Theological Views: Theological Views Commentary

Exegetical Theology & Biblical Understandings (2 Pet 3:16)
Special Comments on Statements/Sermons by SDA Preachers (Acts 17:11)
SDA Church Administration (Matt 15:7-9, 12-14; 23:16, 24)

Exegetical Theology & Biblical Understandings (2 Pet 3:16)

The Ideal Biblical Study Approach for the Spiritually Mature

The theme passage of this blog post, namely Isa 28:5-13, has, literally, universally been assumedly understood by SDA to, pointedly in Isa 28:10 & 13a, be the ‘model/ideal way in which one is to gain understanding from the Bible’. And this view has been cemented by the way EGW similarly understood it. (See e.g., 3SM 32.2; 2SM 280.1; Ed 123.2; -[Nonetheless, see an actually more inline understanding/usage/application by EGW of what that passage is exegetically pointedly meaning in 2T 420.1 (=1868)]) However such (thematic) (mis-) understandings have only come from a “proof-texting” approach to Scripture vs. an Exegetically one which here does not divorce the text from its context. While this method may be an ideal way to teach “babes”, including “spiritual babes”, it is quite detrimental if it is used to teach grown adults/long time believers, who are supposed to by then be mentally/spiritually mature. (=Heb 5:11-6:3ff).

Succinctly correctively said here, the contextualizing statements in Isa 28:5-13, clearly show that the approach stipulated in Isa 28:10 & 13 cannot be God’s ideal, -again, that is for the supposed to be (by now) spiritually mature. And indeed when those two verses are exegetically properly analysed they reveal that this approach is a merely, most basic, way of getting someone to learn to know/say/do something. Namely:

“Command/Order by Command/Order” - It is almost defaultly the norm of parents to deal with children, not through discussion and reason, which the child cannot actually/really process and grasp, but through commands and orders. In other words, children are defaultly thought to ‘obey, and that promptly, the commands of their parents without questioning or discretion’ which in many cases has come to be life saving for them. So e.g., they are categorically told to ‘never talk to strangers’, and not instead to ‘hear a stranger out and weigh what they are saying to see if they should obey the parent’s instruction or not’ or worse, listen to the stranger. The child just does not have enough knowledge, intelligence and experience to be trusted to make the right decision here. (The same concept is seen in the military where soldiers are conditioned to strictly obey commands, and a matching leeway is seen between “regiment” soldiers vs. special forces operatives, as these latter soldiers have more discretion in, nonetheless, how to ultimately carry out the order of a superior.)

“(Defining) Line by (Defining) Line” - The Hebrew word “line” (#6957b) refers not to a ‘line of words’ (per se) but to a “measuring line” (see e.g., Isa 44:13; Ezek 47:3; Zech 1:16). It is thus a “line” that sets a specific delineation/measurement, thus a “canon or rule”. And so here also is left no discretion or leeway for a child to do as s/he sees best. E.g., a parent/teacher would give a child a strict set of instructions of how to accomplish a task which the child must strictly follow. (E.g., what specific course to take to get to school). However an older person would simply be told, (and only if necessary), what the desired destination point is, and given all of the freedom, discretion and judgement to decide what course to follow to get there.

“Here (only/merely) a little; there (only/merely) a little” - The operative word here is “little”. It is qualifying that ‘not the whole of what is available “here” or ‘there’ (lit. also: “here”) is to be taken and given to the child, but merely a very little for “here” or “there”. So, e.g., a child may be introduced in the first grade to an academic subject/discipline (e.g., geography) but they are not then and there told much or all of what there is to know on that subject, but only “a little”. (cf. John 16:12)

So if Isa 28:10 &13a is being thought of/used, as also effectively patently done in the SDA Church, as the ideal way of learning for the spiritually aged, then such an “elementary” basis will indeed only lead to the ‘desired and worked for’ detrimental scenario/result in Isa 28:13b which essentially comes from those so deficiently educated being confronted with advanced situations that they just don’t know how to intelligently, or even trainedly, deal with, resolve, and overcome them.
...And the pivotal issue/reason why: Isa 28:12; cf. 30:15; Jer 6:16-19 = Matt 11:28-30; Heb 4:9-13 (Isa 28:11 = Isa 6:8-13|Matt 13:10-17).

Indeed the most emblematic instance when God has done this is, appropriately enough, in regards to the full guiding for GC wrapping up events/developments which God desired that only the truly righteous ever be able to properly decipheringly and perceveingly see into. (Dan 12:3-4, 10). The pointedly referred to scroll for the comprehensive “OT(-possible) Apocalypse” (pointedly focusing on an Israel of God Civil Warring) of Dan 11 is indeed a great demonstration of this, as is its prophetic elaboration for the book of Revelation, which then addedly and expandingly incorporate the state of Global affairs then that God’s Israel would have spread worldwide, and would include many more “neighboring” kingdom than those which in the OT times, dominated the world.

