Sabbath Keepers have no issue with Church Councils devising doctrine with no biblical support, or even contrary to the Bible.
First and foremost, the Seventh Day Adventist Church itself has INDEED had three separate Church Councils where the Church as a matter of indisputable fact has rejected the Scriptures as a basis for Church Doctrine. Moreover, all three times the Councils decided to deliberately lie to the Church Membership about the complete absence of biblical basis for all three of Seventh Day Adventism's distinctive doctrines. So it is clear Seventh Day Adventists are ONLY opposed to the Christian Church Councils, but are fully in favor of their own Councils where the Bible has been systematically anihilated. Adventists find themselves in a rogue's gallery of anti-Christian cults that also reject fundamental Christian doctrine. Other odious cults that reject the decisions of the Christian Church Councils include Jehovah's Witnesses, The Way International, World Wide Church of God, and Mormons. Adventists find themselves in extremely BAD and anti-Christian company in this emphatic rejection of Christianity's fundamental doctrines. :
1). The 1888 General Conference "discussed crucial theological issues such as the meaning of "righteousness by faith", and the nature of the Godhead, and the relationship between law and grace and Justification and its relationship to Sanctification." As a result of this conference, the Seventh Day Adventist Church emphatically-rejected Righteousness by Faith as a doctrine, and strongly reaffirmed their present legalistic method of Salvation by Perfect Sabbath Keeping.
The Church continued to reject both the Divinity of Christ, his Full Atonement on the Cross, and the Trinity as Church doctrines. Those interlinked, insanely Pro-Salvation-by-Perfect-Sabbath-Keeping decisions unambiguously demonstrate that Seventh Day Adventism is
NOT a Christian denomination. Here is a good summary:
"Debaters and polemicists emerged, stressing the Sabbath, the Law, etc. — like lawyers arguing a case. Spirituality waned, and not a few became decided legalists. . . . Cold intellectualism and dry theory increased. Christ often became secondary,
and Righteousness by Faith largely lost sight of, through outward profession without inner experience."
....
"the presentation of the message of Christ as the only source of righteousness by two young preachers was going to create conflict with some members including church leaders."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1888_Minneapolis_General_Conference_(Adventist)
2). The 1919 General Conference, where a consensus was reached by the Church's top theologians and Bible Scholars that Ellen White was a colossal fraud, a false prophet, an inveterate thief and a pathological liar. The conference decided to "kick the can down the road" and seal the transcripts of the meeting, in order to conceal this knowledge from the Church Membership and particularly, their seminary students. The upshot is that Church membership went on revering a "Prophet" that drastically fell short of all of the Biblical standards for prophets, and met ALL of the standards for a False Prophet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Bible_Conference_(Adventist)
3). The "super-secret Committee on Problems in the Book of Daniel" met intermittently for five years (1961-1966) where Seventh Day Adventism's absurdly-unbiblical "Investigative Judgment" doctrine was discussed and although 48 of Adventism's theologians wrote papers on the subject, the committee was adjourned when no biblical basis for the doctrine could be found. The upshot is that the membership of the Seventh Day Adventist Church went on believing in a doctrine that its foremost Bible Scholars could find NO basis for in the Bible.
THE "SANCTUARY DOCTRINE" – ASSET OR LIABILITY
To recap, Seventh Day Adventists have no issue with Church Councils devising or supporting doctrines with no biblical basis. In three major historical instances, that is precisely what the Church has done. There is also no criticism of Adventist Councils' decision to lie to the Church Membership and Seminary Students about the complete lack of biblical basis for their doctrines.
Thus, Seventh Day Adventists limit their criticism of Church Councils to the ones that were called by the entire Body of Christ in the early years of Christianity. The Christian Church doctrines that Adventists have historically-hated and strongly-opposed include the Divinity of Christ, the Trinity, rejection of the Sabbath as incompatible with Grace, and the Full Atonement of the Cross.
In other words, Adventists have a history of despising all of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Every important fundamental Christian doctrine formulated at the Church Councils has been opposed at one time or another, by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. And their rejection of Christianity's decision at the Council of Laodicea - that the Sabbath is completely incompatible with the Gospel -
was absolutely proven to be nothing short of prophetic at Adventisms's own 1888 General Conference!!!
Adventism's entire argument against Christianity's Church Councils therefore is fatuous, dishonest, anti-Christian to its core, hypocritical and ultimately, completely self-righteous. No Christian Council has ever made a deliberate decision to lie to the members of the Body of Christ. That is a tactic that is limited to only Seventh Day Adventist Church Councils. The Church's own words condemning itself after the 1888 debacle are worth reviewing:
"Alas, what pride is prevailing in the church, what hypocrisy, what deception..... what desire for the supremacy! All these sins have clouded the mind, so that eternal things have not been discerned." –The Review and Herald, March 22, 1887.
"Spiritual death has come upon the people that should be manifesting life and zeal, purity and consecration, by the most earnest devotion to the cause of truth. The facts concerning the real condition of the professed people of God, speak more loudly than their profession, and make it evident that some power has cut the cable that anchored them to the Eternal Rock, and that they are drifting away to sea, without chart or compass." –Ibid., July 24, 1888.
The Minneapolis Conference and Its Aftermath | Official website of the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement
You cannot get a more accurate statement regarding the horrifying, gut-wrenching spiritual catastrophe that Sabbath-Keeping almost always incurs, straight from the mouths of Seventh Day Adventists!
