SDAs have Institutionalized Deception

When Seventh-day Adventists hold a crusade or evangelistic campaign it is a long-held practice for them to attempt to hide their true identity from the general public. Often they hold the meetings in a neutral public venue, such as a meeting hall, and they do not mention who they are or what church they are representing. They choose generic names for their crusades that will not specifically identify them as Adventists, such as "The Word of Life Gospel Explosion crusade" and "Good News Gospel Explosion" (actual names used). Often, the SDA evangelist will describe himself as an "interdenominational" figure--an "historian" or "prophecy expert" or "Biblical history expert." Ask yourself what other Christian denomination practices this kind of deception in their crusades? When the Billy Graham evangelistic organization runs a crusade, they do not try to appear to be generic Christians. You go in knowing exactly what you are getting into. They do not have to hide their identity.

When I [brother Anderson] was a young Seventh-day Adventist I was actively involved in the evangelistic crusades of SDA evangelist John Carter. Elder Carter loved to hold crusades which I applaud him for. However, when he would rent out public halls he would advertise himself on TV and with flyers as a lecturer on archeology. Now, to be fair, he had visited the Middle East, but he was by no means an archeologist of any sort. He is an SDA minister with no qaulifications in archeology.

John Carter would never mention anything about Ellen White in his crusades, even though she was mentioned regularly in Sabbath School and church services at his church in Fort Worth, Texas. He would never mention Adventism until near the end of the crusade, by which time nightly attendence had already dropped off dramatically. He even instructed us to give intentionally vague and non-committal answers to attendees who asked us what church we represented.

That was in the late 1980's. Are things different today? On John Carter's web site there is an advertisement for a video that reads, "John Carter Has Just Returned From Exploring Qumran In Israel."1 This might lead a reader to believe him to be an archeologist which is, of course, far from the truth.

Another method used by Seventh-day Adventists to conceal their identity is to send out literature under generic names. For example, Adventists sent out a booklet to postal addresses with the title "The Path to Peace." It had no identification as to which religious organization published it. Inside there were advertisements for "Discovery Bible Studies" and "Keys to Happiness Studies" but the words "Adventist", "SDA", or "Seventh-day" did not appear anywhere in the book. On a tiny footnote on the bottom of the first page, in text so small it was barely legible, is found the words "Text by E.G. White." Even if someone managed to read the fine print, it is still obscure--we don't know if it was Edward White, or Earl White, or Ellen White! Why don't they just put it on the cover of the book: "Written by Ellen G. White, Prophetess of the Seventh-day Adventist Church"? There is only one reason: they know that many people already have a negative awareness of the SDA sect because of the work of Walter Martin and others who have brought awareness of the true unbiblical teachings of this sect to the Christian public. Therefore, in order to get past this negative bias, the makers of the book attempted to cleverly disguise it in such a way as to deceive and perhaps ensnare those who might otherwise reject the book without reading it.

These methods of deception are not a recent development. In 1932, the following complaint appeared in an SDA book, Answers to Objections:

"When Seventh-day Adventist ministers go into a community to hold a series of lectures, they conceal, at first, their denominational connection. They thus hope to draw into the audience people who would never have come if they knew that Seventh-day Adventists were conducting the meetings. This is a form of deception. There is something the matter with a religious body that is afraid to identify itself as soon as it begins to carry on any activity in a community."2

Adventists seem to have adopted the philosophy that the "ends justifies the means" when it comes to using deception. The reasoning is this: If we tell them up front we are Adventists, they will not come to our meetings or read our books. Therefore, we will use deception to trick them into thinking we are generic Christians. Was this tactic ever used by Jesus or the Apostles? Did they ever pretend like they were pagans so that they could get more people to come to their meetings? On Pentecost did Peter and John stand up and pretend like they were non-Christians in order to gain the people's confidence? Notice how this philosophy of secretiveness and disguise is contrary to the openness and transparency of the Apostles:

But we have turned away from secret and shameful ways. We use no trickery, and we do not change the teaching of God. We teach the truth plainly showing everyone who we are. ... (2 Cor. 4:2 NLT)

Paul says it is shameful to hide who you are. The early Apostles did not hide who they were, and many paid the price with their own lives. We are not even talking here about hiding your identity in a Communist or Arab nation. We are talking about using "trickery" to deceive one's identify long enough to be able to deliver the "message" to the intended target without him being fully aware (and on guard) of whom he is dealing with.

The Seventh-day Adventist hierarchy has a long history of practicing deception in regards to the inspiration of Ellen White. In the early 1850s, church co-founder James White removed portions of Ellen White's visions and then republished them with 19% of the original "inspired" writings missing. The portions removed contained teachings that Adventist leaders decided were no longer "truth." People who later read the revised versions of the "visions" had no idea that what they were reading had been altered, and potentially damaging passages had been quietly removed. The deception was necessary in order to maintain the illusion that Ellen White's visions were not fraudulent.

Perhaps the greatest deception is that the corporate leaders know more about Ellen White than they care for the laity to know. Behind closed doors at the 1919 Bible Conference sect leaders expressed personal doubts about Ellen White, but publicly church leaders continue to make positive statements regarding her inspiration. I [brother Anderson] have personally talked to SDA evangelists and professors who privately expressed doubts about Ellen White, but publicly quoted her and went along with the charade that she was the "spirit of prophecy." College president W.W. Prescott complained bitterly in a letter about how sect leaders were practicing deception in the way they handled Ellen White's writings:

"...we let them go on year after year asserting things which we know to be untrue. I cannot feel that this is right. It seems to me that we are betraying our trust and deceiving the ministers and people. It appears to me that there is much more anxiety to prevent a possible shock to some trustful people than to correct error. ... The way your mother's [Ellen White's] writings have been handled and the false impressions concerning them, which is still fostered among the people, have brought great perplexity and trial to me. It seems to me that what amounts to deception, though probably not intentional, has been practiced in making some of her books, and that no serious effort has been made to disabuse the minds of the people of what was known to be their wrong view concerning her writings."3

When Walter Rea discovered the extent of Mrs. White's plagiarism and brought it to the attention of sect leaders, instead of facing up to the problem and working with him to share the truth with the church's membership, the SDA corporate leaders turned against Elder Rea, fired him, and tried to counteract his findings (Click to read "Who Lied - Them or Me?").

Thanks to the internet--a medium the SDA Corporation has not been able to control--it is now becoming well known that the sect's prophetess, Ellen White, practiced deception:

As reported by Walter Rea, in his book Pirates of Privilege, the first resort of SDA Church leaders when caught in the financial corruption of the Davenport scandal was to engage in deceit.

Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). When the leaders of a church organization practice deception, then deception becomes institutionalized, and the members eventually come to consider deception as less sinful than it really is. The ongoing practice of deception within Adventism is a warning sign that this sect is not aligned with the Word of God.

See Also

Truthful Evangelism, Spectrum Magazine.

Citations

1. Appeared June 29, 2014, at site http://www.cartereport.org/media-library/2013/dead-sea-scrolls-port-moresby-papua-new-guinea-campaign.

2. F. D. Nichol, Answers to Objections (1932, 1954).

3. W.W. Prescott letter to W.C. White, April 6, 1915.