Teresa Beem: A Seventy-day Adventist Who Became Catholic

[Robert]

 

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

just out of curiosity, why was this video posted in the Theology forum?  

Teresa and her husband Arthur Beem chose to condemn Seventh-day Adventism and hopped on board the Catholic hay wagon.  If you take a gander at their open letter to "family and friends," you'll see all sorts of twisted takes on SDA theology.  http://www.formeradventist.com/stories/teresaarthurbeem.html

I'm not impressed.

[Robert]

just out of curiosity, why was this video posted in the Theology forum?  

No particular reason.... 

[Tom Wetmore]

I have heard of a number of former Adventists becoming Catholic.  If one carefully compares many of the beliefs and interpretations of Scripture of the most conservative Adventists with Catholic theology, shocking similarities will appear.  

[Samie]

Teresa and her husband Arthur Beem chose to condemn Seventh-day Adventism and hopped on board the Catholic hay wagon.

I have heard of a number of former Adventists becoming Catholic.  If one carefully compares many of the beliefs and interpretations of Scripture of the most conservative Adventists with Catholic theology, shocking similarities will appear.  

Just want to know the real score. When saying these former SDA's becoming Catholic, does it mean they became members of the Roman Catholic Church?  If No, then, good enough for me.  So instead of "Catholic" with a capital "C", they became "catholic".

[phkrause]

If I'm not mistaken there is a member here that was an SDA than converted to RC and than has converted back?? A friend of mine went to school with him and knows him. I believe they went to AUC together?? or maybe it was Academy??

[Tom Wetmore]

Just want to know the real score. When saying these former SDA's becoming Catholic, does it mean they became members of the Roman Catholic Church?  If No, then, good enough for me.  So instead of "Catholic" with a capital "C", they became "catholic".

Roman Catholic...  

Not that it should matter, but context and the fact of the use of  capital "C" should have made that sufficiently obvious. And if we were merely speaking of catholic in the general and universal sense of the word, one wouldn't become that by leaving Adventism and remaining Christian since no change of being catholic in that sense has occurred.  One remains the same,  and does not "become" something different. 

[Gregory Matthews]

Phkrause:  Reference to a supposed member who was SDA, became Roman Catholic and then SDA again:  There is all kinds of gossip that one can pickup on the Internet.  That member has told his story many times.  By the way, I personally know him well.  The version that you posted here is limited in its factual basis. 

Edited October 5, 2015 by Gregory Matthews

[Gregory Matthews]

The individual that Phkruse referenced has been very open about his past history and the spiritual journey that he has taken.  And, yes, he does post in CA.  As I know him very well, I will give a very brief statement of his past.  Actually it is more complex than I am posting.

1) He did graduate from a SDA College.

2) He did become a Lutheran clergyperson.

3) He did leave the Lutheran denomination and become a Roman Catholic lay person, and was employed for several years by a division of the Roman Catholic Church, as a lay person.

4) He did leave the Roman Catholic Church and  became an ordained SDA minister, several years later.

5) He is presently a SDA clergyperson who is employed by the North American Division.

6) The woman he married while attending the SDA College remains his wife, and has remained an active SDA member during the entire time that I have covered above.

 All of us have a spiritual journey that we walk.  Sometimes that journey goes in strange directions.  But, through it all, God has a purpose and is attempting to lead and direct.  I must say blessings on the woman who remained with him throughout the years of his journey.

 

 

 

[Samie]

Roman Catholic...  

Not that it should matter, but context and the fact of the use of  capital "C" should have made that sufficiently obvious. And if we were merely speaking of catholic in the general and universal sense of the word, one wouldn't become that by leaving Adventism and remaining Christian since no change of being catholic in that sense has occurred.  One remains the same,  and does not "become" something different. 

Thanks, Tom.

I have not yet viewed the video link in the OP when I asked, thinking that they just left the SDA Church and that's it.  But upon viewing the video from beginning to end, they indeed converted to Roman Catholicism.

I have one observation, though. And that's on Sabbath-keeping which Teresa and husband exchanged for Sunday-keeping.  Teresa explains that it was the early apostles and not the Catholic Church who changed the observance from Saturday to Sunday. And she pointed out the reason for the change: Jesus resurrected on a Sunday. A reason which tells me she should have spent more time studying the Bible than reading the early church fathers.

