| Author | Message | ||
| Chyna |
hi my friends, last night i went to go get a study bible, i already had a simple NASB, but I felt like historical notes in my bible would be wonderful. so I went and lo, and behold, in the Christian aisle was "Kingdom of the Cults" ok ok i know it's supposd to be underlined b/c it's a book, anyway, so I started reading the appendix on Adventism. it had pages and pages of reading explaining what Adventists thought and why it contradicted Ortodox Christianity -- basically it refuted a lot of the heterodoxical doctrine. since I was short on time I flipped through and wished I could borrow it just to read that section. funny, but when i was in jr. high i borrowed books on cults from my church library (guess God was already at work in me then) sorry for the mental detour. anyway, so I was thinking maybe sometime I could borrow it from the library. but for some reason today (i guess H.S. was working with me) I typed in Yahoo! 'kingdom of the cults' and it came up with a webpage that had posted entire chunks of Walter Martin's book. Praise God, He is awesome. I had gone to this page before, but every link was broken (satan's work probably) and I was disappointed because it looked like one of those bastions, like a bulwark, a collection of readings that would have been very helpful that somehow got shut down. another thing i don't understand is the 'disfellowshipping.' why aren't church members more aghast that they are losing brothers and sisters in Christ this way? i guess they think their members are sinning unrepentantly. don't know. i wonder what God has in store for me next. in Christ, Chyna | ||
| Ritchie |
Hi, Chyna! I used to work for the denomination and sit on committees and boards that recommended members for disfellowshipping. I reluctantly went along with the decisions and to this day I still don't get it. I heard that a new ruling has just been made to change the term to 'remove from membership'. I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe someone else can shed light on this new development. I've read Kingdom of the Cults and even had a chance to sit in one of Walter Martin's lectures in Pasadena. One thing I know is that he is cool about SDAs--even tries to convince the public that the church is okay inspite of some of its unorthodox teachings. Perhaps this is due in part to the contact he has had with the church--through 'evangelical' SDAs instead of the right wing or 'historical' types. I wish you well in your search for truth. For me it came in several stages. This one my family and I are in is a very crucial one. But we're glad we are moving in the right direction. | ||
| Chyna |
more on why God is awesome :) well just a couple minutes i had the revelation that we can't break the sabbath because our salvation is a keeping-sabbath. this concept is dizzying because it bridges the law and grace. my ex-b/f was quite insistent that the law and grace are not opposite and i agree. hm, actually i feel quite dizzy probably for other reasons also ... physical. i couldn't answer him why the 9 commandments were repeated and the fourth one was conspicuously omitted, but now i see why, it's not that it became less important, but that we continue to keep it BY being saved, not any other way. anyway, wanted to share with you other awesome stuff God has revealed to me. through my extensive study of IJ, and the introduction of Antiochus Epiphanes into the story, I saw how Antiochus forced everyone to worship the Greek religion. This was a ploy of Satan to destroy the Jewish religion before the Messiah could come! Satan was trying to thwart God's plan! also, I had been reading about the rulers of Judah etc. and I saw that in one case the King died and his mother became the queen, but she was insane, and she KILLED ALL her grandchildren. Again this was Satan trying to wipe out the line that Jesus had been prophesied to arise from. She thought she had killed all the successors but an aunt hid Joash, and he became king. through this I see how God prevails, even when Satan tries his best to thwart God. that even though on the exterior it looks like the usual power games of man, but there is a real spiritual warfare going on, but we can have confidence because God is in control even when it looks like all hope is lost. in Him, Chyna | ||
| Colleentinker |
Chyna, God is really leading you in an intensive course on the New Covenant! Wow! But you need also to let him be with you in your pain and to let him comfort and heal you. Let him hold your pain while you gain equilibrium, and remember that God redeems everything we submit to him. Ask him to help you eat and sleep. We are praying for you. You don't have to hold yourself together by yourself. Submit your anxiety to him, and ask him to show you what he wants you to know, to reveal what he wants you to learn, and to bring his peace to your soul. In his love, Colleen | ||
| Lydell |
