Topic
Spiritual Formation & Mysticism The charge of mysticism and spiritual formation, tested by vocabulary: what the terms meant in the sources, and when they entered Adventist publishing.
A whole genre of argument works by guilt of vocabulary — a word appears in a source, therefore the source teaches the thing the word now means. These pieces check the word against the page it came from.
Primary-source backing: 2,220 chunks contain the exact phrase 'spiritual formation' — exact phrase counts across 4,748,064 searchable chunks.
3 pieces on this topic, newest first.
Scholarship · November 5, 2026
Take the phrase “practicing the presence of God.” If those words mark a movement, if they are the fingerprint of a mystical stream that has crossed into the church, then the voice that uses them cannot be the voice of God.
By Dr. Miriam Sorensen
Scholarship · November 3, 2026
A recent Fulcrum7 essay describes a Loma Linda University Health women’s retreat as an occasion of “not the mystery of God, but that of another spirit.” The retreat’s offense, on that telling, is its featured author, Ann Voskamp.
By Dr. Miriam Sorensen
Investigation · July 7, 2026
Quoted in a 2002 Journal of Asia Adventist Seminary: Ellen White on refusing to treat a handful of administrators as the voice of the church.
By Caleb Thornton
Elsewhere in the archive
Eighteen numbered items Read the page cold. Fulcrum7's comment policy opens with a welcome ("Comments and positive discussions are welcome on Fulcrum7") and then gets down to business with a sentence that sets the key for everything after it: "Here are a few things that we don’t allow:" (Fulcrum7, Comment Section, accessed 2026-11-05). Eighteen numbered…
A response to Mass Illegal Migration and the Great Controversy at Fulcrum7. France is bracing for another weekend of riots. A recent Fulcrum7 essay opens there, with Islamic migrants and “far left agitators” in coalition and Italy, Belgium and Portugal behind them, and then climbs fast.
A response to Reject Ecumenism at Fulcrum7. In March 1958 a reader of the Review and Herald asked the editors why the words “For there are three that bear record in heaven” — the Trinitarian sentence at the center of 1 John 5:7 — had dropped out of the modern translations. The question carried its own answer: something was being taken away.
A response to Ugandan Gospel Singer Defends Her Seventh-day Adventist Faith at Fulcrum7. Gabie Ntaate beat six continental competitors for a Sauti Award, then took a Song of the Year in 2021. In most Christian music scenes that would settle whether she is, in the idiom, saved.
A response to Demonize the Brother; Dismiss the Documents; Responding to Religious Liberty TV at Fulcrum7. The denomination has spent a century telling itself it carries a message for the whole world. Signs of the Times said it in 1935: “It is the everlasting gospel that these three angels, or messengers, are to cause to be heard by every nation, kindred,…
In a place the essay does not visit, a child is eating. The food came through an agency founded by Seventh-day Adventists, and some of the money for it moved through the United Nations system. The child does not know this and does not care.
The Rise of Social Justice within Adventism (Part 1) at Fulcrum7. A counterfeit gospel arrives dressed as the genuine one. That is the whole logic of the warning in Galatians, and it is where the argument now circulating about social justice begins.
A response to A Religious Tsunami is Forming in America — Socialism (Fulcrum7, October 27, 2026). A religious tsunami is forming in America, the argument goes. Socialism is a synthetic faith that swaps the Creator for the collective and erases male and female, good and evil, and the Sabbath rest.
The Counterweight was founded on a simple conviction: the truth can handle scrutiny. Every factual claim made on this site is backed by verifiable sources. We cite specific publications, dates, and where possible page numbers.
Rebuilt from the record This essay first ran without its sources. Every historical claim below now cites the page it rests on. The woman beside me at the camp meeting in Ibadan had walked most of the morning to get there.
⚡ SATIRE — NOT REAL NEWS COLUMBIA, MD — A Keurig coffee machine was installed in the North American Division headquarters lobby on Monday, a development that eschatologically-attuned observers say confirms the long-anticipated Sunday Law will be enforced "within weeks, possibly days." "I saw it with my own eyes," said Harold Bickerson, 67, a self-appointed…
Rebuilt from the record This essay first ran without its sources. Every historical claim below now cites the page it rests on. In 1895, at a General Conference session, Ellen White stood before the assembled delegates and told them not to put the whole presidency in one man’s hands.
The argument now circulating through Fulcrum7 and Conrad Vine's presentation makes two moves and asks us to treat them as one. It observes that conferences are not the only legitimate recipients of the tithe, then concludes that a member may therefore redirect it to channels he judges more faithful, as a protest against institutional decay. Both moves rest…
A few readers have asked what this publication is and who we are. What We Are The Counterweight is a publication of Adventist historical review. We write for Adventists who are tired of being told what to think by people who won't show their work.
Rebuilt from the record This essay first ran without its sources. Every historical claim below now cites the page it rests on. In the Review and Herald dated March 15, 1951, on page five, the denomination’s own weekly carried a warning: “The burden of the work in this broad field should not rest upon two or three men” (Review and Herald, 1951-03-15, p.5).
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