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...which just reveals that you know only the lies you have been told by Western media. That is *nothing* like what Islam is actually about. Some unbiased study and reading, and some conversations with some actual Muslims, would transform your perspective, if you let it. Frankly, Gail, in response to the question in the OP, based on what people *do* in the world - which, Jesus says in Matthew 25, is what distinguishes between the sheep and the goats - converting from Islam to Christianity is likely not a forward step. Count either lives snuffed out or 'persons helped', and Christianity and Islam are difficult to distinguish from one another (once you realise that bombed and droned and sniped people are just as dead as IEDed and beheaded people). I know the intentions are good, but the level of xenophobia and ignorance is frankly horrifying. Human beings are human beings. Religions need to be judged by the *net* impact of their believers on the world: and with open eyes, not massive in-group/out-group prejudice that makes people like us the 'good guys' by default.

I'm 65 years old; and I still don't know what I want to be when/if I grow up. I pretty much followed my nose and took the path of least resistance through school (right - a double major in electrical engineering and math); and I've taken advantages of opportunites and leveraged setbacks all of my life. I have had times of need and times of plenty. It seemed like I was just "doing whatever happened" at the time; but looking back on my life, I can see God's leading all the way through it. I just fail to see it when it's happening real-time. The concept of having control over one's life is an illusion. True, we may have a certain amount of infuence, but we don't have control. Circumstance can steal that "control" we think we have at any given moment.

Yes, my thought, too. After the Soviet Union collapsed and opened up I was convinced that God's hand could and would do big things for His people still. I thought that not all Muslims are terrorists, that many in their hearts desire peace just as we do.

I didn't have time to get into it past seven minutes but am happy to admit the gentleman knows what Love in a world gone largely to the god of this world, is sometimes forced to do, rightly in the name of justifiable protection for God's own children..\ 33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: 34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. 35 And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. 37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. 38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. 39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. 40 When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? 41 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.....Matthew 21 God is Love! Jesus saves!

My personal belief is this. Doing that is wrong with that book. I am for sharing that book with friends after I tell them what it is about. BUT their methods, is so "IN YOUR FACE" EGW did not want any of her books printed in cheap newsprint. Their will be people who have changed lives, their will be more that view this as tacky and worse. Just my opinion..

lol, Where have you been? Not quite that direct but Actually I would believe that is your opinion. One you are entitled to hold. Many people believe abortion to be evil. Others think little of it. Just because something is said that a group or others don't want to hear does not make someone evil. Would I send something like that out? Of course not. That is a far cry from labeling something I wouldn't do Hate speech

I copied the following words from pnatt's post of Waggoner. "There is life in the words of God. Jesus said, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6:63. The word received in faith brings the Spirit and the life of God to the soul." So - with the "hearing" (meaning the acceptance) comes the spirit into the person, changing that person - bringing "life". It's much, much more than simply a different type of "hearing" - of understanding something. It's not about the receipt of information. It's about "healing" - which affects the whole person.

I thing there is a difference between the Holy Sprit talking to us and being born again (i.e., between the Holy Spirit being "in" us vs. "on" us). The Holy Spirit woos all of mankind; or else none of us would ever have a sense of our need for God. In this sense the Holy Spirit is "in" us all. Being born again is another level. When the Holy Spirit comes "on us" (in the sense that it came "on" the apostles in Acts 2:3 (" They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them"). It might be the difference between having a "quarter tank" of the Holy Spirit and a "full tank". Or, as taught in the parable of the 10 virgins, having "some" oil and having "extra" oil. The Holy Spirit is activated at a much higher level in the baptism of the Spirit. We speak in other languages; we miraculously cure people; we receive and give prophetic words; we lose all fear (and sometimes all discretion). We testify about what God has done, is doing, and will do without thinking about how prudent it might be at that place and time. We impulsively help others in need; and wonder "why we did that" later. This anointing of the Spirit usually does not just spontaneously happen (although it certainly could and has with guys like Paul), we must earnestly seek it. Even then, I believe God only activates the gifts of the Spirit when they are needed. Furthermore, it is more effectively activated when we start doing what we see God already blessing; not necesarily when we ask God to bless what we are already doing. Jesus did what He saw His Father doing. Just my opinion; not a statement of salvational doctrine.

