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(Spoiler alert: A movie will be discussed and details given away) I have had a very peripheral connection to Hollywood and the film industry. While leaving out family legends that are not true, some relatives were part of Hollywood. My grandmother's cousin was Herbert Coleman, the long time associate of Alfred Hitchcock. A step-father of mine worked in Hollywood for many years at United Artists and then at MGM. He knew many of the stars of the 30s & 40s and it was fascinating to sit around and listen to the tales about the stars. https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Knew-Hitchcock-Filmmakers-ebook/dp/B00GHVBVYU/ My own involvement was as an extra in one movie, "Paint Your Wagon." So, it was also interesting to sit around the set and watch the different actors and how a movie was produced. My interest continued in film and after nursing school I worked in the Los Angeles area and I attended film studies thru the local colleges. This was in the days when computers were little more than kits from Heathkit, so there was no digital editing of video on computers. This was using film, cutting the pieces to the right length and gluing them together. Adding sound was quite the ordeal also. This film was done over fifty years ago! Film studies also included the history of film from the very earliest motion pictures to the more recent at that time. I have had a long interest in very old films including the silent films, film noir (black film), b/w newsreels, and the development of cinematic style. This does provide a dilemma at times for someone who grew up attending the SDA church and I never went to my first movie until academy days and have been "hooked" ever since. But sometime ago while watching some of these old newsreels, probably from the political conventions with Teddy Roosevelt and the thousands of people present, it occurred to me that ALL of those people were now dead. Thirty or forty years ago, many of the silent screen stars were dying and obituaries being written up in the papers. Yeah, there may have been a baby from the end of the silent era movies who today languishes in a nursing home somewhere, but the rest are dead. I have been a Perry Mason fan from the days when they were first run shows. Recently Barbara Hale (Della Street, Perry's secretary) passed on. Everyone else is gone. Lt. Tragg of homicide has been dead for more than fifty years. Unfortunately, this creeping death thing is starting to even include the living. Given the time we live in and looking at the future of this world, large crowds of people are starting to look like death in the future. I look at a stadium full of people on football Sundays and inescapably the realization is "they are all going to die." Even in large crowds in churches with people singing "praise hymns", they are all going to die. I was watching a panel of Baptist preachers talking and one of them stated that less than five percent of people in church are saved. Whoa! Math gears working and I remember that quote from EGW, "It is a solemn statement that I make to the church, that not one in twenty whose names are registered upon the church books are prepared to close their earthly history, and would be as verily without God and without hope in the world as the common sinner."--ChS 41 (1893). "Five percent" and "one in twenty" are about the same thing. Jesus left it at, "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Matthew 7:14 This concerns me when I read and see what is happening in the SDA church. People are totally fighting over stupid stuff with evil agendas and know not that they are perishing. The fight inside the SDA church is little different than the political struggles going on in the world. And all the fighters will perish. When I read Genesis and God told Adam that he would die if he ate of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, He meant they were going to die right then. I still hold the opinion that this earth's human race became spiritually dead from that moment. The only way to be spiritually alive is when Christ abides in you. That abiding is another very long topic, so I will focus on "life" without the abiding of Jesus in one. One of the problems with spiritual death is that the "dead person" often doesn't know it. The Pharisees of the time of Jesus were studying their Scriptures intensively while the answer to the question walked right among them. And they perceived it not. They were the walking dead. This so much reminds me of the movie "The Sixth Sense" which came out about 1998 and starred Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osmont. Osmont was a little boy who was bothered by the people who had died and were caught in that space between living and going into the light. Bruce Willis was a psychologist who tried to help the little boy. The youtube link is one of the revealing moments in the movie. See, the psychologist was dead and he did not know it! But the little boy knew it and he was giving him a clue that he could see the dead. (Jesus used illustrations of hell and afterlife which He also knew was not true!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUYKSWQmkrg So, you have to ask yourself, "are you alive like the little boy, or are you dead believing you are really alive?" So, that is my pressing concern, for myself and for everyone else. Especially for the fighting people doing unimaginable evil and totally clueless to their naked state. Frequently you see comments about the church falling but EGW prophesied this and stated the church would stand. But this is a very very late event in this earth's history. Do we see the thief coming in the window? "It is possible for men to offer the Saviour outward homage, to be Christians in profession, to have a form of godliness, while the heart, whose loyalty He prizes above all else, is estranged from Him. Such ones have a name to live, but they are dead...." EGW, UL, Oct 14. A "prophecy of doom" doesn't get much darker than this.