How I wish I could share with Teresa my conviction based on how I understand Scriputres, that Sunday resurrection is a lie (sorry for the term) initially propagated by those who wanted to give a semblance of Scriptural authority to Sunday-keeping.  The Bible, as I understand it, teaches that Jesus resurrected early Saturday morning, instead of early Sunday morning. And this is corroborated by astronomical evidence since the Bible specifies that Passover is a full moon festival. Jesus ate Passover the night immediately preceding the daytime He was crucified.  That night was full moon, the FIRST full moon after the spring equinox of AD 31.  3 days and 3 nights AFTER He was crucified, He rose from the grave, as per His own specification.

[LifeHiscost]

I have heard of a number of former Adventists becoming Catholic.  If one carefully compares many of the beliefs and interpretations of Scripture of the most conservative Adventists with Catholic theology, shocking similarities will appear.  

All one really has to do is follow Jesus instruction in order to arrive at the right destination.

10"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.....John 15

16And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.....Luke 4

…14"If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15"For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. 16"Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.…John 13

It could be argued that the text is out of context but it would seem to me the principles involved cover the whole of Jesus life, not just the part of His life we wish to accept.

Also the only place in the Scripture that the Lord's day is spoken of is where it is referring to the seventh day Sabbath.

 

9I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, 11saying, "Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea."…Revelation 1

12Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. 13And I heard a voice from heaven, saying, "Write, 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!'" "Yes," says the Spirit, "so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them.".....Revelation 14

19And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! 20But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: 21For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. 23Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 24For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 25Behold, I have told you before......Matthew 24

Why would there be any caution to pray flight be not on the Sabbath, some 70 years after the death of Christ, if there had been any change from the seventh day Sabbath to another day, multiplied centuries before any contention developed about honoring the venerable day of the sun?

  

http://tinyurl.com/nzyuv2w

  [/quote]

God is Love!  Jesus saves! 

[GayatfootofCross]

It is interesting to note that the whole interview's jumping off point is the book she wrote.  That title is an eye catcher for sure. When I was a very young naive Literature Evangelist  in an SDA ghetto..I met my share of Ex SDA's and couldn't for the life of me understand how anyone can leave our Church. Now I understand completely. You know, the devil has a million ways to get us to stop congregating as a Body of Christ.

I met an Ex SDA who was an organist in an old beautiful Church Methodist Church. He loved the old solemn hymns (stuff that we don't have in our hymn books) and reverence and the quiet pageantry,traditions, and rituals. It appealed to his sensibilities and in time became a member.

I don't understand studying the Bible and coming up with Catholic doctrine having been born an SDA.

She shares Jesus is her Saviour and that warms my heart. As well as she now has a Community of Believers in this. And amazing even her Husband left our Wonderful Church too. The same Journey I suspect.

She said that her Multigenerational SDA family were considered Liberal cause her parents let her drink Dr. Pepper. Maybe they allowed to ride bikes on the Sabbath too?

I laughed out loud when Mrs. Beem mentioned the hypocrisy of the NO JEWELRY COMMANDMENT  and yet she saw the watches (possibly ornate and expensive?) and the pins on the Church gowns!

[flashback]

I went to a lil country Church with the strictest rules and wanted to be baptized. Our church was still new and not official and we had   a Lay Minister (the Neighbor who thoroughly indoctrinated me). So I had to be baptizediin one of the Big SDA Churches in town. And walking in there I experienced a cognitive dissonance. Yep there was no make up on the older ladies faces( no blue eye shadow ..at least).but their hair was big and piled up with tons of hairspray and big beautiful glittery jeweled giant broaches on their Evening gowns. It was eye candy to my lil closeted gay self ..but didn't understand why no wedding rings,necklaces, and earings but everything else was a free for all. Even as a lil ___  .. I understood the principle behind no jewelry but just because EGW left out the word BROOCH it was OKAY. Hey!

God of Concessions!

In that expensive ornate mostly Dakota German SDA Church I was baptized as a 13 year old boy on May 1,1976 by an Ordained Minister. God is good.

 

 

 

 

"It's Ok Not to be a Seventh-Day Adventist" by Teresa & Arthur Beem

I believe every story should be shared..even when we disagree about what that journey has been.

 

btw.. I am older and have learned alot about God and People and personally don't care if your dripping with gems of every hue.. It is not a signal to me about your spiritual condition. Which goes everything I was taught for far too many years.

Edited October 5, 2015 by GayatfootofCross

[Kevin H]

The individual that Phkruse referenced has been very open about his past history and the spiritual journey that he has taken.  And, yes, he does post in CA.  As I know him very well, I will give a very brief statement of his past.  Actually it is more complex than I am posting.