I am amazed that you would want to come to this forum and acknowledge to the world at large the depth of your ignorance as to both the religion of Islam and of its members.

Since we are not living under a small, bronze-age theocracy, the conditions of modern industrialized employment are somewhat different. Since the Sabbath of today is only a pointer to the real Sabbath that will be observed in the next life, we could choose to take drastic measures and have no income, or, do our best with the job we now have while trying to remember that if at all possible, we could look for a different job where Sabbath accommodation is possible. We should also remember that in order to keep the New Jerusalem running and livable, some must work even on Sabbath.

Hehe no I don't want to kill anyone. I initially started nursing only because I got into the program but I soon realized there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that job. I'm good at computers so I'm thinking of going into computer science, but I just didn't see how I could do good for God in that path..I suppose doors will open up though.

Yeah, jb7, I wouldn't recommend nursing as a career unless one doesn't mind giving meds that may harm or kill the doctor's poor victims. If you're good at something and like to do it, it's probably time to go for it. If it doesn't work out, at least you tried. Whatever job we have, even if it's a low-paying fast-food job, we should realize that we are working for God, and should respect our employer and put in an honest day's work as if God were actually our employer. The real reward comes in the next life where the formerly lowly will be exalted and the formerly exalted will be supervised by the formerly lowly.

We do not have an ordination for James White or some of our other pioneers. It is assumed that he might have been ordained by the Christian Connection (a church that did believe in ordaining women). but we don't know for sure. Some of our pioneers we know were ordained in their old churches. Others, like James, we don't know if they ever were or were not. However as our church started they were recognized as Elders and received ordination papers. Mrs. White among them.

Many apartment complexes will only accept dogs smaller than 25 pounds, or will not accept them at all for liability reasons. If he know this dog bites and they bite someone else, he can be sued. I love dogs, but it is not safe for him to let them stay and keep the dog. If it is a small dog, he most likely could not be sued for as much, but still it could be a sizeable amount, and if it is a big dog, he could lose everything in a big lawsuit. Unless this is a small dog that can be professionally trained so it no longer bites, and this is done immediately and professionally (most larger towns have trainers for dogs with problem behaviors) he should tell them they need to either get rid of the dog or leave. I am assuming this is not a little dog, and this is the only fully safe thing to do. . Another risk is that if he knows the dog bites and it does, his insurance may not pay, and/or it may cancel and his rates may be sky high for a replacement. So he can tell them that for insurance reasons they cannot stay and keep the dog on his property.

this makes more sense.

Not always that easy, even in America--not easy find decent wages, not easy to complete education without working/taking classes during Sabbath hours. Someone's got to keep these cloud servers up and running so we can converse on Sabbath...

I think you are kind of missing the point. Regardless of ordination or not, a so called "plain reading" of Scripture (A simple counter-view to any fancy hermeneutic whether higher criticism or not...) says that women should be silent in church, not teach men, or have authority over a man. EGW did all of the above - frequently. 10,000 sermons in her lifetime. Men still quote her writings as authoritative and to teach men. But more significantly, give us a quote from her where she objected to being an ordained minister or where she herself said no to being ordained as a minister. I think you will come up empty on both counts.

In at least one Bible the sense of the Hebrew words are rendered not as love and hate but as chose and rejected. That meaning clears up some of the confusion.

This isn't true at all! You are adding your own ideas and calling that "written in His Word." That's not fair! It does NOT say, "for forgiveness to exist and be granted, "Christ blood must first be shed." It DOES say "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. Not quite. God did not need Christ's blood in order to enable Him to forgive us. Since forgiveness involves two parties, both parties involvement must be taken into account. *We* needed the blood for forgiveness, not God. No. I disagree with this. What's written is this: "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins," and I agree with this. But why is the blood needed? What problem does it solve? That's the question. I don't know if you read what I posted by Waggoner, but that post addresses this question. This is really the fundamental question to ask: What is the problem that needs to be solved, and how does the shedding of Christ's blood solve that problem?

I will give you an example: There is a famous verse, known to you-all, in the Bible that tells us the Christ would be 3-days and 3-nights in the grave. The official SDA position involves Friday to Sunday, 2-nights. That SDA position is based upon a basic foundational principle of higher criticism.

