| Author | Message | ||
| Carracio Registered user Username: Carracio Post Number: 26 Registered: 3-2014 |
This week has been full of thinking about the Sabbath and SDA stuff, because my brother-in-law (he is 16) wil stay with us this weekend. He is totally convinced about keeping the Sabbath and is always surprised when he notices we don't keep it. Funny detail: When my wife phoned her little brother for asking him to come to stay with us this weekend, his mother in the background said to her son: 'Remember, you have to keep your Sabbathday!'. (Grace through faith alone?) (MAKES ME SO ANGRY!) I was thinking about using electricity at Sabbath. SDA is so hypocritical. They believe that you loose your salvation if you don't keep the Sabbath, but my parents-in-law use electricity, internet etc. When they use electricity, people have to work in the powerplant, so they can't keep the Sabbath and will loose their salvation. Just because they want to keep their food cooled etc.. Sometimes it just makes me so sad and angry.. | ||
| Pnoga Registered user Username: Pnoga Post Number: 526 Registered: 1-2007 |
I especially love how they can keep their hospitals open on the Sabbath, making money and their excuse is that it's helping others and Jesus healed. Hmmm, did Jesus charge? Sure he healed on the Sabbath, but did he make money for his services? That to me is the key to their hypocrisy. Pointing the finger at others who may choose to work or sell on a Sabbath day when they are doing it all along. So yes, hypocrites! (Message edited by pnoga on May 09, 2014) | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 43 Registered: 4-2014 |
In a globalized economy, NOBODY keeps the Sabbath. Every Sabbath, every Seventh Day Adventist on earth pays for people to work, whether they are paying taxes or buying products that were made or distributed on Sabbath. The 4th Commandment is extremely explicit: Your "manservant and maidservant" and your animals are prohibited from doing ANY work. The fact that you oh-so-conveniently pay for a fungible product that was anonymously made or shipped on the Sabbath, with a fungible "store of value," i.e. "Money" does NOT get you off the hook. You paid the money, somebody worked on the Sabbath for it. It is just that simple. Just because they live 5,000 miles away and speak another language does not mean they are not your "manservant and maidservant." They worked on a Sabbath to build you a product, and you paid them to do it. There are those of us that know we don't keep the Sabbath. And there are those that self-deceitfully pretend they keep the Sabbath. | ||
| Thalarian Registered user Username: Thalarian Post Number: 13 Registered: 7-2006 |
Do you know what is even more hypocritical is the potlucks after church. Have found no evidence in the Bible where Christians are to have a feast on the Sabbath. Yet the so called writings of EGW gives conflicting info about potlucks or after church dinners in the church itself.. Yet they called it Fellowship, and yet they partake in some of the worst sins found in the bible, they break the laws God willy nilly believeing that worship service makes them immune to breaking God's Law while on the Sabbath. Also need to bring this up, if making Adventists hypocrites then anyone who is not a adventist going to church and partaking in potlucks or feasts on Sunday Sabbath, Saturday Sabbath or Friday Sabbath are violating the Law of God... Might want to consider that prospect...  | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 14809 Registered: 12-2003  |
I've thought about these implications often...even as an Adventist. I could never figure out a good solution. If keeping Sabbath is the goal of evangelism...and I believed that essentially it was, because "evangelism" meant telling people the truth about Sabbath and Adventism...I could never figure out how we would actually live if everyone were Adventist. The entire infrastructure of the first world would have to shut down...it made my brain hurt. I couldn't come up with a solution. Now I know why...there simply WASN'T a solution because the premise was completely false. Colleen | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 3362 Registered: 7-2007 |
Carricio; is he willing to consider whether or not the Bible supports the Sabbath now in the New Covenant? If so, perhaps you could have him read this and look up what the Bible says on each point? First, I'd like to point out that the Sabbath was given in the covenant given to Israel at Mount Sinai. (I'm addressing the two big covenants here - the one given at Sinai and the one brought in at Jesus' death - not the ones given to Noah and Abraham.) But it was actually given a few weeks before Mount Sinai at the giving of the manna. That's why the Commandment says: "remember." You can find the giving of the Sabbath in Exodus 16. (Adventists ignore that the Sabbath command was given a few weeks prior to Sinai and then when they read Exodus 20, they go: *GASP!