Like the claims of Donald Trump… she could have gone out on 5th Ave., and shot people to death, and her base would still support her.
Thanks…
Frank
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Yes, and that gay people are born that way and is it a normal part of the human experience (as is actually recognized in the bible - which we choose to ignore.)
And that, just as it turns out the earth is not the center of the cosmos as the church once taught, it is also about 5 billion years old and has supported forms of life for most of that time.
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I have to say, the beliefs have left. They actually left well before I did. But it’s still weirdly interesting, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
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“Achieve” ?
Who says that any helpless sinner can ‘achieve’ anything ‘right’ with ‘filthy rags’ and ‘spots’ that even a ‘leopard’ can’t ‘remove’ ?
Does an embryo-fetus-infant ‘achieve’ its own conception, development and birth ? No way !
The ongoing argument between pro-LGT and anti-LGT SDA factions is apparently centered over such a confused ‘division of powers’ regarding just who is responsible for ‘re-creating’ the ‘character’ of Christ, anywhere in anyone. Meanwhile, the most obvious answer is that the Creator and re-Creator – Christ – alone, can ‘re-produce’ His own heart-character anywhere in anyone, or He lied to Nicodemus regarding the ‘new birth’.
(Clearly this ‘born again’ route is not one of the “only two ways” you are willing to consider. Why ? Can’t our Perfect Creators Create and re-Create ‘perfection’ as They please, whenever and wherever they are allowed to do so ? Can’t our Creators give Their own perfection to us as a free gift that They alone can create and maintain ? Adam gave his ‘fallen flesh’ to us as a free gift, and we gladly maintain that fallen flesh . . . but Christ – the New, ‘2nd’ Adam – can’t give His perfect heart-character to us as a free gift with an eternally-extended warranty ? How is such a forbidding exclusion fair to Christ, our Creator and re-Creator ? It’s not at all fair, unless He is the work our hands, and not we of His !)
Imagine a new-born baby bragging – if they were not helpless to do so – about how they themselves attracted their 2 separate parents into the same place at the same time, then achieved the ‘sex act’ for them, united the sperm and egg, delivered the morula to the womb, spread out a placenta of food, and built themselves into a viable human being, cut their own umbilical and nursed themselves . . . all the way to maturity.
The new-born Israeli nation of slaves might as well have boasted about ‘achieving’ the delivering of themselves from Egyptian captivity and parting the Red Sea for themselves. (If only Spartacus had known that he could have simply parted the Mediterranean sea from Italy to Sicily instead of being betrayed by the Cilician pirates he had hired, just when he needed them most ! )
Or, imagine the King David, singing this Psalm 51 version to his Creator after shacking up with Uriah the Hittite’s wife, getting her pregnant and then calling his loyal warrior-servant and cuckold, Uriah, home from battle to sleep with his wife, Bathsheba, in order to conceal the fact that his King, David, was not worth fighting for:
“. . . I will create in me a clean heart, O God, and I will renew a right Spirit within me . . . and then . . . well, then . . . what in the world do I need You for, anyway, God ?”
No, ‘clean hearts’ are not created from filthy ones, and babies don’t conceive and give birth to and nurture themselves.
The Creator ‘plants’ the ‘seed’ of His own perfect and gracious character into the ‘heart’ of hopeless human minds as they simply ‘behold’ in His living being – either with eyeballs, or with imagination – what they have repeatedly failed to ‘reproduce’ in themselves, by ‘beholding’ merely words of ‘law’ instead. (see Note below) A ‘law’ merely engraved in dead stone that can produce no living ‘fruit’, because the one beholding that stony law still hopelessly lacks any good ‘seed’ either from it or from themselves, to plant within themselves. Dead stone from dead stone. Where is the ‘Life’ to be found ?
