| Author | Message | ||
| Stevew Registered user Username: Stevew Post Number: 8 Registered: 2-2010 |
Hi all. My 9 year old has just said "Dad, did you know that when Adam & Eve were alive, that snakes had wings and legs?" I asked where she'd learned that and she said that Pastor John had told her. (She attends an SDA school.) Now that I am a bit more wary about what we teach our kids, I am just wondering.....Is this a biblical fact or an EGW teaching? I can't find it in the bible. Probably not a huge issue, really, but it shows how the rot sets in... I guess that's what you get when you send kids to SDA institutions, huh? | ||
| Skeeter Registered user Username: Skeeter Post Number: 818 Registered: 12-2007 |
No it is not in the Bible. It is yet another "Ellenism" | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 11365 Registered: 12-2003  |
Exactly. There are so many details in all the Bible stories that Adventism teaches that are not in the Bible. For example: • Abraham did not worship idols with his family in Ur; God kept him from it. • Eve wandered away from Adam at the tree... • A small black cloud the size of a man's hand will appear before Jesus comes. • It was Daniel and his friends' vegetarian diet that made them massively superior to their Babylonian peers after only 10 days of refusing the king's food. • God gave meat to humanity after the flood to shorten their lives. Etc, etc.... Colleen | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 6401 Registered: 9-2006  |
Quote: " but it shows how the rot sets in... " I am a never been, and I am just wondering why you would send your kids to an SDA school and allow the rot to set in? I am not trying to criticize here, I am just truly baffled. River | ||
| Yenc Registered user Username: Yenc Post Number: 139 Registered: 6-2008 |
Steve, I don't know if you attended SDA Schools yourself or not. I did from 3rd grade thru 2 years of college. In some ways it was better than public school: smaller classes (31 in my Academy graduating class), no "evolution" garbage, and my English and math teachers were the best! I also have a few lifelong friends from those associations of half a century ago. One became a major political figure in Oakland, CA. Many left all shreds of faith behind. Several rose to high levels of SDA Church leadership. One good friend who went into the ministry eventually realized how unbiblical many SDA doctrines are, and went on to influence the decision of a younger SDA minister to abandon the SDA Church to preach the truth of the New Covenant; that younger man is now the pastor of the largest Christian church in Phoenix. Anyway, my point is that an SDA education is neither inevitably better nor worse in academics than schooling elsewhere. The BIGGEST downside I see is the distortion of the plan of salvation! In the past 3 years of independent study, I have been unraveling the tangled mess of error that I had been so thoroughly taught. It has been painful at times to realize how much guilt and needless effort I had experienced in my efforts to be perfect so as to be "worthy of salvation"! And now I have the additional pain of seeing my cynical SDA-educated children ignore the pure, beautiful truth of God's plan of salvation, so different from SDA do-it-yourself religion with failure built in! You may feel that SDA schools are preferable to public schools, and I have to agree. But a good Christian school would be that much better. Home schooling may be another option, depending on your family circumstances; in some places, several families form co-ops to support each other's home schooling work. Just keep in mind that when a person remains in SDA schools, much of what they are taught is wrong. You may be risking your child's eternal destiny! | ||
| Cloudwatcher Registered user Username: Cloudwatcher Post Number: 102 Registered: 5-2009 |
I feel like I must pipe up and say that I disagree that your child's eternal destiny is at risk by having your children in SDA schools. God forbid my children's salvation is at stake if I make the wrong decision about something! God is bigger than that and He calls who He chooses. At the same time, I don't think it's a good idea to expose a child to a systematic indoctrination from Adventist if he/she is not intentionally being raised to be an Adventist. And make no mistake, it is systematic indoctrination about more than just quirks to Bible stories, but salvation and who God is. I have more to say about this, but I gotta run. | ||
| Bskillet Registered user Username: Bskillet Post Number: 715 Registered: 8-2008 |
I was recently surprised to find that, contrary to the Ellenisms I had grown up with, the Bible doesn't say Peter sank into the water because he looked back at his friends to show off. Rather, it says he sank because he became afraid. The difference: Peter sank because of a lack of faith, not because he didn't do the right thing. | ||
| Psalm107v2 Registered user Username: Psalm107v2 Post Number: 695 Registered: 10-2008  |
It continues to amaze me how people who learn from the cults seem to absorb garbage and false info but the correct stuff doesn't seem to grab hold as strongly or as quickly. When I heard about the serpent with wings, it was one of the things that made me say I have to get out. There are SDAs (evolutionist SDAS and Creationists) who try to prove that snakes had wings because some snakes have anatomies that "could" indicate that wings were something snakes had in the past. Also they will say that the curse to slither in the ground indicates that they could have flown before and now were subject to be stuck on the ground. It is amazing what lengths people will go to defend extra biblical fantasies. Steve, if this becomes a point of debate at your kids' school don't be surpised if they bring up the flying snakes seen in National Geograpic/Animal Planet type shows. A snake jumping from tree to tree does not prove they had wings until after the fall Enoch | ||
| Hec Registered user Username: Hec Post Number: 1111 Registered: 3-2009 |
If snakes always slither in the ground, what was the curse about? Hec | ||
| Cloudwatcher Registered user Username: Cloudwatcher Post Number: 105 Registered: 5-2009 |
Hec -- the snake could have had feet, eh? | ||
| Cloudwatcher Registered user Username: Cloudwatcher Post Number: 106 Registered: 5-2009 |
I posted earlier that I had more to say, but I don't remember what my train of thought was... | ||
| Grace_alone Registered user Username: Grace_alone Post Number: 1715 Registered: 6-2006  |
