| Author |
Message |
Lori
Registered user
Username: Lori
Post Number: 128
Registered: 11-1999
| | Posted on Monday, December 05, 2011 - 8:25 pm: |     |
Doctrines of demons.
1 Timothy 4:1,2, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirit and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron."
It almost make me physically ill to know my parents (and the entirety of my mothers side of the family) are in this and I am a useless witness to them all because they view me as deceived. |
Flyinglady
Registered user
Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 9520
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2011 - 12:47 am: | |
Lori, You are not a useless witness. Whatever God does through us may not always be obvious to us, but God does use it.
Diana L |
Lori
Registered user
Username: Lori
Post Number: 129
Registered: 11-1999
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2011 - 6:49 am: | |
To my parents, I am...to my mothers family I am. They won't have anything to do with me at all--I am the spawn of Satan. Anything I say to my family causes them to dig deeper into Adventism. My mother has actually told me my blessings come from Satan. As far as they are concerned, I am null and void as an ambassador of Christ. When we were speaking, they would start the religious discussion in order to rip apart my beliefs and in the same breath tell me their beliefs are not up for discussion.
(Message edited by Lori on December 06, 2011) |
Flyinglady
Registered user
Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 9521
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2011 - 8:33 am: | |
Lori, your parents may believe that, but God does not.
Father God you know what Lori's parents have told her. Let Lori know that you will use her and everything she says to your honor and glory.
Keep Lori in your awesome palms.
In Jesus name I ask this. |
Leonie
Registered user
Username: Leonie
Post Number: 21
Registered: 10-2011
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2011 - 12:27 pm: | |
Lori, your words will have an impact on them the day they open up to The Holy Spirit. Never give up, your work is to sow the Word - God himself will make sure it bears fruit.
Pray, pray, and pray..... and when there is an opportunity slip in a word of how wonderful Gods grace is.
Praying for you.
Monica |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 13203
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2011 - 6:02 pm: | |
Lori, I know what you mean. Richard's folks feel that way as well.
Their unbelief and resistance, however, cannot cancel out our prayers.
Colleen |
Bobalou
Registered user
Username: Bobalou
Post Number: 86
Registered: 2-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - 6:45 am: | |
Matthew 19:29
New International Version (NIV)
29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife[a] or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
These are comforting powerful words to offset the hurt we feel. Claim the promise. |
Lori
Registered user
Username: Lori
Post Number: 130
Registered: 11-1999
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - 7:31 am: | |
Thank you for your uplifting words and your prayers. God has provided so much for me in the absence of my family!! |
Chris
Registered user
Username: Chris
Post Number: 1654
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - 10:16 am: | |
quote:When we were speaking, they would start the religious discussion in order to rip apart my beliefs and in the same breath tell me their beliefs are not up for discussion.
Lori, that statement so resonates with me. We get along (more or less) with my in-laws now by just not talking about spiritual things. However, for the first couple of years, what you describe above is exactly how it was. They would make various comments about how we "knew better" and imply that we were being willfully disobedient, but would absolutely refuse to open the Bible with us and discuss why their accusations were erroneous. It was infuriating.
Imagine if someone said to you, "You know full well you should be sacrificing animals, but you just can't be bothered to do what God says. I know it and you know, and that's all there is to it. I don't want to talk about about it anymore and I really don't care to hear any of those texts you throw out. You know the truth and I hope that someday you come back to sacrificing before it's too late".
That conversation sounds ridiculous, but I've had it dozens of times just with a different fulfilled shadow inserted. |
Mjcmcook
Registered user
Username: Mjcmcook
Post Number: 247
Registered: 2-2011
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - 10:29 am: | |
~Chris~
Your second statement above could have come out of the mouth of my dear Mother~[insert["you should be going to church on sabbath!"~
Reading that brought back so many memories~my dear Mother went to her grave worried that I was forever lost, because I had left adventism & went to a "Sunday-Keeping" church!
No amount of trying to explain did any good~in fact, it only made things worse~ I lived in another state so did not visit at her home very often~ but her phone calls were for the most part taken up with her FEAR that I was eternally lost!
Great sadness all around~
~mj~ |
Gcfrankie
Registered user
Username: Gcfrankie
Post Number: 841
Registered: 1-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - 10:59 am: | |
Lori, sometimes not saying anything speaks louder than words because your actions speak for you and your true love of Jesus. Your family can argue with words but what can they do about your actions? Nothing! I add my prayer to Flyinglady that Jesus keep you wrapped in his loving arms and protect you from those evil arrows thrown your way.
