| Author | Message | ||
| Freedom55 Registered user Username: Freedom55 Post Number: 31 Registered: 3-2008 |
I note that the theme for the 2010 SDA General Conference is "Proclaiming God's Grace". Sounds very evangelical doesn't it? I wonder who they're trying to fool. | ||
| Grace_alone Registered user Username: Grace_alone Post Number: 1589 Registered: 6-2006  |
Themselves... | ||
| Esther Registered user Username: Esther Post Number: 511 Registered: 5-2004 |
lol...good one! | ||
| Dennis Registered user Username: Dennis Post Number: 1813 Registered: 4-2000  |
It is my understanding that the 2010 GC Session in Atlanta will be historic by featuring only a vegan cuisine for the delegates. Delegates from outside the North American Division may find that somewhat problematic and/or challenging. Previous General Conference Sessions featured lacto-ovo vegetarian menus. By the way, today marks the NINTH anniversary since my wife and I officially left Seventh-day Adventism. We call it our annual FREEDOM DAY celebration after collectively having more than 100 years of experience in Adventism. Truly, our awesome and sovereign God didn't leave us where He found us. In His power and for His glory, Dennis Fischer Snackbar for the Soul: "No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good." --C. S. Lewis | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 7613 Registered: 3-2004  |
Dennis, congratulations to you and your wife for your 9th anniversary. Diana L | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 10511 Registered: 12-2003  |
Congratulations, Dennis! Totally awesome! Uh--vegan?? Sigh... Colleen | ||
| Dennis Registered user Username: Dennis Post Number: 1814 Registered: 4-2000 |
Thank you, Diana. God is good all the time. Dennis | ||
| Hec Registered user Username: Hec Post Number: 640 Registered: 3-2009 |
Dennis, Congratulations on you anniversary. Soon, I'll start counting too. Hec | ||
| Gcfrankie Registered user Username: Gcfrankie Post Number: 622 Registered: 1-2007 |
Dennis, Congradulations on your ninth anniversary. Hope you will take the misses out and celebrate. | ||
| Pegg Registered user Username: Pegg Post Number: 467 Registered: 2-2006 |
Awesome, Dennis! May Our Wonderful God continue to richly bless you and your wife and to use you in His service. Pegg  | ||
| Bobj Registered user Username: Bobj Post Number: 435 Registered: 1-2006  |
Dennis Congratulations! Nine years! Praising the Lord for you and your wife and your ministry! It's been five years for us, and we praise the Lord starting with the morning coffee and it lasts pretty much 24 hours/day! We thank the Lord for many things, including the friends in FAF and the incredible resources available online, and His tender care for us in these challenging times. Thanks again for your many thoughtful posts here and on other forums. Bob | ||
| Handmaiden Registered user Username: Handmaiden Post Number: 179 Registered: 7-2008 |
CONGRATULATIONS i rejoice with you as you celebrate FREEDOM DAY and NEW LIFE in CHRIST. love handmaiden | ||
| Bskillet Registered user Username: Bskillet Post Number: 611 Registered: 8-2008 |
I found it odd when I was an SDA that not only was Jesus not vegan, but He wasn't vegetarian either, even after His resurrection. If vegetarianism, let alone veganism, was so central to spiritual development, why did Jesus eat fish and animals? | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 1074 Registered: 7-2007 |
"Proclaiming God's Grace" hmmmmm..... When I was an Adventist, I enjoyed the grace-filled sermons I heard from time to time. I would think: "oh what a wonderful sermon!" I didn't dare think: "if only it were true that Jesus REALLY DID take away the sin of the world! If only I could accept His sacrifice and BELIEVE I'm saved!" (But that was the way I really DID think, whether I knew it consciously or not.) No, I couldn't quite believe that I had been saved (past tense), despite all those places in the Bible where the apostle Paul assured the ones he was writing to that they HAD BEEN saved. I thought Ellen White properly interpreted the Bible for us and SHE said that NO ONE could say or feel they're saved! If someone had pointed out that Joseph Smith interprets the Bible for Mormons and that Seventh-day Adventists are simply doing the same thing with Ellen White, I would have been horrified and would have told them that Joseph Smith was a FALSE prophet and that Ellen White was a TRUE one! Oh, I was so blind!  | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 1075 Registered: 7-2007 |
I wonder what Adventists would say if you asked them why Jesus ate meat, but Ellen White said that eating meat brought out the "animal propensities" (something like that.) | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 7618 Registered: 3-2004 |