This seemed like the appropriate topic area to place this under. Heard a true story yesterday and was so awestruck, I wanted to share it. Last Wednesday night we had a missionary to Papua New Guinea, Tim Johnson, speak at our church. Before the service, our pastor Lyle Peluso, who was once a missionary in Australia, took Tim out to eat. During the course of the conversation, Tim suddenly turned to Lyle and asked him if he had ever ministered in a certain remote village in Papua. Lyle replied with surprise that he had. This was a very remote village that took a week to reach by jeep and foot travel. Tim then told him that right before he had left Papua to go home for this visit he had been talking to a handful of folks and mentioned that he would also be speaking in the church pastored by Lyle. One of the men who was there became excited. He told him that 25 years ago Lyle had been in his village and had prayed for this man's mother-in-law (the poor woman had been insane for some time). Very quickly afterwards, the woman's sanity was restored. That's awesome enough right there, but there is more. It was because of that miracle, or rather the demonstration through it of God's power, that the man had accepted Christ. He says that seeing that, he knew that what had been preached was true. That's even more awesome, but not the end of the story. Lyle and Bev told us that Lyle had been the first white person to ever visit that village. It was one thing that had gotten the attention of the villagers to begin with, I guess. But nothing particularly spectacular had seemed to happen during the visit, as far as they were aware. They had just decided that, well, we were obediant to do what God gave us to do, so, whatever... Now here, 25 years later, the Lord manages to arrange things that they finally here news of what happened because of that one visit. It shows that we are never responsible for the results of what happens when we minister or when we pray. We are just called to be obediant in the doing and the Lord is responsible for the rest. And isn't it precious that the Lord would go to the "trouble" of arranging after all these years for them to hear the rest of the story. I just thought the whole thing was too awesome! | ||
| Lydell |
Okay, there was another story as well. Our church recently received a letter from a woman who was touched by one of our servant evangelism outreaches. It seems that she had been in town that day with her daughter doing some shopping. They were very rushed, needing to get to another town aome 45 miles away. It was only as they were leaving town, in a hurry to get home to pick up some forgotten item needed in the other town that they remembered that the daughter had been told also to bring two bottles of water. That started the mom stressing over how she would ever manage to make a stop at a store and a stop at home and still get to the appointment on time. It just wasn't going to happen. It was immediately after this that they pulled up to a stop light where a member of our church stepped up to their car and handed them 2 bottles of cold bottled water. She reports that it was just an awesome reminder to them that the Lord is aware of ALL of their needs no matter how small. Is God good at His job, or what?! | ||
| Colleentinker |
Lydell, thank you for the stories. It really is encouragin to hear other's stories of God working in their lives. And your Papua story really did "speak" to me; teaching seems mostly to be sowing seeds for a future harvest, and we teachers almost never hear whether or not there is a harvest at all! Praising God for being in charge of the sowing and the reaping, Colleen | ||
| Lydell |
I know what you mean Colleen. We too often forget also that maybe when we have done something in the name of Christ the person who is listening is only the carrier of the seed. They don't "get it" themselves, but will turn around and tell what you have said to someone else who IS ready and receives the Word. We are just called to sow extravagantly as the sower in the Bible did. Now as for teaching children....yeah, it does seem a thankless task sometimes doesn't it? At least with having taught my own kids there is a chance of seeing the results. And I do catch the glimpses now that they are adults. And, bless them, they have ever thanked me occassionally. ha But you know Colleen, if you hadn't been doing your job properly, their progress would have come to a halt. And THAT you would have heard about. Maybe by seeing many come through your classroom again. Hey, even delayed harvest is harvest, right. Some seeds just take longer than others to germinate. So don't ever think you are getting nowhere! Ha, likely someday some kid is going to be driven nuts by their parents who will constantly quote back to them something you have said to them back in the days they were in your classroom. My own kids won't forgive me for "Pi are not square, pi are round." heeheeheehee | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 826 Registered: 3-2004 |
As an adult, my son has thanked me many times for raising him the way I did and it was not a traditional SDA way. I wanted him to love God and enjoy the Sabbath so I did not have do nots for sabbath. I just had let us do this when it came to sabbath. Now that he is on the verge of leaving adventism, and I pray it is soon, he and his wife are using the things I used to raise their son. Thanks God adventism is not involved in this. Praise God!!! He is awesome. Diana |
