| Author | Message | ||
| Jlondon81 Registered user Username: Jlondon81 Post Number: 45 Registered: 6-2004 |
I haven't posted in awhile, but I recently noticed through the "Bible Studies for Adventists" link that this quarter's Sabbath School guide is on Galatians. Now, please forgive me, but my first reaction to that was laughter, out loud, so much so that my coworkers thought I was reading a joke in my email. However, I've calmed down (some) and since recognized that I don't think I've ever read Galatians through SDA/EGW lenses. While I like to browse through the refutations, I may have to read this through both sides of the coin, if you will. For those new to the forum, I, like many others, HIGHLY recommend a healthy dose of Galatians-Romans-Hebrews (in that order) to 1) begin washing the SDA out of you and/or 2) begin grasping what the true Gospel is. I look forward to reading through this, and much thanks to the webmasters for posting it! Joel | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 9513 Registered: 3-2004  |
It is good to see you here Joel. Diana L | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13191 Registered: 12-2003  |
Joel, I totally agree with you! Galatians-Romans-Hebrews. Essential reading for transitioning Adventists and anyone wanting to know the gospel. Good to see you here...and yes, it's beyond frustrating to read the SDA spin on Galatians. Talk about eviscerating that epistle... Colleen | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1368 Registered: 7-2004  |
The spin is simply amazing. I know that as I was writing my sections I came across statements in the lesson where I had to ask, "how could you possibly reach that conclusion from those words"? | ||
| Chris Registered user Username: Chris Post Number: 1647 Registered: 7-2003  |
Yeah, some of the author's statements border on bizarre. He says something to the effect that God never asked Israel to do anything for blessing, only respond in gratitude for the blessings they'd already received. I thought, "Um... Did he miss the clearly stated terms of covenant? I mean, Deuteronomy goes on at some length about blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience". This was most definitely a conditional covenant. Some of the author's statements are 180 degrees off from what the Bible teaches yet they call doing the SS lesson "bible study". | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1370 Registered: 7-2004 |
Chris, I want to comment on the outstanding job you do when you respond to these lessons. I can't imagine how much time you must put into those. They make me feel a little inadequate when I am writing my own. Keep up the great work. | ||
| Chris Registered user Username: Chris Post Number: 1648 Registered: 7-2003 |
Well thanks Ric. I really enjoyed reading yours as well. To be very honest, most of what I wrote came out of a previous study on the covenants I've done. I just edited it together in a different way. It was a little work, but not too bad. | ||
| Jackob Registered user Username: Jackob Post Number: 653 Registered: 7-2005 |
Thanks Ric and Chris for your commentaries on the SS lessons. As a contributor myself, I want to highlight a new tactic that seems more and more prominent in the writings of the new generation of adventist's apologists. My view is formed also through reading "Ellen White Under Fire" by Jud Lake. It's a deliberate attempt to portray the message of adventism as permeated by grace, "all is grace", and show that the former adventist's objects are nothing else than straw man construction. The goal of this tactic is to give the impression that adventist's message is a message of grace from head to toe, and mask in this way the mixture of law with gospel. If this amalgamation (pun intended) of gospel-law can pass under the label of grace, the objective is realized. The adventist in the ranks is less able to detect the fact that his salvation is contingent on his obedience, even if this is exactly what's he buying. Also, my perception is that the last apologetic turns in the adventist camp is toward the challenge presented by former adventists changed into evangelicals. By putting the facade "all is grace", the former adventist appears as being naive for rejecting such a wonderful grace message, obviously, from this perspective, due to a lack of understanding of the gospel. In this way, the former adventist is portrayed as being very weak in understanding the gospel, God's grace, since he is not able to see this grace in the adventist' message. Conditions? What conditions? No conditions at all, people obeyed God only out of gratitude. The former adventists are wrong because they, not being able to see God's grace, left adventism, and their much acclaimed freedom in the gospel is the other side of the legalistic coin. They were legalists in adventism, they are still legalists, because they are still unable to come to grips with the fact that it's all of grace, a message that adventists proclaim all along. Of course, the same mixture of law-gospel is present, just only under a new label that covers the amalgamation. The label is called grace, and whitewashes all. New whitewash, same wall. Gabriel | ||
| Chris Registered user Username: Chris Post Number: 1649 Registered: 7-2003 |
