The Sin Against the Spirit

[Bravus]

The Sin Against the Spirit

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Mat_12:31.

I will address these lines to those who have had light, those who have had privileges, those who have had warnings and entreaties, who have made no determined effort to yield themselves in full surrender to God. I would warn you to fear lest you sin against the Holy Ghost, and be left to your own course, sunk in moral lethargy, and never obtain forgiveness.

Why allow yourselves to be longer educated in the school of Satan, and pursue a course of action that will make repentance and reformation impossible? Why resist the overtures of mercy? Why say, "Let me alone," until God shall be compelled to give you your desire, since you will have it so?

Those who resist the Spirit of God think that they will repent at some future day, when they get ready to take a decided step toward reformation; but repentance will then be beyond their power. According to the light and privileges given will be the darkness of those who refuse to walk in the light while they have the light.

No one need look upon the sin against the Holy Ghost as something mysterious and indefinable. The sin against the Holy Ghost is the sin of persistent refusal to respond to the invitation to repent. If you refuse to believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, you love darkness rather than light, you love the atmosphere that surrounded the first great apostate. You choose this atmosphere rather than the atmosphere that surrounds the Father and the Son, and God allows you to have your choice. But let no soul be discouraged by this presentation of the matter. Let no one who is striving to do the will of the Master be cast down.

Hope thou in God. The Lord Jesus has made it manifest that He regards you at an infinite estimation. He left His royal throne, He left His royal courts, He clothed His divinity with humanity, and died a shameful death upon the cross of Calvary, that you might be saved.--Review and Herald, June 29, 1897.

Ye Shall RecievePower- EGW

The final paragraph is, of course, fine. The rest of it is, if read a particular way, fine too. The entire problem is this: who decides who is resisting the call of the Holy Spirit? If it's God, and only God, who makes that judgement call, I have no problem with the whole quote.

But in this instance, it seems very much as though EGW is arrogating that function to herself, and by extension that Richard is arrogating it to himself as well.

It ends up boiling down to 'if you believe differently than I do, you're resisting the call of the Holy Spirit and are hellbound'.

[Guest]

Are we doing a little lying woody. I don't mispell wreaks.

[Bravus]

That's good, but it's spelled 'reeks' if you mean 'smells' which is the context in the quote. 'Wreaks' is if it does something, it's a present form of the word 'wrought'. Let's leave aside the spelling lames. And perhaps Richard's extra-curricular activities as well.

[Guest]

It ends up boiling down to 'if you believe differently than I do, you're resisting the call of the Holy Spirit and are hellbound'.

I find it pretty hard to get that out of it. Nay, impossible. That's not what it says or implies. What happened to the quote being evil? Now you have to read it a particular way?

[John317]

...It ends up boiling down to 'if you believe differently than I do, you're resisting the call of the Holy Spirit and are hellbound'.

Bravus, isn't this exactly what you are doing when you judge people according to whether they agree with you in regard to Iraq and "water-boarding," etc? You are suggesting that anyone who believes Americans were right to use waterboarding aren't accepting the work of the Holy Spirit.

But to speak to the question of determining who is resisting the call of the Holy Spirit-- it is something that only the Holy Spirit and the individual can know for sure. Some actions and words make it obvious when there's resistance to the Spirit, but it is generally something we must leave up to individual believers. We can't judge motives or the heart.

[John317]

You said you stood by your statement that what she wrote is evil no matter who wrote it. But now it appears that you don't really see anything evil in it. I don't either.

Ellen White never took it upon herself to tell whether someone was resisting the Holy Spirit. She only knew this and spoke of it when God gave her visions about individuals and told her to send them testimonies.

[Bravus]

Is a breadknife evil? Not if it's being used to slice bread. If it's being used to attack someone, though...

I wasn't as precise as I should have been, but when I said 'evil' I was talking about the breadknife of EGW's quote and the use Richard was making of it.

I guess I should say thanks for being honest about how you really feel, and where you are spiritually.

The defense rests.

[MariaS]

Sorry, I normally try really hard to, but for pity's sake. This steaming pile of guilt-tripping evil at the top of the thread is bad enough, but in the context where a large number of people here are actively condoning torture, it's just unconscionable. Turn up to church on the right day, don't put the wrong music on your iPod. But torture a fellow human being - yep, no worries at all!

Not to mention that my word were completely civil. A little sarcastic, perhaps, but no name-calling, profanity or anything else objectionable. A dose of truth, but if that's objectionable we're in real trouble.

Bravus, what do you meant by this?

"This steaming pile of guilt-tripping evil at the top of the thread is bad enough..."

