By Theodore Shoebat

Donald Trump brought up Carson’s Seventh Day Adventist religion, and in a subtle way,  contrasted it with his Presbyterian faith, saying:

I’m Presbyterian. I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about

Now, in all fairness, Trump never condemned or explicitly criticized the Seventh Day Adventist religion, but he did spark a discussion that needs to take place, as to the dangers and bizarre nature of Carson’s Adventism.

What most Americans don’t know is that Ben Carson believes in the conspiracy theory that is collectively accepted by the paranoid 7th Day Adventists: that the US government will enforce the Sunday Sabbath. Here in this video, Ben Carson, in a 7th Day Adventist church, says that it will be conservatives who will persecute 7th Day Adventists in America for the cause of the Sunday Sabbath law (that would be you, Mr. Conservative):

Now if a law were to be passed making Sunday a day of obligatory rest and worship, I would see no wrong in this. Sunday is the day in which the Lord arose from the dead, and defeated death. What then would be so evil about this? Ben Carson would then go against conservative Christians for pushing for a Sunday Sabbath. This also means that Ben Carson believes that the Catholic Church is the Antichrist system that will usher in the Sunday law which — in the Adventist perspective — will be a sign of the End Times. According to Ellen G. White, the founder of the Adventist church:

The prophecy of Revelation 13 declares that the power represented by the beast with lamblike horns shall cause “the earth and them which dwell therein” to worship the papacy — there symbolized by the beast “like unto a leopard.” This prophecy will be fulfilled when the United States shall enforce Sunday observance, which Rome claims as the special acknowledgment of her supremacy.”

Carson believes this apocalyptic conspiracy theory. While many protestants would agree with some of these sentiments, it is shockingly true that Carson completely blasphemes protestant theology. Let us look at some of the other dangerous and heretical beliefs of the Carson’s SDA church. For one, the SDA sect is anti-Trinitarian, meaning that it is against the Holy Trinity, or the theological teaching that God is three — Father, Son and Holy Spirit –; that the Father is of the same essence as the Son, and that the Holy Spirit is of the same essence as the Father and the Son, and that while they are separate Persons, they are nonetheless one. Joseph Bates, the one who developed the Saturday Sabbath theology within Adventism, and who convinced Ellen G. White and her husband, James White, of Sabbatarian Adventism, rejected the Trinity, saying:

 My parents were members of long standing in the Congregational church, with all of their converted children thus far, and anxiously hoped that we would also unite with them. But they embraced some points in their faith which I could not understand. I will name two only: their mode of baptism, and doctrine of the trinity. My father, who had been a deacon of long standing with them, labored to convince me that they were right in points of doctrine.… Respecting the trinity, I concluded that it was an impossibility for me to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, was also the Almighty God, the Father, one and the same being.

Joseph Bates

James White, Ellen G. White’s husband and the co-founder for Carson’s SDA cult, said this about the Trinity:

The way spiritualizers have disposed of or denied the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ is first using the old unscriptural Trinitarian creed. (James White, January 24, 1846, The Day Star)

 Adventists like Carson today actually claim to believe in the Trinity, but they do not. For they believe that Jesus Christ is really the angel Michael in the flesh, and thus deify an angel. Ellen G. White herself wrote:

He (Jesus) was revealed to them as the Angel of Jehovah, the Captain of the Lord’s Host, Michael the Archangel

Ellen G. White

Carson agrees with with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who say in their own Watchtower doctrine:

Scriptural evidence indicates that the name Michael applied to God’s Son before he left heaven to become Jesus Christ and also after his return (Aid to Bible Understanding, Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, 1971, 1152).

This evil and anti-Trinitarian heresy is most easily refuted by St. Paul himself, who declares that Christ is greater than the angels, and that the Father never spoke to the angels as He did to His Son. In his letter to the Hebrews he writes:

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. 

For to which of the angels did He ever say:

“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You”?

And again:

“I will be to Him a Father,
And He shall be to Me a Son”?

But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says:

“Let all the angels of God worship Him.”

And of the angels He says:

“Who makes His angels spirits
And His ministers a flame of fire.”

But to the Son He says:

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.”

