That describes me to the letter. Yet, I still attend the Adventist church. I have been an elder of several different congregations. I am not leaving the church, but I am also not going to sit in the pew during SS and let something that I know is glaringly incorrect, but is found in the quarterly, go by unchallenged.
I think the reason we have a church that is often dysfunctional, judgmental, or simply incorrect, is because we don’t speak truth to error. God gave each of us a brain and a mouth, and either one of these is useless without the other.
That’s not true of me. I have become a thorn in more than one SS teacher’s side. I don’t deliberately try to antagonize but sometimes the teacher doesn’t like to be contradicted, and it makes it even more painful if I make a really strong point and back it up with a “proof text”. And for those who know me on this site, will also know how much I HATE “proof texts”, but sometimes a good text can make the point so much better than my perverted logic.
“No matter where you go, there you are” was first coined by the late Don Sherwood, the worlds greatest disk jockey back in the 50’s. He was on KSFO in San Francisco. His ratings were insanely bigger than anyone else before or sense. Anyone after that simply copied that phrase.
Adventism seems to be superficial. It looks more like the continuation of what the Hebrews had - a religion of “right and wrong” activity. It functions well through childhood into adolescence, but not much beyond that.
A book that directed me into other ways of looking at all this, was J.B.Phillips’ Your God is Too Small.
I read it in college, along wit C.S.Lewis, and between these two authors, my thinking couldn’t go back to the “right/wrong” religious experience that Adventism requires. That’s not to say there are no deep thinkers in Adventism, but they’re not the ones driving the denomination.
There are all kinds of religious experiences and most people aren’t theologians; and in some respects all religion is only skimming the surface, but there doesn’t seem to be an invitation to dig deeper than behavioural adjustments. It’s as though the framework is in place, but they ran out funds to complete the job.
I’m an East Coast guy for the most part and though I lived a couple years in LA during the early part of the 20 teens, I never heard of Don Sherwood.
So I googled him but can’t find any evidence that he ever coined this phrase (good reads.com attributes it to Confucius), can’t find anyone who says he has the highest ratings of all time (didn’t see him In anyone’s top ten), and it seems his claim to being “World’s Greatest DJ” is similar to Howard Stern’s insistence that he is “King of All Media”, i.e., unsubstantiated self promotion.
Obviously BB wasn’t the first one to say something to the effect that you take yourself with you wherever you go, but I never said that he did. I just remembered it from that movie and thought the song they were starting to play was kinda cool and wanted to hear more so I found it on YouTube.
(Not much to do with leaving church or god, I suppose, unless he, she or it, as the creator of all things, is also the producer of every film ever made?!?!)
You are right, Ellen remains untouchable in the A Church. What Allen @ajshep said is what may be on paper, but in practice EGW remains the fundamental pillar of the AC, the final word on doctrine.
I can only imagine the reaction in a church if a candidate to baptism stated from the baptismal tank “I accept only 27 out of the 28 FBs, I do not accept EGW!”
The A Church will NEVER change, it is what it is. Actually, it’s become worse under Ted Wilson, it’s been gradually radicalized, and even LGT has made progress infiltrating the camp pretty avidly because TW is also a LGTarian (by self confession in his sermon during the AC-2018 on Saturday morning).
Considering all that we know about heresies like 1844, the fraudulence in EGW’s writings, and the Adventist’s tactics of duping people, I too no longer subscribe to Adventism. I try to avoid hearing about Adventism, or even speaking about it. But I made an exception today…
The funny-as in profoundly sad-thing about all of Mrs. White’s “foibles” is that if the diehard EGW sycophants heard even one tenth of what we know to be true of her about any other purported prophet, they would reject out of hand the assertion that such a person could ever be god’s messenger.
For example, SDA’s reasonably reject Joseph Smith’s claims that Jesus visited North America because there isn’t a shred of evidence for such a sojourn and therefore rightfully denounce him as a false prophet. However, Dudley Canfield provided a litany of EGW prophecies that simply proved to be wrong-for example, Britain did not seize the opportunity of the American Civil War to retake her former colonies in the US-and still the believers say “Well, you just don’t understand!” or “Maybe it’s still gonna happen.”
So, since they won’t consider the possibility that they could be wrong about EGW, and that she too failed the “True Prophet Test”, I’m convinced her most loyal followers would gladly attempt to annex Austria and invade Poland on the denomination’s behalf if this had been required by one of her nightmare…I mean “visions”!!!
Further, those who defend her on the grounds that her “gifts” have been misused make me particularly sick at heart, not only because those gifts were misused on me from birth, but because she herself did this on so many occasions. For example, any honest, objective person who’s read Dr. Kellogg’s vociferous objections to the condescending, deceitful manner in which Mrs. White tried to use things she claimed to have “seen in a vision” but which simply had not happened, in an attempt to abet the GC’s efforts to wrest The San from his control will, be disabused of the idea that she was a gentle matron, lovingly chastening a child in her letters as quickly as Churchill rejected any notion of appeasing “Little Corporal Schicklgruber”.