interesting! (on a side note, my cousin's uncle was Oscar Hammerstein Jr of the Rodgers & Hammerstein duo)

There appears to be a glitch in the software of this forum. When someone posts a response to another post, that response is inserted somewhere into the chain of other responses that have been previously posted. It is NOT posted at the end of the chain. This seems to have people responding to posts that were not posted at the time a response has been made. This has happened to The Wanderer. It is currently happening to me. In a recent post of mine, it looks like Photodude is responding to me, when such was not the case. Someone needs to fix this.

It's happening to me too. I have found that when I simply refresh the screen, the post appears in the right place.

Not for me. My primary allegiance is to Jesus; not to Adventism.

Devotional: Image of God

5 Things You Didn't Know About Marie Antoinette On October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette was executed, almost a year after the beheading of her flamboyant husband, Louis XVI. Here are 5 things you probably didn't know about Marie Antoinette... Marie-Antoinette Married at Age 14 To seal the newfound alliance between longtime enemies Austria and France that had been forged by the Seven Years’ War, the Austrian monarchs offered the hand of their youngest daughter to the heir apparent to the French throne, Dauphin Louis-Auguste. On May 7, 1770, the 14-year-old royal bride was delivered to the French on an island in the middle of the Rhine River, and a grand procession escorted the archduchess to the Palace of Versailles. The day after Marie Antoinette met the 15-year-old future king of France, the two were wed in a lavish palace ceremony. One thing we do know about the marriage itself is that it was not consummated for six years following the wedding. It’s Doubtful That She Said “Let Them Eat Cake” When told that starving French peasants lacked any bread to eat, the queen is alleged to have callously declared, “Let them eat cake!” There is no evidence, however, that Marie Antoinette ever said this, but other people certainly did. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, the philosopher, mentions it in a book and attributes that quote to a princess, but Marie Antoinette was a child at the time it was written. The remark was also ascribed to two aunts of Louis XVI before it was apocryphally tied to Marie Antoinette. Marie-Antoinette Was Something of a Tomboy Marie Antoinette, called Antonia by her family, was the 11th of 16 children born to Empress Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. As a highborn young lady, he was taught how to play musical instruments, embroidery and how to act at court. However, she also took up horseback riding to follow the hunt, which endeared her to her the court. Joining in as a member of the hunt, she was known to ride astride wearing breeches as a man did. She Was Executed After Spending 10 Weeks in the Conciergerie The trial of Marie Antoinette was held from October 14 through October 16, 1793, and the jury found her guilty of theft, treason and sexual abuse, which had been charged against her by her son under duress. She was sentenced to the guillotine. The former queen of France was taken to the Place de la Revolution and lost her head at about 12:30 p.m., the same day as her sentencing. A U.S. city is named in honor of Marie Antoinette. When a group of American Revolution veterans founded the first permanent settlement of the Northwest Territory in 1788 at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers, they wanted to honor France, which had been instrumental in assisting the patriots against the British. They named their new community—Marietta, Ohio—after the French queen and even sent her a letter offering the monarch a “public square” in the town.

Sounds like we think alike. Unity has to do with loving Christ and one another in spite of non-salvational quibbling. WOE is just a distraction. I know the Church is not a democracy, but why cant the GC mandate really important stuff (like Jesus is God and the Sabbath); and leave the "little stuff" (like WOE) to local Conferences and Churches?

Devotional: windows of heaven ?

Sadly read this the other evening: My heart is broken. I've lost a treasured friend, Jeff Wood. He joined Heritage Singers in the early 70s. He was an amazing producer, arranger and song writer. ... Jeff made a huge impact on people all over the world with the song he wrote, "Side By Side". Please keep his family in prayer. I'll meet you in heaven, my friend. ~ Max Mace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXycg2R3Tas