| Author |
Message |
Colleentinker (Colleentinker)
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 08, 2003 - 12:32 pm: |     |
You're not far from the truth, Hoytster. My suspicion is perhaps slightly more cynical. I suspect that when someone such as the person you described above suddenly amasses a huge profit unexplainably, he didn't do so in a vacuum. Generally, he will have ties to others who somehow also were involved (in that or in other unethical or illegal shcemes), and they cover for or settle with the identified "offender" because if they don't, they themselves will be exposed and the offenses may penetrate deeply into the organization. Certainly that phenomenon seems to have been at work in the Folkenberg case.
Of course, the desire to appear clean and compassionate as an organization overlies everything else. Consequently, between not wanting to expose the "sins" of many and wanting to protect the denominational reputation from the scrutiny of the public or (horrors!) the press, many really unethical or illegal "things" get covered up.
Adventists don't have a corner on such duplicity, of course. Such behavior, though, is especially heinous when it hides under a veneer of piety. (I guess the Catholics have had similar dis-ease lately with the various priest/abuse charges.)
I am so thankful that God sees all, that he is just, and that he holds his own--whether they are still Adventists or not--in his hand.
Colleen |
Sabra (Sabra)
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 08, 2003 - 6:46 pm: | |
Hoyster,
Did you know the Waco 'whackos' were SDA? Things that make you go hmmmmmmm. |
Lucias (Lucias)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 9:00 am: | |
Sabra,
Having done a great deal of reading into Waco. I come down squarely opposed to the US Gov actions.
I can say that while there are certainly roots of that movement from the SDA church by the time the Waco incident happend it was clearly not an SDA church. Whether the separation was official at the time I cannot say but from a point of view of how the faith was practiced the seperation was quite old.
There had previously existed a practicing prophetess among them. This prophetess had a son who also began to have the gift. But then Mr. Vernon Howell ( aka David Koresh ) showed up, a SDA or former SDA. He also began practicing the gift. Ultimately he won the battle for offical prophet of the bunch.
My favorite tale is when Vernon and the womans son decided to challenge each other to a test to see who was the true prophet. Kinda like Elijah ( or Elisha ? ) did with the prophets of Baal. They decided that raising the dead was a good test of a prophet so they set about to have a resurrection contest. Well apparently the son of the prophetess, one can only presume in an attempt to get some practice time in, actually dug up a casket from the cemetary and hauled it in to the chapel. It was about this point that word got out. Apparently Davids supporters and the sons supporters got into a fight, shots were fired. The local law was called out and arrested everyone. Due to various problems with witness credibility the only convictions that arose from this were for contempt of court.
Being a former SDA myself who travelled across this country from church to chuch. I can say without fear of contradiction that events like the above are not part of the SDA church.
I mean SDA's have their quirks to be sure. And there are squabbles aplenty. But so far I know of none involving any prophets other than EGW, at least after her early days, and no resurrection contests. The only time corpses are seen in the church is when they lie in state during a funeral and so far as I know gunplay is rarely seen during church disputes ;-) |
Chris (Chris)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 9:39 am: | |
Lucias, I agree that the Davidians should not be called SDAs. Becasue of his extreme views, David Koresh had been disfellowshipped from an SDA church years before the tragic events. Most of the Davidians had SDA backgrounds, but probably would have called themselves Davidians as opposed to SDAs. And I believe the SDA denomination sued to make the Davidians cease using "SDA" as part of their name. So this group was pretty thoroughly disavowed by mainstream SDAs. However, I can't alleviate Adventism from all culpability in providing the millieu in which groups like Sheperd's Rod and Branch Davidians can form. In some ways, these groups are merely a logical extension of Adventist teachings. These groups have grappled with, and supplied answers (however erroneous) to the following questions that Adventism cannot answer in a logical fashion: If we need to keep the weekly Sabbath, why not the monthly and yearly Sabbaths as well? If we keep all the Sabbaths, why not other parts of the Mosaic law? If EGW was an authoritative prophet and a nearly canniocal interpreter of scripture in the 19th century, why shouldn't there be prophets of equal canniocal authority in this century? If you really believe that Sunday law death decrees will soon be passed, shouldn't you back up that belief with preparation now? I tend to think that if more Adventists were more consistent in their belief system, there would be more David Koresh's.