( Note: ‘law’-- Such a ‘checklist’ ‘law’ is merely a ‘recipe’ for the ‘Cake’ that the living Christ is, in His own ‘heart’. In Christ’s heart both a good conscience resided when he was very publicly ministering to His own human peers in willing obedience to His Father’s will . . . and a bad conscience resided when the accumulated evil ‘guilt’ of all of his human peers’ own evil ‘consciences’ sucked the life out of Him in Gethsemane and at Golgotha, although He Himself never once sinned to generate such guilt feelings. He was ‘made to be sin for us’, yet He did not sin for us. If Christ was unable to feel guilt, then why was He ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmities’ in Gethsemane and at Golgotha, even when he was very physically fit ? Clearly ‘infirmities’ here involves ‘spiritual’ infirmities, not physical. But, why must we assume that ‘conscience’ is only useful if it can detect evil ?
At the age of 12 how were Hebrew children to become ‘sons of the law’ – ‘Bar/Bat Mitzvah’ – if they only had a conscientious understanding of ‘evil’ to motivate them to do any ‘good’, but no ‘good’ conscience to motivate them to do any ‘good’, with the pure motives that the ‘law written in the heart’ produces ? Even among the Jews there was once an understanding that to neglect doing good was to do evil. But, ‘neglect’ implies a temporary lack of a motivating conscience, either good or evil. Which ‘good’ deed would you rather have done toward you ? One motivated by an ‘evil’, grudging conscience ? . . . or one motivated by ‘good’, generous conscience ?)
The Creator, plants, tends and waters the seed of His own perfect character in receptive human hearts, and when that seed is ‘ripe’ a.k.a. ‘perfect’ and reproducing seeds of the same quality as those of His own that He planted, He immediately harvests the new ‘perfect’ ‘ripe’ crop home, before it rots in the ‘field’. The ‘heart’ of the sinner’s brain merely provides the barren field in which the Creator does His own perfect work.
That ‘heart’ is the place of ‘motive’ (‘And I will – even – move you to keep my law.’) which God described in the New Covenant that Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote out for the captives in Babylon. As ‘Helen’ White once described it in commenting on the widow and her mite, “It is the motive that gives character to our acts, stamping them with ignominy or with high moral worth.” (Notice that she is also describing the ‘seal of God’ from Revelation, as a ‘stamping’ or a ‘characterizing’ of a ‘high moral worth’ on ‘acts’ according to the quality of the heart-‘motive’ that has motivated those acts. Such a ‘high moral worth’ corresponds to the ‘transcript of God’s character’ – the ‘moral law’ – once characterized in Hebrew letters in mere stone, but also ‘characterized’ in the heart of Christ, the first, primary ‘Son’ of the New Covenant. See Psalm 40:8.)
So, when Christ, the Creator of all ‘perfect’ ‘mature’ or ‘ripe’ things is allowed by the helpless sinner to replace the ‘character’ of their own self-centered heart-motives with the trans-planting of His own other-centered heart-motives, they can in no way claim any credit for providing the ‘perfect seed’, caring for and watering that seed perfectly, until it reproduces the same perfect seed that Christ planted in the formerly barren soil of their heart . . . neither can they take credit, even, for harvesting that perfect seed home to the Creator’s ‘barns’. (If I could, I’d fly there now, far away from SDA confusion ! Better to die a sinner in Heaven’s peace, than in the confusion of this Hellish SDA war over unsymmetrical, biased half-truths on Earth.)
No, the 'perfect reproduction of Christ’s perfect character in the helpless sinner, from beginning to end – from Alpha to Omega – is a Creative act of the Creator, and not a ‘Horatio Alger’ act of a ‘self-made-human’ sinner, lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps. Like the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, all the helpless sinner can do is to choose whether or not to allow the Creator of all perfect things to plant, reproduce, and harvest His perfect seed in the barren soil of their self-centered, lonesome ‘hearts’.
For a helpless-sinner to attempt to do anything more to ‘change’ our own ‘spots’ would be for a created being to place themselves in competition with their Creator. And, first Heaven, and then Earth, has witnessed such, ‘How’s that workin’ for ya ?’ futility for thousands of years, now. The ‘new birth’ is a completely ‘new creation’, not merely a rotted one remodeled by the contractor from Hell ! Sorry, Horatio !
