The Effectiveness of the 1888 Message, My Testimony

My name is Juan Pablo Malanga. I am the director and founder of LIBRE MENTE, a counseling program for people seeking to be freed from addictions. I was born in 1989 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in this same city. From a very early age, at the age of 4, I was abused by a kindergarten teacher. Without realizing it, this event marked my life deeply, for which I had to receive psychological help. From that age to the age of 11, I had emotional sensitivity problems, which made me pee at night throughout my childhood. At the age of 12, I began to experience the use of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. A trigger for these addictions was the separation of my parents, which occurred in quite derogatory terms, concluding with the drastic abandonment of my home by my mother, who left with someone else. As a result of this, my home environment entered a sphere of self-destruction, and my entire family began a system of addiction: my father sought out alcohol, my older brother, marijuana, and my younger sister began to present emotional and behavioral problems. This is how my childhood and all my adolescence were permeated by feelings of loneliness, abandonment, and hatred, which gradually became addictive behaviors of a higher degree.

At the age of 16, I started in the drug trade and consumed approximately 20 to 30 marijuana cigarettes a day. The discos were my favorite place during the week and weekends since there, I had easy access to the consumption of Ecstasy, Ketamine (anesthesia for horses), and LSD (hallucinogenic acid). All this was done without full awareness to fill an inner void, evading my unfortunate reality. It was my best way to alleviate the pain of the emotional wounds I had, even though I added fornication and addictions.

At 17 years old, I felt devastated; I had thoughts of suicide, without a dignified present and without the hope of a promising future waiting. In the midst of all this trance, I began to feel the aspiration to get out of that whole world of slavery, trying to make a "geographic escape," that is, to leave where I lived and move to a place that was as free of drugs as possible. However, this didn't work, as I just managed to take the problem with me elsewhere. I could only go a month without consuming and then relapse again.

At almost 19 years of age, I began to realize that God was seeking me with his love cords to save me from sin. He used a friend who was drug-free for a year with a Bible recovery program. I agreed to learn to trust God and let Him heal and set me free by learning to give my life to the Lord day by day.

I had the privilege of graduating with a degree in theology and also having certified studies for the therapeutic approach to addictions. For the vast majority of my life as an Adventist, I dedicated myself to helping addicts and their families by understanding and accepting this ministry that God gave me. I worked in addiction recovery clinics in the therapeutic area. I attended many cases of addictions and family counseling. But there was something that I was missing, so the ministry that God had given me was truly a light that shined in the darkness.

When I began to be a member of Adventism, many doubts arose in my mind. I realized that after being baptized, I was tempted in the same way as before being baptized. I no longer fell into drugs but did fall into other sins. This is what happens to many addicts after they are baptized. And it is because just as I have not known the most precious message of the third angel. Justification by faith does not mean merely being saved from the legal condemnation of sin but being FREE FROM SIN. This I did not understand until, at one point in my life as an Adventist, I came across the writings of Elders Wagoner and Jones. My mind was totally opened to knowing the truth of the eternal covenant, the power of God's grace daily to give me victory over temptation and sin.

The strongest temptations come from within when Satan uses the impulses of our sinful nature to induce us to sin against God. Most of the people I have seen as patients with addictions or emotional problems are people whose minds have not been transformed by the Lord. They have not yet received a new heart. That new heart is the mind of Christ, a perfect mind, pure and just in an integral way. The Lord offers us this mind freely, and it is received by faith daily. It is the everlasting covenant that the Lord makes with us (Isaiah 55:3). In this way, the person with addictions begins to stop trying to save themselves. And it is that every addict is a person who lives in salvation by works. He, through his addictive behaviors, is saying to God: "I don't need you. I can save myself from my pain by receiving momentary anesthesia through my addictions." Instead, when we begin to live the life of faith, we experience the power of God's grace in Christ from the depths of our hearts, learning to receive new thoughts as Isaiah 55:7-8 says:

Let the wicked leave his way, and the wicked man his thoughts, and return to Jehovah, who will have mercy on him, and to our God, who will be ample in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

The everlasting covenant is the answer to people's mental health. If an addict relapses again, that everlasting covenant gives him a chance to receive the promise of forgiveness again. However, there is a difference between the 1888 message of freedom and the conventional one. The 1888 truth offers us the forgiveness that frees us from sin, cleansing us from sin and giving us the righteousness of Christ in our hearts. Not only is it a legal declaration by God that we are righteous, but God makes us righteous by imputing and dispensing his righteousness into us. This is true freedom. So as I began to understand and experience this 1888 message in my own life, I set out to create therapeutic, psychological, and spiritual tools for addicts and their families based on this message.

Don't ask me how I came to this idea because I think it was not my initiative but God's. Alonzo T. Jones wrote a book that few know about called The Bible in Education. There is a chapter there entitled Mental Science. I believe that this chapter is vitally important for any Adventist working in the area of mental health or addiction. Through the 1888 message, the Lord provides an answer to people's mental health. Can you imagine a body of mental health professionals working with this message through which the Lord frees us from mental sin and prepares us for His Second Coming at the time of the purification of the Sanctuary. The 144,000 are a group of people who have been freed from their sins and addictions, demonstrating to the entire universe that "Christ in us is the hope of glory."

I have the peace of mind that I do not have to use secular tools that many Adventist mental health professionals still use due to a lack of knowledge about this precious message of present truth.

I say goodbye with a verse and a quote about the most precious message of 1888 that always resonate in my mind:

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him: If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So, if the Son sets you free, you will be truly free." John 8:31, 32, 36.

"In Isaiah 61:1 says that Christ was anointed to proclaim liberty to the captives. The word freedom is from a word in Hebrew that denotes "to a swallow." The form of the verb means "to fly in a circle, turn as you fly," like a bird in the air… We often use the expression "free as a bird" and that expresses exactly the freedom with which Christ sets you free… Imagine a bird that has been caught and locked in a cage. He longs for freedom, but cruel bars make it impossible. Then the door opens. The bird sees the opening but has often been tricked in its attempts to gain freedom, which falters. He jumps up and discovers that the prison is really open, trembles for a moment with great joy at the thought of freedom, then spreads his wings and flutters through the air with such ecstasy as can only be known by one who has been a captive. "Really free!" As free as a bird. This is the freedom with which Christ frees the captive of sin. The psalmist had that experience and said: "Our soul escaped like a bird from the hunters' snare; the bond was broken, and we escaped" Psalms 124:7. This is the experience of everyone who truly and unreservedly accepts Christ." Living by Faith, p. 47-49, A.T. Jones and E.J. Wagoner.

Juan Pablo Malanga

Graduate in Theology and Director of LIBRE MENTE, a counseling, counseling, and education program in the area of addictions

LIBRE MENTE offers a training course to prepare lay Adventists in addiction counseling based on the principles of the 1888 Message.

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