APL,

I have studied the "God doesn't kill" theology and soundly rejected it. I refuse to even discuss it.

I agree. Sound doctrine is not liked by very many anymore.

Along with these things we see a huge sea change in our culture compared to what it was a half century ago. It's almost hard to believe all the changes I've seen just in my lifetime. In John Kennedy's inaugural address he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". Can you even imagine the howls of rage that would meet a politician who said such a thing today? And Kennedy was an extremely popular president.

There is only a small part of our country that still believes in honor, duty, self-sacrifice, discipline, etc.... And that extends to within the SDA church too. When these things disappear like they have we can know that the end is near, for they are part and parcel of the love of God as we see these things exemplified in the life of Christ. As the Spirit of God is withdrawn more and more these things will continue to evaporate out of our society and world.

The rejection of the SOP is alive and well.

If that is the game you want to play, play away.

No game - it is serious business. Rejection of the Testimonies was foretold. The plainest statements are rejected or twisted. Who is responsible for this? The adversary. Why do so many want to reject the light? God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. I believe that until we see the truth about the Character of God, which IS the last message of mercy to be giving to the world {COL 415}, the work will falter.

A little piece written some years ago, and with this, I'll leave to what ever game you'd like to play:

I am of the conviction that every instance of entropy, calamity, destruction, and death is entirely due to the results of sin (defined as a disconnect with God and righteousness) and not to that of the active employment of God's power to negative ends. I believe that God's power and presence is consistently exercised by the Divine for purposes of creativity, restoration, and sustenance. When any kind of evil or degradation occurs, it is due to the principle which I have come to describe by the term "Divine Recession," or the withdrawal of God. The level of entropy or destruction which occurs is in proportion to the degree of recession. The Bible terminology for DR is "the hiding of His face" which is the description and definition of God's anger, or wrath. We find first mention of this in Scripture, in Deuteronomy 31:16-18, where the results of rejecting God are depicted in certain terms as "evil and troubles" which shall befall the people who choose other gods and the reason is emphatically provided, couched between two uses of the phrase, "hide my face" as because "our God is not among us."

Other Biblical phrases used to depict the same mechanism of wrath are "giving over," (e.g., Psalms 78:50) "giving up," (e.g., 2 Chronicles 30:7) "delivering up" and "sparing not." (e.g., Romans 8:32).

The "consistent view" of God's character, which I hold firmly, pertaining to His relation to the use of violence in the conduct of His own defense in the great controversy teaches that God never does as man, in that He will break the law in order to uphold the law. In the case of this discussion, we specifically focus upon God’s own relation to the commandment "thou shalt not kill," in His willingness to use threats of damaging or lethal force and His actual actual use of damaging or lethal force. Man takes special license to legitimize the threat or use of damaging or lethal force to uphold the law, which ordinarily prohibits the same. God's ways are infinitely higher than man's and everything He does is in righteousness. This is all to say, God never takes license to employ unrighteousness to achieve righteous ends, as man does. This is pragmatism.

Further, it moves the contest, at least in specific times and places, to an arena that has nothing to do with the contest over principle, ideology and truth: that of raw power alone. Viz., in seeing God as willing to step outside of His “normal” character, which is a transcript of the law, and do something highly irregular, or “strange” in that He would actually turn the use of His power to fearful, destructive and coercive ends. (Note the intentional use of the word “strange,” which is often claimed that such an act of God is violence in a proactive modality, when it is rather proven that His strange act is none other than our “Divine Recession,” or hiding of face; but this is another study.) This type of behaviour from One Who has all power, as Creator of all the powers, reduces the theme of the great controversy to nonsensical gibberish. For, as it is said, “love wins” yet if the All-Powerful can at times override the preferred theme of demonstration of love, rolling up His sleeves and getting busy in active force and destruction and killing of His enemies just to make sure that all things move in the direction of a favorable outcome for “love,” we have nothing but sheer hypocrisy. The case of the flood is a primary exhibit in this regard, for here we have the world nearing the point where God has only a handful of souls that acknowledge Him in truth. God, fearing that the line to the coming Saviour would be extinguished altogether, as it is said, had to intervene and “time out” the wicked inhabitants by killing them and starting over with only His own. All of this is akin to a petulant child playing a game with an opponent who is whipping him soundly, getting extremely frustrated and flipping the board over, scattering pieces everywhere, then picking them up and resetting the board in a much more favorable position for a winning outcome. The Scriptures do not support this idea but rather the theme of DR. Notice:

Isaiah 54:7-9 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.
For this [is as] the waters of Noah unto me…

Also we find in Job the same principle of giving the wicked over to the results of their own choices:

Job 22:15-17 Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:
Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?