Once both sides of the ongoing fruitless ‘LGT’ debate over the wrong ‘model’ of just how, and by whom, the ‘character of Christ is perfectly (a.k.a. ‘ripely’, ‘maturely’. . . ) reproduced in His people’ (in the helpless soil of their hearts, which is their only feeble contribution to the process) and turn to the right ‘model’ where the Creator does the creating and planting and harvesting . . . and the creat-ed stop proudly competing with Him . . . then both sides will finally have nothing more worth competing with each other over.
Who really wants to hire and to struggle to help the contractor from Hell paint over a moldy old failed heart-character, when the Heavenly Creator is waiting to create a completely new and perfect one, and fill it with His own Healthy, Right Spirit to keep it that way for eternity ?
Apparently the same situation exists in the frustrating perpetual ‘LGT’ debates as existed when little ‘stripling’ David visited his older brothers with King Saul in the Valley of Elah, and no fighting-man of Israel could be found to face the God-defying 10-foot tall Goliath. The ‘stripling’, David, placed no confidence in the armour of King Saul, nor in the ‘armies’ of Israel – no single man of which had confidence even in themselves (Not even King Saul !) – but the stripped-down stripling’s confidence was in Israel’s God, alone, Whom Goliath and the Philistines defied and competed against.
Is it any wonder that the ‘stripling’ David was a man after Christ’s own heart ? And as ‘stripling’ David stalked across no-man’s-land to defy those who defied His Creator, the heart-character of Christ, Himself, perfectly reproduced Itself in the otherwise barren soil of that stripling’s heart. Goliath didn’t stand a chance against the motivating force of such a ‘perfect’ reproduction of Christ’s own heart-character. And to think that each one of Israel’s thousands of fighting men thought it was to be up to themselves – all alone – to face Giant Goliath in battle ! ? What a ‘Gotcha’ ! Any one of them could have done just what the little unarmored ‘stripling’ did.
Perhaps SDA-Israel’s ‘fighting-men’ would do better to stop humiliating our Creator, stop fighting over which of us helpless sinners will win the prize in the battle against the Goliath ‘sin’ in our barren hearts, simply let Christ’s own heart-character fight for Itself there, and finally fight and win that battle for us all. Why should both the armies of the Philistine god and the armies of SDA-Israel’s God be in agreement in defying the Living God and Creator, Christ, Our Righteousness ? Christ, is ironically, both the perfect ‘Sprout out of the stump of Jesse’ – the ‘Son’ of that perfectly-motivated Stripling, David, the ‘Beloved’ man after God’s own heart – and David’s God ! Both the ‘Omega’ and the ‘Alpha’ of our ‘faith’ and our ‘salvation’ from sin and guilt, not in sin and guilt.
The only ‘LGT’ worth defending is the right working ‘model’ that the ‘stripling’ King David – a ‘king’ not even worth fighting for – prayed for in Psalm 51, and gladly received as a free gift from his Creator and ‘Son’, the Christ:
“Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part you shall make me to know wisdom (NOT ‘I shall make me to know wisdom!’). . . .
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence; and take not your Holy Spirit from me…
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
(But a self-sufficient, proud heart does despise God.)
This is not the prayer of a self-made ‘conservative’ righteous man like Horatio Alger, neither is it the prayer of a ‘liberal’ Judas, wishing to force Christ to break faith with His Heavenly Father and rule on Earth, alone, in harmony with ‘sin’. It is the prayer of a crushed Peter who has fallen on the ‘Rock’, and broken while realizing the futility of claiming to be able to create and faithfully maintain righteousness in the motivations of his own double-minded heart, without the continual presence of Christ, Himself, in his heart through the Healing Spirit that David begged God not to take away from him. Not a few hours earlier Peter had promised, “I’ll never forsake you, Jesus, though all the others do . . . ‘Jesus ALL !’ . . . ‘More Jesus!’ . . . .”:
"Peter denied the Man of sorrows in his acquaintance with grief in the hour of his humiliation. But he afterward repented and was reconverted. He had true contrition of soul, and gave himself afresh to his Saviour. With blinding tears he makes his way to the solitudes of the garden of Gethsemane, and there prostrates himself where he saw his Saviour’s prostrate form, when the bloody sweat was forced from his pores by his great agony. Peter remembers with remorse that he was asleep when Jesus prayed during those fearful hours. His proud heart breaks, and penitential tears moisten the sods so recently stained with the bloody sweat-drops of God’s dear Son. He left that garden a converted man. He was ready then to pity the tempted. He was humbled, and could sympathize with the weak and erring. He could caution and warn the presumptuous, and was fully fitted to strengthen his brethren.—Testimonies for the Church 3:416. {GW92 401.1}
In other words, Peter was finally touched with the feelings of his brethrens’ infirmities, because he finally recognized them as his own. And in consequence of that recognition Peter also recognized his complete dependence on the righteous character of Christ to re-Create in him a new heart and a right Spirit.
