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The Administrators of Club Adventist feel it necessary to warn you that some people posting in Club Adventist and most other forums, may have criminal backgrounds which may include financial crimes, violence and/or sexual crimes which may have involved children as well as adults.. All persons should be aware of the potential risk that may come from sharing personal information, such as addresses and telephone numbers with people who are essentially unknown to them. Persons posting on the Internet often are not who they appear to be. This may be true for people posting here. Club Adventist cannot be responsible for determining the true identity and background of any person in this forum. All of our members must take personal responsibility for their own safety and only release personal information under conditions where they are certain that it is safe to do so. This posting has come about as a result of discussions between the Administrators and I. If any of you have specific concerns, please feel free to address those concerns in a private message to me. Do not post in any public forum concerns that you may have about any specific individual. If responses to this posting become inappropriate, I will need to close this post and not allow further public discussion. Gregory Matthews

The answer from a professional counseling standpoint is: You do not attempt to answer the person. The list of their alleged offenses in not the central issue. Here is what you do: 1) You shut your mouth and you begin to listen to the person. 2) Listen for the hurt (injury) that has caused the break in the relationship. 3) You attempt to get the person to identify and acknowledge that hurt. Once you have done that you have reached a place where there is a potential for you to assist in the healing process. Here is the rational: 1) People seldom leave over doctrine. 2) People leave over relationships and spiritual injury. 3) When this is the case, getting into an intellectual argument over perceived wrongs (doctrine and policy) is seldom helpful. All such discussions confirm people in the harm that has been done to them. NOTE: My answer is specific to the question asked and the way it was worded. There is a place for a discussion of doctrine, policy, practice and life style. But, that discussion often should be limited.

Once again, every bit of what is quoted above can and does apply to music across the broad spectrum of genres of music. One can say these things about whatever style of music is a part of worship. I have seen/heard and experienced music of many styles, "rightly employed", sung as a "prayer" that has mightily "impressed the heart with spiritual truth". And I have seen/heard and experienced music of all genres going down the negative path these quotes seem to be talking about. The problem with these quotes as being used here, is that we really don't know exactly what music she is specifically talking about. We seem to automatically assume the music that is a blessing that she speaks of is the kind of music that we believe has blessed us, the music that fits our own taste in music. And conversely, the music that she is critical of that she says is the tool of the devil we assume to be specifically that which we don't like and that does not touch our souls with deep spiritual truth. It is like comparing the taste of our favorite food by just talking about the taste in very broad terms, but not really experiencing it or actually saying what food we are talking about. "Yummy" "Oh that tastes too delicious." "The ingredients were of the best quality with high nutritional value." "That was a very well planned and well balanced meal, perfection on a plate!" "The savory goodness of that bite was just exquisite!" "But the bite from that dish really left a bitter aftertaste." "This lovingly prepared dish was my favorite. The presentation was appealing to the eye. The texture was perfectly balanced with the flavors. And every bite was bursting with a symphony of flavors that delighted my palate from start to finish..." Did you really understand or even know what kind of food I was talking about? Could you tell anything about the actual food that would help you enjoy it, plan and prepare it for yourself, or pick it out of a vast array of food? Pretty much meaningless, isn't it?

Hi Scuba and Samie Thanks for these clear explanations. I just want to correct (IMHO) the last 4 lines as to the count to Pentecost. Jews count 7 weeks (shabooah = Strongs H7620) =( 1 + 7 x 7) days from Passover High Sabbath (say on a Thursday). Pentecost means 50. How does this add up to 50. Shaboowah are periods like a week except from one day of the week to the same day of the next week e.g.. Thurs to Thurs. When you count the first day in, from Thurs to Thurs is 8 days. If the count started on Thurs, it ended 50 days later on Thurs. Thus the weekly sabbath has NOTHING to do with this count, For this reason I believe Christ was resurrected at the end of the weekly Sabbath, but was seen by the women risen early Sun morning. Thus I feel it IS a correct translation "early, the first day of the week".

