The following list comes from Steve Wohlberg's (an SDA pastor and theologian)
website and is good overview of Adventist beliefs...
We Believe
The following is not meant to be the formation of a creed, but is rather a statement of beliefs based on solid biblical teachings. We invite all readers to follow the example of the noble Bereans who, nearly two thousand years ago, “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
- The Bible (Old and New Testaments) is fully inspired by God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16)
- God created our world in six literal, 24-hour days, and rested on the seventh day (Gen. 1; 2:1-3; Exodus 20:11).
- Satan (a fallen angel), led Eve into sin (Gen. 3:1-6; Isaiah 14:12-14; Rev. 12:9)
- Jesus Christ is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14)
- Jesus Christ has revealed to the entire human family God’s loving character (John 3:16; 14:9)
- Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man (John 1:1-3, 14; 1 Tim. 2:5)
- Jesus was born of a virgin and died on the cross for the sins “of the whole world” (Matthew 1:23; 1 Cor. 15:3; 1 John 2:2)
- On the third day (Sunday morning), Jesus rose from the dead, as predicted in advance by the Scriptures (Luke 24; 1 Cor. 15:3,4)
- God is not prejudiced against any race, color, or nation (Acts 17:26; Rom. 2:11; Rev. 7:9)
- Eternal life is a free gift through Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:23)
- God’s love brings a sinner to repentance (Rom. 2:4)
- God calls all to repent and believe in Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21)
- We must be born again by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 3:6,7)
- Believers in Jesus should be baptized by immersion (Mat. 3:16,17; Mark 16:15; Acts 2:38,41)
- We should follow God’s Word above man’s traditions (Mat. 4:4; Col. 2:8)
- We should treat everyone with love and respect (Eph. 4:25, 5:1, 9)
- We should keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27)
- We are living in “the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4,10)
- By His grace and motivated by love, God’s end-time people will keep the Ten Commandments and the faith of Jesus Christ (John 14:15; Rev. 14:12)
- Christians should endure tribulation “to the end” (Mat. 24:13; Acts 14:22)
- The Antichrist of prophecy is “already in the world” (1 John 2:18; 4:3)
- The major Protestant Reformers were correct about the Antichrist.
- Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and fallen humanity (1 Timothy 2:5)
- Jesus will not return secretly, but openly and visibly for all to see (Mat. 24:26,27,30,31)
- There will be “a resurrection of the dead, both the just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15; John 5:28,29)
- Jesus Christ is “the seed of Abraham” (Galatians 3:16)
- True believers in Jesus Christ – Jews and Gentiles – become part of Abraham’s seed, “the Israel of God” (Gal. 3:28,29; 6:14-16)
- Our final home is the New Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22-24; Rev. 21:1-4, 10-27)
- All the lost will end up in “the lake of fire, which is the second death” (Revelation 20:14,15)
- God will make a new heaven and a new earth for His people to live in, where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:9-14)
- The truth of the Bible is bigger than any church or denomination.
- The Bible is our final authority.
You say the Bible is your final authority, but you also regard Ellen G. White as an inspired prophet, who is infallible, which creates a bit of a paradox, in that Adventist hermeneutics inevitably agree with her, and while the standard Adventist argument is that Ellen G. White’s interpretation is the most obvious interpretation of Scripture which remains the final authority, given that many Adventist doctrines are unique or unusual, without questioning your sincerity, well, it seems to me that many Adventists, aside from those your denomination calls “liberal Adventists” are unwilling to critically reflect on the relationship of Ellen G. White’s writings and Adventist hermeneutics.
Additionally you did not mention a number of specific doctrines which most Christians disagree with, for example:
- The idea that worship on Sunday is the Mark of the Beast.
- Soul Sleep
- Annihilationism
- The investigative judgement having begun in the 19th century (despite the majority of humans to live past the age of 30 having been born since 1950).
- The absolute rejection of military service even in the defense of others (except as medics or as non-combatants) in order to save lives, which goes beyond mere pacifism, specifically the implication that those who engage in combat to defend their country have imperiled their souls (this caused a schism between the mainline SDA church and the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement after European Adventists who were conscripted and required to fight were disfellowshipped, which exceeds most ancient Christian pacifism; St. Athanasius, who compiled the New Testament canon and contributed to the Creed, regarded military service as honorable, whereas St. Basil the Great who also supported the Creed took the view that soldiers should on returning from combat abstain from the Eucharist for three years voluntarily but were not to be regarded as disfellowshipped or even as penitents).