I seem to remember some SDAs on CARM saying that Jesus did not have the "present truth" when He came to earth. I may be wrong about that. Do not take that for truth. Diana L | ||
| Skeeter Registered user Username: Skeeter Post Number: 405 Registered: 12-2007 |
Jesus did not have "present truth " ??? I guess they must mean that Jesus did not have the advantage of having Ellen White to advise Him that eating flesh might keep Him out of Heaven, might "arouse the animal passions", etc. Almost makes me wish she were still alive today.... I am afraid I would be tempted to smack the old witch upside the head with her "appeal to Mothers" book and ask her "what in the world is wrong with you woman !?!" She seemed so adamant about the effects of "solitary vice" that it makes me wonder if she was speaking (at least in part)from personal experience ! I wonder if she tied her sons hands to the bedposts so they would not practice "solitary vice" as she advised other Mothers to do. The more I learn of her irrational teachings on every subject she poked her nose into the more it makes me feel sick to my stomach. (or maybe it is really sick at heart... thinking about all those people who read and followed her advice thinking they were doing Gods will. Skeeter | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 10517 Registered: 12-2003 |
Yes, my MIL has also said that about Jesus not having had the health message when He was here. The point was that the "health message" was for our time; meat hadn't yet become so diseased, as EGW said it would. My MIL also said once, when I pointed out that Paul said the requirement for salvation was to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and so be saved, that his words were present truth for his time. We, you see, have "present truth" for our time. Last week Randy Roberts at LLUC preached a sermon in his series on why he is an Adventist. His sermon last week was about "present truth". He used the Acts 15 Council of Jerusalem as his text...but he only used the first six verses. His point was that the church leaders got together to decide how to handle the Gentiles based on the needs of their time. They were operating in their "present truth". He said that "present truth" is true for us as well, that we can use the Bible and apply it for our time. The week before he preached a sermon explaining that the Bible was not written like a court reporter's records, or word-for-word transmission. Rather, he said, it was like a "news reporter's" record, reflecting each writer's personal understanding and interpretation. He was saying, in other words, that the words of the Bible are not specifically the words from God but from the writer's understanding of God's messages. Last week he said his primary reasons for being an Adventist are his understanding that the Bible is not written like a court reporter's words but like the mores subjective news reporters recording, and his belief in "present truth", or the cultural application of the Bible. He doesn't believe, in other words, that the exact words of the Bible should be understood and applied in the same ways in each era of history. Truth is more fluid than that, adapting and altering to fit the times. There you have it--the natural outgrowth of believing EGW was a true messenger of God. Colleen | ||
| Pegg Registered user Username: Pegg Post Number: 477 Registered: 2-2006 |
For the life or me, I can't even IMAGINE our pastor preaching a sermon about why he is a Christian Disciple.  Pegg | ||
| Hec Registered user Username: Hec Post Number: 645 Registered: 3-2009 |
Maybe this is not the threat to ask this question, but since it is already mention in the post above, I'll ask, and if you want to move it to anoher threat, that's fine with me. Inspiration. If the Bible is Verbally inspired: read each word. Then why do we need to take into account the author, the culture, the addressee, the time of writing, the style, the genre, etc. when we study it? Hec | ||
| Dennis Registered user Username: Dennis Post Number: 1815 Registered: 4-2000 |
