Why did you become a Seventh-day Adventist? You came out of such an atheistic background. To make a leap to becoming a Christian is huge in itself, but on top of that you became an Adventist. Why?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in most areas of the world is seen as a sect—we keep a strange day, have a strange woman prophet, and are in the same category in most minds as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons. But when you study the history and you study the Gospel, you find that the Gospel is everlasting—it has never changed.

The perception of law and grace must have been the same throughout history if it’s an everlasting Gospel. The perception of prophecy must be unchangeable because God doesn’t change. The view of salvation must be unchangeable because God doesn’t change His modus operandi of salvation, does He? He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. It must be consistent.

Adam and Eve were saved by the blood of the lamb. The Jews were saved by the blood of the lamb. The lamb foreshadowed the Lamb of God whose blood would truly take away all sins. But that’s not what modern theology says. It teaches that the Israelites were saved by the law because they were under law, but we are under grace. But that’s a misnomer. You can’t have grace without a broken law. You have to be a transgressor of that law in order to qualify for grace.

What does the Christian world teach about prophecy? Compare that to what Paul taught and what Jesus taught, and what the reformers taught. Who teaches those same things today?

Only the Seventh-day Adventist Church has the opinion of Paul, John, and all the reformers on prophecy, including the day-year principle, which is not just Adventist, but Biblical. It’s there right from the beginning. Except for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, today’s Christians are either preterist or futurist. Only the Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches the historic continuous interpretation of prophecy, which is a Biblical paradigm. It’s also the paradigm of the Reformation: Luther used it, Melanchthon used it, Calvin used it, Knox used it, Cranmer used it. They all used it.

What you’re saying is that Adventists are a unique type of Christian fundamentally, in that they have the truth.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church considers itself to be the remnant discussed in Revelation 12:17. A remnant looks like the original, so a remnant must teach what the original taught. You go to the earliest church fathers, and you’ll see they teach exactly the same as the Seventh-day Adventist Church today. Study the Reformation and you’ll find the same views as those taught in the Spirit of Prophecy. The reformers may not have had the full picture, but they had the same principles as the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Unfortunately, the reformed churches have not maintained the views of the reformers. They have a different belief system. They’ve largely exchanged their view on the Antichrist for futurism, although some cling to preterism. Many have an antinomian theology, which says that the law is gone, and we are now under grace. So we have all these theologies out there that are not consistent with the early Church or the Reformation. The reformed churches cannot be a remnant because they are unlike the original.

Being the remnant is not about being arrogant or the “only” ones that are going to be saved. That’s not what that term means. It’s about being true to the original. I think even Adventists don’t realize what the term means and have bought into the idea that that term means we are “better” than others, a kind of spiritual pride. But that’s not the right attitude to have when we say we are the remnant.

How do you present these overwhelmingly persuasive facts to other Christians without coming across as arrogant, sectarian, or rebellious?

When I started out doing evangelism, I would explain what the Bible says to people like this: here it is, you eat it, you swallow it, that’s it.

I don’t do that anymore. I say “this is what these people say,” “this what we say over here,” and “what happened in between?” Then it does not become the Seventh-day Adventist Church with all the knowledge. Instead it is a continuous truth that has never ever changed. And if another denomination has had a paradigm shift somewhere in the middle of all that history, then they’ve disqualified themselves as a denomination for the remnant. If they’ve had this paradigm shift, then they will be at loggerheads with the remnant, with the reformers, and most importantly with the Bible. You really have to contort the Bible to come to futurism or preterism. It’s simply untenable and unsupportable.

The power of that logic and the historic and Biblical evidence that supports it isn’t enough to convince those that, for example, believe Sunday is the Lord’s day, rather than the true Sabbath on Saturday. It’s not enough to convince people that their belief structure within their church is not supported by the Bible. So if the logic and the facts aren’t enough what else is there?

Nothing that you can say or do will convince any- body. The Bible already says that. All we can do is sow, we cannot convict. That’s the missing equation. On the basis of logic alone, I can defend my faith, but the Holy Spirit does the rest. John 16:8 says that the Holy Spirit “will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” Our job is to share the truth, and to pray that the Spirit will work in the hearts of our friends who cannot yet see the truth.