Chris |
Melissa (Melissa)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 10:34 am: | |
Had Koresh been arrested, I think he could have easily been convicted on statutory rape to say the least as some of his so-called wives were minors. At least in part, Koresh created the 'vision' he claimed would happen to them by his own unwillingness to cooperate.
If he had gone out and created another Columbine, we would be condemning the government for their in-action. Were the government's actions right? WHO KNOWS. From all the reports I've read (and I've read quite a few), the people were using their best intelligence to protect good citizens from what they perceived as a threat. Again, had the 9/11 hijackers been caught before 9/11 and detained, there would be rights-activists groups out there demanding their freedom. Truth is until a tragedy happens, people don't want other people bothered. After a tragedy, the finger-pointing abounds and questions of WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING? It is a fine line to walk. If we say everyone has a right to do and think as they want until they kill someone, then the person killed is merely the casualty of a free society...sorry for your loss. If we want people who make varying kinds of threats against people, though they have "done" nothing to be "stopped" before they do something, there is a degree of a loss of freedom for the individual. How do you differentiate between the real and perceived threats? That's not a job I would want.
I think Chris' point is right on. Adventism opens the door for continued prophets and "new" revelations. When researching Adventism and the Koresh connection several years ago, there were several of other 'prophets' who considered themselves the person appointed to follow EGW. I think they called their messages the 4th and 5th angels message. But EGW opened the door...
My opinion, purely.... But I believe God allows and is in control of this world. The evil forces of this world DO NOT SURPRISE God....nor do the potential screw ups of those attempting to "help". I have to trust ALL THINGS work together for good, even though the details hurt me or my family at the moment. It's all theoretical for me at this time, though, because I didn't lose anyone in Columbine, Waco, NY, DC or Pennsylvania. But my cousin was standing between 2 of the girls who were killed in the Jonesboro school shooting. She also watched her teacher killed and several other classmates. I know her family wishes she did not have to experience the last few years of trauma. |
Colleentinker (Colleentinker)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 12:36 pm: | |
Wow, Melissa, what a traumatic event for your cousin!
Chris, I completely agree with your assessment of Adventism's predisposing people to forming or joining extreme cults (not that less obviously extreme cults are any less cults; they all stem from spirits of deception.) I have thought for many years that if Adventism is truly believed, it will either drive a person towards insanity or towards agnosticism. Finding Jesus is a mriacle that happens in some people's lives in spite of Adventism. The religion itself will not help a person to know him or to become born again. If Jesus is the not center of our focus and loyalty, we are vulnerable to deception.
David Koresh and his followers (who, I've been told, included one of my former students from Gem State Academy) were already vulnerable to the spirit of deception that shapes Adventism, and Koresh just provided more "present truth"!
(BTW, speaking of present truth, I'll never forget the day an Adventist loved one said that the reason Paul only preached Christ crucified without the added "light" of the health message, etc., was because Paul's gospel "was present truth for his day." I realized there was absolutely nothing more I could say at that point.)
Praising God for continuing to teach us truth and to reveal reality,
Colleen |
Hoytster (Hoytster)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 2:54 pm: | |
Perhaps tangentially related:
My ex's father and (separately) her sister have each tried to start their own churches, variants on the current SDA institution. I don't know about the Dad's theology, except I was told that he had trouble holding onto converts because he kept changing the story. The sister allegedly was soliciting SDAs who were attending services, to come to her church instead, because she believes that the modern SDA church has veered from the Truth. She might be a historical Adventist.
When I heard about their founding their own churches, I was kinda stunned. This may be simply my personality: certitude is not my big quality. The very idea that someone would presume to know a special and unique Truth, the possession of which leads that person to found their own, new church... That kind of blows my mind, if I may use a late '60's expression that I never much liked even then. 