Hec, the Bible doesn't give a whole lot of detail about what the snake looked like. The point is, Ellen White again added her own details (or in many cases, other people's embelishments) and changed the point of the story as well as caused a lot of confusion with SDA's as to whether it's her writings or the Bible. Pretty crafty of her, don't you think? Here's what the Bible says ~ Gen 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [a] and hers; he will crush [b] your head, and you will strike his heel." According to the Bible, God put a curse on the serpent. Plain and simple. He didn't have to take anything away to put a curse. Who knows? It's possible that the serpent had feet and wings or even a completely different shape. However, that's not for Ellen White to decide. She adds her own crap (and by that I mean JUNK), and completely changes the Holy Scriptures. Shame on her for deceiving so many people!  Leigh Anne | ||
| Cloudwatcher Registered user Username: Cloudwatcher Post Number: 107 Registered: 5-2009 |
What Leigh Anne said is precisely the point. Furthermore...It's downright scary, for me, when I think about how Ellen's thoughts are so embedded in our thought patterns that we think what she said 1)our own thoughts or 2) the logical conclusion. The indoctrination is deep and twisted and only God himself can unravel it and uproot it. | ||
| Philharris Registered user Username: Philharris Post Number: 2179 Registered: 5-2007  |
This passage that Lannie quotes, Gen. 3:14-15, is the curse God pronounced upon Satan who appeared as a serpent. It is one of my favorite places in the bible because it is the first promise of our coming Savior. Satan would ‘bruise his heel’, that is, give our Messiah a non-lethal wound. Jesus Christ, God speaking to Satan, ‘shall bruise your head’. This is a fatal wound. This was a promise, founded upon the foreknowledge of God before time began, that Jesus would die for the sins of the world but would rise from the grave three days later. At no time was there any question that Satan would not be defeated. Jesus, the perfect righteous Son of God, could and would not fail. There is also the question of ‘livestock’. What does it mean that the serpent was cursed above all livestock? Livestock is mentioned in Gen. 2:20 before Adam had sinned. What was the livestock used for? Adventist claim their original diet was vegetarian but the only restriction on what they could eat was to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And, that appears to have been a vegetarian food. Anyway, was the serpent considered livestock? Or, was his curse simply worse than being called livestock? Anyway, there are a lot of questions that I have and none of it has to do with a serpent having wings or feet or just what was his mode of locomotion. All of which detracts from seeing this as a promise of a Savior who would remove the consequences of sin from our lives. Satan’s curse is our blessing. Fearless Phil (Message edited by philharris on July 04, 2010) | ||
| Bskillet Registered user Username: Bskillet Post Number: 716 Registered: 8-2008 |
Phil, the Hebrew word used in Gen. 2:20--behema--does not necessarily mean animals bred and raised to be eaten. It means any large quadraped. For instance, it is used also in Gen. 7:2 and 8 to signify "beasts." In the KJV, it is always translated as "beasts" or "cattle." It is the root word for the behemoth spoken of in Job. It is probable, given the curse on the serpent, that there was something physically different about the serpent before the fall than after. Revelation 12:8 refers to "the great dragon" as the "ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan." A dragon, to the readers of Revelation, would have had wings and feet. My point is there is at least more support Biblically for this particular Ellenism than the more damaging varieties, like for instance her blasphemous contention that Jesus could have sinned. (Message edited by bskillet on July 04, 2010) | ||
| Yenc Registered user Username: Yenc Post Number: 144 Registered: 6-2008 |
It seems that we are focusing on what a mere animal looked like before the fall, when the point is that it was truly Satan himself who was the subject of the curse; the snake was just an animal, without morality, superior wisdom or spiritual discernment, utilized like one might use a puppet or a ventriloquist's dummy, as a mouthpiece. Satan himself was the deceiver, and the curse was for his evil ruse to turn Adam and Eve from loyalty to God to caring more about themselves and their own desires. When you think about it that way, it is clear that Satan is still doing the same thing today! And he is still cursed by God for it: he is the lowest life form, the most evil and ugly thing in existence, hated and feared from that time to this for what he has done and is still desperately doing. The promise in Genesis 3:15 is what the whole story is about: Satan's fate-- utter and final destruction--is assured because God Himself promised it. But God promised us a way out, salvation from the same fate. The reason is that Jesus bore the punishment we sinners deserve, dealing the death blow to Satan at the cross, although his sentence and our deliverance were both pronounced in Eden. | ||
| Bskillet Registered user Username: Bskillet Post Number: 717 Registered: 8-2008 |
Absolutely correct. It is interesting that Ellen always described Satan in glowing terms, gushing about his beauty. | ||
| Hec Registered user Username: Hec Post Number: 1112 Registered: 3-2009 |
How about the dust eating? Was this supposed to be symbolic or do the snakes food is dust? If this was literal, I see snakes eating small animals, if it was symbolic, then the rest of the verse may be also symbolic. Hec | ||
| Grace_alone Registered user Username: Grace_alone Post Number: 1716 Registered: 6-2006 |
Has nobody noticed that the snake was actually talking?! If we're going to be concerned about anything I believe that's pretty significant!! Leigh Anne | ||
| Doc Registered user Username: Doc Post Number: 574 Registered: 2-2003  |
I just had this revelation from the Lord, that animals used to talk before the fall of man. Perhaps I could start a new movement with emphasis on this. Balaam's donkey could be brought in, as a special act of grace from the Lord to reveal his will to man in a fallen world. Maybe these guys found a way to cross over from Narnia. And of course, I was just talking to the neighbour's cat yesterday, who had some really significant stuff to say about end time events. There's no point in telling you guys about it, though, because you are not spiritually mature enough to take it. |
