.
hope none of you were affected by the hurricane.. if you were i hope not drastically.. dan
The latest news on the cyclone is one billion damage to the economy the banana crop and sugar crop destroyed and the tourist industry decemated in that area. We stocked up on bananas today they are expected to double in price soon. We got some at woolys for $3 a kilo.
The good news is that no loss of life. Amazing.
many jw's seem to believe they are the only pacifist religion that does not go to war.
here is a list of others that i found on wikipedia.
other religions that do not participate in war are the church of the brethren, mennonites and society of friends, amish, hutterites, and others in the anabaptist tradition, doukhobors, molokans, bruderhof communities, schwenkfelders, moravians many groups of brethren, and many groups within the pentecostal movement.
There is not one position on this among Adventists but three and are
Conciencious objection to war which is the same as the JW position.
Non Combatancy which is joining the forces as a medic or some other non combatant role.
Thirdly to join the military in a full combatant role as justification for this the case for a just war is used.
There are many Adventists right now risking there lives in Irak.
Adventists such as Desmond Doss a non combatant made great contributions to the forces and received the highest awards for his efforts.
Adventists also support those who join the forces in full combatancy roles and support the forces with there clergy.Admiral Black is cheif of clergy in the US Navy and is a Seventh Day Adventist.
when i started dating susan i became very conscious of my 'standing in the congregation.
susan and her parents attended elizabeth congregation 20kms away.
they knew that i'd missed the sunday morning meeting, so i invited them to meet me for the afternoon session at my kingdom hall.. prospect shared the hall with enfield congregation.
Gday unclebruce,
I am Just waiting for the day when you will post about youre experiances in New Guinea. They are great stories and sound just like the ones when I was a kid listening to SDA missionarys in that area.Barry
hi barry, .
noticed you are online, so i wanted to grab you and find out how you perceive seven day adventists compare to jws: .
1 - equally cult like .
Gday James,
Just to clear up a few points from the start. William Miller after the great dissappointement of 1843-4 honestly and openly acknowledged his error.
The SDA church after being formed in the 1860s retained the 1844 date and reinterpreted it to be the start of the investigative judgement. Other churches such as the Advent christian church dont have the investigative judgement doctrine.
Other dates such as 1874 were used by second adventists to be the second comming of christ and an invisible presents. Most Adventist churches including the SDAs have never made a time for the second comming.
Anything written on SDA -JW connection and I would be on here in a heartbeat to tell you all about it.
For the purpose of youre question about Millers chronology I will refer to a book recently written by Kai Arasola who is the current president of east Finlands SDA conference. His recent doctoral dissertation from Uppsala University is now making its way through the Adventist scholarly world.
Kai writes, Miller utilised by God,
William Miller was a man of undoubted integrity and a thorough Christian was the founder of the Millerite Movement of the 1840s thet looked for Christs return about 1843-1844.
He insisted that the then current hope for an increasingly better world culminating in a millenium of blessedness was biblicly unfounded. He was correct. The Baptist farmer was . ahead of the theologians.
Miller Mistaken, But Miller accepted prevailing popular views about the interpretation of prophecy using the year-day principle to arrive at significant dates in the christian era and thereby contravened the warnings of Christ in Acts 1-7 and Matthew 24-36.
Millers methods refuted, Kai points out that William Miller had fifteen ways of arriving at 1843-44 as the general time of Christs return, The time prophecy of Daniel 8-14 was only one of Millers proofs and he gave no prominence to it . This is the one used by Adventists.
Bible scholard in Millers time and later looked at Millers fifteen proofs and found them without validity. There were few who could be called bible scholars who were in the Great Dissappointement of 1844.
Kai points out the flimsy nature of Millers chronological pillars. Kai emphasises that the whole scholarly world has repudiated them. He mentions that only Seventh day Adventists, The worldwide church of God and the Jehovahs Witnesses cling to Millers approach in interpreting Prophecy.
When Kai Mentions Seventh Day Adventism he is mainly talking about the traditional SDAs not the scholars of the church.
Critical Quotations,
Firstly and possibly most significantly one can consider what is missing in Millers rules. They make no mention of Christ of salvation or of the gospel. This matches the near total lack of devotional writing in Millers perodicals in spite of the fact that some historicits outside of Millerism sought to interpret prophecies with a Christocentric method only few Millerites expressed any concern about this.
The proofs rest on technical points like biblical and historical chronology which probably gave athe system. Laymen were unable to check the validity of the points themselves and emotional factors and the retoric of the arguement may have led many to decide in favour of Miller.
All of Millers calculations contain a mathematical error. Miller overlooked the non-existence of a year zero which indicates that no Millerite before 1844 did his homework correctly.
Millerites beleived that a multiplication of weak points makes one strong point. Thus the arguement was multiplied into 15 points some of which were justly ridiculed by opponents and brushed aside by supporters.the path of logic
Some of the proofs are not time prophecies at all or their actual intent is turned upside down. The power of religious convictions has rarely followed the paths of logic.
