Leaderboard

For every comforting prayer of unity, there was a reminder of the risk involved in dissent—of what happens when clergy challenge the status quo instead of blessing it. The post Faith, Power, and the Politics of Prayer in the Inauguration appeared first on ReligiousLiberty.TV / Founders' First Freedom® - News and Updates on Religious Liberty and Freedom. View the full article

By condemning a sermon, House Resolution 59 risks crossing a line that should never be blurred: the ability of clergy to address issues of conscience without interference or condemnation from the state. The post When the State Critiques the Sermon: The Dangerous Signal of House Resolution 59 appeared first on ReligiousLiberty.TV / Founders' First Freedom® - News and Updates on Religious Liberty and Freedom. View the full article

I thank you for this. This is exactly it. About the Suez Canal, I dont know if that is true (looking for sources), but if God wants to part the Red sea, He can. It shouldn't be a bone of contention. He made the world. How would the other be hard to believe? do we also make excuse for spontaneous creation? Even Joshua with "Sun Stand still, Moon Stand still". Joshua was not an astronomer, but he knew what to ask for. God set a sundial back 15 degrees. He can do anything. He knew what Joshua wanted.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Charter School Board, a case addressing whether a religious charter school can receive public funding. The case centers around a proposed online Catholic charter […] The post Public Funding for Faith-Based Schools? Supreme Court Takes on Oklahoma Case appeared first on ReligiousLiberty.TV / Founders' First Freedom® - News and Updates on Religious Liberty and Freedom. View the full article

That’s just crazy! speak as the Spirit moves you ?️ or don’t speak ?

I'm sorry that you went through this. Just being there, listening, being polite and living in the joy of Jesus is testimony enough.

