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Message |
Stevendi
Registered user
Username: Stevendi
Post Number: 174
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 6:02 am: |     |
Reb,
Colleen said "Truly, they really don't mind that you don't buy the theology. What matters is that you are going, participating, and appearing to involve yourself. Motives don't matter...they believe that as long as you're there and involved, you will eventually give them your heart."
This is a classic definition of "churchianity". You have been afforded some excellent advice from your new "comrades". Listen up and pray about it, pray about these things with your wife. Be open, be honest. Do not fret in secret, show your thankfulness to God in the open to everyone. Live what you believe, show your joy, do not sneek around anyone.
Not preaching, just encouraging,
steve |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 425
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 6:54 am: | |
I think I am just going to go to SDB church this Sabbath like I had planned. I am supposed to get a CD of some of the SDB Pastor's sermons to play for my wife to maybe, hopefully touch her heart to want to try the Seventh Day Baptist Church.
I woke up this morning thinking about how MISERABLE I'm going to be if I miss my Sabbath at SDB church the Adventist Church is so dead and the SDB church is so alive spiritually, it's like going from darkness into light. And then I'll probably have to go to SDA church the next Sabbath with my wife(but if I have that CD of the SDB Pastor's sermons and she opens her mind and hears how wonderful they are, she just MIGHT want to go to SDB church with me.
That choir at the SDA church will be just fine without me this coming Sabbath. I'm not the GREAT of a singer that they have to have me there or I'm indespensable, they'll do just fine without me. Later I can explain why I wasn't there.
I think I just have to go to SDB church like I had planned. Doggone it, that's my Sabbath to go to SDB church and I don't want to give it up! |
Jorgfe
Registered user
Username: Jorgfe
Post Number: 430
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 10:15 am: | |
Reb,
What about your son? Where is he attending. He is at an age where he will be highly influenced by his environment, and associates. He needs to be developing ties with Christians at church. His integration and social life with his future church environment can not be emphasized enough. That had a huge influence on why I do not go back to the SDA church, and "continue to stir the pot" there.
Gilbert Jorgensen |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 431
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 10:24 am: | |
He isn't attending anywhere right now except SDA when my wife makes him. He did attend SDB church with me a couple of times but Adventism has really turned him off church, period.
He is really bitter right now about having the Sabbath forced on him and the Saturday morning cartoons he missed when he was younger(he's 15 now).
At least he will be with non-SDA Christians at the Catholic school this fall and maybe this will get him interested in church again.
IF my wife will go to SDB church with me, he will go there also as she will make him. She is much more forceful than I am. I'm the "cool dad" and she's the strict disciplinarian.
I think it reflects on how we were raised. I was raised by liberal, non-churchgoing parents. She was raised in Indonesia by strict, traditional SDA parents.
(Message edited by Reb on July 24, 2007) |
Asurprise
Registered user
Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 66
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 10:27 am: | |
Reb, I think you have a wonderful chance to shine a light in a very dark place. I would be pleased as punch to recieve a "visitation" from the church! I haven't even written to them to let them know that I've left - I feel that the Lord doesn't want me to write yet. (When I do write, I want to try to persuade the reader(s) of the falseness of the SDA church.)
Anyway, if they were visiting me, I'd point out from Ellen White's own writings where she contradicted the Bible. The book Early Writings is a good one. I bought a paper-back version of it from the Adventist Book Center downtown. In it she writes about how Jesus didn't go into the Most Holy Place until 1844 - (when and where He supposedly started the investigative judgment). (I don't have the book here with me, so I don't remember just where it is in the book - perhaps about pg. 42?) Then turn to Hebrews 6:19,20 and Hebrews 9:12,25 where it shows that Jesus went into the Most Holy Place ALREADY at His ascension. If they somehow argue those texts, then point out Hebrews 10:12 where it says that Jesus sat down at the right hand of God. Even Pastor Nelson at Andrews University admitted that where God is, would be the Most Holy Place, when he wrote back to me, after I'd written to him. (There couldn't be a place holier than where God is!)
Also, if you have a copy of EGW's book, "Patriarchs and Prophets" you can turn to the chapter entitled, "After the Flood" and show them where Ellen White quotes that text in Genesis 9:3 where God is talking to Noah and his sons, saying: "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you..." Right after she quotes that text, she turns around and in her next sentence says that Noah was given the "clean" beasts to eat.
If they say, "well then, why did God have Noah take 7 of the clean animals and 2 of the unclean animals into the ark?"
You could tell them, "well, duh - they had to have those animals for sacrifices." No, don't say "duh." 
I would go right through the Bible, showing them why Israel was given the law to not eat "unclean" meats in the first place. (Leviticus 20:24-26) Then I would show them that Peter learned that those "unclean" meats had meant "unclean" peoples and that those people were now "clean." (Acts 10:15,28) And finally I would show them Romans 14:14 -(have them read the verses around this one too) and 1 Timothy 4:1-5. Those verses are VERY clear that there's no such thing as "unclean" meats anymore
Dianne |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 432
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 10:32 am: | |
Hmmmm Dianne, that's a very good suggestion.
I've done some of this already and it just goes in one ear and right out the other. Before I even left Adventism I tried to show people where EGW counterdicts the Bible and I basically got treated like I'm "ignorant" and don't know what I'm talking about.
You should see what it's like on CARM. No matter what you say, the Adventists will find some way to defend EGW and now Doug Batchelor.
I started a thread on CARM about Doug Batchelor's blasphemy regarding the Trinity and EVERY SINGLE Adventist that posted on that thread DEFENDED Batchelor.