And so, the book of Revelation is, as readily seen from the verifying (Acts 17:11) preaching of various Christian groups, either:

-(1) Kindergarten Level - not completely understood at all, and thus effectively just obliviously ignored, just as, or even worse than, the common Spiritually witless paganistic unbeliever;

-(2) Elementary Level - partially validly perceived and understood, i.e., with those non-Futurist-Dispensationalist Christian who know and understand that its language is greatly symbolic must be interpreted, though they do so, not always through the Bible;

-(3) Secondary Level - as seen amongst SDAs, most of the symbols are more than less properly Biblically interpreted and understood, and additionally, the complex, at least merely paralleling structural arrangement of the book is recognized and beneficially understood (see 1980's DARCOM Series);

-(4) University/Graduate Level - This is the level where people (finally) have the above presented, “adaptatingly” capable, (as with the exponentially superior mental capabilities, even actual self-awareness of the human brain vs. the world’s best computer), level of properly self-guiding and understanding, from which the intended Divinely-stipulated/expected goal (-True/Full Righteousness (Matt 5:20; cf. Rev 19:7-8) can be achieved. (=Heb 5:11-14ff). These ones are the true, thus disciplined, (whenever necessary), Christ-strivingly emulating, overcoming “sons” of God, indeed trained to naturally “yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb 12:3-11ff; Rev 21:7). Therefore these are the ones who have the greatest, wisest and most accurate insight into the book of Revelation, having become capable of not only being able to accurately and fully grasp and interpret all of its symbolism, but also seeing and following along its much more than merely paralleling, even Spiritually “quasi-randomly” (i.e. whenever anticipated circumstances are effectuated) transpiring, contributive arrangement. (See the furthering prophetic expositions in this blog; (see e.g. here; here; here; here; here; and here, as sectional samples), which indeed all show that even if SDAs themselves are able to:

(1) letter-of-the-Law (contra. Spiritually “most fully” (=2 Cor 3:7-18)) heed the “Commands/Orders” of God;

(2) able to study into most prophetic “Line” stipulation and delineation (=scenes and series));

(3) though they know to, and how so to, validly search out Revelation’s allusive ‘Snippets’ in the rest of the Bible in order to find the meanings of (for them, most[1]) of these symbolized and thematic prophetic episodes;

they still have not advanced to the possible full light and glory contained in these, and other, now Eschatologically fulfilling prophecies, (including those in the SOP), and thus just do not have the needed wise insight to avoid being ‘tripped up’ (Isa 28:13b; 6:8-13), indeed ,as presented here, not actually having been able to get by their Shaking MOB testing (=5T 80.1.-81.1, EW 269-273), and thus crucially bypassed in God’s pivotal Ezek 9 Sealing, thus indeed not being in any “insider” (1SM 108-111) position to be a part of the Church Triumphant group (=LDE 59-61) which will see God’s ‘still advancing glorious Zionistic Jubilee Millennial Work” to its permitted end!! (=15MR 292.3-4; 8MR 219.1-224.5 =Rev 3:7ff = Rev 4:1ff = here).

‘No Room in the “Inn”’

(See a correction of Jonathan Henderson’s view of Luke 2:7 here.)

God’s View of Bi-|Poly-gamy

As stated in much detail starting here in that discussion forum on polygamy, it is quite evident that God is actually not against bigamy, or even polygamy, when it is actually out of actual, concrete reasons (cf. Deut 21:15-17; e.g. 1 Sam 1:5), where a first, singly married wife cannot have any children. ...And as this situation honoringly/lovingly does not involve the base divorcing of the infertile wife, -something that God actually “hates” (Mal 2:16), evidently even in such valid circumstances, it is not at all “hardness of heart” (Matt 19:8) issue...And of course, by today, God would instead counsel medical fertility treatment/assistance.

Additional Comment:
-Lev 18:18 condemns taking a second wife, while a first wife is alive, simply for the spurious “faulting” reason that the first wife is not “physically appealing”.

