Adventism affirms that Jesus Christ, as the eternal Son of God, existed before his incarnation in Bethlehem. He is the divine Word of John 1:1, the agent of creation, who took on human nature in the fulness of time. The Incarnation was the entry of the pre-existent Son into human experience, not the beginning of his existence.

Ellen G. White writes extensively of Christ's pre-incarnate existence in The Desire of Ages and other works, describing his glory in heaven before the Incarnation and his voluntary self-emptying in becoming human.