The message was, in many ways, a familiar one, a message that one might hear from the pulpit of any Southern Baptist or non-denominational church in the South.

Dressed in a pristine, white suit and smart, rimless glasses, the lay speaker, Dr. Bonnie Basler, talked about setting a Godly example.

As she stood in front of a painted mural of a country stream, Basler spoke of returning to Biblical simplicity, adding, as she looked out into the faces of the handful of faithful, a note of caution about the dangers of losing one’s identity in an a religiously diverse culture.

A few minutes into her presentation, Basler, a family practitioner and mother of two, who grew up a Southern Baptist, said something one would never hear from a Baptist pulpit.

“The doctrine of once saved, always saved is clearly unbiblical,” she said.

She explained that Seventh-Day Adventists try to lead Godly lives between two extremes. On one hand, they don’t have “eternal security,” which leads many Christians to believe their salvation can never be undone. On the other hand, Adventists don’t give in to “infernal insecurity,” the troubling doubt that makes them question where they stand vis-à-vis eternity.

“The Adventist Church,” Basler, said confidently, “has more biblical truth than any I’ve ever been part of.”

Unique beliefs

Biblical truth is a commodity most every Christian church lays claim to, and that truth usually translates to how the majority of ministers or theologians in the denomination interpret the scriptures.

The 60 members of Tupelo Seventh-Day Adventist Church, about half of whom gather each week in the small sanctuary in the Joyner neighborhood, aren’t theologians. They’re simply Bible-believing folks who are convinced that they see things in scripture that other Christians have either overlooked or have purposely ignored.

“I’m not making this up. It’s right there in the Bible,” said the Rev. Ray Elsberry, the church’s senior pastor who each week commutes from his home in Dora, Ala.

Elsberry’s good-natured insistence that what the Bible says is as plain as day isn’t unique among Christian ministers. It does, however, give some insight into why Adventists believe in certain principles that cause many mainline Christians to scratch their heads, and some to even call them a cult.

One such Adventist belief is sometimes pejoratively referred to as “soul sleep,” or the idea, based on texts like 1 Thes. 4:14, and 1 Cor. 15:18, that people aren’t judged immediately at the moment of death. They wait, so believe Adventists, in an unconscious state, for the second coming of Jesus.

In the eternal landscape of most Christians, heaven and hell are already crowded. For Adventists final judgment won’t occur until the son of God returns not once but twice, the second time after a 1,000-year reign of Satan on earth, a sequence of events that, as their name implies, Adventists believe will start very soon.

Hell, as most Christians think of it, doesn’t exist for Adventists, and very few people, according to Elsberry, are already in heaven.

The other and perhaps most characteristic belief Adventists hold, and the one from which they derive their name, is that the biblical Sabbath is Saturday.

As members of the Tupelo church gathered for services, they greeted each other with smiles, handshakes and the hearty welcome of, “Happy Sabbath. Good to see you.” They came in sprinkled with the first drops of rain the area had seen in some time.

Adventists are very much biblical literalists, and they believe that God labored in creation of the universe for six days, then rested on the seventh.

Humankind, and, specifically in the eyes of most Adventists, the Catholic Church, changed the Sabbath to Sunday in order to suit its own purposes.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Sabbath for Seventh-Day Adventists. In casual conversation they often refer to Saturday as “the true Sabbath,” and observing it when they do gives the members of the small Tupelo church, along with the members of their mostly black sister church, Maranatha on Maple Street, and the 14 million baptized members worldwide a sense of special identity.

“I think it’s the number one, most unique belief we hold,” said Marcia Barrera, church treasurer and a member since 1968.

On the denomination’s Web site, the term “remnant church” is used frequently, referring to the belief that since their founding in the mid 19th century, primarily by Ellen White, considered a modern prophet within the church, Seventh-Day Adventists have preserved clarity in their understanding of scripture that others haven’t.

Few but proud

Today members of the Tupelo church celebrate 60 years of history. They’re mostly older folks, along with a few Hispanics who hold services in an adjoining room.

On this Sabbath they’re inviting back old members and preachers, including the Rev. Mark Regazzi, who led the church throughout the 1970s.

They’re reliving their history of being the first Adventist congregation in Northeast Mississippi. The church started under a tent on East Main Street in October of 1950. Then it moved temporarily into Carpenter’s Union Hall before arriving at its present home on Chester Avenue.

Adventists are few but proud throughout Mississippi. The closest church to Tupelo is a Hispanic gathering in New Albany, and the next closest is in Corinth. By best estimates, counting both the predominantly white and predominantly black churches, which still maintain their distinctive conferences and identities, there are fewer than 70 Seventh-Day Adventist congregations statewide.

Adventists are strong evangelists, and throughout the world, in 209 countries, a big part of their message concerns health and wellness.

Today the Tupelo members will share a Sabbath meal, gathering around a table piled high with fresh vegetables, fruits and grains. Many are vegetarians. In addition to sharing the same Sabbath as Jews, Adventists also follow instructions in the Book of Leviticus and avoid “unclean” foods such as pork, and fish without scales, like catfish.

During “Sabbath school” discussion last week, one member spoke up with the kind of cryptic statement that sounds strange to the uninitiated.

“The health message is the right arm of the message,” he said. “We know it will be important in the end times.”

As a physician, Basler said this simply means that physical wellness contributes to psychological and spiritual wellness, and the church uses this message as a means of evangelizing contemporary culture.

She pointed to various studies, including one cited last year in U.S. News and World Report, which said that life expectancy for Seventh-Day Adventists is 89 years, about a decade longer than the average American.

Basler is the kind of conscientious person Adventists strive to be. She’s a slim, bright-eyed woman of modest dress and clear, polite speech. She speaks generously of the “many truths” of her former denomination while affirming the wonders she’s found in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

“The Bible says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made,” said Basler. “We don’t look at these things, diet, etc., as tests of fellowship. Everybody’s at a different place in their spiritual journey.”

Contact Daily Journal religion editorGalen Holley at 678-1510 or galen.holley@djournal.com