* "That PROVES that the Sabbath was given at Eden!" They do that because they refuse to read the Bible in context without using Ellen White to "interpret" what they're reading!) Second I'd like to point out that the Old Covenant includes the Sabbath and that it was given just to Israel. Here Moses is talking to Israel: "And He declared to you His covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and He wrote them on two tablets of stone." Deuteronomy 4:13 And again here is Moses talking to Israel: "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today." Deuteronomy 5:2-3 It was a sign between Israel and God: "You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep My Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you." Exodus 31:13 When Jesus died, He brought in a whole new covenant and the old one became obsolete: "Therefore He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive." Hebrews 9:15-17 "In speaking of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away." Hebrews 8:13 And now what about the Sabbath? Is there still a Sabbath? I'd like to put a verse that shows that it isn't a day anymore. It's JESUS! He's the substance of ALL the Sabbath shadows - the annual/seasonal, the monthly and the weekly. "Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." Colossians 2:16-17 Here's another verse that shows it doesn't matter if a person keeps a day anymore or not: "One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." Romans 14:5 What is someone is keeping it in order to be saved? What then? Here's a verse where the Galatians were getting circumcised because they thought they HAD to do it in order to be saved. If this happened because they were trying to partly earn their salvation, then the same thing would happen to a person trying to keep a day in order to partly keep/earn their salvation: "Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law." Galatians 5:2-3 The whole law of the Old Covenant, by the way, of which circumcision was a part, totals 613 commands. If a person did that, they would have to have had kept all 613 commands perfectly his/her whole life, because Christ would be of no advantage to them. Actually the same book of Galatians addresses those people trying to keep all three kinds of Sabbaths too - the weekly, the monthly and the annual/seasonal. "You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain." Galatians 4:10 Here Galatians goes into more detail about the two covenants, especially the old one: "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children." Galatians 4:21-25 Now, I ought to address a major sticking point for Adventists. It's Genesis 2:2-3 where God rested the seventh day of creation. Adventists put a whole lot of stuff in those verses that isn't there: First, that was Adam and Eve's second day. Second, it only says that God blessed and rested that day, not all the anniversaries of that day, such as the 14th and 21st. Third, there's no command there to Adam and Eve to keep that day. Forth, it doesn't say that God went to work again on the eight day. He's still RESTING. He invites us into His Rest. Israel sure didn't enter His Rest, though they certainly kept the Sabbath. There would die otherwise! " For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief." Hebrews 3:16-19 I'd like to ask: Have SDAs entered God's Sabbath Rest? They certainly try to "keep" the Sabbath day! Are they resting from their labors as God did from His, by resting in Jesus' finished work or are they striving to be saved by keeping the Sabbath? Here's a last few verses: "Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His." Hebrews 4:6-10 | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 46 Registered: 4-2014 |
Colleen, You have to just laugh at some of the "solutions"....for instance, the International Date Line presents an insurmountable problem for people on Tonga and Samoa. Adventists there have been "keeping Sunday" for many years after the line was moved. They go to church on the same day as everyone else. Now with the Adventist "Feast Keepers" becoming a force to be reckoned (keeping all the monthly, yearly Sabbaths and Jewish Feasts and Festivals, all of the clothing laws and some of them building back yard temples for animal sacrifice), they have to deal with the problem of the Sabbath in a round world, where 200 million people live above in Northern habitats. Places where the "Sabbath" can be three months long during the summer and NO Sabbath for 3 months in the winter. Their solution is brilliant.............. Some of them have declared that the Earth is Flat. Apparently in Ellen White's time, she was getting pestered by several Adventists who advocated a return to the Flat Earth. They actually wrote books about it. You think I am kidding, don't you? I am not kidding! | ||
| Freeatlast Registered user Username: Freeatlast Post Number: 922 Registered: 5-2002  |
Adventism's solution? Just don't live there! "God made His Sabbath for a round world; and when the seventh day comes to us in that round world, controlled by the sun that rules the day, it is the time, in all countries and lands, to observe the Sabbath. In the countries where there is no sunset for months, and again no sunrise for months, the period of time will be calculated by records kept. But God has a world large enough, and proper and right for the human beings He has created to inhabit it, without finding homes in those lands so objectionable in very many, many ways." Ellen G. White, MANUSCRIPT RELEASES VOLUME TWELVE [NOS. 921-999], PAGE 159 | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 47 Registered: 4-2014 |
