The Truth About Dr. Walter Martin and The Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Hoekema's argument was totally destroyed by Walter Martin's book "Kingdom of the Cults" where Martin placed the SDA Christian denomination in the appendix giving it a huge amount of space for discussion and totally annihilated Hoekema's shallow arguments addressing Hoekema's book specifically - explicitly.

Martin was no SDA at all - but he knew a bogus argument when he saw it. Martin pointed out that half the time Hoekema was not even using the SDA published statements of belief for his straw-man arguments!! How sad that anyone could be snookered by Hoekema.



As Christianity Today pointed out in 2015 - the SDA denomination is the 5th largest Christian denomination in the world and fastest growing (incidentally it is now over 25 million in attendance each Sabbath world wide.)

 

On p. 551 from the section: Adventist Theology and Classical Orthodoxy, Martin writes,

It is unnecessary to document at great length the fact that Seventh-day Adventists adheres tenaciously to the foundational doctrines of Christian theology as these have been held by the Christian church down through the centuries. Dr. Anthony Hoekema, who believes that Seventh-day Adventism is a non-Christian cult, makes this interesting admission, and since Dr. Hoekema is no friend of Adventism, his testimony on this point could hardly be called prejudiced:

“I am of the conviction that Seventh-day Adventism is a cult and not an evangelical denomination. . . . It is recognised with gratitude that there are certain soundly scriptural emphases in the teaching of Seventh-day-Adventism. We are thankful for the Adventists’ affirmation of the infallibility of the Bible, of the Trinity and of the full deity of Jesus Christ. We gratefully acknowledge their teachings on creation and providence, on the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, on the absolute necessity for regeneration, on sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and on Christ’s literal return.”​

Says Martin,

“It is puzzling to me, as a student of non-Christian cult systems, how any group can hold the above doctrines in their proper biblical context, which Dr. Hoekema admits the Adventists do, and still be a non-Christian cult. However we shall deal with this aspect of the critics of Adventism at the end of the chapter; therefore, suffice it to say that the Adventists do have a clean bill of health where the major doctrines of Christian theology are concerned.”
​

p.561. We earlier mentioned Dr. Anthony Hoekema’s book, The Four Major Cults, in which he classifies Seventh-day Adventism as a non-Christian cult system. It is necessary for me to take exception with Dr Hoekema in this area because, in my opinion, the reasons that Dr. Hoekema gives cannot be justified by the Word of God, historical theology, or present-day practices in denominational Christianity as a whole. To illustrate this point, Dr. Hoekema stated, “I am of the conviction that Seventh-day Adventism is a cult and not an evangelical denomination. In support of this evaluation I propose to show that the traits we have found to be distinctive of the cults do apply to this movement.” (389).

Martin writes -

It is Dr. Hoekema’s contention that Ellen White is an extrabiblical authority in that her counsels are taken to be manifestations of the gift of prophecy (1 Corinthians 12). But granting that the Adventists are entitled to believe that this gift was manifested in White as evidence of the charismata (a fact that Dr. Hoekema could hardly honestly challenge, since the gifts of the Spirit have been and are still manifested in the Christian church), why does he not take into consideration the repeated emphasis of Adventist writers concerning their official pronouncement – Questions on Doctrine – to the effect that they do not consider White to be an extrabiblical authority, but that her writings are only authoritative in those areas where they are in agreement with the Word of God, which is the final standard for judging all the gifts of the Spirit?
​

 

Continued

Martin writes;

It is a serious charge to maintain that any professing Christian group denies justification by grace alone as the basis of eternal salvation; and, if the Adventists were guilty of this, surely there would be ground for considering them as a cultic system. However, literally scores of times in their book Questions on Doctrines, and in various other publications, the Adventists affirm that salvation only come by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross.

Why is it necessary again for Dr. Hoekema to question the sincerity of the Adventists in this area and yet accept at face value their other statements concerning their faith in the Scriptures, the Trinity, the full deity of Jesus Christ, the absolute necessity of regeneration, sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and Christ’s literal return, is a puzzling inconsistency in his presentation, (See The Four Major Cults, 403).

Dr. Hoekema insists that the investigative judgment and the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath are part of the reasons why he classifies Seventh-day Adventists as cultists, but, in doing this, he makes his Calvinistic interpretation of theology the criterion, while ignoring the claims of the Arminian school and of the semi-Arminian and semi-Calvinistic theologians, many of whom take strong exception to Dr. Hoekema’s pronounced Calvinism.

On the basis that Dr. Hoekema would call Adventists a cult, the same charge could be leveled at all devoted Calvinists who consider the Institutes of the Christian Religion and Calvin’s Commentaries every bit as much illumination and guides in the study of Scriptures as the Adventists do where White’s writings are concerned. In addition to this, the Seventh-day Baptists are Arminian in their theology, and keep the seventh-day Sabbath. Are they too a non-Christian cult? They certainly meet some of Dr. Hoekema’s qualifications.​

 

Sadly you 'did not', you got a tiny snip of "partial information" and ran with it totally clueless as to where Questions on Doctrine was later published.

Your lack of information on this topic is astounding

Your "ignore the Bible and just read tiny snips" on the topic - as a policy... has not served you well.

 

yes you got 'old news' and it shows that you are clueless as to where QoD ALSO got printed!!

Keep repeating your mistake - if you think that will help.

Nov 18, 2003 "the book “Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine” is back in print. Andrews University Press, part of the church-owned university and seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, recently released the 597-page, annotated edition of the book"

In addition I have a 1985 edition of “The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary Volume 7A” containing Volumes 1-7. QoD is in Appendix A, B, C

Your reliance on shallow "rant and forget" sites .. is not serving you well.

 

There are a lot of "discussions" one could quote... I prefer the Bible and official sources that the "group" affirms before condemning someone or some group.

 

I have known a number of SDA pastors -- some of whom I would agree with on a given subject.

I know you are married to one-off anecdotal comments that you find on the web and if you prefer that to the facts of what the denomination actually says about its beliefs and also prefer that to actually studying the Bible on a given doctrine - then that is your choice.

I prefer the official statements and the Bible.

 

Says it all folks

 

Says it all folks

you call that heat??

seriously?

 

At what point did I ever make it unclear that I absolutely do not pay any attention to any of your videos or "one-off" stories .. and that instead I prefer actual facts... actual published position statements and the actual Bible.??

I don't see how I have given you any reason to doubt this fact.

This thread is a great example of you leading out with utter nonsense only to have it soundly refuted by actual published fact.

were we simply "not supposed to notice"???

Then you call this sequence where your wild emotional-argument factless accusations get hammered by "reality" --- "heat" for "me"???

Seriously? do you even read your own threads?

When reason vacates in regard to a given subject, the only weapons of argument left are in the hands of emotion. The simplest emotional weapons to wield are name-calling ,disparaging remarks, vitriol and acrimony for those deemed adversaries. All such ad hominem tactics provide nothing of persuasive substance, except to those whose reason has also been vacated on that same subject.

 

that bit of imaginary fiction -- is not going to happen and we both know it. BTW this thread is a great example of one of the few times that you do not start off with video-babble

You are free to put me on ignore - but you are not free to force me to put you on ignore.

We call it "reality"