How Does Forgiveness Really Work? What Does the Bible Say?

Christian growth is the experience of allowing Jesus Christ to work in our lives through the Holy Spirit and restore in us the image we were designed for—God’s image of selfless, other-centered love.

Seventh-day Adventist, like other Christians, believe that after the second coming of Christ, God will cleanse our earth by fire and then restore it back to Eden-like perfection.

As most Christians, Seventh-day Adventists hope for the time when sin and evil will no longer exist. The Bible teaches that God will bring an end to sin after a thousand-year period of time called the millennium.

The thought of dying can seem scary. And the idea of being resurrected—or coming back to life—can seem a little uncomfortable.

The second coming of Jesus Christ is an event the Bible prophesies will occur at the end of this world’s history. It’s called His second coming to distinguish it from His first, when Jesus was born to Mary and lived as a human before dying on the Cross.

The ancient Israelite sanctuary had a daily service and a yearly service. Jesus’ death on the Cross and His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary reflect these services.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church believes God established marriage and the family unit to be blessings to humanity. They make up a relational structure that can reflect the multifaceted nature of God’s love.

The patterns of actions and words that make up behavior are central to any type of belief system because they flow from those beliefs. Seventh-day Adventists look to the Bible, with Jesus as the perfect example, for guidance on shaping our daily behavior.

Seventh-day Adventists believe that the biblical Sabbath is a beautiful gift of rest that God gave to us at Creation and that remains valid to this day. Falling on the seventh day of the week—Saturday—it connects us to God in a special way and offers us a weekly opportunity to be physically, mentally, and spiritually refreshed.

Love for God and our fellow humans is the overriding principle of the Seventh-day Adventist faith. And we express that love in an overarching way through how we manage the things—material and immaterial—that God has entrusted to us.

Seventh-day Adventists believe that God’s law reflects His character of love (1 John 4:8; Romans 13:10). It is perfectly summarized in the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, showing us the practical application of loving God and loving other people.

Adventists believe the gift of prophecy is a spiritual gift that the Holy Spirit gives to specific individuals to help the church carry out Jesus’ Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20). Prophecy helps strengthen, encourage, and comfort His people (1 Corinthians 14:3).

Seventh-day Adventists believe that spiritual gifts are talents that the Holy Spirit gives to believers and followers of Jesus Christ. These gifts are different but complementary, and they often equip followers of Christ with the ability to spread the good news about Jesus and encourage its members.

Like many Protestant Christians, Seventh-day Adventists believe in the practice commonly called the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. They drink grape juice and eat unleavened bread in obedience to Jesus’ direct instructions to do it in remembrance of Him (1 Corinthians 11:24–25).

Like many Protestant Christians worldwide and throughout history, the Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in baptism, a ceremony in which individuals go under water to publicly demonstrate dying to an old life and beginning a new life in Christ. We baptize people by immersion, as taught and exemplified in the Bible.

Seventh-day Adventists believe in biblical unity—the idea of believers in Jesus being united by the truth of the Bible and the common goal of representing God and His love to the world.

The “remnant” are a group of faithful believers that have existed throughout history and proclaimed God’s truth, love, and plan to save humanity. They “remain” with God even amid persecution and also when it seems everyone else has rebelled against God or compromised their beliefs.

Seventh-day Adventists believe that the idea of the church is an important biblical concept.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church believes that salvation is a gift that anyone can receive through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. When we accept His sacrificial death in our place, He saves us from the penalty and power of sin (or evil), which prevents us from experiencing true freedom.

Jesus Christ, a person who lived in first-century Palestine, is the foundation of the Adventist faith. This is because it’s only through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that any of us have hope of life beyond the toil, suffering, and death of this world.

The “Great Controversy” is the phrase Seventh-day Adventists typically use to describe the cosmic spiritual conflict between the forces of good (God) and the forces of evil or sin (Satan/the devil).

Seventh-day Adventists believe that God is the creator of our world. They come to this conclusion from the first book of the Bible—Genesis. The account there tells us that God took six literal days to form the earth and all it contains, including us humans.

Like most Protestant Christians, Seventh-day Adventists believe in God the Father as part of the Godhead. We call Him Father because of His role towards Jesus. Jesus Himself encouraged us to also call Him Father.

Seventh-day Adventists believe that humanity was created perfect and that, at our very core, we crave this kind of perfection and unity with God. But unfortunately, the Bible teaches that we chose to be wise in our own eyes and disobey God, which led to a natural tendency to be sinful, evil, and selfish.