1) He did graduate from a SDA College.

2) He did become a Lutheran clergyperson.

3) He did leave the Lutheran denomination and become a Roman Catholic lay person, and was employed for several years by a division of the Roman Catholic Church, as a lay person.

4) He did leave the Roman Catholic Church and  became an ordained SDA minister, several years later.

5) He is presently a SDA clergyperson who is employed by the North American Division.

6) The woman he married while attending the SDA College remains his wife, and has remained an active SDA member during the entire time that I have covered above.

 All of us have a spiritual journey that we walk.  Sometimes that journey goes in strange directions.  But, through it all, God has a purpose and is attempting to lead and direct.  I must say blessings on the woman who remained with him throughout the years of his journey.

 

 

 

I went to college with him. We have become friends. I did not know that he posts here on Club Adventists.

[LifeHiscost]

 I am not impressed.

I am not impressed either, except I cannot see disciples of Christ in either Catholic or Seventh Day Adventists that waste their time picking apart those of another persuasion. The Word is sufficient for the individual to find His Way into the Kingdom if it is read regularly with the purpose of lifting up Jesus.

32"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself."....John 12

God is Love!  Jesus saves! 

[Kevin H]

About the Jewelry issue: If you get to visit the White estates (at least the one at Andrews) they have folders of different topics. It is interesting to read through them, including the Jewelry folder. On topic after topic you find the earliest topics simple and basic. Then you find starting around the 1920s people writing to a journal such as the Review "Since Adventist don't do this, why do they do that?" and there would be discussion on how this and that was so similar that since Adventist don't do this we should stop doing that. Once that settles down sure enough another person asks "Now that we don't do that anymore, what about this thing over here, isn't it close enough to that?" and like a rock thrown into a pond the circle of things we did not do just kept growing...

With Jewelry the original  issue was modesty and financial responsibility. To use money to save souls instead of making ourselves gaudy. Mrs. White said not to take it too far and used as an example that if you had a pin that set off a dress and made you and the dress look good she saw nothing wrong with wearing it. She also said that the wedding ring issue should be up to each individual.

Well, after the horrible 1923 General Conference when good sense was thrown out and Fundamentalism and conservatism was put in it's place, people latched on almost everything that Mrs. White said over our history as the final word of God, and some topics such as the Jewelry topic took on a life of their own. (Of course they forgot about Mrs. White's statements that said that the wedding ring should be up to the individual and that wearing something like a pin that sets off a dress is not objectionable, or limited Jewelry to specifically the pin because that was the one item Mrs. White named).

Another issue related to this thread. As Mrs. White grew older she had much more fellowship with those of other faiths and actually became a very popular preacher on Sunday mornings in Sunday keeping churches. But earlier as the churches were falling into either modernism or extreme fundamentalism she warned NEW believers that it was best to avoid going to the Sunday keeping churches. And after 1923 reading those statements from a fundamentalist viewpoint seeing it as the final word of God we again took it into a direction that Mrs. White did not practice in her own life.

[Gerr]

I have heard of a number of former Adventists becoming Catholic.  If one carefully compares many of the beliefs and interpretations of Scripture of the most conservative Adventists with Catholic theology, shocking similarities will appear.  

Huh?

[Gerr]

She's not the first and won't be the last.  I even listened to an Adventist WOMAN once who became a Muslim!

[Tom Wetmore]

Huh?

Huh?  What part is a mystery to you?  That some Adventists have become or returned to being Roman Catholics?  Or that we really do have more in common with Roman Catholic beliefs than most Adventists are willing to admit or believe, especially some of our most conservative Adventist brothers and sisters?  Or that some might find any of that a tad shocking?

Or are you just expressing generally confusion or some lack of comprehension?

[Gerr]

Huh?  What part is a mystery to you?  That some Adventists have become or returned to being Roman Catholics?  Or that we really do have more in common with Roman Catholic beliefs than most Adventists are willing to admit or believe, especially some of our most conservative Adventist brothers and sisters?  Or that some might find any of that a tad shocking?

Or are you just expressing generally confusion or some lack of comprehension?

I'd like to hear your view of the similarities.  Maybe I'm missing something. Yes, we have some commonality like the Trinity, but what I see is a stark contrast in theology.  For me to go  back to Roman Catholicism from which I

came would be like what Peter is describing in 2 Pet 2:22.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Gerry Cabalo
Add

[Gregory Matthews]

I have listened to quite a bit of the video about her.