In my limited understanding, that was a rather strong statement of doubt and unbelieve in regards to the solemness of the message that was posted right on top of the thread which happened to be "the Sin Againts the Spirit".

[LifeHiscost]

Bravus, what do you meant by this?

"This steaming pile of guilt-tripping evil at the top of the thread is bad enough..."

In my limited understanding, that was a rather strong statement of doubt and unbelieve in regards to the solemness of the message that was posted right on top of the thread which happened to be "the Sin Againts the Spirit".

Maria, because you love Richard (Am I right?) it is natural you would stand in his defense. And because the OP was without quotes noticeable to me at the top, I didn't recognize them at first as from EGW.

At first I questioned in my mind the wisdom of Richard in the post, not because it was wrong but because it spoke to me re: my own self-discipline of lifestyle and I knew that if I felt the sting of the comments, I who pride myself on thinking for myself(a freedom given each by God), I knew without second thoughts there would be some who would adamantly take exception to the post. A reason being a guilt trip.

I've learned if I'm not guilty not to take the trip. If I am guilty, repentance is the best way to deal with it. Some have found killing the messenger to be the best way to deal with guilt. I'm not sure why it is believed that a dead messenger absolves one of guilt but everyone has a right to take their own poison.

BTW, thanks for the post, Richard. I needed that.

God blesses!

[Bravus]

Maria, you need to read the whole thread. If you still have questions then I'll be very happy to answer them.

[Guest]

I was talking about the breadknife of EGW's quote and the use Richard was making of it.

How did you decide what use I was making of it? I simply posted a page out of a EGW devotional without saying anything about it one way or another. Are you claiming to be able to read minds now?

You called it evil BEFORE I said anything at all about the post.

[Woody]

Originally Posted By: Bravus

I was talking about the breadknife of EGW's quote and the use Richard was making of it.

How did you decide what use I was making of it? I simply posted a page out of a EGW devotional without saying anything about it one way or another. Are you claiming to be able to read minds now?

You called it evil BEFORE I said anything at all about the post.

Richard dear ... you have made 16925 posts here. Most of us who have read even a small number of them have a pretty good idea of where you are coming from. And if in doubt we can read specific ones like I recently quoted. Since you feel that it is impossible to grow here because of all the liberalism ... I think that speaks for itself. One has to wonder why you torture yourself by coming here.

[MariaS]

Originally Posted By: Maria Sangkong

Bravus, what do you meant by this?

"This steaming pile of guilt-tripping evil at the top of the thread is bad enough..."

In my limited understanding, that was a rather strong statement of doubt and unbelieve in regards to the solemness of the message that was posted right on top of the thread which happened to be "the Sin Againts the Spirit".

Maria, because you love Richard (Am I right?) it is natural you would stand in his defense. And because the OP was without quotes noticeable to me at the top, I didn't recognize them at first as from EGW.

At first I questioned in my mind the wisdom of Richard in the post, not because it was wrong but because it spoke to me re: my own self-discipline of lifestyle and I knew that if I felt the sting of the comments, I who pride myself on thinking for myself(a freedom given each by God), I knew without second thoughts there would be some who would adamantly take exception to the post. A reason being a guilt trip.

I've learned if I'm not guilty not to take the trip. If I am guilty, repentance is the best way to deal with it. Some have found killing the messenger to be the best way to deal with guilt. I'm not sure why it is believed that a dead messenger absolves one of guilt but everyone has a right to take their own poison.

BTW, thanks for the post, Richard. I needed that.

God blesses!

Hi LifeHiscost,

If Richard is wrong, I will definitely oppose him too and if he is right, its my duty to stand by his side and sing the same song. A proper referencing will be always at the end of a quote in academic writing. So I guess Richard did the right thing by puting it at the end of the quote.

You are honest in admitting that you have overlooked the reference, that is of a praise worthy attitude. Bless your good heart

[Guest]

I was talking about the breadknife of EGW's quote and the use Richard was making of it.

How did you decide what use I was making of it? I simply posted a page out of an EGW devotional without saying anything about it one way or another. Are you claiming to be able to read minds now?

You called it evil BEFORE I said anything at all about the post.

If you really would like to see my true motivation for posting it, here it is:

Find the daily devotional book "Ye Shall Recieve Power" and turn to the date of the post. January 27th. That was my sole motivation for the post. It was the reading for that day.

_____________________________________________________

January 27

The Sin Against the Spirit

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Mat_12:31.

