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"for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart" ~ 1 Sam 16:7

That is harsh and judgmental. If someone is mistaken on some detail or terminology or date you are basically saying that the person is not a believer and that they are lost. Who made you the judge of a person's heart?

From my observation, worldwide constant SUFFERING is perhaps the greatest reason why believers become un-believers. I have been thoughtfully considering this subject for some time now. I think I was pushed towards this because I myself suffer chronic pain, in the form of very frequent migraines. I have seen miracles - several of them - during my life so far, and I couldn't figure out why the LORD wouldn't heal me. I'm left with the nagging question --- Did it really HAVE to be THIS BAD? I'm reading through Richard Rice's book, "Suffering and the Search for Meaning". He really does a good job, summarizing the different views. My husband was born in Germany. The story of his parents highlights the problem of suffering. His parents were engaged when his father was drafted into the German navy at 18 years old. It was the height of WWII. One month out on a German destroyer, and it was captured by a Russian sub. He spent 4 years in a Russian prison camp, often tortured, and came back home weighing 80 pounds, and bald at 22. He had also decided that there IS NO GOD, because, if there IS, then HE is a monster for allowing this!!! He was abusive as a husband, and as a father to his three boys. He ultimately committed suicide at 72. Of course he was suffering from untreated PTSD. There was no treatment back then. My mother-in-law didn't fair any better. Her biological father was killed in a Brown Shirt riot, and her mother abandoned her to the state. She was often abused in foster care. At 16, she was working at a troupe hospital rear the railway. While walking back to the state owned farm where she lived, she was raped and knifed and left for dead at 16. But she never gave up her belief in God. She remained a believer, and attended church well into her 70's. I never got to visit with her enough to know whether she was just "buying fire insurance" or really believed in the goodness of God. I believe that God feels our pain. "In all their affliction, He was afflicted." Therefore my response is to believe that God would NOT have ALLOWED this horrible mess, if it was not absolutely necessary. It's just difficult for me, when my head is pounding, to think, "THIS is necessary."

To transition from my faith being in my head, to my faith being in my relationship to the world.... and in my relationship to myself as a sinner is a huge leap. Jesus was holy yet fully identified with, and related to, and deeply connected with every human being however deep in the suffering of sin. Only In Christ and through Him can this happen in our lives. Jesus wants to be the one who is seen and is experienced in our sinful hearts and in our communities, in the church and out of the church. Enough of preaching to the sanctified choir. Jesus pour himself out on a lost world, full of prayer and loaded with the power of divine love. We must take hold of heaven and let heaven take hold of us. Let us live in God's presence on the Sabbath, and let God's presence in us reach out to the world all week long. It takes power, and love to be available to enter into labor for the souls of postmodern contemporary society in all it's special wounds and conditions. We Must have more of Jesus, His wisdom, tact, mercy, hope, His intimacy with His father. Of ourselves we can do nothing. True spirituality is hated by the sanctimonious. Jesus was hated for mingling with the publicans and the less than pharisaical.

After reading these accouunts I went to bed. During the night I saw in a dream how we had all been invited on a tour to some beautiful islands. There was much singing and rejoicing. Those who had purchased additional oil for the voyage could on Sabbath sail further to an island where there was a better connection so we were able to receive a greater blessing as we learned more about a rich relationship with our Lord. Those deriding the special Sabbath celebration were cut off from the special blessing and the enemy had easier access to those people with his temptations. Why did I have this dream?

While I still feel the same, I came on too strong and do apologize to all for that part of my last comment. Or at least for the unChristlike feelings I had.

I see the big difference between at least myself and the "Historic Adventists" (and from this the LGT people) is that they want Jesus to have a sinful nature, I understand us to believe what became the traditional view that Jesus had his own unique nature unlike Adam before the fall and us after the fall. They are Fundamentalists, and they have the wrong understanding of hell, so they are trying to see how to get Jesus to let them into heaven, and lastly they are looking at all the different traditons that had developed in the church between 1923 and the 40s as the ideal. While I understand that it is the issue between wanting to esteem ourselves more highly than others, of making less of the outside world. As opposed to loving the world as Jesus has loved it. We are both Wesleyans. But like Dr. David Larson said they are on Wesley's right and we are on Wesley's left. But we have the Wesleyan connection unlike the more evangelicals like Ford who are more Lutheran and Calvinistic in their approach.

