| Author | Message | ||
| Rider Registered user Username: Rider Post Number: 28 Registered: 9-2009 |
I was baptized at River Valley Community Church today to affirm my faith in Jesus as may Savior. It has been about a year since I sent my request to the SDA church requesting my name be dropped from their records. His grace is sufficient. | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 10138 Registered: 3-2004  |
Praise our awesome God!! His grace is sufficient. Congratulations on your baptism. Diana | ||
| Mjcmcook Registered user Username: Mjcmcook Post Number: 1453 Registered: 2-2011  |
Rider~ Now you have a "New Birth"-day to celebrate! Yes~HIS Grace is sufficient! "IT" is Enough~ ~mj~ | ||
| Rocky Registered user Username: Rocky Post Number: 149 Registered: 3-2012 |
praising Him for your new life Rider! yes and amen His grace IS sufficient ! celebrating in my heart your baptism today! \o/ | ||
| Philharris Registered user Username: Philharris Post Number: 3035 Registered: 5-2007  |
Praising God for the affirmation of your New Birth. We serve a wonderful Savior. Fearless Phil | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 61 Registered: 4-2014 |
It's amazing how happy I feel when somebody that WAS Adventist is now getting baptized in a REAL Christian church filled with REAL LIVE Christians. I remember watching Adventists being baptized, and having that sick, thick knot in my stomach thinking "You poor slob, just wait until reality sinks in." I left about a month after that I viewed that last Adventist baptism | ||
| Foofighter Registered user Username: Foofighter Post Number: 327 Registered: 7-2005 |
Rider, So happy for your baptism! I couldn't agree more with Res' comment. I feel sorry for the naïve and unsuspecting who get hoodwinked into this cult. | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 62 Registered: 4-2014 |
Foofighter, You know what is horrifying about our comments? That Adventism successfully lied to Walter Martin and thereby escaped the designation as a cult, which it richly deserves. Because of that institutional deception, so many people think it is an orthodox christian organization, when it clearly is not. So that last baptism I watched, in abject horror, was the un-articulated impetus for my abrupt leave-taking. All I knew was that I had to get out of there, and I did. It has taken me 33 years out of the Church to realize that I actually made one of the best decisions of my entire life. | ||
| Islander Registered user Username: Islander Post Number: 1 Registered: 4-2014 |
Generally the SDA does not remove names from the membership roster. Even though the church has a high dropout rate they leave the names on. The only reason I can come up with is it inflates the actual involved members and looks good in advertising. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 14818 Registered: 12-2003  |
Rider, I'm so happy for you! I agree with all above; seeing former SDA baptized as a Christians is one of life's greatest thrills for me! Colleen | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 3373 Registered: 7-2007 |
Congratulations, Rider!  | ||
| Rider Registered user Username: Rider Post Number: 29 Registered: 9-2009 |
Thanks for your thoughts, and pray that my wife and kids will come to understand that salvation is a free gift and not of works. | ||
| Taluur Registered user Username: Taluur Post Number: 34 Registered: 8-2012 |
Congratulations on your "new birth" day! :-) | ||
| Foofighter Registered user Username: Foofighter Post Number: 330 Registered: 7-2005 |
Res, It is amazing how the SDA church is okay with deception. It is institutionalized and justified! | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 67 Registered: 4-2014 |
Foofighter, It is just utterly shocking when you start to understand the full-measure of what has gone on in that church. It literally is a church that is completely founded on lies, and usually at least 6 or 7 densely-interrelated levels of deception. Just on the issue of alcohol alone - which I do not use, btw, even though it is clearly permissible for Christians; I counted at least 35 layers of deception on the Church's position! And that would seem to be a pretty minor doctrine to have swaddled in so much deliberate lying! You look at how some other Churches have handled the same issue, and most of them don't even try to find biblical justifications, one way or the other. Pro- or anti-alcohol does not matter. Whether it be Puritans (banned cuz it is fun) or Episcopalians (it is mandatory, because it is not fun), they just come out without apology and state their position. Adventists? They have to come out with some convoluted mess so that they can gloat and preen with self-righteousness. | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 68 Registered: 4-2014 |
continued..... I often ask myself "Why bother sifting through this ridiculous and convoluted web of deception?" REALLY! A "Halo around the 4th Commandment?" Amalgamation between man and beasts? Volcanoes the result of subsurface hot oil catching fire? Even if the North wins the Civil war, slavery will be permanent? Jesus made nice fresh grape juice for the wedding revelers? Especially given the fact that I got out of it 33 years ago, leaving "no return address." Which in reality, notwithstanding the less-than-honorable way I got out, was probably the best decision I ever made in my whole life. I say "less than honorable" because there are lots of ex-Adventists who courageously exposed Adventism's doctrinal underbelly, and many of them paid the price in losing their job. There is no "there"....there in Adventism. It is all smoke and mirrors and parlor tricks. It has the thinnest veneer of superficial respectability via Scripture Sculpting disconnected sentence fragments and partial verses wrenched out of all context. It has the thinnest veneer of Christianity, although even THAT is used deceptively. (Message edited by Resjudicata on May 22, 2014) | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 14826 Registered: 12-2003 |
It is shocking, Res...it seems so air-tight when one is in it (although confusing and impossible to properly "do"), but when you get out, the farther from it one gets, the more cultic and crazy one sees it to be. And it completely shaped our understanding of reality; that's why we have to process it. We don't even know where our understanding of reality and EGW "holograms" elide. Colleen | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 69 Registered: 4-2014 |
That is true. That is what keeps me interested in it....finding the areas in my own head that remain different than reality. And the worst of it is, my reality is so much better than what goes on in my head! And the Big BIG area where reality is better than the contents of my head was finally experiencing the Resurrection this year. Wow! Adventism went to great great lengths to deliberately hide that one! What a mind-blowing, earth-shattering revelation! What an incredibly joyous difference! I have corresponded with several ex-Adventists, and the happiness that a week-long, completely bonkers over-the-top Easter Celebration brings cannot be overstated. That's the centerpiece of Christianity and I didn't even comprehend its existence until this year! And that was in the face of ignoring years and years of determined evangelicals and Episcopalians to point it out. No doubt, Adventism has replaced the Resurrection with the Sabbath, and hid the Resurrection under vast mountains of lies and diversions. Adventism gave more thought to the silly and ugly dress codes they abandoned almost immediately than they have on the Resurrection. I'll never forget one wonderful evangelical woman that asked me how I could possibly ignore Easter like I did. I had no answer, other than to say "I have never paid much attention to it." She was just absolutely stunned and amazed. She asked me "how can you NOT pay much attention to it?" To which I had no answer, I was so firmly resistant to examining my "Ellen White Brain" It was just too embarrassing to even discuss. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 14830 Registered: 12-2003 |
Yes. The Resurrection made almost no sense apart from understanding that WE, the essential spirit-identity of us, are dead by nature unless made alive because of Jesus' blood. It is the Resurrection that makes our new births possible! We receive His resurrection life when we believe, and my goodness, it never made sense at all to me that Jesus truly fulfilled the law not merely by being righteous but by taking the curse that was the bottom line of the law. He BECAME the curse of sin, and He paid that price to God...He paid His own price. THEN He broke the inevitable conclusion of that curse: death. He Himself had Life, and He couldn't stay dead. He broke the curse of the law by rising from death. He completely undid the otherwise-unstoppable consequence of sin in creation. His resurrection restored LIFE to creation, both now, spiritually when we repent and believe, and in the future when He recreates the physical part of creation. The resurrection IS LIFE! Collee |