I beleive this book called 'The End of Historicism ' would be as helpfull to JWs as it is to SDAs Barry
i remember going into churches when i was a jw for wedding or funeral and feeling a sense of dread.
i thought the demons were going to come out of the walls at me.
and of course i had the self-rightous attitude that the church would be destroyed soon in armegeddon.. recently i've been helping teach a karate class at a local baptist church.
When I met my ex wife for the first time it wasnt long before religion came into it. She had been with the witnesses for about two years but had not been baptised and she decided to come with me to the SDA church. After the main service we were greated outside by the minister of the church and when I put my arm around her i noticed something I thougt very unusual and strange, she was shaking like a leaf . Michelle had only been a study with the JWs and I couldnt understand how this could be. Barry
hi barry, .
noticed you are online, so i wanted to grab you and find out how you perceive seven day adventists compare to jws: .
1 - equally cult like .
if i have made the SDA church look to rosey to balance things out there is an SDA doctrine I must write about soon its called the investigative judgement and is a doctrine I strongly dissagree with and is promoted for the most part by the Traditional SDA group. Barry
hi barry, .
noticed you are online, so i wanted to grab you and find out how you perceive seven day adventists compare to jws: .
1 - equally cult like .
Gday JWfacts,
Just send me $20 and by return mail you will get my handprint on a piece of holy cloth . As a member of the only true religion on earth today The SDA church you will share in the graces bestowed by our heavenly father.
Now I will be more serious I just couldnt resist putting that in.
When talking about the SDA church I would prefer to divide the church into two broard groups. One being traditional Adventists who generally beleive in the more cultic doctrins would not mix as well well with christians of other denominations and have a more catholic theology. This group is the focas of most arguements against the SDA church.
The second broard group would be the evangicals who would beleive in the protestant doctrine of righteousness by faith be far less cultic and mix well with other denominations.
The SDA traditional group with a scale of one to ten would be 6 while the JWs would be an 8 . The evangelical group would rate much the same as other protestant christians.
It should be noted here that the JW religion is also a high control group and this is another aspect not present in other denominations.
I with many other SDAs beleive a christian is all those who trust in the merits of christ and is not dependent of denomination.
When Barnhhouse and Dr Martin studied Adventism in the 50s they warned about the many differences in SDA theology between differing groups in the church and claimed that the SDA church may be given cultic statis for this reason.
So are SDAs the only true religion ? It depends on who answers the question.
SDAs are free to join services with other christians when I first went to the memorial at the Kingdom hall I told my minister where I was going and invited him along and of course he came along with me. I have allways mixed with other christians from my school days we had religious instruction at school and I usually went to Anglican or Prespetarian scripture classes.
Gday James Woods,
In the SDA church all higher education is valued and because of this the church has had various problems such as the problem of evolution v creationism in fact statistics show SDAs have on average twice the number of degrees as the rest of the population in the US.
Gday Chimene,
50% of SDAs practice health reform and as a result have a longer and better quality older age and this is actually causing problems for the churches retirement fund as health reform is working too well with people living far longer than they ever expected. This can be verified by independant scources.
Gday Wednesday.,
SDAs actually dont df since 2000 no SDA has been DF the most a church can do is ask a member to leave and of course there is no shunning either. Here is an interesting artical it nearly is enough convince me to be a vegetarian http://www.spectrummagazine.org/onlinecommunity/featuredcolums/060210rice.html
miller used the idea that the 7 times of daniel 4 was a prophecy and made it fit to end in 1843, and then 1844. .
in 1840 john dowling predicted that millers prophecy would not come true in "an exposition of the prophecies, supposed by william miller to predict the second coming of christ, in 1843".
what he wrote is insightful and equally applicable to the watchtower society.
Gday JW facts,
Actually william Miller Applied Danial 8-14 'unto two thousand three hundred days then shall the santuary be cleansed' to end in 1843-4. Miller also applied other scriptures to end in 1843-4. Miller beleived many weak arguements would result in one strong position.
The start date for this prophecy is the same start date found in daniel chapter nine. The seventy weeks of years
Of course in Daniel 8 days are not mentioned in the original which should disqualify this text from the day year principle also the day year principle is not a biblical datum.
I should know these things as I am an SDA Barry
a lot of russell's doctrines were taken from the adventists.
however, seventh day adventists worship the trinity, so i am wondering who russell took his anti trinity doctrine from.
christadelphians started in the mid 1800's, was it from them?
Gday Oroborus21,
The SDA church has been teaching the trinity doctrine since about the 1920s however when Barnhouse and Martin studied SDAism in the 1950s they confronted the scholars of the church with a case of literature with articals all with the church logo but with differing positions such as the one mentioned here trinity v arianism. Of course the leaders were shoched at the revelation but it does represent the SDA church a small number are still Arian.
In the 1950s the SDA book Questions on Doctrine was printed while at the same time the book The truth about SDAs was printed by walter Martin both books were sold in christian bookshops both books were sold extensively to SDAs by the church. The books were as a result of the meetings by walter Martin and scholars of the SDA church.
Some SDAs even today beleive Questions on Doctrine by the SDA church is damable herecy. These are the more cultic members of the church
take the quiz
you are 66% americanmost times you are proud to be an american.. though sometimes the good ole us of a makes you cringe.
still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home.. you love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!
Im 46% American but then I am an Australian.
