| Author | Message | ||
| Jorgfe Registered user Username: Jorgfe Post Number: 47 Registered: 11-2005 |
This is certainly an interesting spin on the subject. I haven't heard it expressed this way before. When biblical support is abandoned I suppose any logic will suffice. http://www.atoday.com/magazine/archive/1997/novdec1997/extras/cafstatement.html | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 3191 Registered: 12-2003  |
H-m-m-m... Ron Gladden, the Mid-America administrator the A Today article quoted as saying different churches need different styles but one central message, has since formed a new organization called Mission Catalyst Network. It is completely Adventist in its doctrines, but it is not associated with the organized Adventist church. It is a church-planting organization, and Ron pled with the GC to accept his organization as part of the church before he actually launched it. The church, or course, refused to acknowledge it. The bottom line is that Gladden is planting churches on the congregational model--read that, the churches do not pay tithe to the GC. Gladden's organization is loosely a "denomination" in itself in the sense that it provides a central "umbrella" for the new churches to rally under. The individual churces that join Mission Catalyst pay a small percentage of their incomes to the organization. As I recall, the local churches hire their own pastors as congregational churches in general Christianity do. The core of the matter, though, is that these churches teach Adventism--albeit loosely compared to traditional Adventist churches--and they do not CALL themselves Adventist. This reality creates a lot of confusion, at least in some areas. Just last week we got an email from Greg Taylor who has quite a lot of contacts with former Adventists in several African countries, especially Kenya, Uganda, and one or two others. The former Adventist pastors he works with had been overjoyed that a Christian mission outreach had come to their area. They had begun working together to establish churches. Then they found out that this organization, Mission Catalyst Network, that had begun helping the former Adventist pastors, was teaching Sabbath-keeping, the law, etc. The pastors were devastated, and they want to make a public statement distancing themselves from Gladden's organization. Even though they realized MCN was teaching Sabbath and the law, they still didn't know its association with Adventism. Apparently when MCN plants a church, they do not connect thenmselves in any way with the organization of Seventh-day Adventistsóalthough they are Adventists, albeit independent. It's just more confusion--all in the same vein of the original confusion... Colleen | ||
| Jorgfe Registered user Username: Jorgfe Post Number: 48 Registered: 11-2005 |
I found the term "The Sabbath as THE discipleship seal of God" to be very bizarre. Why doesn't the Rocky Mountain Executive Committee, for example, also use the term, "Circumcision as THE discipleship seal of God"? Perhaps they might start using this as the name for a new evangelistic series. The logic is so distorted it hurts. The Bible is extremely clear about what the Seal of God is. It says it is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. To deny that is to commit the unpardonable sin. In fact, to deny the rightful role of the Holy Spirit in our lives is, to my understanding, the ONLY way to commit the unpardonable sin. Am I right? To try to weave in pleasing words like "discipleship" shows how desparate the Rocky Mountain Executive Committee was to try to make the tenuous connection. They just can't go anywhere without making the 7th-day Sabbath the main end-time testing truth. That, in itself, is totally unsupportable from the Bible. They know that. It is as supportable as Ellen White's teaching that the Flood was caused by "amalgamation of man and beast" when the Bible no where states that as the root cause (or any kind of cause), and instead clearly states in Genesis 6:5 that "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." This type of obfuscating the Biblical truth is simply inexcusable. "The Sabbath as the discipleship seal of God"? Gilbert | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 3197 Registered: 12-2003 |
You are right, Gilbert. I have been aware for about 10 years that more "progressive" Adventists were using that "sign of the seal" terminology because they KNOW the Holy Spirit is the seal of God, and they can't get away with calling Sabbath the actual "seal". It's just more obfuscation, and this term still slanders the Holy Spiritóas if He is not enough! Colleen | ||
| Lisa_boyldavis Registered user Username: Lisa_boyldavis Post Number: 145 Registered: 3-2005 |
As a young college student I attended a meeting put on by literture evangelists... I considered that for summer work. The leaders taught to go to a door and sale Adventist books without telling the customer we were Seventh day Adventists. To clarify, I asked the meeting director, "If the customer comes right out and asks 'Are you Seventh day Adventist, or are you with a church?' what should we say?" We were told to NEVER tell the customer who we really were by changing the subject, saying we were with the "community crusade against drugs" or some other such fabrication. I said right in the meeting of 30 or 40 people, "Then that is a form of lying, which to premeditate a dishonest response is unthinkable while selling books for Christ" The directors face turned beat read and he went into a rampage about getting the word out, etc... That was my last thought to sale books for them. Why I didn't get the red flag the Lord was giving me back then, I'll never know. His timing. Lisa | ||
| Ric_b Registered user Username: Ric_b Post Number: 424 Registered: 7-2004  |
Lisa, What a familiar story. I went one step further. I did it for a summer. I was a theo major and still planning on being a pastor at the time. And we were strongly encouraged to be LE's for a summer "if we wanted a call." So I did. I was disgusted with the process by the end of my training. I was taught to lie about who I was with, and what church published the books. To prey on the poorest segments of society. To convince those who shouldn't be spending that kind of money on books (not at the marked up prices for these hardbound books) to finance them. I never did figure out how selling books was spreading the Gospel. But I was such a die-hard SDA at the time that I basically quit even trying to sell book and instead bought boxes full of Desire of Ages in paperback and gave them away wherever I could. But at least I didn't feel slimey at the end of the day. The amazing thing is that this experience didn't open my eyes. Although it might have helped prepare me for it. Within little more than a year of this I started having serious questions about the accuracy of EGW's statements. |
