Why is it Lord that when I read about the fame of preachers and holy men in the past that made huge changes to the church and caused revolutions. Why is it that these men were able to get away with saying things in their day that we do not/would not tolerate today? Where have all the good preachers gone? - not the cute satelite ones but the ones who offended many as you did Lord. The ones who preached without fear of offending and told it as it is. Why does the church encourage weak leadership/preaching and hit's hard those men who speak the truth and tell it like it is?

Don't answer that Lord I know - Laodicea.

1.)I can send you a PM indicating where the good ones are if you are interested.

2.)But the ones preaching Hell Fire are gone for the most part. They have left Christianity because they discovered they just don't measure up to their own beliefs.

3.) Are you one that believes the church is now Babylon? I think EGW has a few words about that. And personally I would disagree. Our church is one of the fastest growing churches in the world. And it is because of the truth that we preach about the Bible. I don't see any weak preachers actually. Our message is one of the Bible. I don't personally see preachers preaching weak Untruth teachings in the SDA church. And I don't know of any conferences who would promote that. Could you name any pastors like that?

I feel very positive about our church and the message that it has for this end time. It is a message of hope and assurance. But if you are after Hell Fire and "offending" ... then I am sure you must not feel at home.



I can see you are big into "offending" but I don't see much fruit in that. All that does is to create an enemy not a follower of Christ. Jesus attacked the establishment of the Jews. It needed attacking. But God has built up His church. We don't need to attack the Seventh Day Adventist Church. For it's teachings are biblical.

True there are places in this world with the "church appears to be asleep", but I have seen incredible evidence of onfire church members and dedicated pastors. I wish you could see situations where a thousand people are baptized in one day, where more than 1/2 the members have many many weekly Bible studies with their friends and neighbors in their communities, where young people are preaching this gospel not only abroad but in their home countries, where there are ministries to heal and redeem the wounded and broken. Yes, there are problems in our church, just like any church but there is much to rejoice over and many incredible churches, pastors and church members to associate with. Maybe instead of cursing the darkness, when we see it, we should light a candle and join the many other candles that are brightly burning in the darkness of this world.

No I don't believe the church is babylon. I also know about the good work being done in other countries but in mine there is a dearth of good preachers, everyone relies on the satelite dishes for good preaching - but they are evangelists. We need good pastoral preaching - calling sin by it's right name.

The ones Jesus offended were the hypocrites, the church leaders who were leading people astray, not the seekers. Jesus didn't condemn people. He didn't expose their sins openly. He drew people to Him.

Is this what you consider to be the "good news". I thought the message of the gospel was the forgiveness of those sins through faith in our Saviour and Lord ... Jesus Christ.

Perhaps this confusion is the cause of some of the trouble with reaching our young people.

True. Let us speak the truth in love.

That's partly true. As to offenses, Jesus' neighbors were offended in Matthew 13:57.

Those who turn to the world an deny faith are referred to as being offended (Matthew 24:10).

Christ's Disciples were offended (Matthew 26:31-33)

In the parable of the Sower, people who live shallow lives and don't endure are represented as being offended (Mark 4:17).

It's all about Him dear ones,


oG

Why is it so important to focus on sin? We need to lift up Jesus, and He will do the convicting and draw people to Himself. He doesn't focus on how bad we are, so why should we feel the need to do it?

I agree that we shoud not be focusing on the sins of the people. It can be very discouraging for the spiritual life of a church to hear the words of a preacher saying, "We are not doing anything, we are not doing what we should" week after week without any encouragement or counsel on how to do better.

That's about as effective as looking in the mirror and seeing what kind of dirt is on ones face and thenwalking away and doing nothing about it. If the Gospel were preached with conviction and the power of the Holy Spirit more than mens ideas we'd see a different situation.

We must also face the reality that we are a sleepy church that has some serious issues to deal with (See Rev 3:14-22) There is a time to look at ourselves and call sin what it is so that we don't become comfortable with it, but rather deal with it. Paul speaks of this when rebuking the Corinthians about their practice of celebrating the Lords supper.

For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. 1Co 11:31-32