Hey, hey, hey, this is a bunch of questions. Let's slow down and take them one at a time: 1. How do you feel about Jesus dying on good Friday and rising on Easter Sunday? Among the early Adventists there were churches who came to a Wednesday crucifixion and Saturday night resurrection. This has been carried on by the Armstrong movement. The pioneers of what became the Seventh-day Adventist church considered this and was not find the evidence convincing so it was held by our sister churches but not ours. Also, having studied Biblical history and archaeology, this theory has not had any credible scholars who see any merit. Now the last supper was probably on Tuesday night, which was the Essene Passover. And Jesus spending a day in prison before his trials as per Jewish law and Thursday being the days of the trials and on the cross Friday dying at the time of the Temple celebrating the Passover and raising at the feast of first fruits which was early on Sunday morning after the Passover. Thus 20th century scholarship sides with the choice our pioneers made as their friends who did not become Seventh-day Adventists were playing around with the other theory. How do you feel about Sunday being the Lord's day? Our pioneers noticed that the Sabbath is the Lord's day and thus we happen to be Seventh-day Sabbath-keepers. And again modern scholarship while they might argue whether or not the New Testament required it of Gentile believers, they are saying that the Sabbath has always been (it is just the superficial evangelicals who try to argue that the Sabbath has been done away with.) Current scholarship says that Saturday is the Sabbath, that God expects Jews to keep the Sabbath and that the New Testament invites gentiles to join them in Sabbath keeping. How do you feel about telling people that Jesus was born on December 25th? Jesus probably was not born December 25. We don't know when he was born. Some see hints that may lean towards sometime during the feast of tabernacles but even that is not more than hints. Here is an article talking about the old and the new evidence for how we got Jesus' birth on December 25. It was based on Jewish tradition. Not paganism. In fact some scholars are arguing that the Pagans got December 25 from the Christians. http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/how-december-25-became-christmas/ How do you feel about telling people that the early church gathered on the first day of the week rather than on the Sabbath? Even if they did, they still kept Sabbath as Sabbath. There is no change. There is evidence that they went to Synagogue on Sabbath then on Sundays looked at things that were more unique to Christians. We are not sure just when that started, but they never saw Sunday as Sabbath. How about the immortality of the soul? God alone is immortal. We only have life as we are connected with the source of life. If we disconnect we die. If you have no problem with these things then you are not seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness, but rather, you are deep in Babylonian worship which God is calling His people out of. As you see I have major problems with most of these things. The one that I don't have a problem with is the one that our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers heard, considered and rejected and which serious scholarship does not find convincing. You are stuck in tradition and ideas from some of our sister churches latched on to in the 1800s, but which are NOT Seventh-day Adventism. The Bible gives two signs of having been called out of Babylon: First is of course worshiping God as creator, and the cultic sign of this is keeping the Sabbath. A second thing is in Jeremiah 31 of a woman encompassing a man, or the rejection of the Babylonian idea of male headship.

22But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 25But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.....James 1 Asking for and submitting to the control of the Spirit of God for the accomplishment of His will and repenting upon recognition when we fall short, allows God to do His work in our heart, especially when we recognize Jesus as our best Friend and admit when we fail to do as we are prompted. 2My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 4But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.....James 1 There is a decided difference between temptation and sinful conduct. I recall the isolated time period when gaining victories came as a result of admitting I didn't really want to go in the direction Satan chose lead me. The love of Jesus was the deciding factor. God is Love!~Jesus saves!

Kevin, It sounds like you're buying into the speculative Theory of Evolution which assumes that the first humans started with zero knowledge and slowly invented everything, including religion. The Bible teaches that Noah knew God's ways. "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God." (Gen 6:9) So all the people-groups descended from Noah would have still had fragments of knowledge about God's ways. God's appointed times (moedim) are first mentioned at creation. (See Genesis 1:14, where moedim is poorly translated as "seasons".) Also, the "agricultural cycle" is part of God's covenant with the descendants of Noah, and is something that God is in control of. "While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22) So according to the Bible, God's people didn't "take over" the pagan days based on the agricultural cycle, but rather the pagans inherited from Noah a knowledge of the agricultural cycle along with knowledge that God had appointed times.