And that would require the biggest mass migration in world history....by my calculation around 200 million people would have to move. What, all those Russians are going to move to Africa? Nobody has keep the Sabbath, with it explicit prohibition against "manservants and maidservants" working on Sabbath, since the world economy went globalized about 30 years ago. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 14812 Registered: 12-2003 |
it's all CRAZY-MAKING!! The psychological abuse implicit in teaching as truth things that one can easily see cannot be supported in reality makes people mentally ill, ultimately. Have you ever noticed that people who really believe Adventism is "right" either leave and spin into agnosticism because it's just too hard to do, or they spiral deeper into mental illness as they try to get it right, holding contradicting beliefs simultaneously in their heads. They are totally out of touch with reality. I do not think you're kidding, Resjudicata, about the flat earth thing. Sigh. That's the problem with holding untruths as truth. One is forced to support those beliefs with increasingly complex arguments that depend upon essential UNTRUTH. There's just no way to arrive at reality. Colleen | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 49 Registered: 4-2014 |
And the weird thing is, there are contradictions in Christianity where two contradictory things are true at once: You are a sinner that is saved. Jesus was fully man and God. You can go on and on with this list.....Like Ric says, you cannot logically arrive at the Resurrection or the plan of Salvation. You just can't. To be an Adventist, you need to have the ability to tolerate two (or more) demonstrably false ideas that are contradictory. | ||
| Leifl Registered user Username: Leifl Post Number: 30 Registered: 3-2014  |
Colleen, My wife and I have noticed, now that we have been attending an Evangelical church for two or three years, is that people are "normal", and it as if the world is now right-side-up. In our early adulthood, we had made friends with quite a few other young families in both Canada and the USA. All of them have broken up - these were faithful, traditional Adventist families. Those who have not broken up are really struggling to stay together, or living separate lives in the same house. It hardly seems possible to account for this - I don't think I can name a single one of the families among our friends that enjoys their marriage as my wife and I do. Our Evangelical church, which the traditional Adventist would deem as "more worldly" (jewellery, makeup, jeans, etc.) is filled with good, happy, healthy relationships. And we are a mix of families from very different backgrounds - much more diverse than most Adventist churches. It also seems that (in general) a certain mental and emotional profile is drawn to Adventism - obsessive, controlling, unreasonable, and unable to discern simple truth. Imbalance and sociopathic tendencies seem to be the norm. These are just a few observations based on our past 20 years of experience, in and (now) outside the Adventist system. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 14822 Registered: 12-2003 |
Leifle, I have to agree with you. A woman I know (a former Adventist) has a brother who is a psychologist. I believe he is also a "former" Adventist, but as I recall, he is not an active Christian. Years ago he did a personality inventory on a group of Adventists. (I don't know the circumstances of his selection of his study group, but they were SDA for sure.) Interestingly, their profiles reflected the same personality traits common to alcoholics. I've experienced these same phenomenon as well...imbalance, sociopathic tendencies, narcissism and borderline-y behavior. Lots of drama and emotional manipulation. The longer Richard and I have dealt with people leaving Adventism, the more we have seen the common thread of abuse in their stories. I don't know whether you've seen this article or not, but here's a link to an article on spiritual abuse in religions that we ran in a fairly recent Proclamation: http://www.lifeassuranceministries.org/proclamation/2012/4/spiritualabuse-y.html Colleen | ||
| Islander Registered user Username: Islander Post Number: 4 Registered: 4-2014 |
Pnoga,many years ago when I was young I worked in a hospital that was privatelly owned by a SDA family. Actually a convelesant hospital. There was a lot of pressure on the employees to "tithe" or otherwise donate their earning from Saturday employment to various SDA causes. But,giving credit where credit is due a lot of us aids as well as the kitchen and castodial staff requested the Saturday employment because the owner wouldn't allow any "unnecassary" work to be done on Sabbath, such as bathing the patients because that could be done on Fridays and Sundays and moping the floors unless of an emergency spill, etc. | ||