It's very easy to convert people who really want the truth about these changes to God's times. All you have to do is ask them when Mary bought the spices. Did she buy them before the Sabbath or after the Sabbath. In their search for the answer they will soon see there were two Sabbaths during the week of Jesus' crucifixion. Why would they come to this conclusion? Because one verse says Mary bought the spices after the Sabbath passed (Mark 16:1) and the other verse says she prepared the spices and rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment (Luke 23:56). If people would use God's map in Leviticus they would see that the day after Passover was a Sabbath. This works out to Jesus dying on Wednesday (Passover). Placed in the tomb at twilight Wednesday/Thursday. Thursday is a Sabbath because it was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, this was a High Sabbath because it only came once a year. After the Thursday High Sabbath (Mark 16:1) it would now be Friday. Mary buys the spices on Friday, after the High Sabbath had passed (Mark 16:1). She preparing the spices on Friday but now the seventh day Sabbath is here so she rests on the seventh day Sabbath, according to the commandment (Luke 23:56). During the week of Jesus' crucifixion they were counting the Sabbaths because, according to Leviticus, they had to count seven Sabbaths and then add a day. Counting seventh Sabbaths, plus one day, would bring them to the next important Feast of God called, Pentecost. Starting after the High Sabbath, on Thursday, they counted seven weekly Sabbaths. That would mean the Sabbath following the High Sabbath would the first Sabbath of the seven they had to count. Luke 24:1 Now on the first Sabbath, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.

Based on the accounts of Scriptures, it appears there is no possibility that the ceremonial passover sabbath could have coincided with the weekly Sabbath. How? Notice that according to Mark, our Lord was crucified on a prosa,bbaton (prosabbaton), which is literally, day before Sabbath (Mk 15:42), and preparation day. NKJ Mark 15:42 Now when evening had come, because it was the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Does that necessarily follow that this prosa,bbaton then fell on a day we now call Friday, just because it is preparation day? I beg to disagree, because it is not yet established , whether the Sabbath the prosa,bbaton preceded is the ceremonial or the weekly Sabbath. Nor that, that preparation day was preparation day for the weekly or the ceremonial Sabbath. Relying on the principle of allowing the Scriptures to be its own interpreter, we turn to other part of Scriptures for additional information. John tells us that the day on which our Lord was crucified was preparation day of passover: NKJ John 19:14 Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, "Behold your King!" So, OK. The Bible is clear that the preparation day mentioned by Mark is preparation day of Passover, and hence, preparation for the ceremonial Sabbath. That preparation day is the same day our Lord was crucified. But this ceremonial Sabbath could have then fallen on the weekly Sabbath that’s why that same Sabbath was called “High Day” (John 19:31). It is not conclusive since nowhere else in Scriptures is this term used to point out this fact. Are we then left in the dark? No. Going back to Mark, he mentions that the women followers of Jesus bought ointments when the Sabbath was past. NKJ Mark 16:1 Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Which Sabbath is this that past? The weekly or the ceremonial Sabbath? Let us turn to Luke. Luke records that the women followers of Jesus prepared spices and ointments before they rested the Sabbath according to the commandment. KJV Luke 23:56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment. Was the Sabbath referenced by Mark the same Sabbath referred to by Luke? Could not be possible or there is contradiction and the Bible cannot contradict itself. Combining both accounts, we have Mark saying that when the Sabbath was past, the women bought spices which Luke said they prepared for anointing Jesus. And this they did before they rested the Sabbath according to the commandment, which is no doubt the weekly Sabbath. The Sabbath reference of Mark is the ceremonial Sabbath; that of Luke is the weekly Sabbath. The buying of spices and their preparing of those spices and ointments occurred on the same day, before they rested the weekly Sabbath or the Sabbath according to the commandment. Paraphrasing, when the ceremonial Sabbath was past, the women bought and prepared spices and ointments and then rested the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbath according to the commandment. Hence, it is not possible that the ceremonial Sabbath could have coincided with the weekly Sabbath that paschal week, otherwise we come up with a scenario where the spices bought after Saturday were prepared Friday. Another related scenario next post.

It's all right, Aubrey. Nothing wrong on your part. Please don't feel bad about anything. Asking questions to get at the core of any matter is part of my character. 'Wanting to know' is strong in me. Perhaps there is a reader here who might give answers to what I questioned and we'll all see the issue more clearly. I just wished to learn more about how a Luthern community is like in structure.

There are two attacks on the Sabbath: 1. transfer of sanctity from Saturday to Sunday 2. transfer of Christ's resurrection day from Saturday to Sunday. SDA’s know about #1 very well. Unfortunately, but without blaming anyone, most are not aware of #2. BGT Mark 16:9 VAnasta.j de. prwi> prw,th| sabba,tou evfa,nh prw/ton Mari,a| th/| Magdalhnh/|( parV h-j evkbeblh,kei e`pta. daimo,niaÅ KJV Mark 16:9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. The attack can be seen in the translation of the phrase “prwi> prw,th| sabba,tou” into “early the first day of the week”. sabba,tou is noun genitive neuter singular common from sa,bbaton which the Greeks derived from the Hebrew tB'v; ((shabbath). All occurrences of sabba,tou in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) is derived from tB'v; ((shabbath) and not for once from [;Wbv' (shabuwa)` which is Hebrew for “week”. The Greek for “week” is e[bdomoj (hebdomos). Many SDA’s are not even aware that in all the NT verses where the phrase “first day of the week is mentioned”, the “week” is translated from the Greek sa,bbaton, although of course, most are aware that the reason commonly given for Sunday-keeping is that it was the day of Christ’s resurrection. If honest Sunday-keepers will come to know that Jesus actually resurrected Saturday, then there would be no reason for them to remain Sunday-keepers. I guess we will see an exodus of Sundaykeepers from keeping the venerable day of the sun into keeping the Sabbath according to the commandment, Saturday, the 7th day of the week.

