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It seems some are seeing the end in our current President and Vice President. Others are not so sure. But it is strange!

Thanks R.G.! I like you too! You are a strong and sound writer as well as a good guy. I appreciate your open mindedness. While I may not agree with all SDA points of doctrine, I find Adventists to be the most studied, open-minded and flexible of all the Christian religions with which I have been affiliated. I base my personal beliefs on what I understand from my personal study of scripture as influenced by SDA and non-SDA commentators. My personal theology has evolved quite a bit over the past 30 years. I may disagree with some points of SDA doctrine; but not to the point that I would ever leave. I still embrace the basic tenets of the church - Sabbath sacredness and a belief in the soon-coming of Christ. It is the grace of Christ that saves me - not the doctrine of the SDA Church. And people here have actually helped me modify some of my beliefs to be more in conformance with the beliefs of the church. I look forward to visiting with you further on this forum in the future.

I agree. In case no one remembers, this is the Robert Brinsmead doctrine from the 1950s and 1960s.

Maybe not, but for some reason I like you. You doubtless have your honest reasons for all of the above. I will point out that, on these points, you are not just disagreeing with Ellen White, but with the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of doctrine. I am impressed by the fact that you are not dogmatic about these opinions, and I doubt that any kind of firefight will do anyone any good. I believe that all doctrine matters, but just why, or how much it might matter to a particular person at a certain time, I cannot say. By the way, our position is not day-for-a-year applying to all prophecy. We only apply it to apocalyptic prophecy (i.e. Daniel and Revelation), not based on any clear Scriptural pronouncement, but because we find it to be such a good fit. Of course, Seventh-day Adventists were not the first to do this. Whatever your reasons, may God richly bless you in your walk with Jesus.

Yes, indeed. This of course does not suggest that others could have the power to take God off His throne, but the eternal security of the universe depends on everyone being perfectly happy to have Him there. I love how He has it all planned out for us!

In the judgement, mankind is not the only one being judged. The unfallen angels and other sentient beings are also judging God/Jesus. That judgement is pronounced when all of heaven exclaims "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!"

I respectfully disagree with God having to carefully examine all the facts prior to passing judgement on a person. God is omniscient and transcendent in time. He can travel back and forth in time like we can travel back and forth across our living room. The names written down in the book of life were written from the foundation of the world. "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Rev. 13:8) God knew the destination of every human being to ever be born before He even created Adam and Eve. Clarification: I am not talking about predestination here; I'm talking about foreknowledge. They are 2 different things.

That would probably depend on how it was presented. We must never lose sight of our helpless dependence on divine grace. Nor can we ever adopt any suggestion, however subtle, that we can pull ourselves up by our own boot straps, so to speak. Yes, we are to work as if everything depended on our own efforts, but we must also understand that only God is due the glory for the results, results that only His grace could achieve.

I would like to share something that doesn't happen enough, but did the other day. I was thinking of the evidences of love there are in the world. Now I may "see" God's love in nature or situations more than many. This time I was particularly thinking of how animals respond to love. From there I segued to thinking how love will cause a HUMAN heart to respond out of a bad place. The Bible declares that God is love. How does this fact (I believe it to be fact) connect God with His created beings? To me it is saying that we have been born with the capability AND a need/desire to respond to love. Love, and God who IS love. We have something in us that responds to the love and compassion we recognise in others. We recognise compassion and admiration that animals display. And we respond as our hearts are touched: we cry at movies and melt at our children's bobos. In the midst of this pondering the penny-dropping thought was that this concept trumps a Darwinian evolution scenario. Why and how? That can be discussed Thoughts?

While, at first glance, the actions of the Texas Conference may seem to have been rather extreme, I think we'll need to hear the whole story before passing judgment. Promoting the KJV may appear to be a small thing. However, if the basis for this promoting is false information, and the pastor in question is making a big deal out of it, then it seems to me that this could be rather pernicious. Combine this with a blasphemous heresy on the human nature of Christ, with all of its legalism, and a legalistic view of last generation theology, and we could conceivably be looking at a full-blown apostasy here. To allude to a certain Scripture, be careful what you call a conspiracy.