| Thalarian Registered user Username: Thalarian Post Number: 14 Registered: 7-2006 |
Question for Islander there, does not the bible say that Jesus himself approved giving aid to those who need help? Helping the sick, taking care of the sick, feeding the sick? even on the Sabbath?. At least that what I got from studying the bible... Any so called Adventist Hospital that refuses to followed the instructions in regards to the sick on the Sabbath according to the writings of EGW is in direct conflict of what the Holy Bible says on the matter. | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 86 Registered: 4-2014 |
Jesus went well beyond behavior that was limited to aiding the sick. What got him in deep trouble was telling the cripple to "take up your bed and walk," which the Pharisees accurately analyzed as "work" that was blatantly-prohibited under the 4th Commandment. I personally reject the usual Adventist theory that Christ came only to abolish the nit-picking man-made traditions and "legalism of the law." He was deliberately breaking the Commandment and did so loudly and publicly. The truth is the Pharisees were fixated on interpretive regulations of the Sabbath Commandment in order to make it clear what was prohibited on the Jewish holy day. The Pharisees were not the ones who invented that Death Penalty: That was a clear-cut command of God! They were loathe to impose the Death Penalty for Sabbath violations, so they spelled out in detail prohibited behavior to make it much easier to acquit someone of Sabbath Breaking, especially when their behavior fell into "gray areas." The Pharisees were the populist "common man" of their time. Their regulations were devised to make it EASIER for the usual illiterate suspect to follow the law, and easier for the Sanhedrin to acquit if the prohibited conduct was not squarely prohibted by regulation. Adventists almost always forget about the mandatory death penalty that was alive and well, and the court system set up by the Mosaic law that was every bit as important as the Sabbath. Adventists publicly flatter themselves as "Commandment Keepers," but they have NEVER obeyed the Commandment that imposes a Mandatory Death Sentence for Sabbath Breaking. Adventists flatter themselves all too easily: A toothless "Law" with no enforcement mechanism is illusory. It is not a "Law" at all. It is a personal whim. Knowing all of this, I think Jesus deliberately broke the Sabbath and did so openly in the direct presence of Pharisees. He did so to demonstrate that he was the God who created the Sabbath and had every right to abolish it when the purpose for it was over. In addition to proving that he was the Lord of the Sabbath, i.e. God, he was also ushering in the New Covenant and demonstrating that the Old Covenant was being jettisoned. And the Pharisees drew the brunt of his scathing denouncement because they failed to see that the purpose of the Sabbath was standing there right in front of them. He was broadcasting loud and clear that the Mosaic Law was over. HE was now the Law. (Message edited by Resjudicata on June 05, 2014) | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 2130 Registered: 7-2004  |
Excellent analysis Res! | ||
| Resjudicata Registered user Username: Resjudicata Post Number: 87 Registered: 4-2014 |
Ric b, I am ruined for life for any other interpretation. I have lived the most "un-Adventist" of all lives: I was and am one of the few "Capital Qualified" criminal defense attorneys in the United States. I would guess that there are only around 1000 of us in the whole US. We specialize in the most gruesome and grizzly murders with the least mitigating factors possible. Most people reflexively believe our clients deserve to die. We are Death Penalty qualified. And the Death Penalty changes everything. You hear that constantly whispered in hushed tones in courthouse hallways, but few really know what it means, or what it feels like on your own hide and emotions. A few anecdotes from 19 years of deliberately injecting myself into the most hellish situations imaginable: - A prosecutor became a dear dear friend after we tried more than 200 high-profile felony cases together as opposing Counsel. We had 4 Capital murder cases together and became very comfortable with each other in courtrooms where the ultimate penalty was at play. He described being on my opposite side as like two men with one of their wrists bound to the other's wrist, each being furnished with a huge dagger. In a darkened room with blindfolds on, we swing at each other, never knowing how close we are coming, or how close they are coming. It is lethal combat with the ultimate stakes at play with a murky outcome at best. It is a grim, incredibly-fascinating and gruesome "dance of death." - I went to a Jesuit Death Penalty College held at a University in California. A Maryknoll nun there had represented a particularly heinous defendant who had raped and beheaded two of her sister nuns. In a fire-eating, defiant speech