Elder's and Seventh Day Adventism's theology is based entirely on well-known errors in the King James Version of the Bible. Consider this:
"The chief architect of flood geology was George McCready Price (1870-1963), a Seventh Day Adventist who insisted the Flood was responsible for the Earth’s geological features. Self-taught and lacking a formal education in geology, Price based flood geology on the teachings of his mentor, Ellen G. White (1827-1915), prophetess and founder of the Seventh Day Adventist movement. In numerous trance-like visions, White claimed she was “carried back to the creation” and “Noah’s flood had sculpted the surface of the earth, burying the plants and animals found in the fossil record.
It is startling White’s “divine messages” became so influential in 21st century Christianity."
Startling! and I would add my favorite adjective when used in conjunction with "Adventism," which is Fascinating! Watching Adventists' thinking processes is startling and fascinating, like when you can't look away from a terrible car wreck.
Translation:
"It is just STARTLING and FASCINATING there could be so many ignoramuses in our day and age who can barely read and write their own name. Or as someone once said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
Here's how Hebrew Linguists deal with the question of whether the Sabbath is a creation ordinance:
The narrative of the seventh day states:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God … rested … from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy…(Gen. 2:1-3)
Young-Earth View
Young-earth creationists believe the seventh day of God’s rest was a 24-hour period. Based on the statement in Exodus 20:11 (ESV), “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day,” they maintain the creation “week” was a period of seven 24-hour days.
Old-Earth View
Old-earth creationists contend the seventh day is an ongoing period. Although God continues His providential work of preserving and governing His creation, He is at rest in the sense that He is no longer creating. Because the seventh day is a period of indeterminate length, they argue this is evidence the other creation days are not 24-hour periods.
Exegetical Support
The seventh day lacks the concluding “evening/morning” refrain found in the narratives of the other creation days. This indicates God’s Sabbath rest is ongoing. Since God’s Sabbath rest is unending, the seventh day must be unending. The New Testament confirms the seventh day of God’s rest is an ongoing reality. For example in Hebrews, God invites us, present tense, to join Him in His Sabbath rest:
For we who have believed enter that rest, as he said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest,’ although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.’ And again in this passage he said, ‘They shall not enter my rest.' (Hebrews 4:3-5, ESV).
The English translation of Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and earth...” makes it sound as though God created everything within the confines of six calendar-days.
However, the preposition “in” does not appear in the original Hebrew. Rather, the verse is more correctly translated, “For six yôms the LORD made...”
The addition of “in” originated with the King James Version translation and “played a significant role in the advocacy of the creation days being completed within 144 hours (6x24).”When the verse is correctly translated, it is clear the creation “days” could have been long time periods.
The reference to the Sabbath in Exodus 20 seems to refer to the pattern of “days,” not their duration. The emphasis is on the pattern of work and rest, a ratio of six to one, not on the length of the creation days. Exodus 20:9 addresses the work-week of humans (seven 24-hour days); Exodus 20:11 addresses the work-week of God (seven time periods). Thus, as Hebrew scholar Gleason Archer notes: “By no means does this [Exodus 20:9-11] demonstrate that 24-hour intervals were involved in the first six ‘days,’ any more than the eight-day celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles proves that the wilderness wanderings under Moses occupied only eight days.” In Leviticus 25:4 the pattern of one out of seven is duplicated with six years of planting the land and one year of “Sabbath rest for the land.” This further demonstrates the analogy of our Sabbath to God’s Sabbath does not demand that the creation “week” consisted of seven 24-hour days."
The Six Days of Creation: A Closer Look at Scripture
So Elder's Sabbath-7th-day-of-creation theory rests on several bizarre, freakish and ludicrous assumptions. Or should I say
startling and fascinating assumptions? Here's just a few:
1). A head-injured, 3rd grade-educated pathological-liar claimed to have seen in a "vision" the earth's creation and the flood. Yet the description of her "vision" was plagiarized completely from other people's writings;
2). Another ill-educated, unscientific Seventh Day Adventist huckster/numb skull contrived an utterly-baseless "scientific theory" in support of that vision (which vision clearly never happened, given White's incriminating plagiarism) No respectable scientist agrees with that nut's flood theory;
3). Biblical "proof" of a Sabbath Ordinance required a grotesque mis-translation of the original Hebrew during the compilation of the King James Version of the Bible, that was carried over into the ESV. Although the original Hebrew does not translate well into English, modern versions have more accurate translations that strongly dispute a literal 6-day creation;
4). Notwithstanding the obvious well-known translation errors in the King James Version, Elder continues to rely on it as his sole version,
since his entire theology is founded on obvious translation errors!!!!.
5). Hilariously, Elder's and Seventh Day Adventism is
FOUNDED on the demonstrably-lunatic notion that out-of-context verses that describe prophetic "days," can be interpreted as "years" from the Old Testament. This is inconsistent with their rigidly-literal 6-day Creation theory all by itself (why couldn't creation have happened over 600 years? 6 million years? 6 billion years? I mean, we are talking GOD here, right? For God 6 billion years goes by like
instantly, doesn't it?) The Church's horrifying foundation is also based on the King James Version's mis-translation of Daniel 8:14's "2300 days" prophecy. Compounded by the devastatingly-hairbrained move of treating the "days" therein as "years:" Adventists then set those "2300 days" into "2300 YEARS" to arrive at the false prophecy of Jesus's return in 1844,
the Church's undisputed foundation. (
Nothing of any importance historically happened unfortunately 2300 years BEFORE 1844, so that prophetic starting date was itself obviously yanked out of thin air. ) Since 1844 has been absolutely disproved by both history and Adventism's own theologians - absolutely NOTHING happened in 1844 - the loony-tunes-freak Ellen White contrived an insanely-lunatic doctrine of "Investigative Judgment" to disguise their public embarrassment and groveling humiliation over the botched prophecy. Which Investigative Judgment Doctrine all by itself has been disproved time and time again by every credible Adventist theologian. It does not have the slightest suspicion of any biblical support, and is strongly, polar opposite of the Gospel.
But still.....without the insane "Investigative Judgment," there is no need to keep the Sabbath, since it is no longer needed as the "seal" of those 144,000 "Remnant Church" members described in Revelations and thus SDA's self-described identity as the "Remnant Church," which it is demonstrably NOT.
But still......
Without 1844, without the Investigative Judgment, without the Remnant Church theory, without the Sabbath seal, without the
Great Controversy theory, without Ellen White.....there is no reason for the Church to exist.
But still......
There is the tithe issue. If the Church has no reason to exist, where did all that money go? Do Adventists get the money back? Am I headed for the Lake of Fire for asking these questions?
Also, without the Church existing, I would plumb run out of reasons to pepper my posts with "
startling!" and "
fascinating!"
Quite a pickle, Elder finds himself in.