Now, the questions are:
What if Peter had refused to acknowledge the re-Creative power of Christ and His ability to re-Produce His Own perfect character in Peter’s heart ?
How, then, would Peter have differed from Judas ?
Wouldn’t Peter have gone out and hung himself, hopelessly, too ?
Try telling Peter that, “That there are only two ways of achieving spiritual “perfection”.”
Or, did Peter go right back out of Gethsemane and commit the sin of ‘presumption’, by proclaiming to Jesus and the Eleven that he – all alone – could produce enough righteous motive in his own heart in order to never forsake Jesus. . . I don’t think so.
. . . why does the picture of Bill Murray lashed helplessly to the mast of a sailboat, and crying out, “I’m Sailing ! I’m Sailing ! . . .” come to mind ?
If it takes a thousand years for the production of the first one, then it will take another thousand years for the next one. She seems to think–without realizing it–that people will very gradually change for for a very long time. But the people will have been preoccupied with being dead for this very long time.
[quote=“spectrumbot, post:1, topic:18120”]
“We desperately need to return to our Adventist roots”
Ah the good old do-loop.
It may have been Einstein who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
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Ray,
I appreciate your comments and want to thank you for continuing to proclaim the gospel in them. I hope this comment will encourage you to continue to share this wonderful truth.
I have followed your conversation on this thread and hope I can add something that could clarify things a bit.
I think one point that divides you from others is that you understand spiritual realities that people such as Jeremy consider symbolism, metaphor, fantasy and escapism (to use a few of his words). To you they are truths in the spiritual realm, to him they are ‘the most childish naivety’. Yet Christ said we must have the faith of children to see the kingdom. Like children, right now we understand little and must trust much.
I believe Jeremy is a product of his ‘cultural sensibilities’ and as a modern, rational man they inform him that the things of the spirit that you believe and Paul described are not real. Hence, he must do something himself and rely on some sort of mixture including the old covenant way of lawkeeping for salvation. He says we must ‘do our best’ to keep the law and Christ will make up the difference. I believe he is putting a mixture of old and new wine in his wine skins.
You understand that a new way of salvation apart from lawkeeping has been given to us. Thank you for sharing it and what Christ has done for you. The law demands that the sinful, selfish, Adamic man you were born suffer the death penalty for his sins. On the cross, God put you in the last Adam, and you were crucified with Christ, so legally your sin debt was paid. You have died to the law through the body of Christ. The law no longer has a claim on you. In God’s eyes you have paid the penalty of the law. Praise God! The legal death of your old, sinful, outer man means that God has implanted new creation, resurrection life within you (Christ in you) to replace him. God has not seen fit to remove the sinful man of the flesh physically yet. You are pregnant with this Seed of Christ within (as was Mary physically with Christ). He is still growing and will come forth at the time of your glorification. Our ‘job’, like Mary’s, is to nurture this new life.
Our faith is to receive these things of the spirit, this gospel, which God has given through the words of Paul.
I think another difficulty you have with Jeremy’s view is the way he uses passages that describe our efforts and works in his effort to show they are essential for salvation.
Firstly, some like to use old covenant admonitions for this purpose. For example, they repeatedly use Christ’s exchange with the rich, young ruler.