Really excellent points Gabriel, and thank you for your contributions. Yes, I saw the same tactic you are describing. I found it very telling that in the final day of this week's lesson the author quotes EGW in PP were she essentially defines "grace" as God giving us the ability to keep the Law. This is in direct contradiction to the way the Bible describes grace as God's unmerited favor completely apart from the law. In fact, it's God's favor bestowed on us while we are yet dead in our sins. If it's tied to our ability to keep the Law, then it's not grace. So Adventists and evangelicals both use the term "grace" but we have completely different definitions. Evangelicals use the biblical definition and Adventists use the EGW definition. It's a pretty big language barrier to over come. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 13195 Registered: 12-2003 |
EXACTLY! Adventists have slowly changed their rhetoric as they've heard those who have left their ranks for the sake of Jesus. They have, in the ignoble tradition of the men who met with Walter Martin, adapted their language in order to deceive...only now they're not only deceiving a "weakening" evangelical Christian church (beset by relativism and by replacing the core of the gospel with social concerns), but they're also deceiving their "own". Indeed, they are quite specifically attempting to debunk all we formers say about Adventism by playing word games that create mazes that lead into dead ends. They do try to make us look as if we just don't understand grace—if we did, we'd have never left. More and more I see that, along with addressing the deceptive vocabulary and truly illogical arguments they created, it's necessary to cut to the tap root and continually restate that Adventism can't talk about grace and the gospel and mean what the Christian church means as long as they don't believe men have a spirit that can be made alive by the Holy Spirit, as long as they have a jesus who could have failed and who had no "human spirit" when he was on earth and who did not know he would rise from the tomb, and as long as they believe Jesus is not the same substance as God the Father and IS Almighty God, Yaweh. They throw Christian words around as if they are Christians...but those words are truly completely different "things" because they have a false belief in the nature of man and they have, literally a different Jesus. Colleen | ||
| Rossbondreturns Registered user Username: Rossbondreturns Post Number: 307 Registered: 10-2009  |
I'm humbled even to be part of the writing team if you will for these commentaries. My takes at bringing light to the darkness seem almost trite when I read the others. That said I'm really planning big things for the last week of the quarterly. Working on it already in fact. Can't wait to share it with everyone. Ross | ||
| Nowisee Registered user Username: Nowisee Post Number: 1005 Registered: 5-2009 |
I have to give kudos and thanks to all of you who write the SS commentaries. I can barely stand to read those lessons, so I don't know how you do it. Maybe I have Quarterly PTSD or something..I can barely tolerate them. Anyone else have this reaction? | ||
| Mkfound Registered user Username: Mkfound Post Number: 160 Registered: 1-2011 |
Nowisee, yes, I have the same reaction. I was yelling at the computer screen reading some of this Sabbath School lesson for this quarter. Yeck, it is absolutely disgusting. It's like the editors/writers purposely miss the point of the gospel, purposely circumvent it, so that the ones in the pews can feel that they have studied Galations and have a firm handle on the gospel, but in reality are just reading snippets here and there through the SDA lenses, and not getting the full brunt of Paul's letter to the Galations. | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1374 Registered: 7-2004 |
I have the same reaction to some of the lessons. Plus the inevitable "how could I have been so blind" feeling. But ose feelings also make writing the responses to the lessons all the more important. | ||
| Free2dance Registered user Username: Free2dance Post Number: 515 Registered: 2-2010 |
My husband and I have been working on the week of the 17th tonight. I feel mentally paralyzed in some way(possibly, because I'm overtired anyway). I have never looked at a quarterly before either so this is new to me in a couple ways. I do not understand how they can call this a study of Galatians when they hyper focus on one verse for the week, discuss minor points the rest of the passage makes and ignore the meat that can only be known if one knows the truth. They send their readers to all these one-line passages all over the Bible to make a point about staying strong. In addition, some of the words they choose to study from the Greek are odd. The Greek could really help them with Galatians but they are camping on the wrong things. Maybe dropping a few Greek words in at odd places helps give weight to their authority...I do not know. Sigh... I see so clearly why I was always confused. Their teaching requires a whole lot of time consuming, unclear, busy work to purge the conscience, motivate the flesh to "do good!", and keep their members relying on them. This is not a study of Galatians. This is a Bible maze motivated by random lines in Galatians. | ||
| Philharris Registered user Username: Philharris Post Number: 2613 Registered: 5-2007  |