Special Comments on Statements/Sermons by SDA Preachers (Acts 17:11)

Did I Hear a ~~“Noise”~~, Nay, Potentially Even a “Rattling”??! (=Ezek 37:7 - See in this post)

Finally an SDA Preacher who manifestly, most comprehensively understands the, at least, “skeletal framework” (see in the Ezekiel post) of the present truth for this time in regards to the Remnant Church’s pivotally due present Perfection and Work before/for the Second Coming and Eternity! In this late May 2011 4-part, Florida Youth Initiative (FYI) series, (which was also presented in his Thursday and Saturday evening devotionals during GYC 2011,[2] current Michigan Conference Pastor Kameron DeVasher has given a, much more than less, Theologically sound, in its substantive self (i.e., its impelling motive is still “wanting” (LDE 219.2-3; -indeed motives, purposes, character, and also works, -all revealing the genuineness and quality of one’s faith, are distinctly evaluated in the investigative judgement (OHC 139.1-5; James 2)), Bible and SOP exposition on the due, pointed, ‘Character Perfection’ necessity of, prominently, SDA Church members, and the due Full Gospel Work that, dually, will lead to, and also, be the result of, such an all out Christlike Character pursuit. The innate radicalness of these messages, indeed quite countercurrent to many things that SDA commonly, wrongly Believe and therefore, Practice is most commendable, however, (and most solemnly being warned here), at best in a, (as discussed in this post), ‘Rev 3:1-2, and prophetically non-coincidental, “Reformation Age”, Seal of God involving, ‘Eschatological Fifth Series Era’ way.’ So ‘he who has an ear let him hear!’ (Rev 3:5-6)

And this key “shortcoming/deficiency” lies in the fact that this message was only partially “fleshed out” in regards to the needed extent of its practical application, which, as the SOP states, and which DeVasher emphatically cites: ‘is to go way beyond the local community involvement level.’ (AUCR, March 1, 1901 par. 11) Since the responsibility of a Divinely ‘globally established Church’ is, correspondingly, ‘the global needs’, then all of these ‘global needful areas’, including, most pressingly, abortions (Matt 25:45; -indeed infinitely much more pressing than his lamented ‘lack of an SDA homeless shelter’), must duly be taken into consideration. And in terms of the vital needs outside of First World Countries, it will indeed take much more from Church members living in First World Countries to meet them (Luke 12:48), as indeed quite feasible.

Indeed, the only natural/logical method of fully accomplishing this grand Biblical/SOP objective is through the fourfold-faceted: Physical (Lion), Spiritual (Ox), Economical (Man) and Logistical (Eagle) (=Rev 4:7 “Order”) pursued by the NJK Project (cf. here) Manifestly DeVasher comes short of also calling for such plannings because he ‘believes with all of his heart that Jesus will surely come in his own lifetime’ [not that such SDA-common “deep belief profession” begin to trump the “Biblical measuring/determinative canon” used by God for this key matter; cf. this post]. And such SDA-patent statements, on the heel of a major, reforming call, is like giving someone doses of general anaesthetics to ‘awake them from their natural sleep’ (=Rev 3:3ff) as it is effectively stating: ‘do seek to fully do what Christ is tangibly expecting for you to do before His return, however only what we really will have “time” to do.’ This is indeed the present pervasive, appeasing Laodicean belief and teaching of the SDA Church. As a Third World proverb says about such self-underminings: ‘It’s like washing your hands and then wiping them on the (dirt) floor!’

-A pointed, though summary, comment in regards to DeVasher’s explanation of the pertinently key statement in Nahum 1:9 (see in his 4th FYI presentation at [12:00-15:38ff] and Thursday Evening GYC Devotional at [53:24-54:29ff]; -he reads it from the AKJV), (which I have expounded upon starting in this discussion forum post; (cf. specific links at the end of this post)), and indeed keyly in its fuller context of Nah 1:6-9: the pointed statement by God [about a once again apostatised Nineveh (Jon 4:11 vs. Nah 1:1ff)] in vs. 9 is:

‘Whatever you will devise against the LORD, He will make a complete end of it. Distress will not [naturally] arise/be established this [i.e., second] time.’ (cf. NASB)

In other words, and as the SOP (generally) applies this statement, ‘after the Second Coming event, (and not ‘towards/at this climatic event’, as DeVasher eisegetically, wrongly, contradictorily/illogically/non-sequiturly claims), when God then has (first) brought about an end to this GC and sin, He will not allow it to take a “foothold”, if that is ever attempted again.’ Or as the LXX translators (rightly) understood it:

‘Whatever you reckon/account upon the Lord (as Lucifer’s initiating false charges did), He will make a complete end of it, for He will not twice vindicate Himself (i.e., ‘prove Himself to (actually/indeed) be Righteous’) in/through tribulation (i.e., in/through another permitted Great Controversy age).’