PLEASE try to understand - everything between the giving of the law at Sinai and the cross was in the time of the old covenant. Christ was very careful in His words to the RYR because all this man knew was salvation by keeping the law. He could never have understood that a radical, new way of salvation springing from the grace of God and the amazing gift of Christ was coming. The RYR’s ‘cultural sensibilities’ couldn’t have have handled this truth. That’s why someone else, Paul, had to explain the new covenant to us after the cross.
Secondly, I believe that some passages written after the cross that speak of works and efforts to achieve something are being misused. Jeremy cited 1Cor 9:27. The passage says that Paul was striving for something he called the upward call of God which he had not yet achieved. He was talking about running a race and winning a prize. He was hoping he would not be disqualified and someday attain it.
PLEASE try to understand - in the books of Romans and Galatians Paul carefully explained that salvation is a gift we claim solely by faith in what Christ has done for us. He is not contradicting himself here. We are so preoccupied with our own salvation we can’t see that Paul is talking about something else.
The Bible tells us that some will be chosen for positions of authority in the coming kingdom. I believe Paul wants to be more than a citizen, he wants to be a servant- leader under Christ. Three such positions mentioned are priests (Is 66:21; Rev 5:10; 20:6), judges (Matt 19:28; 1Cor 6:2-3) and rulers or administrators (Dan 7:22; Luke 19:17-19; Rev 5:10; 20:4&6). I believe one of the purposes of the IJ of our works is to chose people to fill those positions. Thus the issue in the IJ based on our works is not our salvation.
Our good works cannot and will not save us. Our bad works cannot and will not cause us to lose our salvation. But I believe we will be rewarded for our good works and punished or chastised (and corrected) for our bad works. PLEASE read 1Cor 3:11-15.
I hope this comment has served to clarify some points of dispute.
@vandieman
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QUESTION –
From the Bible [Bible only] how do I prove to someone that during the 7 last
plagues the “saved” have to live without a mediator and remain “sinless”?
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In our church this weekend, the Scripture reading was the story of the Prodigal Son. That is Jesus’ teaching! It does not portray a father waiting for his son to be perfect before welcoming him home. In fact, it portrays a father waiting on his “front porch” watching for his son to return home. There are absolutely no conditions (reform, perfection, etc.) attached to the father’s welcome. One teaching after another from Jesus’ ministry portrays God’s unconditional love.
This is antithetical to LGT!
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Did Jesus teach about the 7 last plagues? Or even seem to infer anything about them?
Continuing the discussion from Defending Last Generation Theology:
EGW:“When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He shall come to claim them as His own.”
What? No scriptures that first must be fulfilled? No thus it is written?
“It wasn’t God’s plan for us to still be here,” Dr. McNulty said in his opening address on “Why Jesus Waits.”
Wasn’t God’s plan? Really? McNulty obviously doesn’t have a very high opinion of God and who He is. He implies that God is impotent and doesn’t have a plan.
We don’t often look at it from God’s point of view, he suggested, to realize that we might be delaying Him.
We might be delaying God’s Kingdom? This is the kind of message that directly undermines God’s word and His authority and it all started with EGW.
Exhibit A: Judas
EGW: In connecting this man with Himself, He placed him where he might, day by day, be brought in contact with the outflowing of His own unselfish love. If he would open his heart to Christ, divine grace would banish the demon of selfishness, and even Judas might become a subject of the kingdom of God. DA 294.3
Take special note of the word “If” that EGW uses. So much for the integrity of God’s word and the necessity for its fulfillment.
EGW: When he came into association with Jesus, he had some precious traits of character that might have been made a blessing to the church. If he had been willing to wear the yoke of Christ, he might have been among the chief of the apostles; DA 295.4
Note again the offending “If”. As if the holy scriptures that foretold Judas’ betrayal are of no consequence in the outcome. This is EGW’s MO. it suggests to the reader that maybe the scripture didn’t need to be fulfilled. Maybe Judas really could have actually been one of the chief apostles. I think we know better.
EGW: The history of Judas presents the sad ending of a life that might have been honored of God. Had Judas died before his last journey to Jerusalem he would have been regarded as a man worthy of a place among the twelve, and one who would be greatly missed. The abhorrence which has followed him through the centuries would not have existed but for the attributes revealed at the close of his history.
