| Author | Message | ||
| Lynn W |
I'm still reeling from the condemning, judgmental attitude of this newletter. What I want to know is, how do "pastors" get away with this kind of stuff? Don't their own people ever confront them on this kind of stuff? Once, while I was in a large SDA SS class taught by the pastor, he made the bold, unqualified statement, "and of course we know that the 7th-Day Adventist church is the only source of truth on Earth." I was tempted to hold my Bible over my shoulder & say, "well, I guess I won't need this anymore." But since I was the only non-SDA in the room, I thought I'd better not. But the really astonishing thing was that I looked around the room & nobody flinched. | ||
| Lydell |
Lynn, I think no one spoke up because that is the accepted view. I still remember the one small paragraph tucked way at the back of an Adventist Review after one of the GC sessions. It was reporting on actions taken at the session and stated simply: Resolved: "When the GC sits in session it is God's highest authority on earth." As nearly as we could ascertain from other materials, the resolution had passed with virtually no argument. That was pretty much the final straw for me! | ||
| Lynn W |
There's similar wording on page xix of the Church Manual. (But how many people read that?) "'Resolved, that the highest authority under God among Seventh-day Adventists is found in the will of the body of that people, as expressed in the decisions of the General Conference when acting within its proper jurisdiction; and that such decisions should be submitted to by all without exception, unless they can be shown to conflict with the word of God and the rights of individual conscience.' - Review and Herald, vol. 50, No. 14, p.106." But it gets worse. Next 3 paragraphs: "Ellen G. White, in 1909, wrote: 'But, when, in a General Conference, the judgment of the brethren assembled from all parts of the field is excercised, private independence and private judgment must not be stubbornly maintained, but surrendered. Never should a laborer regard as a virtue the persistent maintenance of his position of independence, contrary to the decision of the general body.' - Testimonies, vol. 9, p.260. "Long before this - in 1875 - Mrs. White had written in the same vein: 'The church of Christ is in constant peril. Satan is seeking to destroy the people of God, and one man's mind, one man's judgment, is not sufficient to be trusted.' - Testimonies, vol. 3, p.445... "In these inspired words, in the 1877 General Conference action, and in the need for well-defined rules that are requisite to good order, is found not only the justification for this Church Manual but also its rightful claim upon us all, both ministry and laity." Can we say "mind control" anybody? | ||
| Jude the Obscure |
Yes, I think we can fairly say "mind control." I don't think it was mind control in the beginning, back when William Miller was running around New England with his hair standing on end and his eyes popping out of his head. (Talk about terror-based religion!) It was mass hysteria -- conceived, born and bred on self-deception. But later, after the Great Disappointment brought slam-dunking reality very close to home, it became mind control. Because new people coming in and children being born into "the little flock" needed INSTRUCTION, it became -- and it remains -- "mind control." There also remains a kind of self-selection process, quite obvious in public evangelism: Many people who join as a result of "efforts" are already professional victims with chips on their shoulders. Examples: people who can't hold a job, people who have been abused by family members and can't "get past" their experiences, people wanting a-whole-lot-of-good-stuff-for-nothing-thank-you-very-much, so-called "rice Christians," on and on. I remember a public evangelism effort in Palo Alto, California in the 70s. The "evangelist" was Dave Brucette (not sure about the first name, and may be misspelling the last). His visage was striking. He had "blinding blond" hair and always wore a white suit, maybe even with tiny spangles sprinkled on it. And he always stood spotlighted in the always darkened theatre, where it would have done you no good to bring your Bible. And even if it were lighted well enough to read your own Bible, it would have done you no good. (I know because I've tried it with Dwight Nelson, who, while bad enough, couldn't be any worse at misinterpreting Scripture than was Dave Brucette.) The e-meetings ("e" not for "electronic," all you cyberspacers out there, "e" for "evangelistic") were held in The Stanford Theater, newly renovated in downtown Palo Alto. For those among you who don't