So, as it was explained starting here in regards to Nah 1:9, the, indeed rightly termed: ‘“guarantee” of God’ here is actually in the sense that: ‘if ever another sin issue should be raised up, God will most rapidly, and completely, (i.e., to the objective satisfaction of all (others)) take care of it,’ and probably with God pulling out some most pertinently, exemplifying “judicial precedence” from, pointedly, the painstakingly completed Investigative Judgement. And that is relatively all like it was done with the Tower of Babel development shortly after the Flood destruction where God summarily, righteously, and through a most effective means, acted to nip that “outbreak of rebellion” in the bud. (Gen 11:1-9). And contrary to what DeVasher also rationalizes/claims, just because a human creature of God may have attained a perfect, Christlike Character, that does not at all guarantee that they ‘cannot/will not sin’. For prior to his fall Satan too had a perfect, Godly/Godlike Character, and of course Jesus maintained this perfect Character, yet that most realistically was not a “guarantee in itself” that either one could not/would not ever sin.[3] {Cf. A similar view/understanding by Adrian Webster here[01:05:16-01:07:15ff]}

Given the undismissable Free Will realities involved here, as DeVasher recognizes, but actually does not allow to have its full implication, that indeed is ‘God’s Most Righteous/Wise Plan For Eternity!’ Indeed the Theological Issue of ‘an Almighty God and the Future’, (=Rev 16:14), as it was highlighted in that post, is key to the, already being mustered, H/Ar-Mageddon’s Final Conflict (Rev 16:16), as also those who have this false belief that ‘the future is somehow set in stone, (or even exists)’, will not endeavor to attain the level of “perfect/complete righteousness” that God expects (=Rev 16:15; again non-coincidentally involved in Rev 3:1-6) and, through such Gospel curtailment, instead, at least, tacitly, at least initially, side with the foes of righteousness (Rev 16:16) as indeed revealed in the pertinent, ensuing Sixth Series Era studies in this post.

-By the way, since DeVasher did not, at least, presumably, explicitly state so, his often cited ‘merely getting into Heaven vs. actually fitting in’ (see FLB 116.2) running thesis has a Biblical basis in the parable of the Wedding Garment (Matt 22:1-14|COL 307-319 =Rev 19:6-10 = 1SM 109.1-111.1 (-which involves ‘God’s measuring line for individuals’ (Isa 28:16-17 -cf. Ezek 40ff (=Rev 11-see here); Zech 2; Jer 31:38-40))); which, once again non-coincidentally, is thematically/Spiritually alluded to in Rev 3:4. (See more on this in this post.).

-Incidentally, the appealed to “creativity” of those who are aiming to involve in such ministry [see/hear the appeal after the Saturday Evening meeting] will have to be towards ‘what to do to meet the present global needs’ and not merely, (as I understood it being stressed) ‘what to do for having a (local) ministry’. Indeed, pointedly to First World-living Church members, ‘Jesus is, through the voices of “the least of these”, calling us to reach beyond “our world”, to the “Beautiful Stranger”’ -e.g., Joyce Meyer Ministry’s Hand of Hope; James and Betty Robison's Life Today’s Mission Outreaches (GW 304.2: Luke 19:40; John 8:37-39, 40-45, 46-50 = Gen 22:18 = Gen 15:6; Luke 3:8)

The SDA Church’s Special “Angel of Light” Deception (Matt 16:22-23)

Succinctly said, in hearing this sermon by David Asscherick, expoundingly patterned after a similar Annual Council 2012, “One Way”, sermon by his ministry partner Ty Gibson, I could not help but Biblically think and perceive, that Satan does have a special application of the “Angel of Light” deception for the SDA Church itself, (and along the ‘no-actual-need/reason-to-(fully)-sacrifice-for-others’ lines of Peter’s argument in Matt 16:22), and that it because, though this admonition to, if I get it correctly, more prominently preach Christ is not at all wrong in itself, what is Biblically wrong here is the way in which Asscherick is claiming that this is what is missing in the SDA Church message presentation and the “One Way” in which it will finish its work.

First of all, I do not know where Asscherick has been since ca. 1996, but I have personally observed that the SDA Church and its various official and supporting ministries have made this prominence emphasizing of Christ in its message. I guess this must have been the time when Asscherick himself began preaching his initially ‘rationally argumentative type of sermons’ shortly after his conversion/baptism in 1996, as e.g., earlier seen with e.g., a 2001 evangelistic series of his. Interestingly enough His ministry partner Ty Gibson had long ago made that switch as seen in his (along with James Rafferty) switch from their prior Daniel and Revelation series to a “Lift Him Up” series.

