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I found the report, there are over a dozen slides regarding membership losses - http://www.nadadventist.org/site/1/2016 images/2016 NAD Secretary Report G. Alexander Bryant.pdf

There are a number of people in this forum who believe that it is of value to see what Ellen G. White has said on a subject. Regardless of what one may believe about her writings, what she wrote is of interest to those who study SDA history. Over the years the EGW Estate had produced a CD of her writings along with the software needed search those writings. However, those early CDs generally contained her published writings but did not generally contain her unpublished writings. Acting on a decision made in 2013, the EGW Estate released in 2015 her unpublished writings. These amounted to some 8,300 documents and some 50,000 pages of material. This material can be accessed at: http://ellenwhite.org/content/letters-and-manuscripts-collection NOTE: I am uncertain, but think that the above material may (?) be available in the latest version of the CD materials. I am posting this message and the above URL as I believe that it may be of interest to those who study SDA history. I have not had the time to verify everything that I have said here. I may be off in dates and/or other minor aspects. But, if you are interested, you can figure it out.

It's late and I have to go into work a few hours early tomorrow so let me cut and paste from another topic but where I describe hell fire, I'll do some editing of it and hope you find it useful: The traditional understanding of the Judgement: We stand before God with our knees knocking. Our record is reviewed and God either tells us that we are allowed into heaven where we run with joy and relief wiping the sweat off our brow and hoping to get into heaven before God changes his mind. Otherwise we are judged and God says we have to go to hell were we are dragged off screaming and begging for mercy and suffer the physical pain of the fire forever. Now we (and Mrs. White has helped us to see this) that hell fire is the glory and beauty and love of God. Moses was unable to see God's face because it would have consumed him. He was able to only see the back of God. And from just seeing the back of God he shone so bright that he had to wear a veil. When Jesus cleaned out the temple we find that his divinity flashed through humanity and people ran in 2 directions. The money changers were running away from it, and children and the poor were running TO it. How often to you see children running with joy to an angry man with a whip? Yet there was something about Jesus' anger that made the little children and the poor want to run and be with him. That flash of divinity that made the money changers run away and children and poor and ill run towars him was a peek at hell fire. Mrs. White pictures that when Jesus comes and we see him in all his glory It will be so awesome that we all ask "Who shall be able to stand?" There is a moment of awful silence, the angels stop their singing. Then Jesus says [sings?[ "My grace is sufficient for you" Notice Jesus does not say "My grace is sufficient for some of you" He does not say "My grace is sufficient for you and you but not you over there, and it's sufficient for you, no not you I'm talking to the person standing behind you, sorry for the confusion and false hope you held until you realized that I was talking to the person behind you" Jesus tells all of us that his grace is sufficient for me! However Mrs. White points out that despite what Jesus just told me, that the people who hear him give 2 responses. The one group says "Of course his grace is sufficient for me! This is my God and he will save us!" But other people who just heard Jesus tell them that his grace is sufficient for them feel that he's lying, and with the influence of existentialism on our culture they have become slaves to their feelings. They feel that his grace is not sufficient for them and as they see their lives in contrast to his purity they believe that God is going to get them for their sins, they run in terror to the hills and caves and say "Fall on us and hide us from the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb." "Wrath of the lamb" Can you picture yourselves hearing a news bulletin "Lamb escapes from the children’s zoo lock your doors and stay inside? The lost have no more need to be afraid of Jesus than they are of a little lamb. However they are terrified like never before and the brightness of his coming consumes them. We have the truth here at the second coming, but then we fall appart and into tradition and superstition at the third coming instead of carrying out what we saw a taste of at the second coming to be in it's full force at the third coming. So at the end of time. Isaiah 33 asks who can live in the eternal fire. The answer is that the righteous live forever in that fire. When prophets first saw God in vision they felt like they were being burned alive. But learned that they could not only survive in that fire but thrive in that fire and hated not to be burning in that fire. Deuteronomy 4:24 reads For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. We, all of us have 2 attitudes fighting with in us. One is our sinful nature or a disposition to think we are for ourselves by making less of the outside world. To esteem ourselves more highly than others, to serve self, to seek the highest place and often this results in evil surmisings and bitterness of spirit. Fighting dispositon this is a gift that God gave us in Genesis 3:15 which is not only a promise of the messiah, but that there is something in us attracted to God and beauty and repulsed by the ugliness of sin. That our deepest desire is to love the world as Jesus has loved it. Then for us his mission is accomplished. We are fitted for heaven for we have heaven in our hearts. Everything we do builds on one of these two attudes and weakens the other. Yet even at our worst we are trying to manipulate the world into what we think we need to be able to like it better. And even at our best there is a taint of selfishness and thus truly our best is like filthy rags. Thus everything we do has both elements of respect and contempt in it. At the end of time we do what Moses was not at that time ready to do, see God's front (granted there will still be the unapproachable light and deep darkness reminding us that there is more to God then what we are seeing so that we don't commit the sin of idolatry and think we are seeing God in total). But we will see him in love and glory. Jesus is our deepest desire. The one altogether lovely, the one sweeter than honey and more desirable than gold. The one beloved of women (a forgotten Biblical name of Jesus). We are all overwhelmed by his beauty and glory. The righteous find it heaven to be in this situation and we respond to the overwheming aspect of seeing our filthy rags in contrast to Jesus' holyness by casting our crowns at his feet singing "Holy, Holy Holy, worthery if the lamb!" and at the second coming our sinful nature, or the disposition to think we are for ourselves by making less of the outside world will been burned out of us. To the lost they are in a dilemma. Jesus is their deepest desire. They are attracteed to his beauty. They long to run into his loving arms and give themselves fully over to him. They are welcomed by Jesus who tells them that his grace is sufficient for them. But as they contrast their selfishness to his righteousness they do not sing the song of the redeemed. They are unforgiving people and thus they cannot comprehend forgiveness. They think that sooner or later God is going to get them for their sins. Jesus in John 3:18-21 said that there is only ONE reason why people are lost. And that it because they won't come to the light for fear their deeds will be exposed. For fear that God is going to get them for their sins. (while those who do come to the light find not a condemning God but a welcoming God who changes them). The lost see loved ones around the throne who they long to be reunited with. But they also remember how they would use things like criticizing, complaining, blaming, nagging, threatening, punishing and rewarding to control to make these people do what they wanted them to do. They see how horrible and selfish their interactions with even their loved ones has been. And they see others who they did not love and who they wanted to hurt. And they are horrified especially as they contrast their behavior with the purity and beauty and self-sacrificing love of Jesus. And they know that the one who sits on the throne knows the deepest recesses of their mind and heart and they want to pull away from the source of life. Hitler does not see the final solution from the results of thousands of years of sin and excuses, but sees how these acts were seen through the pure eyes of God. So everyone will see themselves. The redeemed cast their crowns and sing out of gratitude, while the lost want to pull back and hide from the only source of life. Yet Jesus is still their deepest desire. They are in a dilemma. They want to run to Jesus and accept his grace, but they refuse to yield to this desire. It's God's nature to love and forgive and to draw all unto him, but God's love is a power that brings out the best in us. For those who do not want the best in them to be brought out, who are horrified at the ugliness of their sin and don't trust in God's grace but are slaves to their feeling where they feel that God is going to get them so also want to pull back from the one they so long to run to. It is a very uncomfortable position. It is even worst than the traditonal Catholic/Baptist hell. Heaven and hell are not two different places. God does not say to some of us we can go into heaven and send the rest to hell. We are wrong when we say that the fire burning forever does not mean forever. "The Glory of him that is love will consume the wicked" When does the glory and beauty and love of God burn out? Never. It's just that some of us will find it to be heaven to burn forever in the fire of God's love and beauty and glory, while others will find it to be hell and consuming and death. God treats each and every one of us the exact same way. Lucifer is treated the same way as Gabrel. Judah is treated the same as Abraham. The only difference between heaven and hell is that one is embracing all of reality with joy and enjoying reality and enjoying their friends and loved ones and have allowed the selfishness to have been burned out of them and to cast our crowns at Jesus feet and sing "Worthy is the lamb" and others are following a sick figment of their imagination that God's grace is not sufficient for them, are slaves to their feelings that God is going to get them for their sins. They become prisoners of their minds where they have created their own morbid heaven of complaining and whining about how unfair everything is only to see that God is indeed fair, and to come up with excuses but see that they have no excuse yet they refuse to leave this state of mind. Hell is locked not with a pad lock but a sliding lock and it's locked from the inside. As they see all thier excuses melt but refuse to yeild to their desire to run to him they make a compromise. They go on their knees and admit that God is indeed right, but they refuse to go further. This delema between wanting to run into his loving arms and have him wipe their tears from their eyes and wanting to be with him like nothing else they have ever been attracted to ever before, yet their refusing to yield to this desire and instead stay in their fear of what God would do to them and their morbid heaven of complaining and whining becomes so intense that it quite litterally rips them appart and disintergrates them. God is the great purifer, he does not need some other flame for a clean up job. He is the great cosuming and cleansing fire. On the one hand God is completely active in the distruction of the wicked. He is not passively twiddling his thumbs. The event that is so horrible for the lost is seeing God in full beauty and love and glory. If he did not show them this they would not have to suffer hell. On the other hand the lost are completely active in their own distruction since they make a different choice in how to respond than the saved.

