28. Are Adventists trying to be Jewish?

No.  This type of accusation is often made, although it is usually difficult to pinpoint what exactly critics are trying to argue.  Of course, Christianity is essentially a Jewish religion: worshiping a Hebrew-named God YHWH, founded by Jewish disciples, who believed an itinerant Jewish preacher from Nazareth fulfilled ancient prophecies found in sacred Hebrew scriptures (i.e. the Old Testament of the Bible), that He was the King of the Jews, Messiah (i.e. Christ in Greek, meaning the anointed) and saviour of all mankind. 

Furthermore, if the suggestion is that Adventists are trying to be Jewish by keeping the Sabbath or abstaining from eating ‘unclean’ foods such as pork, Adventists would argue such practices are not in fact Jewish but pre-date Judaism.  As noted in further detail below, the seventh-day Sabbath is part of the Moral Law, found in the Ten Commandments and first given to all mankind at Eden (Gen 2:2-3; Is. 56:2-5; Mar 2:27 and Luk 6:1-5). Certain ‘clean’ animals meanwhile were given to Noah on the Ark some centuries before Moses was even born (Gen 7:2).  Thus, for the avoidance of doubt, the SDA Church does not teach Christians are obligated to keep Jewish ceremonial laws, such as circumcision, as clearly instructed in Acts 15.

Finally, the SDA Church may seem ‘Jewish’ to the extent that it attempts to remove pagan philosophy (notably Greek-Platonism and Gnosticism) from Christianity and return to ideas actually grounded in scripture – often described as the principle of ‘Wholism’. The SDA Church believes it has a special role pursuant to Revelation 14 in imparting this message to the rest of Christianity, to call it out of ‘Babylon’. For example, as admitted by German Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann in Spirit of Life (1992):

“In the degree to which Christianity cut itself off from its Hebrew roots and acquired Hellenistic and Roman form, it lost its eschatological hope and surrendered its apocalyptic alternative to “this world” of violence and death.  It merged into late antiquity’s Gnostic religion of redemption.  From Justin onwards, most Fathers revered Plato as a “Christian before Christ” and extolled his feeling for the divine transcendence and for the values of the spiritual world.  God’s eternity now took the place of God’s future, heaven replaced the coming kingdom, the spirit that redeems the soul from the body supplanted the Spirit as “the well of life”, the immortality of the soul displaced the resurrection of the body, and the yearning for another world became a substitute for changing this one”. (p89) (emphasis added)

Wholism accounts for many of the SDA Church’s beliefs, including the Trinity, the Sabbath, emphasis on the physical 2^nd Coming of Christ, a rejection of Antinomianism, Soul Sleep, promotion of health, many of its eschatological (end-time) systems and its remnant message.  Perhaps for the above reasons, whilst Wholsim is not one of the 28 official fundamentals of the SDA Church (as it encompasses many as a theological framework), it is often viewed by Adventist theologians as Adventism’s most valuable contribution to Christianity.

            See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_theology

            And: http://spectrummagazine.org/files/archive/archive16-20/18-1bull.pdf

Also:http://www.friendsofsabbath.org/Further_Research/Bacchiocchis%20Research/Immortality%20or%20Resurrection.pdf

Also: http://ponderanew.typepad.com/jackwprovonsha/wholism/