| Author | Message | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3706 Registered: 3-2004  |
Colleen and Richard, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for this website. I say this because I have been printing off the studies on Hebrews and been studying them myself. This morning I read Hebrews 4 in the NIV. I also read the notes at the bottom of the page. This morning I read v 10 and notes. V. 10 reads, "for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his." The note says, " rests from his own work. Believers cease their efforts to gain salvation by their own works and rest in the finished work of Christ on the cross." I finally got it. The rest in Jesus Christ is ceasing my works to gain salvation and resting in Christ's work on the cross. Oh what joy fills my soul as I re read this. Thank you God for this rest. You are awesome. Diana ps: I knew this, but didn't know this. It was just made very plain to me today. | ||
| Doug222 Registered user Username: Doug222 Post Number: 555 Registered: 3-2001 |
Yes Diana, Reading this passage was a significant milestone in my journey too. The ironic thing is that when you read chapter 3 in conjunction with chapter 4, the only possible conclusion you can come to is that the sabbath rest referred to in v. 10 is one of resting in God's completed work for our salvation. How it can be twisted to mean that that we still need to keep the Sabbath is beyond me--except for the fact that the word "Sabtismo" (sp)is used for the word "rest" in the original language and a reference is made to the seventh day of creation in verse 4. Doug | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5933 Registered: 12-2003  |
All I can say, Diana, is Praise God!!! He is completely faithful. Colleen | ||
| Sara Registered user Username: Sara Post Number: 1 Registered: 5-2007 |
Diana, Are you talking about the Studies on this Web site? If you are, I agree, they are great. I have been around here awhile, but I never noticed the "study" tab on the main page. I always came straight to the forum part. I was going to ask if anyone was using them. I cant decide which one to do first... Sara | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5943 Registered: 12-2003 |
Hi, Sara...Welcome! Glad to have you join us! Colleen | ||
| Helovesme2 Registered user Username: Helovesme2 Post Number: 943 Registered: 8-2004  |
Hi Sara, Welcome to posting here at the forum! Blessings, Mary | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3712 Registered: 3-2004 |
Sara, Welcome to FAF. I am so glad you are here. Tell us about your walk with Jesus when you are ready. And, Yes, it is the studies off this website that I am studying. For some reason I chose Hebrews. Oh, and Colleen, I showed the studies to a woman friend from church and she is using the Hebrews study for her small group. Thanks for all the studies. God is so awesome in how He provides all things for us. Diana | ||
| Bobj Registered user Username: Bobj Post Number: 165 Registered: 1-2006  |
Diana Trusting the Lord was very difficult for me. Growing up Adventist I believed that the death of Jesus made it possible for me to be saved if I could just stop sinning. It wasn't very good news! There was no peace. I'm so thankful for the spiritual rest of Hebrews 4, that begins the moment we trust fully in the Lord and continues from this moment forward--through all eternity. The rest God calls us to enter is not our rest but His rest, which is 24/7 forever. Bob | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5945 Registered: 12-2003 |
Amen, Bob! Colleen | ||
| Bobj Registered user Username: Bobj Post Number: 166 Registered: 1-2006 |
Welcome Sara! I'm glad you're here! Bob | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 803 Registered: 9-2006  |
Pardon me for being a Dumas, but what studies are you talking about Dianna? Hi Sara, welcome! River | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3716 Registered: 3-2004 |
River, When you clink onto FAF on the home page where you hit forums, there is a link for studies, if I am remembering correctly, near it. Clink on all the links near forum, you will find it. | ||
| Agapetos Registered user Username: Agapetos Post Number: 833 Registered: 10-2002  |
Welcome Sara! Bob, what you wrote was something I was thinking about today: Adventism taught that God forgave our sins from our pasts, but that after we learned the truth we had to keep it -- meaning we had to keep the Law. I was thinking that this is almost the same as the deal of Sinai. God delivered Israel from Egypt, and He agreed to be their God if they kept His Law. If they kept His Law, they would be blessed. If they didn't, they would be cursed. It's almost the same in Adventism. God forgives you (brings you out of Egypt), but then you have to keep the Law, you have to be good enough to make it to heaven. Yes, of course "with God's help". But the final point is the Law, and your blessing being conditional upon it. But in Christ, the blessings from His mount are given first before the commands, just as He has loved us and died for us first before any of us were born! | ||