Getting right to the point here, it is evident that things are being taken out of historical context and misapplied. When EGW made her admonitions of presenting Christ more/most prominently, the Law was indeed the Central preaching of the SDA Church and the message of salvation was being grossly neglected. However by now, this has come to change where Christ has taken this central place. {Cf. this [ASI 2014] testimony [28:05-34:40ff] of SDA evangelist Will Pergerson.} This is even seen in prophecy seminars, which previously just had gruesome depictions of beasts on their invitation flyers, but has for a while most times presented an ‘inviting Jesus’. Perhaps there may be a pointed need today to center and/or incorporate Christ much more in Doctrinal and Prophetic presentations, as, as discussed in this ca. +1997-based post, these teachings do indeed depend upon Him and His Truths. Indeed since the 9/11 events there has generally been a reverting to now, instead of gruesome beasts, presenting “contemporary” themes of: terrorism, the “Homeland”, modern warfare, etc, on Prophecy Seminar flyers. But to claim that this is the ‘one thing’ (Cf. the One Project) that is missing in the Church is spuriously false...i.e., ‘plausible, but not really the case’.

Indeed, unlike the early days of SDA, the objection of Christians today to SDAs and their doctrines or prophetic interpretations is not that they ‘only preach doctrine and/or prophecy’ because for a while now Christ has, more than less, been rightly, Ideologically/Theologically, presented during these presentations. So here instead is the problem, and thus the deception involved here, as it was actually seen by the closing statements by Asscherick in that sermon: all and any abundant teaching about Christ will not make any difference to others, especially non-Christians, until they see Christ tangibly, practically (LDE 218.3ff) manifested in the Church. (=John 13:34-35; 1T 113.1-2; EW 228.2; 21MR 186.3; (HS 290.5-291.3) = EW 279.1) And, as likewise discussed in here due to the “dualling” indicators cited in Rev 12:11, contrary to Asscherick's typical “curtailed and halving” claim, (as it was similarly done just above, =EW 48.2-50.3ff), or which at the very least is an indifferently unexplicitly, tacitly conveyed implication, this will be demonstrated in not merely evangelistic type of ministry works, but also, and particularly, humanitarian types of works towards those in need. Then will the rest of the world, both Christian and non-Christian, most obviously see the actually only needed: “demonstration of the Character of love of Christ/God’ (e.g., COL 69.1; 312.2-314.2). Indeed merely saying “Lord Lord” but not doing the works of Christ will result in those people not being covered by the righteousness of Christ. (Matt 7:21-23; 25:31-36).

And in regards to Asscherick’s follow up/subsequent theme of ‘not understanding that God is Love is the other major/fundamental problem with SDA’s and their message: As summarizingly stated in 1 John 3:16-19, a mere intellectual/rhetorical exposition about the Truth that ‘God is Love’ (as Asscherick has lately been (“foundationally”) widely doing e.g., from/in here; here; here; here; and here), which does not, (indeed as honed by Dwight Nelson in his 11-02-2013 following up sermon (mp4) to Asscherick’s presentations on this theme/“thesis”), straightly, concretely translate into a love of one another, especially those in various need, is at best only a ‘deedless “half-truth”’ (=1 John 3:18; cf. James 2:14-22ff), and inherently a sly deception which serve to keep one from becoming as ‘lovingly perfect/complete as God’ (1 John 4:12; Matt 5:48). (Ironically enough, see the Matt 25:40 “punch-line” [at 46:30] in this (May 31, 2014) testimony involving this issue in Asscherick’s present Church in Australia.)

Do see more on this determinative issue here.

The mixed-in deception of Satan in all of this is: ‘anything but the sacrificial truth’ (EW 48.2-50.3), and there is nothing more appealing to time-obsessed SDAs than such an, actually, Christ- & Cross- less “shortcut”. Indeed it would be one thing if SDA’s were already “sacrificially loving” towards each other (e.g., for here) ; and others in Spiritual and physical need, and this sermonic theme would then serve to help them foundationally also understand that “God is Love”, -(tellingly enough, as if such a sermon/reminder would be needed to be given to them then; -as it actually can be the needed “reminding” case for a non-Believer/Christian who is nonetheless big on humanitarian endeavors), but that certainly is not the case. And so presenting merely these ‘intellectual rhetorics’ as a cure-all can indeed only be ingested as a high-dosage sleeping tablet for/by Laodicea...And as, (if I recall accurately (also, from e.g. within here)), Dave Fiedler has rightly emphasized the SOP statement in COL 415.5: ‘The last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation --which is more of (visible) demonstration, rather than a mere (audible) proclamation -- of His character of love’ (=COL 416.1; 417.4 and the wider context COL 415.1-418.1ff...a/(the) proper/“full” consideration of that passage should (have) calibrate(d) Asscherick’s et. al.: “Isa 60.1ff-related” “A.R.I.S.E.” Institute/Ministry!!...)

