28 fundamentles! How many does it take to qualify?
mel

The term fundamentalist derives from a series of (originally) twelve volumes entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth.

Our 28 Fundamental beliefs don't necessarily qualify us as being among the "Fundamentalists," because the latter is a technical term, not a general description. It requires a church to have particular beliefs, some of which our church doesn't hold. A lot of people don't realize this, but the Fundamentalists believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, the “plenary (total) and verbal [word-for-word] inspiration.” Inerrancy of the Scriptures is their first and most important belief.

Seventh-day Adventists, on the other hand, believe in the infallibility of the Scriptures, which, from the viewpoint of other Fundamentalists, fails to qualify Seventh-day Adventists as one of that group. As a church, we believe in thought-inspiration rather than that the Bible was dictated by God.

This may seem to many to be a point of little importance or perhaps even like "splitting hairs," but to those who consider themselves "Fundamentalists," it is a major difference. Also, the fact that Seventh-day Adventists believe that God sent a modern-day prophet is an additional reason for our not being considered among the Fundamentalists.

The following link gives the first four volumes of the Fundamentals: fourhttp://www.xmission.com/~fidelis/

It is worse than that I fear-

"Fundamentalist" is taken to mean "someone who reads the holy book of their particular religion and BELIEVES it is REALLY true instead of taking it as a loose moral guide along the lines of Aesop's fables".

in Christ,

Bob

Then why do we use the word fundamental if it tends to be confusing? Just because a majority at some General Conference voted that way doesn't mean that all of us do indeed agree.
mel

I agree with you that there is danger in the way people are coming to view those who accept the Bible as the revealed, inspired Word of God.

If Satan can arrange things so that the world associates Seventh-day Adventists with extremism and with extremists, such as Jim Jones, Muslim terrorists and with what happened in Waco, it will not be to the advantage of the beautiful message we proclaim.

Ellen White made statements to the effect that the time will come when the world will view Seventh-day Adventists as enemies of mankind and the world. So it seems that you've hit on a problem that may well be a part of Satan's plan to alienate the world against the church and our beliefs.

This should encourage all of us, I think, to make sure we are not saying or doing anything that would leave the impression that we are supporting violence in any way.

I think you have a point, melvin. It can be confusing to some when they see that we have "28 fundamentals." I suppose we could call them "28 basic beliefs."

But we never describe our church as a "fundamentalist church" in any of our publications or in any description of who we are or what we represent.

At least I have not seen any such term used. I did a little search of the web-sites and don't see any where we are described as being a "fundamentalist church," although I am sure that description does come up from time to time. In fact, I would not be surprised if some SDAs think of it that way or maybe tell friends or family that it is a "fundamentalist" church.

I admit that for many people it may not matter. They will still think of us fundamentalists just because we do hold many of the same beliefs as "the Fundamentalists."

Not sure what we can do about that except to point out the differences.

To a liberal taking the book as "true and accurate" IS extremist! The World's liberal and overt efforts to associate the ideae of extremism with fundamentalist is no accident.

In the case of Islam - the book is about endorsing Jihad so you could argue that to accept the book is to promote certain cases of violence. But hey -- their BOOK was wrong so no surprise!

Using that same rule however would be wrong in the case of Christianity since the book is RIGHT - it is no suprise then that it requires that we Love others and Love God.

It is also no surprise that it says things not in line with atheist views of origins (held by Darwin, Dawkins, Meyers, Provine, Gould, Patterson ...) "SIX days you shall labor..for in SIX DAYS the Lord MADE..."

in Christ,

Bob

I completely agree with you. The viewpoint of the world towards people who accept the Bible is influenced by the extremists. It is easy to imagine that some day they will consider SDAs as the enemy of mankind, not because of what Adventists teach but on the basis of others whom they wrongly associate with us. I think we need to do a much better job at communicating what we represent. Few people read what we believe doctrinally.

I was surprised to see this posted recently:



Source: http://newmatilda.com/2008/10/31/god-his-side

I'm sorry, which group are you speaking of within the SDA denomination? Firm Foundation and such project nothing but cold, formal legalism, which makes those outside the church view the entire denomination as a cult.

Rob