November 10, 2015 NAD Year-end Meeting Wraps Up A summary of the final two days By Kimberly Luste Maran November 3, 2015: Marye McKenney, the calendar artist for CRS, National Camps for Blind Children ©2015 NAD Communication/Dan Weber The North American Division 2015 Year-end Meeting wrapped another day filled with worship, prayer, and business. The morning business began with the Christian Record Services for the Blind’s (CRSB) report and its new president, Diane Thurber. A highlight of the report was meeting Marye McKenney, the calendar artist for CRSB, National Camps for Blind Children. McKenney, whose vision is limited to three inches in front of her face, was introduced to Jesus through a summer camp for the blind at age 11. CRSB also reported on a variety of ministries and tools they’ve produced, including gift Bibles, lending libraries, National Camps for the Blind, health seminars, curriculum kits, and inSight4VETs, which are recorded books for veterans who have lost their eyesight. A detailed report from Pacific Press Publishing Association (PPPA) was next. While Jerry Thomas, vice-president of product development, said that digital books “will never be the main part of our business,” he shared that Adventist-eBooks.com has more than 1,000 books online — and more on the way. As part of the report attendees were given a photo tour of the press; and sharing book, Four Winds of Revelation, was distributed. The book was made available as a free download for 24 hours on several platforms, including Kindle and Amazon, for those who would prefer the e-version. The executive committee members accepted the report as well as the nominating committee report with the five-year term PPPA board selection. In regard to PPPA, Dan Jackson said, “We have a great asset and great potential through Pacific Press. Drive Dale [Galusha] crazy with questions . . . we want to see the publishing work, the literature ministry, grow in our division. More than 4 billion pages printed, more than 40 sharing books printed . . . we can do more than that.” Division health initiatives were shared by Katia Reinert, outgoing Health Ministries director. In addition to detailing partnerships and collaborative efforts with other division and General Conference (GC) ministries, Reinert handed out a “save the date” card promoting the Emotional Wellness Summit, Jan. 13-17, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. The “Young Adult Life Building Block” report continued the morning business. James Black, Marquis Johns, Benjamin Lundquist, and Lavina Seawright presented a myriad of ways the young adults are working to “stop the crisis of young adults leaving the church.” Some of these included Adventist Christian Fellowship (public campus ministry), events such as Impact San Antonio 2015, and Life Summit, a young adult training/learning conference held concurrently with the Just Claim It 3 teen conference in California on Feb. 17-20, 2016. Lundquist shared five steps for Young Adult Life ministry and “for all involved in the mission”: catch the vision, surrender to God, educate and learn, commit to honest conversation, and take action. Said Lundquist, “If it happens under our church roof, it is our responsibility . . . [ministering to young adults] means you and I coming together to collaborate in reaching young adults.” Johns added, “We must continue to collaborate, to reach the young adult generations.” The business meetings continued after lunch with six departmental reports shared and accepted: Health, PARL/Liberty, Stewardship, Volunteer Ministries, Women’s Ministries, and Youth Ministries. These reports are available online. Adventist Risk Management and Philanthropic Service for Institutions (PSI) also shared video reports focused on their work in North America. After a vote, G. Alexander Bryant, executive secretary for NAD, announced that both reports were “received into our records.” ADRA Canada, a ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada, was next on the agenda. James Astleford, executive director, said that ADRA Canada has assisted 6.7 million people around the world, and new initiatives are geared toward helping even more. One main initiative is focused on helping maternal, newborn, and child health in the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Rwanda — for 4.5 years — with more than $20 million in funds coming from the Canadian government. Editor Carmela Monk Crawford followed with the Message magazine report. According to Crawford, Message, which became part of NAD as of February 1, 2015, is an “entering wedge ministry” — an Adventist magazine on “current events for the urban audience.” In addition to outlining future plans and goals, the report touched on several recent distribution opportunities —25,000 copies at the Essence magazine festival, 73 subscriptions and 1,000 copies at the Annual Black Caucus, 30,000 copies during Pope Francis’ Philadelphia visit, and 25-30,000 copies and 5,000 bottles of water at the 2015 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Crawford also described Message as a collaborative, ”watchman” ministry: “The watchperson doesn’t come out of the rain, they stay on duty. People will want to know what is happening, what it means—that’s where [Message] comes in. We will wait, watch, and warn.” NAD Vice President Elder Alvin Kibble, presented a report on Big Data and Social Media ©2015 NAD Communication/Dan Weber The final “Building Block” report, on Big Data/Social Media, was presented by