If we’re so wrong, where are the theologians that stand up and say “excuse me, let me point out that you’re wrong over here.“ Take for example the occasional ads people put out offering a monetary reward to prove from the Bible that the Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. No one ever gets the reward because it can’t be proven from the Bible. But it takes more than flashy billboards to change the heart. It takes the Holy Spirit’s working.

People argue that one man’s truth is another man’s error. How do you deal with the perception that it’s Walter Veith saying this that or the other thing. It’s Walter Veith’s truth, he’s got a strange paradigm, and we shouldn’t believe it.

If it was my truth, then woe unto me because why didn’t I have it in the beginning? Where did I get it from? Didn’t I get it from the Word? It was a war to accept the Word over what my paradigm was. I had to adapt my truth—no, eliminate my truth—in order to accept the Biblical paradigm.

So we’re talking about the reliable source. The issue is the Word.

You talk about prophecy being an important element of your conversion process. Can you expand that?

The very first prophecy that really struck me is Daniel 7. Being a non-practicing Roman Catholic, I can tell you that the little horn of Daniel 7 can be none other than the papal system. If you look at all the criteria, the probability of it being someone else is zero. It’s Rome. It’s the only one that fits. Like some Protestants say, “if the little horn power is not Rome, then Rome has bad luck to be so exactly like it.”

What do you mean by the term “Rome”and what does the Bible say?

The papal system. I’m not talking about the people or a specific Pope. I’m talking about the political system. This is the system that arises at the right time, gets political status at the right time, maintains it for the exact prophetic period, changes times and laws, messes with God’s time, uproots three kingdoms, and persecutes the saints. All the Biblical criteria fit exactly.

There’s just no other power over that period of time that can qualify. It can only be the papal system.

You have a series that argues the need to restore the Reformation. In the time of Martin Luther, when the reformers studied the Bible and began to break free of the papal chains, did they know the Beast power of Revelation was the papal system?

They were all of one accord. Every single reformer agreed with exactly these Biblical criteria&mdaah;even people like Spurgeon. They made it clear that there is no way we can let the papal system off the hook. That is the Antichrist power.

It is not a unique truth of the SDA Church, but a rediscovered truth that had been buried by antiProtestant rhetoric on the part of the Jesuits. Orkaza and Ribera invented preterism and futurism, which have been swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the churches today. But those doctrines are not Protestant positions.

The day-year principle is a Protestant position, not just an Adventist position. The modern belief is that there is a literal 3.5 year period when the Antichrist will come. That’s a modern position, but not a true Protestant position.

Where does the day-year principle come from?

Ezekiel says to take a day for a year. The reformers used it. Then it was lost during the Counter Reformation, and the Adventists picked it up again. This is another example of the remnant being like the original.

Is this rediscovery of the truth of the Beast power being equated with the papal system widely endorsed today within the Adventist Church?

That’s an interesting question. It depends where you are. If you’re in the Third World, where the majority of Adventists are, then that is absolutely the position—unshakeable, immovable, like a rock. If you go into the First World, you have an unbelievable dichotomy. You will have some people literally stand up and say “that theology is a childhood disease of former years within the Adventist Church. We’ve outgrown that. The papal system is not the Antichrist.”

Some people are signing documents to join ecumenical fan clubs to the Papacy—now I’m talking prominent leaders within the Church who have that position. Of course, if they have that position, automatically they reject the Spirit of Prophecy by pretending not to reject it, by saying, “she was a wonderful person, and she did have prophetic insight for her day,” or, “she can be used for devotional purposes but when it comes to prophetic interpretation or Biblical exegesis or historic accuracy, it was just her opinion, or just her own research, it wasn’t divinely inspired.”

So this type of thinking says “this body of knowledge in the Spirit of Prophecy is only half right.” How do you determine which part is right or wrong if you follow that approach?

Exactly. When I came into the Church, I wanted the Bible and the Bible alone. I became an Adventist based on the Bible, not on the Spirit of Prophecy. I had nothing to do with it and did not even have one lecture on it.

