| Author | Message | ||
| Bruce H |
Timo K You are right about the Invisible Church. Jude Thanks for your great answer. | ||
| Bruce H |
Jude Along this line, I'm itching to review Samuele Bacchiocchi's FROM SABBATH TO SUNDAY on www.formeradventist.com to show how he impresses the SDA archtypical view onto HISTORY as well as onto Scripture. I would be very interested in this. I have read his book through as well as most of his Bibliography. I found him to be dishonest and deceivig. bh | ||
| Jude the Obscure |
Allenette, What a pretty name! Iím sure that the gentlefolk at formeradventist.com would be more than happy to have you as a regular. Iím actually only a few days old on this website myself. You asked what I meant by Adventists who never had Christ in their hearts going off the ìdeep endî when they leave the church. Forgive me for using that SDA clichÈ. I was thinking of lifestyle issues: sexual immorality and drugs, for example. Yes, I would agree that the SDA ìdeep endî idea is pretty shallow: movies, coffee, wine, jewelry, makeup, etc. You come across as a thinking person. You pointed out that some SDA ìbackslidersî left gagging on these shallow lifestyle issues -- not doctrine -- but couldnít make the new social scene and so drifted back to the comfortable old ìfilthy ragsî of Adventism. I've seen that so many times: the poor soul, either sitting in a bar feeling guilty because he's not sitting in church or sitting in church wishing he was sitting in a bar! Obsessive-compulsive religious addiction. I have to admit I do admire people like you who study their way out of doctrines that they ìweigh in the balances and find wantingî ñ even if they donít join another church, even if they donít remain ìbelieversî in a conventional sense. I donít worry about these people, because it is God, and not I, who leads them. In this regard I got a snail-mail letter from a friend just yesterday, who has left the church. She said she thinks there MAY be a God, but sheís become "totally anti-church-religion.î Hereís part of what I wrote back: ìCongratulations, [her name]! Youíve come a tremendous distance! If you were to ask me, I would say that God has been very active in your life since you left ________. Maybe you had to leave the church to find God. Maybe God used Nietzche to get a message through to you that ìthe teachers of the lawî could not do. And maybe God is using me to tell you that he is extremely pleased with your progress. ìMy take on the sacrifice of Jesus [which she has rejected because she didnít think her sin was great enough to merit the death of a god] is: He died for you whether you like it or not. God's love is unconditional. The greatness or smallness of your sin has absolutely nothing whatever to do with it. Maybe God doesnít want you to find him in church or in a pastorís study [her pastor had humiliated her and made her feel ridiculous in "spiritual" counseling]. Maybe God wants you to find him exactly where he led you to look: in nature, art, philosophy, music, children, friends. And maybe -- when you have come full circle -- you will meet him for the first time.î I closed the letter with this quote from James Russell Lowell: ìTruth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne .... Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own.î Ah, what sweet mystery is God, Allenette, Jude | ||
| Jude the Obsure |
Bruce: Now I've GOT review Bacchiocchi's book! --Jude | ||
| Richard Tinker |
In reference to a former post concerning whether evangelical Adventists should stay in their church or leave, consider the following text: Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord, Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. (2 Cor.6:17-18) In my own experience, I have had far more opportunities to witness to Adventists since I left than during all the many years I was an evangelical Adventist! Listen to the Holy Spirit as He will most certainly guide you to Truth. | ||
| Lydell |
Richard, another point that the Lord brought home to us when He led us out was that if we stayed in the denomination we were, in effect, declaring to everyone who knew us that we believed the Adventists to have the truth and the church to be a safe place for believers. It wasn't a nonsensical idea, unfortunately. It was with very real sadness that I heard a couple years ago that a former neighbor of ous had begun attending the local SDA church where we had once been members. I feel sure it was because she had been friends with us, respected the faith she had seen at work in us (we were Christians before attending the SDA church) and made her move to them at least in part on the basis of that. Praise God, I believe she has given it up! | ||
| Timo K. |
Richard, weather we "leave" our Churches or not is a matter of Holy Spirit leading us. Ideally no-one shoud even join a denomination unless the person is babtised with the Holy Spirit. In my understanding all the visible Churches are dangerous places to be in. Those who are not called by God to be in a denomination should be better off leaving the denomination (at least spiritually) and receive the Holy Spirit and thus been born again. And after that let the Holy Spirit lead wherever He wants to lead. First spiritually and afterwards personally the Invisible Church is leaving the divided christianity. One by one God is calling out of spiritual Babylon (divided christianity). In one way it is often hardest to leave an evangelical denomination, since there might be so many Spirit filled people in these Churches. In other word many inside these denominations are members of Christ Invisible Body. We start feeling home at these Churches, and it is easy to forget that Christ prayed for unity. In spite how many Spirit lead christians, who accepted the Blood of Christ, there is in a denomination, there is only ONE real Church. In Communist China, those Cogregational local Churces who were proclaiming that all Christians in one area (town) belong to same Church, were most successful under pressure during the Cultural Revolution. Watchman Nee, who saw this Church-pattern as the only way in China tried to establish local churches on this basis. I don't agree with all the teachings of brother Nee, but in this I do. He spent 20 years in prison and kept his faith all these years. I am not telling that brother Nee's Church model fulfilled in any ways the Unity led by the Holy Spirit. But maybe this is a foretaste that Christians can be "under same roof" even thou theological understanding is not always same. Of course without the Blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit no real Unity is possible. China which does not have a long tradition of different Christian groups, had easier to accept practical Christian Unity. In western Christianity this Unity needs a real deep work of the Spirit in the hearts of us, in order to be practical reality. At least we can have a goal not being "spiritually" part of any divsion. Only part we should have is "likeness" but not in it. We can be in "likeness" of adventism to win adventist or in likeness to Pentacostalist to win pentacostalist ... and so on. Man-made unity does not work, it has to be Spirit made Unity. timo |