I'm just as boring online as I am in real life.

I have neither an Android nor an iPhone.. I'm not one of those 1/3 of SDAs who make over $100K per year.. lol

Gleaned from your previous posts relative to this question, I guess your answer is "God is the lake of fire". Only a short statement of 6 words. Shorter than your post I quoted above.

I believe that many people have an "in-person" personality and in "internet" personality. I know that I tend to be more clear, logical, and bold here than I am in person (maybe because I have time to filter my comments as I type rather than engage in concurrent cases of verbal diarrhea and mental constipation when in person. For the most part I have no filters between my brain and my mouth). It would be interesting to contrast people's online personality vs. their in person personality.

The article, to me at least, did not seem to recognize that those within the church may be the ones pushing others out. I have known those who have left the 'SDA church' and it was not over the issues mentioned. It was as Pam said, they felt isolated from the church because of what they were experiencing, the mentioned isues being included. Until the church sees itself as a family and less of a 'religion', I do not see those numbers changing. All of the emphasis on 'narrow road' it will be 'tough' are not in any way reassuring to those in need. Why that emphasis when we also teach that Christ will take our burden and carry it for us? We teach that peace can be found in Christ. My two-cents on the matter is that until the SDA church presents ifself as a 'safe' place like a family and not a place of 'buckle up, it ain't easy' salvation is only on this 'narrow' road and all the other clap trap 'guide lines', people will leave and not for the 'easer' path. They just are not wanted without conformity to a particular organizations rules. Christ had open arms and welcomed everyone, He died for everyone. The fault is not with those leaving, it is us who are not listening to them.

Paul did not say in Ephesians 2 that "the body of Christ was created on the cross." I have seen you take other people to task because they claim the Scriptures say something, and then you quote what the Scriptures actually say, and make the point that it doesn't say what they are claiming. I would do that here, but I don't even know where to start. When you say that it is saying something, why not quote what it actually says?

Ephesians chapter 2.