Just maybe, she is following the leading of God in her spiritual journey?  Who are you to say?  Who are you to predict where God will lead her next.

Just maybe, God does at times lead  one out of the SDA Church in order to save them.

[Gregory Matthews]

To  set the record straight:  It is a major error to state that the astronomical evidence supports the position listed below.  The statement below fails to recognize calendar issues  and issues related to the time for the celebration of Passover.  The actual date cannot be calculated with certainty regardless of the date that one accepts.  One can only state that one believes that more evidence supports a specific date than supports another date.

The Bible, as I understand it, teaches that Jesus resurrected early Saturday morning, instead of early Sunday morning. And this is corroborated by astronomical evidence since the Bible specifies that Passover is a full moon festival. Jesus ate Passover the night immediately preceding the daytime He was crucified.  That night was full moon, the FIRST full moon after the spring equinox of AD 31.  3 days and 3 nights AFTER He was crucified, He rose from the grave, as per His own specification.

[Felix Florimon]

I'd like to hear your view of the similarities.  Maybe I'm missing something. Yes, we have some commonality like the Trinity, but what I see is a stark contrast in theology.  For me to go  back to Roman Catholicism from which I

came would be like what Peter is describing in 2 Pet 2:22.

    It is unquestionable that there are many similarities. However, the Apostle Paul said the “Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). Those people could stay in the church; however, they would abandon the faith. Moreover, during his farewell speech to Ephesians elders, the Apostle Paul predicted: “I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.  So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears” (Acts 20:29-31). 

              The Catholic Church came from the original church founded by Jesus Christ and helped to be established by Jesus’ Apostles including Paul. The Catholic Church needs to have many truthful doctrines because it comes from the original Christian Church. The difference between the Seventh Day Adventist Church and the Catholic Church is that the SDA Church cannot accept post biblical doctrines such as the church having an authority to change the day of rest established in in Exodus 20:8-11. The SDA Church cannot accept a doctrine stating that its ministers should not marry and have children. The SDA Church cannot accept that the intercessory role of Jesus was switched to be carried out by Mary, Jesus’ mother. The SDA Church cannot accept that any human leader of the church should be named “holy father.”  The SDA Church cannot accept a doctrine stating that any of its human leaders is “infallible.”  The SDA Church cannot accept “The Roman Decretalia” an authoritative work in the Roman ecclesiastical law stating that any human leader of the Christian Church “…can pronounce sentences and judgments in contradiction to the rights of nations, to the law of God and man...He can free himself from the commands of the apostles, he being their superior, and from the rules of the Old Testament...The Pope has power to change times, to abrogate laws, and to dispense with all things, even the precepts of Christ.” Even Jesus did not say that He could abrogate the law. Therefore, according to the Catholic Church, the authority of the Pope is higher than the authority given to Jesus when He said in Matthew 28:18-19:  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples…”   

              Now, we have a doctrine that the Apostle Paul and Jesus did never spoke about. This is the “Health Message” promoted by EGW. However, this health message is highly consistent with John 10: “I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10) and with John 3:16 through which we are promised able to finally enjoy eternal life. If we were able to accept some wisdom from God we would feel that it does not make sense that the agencies of heaven should be working so we could finally have eternal life while we destroy our lives with meat rich in cholesterol and animal toxins, liquor, tobacco or other “recreational drugs.” So we have to admit that the SDA Church has key differences from the Catholic Church while our “perceived” difference with Jesus’ gospel and with the primitive Christian Church, such as the "Health Message" is in order to enhance Jesus’ teachings in our own personal and collective lives.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

FF

Edited October 18, 2015 by Felix Florimon

[Gerr]

There are some "apologetics" ministries and efforts that have worked strenuously to "prove" the "many similarities," yet the fact remains when even just the word "Bible" is mentioned, the two "sides" mean totally opposite things. Catholic belief does not mean the same as Protestant belief by use of this term. And thats just for starters. Methinks you are on the right track Gerry.

Since the RCC's origins can be traced back to the Christian church in Rome, it is no mystery that we should have some commonality with her, but I am curious about Tom's statement because what I see are polar opposites in most theological issues.

[jbal7]

 

 

 

Disregard this. I couldn't get the quote feature to work correctly.

Edited October 19, 2015 by jballew7

[Gerr]

Tom, I am sincerely wanting to know what these "shocking similarities" are.