While you can find individual congregations, theologians, pastors, Sunday School classes/teachers who this comment does not apply to: as we look at the other churches as a whole they tend to be either Modernist with seeing the Bible as just a human book what has some good ideas, and who uses higher criticism to disintegrate the Bible, and limits their reading to the idea of Preterism, that the Bible ONLY was dealing with the past. Or else we find Fundamentalists, usually also connected to Dispensationalists, who are so hypersensitive to the Bible being so fully perfect and that the copy we have is except for copying and translation, exactly as the original writer got it from God, and thus use "Lower Criticism" only, as well as using Futureism only. I know that there are voices in the church which wants us to go firmly into either one group or the other. I know that the 1922 General Conference gave the Fundamentalist voice a stronger influence, and that the General Conference Presidency of Elder Pierson and our current Elder Wilson, among others want to really make us into 1922 Adventism; but this has not become official; and even our most strict voices for "Fundamentalism" tends to be on the more liberal side of the spectrum of those who consider themselves Fundamentalists. Seventh-day Adventism still gives us room to grow to a more balanced view between being either a Modernist, or Fundamentalist. Those who like "Higher Criticism" can hold on to the original ideas of how higher and lower criticism are simply tools that can help us understand the Bible, and thus the God of the Bible even better. (An excellent proof text to teach us the method of "Historism" is the two different writing styles in the book of Amos. When linguists divide them-- higher criticism-- we find a message to the Northern Kingdom on facing the Assyrians. When looking at the second writing style, we find someone taking Amos' message to the North and they reapplied the message to the Southern Kingdom of Judah in her current apostasy and facing the Babylonians, and has turned the entire message to the Northern Kingdom into a prophecy to the Southern Kingdom facing Babylon.) We do not have the dead going right to heaven or hell, but the sleep until the resurrection. We do not have an eternal punishing literal fire hell; and we are in discussion on the question of hell fire either being the literal flame that we get when we light a match, or see a volcano; or if the "fire" is physically seeing God in God's glory, love, beauty, and character which encourages the best in us. While most others read the Bible with the question being "How can I get God to let me into heaven instead of sending me to hell?" We have the issues of the Great Controversy: The three jobs of the Trinity, the three lies of Satan, each one attacking a member of the Trinity. How does God answer these lies, and thus or question is whether or not God is someone we want to spend eternity in His presence. And from this we turn to how He saves us. We have what we call the "investigative Judgment" while this has been criticized, when taking a closer look this doctrine awakens us to how we are living in the age of exegesis; a time where the ancient world was resurrected, the historical, geographical, the cultural and linguistic context of the Bible. An age where we get to investigate the Bible like never before.-- an ancient idea that we see like in the understanding of "the sacred mountain" events in heaven and earth reflect each other. In the investigative judgment, the angels and unfallen in heaven looks at the lives of all those who in one way or another claim to have accepted their understanding of who God is into their lives. They have two questions; did this person really accept Christ into their lives, and if they did, what difference does Christ make in our lives. As they study this, they understand their own salvation better and fall even deeper in their love for Jesus. For us on earth, as I said, we get to study the Bible in context of what we have learned about the ancient world, and the modifications we will make as we learn more. This deeper knowledge of the Bible can deepen our knowledge of God, and awaken even deeper love for God. Too much of religion is static, Jesus died for me, I've accepted it, so I'm going to heaven, and standing like if they are standing on a very small rock sticking up out of the ocean and fearful that if they have any sort of movement that they can fall in the water and drown. Or else there are churches which think that we can look at what happened in the Bible, and that "miracles" are how they understood what naturally happened. We have a dynamic religion of "More about Jesus I would know..." and a Jesus who we can come to in prayer and God can do things for us. Seventh-day Adventism is based on the purpose and perpetuity of God's law. So when others turn to faith healers or other mystical forms of healing; we have the health message, health centers and hospitals, using the natural in cooperation with the supernatural. Also, we are more open to other applications of this principle, including the blessings found in the Seventh-day Sabbath. In other churches there tends to be a skepticism or denial of miracles, so they look in the Bible for only natural events; or else they want to believe in miracles, and thus look at the most incredible totally against anything natural. We are open for the Natural and Supernatural working together. While not necessarily the final word on the topic, we are not upset at seeing in the Bible the supernatural and natural working together. Three examples include: 1. The instant healings of Jesus. When Jesus was on earth sickness was understood to be the direct punishment for specific sins. Some even believed that they could tell what sin the person committed by the illness that God was punishing them. In instant healings in that culture it was a message that their sins were forgiven. Today we have different perspectives in how we see illness, and in our culture the idea of the health message is the appropriate way to deal with illness. (and as we understand this better, and when we get to a point where we are giving glory to God instead of giving glory to my church, or give glory to my subgroup in the church, we are going to see God do some very amazing things through the health message.) 2. There are different understandings as to where the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea when leaving Egypt. A lot of people want it to be either the gulf of Suez or gulf of Aqaba with the water being very deep and the Hebrews looking at the fish in the wall of water as if they were in an aquarium. But one other possible crossing places, is called "The Sea of Reeds." Sometimes Fundamentalists say "The crossing of the Red Sea was really a miracle because God drowned the Egyptian Army in only a few inches of water." Sadly, about a month ago on 3ABN Mark Finley was giving a new program and he made this joke. I wrote to him and shared this information, (and he thanked me for this said it makes him think.) The "Reed Sea" crossing location has a history of if the east wind blows all night, it parts the water at that location. Now while not as amazing as our artistic drawings of the Red Sea crossing, it does look unusual enough and is rare enough so that when it occurred, people from local villages would come to look at it and walk in the area between. But if they did not leave fast enough, and the waters came back over, people have drowned. The last time it split was in the early 20th century (1927?) Since then the influence of the Suez Canal has changed the dynamics of the location. In the last splitting, sadly, one of the near by villages ended up loosing nearly it's entire population because they did not get out in time for the water to return and they drowned. If these people over the years, including the large loss of life from it's split in the early 20th century, why can't it drown Egypt's Army when the Hebrews crossed and there was the union of the natural with the supernatural? 3. In Joshua 10 we have the battle where the Sun stood "Still" Often we do not realize that the location where Joshua asked the sun to stand "still" was on the eastern horizon at the break of dawn. Joshua ordered the moon to stand fast in the west. We tend to picture in our minds there being constant daylight either of the noontime sun or the setting sun continuing to shine for the battle. However, the word for the sun to stand "still" the Hebrew is like our English word "still" which can either mean "Don't move" or "Be quiet." The word for the moon does mean "Don't move" but it is a military command to not retreat in front of an attacking army, to hold your ground and not allow the enemy's assault to succeed. And the Bible discusses the thick hail storm. For hail stones to be the size the Bible describes, it would be thick clouds so thick that it would remain as dark as night. Thus the text could be understood as a beautiful morning and rising sun suddenly being struck out by a horrible hail storm that blocked the sunlight from reaching the ground until dawn the next day. Study of the battle field indicates that Joshua had the advantage by attacking in the dark, and the sunlight would even up the battle field. Also, there were things about the Canaanite religion that gave a powerful message for the storm showing up and blocking the sun. As a Seventh-day Adventist, these make sense. If I was to leave to other churches I'd either have to join one that does not expect a miracle in these events, or churches which want it to be miracles of a scale so amazing that has no room for the natural and supernatural working together.

I've never heard of such a thing. For the most part, most of the folk in my SS class are quiet, as are the other classes as well. Even pre communion, hardly anyone has a testimony to tell. You act in church as you feel you need to in order to praise God and help others. That can be as little as a few smiles to some who might need them. God bless you. I'm sorry this happened to you.

So, I'm not very good at talking or even writing what I mean to say at least the first time around. I have a difficult time converting thoughts to words to speak or to write. So, I hope I can convey my thoughts to you clear enough to get my point across. By nature I am a pretty quiet type person. I don't like being in the public eye or getting attention from strangers. For maybe 25 or 30 years, and maybe before, I have been told repeatedly by well-meaning adventist members that I need to speak up in public forums (such as Sabbath-School and town meetings and such-like, when the opportunity shows itself) in order to be saved in GOD's kingdom. One of the more harsh examples of this opinion took place about 8 years ago in a small New England church in the mountains where I was a visitor that day. After Sabbath school one of the local adventist layman stood up and took more than twenty minutes to publicly lambast me because I said nothing during the Sabbath-school discussion time. Several local members protested the brother's diatribe but without a peaceful end. And it appeared to me that several other visitors (it is a tourist area) ended up leaving early. I have also been told this principle (?) by visiting evangelists and pastors at various other churches I have been a visitor at. I wonder where this doctrine is located in the Scripture and why It has never been taught to me in the Bible studies, official or otherwise I have taken over the years. I don't recall that it is asked of the baptismal candidates who stand before the congregation prior to the baptisms I have witnessed.