Thursday, May 2, 2013

Are Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses Similar in Some Teachings?

In reality there are really very few, if any, similarities between Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses.

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The Seventh Day Adventists will participate [in] politics and even in warfare by going into the military in "non-combatant" positions. Witnesses feel this is a compromise of true Christianity and take absolutely no part in warfare or politics.

Also the Adventists never really took a strong stance on a definition of the Trinity. They used to believe in a modalistic Triunity –believing that "God" was just one person who manifested the different modes of Father, Son, and Spirit as the need arose. However, in the last decade or so the Adventists have moved even farther from Biblical Truth and adopted the full-blown unbiblical, pagan and apostate teaching of the Trinity. Many of them still recognize that this dogma is not taught in the Scriptures, yet do not consider it important enough to disagree on.

On the other hand, Jehovah's Witnesses believe exactly like the Bible when it says God and Christ are two completely separate beings.

The Adventists knew that God’s Name was Jehovah and used to use the Divine Name regularly. Yet they never adopted a Bible version which was accurate in this regard and now it seems that they have gone the way of other religions in ignoring that most holy name.

Adventists do not believe in an eternal hell fire torment, but they taught a "limited" torment of the resurrected wicked "according to their deeds" and Satan will be tormented for a long time (Great Controversy, pg.672,673).

Adventists also believe that the seventh day Sabbath is binding on Christians because they ignore and misinterpret the Scriptures which clearly state that the Sabbath was done away with (Col.2:16; 2Cor. 3:7-11; Rm 7:2,6; 10:4; 6:14; Eph 2:13-15; Col 2:13,14).

In order to support their dogma, Sabbatarians must arbitrarily define words such as "law" and "commands" as it fits their theology. If it says we must obey "law" or "command" then it must mean the Decalogue, but if it says "law" is not binding it must only mean "ceremonial laws." This is theologically driven eisegesis and a highly dishonest method of interpretation.

Christians were not commanded to keep any certain day as "holy", but whether they observed a day or did not observe any day was up to their personal choice (Rm.14:5-9; Heb.4:3,9,10; 2Cor.3:7,11, Rm.7:4-8). We keep a "7" day Sabbath (not 7th day).

There are many other differences, but these are the ones which come immediately to mind.

SOURCE: This is the answer provided to a question by BAR_ANERGES at Yahoo Answers.

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