know this area: Like Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley across the Bay, this is a premier hang-out for off-beat intellectuals, kinda-sorta-richy people's kids from nearby Menlo Park, Atherton, and Woodside out "slumming" or seeing how "the other side" lives, ex-hippies who could be wearing anything but betray a kind of "giveaway" look, stalwart hold-out hippies whose heads are bald in front but who sport a waist-length pony tail or pigtail hanging down behind, die-hard hippiesses in colorful tent dresses and strings of beads with carved wooden giraffes interspursed and tambourines and other jingle-jangly or ckicky-clacky things, skin-head nazis and KKKers, hells angels, India Indians under immense India-ink turbans, tie-dyed dudes and dudas, teen boys in elephant's pants with gold or silver studs through their tongues, teen girls in black leather and black lipstick with gold or silver studs through their tongues, yellow-saffron-robed Hari-Krishnas, bag-people, shopping-cart people, buff young clean-shaven Black Muslims showing off freshly dry-cleaned black suits and laundered white shirts with conservative black ties politely intimidating you for your "donation," young white male Mormon missionaries walking two-by-two, rigid-severe-faced young people carrying "Repent!" signs, the vacant-eyed "burned, bored and bypassed," hordes of students from Stanford and other nearby universities and colleges and high schools, cops-in-regulation-shorts-riding-regulation-bicycles, alienated middle-classers savoring their mid-life-crises, human mannequins on soap boxes on street corners with whistle-like buzzers between their lips .... Pressing onward: Tangled clusters of beat-up bikes (not so dumb an idea, since you wouldn't want to steal one or even if you did it wouldn't matter much 'cause the student owner could steal another one right away anyhow), all kinds of hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants (Italian, Greek, Chinese, Mandarin, Mongolian, Mexican, Japanese, Swedish Smorgie .... ), bier bistros, Caribbean voodoo stores, candle 'n' incense stores, "Mamma Llama" fur establishments, Peruvian rug palaces, Traders Vic and Imports R Us'es, American Indian woven baskets and turquoise and silver jewelry tables set out on sidewalks, tattoo and body-piercing parlors, Ben 'n' Jerry ice-cream parlors, boutiques exotique reeking of patchouli oil, tee-shirt 'n' poster places, leather 'n' chain places, leather 'n' lace places, Planets Hollywood, tobacconists, artsy-smartsy movie theatres smelling of stale palm-oil popcorn and Lysol and showing the likes of "Night and the City," "Sunset Boulevard" and "Postman Always Rings Twice" -- not the REMAKES, my fellow dumdums, the ORIGINALS -- and every Friday and Saturday night for at least two decades, at the demon-stroke of midnight, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" -- especially for the trade of students who weren't even born when most of those flicks were set to celluloid .... And now that you have the picture: Into this truly Corinthian environment came wild-eyed, hair-standing-on-end William Miller -- oops, I mean Dave Brucette -- and the SDA E-Crusade. By this time I was too alienated from "the mystification" to participate in the campaign, but not too alienated to attend some of the meetings. You know the kind of people who would be attracted to meetings featuring the cute little Numeat-fed, makeup-scrubbed-off, jewelry-bereft Mountain View Academy girls with shiny ironed preferably blinding-blond hair, standing out front and passing out "free tickets" together with colorful leaflets featuring that hideous painting of the seductive-scantily-clad-buxom-woman-in-scarlet-drinking-the-purple-wine-of-the-wrath-of-God-from-the-golden-goblet-in-the-foreground-and-the-skyscrapers-toppling-over-in-the-background on the front cover. You know the one. I mean, if that weren't reason enough, some of the sidewalk brigade would go in just for a warm place to sleep "it" off in the dark for a couple of hours. Yes, I think you're sufficiently aware of the kind of people who would tend to enter -- in addition to the normal "pew sitters," the pre-invited "friends 'n' neighbors" and the one-on-one Revelation Seminarians. To "cut short in righteousness" this too-true story: As a direct result of this 3-week series, Brucette's minions of local-church ministers baptized about 250 souls and distributed them among the SDA churches roundabout: mainly Palo Alto and Mountain View, and a scattering on down to Los Altos, Los Gatos, and Sunnyvale. And although by a year later few-if-any remained in the less-than-stimulating local-church environment, witnessing the