Because the accursed thing was in the camp

[Asia Joe]

From another thread, 

Quote

I was going through the mail today and came across the story of Stephen Smith and his interaction with James and Ellen White. Amazing testimony, we need to understand how the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will come in these last days...

Stephen Smith and the Unopened Testimony - Adventist Review

In that article: 

James wrote: “When we arrived there, disunion existed among the brethren. They had been visited by Stephen Smith and Josiah Hart, who had tried to prejudice them against us. It had had a bad effect, but we went on with the meeting.

“The burden of the meeting was pointing out the errors of S. Smith, H. W. Allen, and the importance of church action as to the course of some brethren. Ellen had a vision and saw the frown of God was on us as a people, because the accursed thing was in the camp, that is, errors among us, and that the church must act, and the only way to do Brethren Allen and Smith good was to withdraw fellowship from them, in their present position. All acted on the light given, all received the vision, and, even to an individual, all raised the hand to withdraw fellowship from them.”

 

I wonder. With this LGBT thing in some places, do we have an accursed thing in the camp? 

What are your thoughts?

[hobie]

On 7/31/2026 at 4:39 PM, Asia Joe said:

From another thread, 

In that article: 

James wrote: “When we arrived there, disunion existed among the brethren. They had been visited by Stephen Smith and Josiah Hart, who had tried to prejudice them against us. It had had a bad effect, but we went on with the meeting.

“The burden of the meeting was pointing out the errors of S. Smith, H. W. Allen, and the importance of church action as to the course of some brethren. Ellen had a vision and saw the frown of God was on us as a people, because the accursed thing was in the camp, that is, errors among us, and that the church must act, and the only way to do Brethren Allen and Smith good was to withdraw fellowship from them, in their present position. All acted on the light given, all received the vision, and, even to an individual, all raised the hand to withdraw fellowship from them.”

 

I wonder. With this LGBT thing in some places, do we have an accursed thing in the camp? 

What are your thoughts?

But my nieces and nephews who know the truth and many others have held back from open sin in the camp per se. So we try to reach them with love and tenderness, and much prayers. What more can you do. Back in the day, you got blotted out of the church books just for being divorced, now it takes a federal case or worse to get someone taken out of the books

[Asia Joe]

20 hours ago, hobie said:

What more can you do.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. 

I really think the solution lies in the leadership. If the local conference is hiring and training pastors to effectively deal with these problems, then there would be progress. 

Through sermons and Bible studies, prayer meetings, and elder education, change could take place.  The major problem is there is not a desire to do so at any level. People have been conditioned to be tolerant of these issues. 

But the Bible shows us, that God is not tolerant of this.  In only 2 divisions out of 13, our church is tolerant. 

What saddens me is it appears the GC has abandoned those two divisions  and is concentrating on the other eleven. 

I am not criticizing them or saying they are wrong for abandoning NAD and IED (EU), it just makes me sad. Perhaps, the GC has so many problems—the war in Europe, the war in the Middle East, and other logistical challenges—that it cannot devote time and energy to these problems in NAD and IED. 

In Ukraine, where we had many losses, the leaders report directly to the GC, to avoid conflicts with other countries.  In China, there are many challenges, and they report to the GC. 

So it is possible that the GC may be understaffed and overwhelmed with challenges. 

 

Side Note: I cannot type an em dash on my keyboard, but my grammar checker can insert them for me. 🙂

 

[Asia Joe]

Instead of IED i should have typed,  EUD.  IED is an explosive.