They just don't listen. |
Jorgfe
Registered user
Username: Jorgfe
Post Number: 432
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 11:09 am: | |
For Adventists it is not about theology. It is about defending the institution. Even though they won't admit it, their identity is wrapped up in their identity as an Adventist -- a member of the "true church". Everyone else is to be pitied, as they don't have the "whole truth" from the "pen of inspiration".
That is why debating theology with an SDA spouse is of limited benefit. They don't follow Ellen White in the first place! Their integration is at a social level, and that is what has to be replaced. I have found that hammering them over the head with more theology is of limited benefit. We, as males, perhaps tend to think that logic should win over the world. Fortunately God gave us women to keep us from being so boring!
Gilbert Jorgensen |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 434
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 11:32 am: | |
So true, Gilbert. |
Asurprise
Registered user
Username: Asurprise
Post Number: 68
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 11:35 am: | |
Keep telling them though. Someday, someone may "hear." I finally did.
Dianne |
Doug222
Registered user
Username: Doug222
Post Number: 596
Registered: 3-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 11:37 am: | |
quote:That is why debating theology with an SDA spouse is of limited benefit. They don't follow Ellen White in the first place! Their integration is at a social level, and that is what has to be replaced. I have found that hammering them over the head with more theology is of limited benefit. We, as males, perhaps tend to think that logic should win over the world. Fortunately God gave us women to keep us from being so boring!
Amen Gilbert!!! You have hit the nail on the head. This is why the Spirit has to be the one to remove the veil from Adventist's eyes. Until that happens, no amount of discussion, debate, peresuasion, etc. will have any effect. I think you have to get them to begin to question the institution of Adventism before you can ever talk theology (or even present the Gospel in its purest form). Otherwise, you'll get, "yeah, but if they (it) is wrong on the Sabbath, where else are they wrong;" or my other favorite is, "the Adventist church may not be perfect, but its more right than any other church." That sound you just heard is the sound of them closing their mind to anything else you have to say.
Doug |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 436
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 11:48 am: | |
Doug, that's EXACTLY what my wife says all the time, The Adventist Church is not perfect but it is more right than any other church.
She thinks I am in error now that I go to Seventh Day Baptist church even though SDB church meets on the Sabbath. Why? because SDBs, like other Baptists believe in the immortality of the soul and don't follow the Levitical food laws. So although she is pretty much tolerating my going to SDB church she refuses to even visit it with me and says things like "half her hapiness is gone" and why can't I go back to believing in Adventism like I did.(at one time I was a conservative Adventist she has always been a moderate to progressive one).
I lovingly stand my ground and tell her I can't, I have to be true to myself and to God.
I am hoping she will listen to the CD of the SDB Pastor's sermons that I am going to get this Sabbath.(I have decided that I am NOT giving up my Sabbath to go to SDB church to sing with the choir at the SDA church this coming Sabbath, they will do just fine without me but I will be happier where I am fed.)
I was so bored at the SDA church last Sabbath I was doing Cauchy-Riemann equations preparing for the midterm I have in Analysis of Complex Variables at Cal Poly this Thurs., during EGW Indoctrination Hour. It was so dry and dead I got NOTHING out of it and the sermon wasn't much better.
Going to SDA church is a COMPLETE waste of my time. |
Jorgfe
Registered user
Username: Jorgfe
Post Number: 433
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 1:22 pm: | |
Proud of you, Reb. Stick to your beliefs. The Holy Spirit will guide you. Little by little, your wife will respect you for it.
Gilbert Jorgensen |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 438
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 1:37 pm: | |
Thanks, Gilbert. And you saw where I decided I will go to SDB church this Sabbath and the choir at the SDA church is just going to have to do without me, they'll be just fine.
I'm sticking to my guns. As I said my wife is tolerating where I am at right now but she also makes it clear she thinks Baptists are wrong. she doesn't come right out and call Baptists "infidels" but I know she's thinking it.
I do signs of progress in that she is letting our son go to Catholic school and that was even HER idea, not mine.
I do think she is respecting me for sticking to my guns and overall, she has been pretty cool about it. Not exactly supportive, but she hasn't been strongly opposing it anymore. |
Stevendi
Registered user
Username: Stevendi
Post Number: 175
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 1:41 pm: | |
Reb,
I used to say "I love my God, but I hate my church". Well you could add that you also love your wife. I'm wondering if you could ask her to explain what it means that the Adventist church is more right than others. Be patient, be prepared to do a whole lot of listening. Perhaps you both could do a journal on one question at a time. Research together, no matter how long it takes. Pray together for truth to be shown to you two as a team. The best advice I could offer would be to LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN. God will give you a wisdom and understanding of your wife's viewpoint, her fears, her uncertainties. I would venture that you have much more to learn about her position than she does yours. You can do this. I can tell from your posts that you are intelligent, passionate, honest, caring, loving, faithful. Pour your energies into showing your wife (1) you love her (2)you care what she has to say (3)you promise to listen and pray to understand HER. Thank God for her as you pray together, let her hear that you have a burden for HER spirituality.
I'm not doubting that you're not already doing this, but love always wins out over religion. That's why Adventism is so weak - day ain't no love Baby!
I know that your wife will hear her doubts as she hears them from her mouth, no one else's.
A woman's words are powerful. Why, after 36 years, when I ask "what's wrong, honey" and she says "nothing", I start to quiver in my boots, cause it's gonna be BIG!
A little carried away,
steve |
Reb
Registered user
Username: Reb
Post Number: 439
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - 1:44 pm: | |
That's very profound, Steve. And good advice. I like it! |
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