whole extravaganza did leave me with a vivid idea of the kind of self-selected people who are routinely "brought in" via this kind of SDA e-process. At the time I was team-teaching an SS -- come on, cyberpals, not Hitler's Schutzstaffel, though close, squeamishly close -- moderated discussion group at Mountain View SDA. And one of these proselytes landed in my class. I kid you not, he looked like a Nazi from the movies -- young, tall, handsome, with blinding blond hair shaved and sheared off well above the ears, Himmler style, and strikingly pale blue eyes that said, "Nobody's minding the store." He even wore something that vaguely reminded of a uniform, with epaulets maybe. We were sitting around a couple of those long "church potluck" size tables pushed together in the fellowship hall on this particular Sabbath morning. The subject-of-Quarterly was the early Christian martyrs. As I was explaining how they were tortured, stoned, sawn in two (Hebrews 11:37), killed by the sword, set-upon by deliberately-starved lions, dipped in pitch and set afire while still alive to "light the screaming night" of the blood-thirsty Roman coliseum, etc., I noticed this fellow leaning forward in his chair, elbows on table, eyes agleam, mouth betraying an incipient, almost drooling smile .... Finally he cracked a broad grin and cried out, "Did they back over them -- ah, ah -- with trucks?" Yes, he was scarily ignorant -- like nearly all the Third-Reich-era Nazis were, having "matured" in a Germany of burning books and exported "subhumans" such as Albert Einstein -- and oblivious to the simple historical fact that it would be a good nineteen hundred more years yet before trucks were even invented. But, and vastly more important, he was a self-selected chip-on-the-shoulder attracted by a sensationalistic series of e-meetings unwittingly designed for people like him. Maybe he couldn't hold a job, and it was "always the fault" of some "Jew boss" or something, and if he'd just jump on Jesus' bandwagon, his new "Lord" would oblige him by sending that Jew and all others who were mean and cruel and nasty to him to be "gassed and incinerated in the chambers" by the proxy of the Second Coming. He wouldn't have to lift so much as a finger. Whatever the case, Brucette's pitch had obviously "netted" him: "You're a victim and Jesus is going to zap all your enemies 'with the brightness of his coming.'" Yes, you know the type. And so I would agree with you that "mind control" is certainly an operative term. But I would also add that since this "mind control" usually works best on willing victims who are already emotionally unhealthy, it is typically the emotionally unhealthy who enter willingly in under the archway graced with the handwriting by the moving finger in the unknown language written on the keystone of the arch that, if only the victims had had the "eyes" to read it, says, "Abandon Hope All Ye who Enter Here." It's the "slave demands slaver" or "victim requires perpetrator" syndrome. It's as though if there were no Jan Marcussens, no Dave Brucettes, no Neal Wilsons, no Bob Folkenbergs, no Doug Bachelors, no Morrie Vendens, no Dwight Nelsons, no EGWs, no William Millers, etc., it would be necessary to create, or at least clone, some. Therefore, do not go gentle into SDA night, Rage against the dying of the gospel light, Jude | ||
| susan |
Jude, you crack me up! Love your use of the english language. Thanks for the great illustrations. You've given me my laugh for the evening. You and Lynn are "right on" about the mind control. Looking back at my childhood, I was in constant opposition to sda teachings/mind control. I questioned everything and never got satisfactory answers (perhaps it's because they weren't God's answers???). This is the kind of stuff that mainstream Christianity has NO idea about. It's quite unsettling to me. Sda's are so subtle with their mind control and cultic teachings that most Christians haven't a clue. I can't praise God enough for leading me out. And I thank Him for all of you and what He's doing in all our lives. What a MIGHTY God we serve!!! | ||
| Darrell |
Ah yes, University Avenue. I do miss Liddicoats, The Good Earth, and North Face. 6th Street may be the closest thing to Palo Alto this side of the Rio Grande, but it has 3 times the scum and none of the redeeming factors. Jude, thanks for your vivid description! | ||
| Debbie |
Jude, You are quite right in your description. The gentlemen you are speaking about is Dale Brusett of Brusett Montana. I attended a seminar of his in the 80's and again in the early 90's in St. Louis, MO. I can't believe I fell for all of their twisted nonsense. Broke free from bondage in 1998! |