Look what you started GM!!!

5 Facts About The Creation Of The Universe On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe was created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Check out these 5 surprising facts about the creation of the universe.... Kepler Was Wrong Seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler should have stuck with his theories about the motion of the planets, because it turns out that he was wrong about the age of the universe to the tune of billions of years. Astronomers now estimate the age of the universe at around 13.7 billion years, give or take a few million. The age was calculated by measuring the density of energy and matter in the universe, which determined how fast it expanded billions of years back into the past. ps: I don't believe Kepler was completely wrong, if he meant the small piece of the universe we live in than I think he's closer to the correct date than the others. But if we really talking about the complete universe, I don't think anyone knows for sure, only God knows. The Universe Is Flat Flat Earth Society members may be a bit more cheered after finding out Earth isn’t flat but the universe is. According to the Theory of General Relativity by Einstein, the universe can only be closed, open or flat. Measurements taken in the 2001 NASA exploratory mission, called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), confirms that the universe is indeed flat. ps: my thoughts are that is open?? What You See in the Night Sky Is From Long Ago Wishing upon a star might be a little retroactive, since the twinkling lights we see in the nighttime sky have taken so much time to get to us on Earth that they are really old. What viewers and astronomers see in the night sky is how stars looked in the distant past. For example, Orion’s star Betelgeuse is 640 light years' away, so the light that reaches us would have left Betelgeuse around the year 1370, during the period of the Hundred Years’ War. The Universe Has No Center It can be difficult to locate the center of something when it keeps moving, and that’s the problem with finding the center of the universe. The galaxies inside the universe are moving away from each other, which is expanding the size of the universe, and they are apparently moving faster and faster as time passes. Some scientists believe it is dark energy that is driving the universe’s expansion, but only time — and a lot of it —will tell. ps:I've heard differently There Might Be More Than One Universe One controversial hypothesis has been that there are many universes. However, a new study suggests that our universe may have collided with some of them. This supposedly would have left telltale evidence in the light that spread out from the Big Bang by leaving a circular pattern. A study by Stephen Hawking and physicist Thomas Hertog that was modified a few days before Hawking died, suggests that there may be many other universes similar to ours out there in space. ps:That one word says it all for me!!!!!

I'd follow him to his new country of "Mynaymistan"...

We'd probably have to rename the website to "The Website formerly Known as Adventistan" or to "Buddhistan" or something like that. I'd still hang around though cuz I like most of the folks here; and it would give us someone new to pick on besides LGTBQ+ and pro-WO folks. Oh yeah - we're already picking on Stan. Never mind.

Under our Constitution, I believe that the Moderators, as a group would need to consider impeachment. NOTE: This does not meant that we would do such. It simply means that we would need to consider it.

No, the WO issue is not the WILL of the REPRESENTATIVE BODY OF THE CHURCH, but a group bulldozing an idea through at the expense of another that has shown a lot of merit. The Holy Spirit works through a lot of honest discussion and with something as popular as this to have worked out a compromise. This bulldozing through is basically telling the Holy Spirit to shut up. The Holy Spirit will not stay where he is rejected. And where the Holy Spirit is not welcome then Satan does not care about our wills and will force his way in among us. As for last generation; true Mrs. White does teach it. But her view and their view are very different. The popular preaching of last generation is very legalistic and mixes Mrs. White with a point that Wesley was wrong on. They are seeing a difference in quality. Mrs. White saw last generation as a difference in quantity.