I was in radio for 55 years, both as a DJ and most of it as an engineer. I do know about the 50"s ratings, which were much different than todays. But here is Don Sherwood’s numbers; In one book he had a 70 share of the SF market. What that means is that 70% of the people listening to radio in the AM during his show were listening to him while the other 45 stations in San Francisco shared the other 30%. No one has ever done this before or sense anywhere. Now, in major markets a 3 or 4 share is considered a big number. He was considered SF’s bad boy, he would come in late, his show started at 6AM, but he would be out partying the night before and would stroll in at 6:30 to 7:00 while his engineer, Carter B. Smith ran the show until he arrived.
Maybe you can’t find it online, but I actually heard him say it a number of times on the air. His other saying that may or may not be documented was “out of the mud grows a Lotus”. I know all of this is meaningless to most of the readers here. But Mr. Sherwood was a Legon. Gene Autry, who owned KSFO, had a contract with him in which they paid him $1,000 a month for life, to never work for another station in the market.
But SF population in 1950 was around 800,000, so about 550,000 heard Don Sherwood on the radio.
A 3.0 share of 350,000,000 is about ten times that number.
In other words, while he was a local “Legon” (sic) and in some peoples minds-both his and some of his fans-statistical data says most people in America had never heard of him and he was a marginal historical figure compared to many disk jockeys of more recent times.
Further, while I don’t doubt that he said “No matter where you go there you are”, anymore than I’ve heard many others use the phrase ever since, I’m convinced all of them were copying the wisdom of some other, older and much more historically significant sage.
You’re missing a big something. San Francisco has been about 1 million for the past 75 years because it is land locked on 3 sides. But the SF Radio market is 7+ million. That number might have been smaller in 1950 but it still was a very large number. And that would have been the population base. Don Sherwood was the world’s greatest DJ. I think most radio people in the know, would agree. But like you said, I am sure no one else cares. It has been the 6th largest radio market for many years. It may be even much bigger now. I am using numbers from at least 15 years ago when I had all the radio markets in my head. I engineered stations in the 3 of the top 10 markets, so I do have some history.
If anyone had evidence to show that I shouldn’t have stopped going to church because Jesus himself showed up at theirs last Saturday, that would be “a big something”.
Otherwise, I find the DJ topic achingly trivial but here’s a piece from SF Gate you might find absolutely fascinating:
Interestingly, I also rad those two, but have found Adventism to reflect the best of God’s greatness and goodness. It is not just right and wrong, good as those are for the youth as you have noted (I am forever thankful I avoided smoking), but the reality of a great God, how created life, not by cruel evolution, but by a spare and sparse call into existence. Death was not the hero, and I don’t know of another religion that has not gotten mixed up in that.
I have found nothing to be ashamed of in Adventist theology. So I am content.
Hmmm. Thought it was the Bible. I think for instance, the she encourages vegetarianism, and was herself one, in the end, but it is not required for membership. And the IJ is supported in the Bible. 2 Cor 5:10, and I have not heard this text refuted (Christians before the judgment seat of God)
I am a bit surprised, as you still seemed a believer. Sorry about that.
I actually ask myself, “Why did it take me so long?” After all, I may be indeed a “fool” (as you once said… )
Fact is, Allen, that I am a believer, but not on the adventists heresies, and much less on the fraudulent issues related to Ellen White. Adventism is, in my view, the Church of Ellen White, not the Church of God. And a Church cannot be of both of them, because they are incompatible. But this is just my conclusion after learning so much about those controversial issues, and I am not in any way trying to persuade anybody about my conclusions. Dupe me once, shame on you…dupe me twice, shame on me. Oh no, no, no!
I don’t know your SDA background (born one or came to it later and at what age). Growing up, church, as such, was not in my experience (officially Lutheran). We went to church Christmas Eve and Easter - but, I was always aware of God (thanks to my mom). Long story short, I was baptized at 16 - not because, like my husband, who thought you couldn’t go on to sixth grade unless you were. And I, too, am grateful I was. It put me on the right track.
Over the years, I kept searching because something about it seemed empty. Not until I did a serious study of all the high points of Adventist theology, did I began questioning it seriously, and this after four years at AUC and a minor in Adventist Religion. What’s missing is Christian assurance. Adventism is all about appearance - how you look to others; and ultimately you’re left wondering - “am I doing enough?”.
An ardent SDA/EGW I once knew, was practicing his SDA faith like a Catholic he once was; but didn’t have the candles and the confessional - so in the end, he questioned out loud, “I don’t think I’m good enough”, as he lay dying. That should never be the point of it all. The Gospel tells us, we are never good enough, but the love of God, through Christ is. Because I am forgiven, I will show my gratitude through the life I choose to live. Adventism does not say that. Adventism requires commitment to the church, not gratitude.
I’m sure Adventism will say this is their fault and that they didn’t read EGW enough, correctly or with the right attitude, etc.
I’m pretty sure the exact opposite is the case.
And I’m absolutely sure of this: no one has talked to Jesus, in the flesh, for the past two thousand years,.
So even if it takes another two billion millennia for him to return “quickly”, I’m gonna wait till he gets here to tell me what it means to be a Christian.
Sometime after that-maybe another lifetime or two?!?!-I’ll decide if I want to be one.
Of course, I’m not gonna just take his word for it, like I did with EGW.
