| Author | Message | ||
| Blessed Registered user Username: Blessed Post Number: 27 Registered: 1-2007 |
I received a brochure in the mail today (as did everyone else in my city) inviting me to attend a Revelation Brings Peace seminar. There is no mention of a sponsoring church on the brochure but I checked it out and it is SDA. They are holding it at an arena in one of the suburbs this Friday through Sunday and bringing in Bill Santos from It Is Written. I spent the morning calling many Evangelical churches in the city and alerting them as to who was putting this seminar on. I also sent emails to a number of clergy as well. I have received emails back and many were surprised as to which church it was. Some clergy have asked for more information about Adventism and I am looking forward to having the opportunity to share my faith story as well as some books for them to read. I also am hoping to get them on the Proclamation mailing list. Please pray that this event will not be successful and that vulnerable people would be protected from getting meshed into their doctrines. Blessed | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3532 Registered: 3-2004  |
Blessed, Go for it girl! God is leading you to warn people of the dangers of the seminar. I will pray for you. We truly do have an awesome God. Diana | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5662 Registered: 12-2003  |
Blessed, I am also praying. I'm delighted to hear about your contacts with and the interest among the evangelical clergy. Richard looked up the flyer for this event on the It Is Written website. It's typically full of brightly colored horsemen, etc. As I read through the titles of the five weeks of presentations, I got that old familiar heavy feeling in my stomach. We will pray. Colleen | ||
| Toria Registered user Username: Toria Post Number: 96 Registered: 2-2006 |
Blessed, Good for you. I also will pray. And I will pray that God will place someone like you in every community where those seminars are being held, to warn people of the dangers. Toria | ||
| Freeatlast Registered user Username: Freeatlast Post Number: 524 Registered: 5-2002 |
To paraphrase Wyatt Earp's line from the film "Tombstone"... "You tell 'em Bill Santos is comin' and hell's comin' with him!" Way to go, Blessed! Expose the beast. | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3539 Registered: 3-2004 |
Freeatlast, ".....Bill Santos is comin' and hell's comin' with him!" So true. I am sitting here typing and smiling. Diana | ||
| Leigh Registered user Username: Leigh Post Number: 159 Registered: 2-2003 |
Blessed, I'm praying. I found this article about the seminar on line: http://www.culthelp.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=677&Itemid=8 | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3542 Registered: 3-2004 |
Thanks Leigh. Why am I not surprised??? Thank God I am not part of it any more. I do pray for the SDAs and these seminars, that people will not fall for what is taught. Diana | ||
| Grace_alone Registered user Username: Grace_alone Post Number: 515 Registered: 6-2006  |
Thanks for the link, Leigh! Excellent article. I wish more people out there would be able to receive that message. I like that site.  Leigh Anne | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 658 Registered: 9-2006  |
Leigh, Thanks for the link, I wandered through it a bit and I am surprised at the number of cults and even the classifications of cults such as commercial cults. Also, and what is not mentioned, cultic abnormalisms (I guess you would call it) can and do arise within mainstream evangelical denomnations, not the whole mainstream mind you but in spots,for the most part these straighten back out over time I think but we need to be able to recognize when a group is under some kind of human abnormal control such as intimidation of some sort. That said, I don't mean to say that we cannot trust anyone and we got to be peeping around every corner. What I mean is that if I am looking for a church I go for a while to get the lay of the land which sometimes can take awhile. IMHO. River | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5667 Registered: 12-2003 |
Leigh, great link. Thanks for sharing it! Colleen | ||
| Jeremy Registered user Username: Jeremy Post Number: 1750 Registered: 10-2004  |
I just came across the most incredible EGW quote today:
Anyone have any comments on this? ;-) Jeremy | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 659 Registered: 9-2006 |
Sounds to me like she is saying she ain't saved yet and that she would like to be in the coming year, grace alone is her trust, but she would like to help him out in getting the job done and that even though she is not yet saved and frail at that (in body?) she would like to be the agent to bring souls from darkness to light. How my Adventist acquaintances can get inspiration from reading the writings of “Our dear Sister Ellen White” is just beyond me, it absolutely boggles my mind. Her writings seem to be an abject lesson in failed logic. But nevertheless that was the statement of one of my Adventist friends; he had gotten up that morning and received his inspiration from her writings. My thought on it was “ROTSA RUCK” but I didn’t say anything. River (^^)>(?) | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 660 Registered: 9-2006 |
