From Dennis Rainwater
Dennis Rainwater is a believer in the Lord Jesus who cares about the truth and cares about people. 6/4/07
If you have any comments or questions please email me or email Brother Dennis
Seventh Day Adventism
Our Lord brought Dennis out of the Seventh Day Adventist religious system and below are some of his recommendations for info that might help others.
Discoveries in Doctrine (pdf 174 kb) an article by Dennis Rainwater
Here are a few sites worth some investigation. There are several others that provide excellent info as well, but this is more than enough to get you started — and some of these will provide links to the others anyway.
This first site is hosted by a former SDA pastor who now pastors a non-denominational church in Phoenix. I found Mark’s info to be the most useful and navigable when I finished my study OUT, and started examining what conclusions others’ experiences had led them to. I think you will find this link valuable:
The following site is designed to be a virtual meeting place for former Adventists, but provides many stories and other material that would be very useful to inquiring SDAs and those inquiring into Adventism. The crown-jewel of this site is an interactive forum that archives discussions covering every conceivable topic relating to Adventism and Adventists spanning back several years. It is a place I was able to connect to other ‘live’ people who were wresting with the same struggles and questions I was, as I was finishing my journey out. I believe this is an invaluable tool for those SDAs who are finally allowing themselves to question the cognitive dissonance they’ve so long been sternly commanded never to question. It is also an excellent place for someone who is concerned for an SDA friend or family-member to gain a ‘flavor’ for what Adventism is, and how these people think. What their deepest hang-ups are…
https://www.formeradventist.com/
A trapped SDA who might be open to considering truth is usually snagged by one of two major catch-points: 1) The Sabbath, and 2) Ellen White. The Sabbath was the major problem for my wife as we journeyed out together; and while that was a big problem for me as well, I think the equal-to-Scripture authority I had been taught to accord to Mrs. White’s prolific counsels was my largest snag. This site offered me many of the pieces to that part of the puzzle which I needed to unlock the cage…
You asked me to consider sharing some of my perspective on Adventism. I have never put together a biographical account of our journey out, but I did massage the study-notes I’d made during our exodus into a declaration of sorts. I figured this would be a less emotional and volatile means of explaining to our friends and family members why we were leaving ‘the one True Church’ behind in our quest to follow Christ. Leaving SDAism behind doesn’t mandate being shunned by those who remain — but the effect is usually the same as if it were. The spiritual chasm you find yourself shouting across with these folks is usually instantly too wide to bridge, and you find there is little left to talk about any longer. I hoped this paper would give our loved-ones something that they could return to occasionally, and perhaps one day something in it would crack the armor of their defenses. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, it came to be published on a couple of websites — here is the better of those renderings. I would add the caveat that this was written about eight or nine years ago now, and while my perspective on most everything else remains pretty much the same, my views on Mrs. White were considerably softer then than they are now. There can be little doubt that she was being LED to a great degree in a spiritual manner — and it has become blindingly apparent that the spirit which led her to the bulk of her conclusions was not a Holy one….
The following is from the first email that Dennis sent me. I appreciated hearing his thoughts on several topics.
Hi there,
I am Dennis Rainwater, and I happened across your site through the “Amway” portal — I am a former Amway distributor. After some 13 years trapped in that cult (well, the support org. was certainly a cult), God graciously opened the door to let us out! Praise His name!! Anyway, part of what led to that release was that a couple of years earlier, He also released us from the quasi-Christian cult that my wife and I had both grown up in as fourth-generation members: Seventh-day Adventism.
While I was encouraged to see you have material on your site about Mormonism–and did I notice something about Jehovah’s Witnesses?–I didn’t notice anything but a passing reference to Ellen White concerning Adventism… It is my considered opinion that Adventism represents a greater threat to God’s Kingdom than even these cults, because Adventists are so much more subtle in their errors, and nailing down their inaccuracies becomes such a slippery game of semantics. They use this difference to great advantage, and I think they are horribly successful at drawing immature but sincere believers away from one of the Shepherd’s legitimate sheep-pens and into a wolf’s lair… There is a wealth of very useful info out there regarding the abject heresy of SDAism. Perhaps you would consider at least adding a link or two to those sites if you are unprepared to do an investigation and summary yourself?? I feel it would be a worthy addition to such an exhaustive list which you already spotlight….
Thanks in advance for your attention, and I thank you for doing your best to stand for truth. It’s a thankless task, all too often.
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Oh — as an anecdotal aside, God saw fit to plant us in a Calvary Chapel to learn, grow and lick our wounds from Adventism when he led us out of that… I agree with most of what I’ve read here concerning the possibility of a pastor in that movement becoming abusive when tempted by his flesh. But I thought that perhaps you were painting with a wee bit too broad a brush, as equally disastrous problems have the possibility of arising from ANY form of church governance I’ve ever seen.
For example, I am currently an elder in a smallish country Baptist church where we are struggling to lead the body out of three quarters of a century of inwardly-focused, ‘the-lost-can-go-to-hell’ kind of country-club mentality. I believe this kind of mindset has been just as devastating to the souls of our members as was a genuinely out-of-control, ego motivated “pastor disaster” experience we survived in a (different from the above) Calvary Chapel a few years ago — which I might add trumped any of the examples you mentioned re: CC here on your site. (Because we chose to back away from his leadership, this pastor actually engaged in stalking-type behavior; harassing us for years after we left, with macabre, threatening e-mails, calls and the like.)
The point is that each church model has its own strengths and weaknesses — and some are downright unscriptural. (I think most mainstream denominations fall into this category). But it saddens me to see a movement singled out for the spotlight of critique which — while not at all without its own flaws — I believe is generally meeting both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission as honestly and accurately as anyone I’ve seen. Believe me, I’ve seen some of the very worst that Calvary has to offer. But I still think many of the mainstream, ‘most acceptable churches’ are more likely to quietly lead their sheep into the sleepy fields of self-focusedness and ineffective luke-warmness than any CC I’ve observed.
I do agree that no organization is above question and critique, however….
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Thank you much for your time — and may God lead your efforts to edify many folks to His truths,
Den <><