Miscellaneous

The “Fluff” of the Word
-Doug Batchelor is, pun intended, “hands down”, (particularly, at least merely, prominently-speaking) the leading, and wholesalely so, “spinner” of Bible Study/Sermonic/Evangelistic/Literary/‘Bible Answering*’ “cotton candy” (a.k.a. “moronisms”) in the SDA Church... Seriously, it has got to, at least clinically, be all of those “killed brain cells”.... I.e., it (compoundedly, moreover) doesn’t help that when “confronted” with various involved/mindful/problematic/complex situations he much prefers to “deal” with them by claiming “answers/solutions” ‘off the top of his head’!! (But, (to be fair), as they say: “even a broken clock is right twice a day”!... though in a digital clock age...that “happenstance correctness” is lowered by 50%.)

* It is personally most comically ironic to hear of Doug Batchelor tell of the impetus for the creation of his Bible Answers Live radio program by retelling how he would be ‘freaking out’ when he would hear the false and/or relatively sordid answers that other people with Bible Answer shows would give to callers...well I get the exact same reaction, and worse, knowing that he could easily do, and/or actually knows, better, when I listen to his several, similarly revolting, “Bible Answers”.

  And so in this “simpleton/Caveman Theology” producing “the Gospel According to Doug Batchelor”, the Bible is actually a collection of stories functioning as prophetic allegories (dubbed “Storacles”) which all depictively prophesy of some event in the future, even in regards to final events (however subjectively substantiated Batchelor then makes demonstrations these out to be. -See this July 6, 2012 sermon of Batchelor where he further claims that God was ‘acting sovereignly to have those OT episode be effectuated,’ which heretically implies that the actors in those episode had absolutely no free will to do, or not do, anything!??). However it is the distinct converse which is true. Those Bible stories did not occur, nor were they recorded because they were allegorically prophesying of some future event, but rather because their occurrence and development involved a major principle which a never changing God then was using and playing out during that episode. So these stories were not “allegorically-intended” but were rather “examples” of God’s unchanging and everlasting perfect principles and consequential dealings, indeed for our ‘warning instruction’ (=1 Cor 10:11). And so, e.g., Joseph was not rejected by his brother because that was to be an allegory of how Christ was going to be rejected, but rather because both Joseph’s and Jesus’ ordeal involved the same elements of what would most likely happen to someone who is favored by God and also most faithful to Him. (Therefore was Joseph really ‘acting badly’ (as commonly jeeringly claimed) when he would, through righteous indignation, and not out of any malice, report the waywardness of his brother to his father Jacob?? Seems to me that it was because of the great love that Joseph, out of actually no initiation on his part, was receiving from Jacob (which was in itself not fair), that he felt most offended when his brother would effectively trifle with their father behind his back.) In Jesus’ case, the naturally perfect/sinless Jesus was indeed most favored by God, and that above all others then, especially the religious leaders in Israel, which caused their hateful jealousy, pointedly because those leaders were not living in harmony with God’s will. And so as both of such actions and principles of God were at play in first Joseph’s ordeal, and, then with Jesus, and as God had in both cases a distinct purpose for each of these most faithful ones to accomplish in order to save the rest of their family, both stories went on to develop in similar ways and God went on to similarly implement His unchanging principles, favor and promises with both of them. And that is how theses two people/stories are (parallely) similar, and not, as Batchelor’s allegorical understanding involves, (linearly) dependent. And really, it was actually Jesus Christ who learned (cf. Heb 5:8-9), from Scripture, the necessary key lessons for His situation from what Joseph had successfully gone through thousands of years before, and not reversedly, as Batchelor’s view involves: ‘Joseph’s story unfolding as it did because that would be how Jesus’s own story would develop’.
           This distinction is most significant because if one ascribes to Batchelor’s Allegorical Theology, you’ll be scouring the Bible like him to find stories to apply to future prophetic events, and thus figure out how these final events would develop and end. However under the Biblical “parallel principles” understanding of those OT episodes, one will instead search those stories out to glean from them the various implicated principles which the righteous main characters faithfully adhered to in order to come out victorious in their ordeal. It is all like studying for a Math Test by memorizing the answer page, but when the teacher requires you to show all of your work, you just can’t because you never learned the mathematical science how to work these problems out, and had just looked at the “final results picture” instead. Try as you may, as shown in the parable of the wise vs. “moronic” virgins and their lack of oil for their lamps (=the Holy Spirit enlightening of the Holy Scriptures), you cannot even “reverse engineer” a math problem’s work from merely its final answer.
            And that is indeed what is most insidious about this “cotton-candy” approach, which like cotton candy, is in appearance quite fluffed up, and thus seems that it will be filling, is attractive in color through artificial coloring, and is the perfect “food” for a circus/fair/entertainment atmosphere, but when eaten, it not only melts right in your mouth, but whatever is ingestibly left of it after its radical transformation of phases when having come in contact with saliva in your mouth, is nothing more than empty calories. Keep being fed with such fluff/junk food and you’ll eventually get seriously sick, probably developing a chronic diabetic condition and may even die of that diseases and/or malnutrition!...And do rely on Doug Batchelor to, as here (also =here), to (glibly/trivially) bury and invalidate a thematically-valid OT Christo-typology, (which is actually mainly in ceremonial laws (PP 363-373), Divine/miraculous interventions/acts (1 Cor 10:1-4, 9-11), and prophecies (DA 796.4-799.3)) (=“TMK 208”), with “piled on”, subjective/fanciful, “fluff”...

