Seventh Day Adventist. false teaching #6. INVESTIGATIVE JUDGMENT

FALSE TEACHING # 6: INVESTIGATIVE JUDGMENT

According to Ellen White, Jesus entered the heavenly holy of holies to begin an investigative judgment of the records (deeds and thoughts) of those that have professed faith in Christ. The judgment is supposedly based on the Ten Commandments, and the character of each person will be tested by the standard of this law to determine his eternal destiny. During this heavenly judgment, God has allegedly raised up the Seventh-day Adventist Church to proclaim the gospel to the world. When the judgment is finished, Christ will return to the earth, destroy the wicked, resurrect the saved (who have allegedly been sleeping in the grave), and place all sins upon Satan.

“Every man’s work passes in review before God and is registered for faithfulness or unfaithfulness. Opposite each name in the books of heaven is entered with terrible exactness every wrong word, every selfish act, every unfulfilled duty, and every secret sin, with every artful dissembling. … The law of God is the standard by which the characters and the lives of men will be tested in the judgment. … Every name is mentioned, every case closely investigated. Names are accepted, names rejected. When any have sins remaining upon the books of record, unrepented of and unforgiven, their names will be blotted out of the book of life, and the record of their good deeds will be erased from the book of God’s remembrance. … All who have truly repented of sin, and by faith claimed the blood of Christ as their atoning sacrifice, have had pardon entered against their names in the books of heaven; as they have become partakers of the righteousness of Christ, and their characters are found to be in harmony with the law of God, their sins will be blotted out, and they themselves will be accounted worthy of eternal life. … Sins that have not been repented of and forsaken will not be pardoned and blotted out of the books of record, but will stand to witness against the sinner in the day of God” (Ellen White, The Great Controversy, pp. 424-425, 428).

“The righteous dead will not be raised until after the judgment at which they are accounted worthy of ‘the resurrection of life.’ Hence they will not be present in person at the tribunal when their records are examined and their cases decided. … Everyone must be tested and found without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. … When the work of the investigative judgment closes, the destiny of all will have been decided for life or death” (Ellen White, The Great Controversy, pp. 431-432).

“When the investigative judgment closes, Christ will come, and His reward will be with Him to give every man as his work shall be. … Christ will place all these sins upon Satan, the originator and instigator of sin. The scapegoat, bearing the sins of Israel, was sent away ‘unto a land not inhabited’ (Lev. 16:22); so Satan, bearing the guilt of all the sins which he has caused God’s people to commit, will be for a thousand years confined to the earth, which will then be desolate, without inhabitant, and he will at last suffer the full penalty of sin in the fires that shall destroy all the wicked” (Ellen White, The Great Controversy, p. 427).

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS

1. The believer will not be judged by the Ten Commandments and will not lose his salvation if his service is unacceptable. The believer has eternal life (John 3:16). He has already passed from death unto life (John 5:24). He is safe in Christ and stands and rejoices in hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:1-2). He has no fear of future wrath, for he is complete in Christ (Romans 5:9). All punishment for his sin fell on Christ, and he is forever free. Christ took the believer’s unrighteousness upon Himself and gave the believer His very righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

2. The believer’s judgment is an examination of his service to Christ to determine whether he will be rewarded or suffer loss of reward. See 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 and 2 Corinthians 5:5, 9-10.

Consider some important differences between the judgment described in these passages and the Investigative Judgment of Seventh-day Adventism: (1) Christ’s judgment of believers does not determine their salvation. Those who stand at the judgment of 1 Corinthians 3 will be there because they have already been saved, not in order to determine whether or not they will be saved. The ones judged in 1 Corinthians 3 are those that have established their lives upon the solid foundation of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11-12). (2) The believer’s judgment will not result in damnation, torment, or separation from God. Believers whose works fail the test will suffer shame and loss of reward, but not loss of salvation. “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Cor.  3:15). Words could not be plainer. (3) Notice, too, that the believer shall appear personally before his Lord. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10). According to Adventist theology, the believer’s judgment occurs in the heavenly holy of holies between 1844 and the Second Coming, while the believer himself is supposedly on earth or sleeping in the grave. This is not what the apostle Paul taught.

3. It is unscriptural to identify Satan with the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. Both goats of the Day of Atonement—the one slain and the one released into the wilderness—represent the Lord Jesus Christ. The slain goat pictures the act of Christ’s atonement: it is a bloody sacrifice. The released goat pictures the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement: it is accomplished once for all and is forever complete. To interpret the scapegoat as a reference to Satan is blasphemous. Adventism finds confirmation of this doctrine, not in Scripture rightly divided, but in the visions of Ellen White, which is yet another example of how they have added to the Bible’s revelation.

……and these are The Signs of The Times

This report is excerpted from AVOIDING THE SNARE OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM. This book has been called the best on the subject by the editor of The Baptist Challenge. Now it has been throughly updated and enlarged. It is diligently researched from official publications of the Seventh-day Adventist organization and proves conclusively that the Seventh-day Adventist gospel is false. The book begins with a chapter entitled “Adventists Wanted Me to Revise This Book,” describing a deceptive attempt by Seventh-day Adventists to have me change the book. The major divisions of the book are: “Adventist History Proves It is Heretical” and “Adventist Doctrine Proves It Is Heretical.” The book analyzes Adventist doctrines such as Sabbath-keeping, Soul-sleep, Annihilation of the wicked, Ellen White as a Prophetess, Investigative Judgment, Misuse of the Mosaic Law, and Vegetarianism. The chapter “Why Some Have Considered Seventh-day Adventism Evangelical” analyzes Walter Martin’s (author of Kingdom of the Cults) faulty view of Adventism. The book includes selections from D.M. Canright’s 1898 book Seventh-day Adventism Renounced. Canright was an early leader in Adventism who left and became a Baptist pastor.

Posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 6:57 am | RSS

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