Despite being the father of lies, Satan ultimately does not usually cause blatant lies but he likes to divide the truth in approximately half and use it against the rest of the truth. People tend to be attracted to either the one side or the other and Satan is willing to accommodate them and make them comfortable. As Jesus said the truth is straight and narrow, and few people like the straight and narrow, they are so comfortable in one ditch or the other. I do have to apologize for not pointing out that my big issue with both Ford and many of the people who believe what you described this group as teaching tend to be quite dogmatic in their heresies demanding the rest of the church to follow suit, which is unscrupulous to take money from the church to have that spirit of grabbing the rest of us by the button hole and making the demands whether it's against the Investigative Judgment like Ford did, or the points of this church. I would have a much different opinion of both groups if they would be less dogmatic but were to have a spirit of "I know that Adventism has different views and I will share my understanding but study and listen to our collective understanding of Seventh-day Adventism. Follow what you understand, have listening love for the others. While there will be things different pastors say that you would like, let's not form into major political parties. We should be only a political party of two, you and Jesus.

See: https://spectrummagazine.org/news/2019/czech-slovak-union-votes-ordain-women-pastoral-ministry-rejects-gc-document

Today, December 22, I awoke early. I decided to watch the movie, Newton's Grace, which I had previously recorded, before going to church later today. It is an inspirational, true story, of God leading a man who became the captain of a slave ship to become a pastor. I encourage any to view it as part of their devotional life.

IMHO, when Adam and Eve sinned, our DNA changed. Instead of having a natural genetic predisposition to righteousness, we now have a natural genetic predisposition to sin. Our "sin gene" was turned on. Without the indwelling of God's Spirit and His grace, we are all doomed to receive the wages of sin. We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners - predisposed from birth to put self first. Without Christ, it is impossible to be saved if we have made a conscious decision to reject the grace offered by Christ. Once we truly receive Christ (not only believe who He says He is and what He has done for us, but to absolutely depend on that) I believe it becomes harder to be lost than to be saved. We have accepted the gift of the golden ticket from Christ - He cannot take it back, since it was a gift. I guess we can choose not to cash it in; but once we have experienced God's love, who would want to do that? There are those who try to "help" Jesus save us through their good works. Nothing wrong with good works; but they are the RESULT of grace received; not a PREREQUISITE.

I AGREE!! The Calvinists teach that God's will is supreme, and He decides whom He will save. Man has no choice. Armenians teach that man's will decides. God will save those who CHOOSE to accept His offer of grace. Man's will is stronger than God's will. Neither of those seems right to me. A man cannot accept God's offer of grace, without God's help to do so. Faith is a gift from God. But I can refuse the GIFT. It's not a gift, if I cannot refuse it. I believe that God created sentient beings (in His image) with the ability to make choices based upon evidence (rather than merely instinct). Of course, God could overpower the will of the human. But the Creator has made a choice - to hold back His power, lest He overpower the human will - when it comes to the choice to accept - or to reject - the influence of His Spirit. THIS is the key factor. We are born with a physical nature that craves bad things (we do have some instincts). We are exposed to less than perfect role models, and taught lies. Is the Spirit of God, STRONGER THAN all of the other influences upon us? Is the Spirit of God STRONGER THAN our own will? To the second question: The Spirit of God WILL NOT OVERPOWER human will. We are FREE to resist. To the first question: Yes. "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." (1Jn 4:4). But you must ALLOW Him "in". So it's all down to resistance. That is our CHOICE to make - to welcome, or to resist. Consistent, ongoing resistance IS the "unpardonable sin". So long as one resists, he is not open to the healing of God's Spirit. Even resurrection from the dead us because of His Spirit. "He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you." (Rom 8:11 NIV) It's THE SPIRIT of GOD - vs - all the other forces pushing and pulling us. Which one is STRONGER?

Interesting. Well thought out.

It is the idea that it is the strongest, as in physically strong, that win out. Love and compassion values the weak and unfortunate. When I think of "only the fittest survive," it brings to mind Hitler and Stalin's regimes. I have heard it said that Hitler was influenced by Darwinian thoughts. While it is true that there's a LOT of violence in the natural world, just as humans can and do very naturally behave brutally against each other. But then- there are the exceptions to that. And when examples of kindness occur, we are moved.