Peeving Petted Peeve

What it the world is exactly is the deal with Stephen Bohr’s patent “modus operandi” of making a detailed and long exposition on Biblical claims/comparisons/interpretations/application which he in reality, unless directly inspired, has no authority to defaultly make, and then, at the very end, after by now, at least for me, you are wondering how and where from is he claiming this, he then says that it was actually stated in the SOP, and from the context of SOP passages which he had been copiously quoting and reading from??! Perfect case in point: this sermon [which he incidentally is trying to convolutely posit as being pertinent to the Woman’s Ordination issue, claiming that ‘women are trying to wrongly have an authority that is not for them to have’] where in the first 43:06 he detailedly associated the rebellion of Dathan, Korah and Abiram with that of Lucifer’s in Heaven and then from 43:07-44:39 he reads ensuing statements in PP 403 where the SOP says what he had just been saying. It is quite evident to me, particularly in cases where the SOP revelation is in the same context where he was priorly reading from, that he had actually got that idea from having first read it there. Then why not start by saying that ‘EGW makes this application...’ and then present his, perhaps, expanded exposition on this. It all seems quite dishonest to me, and moreover, at least for me who much prefers documented claims than just whimsical ones, quite a peeving put off, and most of the time I struggle to listen to the rest of his sermons after he starts off by making such, actually usurping, ‘unauthorized claims’.

Personally, as it is done throughout this blog, if I make a claim and then later cite where the SOP, or even the Bible, says the same thing, it is truly/honestly because I had thought of it first and found corroboration of it after in the SOP/Bible. And I actually only do so when I had first written out that thought/view and then after (long or shortly) found the Bible and/or SOP corroboration, and not even for cases where I first found that supporting passage while still studying out/researching that thought/view. And when the converse is the case, I have no problem giving default credit where the inspiring credit is due. But quite obviously, not so with Stephen Bohr, and for me that really overshadows anything valid that he may previously have enlighteningly detailed/explained. Bohr’s quite evidently, dishonest, patent, “look-at-me-first” approach just does not begin to impress me!! And that, (wholesalely in regards to anything that he may teach), quite to the contrary! Indeed, on such matters of ‘inspired claims’ I do not begin to find him “authoritative” as he may want/think people to/do. So he’ll first need to provide his “inspired credentials”.

God’s Pragmatically Purposeful “Wealthing”

Some may, “naturally” (1 Cor 2:12-16), “moronically”, connivedly take the somewhat/effectively insouciantly ambivalent statement by Dwight Nelson in his May 19, 2012 sermon [14:15] when commenting on the wealth of Abraham and tersely claiming that: “It is okay to be ‘very well to do’, when you follow God.” to mean that God actually give someone wealth to, effectively, “sit on it”, i.e., “pamperously” and luxuriously expend it on themselves. But when fully studied out, it is seen that God never gives someone more wealth than they actually need for their various living expense. At best, God “wealthing” is to most adequately help someone meet their basic living needs. The prominent, and often spurious cited, examples of Job and Abraham were discussed here (Post #73599 - “Wealth of Job” subsection), and it is here further contextualizingly added, in regards to first Job, that the there stated fact that ‘God actually only gave Job back, after the trials, what he would have had everything not been taken away from him before, and not a merely whimsical double” of everything (Job 1:3ff vs. Job 42:10ff), is seen in the fact that God blessed him to have only 10 other children, and also 7 sons and 3 daughters (Job 1:2 = Job 42:13), to “replace” the 10 which he had lost in the trials and not 20. And it also seems that these children were born to the same, original wife of Job (or else his remarriage would surely have been mentioned in Job 42). Therefore, with the first group of 10 children having been mostly grown/“youths” (Job 1:19), perhaps most living in their own homes (cf. Job 1:13, 19), Job having 10 more children with the same wife was likely a special blessing of God.

