Evangelical Adventism—Questions on Doctrine’s Legacy

Evangelical Adventism—Questions on Doctrine’s Legacy
Larry Christoffel

David VanDenburgh, senior pastor of the Seventh-day Adventists Campus Hill Church in
Loma Linda, California, and I, an associate pastor of the same church, visited Walter Martin in
1987. At the same time we met him, we were introduced to Kenneth R. Samples, on the staff of
Martin’s organization, The Christian Research Institute. We learned that they were planning to do an article on Seventh-day Adventism, and we were happy to talk with them.

Samples’ article, “From Controversy to Crisis, An Updated Assessment of Seventh-day
Adventism,” appeared in the Summer, 1988 Christian Research Journal.1 According to Samples,
the “controversy” which the Evangelical/SDA Dialogues (1955,1956) and the publication of
Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine2 (hereafter, QOD) stirred up continued
through the 1960s and 70s. Samples questioned whether the church would continue in the same
direction as QOD or return to a “more traditional understanding of the faith”3

He identified two groups within Adventism aligning themselves with the polarization
mentioned above. The one, continuing in basic agreement with QOD, he labeled, “Evangelical
Adventism,” and the other, opposing QOD, he called, “Traditional Adventism”. Differences of
opinion on Righteousness by Faith (Was Righteousness Justification only or both Justification and Sanctification?), the human nature of Jesus Christ (Did Jesus inherit Adam’s sinless pre-fall or his sinful post-fall nature), the sanctuary (Was the Atonement complete at Calvary, or not?), assurance of salvation (Could a Christian have it our not?) and the authority of Ellen White (Was Scripture its own interpreter or were Mrs. White’s writings an infallible interpreter of Scripture?) characterized the two groups. 4

Samples reasoned that the conflict moved to “crisis” level when an Australian theologian
Desmond Ford, challenged the traditional understanding of the Adventist sanctuary doctrine. “He [Ford] argued that the literalistic and perfectionistic understanding of these doctrines promoted by traditional Adventism had no biblical warrant, and were accepted primarily because of Mrs. White’s vision, which confirmed them.” 5 Ford had been given the opportunity to prepare a defense he did in a 990-page book, Daniel 8:14, the Day of Atonement and the Investigative Judgment6. After the August, 1980 Glacier View Sanctuary Review Committee, called to review Ford’s views, met, Ford was fired and his ministerial credentials were removed. Hundreds who agreed with him have been affected, many losing their positions with the church.7 .

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1 Kenneth R. Samples, “From Controversy to Crisis, an Updated Assessment of Seventh-day Adventism,”
Christian Research Journal, Summer 1988, 9-14.
2 Prepared by a Representative Group of Seventh-day Adventist Leaders, Bible Teachers, and Editors, Seventhday
Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., 1957.
3 Kenneth R. Samples, op cit, 12.
4 Kenneth R. Samples, op cit, 12,13..
5 Ibid.
6 Desmond Ford, Daniel 8:14, the Day of Atonement and the Investigative Judgment, Evangelion Press, Casselberry, Florida, 1980.
7 Kenneth R. Samples, op cit, 14. (For further documentation see Peter H. Ballis, “A Study of the Process of Leaving the Adventist Ministry,” Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, London, 1999. This thesis deals with those leaving the Adventist ministry in Australia and New Zealand in the years after the Ford crisis.)
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Read More @ http://qod.andrews.edu/docs/09_larry_christoffel.pdf
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