If the gospel of justification by faith alone had been embraced whole-heartedly in 1888 and then in the 1970's, the truth about Ellen G. White's borrowings and doctrinal changes and the truth about 1844 would have had no real damaging impact upon the viability of the SDA movement. The good news about the imputed righteousness of Christ would have carried the day even unto the Last Day.

As it is today, the church members are shocked as they are beginning to understand that the following "Adventist Distinctives" are not actually taught in the Bible:

1. Literal foot washing before observing the Lord's Supper.
2. Mandatory tithe paying as a test of fellowship and salvation.
3. The "investigative judgment" beginning in AD.1844.
4. Christ entering the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary in AD.1844.
5. All post-apostolic era date setting (like 1844 and 538-1798).
6. The "three angles messages of Revelation 14" beginning to sound in AD.1844.
7. The United States of America as being the "image to the beast" of Revelation 13.
8. Spiritual gifts such as the visions and dreams of Ellen White are not inerrant, not equally authoritative with the Bible, not to be used to determine doctrine, and not of equal inspiration with the Bible.
9. 1-0/1A0 pacifism which forbids the use of deadly force to defend ourselves, our families, or our country in a just war.
10. The clean/unclean Levitical food laws being mandatorally binding upon Christians.
11. Wine in the New Testament is grape juice only.
12. No jewelry wearing for Christians.
13. A "close of probation" for the believer in Christ before Christ comes.
14. A period of time, called the "time of Jacob's trouble" just before Christ comes again, when the intercession of Christ's imputed merit will no longer be necessary for the remnant "perfected" believers.
15. The "blotting out of sin" as a special or "final atonement" for the people of God which is different than the forgiveness of sins.
16. The "latter rain" as a second blessing of the Holy Spirit which restores the character of God's people to the original innocence of Adam before the fall.
17. Sinless perfection for the "final generation" before Christ comes.
18. The "Last Days", the "time of the end" began in AD.1798 rather than the apostolic era.

They feel betrayed by the leaders in which they had been placing their confidence. Members are leaving in droves since 1980. The very truths that Adventism was raised up to restore are now spoken evil of because of the sins of the SDA leadership, especially the Ellen G. White Estate, which has resisted and hedged up the way for the truth to be taught to the Seventh-day Adventist members.

These reforms in Adventist teaching are absolutely necessary in order for a true revival of primitive godliness to take place among the advent people. Then and only then will the people of God in other folds begin to take the Seventh-day Adventist denomination seriously and join this God-ordained movement to restore the bible and only the bible as the rule of faith.

Seventh-day Adventism is not a cult. There are cultic Seventh-day Adventists, but the essence of the Adventist movement is true historic Protestant Christianity.

The Adventist movement in its truest evangelical expression as God intends this movement to be will be a "restoration" movement rather than an "innovation" movement. Just look at the true essence of Adventism:

1. Adventism uplifts the "Third Use of the Law" which is so important in this lawless diabolical age in which we live.
2. Adventism uplifts the "Second Use of the Law" which is so important as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ to continually be justified by faith in His sinless life and atoning death on Calvary.
3. Adventism re-establishes the glorious truth of the resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming of Christ as the hope of the believer rather than the Grecian view of the "immortal soul" which lives on after death.
4. Adventism affirms the virgin birth of Christ and His unique incarnation as fully God and fully man.
5. Adventism is a necessary bulwark against the prevailing error of antinomian Dispensationalism which is sweeping the evangelical Christian world today and foolishly focuses on the Zionist events in the middle east, a rebuilding of the Levitical temple, and a "secrete rapture" of the church.
6. Adventism uplifts and restores the Sabbath commandment as a memorial to Christ's having created the universe in six literal days. The Sabbath is God's emphatic rebuke to the abomination of Darwinian evolutionism.
7. Adventism affirms the Biblical truth of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden as the origin of sin and suffering and death. This truth is denied by all forms of Darwinism.
8. Adventism affirms the existence of a real fallen angel named Lucifer who became Satan along with one third of the angelic host.
9. Adventism affirms a literal world-wide flood which destroyed the lawless unbelieving antediluvian world and the saving of Noah and his family by God's unmerited grace.
10. Adventism affirms the vicarious atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ in that He is the Seed of the woman who has fulfilled all the righteous demands of the Law for us so that in Him we are accounted sinless and righteous in His sight even unto the coming of the Lord.
11. Adventism is a warning and a witness that God is about to destroy all the world and all who refuse to repent, believe the gospel of Christ, and allow God to write His law upon their hearts through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
12. Adventism affirms that God will totally annihilate sin, Satan, and all unrepentant sinners at the final judgment rather than an eternally burning fire in unending pain and suffering.
13. Adventism as a true child of the Reformation is an ongoing rebuke to the abominable errors of Roman Catholicism.
14. Adventism is a rebuke to modern day Spiritualism which seeks to contact and communicate with the dead..

In essence then, Adventism as God intends it to be, is God's final warning to all the world to repent and be justified by His unmerited "grace alone" through "faith alone" in the sinless life and atoning death of "Christ alone" as revealed in the "Bible alone".

This is the essence of true Adventism which Ellen G. White intended for the movement to be. Her vision was for Adventism to be the foremost voice in all the world to uplift the sinless, crucified, and risen Savior to all the world. She never intended her writings to become so prominent in the Advent Movement as they are today as the "twenty eight fundamentals" and the recent Sabbath School Quarterly portray her writings to be. It is time for the Seventh-day Adventist movement to take off the "training wheels" of Ellen G. White and become all that the Lord intended this movement to be. Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Solo Christo, Sola Fide.