I can’t. Affirming something you don’t believe is a lie. In this context it’s a very damaging lie.
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Well, Tim, the world isn’t always black and white. But I get your point. There is just a certain amount of acting that one can stand in a job. But every job needs acting once in a while. No one can be 100% pure. The question is: Where is the line that one cannot cross? And in this case, it’s effecting a whole Adventist world, so to speak.
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How is voting for something that you can see is nonsense acting? I guess that’s a new concept for me.
I agree that this is impacting the whole Adventist world, and so it is way, way, way past the line.
I would say that when delegates are asked to vote that they agree with or don’t agree with a statement such as this, they actually can be 100% pure. And, such a proposition really is rather is black and white. It’s a binary vote.
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We know that politics is involved in such a voting process. So, yes, acting can play a role, even behind a binary vote. Or call it pretending out of fear. I was thinking about this lately, especially since the discussion about the article The 175 Years Great Disappointment. Votes aren’t always pure and without agendas. I don’t accuse the representatives of acting, but I’m not naive either, and just thought your suggested possibility of fear of job loss through.
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If so, then Ellen was right:
“Yet we hear that the voice of the Conference is the voice of God. Every time I have heard this, I thought it was almost blasphemy. The voice of the Conference ought to be the voice of God, but it is not, because some in connection with it are not men of faith and prayer, they are not men of elevated principle. ” April 1, 1901, Ms. 37-1901.
Men of elevated principle will vote their conscience, their beliefs. These, then, are men of politics, of self preservation. They would rather keep their jobs in a corrupt organization than express their beliefs honestly.
If we can’t even be honest about the nature of the bible, there is nothing to the church except the self-preserving corporate structure.
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We will never know what motivated them, and what will motivate them when the EGW statement will be put to a vote. As @niteguy2 and @cfowler wrote, the results are and will be terrible: The non-specific “correct inaccurate interpretations” leaves room for classifying almost all unwanted interpretations as heretical.
edit: And the Bible Statement brings us back to the age of fundamentalism. Our understanding of the person as inspired was a shield against fundamentalism. Now broken…
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There seems to be a limited pick list of motivations:
- They really buy this sophomoric approach to scripture.
- They don’t, but they vote that they do.
- They care so little that they don’t pay attention to what they are voting on.
None of these options are acceptable to me.
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Btw, I appreciate your constant reminder of the diverse voices of the Bible, books rather than book, diverse experiences with God and various attempts to understand God’s ways. They all reflect selective snap-shots, and together they show a patchwork rug of God’s encounter with humans, culminating in God on earth in Jesus Christ.
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At the end of the day, this is the church of EGW. I don’t know how people don’t (or won’t) admit this.
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You’re probably right. Private piety meets official religion, and they become one. It’s just hard for us people that experience a different path even within the church.
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Thank you. Yes, I watched a series of lectures from Bart Ehrman once where he said that it is unfortunate that we conflate even the Gospels together, trying to make them tell the same stories, when they often don’t. Even expecting them all have the same theology is an error. They don’t.
For example, when treated individually, and read in the order they were written (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John), it is quite possible to see the development of Christology over time - just decades.
Similarly, think of what you’ve been taught about the birth of Jesus, then go try to find it in the Gospels. You will only find it by piecing the three of them that even address it together, and then ignoring the incongruent details.
I just discovered he has a blog, which I’m exited to read: https://ehrmanblog.org/
I’m very glad you didn’t write, culminating with Ellen White’s visions that help us understand what scripture really means, despite what is says.
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We’re living in the “upside down”.
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I believe that many SDAs don’t pay any attention to what happens past their own church potlucks or pastors. I hope that I am wrong in this regard and there is an uprising over these statements about the Writings of EGW.
The church is developing into a full fledged cult and is going so far past what I believe that the Founders of Adventism could have even imagined or would have accepted. If The Powers That Be keep it up…they will lose more and more young people and become more and more inconsequential in the Christian world.
The only spark of hope in any of this would be that God doesn’t need the Adventists to save the world. If the Adventist Church continues to transform more and more into cultic Fundamentalism- they won’t be able to save themselves.
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Very few persons in the pews will be aware of what is on pages
33 and 34. And they will be unaware that these were even vote on.
Perhaps a short blurb in the NAD magazine saying “the Bible and
writings or maybe the gift to Ellen was reaffirmed by the delegates.”
But nobody will know the texts that are on the pages.
Will the Pastors even care?
It does affect our teaching of earth science and Genesis from the
Elementary Kindergarten to the Doctoral Level. Those out of
compliance will need to BEWARE!! May find a “pink slip” sometime.
We will have to STOP field trips digging for bones and other fossils.
Looking at strata in the earth.
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But, Sister White says…
Adventists need to stop sneering at the LDS, JWs, and most especially, the RCC. SDAs will be soon worshipping their Ellen. Complete blasphemy…
If this ridiculous document is approved, the Adventist Church has not a leg to stand upon. It truly will be a “unique and set apart” church…but not in any good way.
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We believe that the writings of Ellen G White…help us to overcome the human tendency to accept from the Bible what we like and distort or disregard what we do not like.
I can’t ev…wait okay, so you mean quotes like these, right?
The message of the gospel of His grace was to be given to the church in clear and distinct lines, that the world should no longer say that Seventh-day Adventists talk the law, the law, but do not teach or believe Christ.
Let the law take care of itself. We have been at work on the law until we get as dry as the hills of Gilboa, without dew or rain. Let us trust in the merits of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
So like, the GC is gonna start using these to speak out against perfectionism and LGT, right? Cool, I’ll be over here holding my breath waiting for that to happen. (faints)
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Kim, the church is being incessantly on a march to abandon EGW and the bible.
I understand that many on this forum do not believe EGW is biblical. And many more don’t accept the bible anyway.
And the bickering in this context is an exercise in futility. Why should anyone care if EGW is biblical or not if the bible is not authoritive anyway?
A strange enigma in my opinion.
But EGW’s spirituality is certainly in harmony with the bible and to try to play off one against the other is equally futile.
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Bill…my contention isn’t whether or not EGW is “biblical”. However, there can be no doubt that she or her work is not “above” or “equal” to the Bible. This is something that she herself would have been against. Adventism finds itself entering the gates of full-fledged Cultism. It has skirted the edges of the gates since it’s inception as a religion…however, if this document is passed- there can be no doubt that it is a cult.
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I have the feeling that the SDAC is imploding. It’s going from cultic to more-cultic. A recipe for disaster.
And yes, I already had my surgery this afternoon. So far so good. You see, when I said 48 hours I was bluffing. But I am taking it easy.
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Glad to see that the procedure went well. 
It isn’t possible for Adventism not to be a laughing stock of Christendom if this ill-fated document passes. In their zeal to be “special” they don’t recognize that they also may achieve the goal of blasphemy in equating EGW and her writings as on par with the Bible. But…they may achieve all of these dubious “goals”.
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