In one of EGW's books, she asks "Why Is There Sin". If I remember it correctly, I believe her conclusion was that there is NO reason (excuse) for sin. Man chose sin for no logical reason whatsoever except self engrandizement. I believe there is pain, sickness, and suffering in the world because of: 1. Who is the current ruler of the air (satan); and he LOVES to see humans suffer! 2. Man's inhumanity to man. God kinda self-limits Himself here; He gave man a free will; and when men by there free will choose to do evi, there will be collateral damage. I have no answer for why God allows evil and suffering to continue; but I also have evry faith that He will bring it to an abrupt end sometime soon; just like He ended suffering every place He went when He was here the first time. But He did promise us that suffering and persecution would come; and that the sun shimes an rain pours on both the good and the evil. My heart and prayers go out to you who are suffering physical or emotional pain - especially this time of year. I pray that God either grant you healing from your pain or grant you the sustaining faith the praise Him in spite of your pain as your witness to the world.

Sadly many feel this way. We shouldn't feel unbalanced by it. Remember our pioneers were the thrown away fragments from their beloved churches and our church was formed as a refuge for fragments, or as they preferred to see themselves as a collection of remnants. There are times in which we choose to get a long better with each other and sadly other times where we want to make a uniformity in the church and make us like the other churches around us, and make our version of Adventism the only true version. For some sad reason there is a neurotic need in Adventism to try to prove to the world that we are good Baptists.

I have thought about this along with a related subject (Has God promised more than He could deliver?} over the years. Here are some thoughts: 1) The human condition and all the promises of God are book-ended or framed by two Biblical truths, (a) God's original creation was very good, Gen 1. As a result of sin, that paradise was lost. The ground was cursed, pain and death became the human experience, Gen 3. (b) Someday, that paradise will be restored where there will be no more pain, crying, or death. No matter how healthily you will still die. And how we die is not specified. It could by accident, old age, or a slow painful cancer death. 2) Another piece of that frame is the law of cause and effect. Defy the law of gravity by jumping off a tall building and the result is pretty certain, 100 prayers not withstanding. Eat foods that interfere with circulation and the result could a stroke, or a heart attack or something else. In my line of work, my observation is that many if not most human ailments/suffering are self-inflicted. 3) Innocent bystander/collateral damage. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 4) Refining aspect of hardships/trials/suffering. Not popular concept, but the Bible presents this nonetheless. 5) We are caught between two warring supernatural forces. If you choose God's side, Jesus guaranteed that you will have tribulation. 6) Hebrews 11:39-40 guarantees that all the promises of God cannot/will not be realized in this life. 7) Nothing can happen to the believer without God's permission, so in the meantime I just have to trust my God.

You sound like Job's two friends. That sort of comment does NOT HELP someone in pain!! That comment might be applied to people living in the developed West, but certainly NOT to those living in third world countries, or in war zones. I inherited migraines from my father AND my mother. I was BORN WITH a deformity of my skull and cervical vertebra called Chiari Malformation. (My C2 and C3 have degenerative changes.) I worked 40 years as an RN and CRNA, and now have arthritis in both feet. (I never wore high heels.) How was ANY of this my own fault? The young girls who were kidnapped by radical Muslims and sold into sex slavery - how was this THEIR FAULT? Those who labored as slaves during 200 years of history in the US - how was this THEIR FAULT? Millions and millions have died as collateral damage to war, famine, plague, natural disasters, ruthless dictators, ignorance, selfishness, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. I personally see them as collateral damage of the war between Christ and Satan. They did not consent to being born into a war zone, on a dying planet. So I would disagree. MOST of the suffering in this world is NOT "our own fault".

When the disciples asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind", Jesus answered "neither". So suffering is not always the result of sin? I believe the FLOOD of Noah's day brought about great changes in the atmosphere, the soil and in the amount of radiation from the sun (without the firmament as it was originally created). These changes resulted in rapid aging, terrible weather patterns, floods, droughts, etc. etc. etc. They resulted in gradual genetic changes, which have resulted in heritable disorders. Also eating animal flesh brought disease. So the flood was the SOURCE of a great deal of suffering.... WHY would God allow the FLOOD? I don't believe HE directly caused it. Someday, I believe we will learn that God almost LOST the war. He came within a hair's breadth of loosing humanity entirely. The ONLY way to save any humanity, was to wipe out all but a family of 8, and start over.