I attended the sister's Saturday morning service a couple times, out of courtesy and curiousity.
That ended when one of my son's cousins, an 8-year-old, read his favorite verse from the Bible, John 3.16. The sister responded with a cold voice:
"Right after that, the Scripture is really harsh."
She wanted to draw this child's attention to the subsequent versus, which tell how unbelievers and evil doers are condemned. What struck me was her apparent need to emphasize the dark side. This simple child presenting his favorite verse, felt rebuked and saddened.
That was the last time I attended, and that child's mother stopped going soon after.
I guess that is where I got me apparently-mistaken impression that SDAs tend toward the negative aspects of the Good News.
- Hoytster |
Hoytster (Hoytster)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 3:01 pm: | |
A postscript:
The ex's family are extremely bright. The father was a leading surgeon. The ex and two of her three siblings are doctors. The sister who is trying to found her own "true" church is a very smart, extremely well-studied, and ultimately kind and Christian woman.
So they are formidable, and persuasive.
I have had to stop talking with her, though, because she was relentlessly proselitizing (sp?), and the message was so negative.
Are you familiar with the idea that you are a liar, a violator of the commandment, if you are *deceived*. In my case, because I was deceived (by the Pope, presumably) into worshipping on Sunday, that made me a liar.
At that point, I lost patience.
Is this a real doctrine? If you are deceived, then you are a liar?
- Hoytster |
Sabra (Sabra)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 3:36 pm: | |
regarding the Waco, incident: IMHO, saying they weren't really Adventist is like saying the terrorists aren't really Muslim..."Islaam is a peaceful religion" kind of double talk. Yes, they were extremists but the mold they came from played a large part in that.
Hoyster, you truly have a mess on your hands.
They do focus on the negative, the dark, the terrible. It is so sad to grow up in that atmosphere. I still have to shake myself and tell myself to enjoy my life after so long of not thinking I had a future. I looked at everything as "what's the point?" I thought, "why are we so worried about being healthy if we are going to be hunted down and killed? Why are we going to school if the Sunday Law is coming and we have to run to the hills?" I never felt I had a purpose in this life. The religion is so destructive to self worth.
Praying for you and your ex family. |
Chris (Chris)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 5:34 pm: | |
Hoyster, I don't think you'er mistaken about many SDAs focusing on God's justice rather than his mercy and the beauty and assurance of the simple Gospel of salvation. That's certainly true. It's just that it's most correct to say that Adventists sometimes focus on "judgement" as opposed to saying they focus on "hell". The difference is that they believe in an investigative judgement, but don't believe in a literal hell. They believe that if you don't pass the judgement you will simply be extinguished and exist no more forever, i.e. no eternal conscious seperation from God, just oblivion, non-exisitence.
Chris |
Lori (Lori)
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 8:34 pm: | |
Regarding: "If you are deceived, you are a liar."
The line I always heard was: "If they don't keep the Sabbath there is no truth in them."
This one-liner keeps many an Adventist from listening to anyone "outside the church". You may hear something.....and it makes a lot of sense but then that one liner flashes through your mind. You immediately realize they can't be telling the truth because they don't keep the Sabbath. If they don't keep the Sabbath there is no truth in them. Period. You don't even have to examine the Scripture!! Brilliant one-liner, huh?? |
Jerry (Jerry)
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 7:13 am: | |
Yes Hoytster and Lori, they, no doubt, think they are referring to this:
Quote:John 8:44
[44] Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
There are several problems with any attempt to use this verse to refer to ́non-Sabbatariansî as having ́no truthî in them.
- First, the verse refers to the devil having ́no truth in him.î
- Second, where he says, ́Ye are of your father the devil,î Jesus was confronting those who denied his divinity and sought to kill Jesus. These were Jews seeking to enforce Torah law, in particular one of the Ten Commandments, the one about adultry.
- Third, Jesus did not say that these Jews had no truth in them. To infer this is speculation, not proof.
- Fourth, John tells us exactly what ́truthî Jesus meant.
Quote:John 14:6
[6] Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
This second quote, while several chapters after the first, fits perfectly with the context of the statement in John 8:44.