Gail |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 13204
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - 11:41 pm: | |
The cultic nature of the organization is so visible at those moments of smug certainty accompanied by a refusal to listen. It is, as Chris said, infuriating!
Sigh...
Colleen |
Lori
Registered user
Username: Lori
Post Number: 131
Registered: 11-1999
| | Posted on Thursday, December 08, 2011 - 6:52 am: | |
Actions do speak louder than words. At one point, my mother was calling me and asking me to pray about something because I had a higher connection with God than she did. How does that work??? The week before she was telling me my blessings all come from Satan and the only reason my husband was doing so well at work was because she prayed for God to bless him. |
Got2bfree
Registered user
Username: Got2bfree
Post Number: 16
Registered: 7-2011
| | Posted on Thursday, December 08, 2011 - 11:14 am: | |
Lori,
There's a name for how we all feel when things happen as in your post #131.
It's CRAZY-MAKING!
I hate that it's happening to you, but I hope it helps that you have company. Lots.of.company. |
Asurprise
Registered user
Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 2280
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, December 08, 2011 - 5:53 pm: | |
If only Adventists were willing to sit down and actually be willing to open the Bible and see the passages we have to show them!!!!! If I call my mother and beg her to please look something up in the Bible, she threatens to hang up on me.
I called one of my sisters and asked her if I could please read her a passage and she got GREATLY offended and held the phone away from her ear until I gave up trying to read her the verses.
It seems as if they subconsciously "know" that their beliefs are wrong.
It's like that J.W. couple who came to my door a couple weeks back. I pointed out John 12:41 where it says that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory, and then I pointed them to where Isaiah saw His glory in Isaiah 6:1. They were taken aback by the fact that it says "I saw Jehovah high and lifted up" (their "bible" says Jehovah); but the man recovered quickly and started trying to point out his "proof" texts. When I kept telling him what the Bible REALLY says, he got disgusted and walked away.
(Message edited by Asurprise on December 08, 2011) |
Jackob
Registered user
Username: Jackob
Post Number: 655
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, December 08, 2011 - 10:36 pm: | |
Adventism is a form of gnosticism, a kind of movement in which only the members are illuminated and have access to the secret knowledge. Don't forget that Miller was a deist and a mason, a member of a secret society that thought about their members as having special, secret knowledge about the world not accessible to the people at large. The play on biblical numbers Miller exercised was allowed by his views of the Bible containing secret codes, similar to the jewish cabbalistic approach to Torah.
When adventists refuse to listed to even reading them Bible texts, the unstated unconscious presupposition that governs their thinking is that you are not illuminated while they are, you are just scratching the surface of the Bible while they have access to the meat and solid corpus of the biblical message. Since you don't possess their ability, in their mind there is useless to talk with you, since you're not having the "gift" of perceiving the hidden and "true" message of the Bible. They are on a different spiritual level than you.
Gabriel |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 13209
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 08, 2011 - 11:50 pm: | |
Absolutely true, Gabriel.
Colleen |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 7503
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 4:32 am: | |
My heart really goes out to those who have been abandoned by their Adventist families and not only abandoned, but face the confusion of coming out of Adventism and not knowing where to attend church or who to trust.
Being told directly or implied that you are the spawn of Satan cannot be an easy thing to abide and no doubt, deeply hurtful.
The one thing that may be the hardest for the person affected is to begin to view the Adventist family as an unsaved person.
Out in the world when you meet or previously know an unsaved person, if you don’t know it already, it will soon become apparent in their use of every day language, not using judgmental sense but just using common sense a person in need of Christ is easy to recognize.
With the religious lost, it is not so readily apparent, but can be far more unapproachable than the ‘normal’ lost we may encounter, but are possibly more bound by Satan than the ‘normal’ lost in the world.
The reason you can’t cut through the proof texts is because they haven’t been born again and the true gospel offends their senses and is death to them.
When Stephen preached the Bible says they gnashed on him with their teeth, cried with a loud voice and stopped their ears.
Basically with the unsaved religious the same thing happens, they stop their ears when the Holy Spirit begins to convict. They may not gnash with teeth, but words can do the same thing.