Again she introduces an incidious alternative narrative that suggests that God’s word is of no consequence in the outcome. in other words, God’s word is impotent when it comes to deciding the destiny of His Kingdom. It’s the exact same mentality displayed by McNulty (That there is something we can do to hurry up God’s Kingdom). The idea doesn’t occur to him that maybe his understanding of the Kingdom is wrong.
Here’s another one of EGW’s insidious statements that undermines faith in God’s word.
EGW: Could Satan in the least particular have tempted Christ to sin, he would have bruised the Savior’s head. As it was, he could only touch His heel. Had the head of Christ been touched, the hope of the human race would have perished. Divine wrath would have come upon Christ as it came upon Adam. Christ and the church would have been without hope.
Here again she introduces an alternative narrative that she says could have happened even though Genesis said no such thing. Statements like these directly undermine faith in the authority of God’s word and create doubt in the minds of readers.
Contrast EGW’s and McNulty’s wishy washy stance on God’s word with the Gospel of Matthew.
Matt. 26: 24 The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.”
31 Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written:
‘I will strike the Shepherd,
And the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
32 But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.”
33 Peter answered and said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.”
How did that work out for Peter? No amount of resolve could overturn what was already written!
52 But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? 54 How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?”
Must happen thus!
55 In that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, “Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to take Me? I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple, and you did not seize Me. 56 But all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.”
That the scriptures might be fulfilled!
Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled.
Matt. 27: But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.” 7 And they consulted together and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. 8 Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
9 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, 10 and gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”
Acts 1:15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples (altogether the number of names was about a hundred and twenty), and said, 16 “Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus; 17 for he was numbered with us and obtained a part in this ministry.”
18 (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. 19 And it became known to all those dwelling in Jerusalem; so that field is called in their own language, Akel Dama, that is, Field of Blood.)
20 “For it is written in the Book of Psalms:
‘Let his dwelling place be desolate,
And let no one live in it’;
and,
‘Let another take his office.’
The difference between EGW and the New Testament writers when it comes to the integrity of the scriptures is like night and day.
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My great grandmother (deceased), grand parents (deceased), and father (deceased) thought they would see Christ while they were alive. Did not happen. Only Christ knows when he will return, and not the LGT believers. It does not hurt to hope for His return in our lifetime. But to take a stand as the LGT group / believers do is the same mistake the early Adventist believers made when predicting the return of Christ in 1844. They are likely to be disappointed.
Just being a LGT believer assumes they themselves have reached perfection. What arrogance!
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Sacramento Central Church is run by people who support LGT, not to be confused withLGBT, It’s hardcore Old Guard legalism. I believe it was Central church that had COM (Coming Out Ministries) speak there with their “stories” trying to tell people they were “redeemed” from homosexuality. This was the church that Doug Batchelor pastored for a long time. It shows. He now pastors the new church that is called Granite Bay, east of greater Sacramento. Good name for that church, because Batchelor’s theology is hard as granite. One thing nice about Sacramento is there are several Adventist churches in that metropolitan area, so you can always attend a church nearby that is more to your liking if you can’t handle the neanderthal LGT theology of Central.
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LGT stands for Longtime Getting There. Like a mirage of water in a desert, perfection is always just ahead, but the faster you run toward it, it remains just out of your reach. You will only get thirstier, and drop dead trying to get to it. @GeorgeTichy @elmer_cupino
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Continuing the discussion from Defending Last Generation Theology:
vandieman: …a future prophet will know more than egw…
It looks like anyone can be a prophet then.
I love the gospel in the Seventh-day Adventist church and by this I am talking about the fundamental beliefs that the church that have been established as a statement of faith. Many here I see at odds with the church standing on doctrines. I don’t know why, it is all clearly laid out in scriptures. There is nothing wrong with the Investigative Judgment nor Sister White. Last Generation Theology is to the glory of God not heresy. Not so different to what our Lord said really. Be ye holy for I am holy. I am sure the disciples were prep by our Lord for Penticost. So to the latter rain, the outpouring of God’s Spirit in a greater measure are of upmost importance to the finishing of the work. There is no need to get up in arms about living a holy life. God has precious promises. He has given us the divine Spirit. He is able to keep us from falling. If God be for us who can be against us. We do not focus on law, we put it in its right perspective. As Paul says, “Not the hearers of the law are just before God but the doers of the law shall be justified.” Romans 2:13. Let’s not fret about the doing, for we have Phil 2:13 as a promise.