What the original accusation does is assume that the ́truthî is the Sabbath, then reversed the cause and effect of the clause. Essentially, they changed ́abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in himî to this, ́there is no truth in a Sunday worshipping non-SDA, because they abide not in the truth (Seventh-day Sabbath).
This is the kind of eisegesis used by some SDAís to bend scripture. |
Thomas1 (Thomas1)
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 8:23 am: | |
Another thing I find interesting about that passage is that the ones he was talking about were the ones who on many occasions accused HIM of being a Sabbath breaker!
<><
Thomas |
Colleentinker (Colleentinker)
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 12:38 pm: | |
Hoytster, you are in a difficult situation. I would guess that your ex family is on the historic Adventist side of things; they tend to believe that Adventism has strayed from the "blueprint" and needs to be reformed.
There have actually been many reactionary Adventists over the years who have tried to start new churches. Some end up like Waco; some develop small followings who support small publishing efforts designed to promulgate the real "truth"; some end up like Jan Marcussen with his anti-pope/Catholic campaigns; some end up like the Hope International group, etc.
The common thread among all of them is the belief in extra-Biblical prophecy, usually EGW's prophecy. Some of these entrepreneurial church planters or movement-starters, however, even see themselves as the successor to EGW and claim their own special revelations from God.
Whenever anyone strays from Scripture, he or she strays from truth. It's suicide to think anything other than the Bible is an authoritative source of spiritual truth for our lives.
Praying for you and your son, Hoytster.
Colleen |
Susan_2
Registered user
Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 472
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 5:00 pm: | |
Dear Hoytster, I will tell you that I was taught as a child growing up- that we Commandment-keepers had one up on those Sunday-keepers and yes, God knows His own and loves the Sabbath-keepers more than he loves the Sunday-keepers. It was drilled into me as a child that the Sunday-keepers while professing Christianity were mearly nominal Christians and if they are allowed to live long enough that they should have had the time in this life to come to the truth of the Sabbath and they wasted their time by not looking into this or if they did look into this subject and rejected the truth of the weekly Sabbath then they squandered their opportunity for eternal life. It was always clairfied though that it really wasn't a wasted life because being a fslse Christian will most likly give a person a better quality life in this life than having been a total non-Christian. I was taught WE have the truth and THEY don't. There was always that division/ us verses them. The Sabbath-keepers are the REAL Christians. The Sunday-keepers are not Christians but since they really believe they are Christian then at the judgement God will most likly have mercy on them but then maybe not so they'd best not risk eternal life over it and they'd better become SDA fast because the SDA church is the only church that is speeding up the second coming of Jesus. Does this ring a bell? Does this make sense? I was always taught as a little kid that we were better than anyone else because we had THE TRUTH, all the truth and that settles it. My precious JW in-law children are being taught this same reasoning-that they are better than everyone else because they have all truth and everyone else has all error. It's extremely tragic and I truly believe it is mental/emotional abuse 100%. |
Pheeki
Registered user
Username: Pheeki
Post Number: 257
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 08, 2004 - 12:56 pm: | |
Me too, Susan2. It is abuse. I was taught the same thing as a child. I hang out on the www.carm.org website and try to talk some sense into the SDA's there...they tell me and others that we just had a non-characteristic legalistic SDA upbringings...the new ones to SDAism that didn't grow up in it(or the ones contemplating SDAism) tell us we don't know what we are talking about and just have a vendetta against the SDA chruch.
I know exactly what you are professing above...I experienced it first hand. |
Susan_2
Registered user
Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 480
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 5:06 pm: | |
This may sound crass but I really believe the new converts to SDA'ism and the kids growing up in that organization if they pay full attention to what is being taught to them and they stay in the SDA organization long enough then they too will develope that same mindset that you and I remember so well. Reading the Sabbath School quarterile, tne Review, the Recorder and the other SDA literature only leads me to have come to this conclusion. It may not be pounded as loudly from the preacher standing up front on Saturday mornings but it still is there every bit as strong. |
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