Did someone say this?



Did someone say this?



Did someone say this?



This I did say. None of the other stuff though. Perhaps someone else said some of the above things, but all I said was this last one, which is that as a denominated body, only SDA's are the ones with the 3 angels message. If you claim there is some other denominated, or visible, body with this message, what is it?

Thomas,

The key to understand this subject is the context of Rev. 12.

“Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth. ... And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.”

Rev. 12 speaks of a woman who gave birth to a Child who can only be Christ. There are only two possibilities here: either you interpret the woman as being Mary or you interpret her as being the Church. The Bible says nothing about Mary fleeing into the wilderness after Christ’s ascension. Besides, this is the same period portrayed in both Daniel and Revelation as being the period during which God’s children would be persecuted. Therefore, the woman referred to here is the Church. But which Church? The Church who would be persecuted, not the Church who would persecute. Therefore, this refers to a special group of Christians, and not to the whole body of Christendom.

Then Revelation continues:

“Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

So, after the Church had gone through a period of persecution there would arise “the rest of her offspring.” It’s obvious that “the rest of her offspring” cannot refer to the whole body of Christendom, but that it refers to a small group of people (which is implied in the word "rest") at the end of time (which is also implied in the word "rest") with especial characteristics – “who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

All the above is implied by default when you as and adventist speak about SDA being the heirs of Israel. If you mean something else than the default meaning, you must specifically state so.

You got this backwards. The church did not give birth to Jesus, Jesus started the church. Surely you see that an organisation cannot be the mother of its founder? The text says nothing about the woman going anywere, only that the woman is out of reach for the dragon. So maybe the characteristics of this remnant is not that they are the only body of christ around but that they are the only persecuted body of christ. It does not seem adventism is persecuted more than any other christian group.

That's not what I did at all. What I did was to say that the SDA church is a denominated, or visible body, and then give other examples of denominated bodies.

I did not compare the position and inheritance of Israel with the SDA church (I didn't say anything at all about this).

If I said something about SDA's being the heirs of Israel, you have a point. Did I?

If you by decendants of Abraham are not refering to the long history of Israel as found in OT, the above paragraph makes little sence. By using the word 'similarly' you are in effect making a comparison between two things, in this case the SDA church and the decendants of Abraham. You also spoke in the first paragraph about the believers who were not of Abrahams bloodline as being part of his family. That would be the church. But on the other side of the comparison there was only one group, the adventist church. How else are the paragraphs in the quote to be understood?

I wrote "similarly, the SDA church is a denominated body, with a given purpose to likewise give a message." There are two points of similarity:

a.Both groups were denominated.
b.Both groups had a message to give.

That's all I said, and all I meant to say.

This is what Revelation says, isn’t it? That the woman gave birth to the Child. This only means that the Child would be born among God’s people, or from the seed God’s children.


Of course it does. “But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.” (Notice that this does not refer to the remnant, but to the Church before the time of the end, especially during the Middle Ages.)


Notice that the text says that Satan first persecutes the Child, then the woman (the Church before the time of the end), then the remnant. The characteristic of this remnant is that they “keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ,” not just that they are persecuted. The persecution of this group hasn’t in fact began. It will happen when “all who dwell on the earth will worship him [the beast], whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (13:8). Then “he was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed (v. 15).”

Born among God's people yes. Does that mean the church? The answer to that would be interpretation on our part.Notice the chronology. The woman has her child. The dragon tries and fails to kill the child. The child is taken to heaven. The woman escapes. The dragon follows her and tries to kill her. Then, upon failiure to kill the woman, the dragon moves away from the woman to attack her other children. This time it is the dragon rather than the woman who moves. What happens to the woman? Does she cease to exist or die after having experienced this wonderfull rescue from the dragon? How does she relate to those of her children whom the dragon is busy plotting against? So we are not trying to understand a prophecy with a fullfillment in the past but one with the fullfillment yet to come? That surely is a marshland many have ventured out on never to be seen again in the lands of the Sheepherd.