And:

“You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
They will perish, but You remain;
And they will all grow old like a garment;
Like a cloak You will fold them up,
And they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will not fail.”

But to which of the angels has He ever said:

“Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”?

Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? (Hebrews 1:1-14) 

This entire Scripture explicitly refutes Carson’s heresy that Christ is Michael the Archangel, regardless of whatever sophisms they try to utilize to explain theses verses away. God speaks to His Son — God the Son — in ways that He would never use when speaking to angels. This alone refutes the claims of the heretics.

Ellen G. White was also a false prophet. She supported the false prophecy of William Miller who said that Christ would return in 1843, and then come back a second time in 1844. When Christ did not return Ellen G. White came to Miller’s defense and said that while the date was wrong, the event was simply misinterpreted: Christ was not to return on the specific dates given, but was to enter into the Holy of Holies in Heaven and begin judging the world and acting as a mediator. In her own words:

Had Adventists, after the great disappointment in 1844, held fast their faith … receiving the message and proclaiming it to the world, they would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and Christ would have come ere this to receive his people to their reward … it was not the will of God the coming of Christ should be thus delayed. (Selected Messages, Book 1, p. 68)

Such a belief belittles the sacrifice of the Crucifixion, and it was this doctrine that would set off the SDA movement. In other words, the SDA cult was founded for the purpose of defending the false prophet, William Miller.

WIllima Miller

White also said that the reason why Christ has not returned was because Adventist did not give away enough of their money to her ministry, and that if they did give enough, the Second Coming would be ushered more quickly:

If they will be faithful in bringing to His treasury the means lent them, His work will make rapid advancement. Many souls will be won to the truth and the day of Christ’s coming will be hastened. (Counsels on Stewardship p. 45)

Has Carson has never exposed the abuses by his own cult. Abuses are very rampant within the SDA. In a survey taken by the Oregon Conference of SDA Family Life Department, these were the results:

24% have been divorced or permanently separated.
30% were physically abused at home before age 18.
43% were verbally or emotionally abused at home before age 18.
16% experienced incest at home before age 18.
13% have abused drugs or alcohol.
37% have lived with a drug or alcohol abuser.
7% have attempted suicide.
27% have had suicidal inclinations.

 Moreover, Carson has never exposed the Nazi history of his cult. the great majority of Adventists in Germany were in favor of Hitler, because of “his personal dedication and his abstinence from tea, coffee, alcohol and meat, practices shared by the Adventists, [therefore] he was welcomed as a savior.” In the Adventist town of Friedensau, 99.9% of the population voted in favor of the Nazis. The departmental secretary of the Adventist South German Union Conference, M. Busch, was in support of Hitler and “approvingly quoted Hitler’s statement in Mein Kampf  that ‘for the political Fuhrer all religious teachings and arrangements are untouchable.’” The Adventists were banned by the Nazis, but this ban was lifted once the cult declared their allegiance to Hitler. While there were Adventists who righteously risked their lives to defend Jews, the official Adventist movement did get rid of any of its members who had Jewish backgrounds.

The Adventists were also in favor for the Nazi eugenics policy, and supported the sterilization of those considered “unfit” for German society. According to one historical statement:

The mentally weak, schizophrenics, epileptics, blind, deaf, crippled, alcoholics, drug addicts – all were to be sterilized. ‘This law,’ an article in the Seventh-day Adventist paper Jugend-Leitstern said, was ‘a great advance in the uplifting of our people.’  (R. Sulzmann, “Erbkrank,” Gegenwarts-Frage, vol. 9, nr.1, 1934, p.8, quoted by: Sicher, “Seventh-day Adventist Publications and the Nazi Temptation,” 19)

The Adventists also believed that by their health laws and teachings they were bringing Germany into a new world order. Adolf Minck, soon to be president of the German Adventist Church, said, “We are not unprepared for the new order. After all, we have helped prepare the way for it, and helped to bring it about.”