| Sara Registered user Username: Sara Post Number: 2 Registered: 5-2007 |
Thank you guys for the welcome! Hi River, I'm glad I'm not the only one who overlooked the tab for "study". There is also one for "Stories" on the home page. Find the cross at the top of the home page, then look to the right. You will see FORUM, STUDY, STORIES, AND LINKS tabs. The stories are great too. I see some people who post here have their personal stories listed. I feel like I know them now. I haven't written any story yet. Here is the bottom line: I read my Bible. I quit reading Ellen G. White, I'm not even sure why. I read the book of Acts to start with. I't didnt sound like anything I have ever experienced in my lifetime in the adventist church, from the cradle to Academy to SDA college and SDA community. The Bible description of Christian living, and Adventist description and experience of "Christian" living, are polar opposites in many areas. The more I read the Bible, the more excited I became. I asked God to give me truth, to send His Holy Spirit and to give me wisdom and understanding. He did, and He still is. I am no longer a Seventh-day Adventist. I recently asked for my name to be removed from the books. I couldn't stand to go to an Adventist Chruch anymore. I could not take it. The Spirit of God was not there. (I think Reb or one of the other new people said the same thing). I am the only one so far in my family to leave. I'm thankful to God for choosing me, to rescue me from generations of adventism. I don't know why He chose me, but I'm so blessed that He did. Sara | ||
| Jeremy Registered user Username: Jeremy Post Number: 1832 Registered: 10-2004  |
Amen! Praise God! Welcome to the forum, Sara. Jeremy | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5953 Registered: 12-2003 |
River and others who may be curious, the Studies on this website can be accessed at this link: http://www.formeradventist.com/study.html We have all the studies we've done at our Friday night FAF for the past seven years online: Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Hebrews, and the first part of Romans. Romans has taken us the longest...we don't have the Romans studies online quite up-to-date with where we currently are on Firdays yet; we are currently on Romans 12:3-5. Richard is actually working on redesigning this website, so he probably won't upload the most recent Romans studies until he reformats the whole Studies page. It's coming, though! Colleen | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 807 Registered: 9-2006 |
Thanks for the tip about the studies Dianna and for the direct link Colleen, I hadn’t been on the front page for some time and had not read Jess Dixons story, I will have to check more often, when I first came to the site and before I checked out the forum I sat and read every one of the stories. I had never read anything that even came close to this concerning any religion involved with God. I had just got my return letter from Dale about a week before and as I remember it I had looked up his website after I got his letter. Dales letter struck a chord of kinship and I immediately liked his demeanor and that is when I looked up his website, he had mentioned he would like to send my letter to him to Colleen Tinker for possible use in Proclamation and ask my permission and of course I gave it, although I had no idea who Colleen Tinker or what Proclamation was I instinctively trusted him 100%. I had studied Adventism for three or four years without knowing there was such a thing as a former Adventist, I just knew I needed some one to talk to besides sitting here mumbling to myself, little did I know what I was in for when I got up the nerve to write Dale. I don’t remember how I got dales address or why I thought he could help but since I have been a researcher all my life due to having so many objectives I am a pretty good at following the dimmest trail. So I finally landed at this website and as I said I had never seen anything like the stories on the front there. To put it bluntly and truthfully the stories decimated and cut a swathe trough my heart and I sat here in deep emotional shock and as I read each one. I had studied out a great many of the false premises involved in what my friends believed learned through my association with them by direct Bible study and sitting here at my own desk, I had given them fair play by telling myself that I would do it with no preconceived