Leaderboard

Ha, Ha, I understood what you meant. I am greatly concerned about the lack of serious study and response to this problem by church leaders. The church is growing by more that a million a year, some parts of the world is growing much faster than other parts. So when they balance the books, more new members come in, than leave, which gives a net growth. For example, 1.3 million join the church and 1.1 million leave gives a net growth of 200,000 and they get excited. Church leaders should be ashamed that they can not stop or slow down the losses and then they church will really grow. In my opinion, the NAD is in real trouble, the NAD seems to be afraid to do a membership audit, as other divisions have done. I think an audit will reveal that many of the "absent members" who don't come to church, are actually done with the church, and did not inform anyone to remove them. The word "drop out" they use does not account for all the members who dropped out. Look at the report and the NAD claims a net growth of about 23,000 last year, but if they did an audit, I believe that it would show much more have left then they think and that the NAD is actually shrinking. If that is the true condition, than they should be much more concerned then they are about losing members.

you can't be serious

Do you not see that you're insertion of Obama and other ideas into Biblical texts is very near to being a 'conspiracy theory'? >conspiracy theorynouna belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event.<We could get technical amd say "Obama is not a covert organization", so therefore to say that.......but when you say he will do such and such, with out his name being mentioned or being described in the Bible, we have something akin to a conspiracy theory.

KJV Daniel 12:11-12 11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. 12 Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days. It appears, to me, from the above verses that the setting up of the AoD is at the end of the 1290 days. If the 1335 days will end 20 Jan 2017, then 1290 days ended 06 December 2016. Any event of particular relevance to the AoD that occurred on Dec 6, 2016?

HCH, it is never safe to go beyond what the Bible says and to read into the Scripture our own personal thoughts. In Daniel 2, The Bible does NOT give any meaning to the fact that the image probably has two legs, two feet and ten toes. To read any meaning into that is to engage in eisegesis which is never safe. It is of interest that those who do this do it on a selective basis. The Bible states that the 2nd kingdom has two arms, but it does not give meaning to that and that is ignored by those who want to give meaning to the legs and the toes. In addition, the Bible tells us that the 3rd kingdom has two thighs (legs) and that is ignored by those who give meaning to the legs and the toes. In contrast to Daniel 2, Daniel 7 is more specific and it gives meaning to more elements of the dream. It gives meaning to the 10 horns. So, it is proper for us to discuss that meaning. But, Daniel 7 does not give meaning to the four wings of the 3rd beast. Anyone who attempts to attach a Biblical meaning to those is engaging in eisegesis, I will acknowledge that it may be of interest to speculate on such issues, as long as we acknowledge that we are speculating, may be wrong and do not suggest that our human speculations are what the Bible teaches. My issues to some of the speculation about President Obama and a 3rd term is related to the attempt to attribute such to a teaching of the Bible, instead of purely human reasoning.

Now note: The power of right as against might can never use any might. Do you see that? Do you not see that in that lies the very spirit that is called of Christians, that is, the very Spirit of Jesus Christ, which is nonresistance? Could Christ use might in demonstrating the power of right as against might? No. {March 3, 1895 ATJ, GCB 437.8} We have only one perfect photograph of God, and this is Jesus Christ. {Ms70-1899}

The third angel's message is a term that applies to the total package and is the everlasting gospel. It is all in the first. Angels 2 and 3 don't have anything new to add. Angel 2 shows what happens when the gospel is rejected (the individual or the group becomes fallen Babylon) and in a certain sense shows what happens in the heart when it is accepted (Babylon falls). Angel 3 is a warning of what happens to fallen Babylon.