Free2dance, I am looking forward to reading the commentary you and your husband are doing. What you are finding to be challenging is the same for all who are doing these commentaries. No lesson has been easy for me. Each day of each lesson, I stare at the quarterly and go to prayer, not knowing what to write, often knowing what needs to be said but not knowing what words to use that will lead a searching Adventist into God’s real truth. Then it comes, but not of my own ‘thinking’. Only as each of us are lead by the Holy Spirit can any of us do these commentaries. The Galatians and Romans Quarterly “studies” are very much alike….not real bible study. I found it very frustrating doing commentary for both quarters. My solution was to repeatedly draw attention to what the real and simple gospel message is. My thought is to stress doing expository bible study and focus on the ‘original’ message instead of putting together a patch-work Frankenstein Monster that has no real life. Emotionally I have found the quarterly mindset to be very draining. Blessings to you and your husband, along with all the others who are doing these commentaries, Phil | ||
| Cloudwatcher Registered user Username: Cloudwatcher Post Number: 612 Registered: 5-2009  |
Y'all are troopers for doing these commentaries. The SS lesson is truly torturous to read. When I was SDA, I would try to catch up with the week's lesson on Friday night, just in case the pastor's wife was asked to contribute to the lesson discussion. LOL It always amazed me how fast I could do it and how I could fill in the blanks without opening my Bible. It is truly a joke that this passed for Bible study. What is so dangerous about this is that Adventists think they've studied the book of Galatians now because they have spent 30 minutes a week with this mumbo jumbo. It's also intriguing to me how these authors follow Ellen's train of thought and present it as fact, without attribution. Don't wonder where they got *that*...you know where they got that! | ||
| Jackob Registered user Username: Jackob Post Number: 654 Registered: 7-2005 |
I want to enforce what Phil, Chris, Ric and other has said about the Galatians and Romans, not real bible study. Indeed there is difficulty in moving from one day to another, not because the lessons are rocket science, but because they seem to come from another planet in a language that barely can be deciphered. In my opinion this is because they assume apriori that the adventist message is right, it's the correct interpretation of the biblical text, and no matter if the biblical text support it or not, they will make the text look as it supports them. The old adventists themes appear when you're expecting them less, and the entire thing seems like a propaganda show, an exercise in rehearsing the same old song again and again and again, just make sure that the members are reassured that neither Romans or Galatians present a problem for the adventist position. It's like "See, don't be afraid of the evangelicals, these books are on our side. And if they are on our side, don't bother very much, you'll get your reward." Of course such a methodology doesn't make very much sense when you're trying to write a meaningful commentary. They don't have intrinsic, internal meanings, they are only made to sound good to adventist ears, to fit with the adventist paradigm and placate any fears that adventists don't get right. Because of the lack of internal meaning, they are incoherent, composite of many ideas unrelated with each other. It's a mess from beginning to end, it's eating platitudes from beginning to end. I don't know about the other writers, but for myself it's difficult to start writing the lessons earlier, usually I postpone them until it's almost too late. The external deadline constrain must be added to the internal motivation, otherwise I'm not sufficiently motivated to write the commentary. When I'm reading the lessons, I'm thinking "nothing has change from the time when I attended the same lessons at the sand box. Do what God asks you to do, and you'll be saved, same old mantra, again and again." Uh, good luck with this! Gabriel | ||
| Philharris Registered user Username: Philharris Post Number: 2614 Registered: 5-2007 |
Gabriel, I am with you on the 'deadline' thing. Knowing that it takes Richard a certain amount of time to upload the lesson to the website is like a 'ticking clock' that motivates me to get'er done. Here are my personal thoughts on doing commentary: 1. Pray and reveal the love of God. 2. Preach the real gospel in simple language. 3. Provide answers for those who the Holy Spirit is leading out of false doctrines. 4. Plant seeds that the Holy Spirit will use to lead "true belivers" out of Adventism. PS I will be taking a break from doing commentary next quarter to take care of 'personal issues' but I will be back...God willing. Phil | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 1377 Registered: 7-2004 |
My advice, focus on what the Scriptural passage actual says. Describe that and why. Then come back and fill in the blanks and respond to what the lesson says. More than just a response to the lesson, provide the reader with a study of what is REALLY in that passage of the Bible. Explore the verses that the lesson glosses over. |