"The writers of Scripture were chosen and prepared by God for their sacred task...However, through divine inspiration God made it possible for His truth to be communicated in an inspired way making use of the backgrounds, personalities, and literary styles of these various writers. The human writers were not machines and ought not be conceived of as being without personality. What is overcome or overriden by inspiration is not human personality, style or literary structure, but human tendencies to distortion, falsehood and error." (Excerpts from Explaining Inerrancy by Dr. R. C. Sproul, p. 28) Truly, God is the ultimate author of the Bible. "Because the Bible is the Word of God and reflects his truthful character, it is important to affirm that it is one. Though it contains much information of a wide diversity of scope and interest, nevertheless there is an internal unity and consistency to the Word of God that flows from the nature of God's truth. God's truthfulness brings unity out of diversity. God is not an author of incoherency or of contradiction. His Word is consistent as well as coherent...Scripture is to be interpreted therefore in terms not only of its immediate context but also of the whole context of the Word of God." (Ibid., pp. 44, 55) Dennis Fischer | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 10522 Registered: 12-2003 |
Oh, my goodness--you HAVE to hear our sermon from today. I have NEVER heard Scripture's reliability explained this way before. Gary showed from the Bible, using Matthew 5:17-22—that infamous passage about not coming to destroy the law but to fulfill it—as his main text, how Jesus Himself endorsed the OT Scriptures as the actual and lasting word of God and then, using John 14 and 16, showing how Jesus foretold the revelation of the NT. He explained how we know, from Jesus' words, that the NT is our final revelation of all truth. I sat in church thinking, "I have to post a link to this sermon on the forum!" The audio is already up; the video will likely be up tomorrow. You can access it here: http://www.trinityonline.org/cgi-bin/MediaList.cgi?section= It entitled "The Savior and the Scripture". This is totally a must-hear. I have never heard an explanation this careful and compelling before. Colleen | ||
| Seekr777 Registered user Username: Seekr777 Post Number: 800 Registered: 1-2003  |
Colleen, thanks for the link. I'll go and listen, it is something that is VERY important to me. Richard | ||
| Raven Registered user Username: Raven Post Number: 1086 Registered: 7-2004  |
Hec, in answer to your question about why we need to take into account the author, culture, addressee, etc. - I think that's just all part of the context. It may not be required to know all those details, and the Word of God stands on its own, but more context is better. I think a good example of that is the Seven Churches in Revelation. I know there are plenty of theologians (including SDAs) who interpret that to mean specific time periods of the church--and say that now we're in Laodecia. But when you realize those were literal churches in John's day, and look at the map to see that they are listed in the exact order that it would make the most sense for a messenger to personally take them from Patmos one after the other in a circle, then I think the idea those churches represent historical time periods holds a lot less weight. We can learn from each church's praises and rebukes, so it is timeless information - but I don't see the other meaning in it. Interestingly, there is a lot of historical information about the cities those churches were in at that time that make the praise and/or rebuke make so much more sense as to why it was worded the way it was. | ||
| Doc Registered user Username: Doc Post Number: 447 Registered: 2-2003  |
Thanks Colleen, I generally enjoy your pastor's messages. I have downloaded it and will save it for later. I am rather busy at the moment! God bless, Adrian | ||
| Hec Registered user Username: Hec Post Number: 653 Registered: 3-2009 |
That was a good sermon Colleen. I had not seen Mat 5:17-20 in that light. Also there is a phrase that he says that applies to certain people: "We are not free to pick and choose." Hec | ||
| Loneviking Registered user Username: Loneviking Post Number: 675 Registered: 7-2000 |
Dennis, is Explaining Inerrency the commentary from 1980? Or is it another book? I've been looking for a well written and succinct book to use when talking with SDA's about this issue. SDS's throw so many 'straw man' arguments in response to this issue and something as clearly written as this seems to be may be what I need. | ||
| Dennis Registered user Username: Dennis Post Number: 1817 Registered: 4-2000 |
Loneviking, The small,74-page book entitled "Explaining Inerrancy" by Dr. R. C. Sproul is copyrighted in 1980 and published by Ligonier Ministries. It primarily quotes from the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy formulated by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in 1978. Those on the Draft Committee included Drs. Edmond Clowney, Norman L. Geisler, Harold Hoehner, Donald Hoke, James I. Packer, Roger R. Nicole, Earl Radmacher, and R. C. Sproul. I highly recommend it for concise information. Dennis Fischer | ||
| Loneviking Registered user Username: Loneviking Post Number: 676 Registered: 7-2000 |
Thanks Dennis! |