Wow. Everything we have been discussing is relevant to the topic. We have here a post containing a reference to a page by some atheist who is reading the Bible pretty much the way the majority of the Christian world, including Adventists, read it, concerning the character of God. It has been my experience that there is little difference in dealing with the atheist or with the Adventist mind that is entrenched in this view of God. The atheist hates God because he got that view from Christians. But he doesn't want to hear how to read the Bible because he wants to keep that view. The fundamental problem the atheist has with being confronted with the truth about God's character is one of two, or both: 1) it is foolishness because all he understands is carnal principles of law, crime and punishment; 2) to embrace this God also means committing to dealing with cherished sin in his own life. The Christian who has this view also hates God, but has fooled himself into believing he loves Him. He has one of two problems, or both: 1) he loves the idea of punishment, being fully committed to eye for eye systems; 2) his relationship with his God is contaminated with being afraid of God. Both are clinging to Satan's misrepresentation of God as a Being with his own attributes. "No outward shrines may be visible, there may be no image for the eye to rest upon, yet we may be practicing idolatry. It is as easy to make an idol of cherished ideas or objects as to fashion gods of wood or stone. Thousands have a false conception of God and His attributes. They are as verily serving a false god as were the servants of Baal. Are we worshiping the true God as He is revealed in His word, in Christ, in nature, or are we adoring some philosophical idol enshrined in His place? God is a God of truth. Justice and mercy are the attributes of His throne. He is a God of love, of pity and tender compassion. Thus He is represented in His Son, our Saviour. He is a God of patience and long-suffering. If such is the being whom we adore and to whose character we are seeking to assimilate, we are worshiping the true God" (5T 173.4).

It is really the right question. There are two views: came to save us from God or came to save us from sin.

What did Christ some to save us from? What would you say is the "Good News?" (1st angel's message)

This notion that God does not do what he repeatedly says he does is simple sophistry. It's just a form of proof-texting, where one text which says what the interpreter has pre-determined to be correct, is used to define all the other texts which say something else. The sheer volume of verbiage required to "prove" the point demonstrates that it is rationalizing away all the other evidence. And it is the opposite of sound exegesis. On simple example, this idea turns Isaiah 28 on its head. We're asked to believe that what God calls his "strange act," or his "unusual act," is precisely the same as what he always does. In other wordes his "unusual act" turns out to be "standard procedure." Any such formulation is simply nonsense.

I know a person who is exactly as Kevin H has described; one who, while consumed with guilt, refuses to grasp Christ's forgiveness. I suspect that like most topics of life we see only in part for the time being and there will be lots of surprises on the road to the end of sin.

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.

The "new man" is the body of believers (in Christ) - consisting of Jews, Gentiles, males, females, slaves, and free persons.

"I have called your name Green Olive Tree" (Jeremiah 16:11). This is the passage Paul was using to support his analogy in Romans Chapter 11. If Green Olive Tree is the NAME God gave to His own, then perhaps we need a definition of "Israel". The definition of Israel, depends upon your CONTEXT. "Israel" was a man. It was the descendants of that man. It was the name of the 10 Northern Tribes. It was the name used of themselves by Judah, after the 10 tribes were taken by Assyria. It was the name used of themselves, by the captives returning from Babylon. It was the name used of themselves, by Jews in the days of Christ. It is the name of a geopolitical nation today. It is the name used for themselves, by Jews worldwide today. It is also the name of believers in Yeshua. And it is the name of God's redeemed.

From the Spirit of Prophecy, "as soon as there was sin, there was a Savior." From the foundations of the world, the plan had been thought of (Revelation 13:8). Romans 11:16 says "the root" is "holy". That means "the root" of the Olive Tree was/is the Son of God. The TREE represents Israel. (Jeremiah 11:16). But Israel consists of those "in Christ" (either pre-incarnate or post-incarnation). The branches receive nourishment from "the root". Branches are broken off "because of unbelief" and new branches are "grafted in" because of belief. Obviously, one cannot receive nourishment from "the root" is one is not attached to the tree. If Samie's theory is correct, then every person begins life attached to the tree. Why then, the term "grafted in"? No one would NEED to be "grafted in" if we all start life already attached. Samie's question is like asking if one was a branch on the tree, before one believed. Paul says that Gentiles (before they believed in the risen Christ) were: "separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world". (Eph 2:12 NIV) "without God" does NOT sound like already "saved" - to me.