The article that this thread is about has 2 major problems: The first described already is how the author does not show knowledge of what higher and lower criticism actually are. He just assumes that one does not believe in the inspiration of the Bible and that the other does. Then he goes on to say that those who support women's ordination are all higher critics. He is breaking the commandment "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Unless the author repents he is going to have to face this article in the judgment. There are many Bible believing people who use only lower criticism who support women's ordination. He is unfairly placing us all into the same boat and labeling us. He is offering his readers a choice "Now there are good people who believe the Bible and bad people who don't believe the Bible. Now the good people who believe the Bible oppose women's ordination. The bad people who don't believe the Bible support women's ordination. Oh no, many bad people who do not believe the Bible and thus support women's ordination have come into the church. Do you want to be one of these bad people? Or do you want to be a good person? If you are a good person then oppose women's ordination and let's get these bad people out of the church." I worry about an argument that is based on villainizing those you are arguing against.

Higher and lower criticism is not that difficult to understand. They were both designed to be tools used in Bible study. Not that one was any better than the other. Around the 1700s it was noted that there were different writing styles in the Bible, including with in the same books. "Higher" criticism was looking at these styles to see how the Bible was written and lower criticism was the study of the finished product. We use both all the time with Mrs. White. We look at the sources she used and how her staff edited the work and study how she developed her ideas over the years. That is higher criticism. Lower criticism is the study of the finished product within itself. What was she saying in this passage. With the rise of evolution there was a rise of skeptics and atheists. They began mocking Bible believers by saying "If God is perfect should not his word be perfect, so why all this editing in the Bible? Should not a perfect God have just had one smooth manuscript all perfectly written?" and thus they launched on to higher criticism and began using that to slice and dice the Bible so that there was nothing left and thus gave higher criticism it's bad name. Those who wanted to defend the Bible went to the other extreme. They began arguing that the Bible was indeed perfectly written and was refusing to look at the evidence of editing and only studying the finished product. God was perfect, God wrote the Bible and thus the Bible did not need to be edited so we don't need higher criticism but only study the finished product and thus latched onto lower criticism and took it to an extreme and formed the movement called "Fundamentalism." Going into the 1900s they started printing out a series of pamphlets called "The Fundamentals" that were very popular. Then finally they had a big Bible Conference in Philadelphia PA. Meanwhile there were voices who was not comfortable with the two extremes that the church was going to: The unbelieving modernists and the Fundamentalists. One minister preached a sermon wanting to maintain a balance. To accept the Bible as inspired but realizing that God worked with people. Their personalities, their knowledge and what they study and their sources for study. His sermon was unpopular by both sides. People were furious as to his views. His ministry suffered and eventually he was forced out of the ministry because a woman said that he had an affair with her. Later that was proved to be a lie but the lady said that she told the lie to get him out of the ministry so that he could stop making his attacks on the Bible and to nullify what he had been teaching. The understanding of the "Shut door" had kept Adventism out of the origins of this conflict. But when we modified the understanding of the shut door and came more into contact with others the dust was starting to settle. Apparently the first to bring Fundamentalism into the Church was W. W. Prescott who read one of the early books on Fundamentalism, liked it and started teaching it. When Mrs. White learned about it she asked him to stop teaching and to help her with her writings. He, A. G. Daniels, and D. M. Canright were asked to help her. They were shocked as to the things she asked him to do with her writings and how they were actually done. Prescott and Daniels found that they had to give up Fundamentalism. D. M. Canright gave up Mrs. White and joined the most extreme Fundamentalist church there was. Also, I mentioned an infamous sermon by a minister a moment ago. Mrs. White took that sermon. Now the pastor saw inspiration as more of a subjective experience. Mrs. White changed it from more subjective to a very definite objective experience, but that horrible sermon that caused that minister to loose his career has a portion became the forward to "Great Controversy" and more of it was used by Mrs. White to describe inspiration and is found in Selected Messages.

But our loved ones are not gone forever. They are sleeping!! There's a difference. And Stewart, how can you love someone who does not exist? When this sad experiment with evil is over, sin and sinners will be no more. They will not exist!