to the Judge that nearly got her thrown in jail for contempt, she told the Judge that her client would "suck from the pipe" when they extracted him loose from her cold, dead hands. Catholics mean what they say and say what they mean about the value of human life; - In a grizzly triple murder case that was followed up by satanic sexual abuse of tiny tots and the fourth murder of the binge, I learned the meaning of "community." Everyone involved in that case suffered more or less from PTSD, and in support groups, we were all in the same boat: Prosecutors, police, defense attorneys, defense investigators, paralegals.....all suffering together and all supporting each other as fellow weak and damaged human beings.....defense council bawling in the arms of the arresting police officers, hardened cops who had seen "everything" breaking down bawling with no warning.....all of us relating the nights of waking up on the floor, with fingers and toes dug into the carpet until they bled, every muscle in your body completely locked tight, bathed in gallons of sweat..... Yes, the Death Penalty changes everything. And so I have a LOT more compassion for the Pharisees and what they were trying to accomplish than the average Adventist - who has the privilege of blithely ignoring the explicit Commandment of God imposing a mandatory death sentence for Sabbath breaking. And EVERYTHING the Pharisees did around Jesus and his willful Sabbath Breaking is totally consistent with my own history of being up close while decisions on the ultimate penalty are being made. The Death Penalty is and should be the harshest penalty, and it should and is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. And the Pharisees went out of their way to put every obstacle they could think of to make it harder to impose the Death Penalty for Sabbath Breaking. Every Adventist should be forced to read the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and the published cases of Sabbath Breaking and the debate over the mandatory death penalty. They would eagerly join mainstream Christianity in "adding" the 7th Day Sabbath to the list of ordinances "Nailed to the Cross." Think of it: The Death Penalty for Sabbath Breaking could not possibly be more clearly one of the "moral laws" of the Old Testament! And yet, Adventists conveniently pretend like it isn't there when they analyze the conduct of Jesus and the conduct of the Pharisees, like their verbal jousting was taking place in a vacuum where nothing was at stake. EVERYTHING was at stake, and every spectator standing around and watching those discussions knew it. Without understanding the mandatory death penalty for Sabbath breaking, and the heroic efforts made by the Pharisees to make that penalty all but impossible to achieve, you cannot really understand what the issue was there. Nor can you understand what Jesus was actually talking about when describing himself "Lord of the Sabbath" but then allowing himself to be meekly tried and executed as the Lamb of God. Adventists live in a pretend fantasy world. They pretend that they keep the Sabbath and pretend the mandatory penalty for breaking it does not exist. What more "moral law" could possibly exist than one levying the ultimate penalty for violating God's Holy Day? Adventists hypocritically want to have their cake and eat it too. I have lived the oddest life to be posting here on an ex-Adventist forum. I have the blackest and deepest pessimism born from being close to the blackest human evil on earth, and the understanding that law is powerless to transform the human heart. You live my life, and you will do exactly what I did in January when I read Dudley Canright's "Seventh Day Adventism Renounced." You will lunge for that hand of Grace and that Resurrection and that hope. You will LUNGE for it. Free at last....Free at last....thank you Dear Jesus, I am Free at last. | ||
| Thalarian Registered user Username: Thalarian Post Number: 17 Registered: 7-2006 |
Wondering if anyone here remembers Little Debbie Snack Cakes? Little Debbie is trademarked and owned by Mckee's Foods Corporation, a SDA owned and Operated Bakery based in Colledgedale, TN a closed SDA community up until 2002. 70% of the workforce was non-SDA. They sold unhealthy snack cakes that were in direct violation of the writings of their so called founder Ellen G. White. Everytime you buy a little debbie snack cake you are supporting the SDA Cult/Religious Movement. You need to understand that for every $100 made in sales Mckee Foods donates $75 of that to the SDA church/cult. | ||
| Islander Registered user Username: Islander Post Number: 8 Registered: 4-2014 |
Yes. I was aware of the Little Debbie/SDA relationship. In fact, I once met a girl who worked at the Little Debbie factory ( it is factory food) to pay her way through college. All I can figure out is it boils down to capitalism and profit over convictions. I don't know if this is true but there are several major supermarket chains that I have heard the LDS church owns. Each one sells coffee, sodas, alcohol and tobacco products. BTW, I heard Sister Prejean speak. It was dynamic. |
