Seventh Day Adventist

Seventh Day Adventist

Introduction

Nineteenth century millennial expectations led to the development of three new religions within the Christian tradition, which survived into the 20th century and today are successful globally due to widespread missionizing (Knight, 1999). The Seventh-Day Adventists also known as SDA began with the failed predictions of William Miller and others in his movement, who set particular dates for the return of Jesus based on their interpretations of the Bible. After the final “Great Disappointment” on October 22, 1844 (Knight, 1999), Ellen G. White and others reinterpreted the Millerite predictions and thus began the Seventh-Day Adventists, who observe the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, Saturday. Today, Seventh-day Adventist Church is one of the fastest growing organizations in the world, mainly due to rises in Third World membership. At the present, it operates in 203 out of 228 countries recognized by the United Nations.

Discussion

Seventh-day Adventist Beliefs

The doctrine of Seventh-day Adventist is derived from the Anabaptist Protestant practice. Adventist doctrine is similar to conventional orthodox Trinitarian Protestant religion, with only some exemptions like the following.

Adventism: Belief in a pre-millennial, imminent, unanimously observable second advent, headed by a time of difficulty when the virtuous will be hounded and a false second approaching where Satan pretends to be the Messiah (Neusner, 2009).

Ellen G. White: The teaching that “Spirit of Prophecy" is a categorizing mark of the remnant church was marked in Ellen G. White's ministry, whom Adventists identify as the messenger sent by the Lord (Neusner, 2009). It is believed that her writings are an authoritative and continuing source of truth which takes care of the church comfort, correction, instruction, and guidance. It is also made clear that the Holy Book Bible is the standard through which all experience and teachings ought to be tested.

State of the Dead: It is believed by the Adventists that death or bereavement is a sleep through which the deceased know nothing. This vision upholds that the individual has no conscious type of existence till the renaissance, whether at the second appearance of Jesus or later than the millennium of Revelation 20 (Neusner, 2009). Owing to this vision, the Seventh-day Adventists do not consider hell to exists currently and deem further that the evil will be shattered at the end of time. These believers also oppose the making of credal statements and have a preference to see the basic beliefs as descriptors more willingly than prescriptors. On the other hand, deviation from the published position is disapproved.

Seventh-day Adventist Practices

Seventh-day Adventists follow practices like:

They observe a twenty-four hour sunset-to-sunset Sabbath starting from Friday evening. Reasoning for this belief is acquired from the formation description in Genesis in which Lord rested on the 7th day. It is an approach which is later commemorated in the Ten Commandments. Seventh-day Adventists keep up that there is no biblical authorization for the modification from the "true Sabbath" to the observance on Sunday, which is to declare that Sunday-keeping is just a ritual of men (Neusner, ...