I will address these lines to those who have had light, those who have had privileges, those who have had warnings and entreaties, who have made no determined effort to yield themselves in full surrender to God. I would warn you to fear lest you sin against the Holy Ghost, and be left to your own course, sunk in moral lethargy, and never obtain forgiveness.

Why allow yourselves to be longer educated in the school of Satan, and pursue a course of action that will make repentance and reformation impossible? Why resist the overtures of mercy? Why say, "Let me alone," until God shall be compelled to give you your desire, since you will have it so?

Those who resist the Spirit of God think that they will repent at some future day, when they get ready to take a decided step toward reformation; but repentance will then be beyond their power. According to the light and privileges given will be the darkness of those who refuse to walk in the light while they have the light.

No one need look upon the sin against the Holy Ghost as something mysterious and indefinable. The sin against the Holy Ghost is the sin of persistent refusal to respond to the invitation to repent. If you refuse to believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, you love darkness rather than light, you love the atmosphere that surrounded the first great apostate. You choose this atmosphere rather than the atmosphere that surrounds the Father and the Son, and God allows you to have your choice. But let no soul be discouraged by this presentation of the matter. Let no one who is striving to do the will of the Master be cast down. Hope thou in God. The Lord Jesus has made it manifest that He regards you at an infinite estimation. He left His royal throne, He left His royal courts, He clothed His divinity with humanity, and died a shameful death upon the cross of Calvary, that you might be saved.--Review and Herald, June 29, 1897.

Ye Shall Recieve Power- EGW (Jan. 27)

[Bravus]

Originally Posted By: Bravus

I was talking about the breadknife of EGW's quote and the use Richard was making of it.

How did you decide what use I was making of it? I simply posted a page out of a EGW devotional without saying anything about it one way or another. Are you claiming to be able to read minds now?

You called it evil BEFORE I said anything at all about the post.

Woody is right. Posts are not read in splendid isolation. They are read in the context of the online persona that we build up in our past posts over the years. I can't read minds, but I can read posts.

[Guest]

So based on some of my previous posts the EGW devotional is evil? How does that work? I wonder what I could have possibly said in the past that could make the EGW devotional, the steaming pile of evil that you said it was?

Help me to understand how that works. If you make a good post, should I say, based on some of the things you've said in the past:

"Well, that must be evil, because I know his heart is as black as coal, so what else could it be but evil"

Was that how it went?

How do you judge Ellen White based on MY previous actions. This may be the lamest excuse for a wrong kneejerk reaction that I've ever seen.

[Bravus]

If you will persist in intentionally misunderstanding my explanations, it will be impossible to explain.

Fair enough. I apologise if I misjudged your intentions. I withdraw the suggestion that the post is evil. I take responsibility for my own juxtaposition of your post with other issues and my reaction to that.

Right, I'm out of the picture, my reactions are out of the picture.

Is anyone at all interested in discussing the original quote? It's been a few days and no-one has.

[doug yowell]

The Sin Against the Spirit

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Mat_12:31.

I will address these lines to those who have had light, those who have had privileges, those who have had warnings and entreaties, who have made no determined effort to yield themselves in full surrender to God. I would warn you to fear lest you sin against the Holy Ghost, and be left to your own course, sunk in moral lethargy, and never obtain forgiveness.

Why allow yourselves to be longer educated in the school of Satan, and pursue a course of action that will make repentance and reformation impossible? Why resist the overtures of mercy? Why say, "Let me alone," until God shall be compelled to give you your desire, since you will have it so?

Those who resist the Spirit of God think that they will repent at some future day, when they get ready to take a decided step toward reformation; but repentance will then be beyond their power. According to the light and privileges given will be the darkness of those who refuse to walk in the light while they have the light.

No one need look upon the sin against the Holy Ghost as something mysterious and indefinable. The sin against the Holy Ghost is the sin of persistent refusal to respond to the invitation to repent. If you refuse to believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, you love darkness rather than light, you love the atmosphere that surrounded the first great apostate. You choose this atmosphere rather than the atmosphere that surrounds the Father and the Son, and God allows you to have your choice. But let no soul be discouraged by this presentation of the matter. Let no one who is striving to do the will of the Master be cast down.

Hope thou in God. The Lord Jesus has made it manifest that He regards you at an infinite estimation. He left His royal throne, He left His royal courts, He clothed His divinity with humanity, and died a shameful death upon the cross of Calvary, that you might be saved.--Review and Herald, June 29, 1897.

Ye Shall RecievePower- EGW The final paragraph is, of course, fine. The rest of it is, if read a particular way, fine too. The entire problem is this: who decides who is resisting the call of the Holy Spirit? If it's God, and only God, who makes that judgement call, I have no problem with the whole quote.