I keep wondering where she got all the money to go wheeling around all those countries plus let alone the travel she did in the U.S of A. Was she sponsored by her parents? From her photos she looked like such a homely person so she doesn’t look like someone anyone would like to cart around the country, to me she looks like someone who if they come at me aboard ship I’d probably jump ship and take my chances with the sharks. Anyone have any idea of how an organization born out of a cornfield and a crazy woman got off the ground financially? River | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5669 Registered: 12-2003 |
Jeremy, that quote about sums up the notion I had of salvation for years. Striving to gain worthiness was our heritage from Ellen herself. River, James and Ellen White made money from printing and selling her Testimonies. James was a talented entrepreneur, and he started a printing press which became the Review and Herald Publishing Company. Because they had established a "church", of which James and a small handful of other "brothers" were the leaders with Ellen being the prophetic voice (and thus also a leader), James could convince the people that they needed the books he was printing. James inaugurated The Advent Review which later became The Reveiw and Sabbath Herald and morphed a couple more times until the present day. This paper has been the "official organ" of the church since its inception. (Today it still exists, but the new international "organ" is called The World.) In The Review, James advertised a great many things from which he and Ellen directly profited via royalties. Once he had a plethora of booklets (I can't remember the name of it) which they couldn't sell. So James adertised a "special", saying there were limited quantities, and people needed to buy it now. He bundled several into one order, and sold it for a price that was good for him. People bought them. The "reform dress" was an embarrassing episode in early Adventism. Ellen had a vision (following a stay at a health resort where the nurses wore these outfits) that Adventist women were to wear "reform dress". It consisted of a dress that cleared the ground by several inches under which loose bloomers of a matching fabric were worn. (This during a time when dresses were long and sweeping.) It was an embarassing get-up, and D. M. Canright writes about his young wife wearing it and being mocked on the streets by the young men. At any rate, Ellen "saw" that all Adventist women were to wear a certain design of this particular outfit, and this special design would be sold by the church to the women. It was advertised in The Review. So the Adventist women sent away for the pattern which cost $1.00 per pattern. (When I was a girl, my mom used to buy Simplicity patterns for $.75. This $1.00/pattern was in the mid-1800s.) After a period of time during which most of the Adventist women were attired in this clothing spectacle, Ellen, who had betaken herself away from the center of Adventism and was exconced in California, quietly quit wearing the reform dress. People asked her why she wasn't wearing the dress anymore, and she said that it was no longer required. She never officially retracted or changed her public announcement that they needed to wear the clothes; she just quit wearing it, and quietly and slowly the Adventist women left it behind. But she and James made money from the sales of those patterns. In 1914, the year before she died (according to Canright) she received $100,000.00 in royalties. That was a fortune in those days. Yet she died in debt. Colleen | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 661 Registered: 9-2006 |
That explains it Colleen, Yes, 100.000.00 would be a fortune for me today, I might dig up a grand if I talked to the bank teller real nice, course I got plenty of money, it's just everbody elses is layin on top of it and I can't get too it. Ha. Well, sometimes I find this stuff funny but it is really sad she and James pulled people through so much. I go to read sometimes on Ellenwhite.org and the things she came up with to foster onto people was such a side show, of course it's not much diffrent today. Remember the pet rock? I remember working for 50 cents a day so the sum of that 1.00 pattern would have represented two to four days wages for some poor farmers wife at least only to wear it to town and get laughed at. I can't say that I have not been taken advantage of myself because of my love for God so I know there are many more and it is so sad when the real needs are so great. What a Vision I just had! Ellen appearing before the Master with her hands held forth, the work and sweat of honest people turns into useless money and it just keeps growing and growing to her horror a penny at a time, she franticly tries to get rid of it but it just keeps growing and growing. Thanks a lot River, have a doughnut with that nitemare? River | ||
| Blessed Registered user Username: Blessed Post Number: 29 Registered: 1-2007 |
