About SDA For Me

Our Story

Welcome to this website, which is devoted to defending our Seventh-day Adventist fundamental beliefs as an expression of grace and truth in Jesus Christ. It exists to meet the challenge of Life Assurance Ministries (LAM). Founded and led by ex-SDA pastor Dale Ratzlaff, LAM suggests that we Adventists are a non-Christian organization basically because of our beliefs regarding 1) the Sabbath, 2) the Pre-advent Judgment, and 3) the role of Ellen G. White. Dale and his team travel the world raising questions about the SDA message and mission. He says “You can’t be an Adventist without being tainted” by legalism and other unbiblical errors. Coleen, one of his leading assistants, says publicly: “God removed from me the Adventist spirit and gave me His Holy Spirit.” As if we Adventists are possessed or at least hounded by evil spirits!

Recently in Lincoln, Nebraska, a large community church hosted weekend meetings by LAM. Several days beforehand, Outlook magazine editor Martin Weber visited the senior pastor of that church and requested to be allowed to participate with the discussion panel of ex-Adventists for the Q&A sessions. After all, if Adventists are being publicly analyzed, shouldn’t they be able to represent their own beliefs as they are discussed?

This pastor welcomed Martin to his church but said that the meetings that weekend were outsourced to one of his local elders, an ex-Adventist, in connection with LAM. This elder consulted with Dale Ratzlaff, whose answer to Martin was “No.” Dale would not allow Martin to participate, but just to attend and submit written questions.

Most seminars of this type include a live Q&A session from the floor, but not this one from LAM. Dale allowed no live interaction with the audience during any of his three meetings. Meanwhile, he and his staff made dozens of claims and charges against Adventist beliefs and leaders that can only be described as unfair and untrue. Perhaps Dale did not intend to misrepresent his former church, but that certainly happened.

Frustrated and heartbroken to see 350 people in Dale’s audience confused and led astray, Martin retreated after the meeting to the office where he works, the headquarters of the Mid-America region of Seventh-day Adventists. In the storage section of the basement is a private prayer location. With nobody else in the building past 10 p.m. Friday night, Martin was crying out to God to do something to defend His truth. Just then his cell phone rang. It was his friends Chris and Candice McConnell. Although separated in age by more than three decades, the three share a common bond of confidence and appreciation for God’s grace and truth reflected in the fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists.

Chris had also been to Dale Ratzlaff’s meeting that night with Candice. They phoned Martin with a plan to propose—why not start our own website where the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Life Assurance Ministries against Adventists could be addressed? Martin perceived their proposal as the answer to the problem he was praying about.

The result is this website, www.sdaforme.com, devoted to correcting misperceptions about the Seventh-day Adventist Church and showing that our beliefs are based upon the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Chris and Candice contributed their technical professional expertise, and Martin contributed the content, based on hundreds of chapters, articles, editorials, telecast scripts, graduate papers and sermons that he has written on the points of doctrinal disagreement.

Martin, Chris and Candice invite you to engage in dialogue with us, which was not possible the weekend of Dale’s meetings. We don’t pretend that Seventh-day Adventists are everything they ought to be, or that other churches don’t have much to contribute to enrich our Christian experience. Although we rejoice in such truth as Sabbath rest in Christ, we also have much growing to do—and much to learn from fellow Christians in the community. So we welcome communication with you for the sake of building up Christ’s body of true believers everywhere, with the grace of God and the truth as it is in Jesus.