From Truth to Tradition: Adventist School Makes Food Offerings to the Spirits Through Pagan Cultural Dance

Maxwell Adventist Preparatory School is a Seventh-day Adventist institution located in Nairobi, Kenya, offering pre-primary, primary, and junior secondary school education. According to the school’s mission statement, Maxwell Adventist Preparatory School operates within the “Seventh-day Adventist Church’s educational policy framework.” [1]

On June 13, 2025, Maxwell Adventist Preparatory School shared a video of students on YouTube dancing to ancient pagan dances complete with offerings to the spirit world. [2] These kinds of dances with “offerings of food” are “made to show respect and gratitude to the ancestors.” [3] By “offerings of food, water, and other goods,” the dancers are seeking “guidance, protection, and blessings” from the dead ancestors. [3] The food offerings, together with the “music and dance,” play “an essential role in ancestral veneration in Africa.” [3]

When a church school that bears the name Seventh-day Adventist publicly shares videos of pagan-influenced dances—especially those involving food offerings to spirits or ancestral rituals—on platforms like YouTube, it is no longer a personal or private matter; it becomes a public scandal. By broadcasting such content to a global audience, the institution is making a public statement to church members, young people, and the world at large that blending Adventism with pagan practice is acceptable and compatible with Adventist faith and doctrine.

Worse, it places a stumbling block before those who are seeking the truth, potentially leading souls into confusion and spiritual compromise. Scripture clearly teaches, “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.” (1 Timothy 5:20). By promoting these rituals online, the school is not exposing darkness—it is promoting it.

In the digital age, what is posted online is no longer confined to a classroom, auditorium, or local context. It reflects the values and priorities of the institution and, by extension, the church body it claims to represent. If we cannot clearly distinguish between the holy and the profane, especially in our public witness, then these administrators and educators have become blind and are unfit because they are failing the very youth we are called to prepare for the soon return of Christ.

The issue is not about cultural expression in and of itself, but about crossing the line into deep spiritual apostasy—a line clearly drawn by Scripture and firmly upheld by the historic teachings of the Adventist Church. A school operating under the banner of the Three Angels’ Messages has no business engaging in rituals that mimic or echo pagan worship forms rooted in false theology, regardless of their cultural origin.

Seventh-day Adventists believe that the dead are asleep, unconscious, awaiting either the resurrection of life or the resurrection of damnation (John 5:28–29). As such, any act that involves “communication” or “offerings” to ancestral spirits is not only doctrinally incompatible with Adventism—it is a direct contradiction of the Word of God. Practices that attempt to interact with the dead, honor them as if they possess consciousness, or offer food in their memory are all grounded in spiritualism—a deception warned against in the Bible and exposed by the Spirit of Prophecy.

Cultural practices that involve food offerings to spirits or ancestors are not harmless. They are acts rooted in the occult world—something that biblical Christianity categorically rejects. Even if such rituals are “symbolic” or “educational,” the spiritual implications cannot be ignored. God’s people are repeatedly warned in Scripture not to learn or imitate the customs of the idolatrous nations (Deuteronomy 18:9-14; Jeremiah 10:2), especially when those customs involve worship practices or interactions with the dead.

The Seventh-day Adventist community exists not to mimic the customs of the world but to be a prophetic voice calling people out of Babylon, out of confusion, idolatry, and counterfeit worship. To adopt practices that originate in ancestral veneration, even under the pretense of cultural education, is to erase the line between holy and profane. It confuses students, compromises our witness, and betrays the spiritual heritage entrusted to Adventist institutions.

Therefore, from a biblical and prophetic standpoint, while these displays do not represent all of our institutions, they are a clear indication that some of our schools are drifting from our foundation and trading eternal truth for worldly acceptance. This is not the time to step off of the platform of truth that God has given us. It is time for us to re-examine what it means to be distinct, peculiar, unique, and faithful, and to hold fast to sound doctrine—especially in these last days of earth’s history.

“The apostle Paul declared, looking down to the last days, ‘The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.’ 2 Timothy 4:3. That time has fully come. The multitudes do not want Bible truth, because it interferes with the desires of the sinful, world-loving heart; and Satan supplies the deceptions which they love” (Great Controversy, p. 594).

Sources

[1] https://www.maxwellpreparatory.ac.ke/about-us/

[2] https://youtu.be/YL6sRFm_QKw?si=BS23q-AXYun94YOF

[3] https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/african-history/honouring-ancestors-a-sacred-tradition-in-haiti-africa-and-latin-america/