Alvin Kibble, NAD vice president for Communication, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty, Executive Training, Coaching and Development, and Publishing; and Paul Hopkins, associate director of PSI. Both presenters stressed the importance of using *big data to “understand what your constituents need and where they’re going.” Hopkins offered four reasons for the church to use big data: “to make decisions in the now, to try and predict the future and act on it, to benchmark ourselves against others (and ourselves), and to create language around which we can tell stories or communicate with one another.” Kibble explained that this “Building Block” shifted from a social media emphasis to one focused on big data with social media inclusion. He said that data is “going out there because the market demands it. Lots of ‘data mining’ is going on, except in the remnant church. [In the world,] no decision is made without big data analytics.” “It’s time for us to start heading home,” Kibble added. “God has placed within our midst a way for us to know our candidates, clients, members better, and ways to better serve them. We can better target different groups to better serve their needs.” Planning is underway to form a team to manage data and analysis. The business day concluded with two more items: Lincoln Steed was elected PARL associate director and Liberty magazine editor; and a motion that the division “affirm a more focused approach to public campus ministry with greater intensity and focus by NAD” was passed. November 4, 2015: The 2015 NAD Year-end Meeting came to an end about 12:30 p.m. after a morning of reports, votes, prayer breaks, and comments from the gathered constituency: NAD Vice President for Education, Larry Black, presented the Education Department Report ©2015 NAD Communication/Dan Weber The NAD Education Department video report was presented. Following the report, Larry Blackmer, vice president for Education, shared that the NAD Adventist school system is the only one in the parochial system in which 100 percent of the schools are accredited. As reported in a four-year CognitiveGenesis study, each year, students in Seventh-day Adventist Church schools outperformed in all subjects, for all grade levels, for all school sizes, regardless of ability level. In addition, students in Adventist schools had higher-than-expected academic achievement based on their individual ability. Blackmer, candid about losing 16,000 students with 271 schools closing in the past 14 years, gave specific examples of how the department will help the 60,000 students in NAD schools know, “more than anything, that Jesus and the Adventist Church loves them.” He also talked about growth. Two of the newer departmental concentrations were shared, geared toward the youngest students: the Pathways (faith-based integrated literacy program) kindergarten curriculum, and a Florida Hospital partnership with “Cobblestones,” early childhood education curriculum. The NAD Evangelism Institute, commonly referred to as "NADEI," continued the morning business session with Ron Clouzet, director, giving their report. The report described how they serve the church, the events they host/coordinate, and the resources they provide, including books and other training materials for church growth, church planting, small groups, and pastoral resources. Clouzet mentioned that SEEDS church planting conferences would continue and expand, and that there would be more urban area evangelism training conducted. The final department report came from Native Ministries. The highlight of the report was a video in which faculty, students, and alumni from Holbrook Indian School were interviewed. In the video, Jovannah Poor Bear-Adams, vice principal and former student, said, “Our school isn’t about killing what’s native in the kids. It is about cultivating their faith, their culture, themselves.” The report also gave these statistics: 33 percent of Native American women are raped or suffer sexual abuse and 65 percent of perpetrators are never prosecuted; 43 percent of Native Americans live in poverty and abuse. The nominating committee finished its report with one more nomination: Angeline B. David, DrPH, MHS, was presented as the candidate for NAD Health Ministries director (replacing Reinert, PhD, CRNP, FNP-BC, PHCNS-BC, FCN, who will be an associate director for the GC Health Department). David was unanimously approved. The committee also reported that Delbert Baker did not accept the appointment to president of the Guam-Micronesia Mission. (The Guam-Micronesia Mission has reported to NAD since October 2011.) Policy agenda items completed the day’s business with several NAD policies amended and approved by the voting constituency. One “consent agenda” item that garnered favorable commentary: a policy change to help seminary students who are hired after graduation. *Big data describes the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured. It is a broad term for work with data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate and distributed databases are needed (Source: Wikipedia). According to IBM, “Big data is being generated by everything around us at all times. Every digital process and social media exchange produces it. Systems, sensors and mobile devices transmit it. Big data is arriving from multiple sources at an alarming velocity, volume and variety. To extract meaningful value from big data, you need optimal processing power, analytics capabilities and skills.”