David, thank you for your comments. They are very much appreciated and I think you have clarified some very interesting points. There’s so much to challenge us in understanding the new covenant. I couldn’t help but think of Christ’s words to the woman at the well when you spoke of the spiritual nature of Paul’s gospel. “God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” It’s perhaps the key that unlocks our understanding of Christ’s finished work on the cross and His resurrection.
There’s one thing that encourages me about Paul and that is the direct revelation of the gospel that he received from Christ. Whether it was face-to-face or in vision I’m not sure but it gave him an incredible insight into the new covenant of grace.
As for the other apostles and early disciples, there’s something I often overlooked in Acts 1. Christ met with the whole group over a period of 40 days teaching them about the kingdom of God and He presented Himself alive by many convincing proofs. What an experience to hear it all direct from the Lord Himself. John and Peter and James knew what they were writing about, as did Paul.
Grace and peace was in every greeting to the saints… That same grace and peace is ours today in Christ. The world needs to hear that.
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dave, i think you’ve clarified what you yourself, and possibly ray, believe, but there’s no chance that your comments are going to be accepted by any serious student of the bible and egw…in particular, you don’t appear to understand that christ was “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world”, Rev 13:8, meaning that his sacrifice was operational in an imputed, justification-oriented sense before even the old covenant was operational…as egw says so well:
“Under the new covenant, the conditions by which eternal life may be gained are the same as under the old—perfect obedience.” Lt 276, 1904.
what changed under the new covenant wasn’t the way in which fallen humanity is redeemed…what changed was fallen humanity’s opportunity to understand that redemption - something intimated as early as the days of jeremiah:
“I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts”, Jer 31:33;
of isaiah:
“Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law”, Is 51:7;
of david:
“I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart”, Ps 40:8;
and in fact moses:
“And thou shalt love the LORD they God with all thine heart, and with all they soul, and with all they might”, Deut 6:5…
as christ himself has timelessly said:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments”, Jn 14:15…
what we can logically conclude from a full reading of both testaments, and even more clearly from egw, is that enoch was saved through a combination of his spirit-directed heart efforts and the imputed perfection of christ just like we stand to be saved…at no point since even before the creation of the world has god been limited by events in linear time, so that the merits of jesus could only be applied once they physically happened, as you appear to suggest…jesus’ directive to the rich young ruler wasn’t tailored to an old covenant form of redemption that no longer applies…instead it was just the counsel he would give to us today were he physically with us now…the notion that people under the old covenant were saved through their own obedience, without christ’s obedience, and that since the new covenant we’re save through christ’s obedience, without our own obedience, is an example of the singularly superficial reading of scripture we find in evangelicalism today…
i would say that what you’re presenting, which is a variation of fordian passive sanctification, is possibly even more insidious than LGT…that is, while LGT fails to recognize the ongoing operation of justification beyond an initial conversion experience, you are failing to recognize the foundational operation of sanctification - of the importance of active obedience in the justification process - called for in john the baptist’s message…love and a heart experience in christ are in no way antithetical to obedience…in fact they are two sides of the same coin (see Hebrews 11)…while i would agree that it is possible to render outward obedience without a true heart experience, i disagree completely that it is possible to receive and retain a true heart experience without all-out obedience:
“And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But who’s keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him.” 1Jn 2:3-5.
Jeremy, can you please explain this in a succinct way? What did Des teach about it?
But please, don’t just “say it;” this needs reall corroboration using some kind of source directly from Des Ford. Now that he is no longer with us, we have to be careful because people are already putting way too many words in his mouth, especially his passionate detractors.
@gford1
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And we should care…why? 
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Very well put. Adventists have to read most of the bible as allegorical to allow for their eisegesis to be perceived as exegesis.
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