But in this instance, it seems very much as though EGW is arrogating that function to herself, and by extension that Richard is arrogating it to himself as well.

It ends up boiling down to 'if you believe differently than I do, you're resisting the call of the Holy Spirit and are hellbound'.

I hate to be a stick in the mud, Bravus, but these comments seem directly in response to what EGW wrote about the "unpardonable sin". It appears, unless I'm missing something,that you HAVE addressed the main topic. I believe the John also has tried to get you to explain why you disagreed with her statements here. Wanna give it another go?

[Bravus]

I've tried to be as clear as I can, but I'll give it another go.

My objection to the quote has two parts:

1. It motivates through guilt and fear rather than through love. It does not say 'Jesus is lovely and amazing, and has great things in store for us in this life and the next, and we're missing out when we don't choose those things'. Instead it is an ominous, doomy warning, essentially motivating with threats of damnation rather than promises of salvation. Perhaps if read in the context of the entire massive body of EGW's work there is more balance available, but this excised chunk is pretty unremittingly grim.

2. The second part is what I tried to explain in the post you quoted above, doug. My guess was that Richard was not posting it as pointing toward himself, but as pointing toward others that he thought were in the condition described. If I was wrong in that guess I'm happy to apologise and withdraw it, but he has not actually said that I was, despite his other protestations, and his later posts have supported rather than challenged that interpretation. How is the judgement that others are failing to fully surrender themselves to the Holy Spirit made? By making judgements about their actions and beliefs.

I'd actually be delighted if Richard would be willing to post something about what that quote means to him and why he posted it. Perhaps if he had done that in the opening post, rather than just do the uncommented copy-and-paste, a fair bit of misunderstanding could have been avoided.

If, indeed, he posted it as a confession that he seems *himself* as in need of more fully surrendering to the Spirit, that's something I could celebrate. But if, on the other hand, he was posting to condemn others, then my breadknife analogy holds.

[Guest]

I don't really expect too much discussion when I post a devotional. It's there for people to read. If they get something good out of it great. If not, there will be another one in a day or two.

I am constantly changing Bravus. God is not through working on me by a long shot. Whenever I post pointed topics like that, they are always pointed at me first. I have never thought of myself as being above the scrutiny of her writings, and just handing it down to others. I'm sorry that you seem to feel that way about me. Although I don't know what I can do about it.

Do you hate me Bravus? Is that what it is? That is kind of the impression I got the last couple days. I don't hate you...

[Bravus]

Nope, I don't hate you at all. I feel quite warm and positive toward you. I belive you're a good person with good intentions.

I am frustrated by some of the attitudes displayed in some of your posts. Again, I apologise if it felt as though I was attacking you personally: my objection was to the post. And I admit I made a guess about the intentions behind the post.

I also admit that I responded to your post in the context of the torture discussion, and that wasn't really fair to you. I was responding to the implied guilt-tripping in the post of people who do things like... I dunno, admit to moderate use of alcohol and doubts about recent creationism, stuff like that. (The Spirit may yet convict me on those things... but that's His job.) And of course, not only on my own behalf but on behalf of others, who may have less robust confidence to resist guilt-tripping.

I was responding to that in the context of recent discussions here in which many of those who would never, ever drink alcohol or dare to dream that the earth could be more than 6000 years old defended the practice of torture.

As I say, my post juxtaposed the devotional you posted - with which I do have the problem described in Point 1 above - with that context on the whole forum. As such, you should not interpret my response as to your post alone. Maybe that's not ideal, but it's part of the way rich complex forum discussions work.

It's possible to disagree strongly with what you post while still considering you a good person, and that's the situation.

[Guest]

What is the name of the thread about torture?

[Woody]

Well I appreciate that post Bravus. Even though some in this discussion disagree ... I see no problem with you as an Adventist drinking a beer now and again. Like you say it's the job of the Holy Spirit to convict you to change. And that just may happen over time. But in the meantime ... in my eyes you remain an Adventist.

(This comes from one who has never had a drop of alcohol in his or her life)

You see ... as evident in this forum: NO SDAs AGREE 100% ABOUT ALL ISSUES. So, if we are going to ban people from being called SDAs then there would not be any left. So, my vote is that we keep Bravus. Hurray Hurray.

[Bravus]

What is the name of the thread about torture?

It's this one, started by Woody and entitled '20 Years Ago in Iraq': http://clubadventist.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/420116/20_years_ago_in_Iraq.html#Post420116

It meanders around a fair bit but the torture discussion begins on page 2 and goes for several pages.

[Guest]

Thanks