are also correct that the wording of the defining beliefs is sketchy. Be bold! and make the changes. MyNameIsNotBob 06:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree that the reference given is any use. Let us try for scholarly print publications rather than obscure internet references. Further, can't we do something like extract the criteria for evangelical from that article and demonstrate that Seventh-day Adventism matches. I struggle to understand why the evangelical status of Adventist theology needs to be defended. Adventist theology is not orthodox or liberal, the label evangelical is used to indicate a theological position seperate from the above but still within the confines of Christendom. -Fermion 09:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I have reworked the section, what does everyone think of that rework? MyNameIsNotBob 00:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC) ps it is in no way a complete task. feel free to improve it - PLEASE!!!

Beliefs sections

Those who watch this page may have noticed that I have just done a fairly large expansion to the Sabbath section under the Beliefs heading of the article. This expansion is a summary of the relevant paragraph in the publication Seventh-day Adventists Believe..., which is the closest thing the church has ever released to a doctrinal statement. My question is, is this expansion too large for the article? MyNameIsNotBob 10:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)