Stephen was killed by the unsaved religious. |
Mjcmcook
Registered user
Username: Mjcmcook
Post Number: 251
Registered: 2-2011
| | Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 10:15 am: | |
~River~
In 2Cor. 2:14-16 the Apostle Paul talks about what you said in post #7503~ "....the true gospel offends their senses and is death to them."
Apostle Paul~"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the 'fragrance' the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of DEATH; to the other, the FRAGRANCE of Life. And who is equal to the task?"
My daughter reminded me of this scripture when I was still teaching in an adventist school, for a time, after I became 'born again'~ Even though I did not dare share what had happened to me with my co-workers. I thought I felt a definite coolness in their interactions with me that had not been there before~ I thought I was being paranoid! She told me "No"~ you smell bad to them because of the Holy Spirit now being ALIVE in You! On some level, they don't understand, you raise up a 'stench in their nostrils'!
Finally it made sense to me~ There was not anything I could do about it~ All was God's doing!
~mj~ |
Lori
Registered user
Username: Lori
Post Number: 132
Registered: 11-1999
| | Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2011 - 10:59 am: | |
MJ!!
That is my favorite verse!!! The first time I read it....I read it over and over again. How amazing is that...to God we are the aroma of Christ? All I could think is "WOW"!!!
I can't speak for all formers who have lost family...but...I don't miss my family at all. The thought of spending time with my family is completely nauseating. (They didn't even enjoy the time we were together!! They walked in the door with their heads hanging down, were woeful the entire time we were together and then downright angry after they left-even though nothing "bad" had happened while we were together. My mother would relate conversations to my brother that never took place. It was bad enough just enduring the time we had to be with them without waiting to hear the huge lie created afterward.)
The only thing I miss is the big family gatherings. I grew up surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, great grandparents. We spent a lot of time together. But, we wouldn't have had that anyway because we all moved different places and were no longer geographically close enough. The holidays can feel lonely sometimes but other than that...it's so much better away from the never ending crazy stuff. |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 7504
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2011 - 11:52 am: | |
Mj,
Thats the verse I was thinking about,but couldn't find it.
Many formers lose family if they are not even gone because the old things are passed away for them and all things have become new just as the Bible tells us.
Certainly not all cases are alike, I know one Adventist (retired now)Pastor and his wife well who live up near the Canadian border. They were throwing a fit with their daughter and son-in-law for a while until they realized what was happening and corrected it, now they get along just fine.
I really enjoyed the visit from him and his wife, we spent a day visiting and then had prayer together and they left. Not all Adventist are crazy making and with the above post I didn't intend to apply what I said to every case.
It all too often is the case though, way all too often. It grieves me and makes my heart heavy for the formers who have to endure it, but there is prayer and God gives strength to those who trust in him for that strength.
Now I'm babbling.
River |
Mjcmcook
Registered user
Username: Mjcmcook
Post Number: 253
Registered: 2-2011
| | Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2011 - 5:20 pm: | |
~River~
I am happy I could 'fill in the gap' for you with the verse you were referring to !
It is nice to see you around here~again!
~mj~ |
Goose
Registered user
Username: Goose
Post Number: 71
Registered: 11-2011
| | Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2012 - 11:46 am: | |
I know a little bit about coming through dysfunctional families, Lori, and it is very painful.
What has helped me a lot is to remember the fact that we do not come from our families, but THROUGH them. We do not come from our families; we come from God!
Am so very glad for you, that you somehow managed to break free from their clutches. And as someone in this thread said, now you are being held tightly in the hands of Jesus and the hands of the Father--and NO ONE is going to be able to pluck you from Those Hands!! Halleluiah.
SDAs. Modern day pharisees. |
Skeeter
Registered user
Username: Skeeter
Post Number: 1754
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 - 10:11 am: | |
Lori post #131 "The week before she was telling me my blessings all come from Satan and the only reason my husband was doing so well at work was because she prayed for God to bless him."
Well isn't she "special" ?!!? God listens to HER prayers, but YOUR "blessings all come from Satan" ???
Personally..... I do not believe that Satan either desires to , or is capable of "blessing" anyone.
Blessings come from God.
Deception and conceit come from Satan. That lady needs to look in the mirror. |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 13321
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 - 1:55 pm: | |
Skeeter, well said.
Colleen |
