The official Seventh-day Adventist Church YouTube account was restored over the weekend thanks to petitioning by Church administration and members, after hackers seized the platform to promote a cryptocurrency scam on February 27.
The scam, which has been reported by multiple YouTube accounts globally—including the Adventist Church in both Poland and Jamaica—hijacks large YouTube accounts and impersonates Elon Musk’s SpaceX channel, offering fake giveaways to earn money from viewers.
In response to the breach, YouTube terminated the official Adventist Church channel, despite no warning being given or existing strikes prior to full termination.
The Adventist Word Church’s Communication Department promptly submitted two official appeals to YouTube, including documentation demonstrating how important the channel is to Adventists worldwide. Following four days of uncertainty, communication departments from around the world coordinated a campaign on Twitter, asking members to pray and appeal to @TeamYouTube to restore the channel.
The campaign started at 7:14pm on Friday, March 4. Hundreds of people united their voices.
By 6am the next morning, March 5, YouTube had reinstated the channel, with hundreds taking to Twitter again to express their gratitude.
For associate director of communication for the Seventh-day Adventist World Church, Sam Neves, the reinstatement was an answer to countless prayers.
“Our entire team was devastated. This would be the first Sabbath in almost 10 years without inspiring people through our YouTube videos”, he said. “But God answered our prayers through the YouTube team. As our team in the Americas woke up last Sabbath, our channel had been restored. It was a Happy Sabbath indeed.”
The ordeal, which lasted for 5 days, was a strong reminder to all Adventists about the value of video content, and how important the YouTube platform is to the Church’s evangelism efforts.
“It was also a strong reminder to all communication teams of the importance of strong security protocols to keep every social media property safe,” added Neves. “The hack lasted for just under an hour, which is the time it took the social media team to delete the scam video and restore the name and visual identity of the channel. This was only possible because the channel ownership account was limited through multi-factor authentication protocols. Other affected channels lost their ability to stop the hack by themselves as their owner account was also compromised.”
With content ranging from breaking news updates from ANN to theological studies, messages of encouragement and official statements from Church leaders, the official Adventist Church channel is both a vital communication platform, as well as a historical document of past events.
“Each of our Adventist world church channels is unique and serves a large community. We exist to help everyone understand the Bible so they can find freedom, healing and hope in Jesus,” said Neves.
With many videos receiving thousands—if not millions—of views, it is clear that people around the world have been both personally and corporately impacted by the videos posted to the official Adventist Church YouTube account.
“My grandchild is a teenager and she has a lot of anxiety, she has a lot of pressure points. So I shared this video with her, and they told me that they would listen to it. Thank you for serving our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”—Mary Burge (1 month ago)
The official Adventist Church YouTube channel is part of World Church’s Digital Evangelism Initiative. Subscribers to the channel have increased from 20,299 in 2019 to 182,493 currently. This 800 per cent growth is due to the efforts of a large team of professionals from around the world who create fresh content, manage the channel and provide pastoral care to the viewers.
Global Seventh-day Adventist Church administration expresses their thanks to all church members who prayed and petitioned @TeamYouTube to reinstate the channel, and also gives thanks to YouTube for their prompt and professional service to resolve the matter.