notions that I might have carried up to that time, I hadn’t even thought of using the internet, just the Bible. I was not prepared for the stories I was about to read and I sat here and read and wept, I could hardly read for having to clear my eyes so often. I saw a monster that was without mercy or grace in the process of slaughtering its own. Jess Dixon’s story brought that memory afresh, I have gotten so used to this thing that I am no longer affected the way I was when I first came here but the stories never cease to effect me, it’s strange how we become immune to such things so quickly but I suppose it is the way we are wired so we don’t overload. I wanted to write this so maybe you folks could see it through my eyes and get a glance at what you really are dealing with. Nothing here is made up nor comes from gift of gab. So sometime if I have said things about Adventism that made any of you cringe, now you know why, it is because I get another glance at that monster from time to time just as today when I came face to face with him through reading Jess Dixon’s story, this monster can never be satisfied, or reasoned with and he has hate and blood running from his drooling jaws. The rest of the Evangelical world in general does not know, nor I don’t think can possibly know by taking the short route, I taken the long route and only God knows the reason, maybe a few others from the outside but not many I think. The Holy Spirit has never led me to believe that I saw anything different than what I have told you. River | ||
| Stevendi Registered user Username: Stevendi Post Number: 118 Registered: 10-2006 |
River, Indeed, Adventism is a "monster...without mercy or grace in the process of slaughtering its own." The attitude of Adventism can be downright murderous, not unlike Islamic extremism. Mercy and grace are phony fronts used in their evangelism to entrap the innocent in a cultic web. Indeed, I cringe with you River. Steve | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 5959 Registered: 12-2003 |
River, I read your post last night, but I was just too overwhelmed to respond. You are here, partly, I believe, to help us see this "thing" we all hold in common. We are so close to it; it shaped us, rasied us to adulthood, and holds our loved ones in its grip. Yet we all struggle and suffer. The farther we move away from it, the more sinister we see it is. But, like a person raised in an abusive home, it's extremely hard to admit that what we loved was so destructive. It's hard to admit that it was "all that bad". We bear the scars and deep wounds in our psyches and spirits; we are hypersensistive to certain heresies; we marginalize other Christ-followers because they don't have all their doctrines in a row: they believe in the rapture, or in free will, or in 5-point Calvinism, or in speaking in tounges...we fear being deceived or caught up in false teachings to such an extent we have trouble functioning in the body of Christ. Yet these wounds and fears and deep scars seem "normal" to us. We have trouble recognizing them as signs of abuse. River, God uses you to help us see the truth about where we're from and what we experienced. When I read your post last night I had a hard time controlling my tears for a good hour afterwards. For some reason your monster metaphor touched a nerve, and I realized that we really have been saved from darkness. We really are here because God is asking us to help others escape the destruction that saps their spirits and threatens the lives of those still caught. I thank God, River, for His giving you this deep clarity and insight and for bringing you to us. He is using us to help each other know the truth. We're helping you understand the truth about Adventism, and you are helping us see the truth about what we've endured. Praise God for rescuing us from the domain of darkness and transferring us to the kingdom of His beloved Son! Praise God for taking us from the jaws of death, from the "monster who slaughters its own" and bringing us to life, giving us hope and peace and joy and a certain future. I am so thankful to God--I hardly have words. Colleen | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 3730 Registered: 3-2004 |
River, I am so thankful God broughtyou here. It is good to read your perspective on adventism. As Colleen said, the abuse suffered seemed "normal". The longer and further away I get from adventism, the more I see the dysfunction of it. I have had to admit certain things about my family of origin and learning what adventism really teaches, I am seeing it for what it really is and admit that that family of origin is dysfunctional also. Thank God He used my 12 step program to pull me out of it and to clear the SDA cobwebs from my brain. God you are awesome. Diana |