As far as the Spirit of Prophecy went, I didn’t have a clue. I knew there was this body of writings, but I had nothing to do with it. But a few months after becoming a SDA, I got a phone call from a former colleague who was highly irate that I had become an SDA. He mocked Ellen White with such anger in his voice, I thought to myself “wow, must be something in it.”

So, I started reading it, starting with The Desire of Ages. Then I went through the whole health message and I had huge problems with it, because I had to change my lifestyle. And I made lists and lists and lists of her statements, which later I actually empirically tested in the laboratory, and that gave me such faith in the Spirit of Prophecy, it just blows my mind.

There are so many critics of the Spirit of Prophecy. Just go to the Internet, and you will find a list that will boggle the mind. Most of that list is just people who don’t understand the plan of salvation, the atonement, and the sanctuary message. So you can scrap those.

Then you have all her so-called false prophecies, and there are many people even within the Adventist Church, that take issue with some of these points. But I have discovered over time that the more you research something, even if you find it incredible, she always comes out on top. She’s always right. I’ve come to the conclusion that this can only be inspired, so I accept it.

If there’s something I don’t understand, I shelve it, and inevitably, maybe years later, the answer will come. Case in point: there are some in our ranks who question where she writes “the French Revolution is a forerunner of what is going to happen in the entire world.” Some say, “but that’s ridiculous, the French Revolution was a localized event and nobody in his right mind would go around even imagining that this kind of revolution could be on a universal scale.”

But then we hear Condoleeza Rice making a statement that George Bush is completing the work of the French Revolution on a universal scale, and you put the two together and you say “what do we have here?” Then it gets interesting.

So, we’re not talking about Walter Veith’s truth, Adventism’s truths, or even the Church’s truths. We’re talking about God’s truth—universal truth.

When did you choose to become a messenger of this truth?

Once you discover this truth, if you don’t want to tell everyone around you about it, there’s something wrong with you. That’s a conversion experience. Also, those people out there who don’t know, what’s their probability of salvation? Somebody has to tell them. You have to tell them the truth.

You get so much opposition. Like Jeremiah you say, “I don’t want to speak about this anymore Lord, I’m not going to do this anymore. I don’t know why I have to be bashed on my head all the time over this. I’ve had it.”

And then what does Jeremiah say? “Ah, but your word was a fire in my heart...” and there you go, you just keep on going and get bashed again.

Take my first lecture on secret societies for example. It was like the world caved in on me. I had so much criticism it was unbelievable. And I went back and I studied and I looked at the Spirit of Prophecy and I said, “wow, these people who say secret societies have nothing to do with prophetic truth have never read the Spirit of Prophecy!”

Ellen White says that the prophecies of Revelation and John tell us to stay away from secret societies. She mentions the Freemasons by name. So, when this criticism became so great, I had only one lecture, and eventually two lectures. I withdrew for a while, and I studied, and I had all the occult resources at hand, and in the end there were 36 lectures, each of them more than an hour and a half long.

This is not a conspiracy. This is a confederacy. The Bible says there will be a confederacy, and that the whole world will unite in unison with the Beast—the Papacy—to counteract the truth. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. I have no issue with people saying, “you might be wrong on that little point or that little point” but there is no denying the global picture.

The more you evangelize and teach these truths, surely there must be more and more increasing evidence to support your assertion?

It’s amazing. People don’t know what kind of evangelistic tool this is. And I can just say that thousands of people, and that’s not an exaggeration, are embracing this truth because for the first time, the mess in this world starts making some from of sense. The overall picture is very clear. We may not have all the dots right, we can shift them around a bit, but there’s absolutely no doubt that there are forces working behind the scenes to bring about the exact prophecies as they are in the Bible.

Can you share with us in your experience how to develop that relationship and get to know God after the time of conversion?

There’s a tendency to latch onto other people, and that is a poor tendency because others will always fail you.

My wife is not married to me because I’m perfect; she’s married to me in spite of my imperfections. So it is with any relationship.

There’s only One person who’s absolutely steady and that’s Christ. People must be absolutely trained to make the transition to relying fully on Christ and not just on a speaker or mentor. A speaker can fall away tomorrow. The only ultimate mentor you must strive for is Christ.