Ex Adventists

[Gregory Matthews]

A formal study is underway in an attempt to understand why people leave the SDA Chruch.  If you either would like to understand this better or contribute your thoughts as to why you left the SDA Chruch, click on the following link.

https://atoday.org/elon-university-research-team-hosts-survey-for-former-adventists/

 

[Kevin H]

Of course I'm not an ex-Adventist, but a couple of things I've noticed has been over misunderstandings about 1844 by the last generation people, where people try and try to prepare for that special generation and tire themselves out, learn about the freedom in Jesus and just throw out Adventism. 

A second thing seems to be Fundamentalism. We have a neurotic need to prove to the world that we are good Baptists. As we learn that Mrs. White does not fit fundamentalism we throw her away and often Seventh-day Adventism as well. This is what happened to D. M. Canright, and when Mrs. White made a complete about face from breaking Sunday laws, to giving Sunday to the Lord, to follow as far as conscience allows, spend Sunday with evangelistic meetings and Bible studies, Elder Jones held a Fundamentalist view that did not have room for a prophet to learn and grow, he felt that if she was a prophet she needed to be absolutely consistent with her first counsel on breaking Sunday laws. This about face on the topic was a major cause for him to leave the church. Sadly, we would rather hold on to Fundamentalism and give up anything we see as not filling the Fundamentalist myth of what a prophet "should be"  We are seeing this with Adventists and Mrs. White, but a day is coming when we can't tap-dance over places where the Bible shows the same problems that we find in Mrs. White when compared to Fundamentalism.  Sadly, the day is coming when as people need to face these issues in the Bible, too many will end up throwing out the Bible while clinging to Fundamentalism. And why not throw out that untrustworthy book when we have "Jesus" (Satan impersonating Jesus) and the "great saints over the ages, including the Bible writers" (demons impersonating them) and our "loved ones" (again demons impersonating them) and society pressuring us to go along with the situation. We will turn to these people instead of that untrustworthy old book. We who hold on the the Bible (and Mrs. White) warts and all will appear to be crazy. 

A third issue is simply religious abuse which is in all churches, but the abused members focus the abuse to their particular denomination.