Thanks so much to all of you for praying. The first night starts in a couple of hours and it feels so good to know that people are praying. I have received some good feedback from the Evangelical community and many have thanked me for enlightening them as to who is putting this on. Someone sent me a link to a website for a large SDA church in my city. I went on it and there were two sermons by this minister. I listened to both (although not in its entirety) and interestingly he preached the Word only and there was no mention of Ellen White. I met this minister once at a funeral but otherwise have had no contact with him. Maybe when this is over I should go and meet him and share with him my testimony. I will need to really pray about this. It's so wonderful to have an FAF family that I can share with and also ask to pray. I will keep you posted on how things go. In Christ Blessed | ||
| Bobj Registered user Username: Bobj Post Number: 129 Registered: 1-2006  |
Jeremy After 1888, no less! Comments? Cain's offering, the man who was thrown out of the King's feast for wearing his own clothes, outright Galatianism, the same false gospel that plagued the early Christian church is still with us today, there's more, but those are the first things that come to mind. Great quote Jeremy! Bob | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5670 Registered: 12-2003 |
No kidding, Bob! All those apply... Colleen | ||
| Timmy Registered user Username: Timmy Post Number: 177 Registered: 8-2006  |
River, Money?? This supports what Colleen said. Ellen and her gang were not hard up for money... Quote: See how she lauds her own books! So, of course, her books were pushed and sold in large numbers, and as a result she received large financial returns. Her royalties from only one of their publishing houses (the one located in Washington, D.C.), in 1911, amounted to over $8,000, or more than the net profits of the house itself that year. From one book alone she received over $4,000 royalty, and from all of her books over $100,000. [Editor's Note: In 1998 dollars, that amounts to many millions of dollars.] http://www.ellenwhite.org/canright/can11.htm More: "The volume of 'Spirit of Prophecy' and also the 'Testimonies' should be introduced into every Sabbath-keeping family. . . Let them be worn out in being read by all the neighbors. . . Prevail upon them to buy copies. . . Light so precious, coming from the throne of God, is hid under a bushel. God will make his people responsible for this neglect" (Testimonies, Vol. IV., pp. 390, 391). Sometimes I can't help but think that 'money' was the real fuel for the roots of Adventism. They took such a simple solid Gospel message and watered it down, made it very complex and sold it like a business, which today is a BILLION dollar business. -WWJD? | ||
| Bobj Registered user Username: Bobj Post Number: 130 Registered: 1-2006 |
Jeremy Your quote about Ellen assisting God in her salvation illustrates a human centered religion. Like those whose salvation is finally determined based on their ability to live perfectly before God without a Mediator, Catholics also teach that we cannot know for sure if we are saved or lost. Both views are human centered and foreign to the teachings of the new covenant. My failure to accept Christ's finished atonement on the cross (as my perfect substitute), left me with no choice but to ultimately put my trust in my own willpower and my ability to attain perfection or to "get ready." What wasn't immediately apparent to me was that by accepting the teaching that I would face an IJ, I was ultimately rejecting my Saviour. I couldn't remain an Adventist after the Lord helped me understand that. Thanks again for sharing the quote. Please pray for my friends who don't fully trust the Lord. Bob Bob | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5676 Registered: 12-2003 |
Bob, what a poignant post. You have really stated the truth clearly: "What wasn't immediately apparent to me was that by accepting the teaching that I would face an IJ, I was ultimately rejecting my Saviour. " Thank you for sharing your insight. Colleen | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3550 Registered: 3-2004 |
This is a good place to tell you how God used me last night. Dog, the bounty hunter was at our church for 2 services last night and 3 this morning. I was one of many who welcomed people as they came in the door of the church. During the first service, I ate dinner. At the church there is a person who fixes dinner for those volunteering as the 6:30 service is right at dinner time. (Breakfast is fixed for the Sunday morning volunteers) I sat with 2 people and we started talking about our experience with God. Well of course, me and my big mouth, I said I had come out of a legalistic church with many cult like beliefs. The older gentleman asked what church and I said Seventh day Adventist. He acted kind of surprised and asked about the beliefs so I told them of the IJ, the extra Biblical source of EGW. Neither of the people I spoke to knew much about SDAs. When they left the table, they knew something about SDAs. So, as I see it, part of God's work for me is to tell the people I meet what SDAs believe. This I do gladly because I know it is not my words, but the words God gives me to say. I could not do it without Him. Diana | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5680 Registered: 12-2003 |
Diana, how wonderful! God does bring us opportunities to speak for Him. It's quite overwhelming when we look back and see how He has worked! Colleen |