- The belief that there will be more legislation intended to suppress worship on the Sabbath and enforce worship on Sunday (despite the recent trend towards the repeal of Blue Laws and increasing government interference in Christian worship on Sunday, as well as the fact that Sunday is not regarded as part of the weekend in Israel or many Muslim lands, which requires Christians in countries like Oman to worship on Friday.
- The belief that John ch. 6 is completely devoid of any reference to Holy Communion, and the deprecation of even a belief in the spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist or a Zwinglian symbolic interpretation in favor of a strict memorialist approach.
- The belief that the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, the Church of the East et cetera did not historically exist independently and devoid of Papal control despite the historical and archaeological record to the contrary.
- The belief that the Papacy as we now know it existed well before the eighth century despite, again, massive documentary and archeological evidence.
- The belief that certain unusual ancient sects such as the Albigensians as well as relatively ordinary proto-Protestants such as the Waldensians were Sabbatarians despite a complete lack of archeological or documentary evidence to support that position (similart to the Landmark Baptist approach.
- The belief, unsupported by Scriptural, historical and documentary evidence, that the early church had from an early date access to the entire New Testament canon and that the well documented process by which the Early Church Fathers cut the wheat from the chaff and preserved the surviving Apostolic writings which constitute our 27 book New Testament canon is inaccurate (despite the fact that, for example, there was no Syriac Aramaic translation of all 27 books of the New Testament until the 6th century meaning that most Aramaic speaking Christians had no access to them until then; indeed it was not until the third century they gained access to the four canonical Gospels and the fourth century to 22 books of the New Testament), and also ignoring the fact that the oldest manuscripts in the original Greek include books which were nearly included in the canon, but ultimately this was forestalled by widespread agreement with the New Testament canon first documented by St. Athanasius and promulgated to the Church of Alexandria and those churches in Egypt which looked to it for spiritual guidance in 367 AD.
- The widespread belief that St. Constantine established the Roman Catholic Church and made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire and that the issue of Sunday worship was a major issue at Nicaea, all inaccurate claims (St. Constantine did not make Christianity the state religion, this did not happen until 379 after the death of the Arian Emperor Valens, under the reign of St. Theodosius, who closed the Pagan temples and smashed the Altar of Victory) and other historical beliefs which can be shown to be inaccurate.
We could go on from there.
Also regarding the views of the major Protestant reformers on the Antichrist, while it is true a number of them believed that term at the time referred to the Pope of Rome, it is equally clear that they did not believe this had always been the case; indeed Anglicans, Lutherans and Calvinists generally regard ancient Popes such as St. Gregory the Great in high regard (indeed St. Gregory the Great’s statements on the danger of a bishop claiming universal jurisdiction were quoted by many Protestants, and also Anglicans officially commemorate St. Gregory the Great as do many other Protestants in denominations that nonetheless had founders who associated the title with the Bishop of Rome.
For my part while I am not a Roman Catholic I disagree with that identification, although I do not disagree with the views of St. Gregory the Great.
Now I do understand there are ecumenically minded Adventists who take more charitable views towards non-Sabbatarians and I am friends with many on this forum, but every issue I’ve stated in this thread keeps recurring in debates and I frankly wish that more Adventists would be less hostile towards those who worship on the First Day, especially Orthodox Christians who also worship on the Seventh.
I am also concerned by the fact that the early Millerites were non-Trinitarian and yet the miscalculations of Miller are still using his date of October 22, 1844 as the date of the Start of the Investigative Judgement despite the fact that he did not at the time believe in the Trinity, which is now an essential Adventist belief. Now while traditional Christians do not require early church fathers to be free from error, there are no Church Fathers who are accepted as such and venerated as such who rejected the Incarnation or the Trinity or other essential Nicene Doctrine, indeed the position of the Council of Nicaea was directly derived from Scripture (a conclusion EGW appears to have arrived at independently, to her credit, and I credit her with promoting Trinitarianism and ensuring SDAs, the majority of Adventists, became Trinitarian).