Here's PROOF that the pyramids were used to store grain, etc..... Last night on the Stephen Colbert TV talk show he revealed this "ancient Egyptian diagram" that shows the pyramids were used for grain & food storage! HA!

Fascinating accusation. Did you have an example? For example what part of the Friday Crucifixion did you suppose is "not in the Bible"??? "Early on the first day of the week" for the resurrection. Luke 24:1 And of course Luke 24 on week-day-1 "THIS is the THIRD day" Luke 24:21 is the statement of the actual eye-witness disciples -- said to Christ Himself. How then is all that -- "evil SDA"?? You may choose to reject all of that Bible evidence as your own POV (you have free will) - but then how in the world do you "blame it all on EGW" or "SDAs" given that you are going against the Bible on that point? You have chosen to see it differently - but that did not cause the Bible to vanish and it can hardly be claimed that the Baptists and Lutherans that also admit to these same Bible details are "Following Ellen White" to see these details in the actual Bible. It is "obvious" to all of us that you have a different POV - and "would like" that to somehow be blamed on Ellen White or SDAs. Seems a bit contrived.

I saw the "Free Will" title and thought I would just scan the thread to make sure no Bible texts were included - sure enough ... all is as designed. But it might make a good topic for one of the other forums where Bible texts are allowed.. something to think about --

Which goes to show you that you really can't satisfy everyone when it comes to subjective matters of taste... I am convinced that some people simply live to judge others experience, to criticize, find fault, no matter what the issue, large or small, important or not.

Or maybe it was you that missed the point, or to be more precise, misinterpreted and misrepresented the point of the music in question. Let's unpack what you just said. The first assumptive charge that you can sing a song to give glory to God or you can do it for self - has nothing to do with genre of music. A hymn singer can just as easily sing for self as you seem to ascribe to the ones you were observing singing a style of music that you apparently neither understood nor liked. And with all sincerity, a person can sing a modern song with modern instrumental accompaniment making a loud and joyful noise to the Lord all with the purpose and pure motive to give Glory to God. Ones motives in performing any genre of music are not readily apparent. The only person's motive accessibly to you as the nonparticipating observer is yours and yours alone. Think about what your frame of mind was at that moment in time. Was it seeking to praise or honor God or to bring glory to God? Or was it to be a critical spectator, looking to find fault, looking at others with a spirit of murmuring and complaining? Who was in control of your thoughts? Whose carnal nature on the occasion in question was excited and stirred? Were the kids' movements on the stage really crudely sexual as you described it? Really? Do you honestly think they had any sexual motive, excitation or intent in there minds? Or were your adult perceptions and thoughts of the movements of those kids what was crudely sexualized? Seems more than a little creepy and perverted that you would see them that way, don't you think? Whose carnal nature exactly was excited that such ideas so easily came to mind?

Perhaps within the realm of the reality that life is infinitely nuanced and complex with way more than 50 shades of gray - so much so that simplistic answers and zero sum games with rules just don't fit or work very well in real life.

BREAKING: One State Just Gave Illegal Aliens Some Bad News 29Oct, 2015by Cassy Fiano Liberals will be sobbing poor, pitiful progressive tears into their Cheerios today. And it’s all because North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory just signed into law a bill that equals some very bad news for illegal aliens. Illegal immigrants and their liberal defenders are already doing lots of hand-wringing about this bill, complaining that it’s a sign of “hate” and promising that now, mothers won’t be able to pick up their kids from school and other such nonsense. But they seem to forget that illegal aliens have no right to be here; that they’re criminals who broke our laws and for some reason, think we should just smile, say thank you, and hand them wads of cash for being criminals. Sorry, people — in North Carolina, at least, that’s not going to happen.

Just for clarification, and I told a member I would respond publicly. I know some have had struggles in the past and crossed lines, truth is, we all have, some got caught and others did not. Our concern is what happens in here now and in the future. If someone approaches you for fund raising, or private things that they should not be asking for, Please contact Gregory. I know in the past we have raised money for members in need, and some of them were. Some of them according to reports were NOT. AND we paid for their week long parties. Still others sought after widows for funds to "Fill desperate needs". None of the above fill the mission of this forum. Thanks to Gregory for his comments and wanting to protect people here.