 Hulda Jost, the leader of the Adventist Nurses Association, worked heavily with the Nazis and became a propagandist for the Nazis in the United States. While she was in the US in 1936 she spoke for a  pro-Nazi organization called Friends of the New German, in which she said that “Hitler doesn’t want war,” and that Germany was simply rearming to defend itself against Russia. When asked about Hitler’s persecution of the Jews Jost said, “Hitler has merely wanted to take leadership away from the Jews but he doesn’t want to hurt them.” During the war the Adventists expressed nothing but support for Germany’s aggressions, saying “in total war there can only be total commitment and sacrifice.” The Adventist church in Germany issued an instructional circular stating that “God had commanded: ‘Submit yourselves, for the Lord’s sake, to every authority,” thus using Scripture to justify obedience to Hitler’s regime.

The president of the East German Conference, W. Mueller, has been quoted as saying:

Under no circumstances did any Adventist have the right to resist the government, even if the government prevented him from exercising his faith. Resistance would be unfortunate because it would mark Adventists as opponents of the new state, a situation that should be prevented.

 After the war the Adventist church believed that it was justified in its support for the Third Reich. It was not until 1948 that they began to investigate Adventist support for the Nazis. But this was not because of some sense of guilty, rather it was because an American military official, Major J.C. Thompson, chief of  the Religious Affairs Section of the American Military Government in Berlin,  sent a letter to the Adventists asking them why they had not removed all of the Nazis who had positions within the SDA sect. Thompson also added that while the Catholics put up immense opposition against the Nazis, the Adventists did not. The General Conference then began to ask Nazi Adventists to step down, and this greatly upset the German Adventists, especially because it was the General Conference that helped them appease the Nazis in the first place.

But out of all of the evils of the SDA, one of the most disturbing was that of Roch Theriault, the leader of an Adventist group that lived in French Canada. Theriault rejected Catholicism and joined the SDA and went through its rehabilitation course to help him quit drinking. He became a very enthusiastic advocate for the SDA’s holistic classes to help people leave smoking and drinking, and which promoted more “healthy” living. He started going door to door passing out SDA literature, and soon he accumulated a group of followers. He convinced all of them to drop out of school, telling them that Christ was returning soon and education would mean nothing then.

Theriault and his followers went on to a retreat to Sainte-Marie, in the Beauce region, about 65km south of Québec City, where they established the “Healthy Living Clinic,” an alternative medicine venue where you could get organic foods and holistic literature to help you cure any ailment.

Without getting in all of the details, some very sadistic and violent things happened within this cult. Theriault got three of the female members pregnant, and he had one Guy Veer to look after the “animals,” that is, the children in the cult that were not of his seed. One night a two year old child named Samuel was crying and Guy arose and yelled at the child. He then picked the child up by the throat and punched him several times. The child’s head was seen “flopping around on his neck”. Theriault, the cult’s leader, took a pair of scissors and cut his penis off. The toddler Samuel was found dead the next day.

Roch Theriault

The cult members then worked together to burn the child and burry the remains so as to allow birds to consume them. Months later Veer was found guilty in a tribunal conducted by the cult for some infraction. He was found guilty and his punishment was castration. They placed him on a table and Theriault cut his testicles off.

In 1985 one of the female members, Gabrielle, put her five month old baby in a wheelbarrow outside in the middle of the winter. It was 14 degrees F. In a few hours the child froze to death. Theriault hated the child and said that it had the “mark of the devil” and that killing it would be only good. The actions of this group were so diabolical and horrifying. Theriault even had his own son, Roch Jr., molested, and he himself would rape the other children. He would also teach the children that God lived under the earth, because flowers grew from under the ground, and at times God demanded blood sacrifice. So, he and the children would sacrifice a goat and one of the children — one of his daughters — bathed in its blood. They would also conduct rituals that involved upside down crosses and horrific sexual acts.

He would inject a 94% ethanol solution into his followers’ stomachs. In one instance he took one of the women, Solange Boilard, after she complained of a stomach ache,  punched her in the stomach, jammed a plastic tube up her rectum to perform a crude enema with molasses and olive oil, then cut open her abdomen, and ripped off part of her intestines with his bare hands. Another member sowed her stomach up with a needle and string, and another member shoved a tube down her throat and blew. She died the next day.

This is the fruit of the SDA: cult abuse, heresy, murder and the support for Nazism. If I were Trump I would be using this information so as to counter Carson when he questions his faith.