I believe that the final advance of the reformation; the key to the complete understanding of God’s glory (character); AND the core of the power of the fourth angel--that “glory angel” of Revelation 18 that comes in to join with the third angel’s message at last--is the view to the correct understanding of God’s character in relation to the use of force and violence.

“Jesus Christ is the Restorer. Satan, the apostate, is the destroyer. HERE is the conflict between the Prince of life and the prince of this world, the power of darkness…” {CTr 247.2}.

1 John 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
John 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

Life=light
Darkness=death

Death is not in God to give. Man can choose it and receive it, but the Source of life cannot produce it, any more than a source of physical light can produce darkness. Only when the light is disconnected does a state of darkness ensue, all as natural consequence.

Do you accept, "Be good or God will kill you", if not torturing you first?

Would that mean then that the entire universe is pervaded with sin, since the universe moves towards greater entropy?

So true, and the exponential increase in societies' self love is breathtaking.
It's a feedback loop. The more corrupt our leaders become, the more the population surrenders to selfishness. The more selfish the population becomes, the more easily it is controlled by demagoguery. More and more decisions of leaders and followers are being made based on emotional self interest.

This corruption is evident in the SDA Church as well. We see leaders abandoning "thus saith the Lord" and making more and more emotion based decisions. We now have a "married" lesbian being baptized by a female "pastor" in California; gay men's choirs performing in a Florida church; teaching the Sabbath truth being forbidden in SDA community outreaches, also Florida; courses in the Jesuit practice of "spiritual formation" being made a requirement for church leadership roles and so on.

We know this can only end in disaster for the world.

The people of the Church and those who would come out of Babylon must stop following the god of emotion and seek the God of the Bible.

I have not seen anything on the forbidding of the Sabbath being taught nor the requirement of spiritual formation being taught to leadership. Could you provide some links to that? I had seen where the Florida conference had said Doug Batchelor wasn't welcome anymore but not the last two on your list.

It is going to be very interesting to see how God is going to work to cleanse the church. I have no doubt that he will, but the how will be interesting to see.

Check out this thread:
Is Spiritual Formation Creeping into the SDA Church? pg-51

It is a long thread, but worth reading.
Here is a small excerpt:

Originally Posted By: Daryl

https://youtu.be/YKeQ0i3fxw4

"I showed the above posted video in church last Sabbath amd discovered that Spiritual Formation had been subtlely presented at our Canadian University College in Alberta, Canada."



Rick H:

"Its coming on strong, our church members stood up against it the Sabbath before. They had brought in the presentation before the church for the 'candidates' for leadership for the coming year, and only those who had gone through the 'spiritual formation' training were included. Well they brought it to a vote in front of the whole church, and the members discerned what was being done, and voted NO! The members stood up and told those up front pushing the 'candidates' that what they were doing was wrong and they would let the conference know what they were trying to do.

But somehow I think these people in control are going to find a way to get by the process clearly laid out in the church manual and impose these 'candidates' without any nomination, without any vote by the church, and without any approval by the church board. I didn't think it was possible but yet here we are."


Edited by Rick H (Sat Jun 14 2014 07:33 PM)

I have read more about Spiritual Formation being made a requirement for church leadership positions, but I cannot recall the source. This Jesuit infiltration is entering the Church so quickly, in so many different places, it is difficult to keep them straight.
As Daryl said, it is happening here in Alberta, also down in Florida where Rick H is located, and jamesofthunder, in the same thread, reports it is in Minneapolis:

"Every single one of the young pastors here in Minneapolis are promoting Spiritual Formation in their own ways."



Here is another quote from Rick H in the Is Spiritual Formation Creeping into the SDA Church? thread:

"...this was a project to help the homeless from our original church and our people were helping but when they saw them organizing it as a Sunday worship service we questioned what they were doing, and the answer was shocking. They said the Sabbath didn't really matter and began to guard against any Adventist literature from reaching the homeless.

Adventist elders and members keeping the truth from others......I cant even begin to try to explain that..."