So God’s re-blessing of Job was not “overabundant”, and with that doubling of field animals, he would have needed a ‘twice as large’ workforce to take care of them, and/or, if, manifestly, all of his servants had also not been killed in the three raids which killed his field animals (Job 1:14-15, 16, 17), their natural family size would have also been doubled after the trials, and so God blessed him in wealth to also be able to variously provide for (= pay) them for their rendered services. [By the way, God actually never tells Job the exact reason why he had gone through those trials!!]

Now in regards to Abraham, the SOP brings up an interesting point in regards to his wealth in PP 130.2-131.2 for it seems there that, just as with the Children of Abraham later, (a) God blessed Abraham while in Egypt, in his case with wealth (vs. rapid people growth) which also brought great fear of him by Pharaoh and the Egyptians. So in itself, that enriching was most purposeful by God, especially given the fact that Abraham, from the start, had become at odds with the Pharaoh. But that readily observable sign of Divine favor, served to protect him. And the (b) because of the mini-plagues brought upon Pharaoh’s household for having taken Sarah, Abraham, who was being kicked out of Egypt, perhaps while there was still a great famine, was able to leave with enough freely bestowed wealth, as some sort of trucing “pay off” or compensatory “severance package” (=Exod 3:21-22; 11:2-3; 12:33, 35-36), to live on, him and his large, travelling household (which by Gen 14:14, thus only 2 chapters into his journeyings, had had 318 men (and, probably, only those of fighting age here [perhaps 20+years old]) born in Abram’s own house), during those times. In fact, as Pharaoh was not told by God to give all of this “parting” wealth to Abraham, his “base” thinking here likely, simply was: ‘I better give Abraham enough wealth to most easefully survive in a region of famine so that His God will not (again) sent plagues upon me.’ This was indeed just like the Egyptians later reacted with the Israelites, in then, making sure to compensate them as much as possible for their years of oppressive slavery, so no more plagues would come upon them.

So the Biblical demonstration is that God pragmatically blesses people with wealth to meet an actual need, and if they have wealth without any unmet needs, then they are expected to help others in need with it. So, really: “It is okay to be “wealthy” (i.e., here, generating more than enough wealth) if you are actually doing God’s benevolent will with it.” And thus Nelson’s “follow God” statement would actually need to be only involving the self-denying, “cross-bearing”, ‘truly following after God’ that Jesus taught. (Mark 8:34-37; cf. Luke 18:22-27).

Quasi-Theo-Slighting Ad-Lib

Non-inconsequentially enough, manifestly GC President Ted Wilson needs to more carefully read the Great Controversy book which he says he has been re-reading, (or perhaps he did not (again) get to that section yet), but in this June 23, 2012 sermon [01:23:46] in Prague he, manifestly ad-libly states/claims that: ‘“somehow” the early Adventists (=Millerites) missed the statement in Matt 24:36 which says that ‘no man knows the day of the hour...’’ but in GC 370.2 EGW says that ‘that argument was most often brought forward by rejecters of the advent faith’. She then recounts the reason why the Millerites did not see it as applicable then. As the SOP states, the only “Divinely hidden” detail from the Millerites was the 1843 (versus 1844) year calculation mistake. (EW 74.1).

The sequiturly significant implication here is that, contrary to the implied insinuation, God did/does not need ‘“knowing, aiding” falsehoods’ (e.g., guile) to establish His Church/Work. And when He allows a (quite honest) “mistake” by man’s own/free doing to then fully develop, as with the 1843 versus 1844 mistake, it is to allow for an effective “self-testing” purpose. (Cf. Ezek 14:1-5ff) Perhaps God saw that many had joined the Millerite movement simply because of the “set time” evidence and thus the 1843 failure probably cause these spurious faith believers to leave the movement. So in this case, this was all to see who really “wanted” the Second Coming to occur then. And according to the Jer 18:1-10 principle, such genuine and tangibly acted upon faith can indeed move the hand of God to warrantly/actionably even pass over any not yet fulfilled “prophecies” to accomplish something. (E.g., Isa 38:1-8ff) Genuine faith (versus hollow/mantra professions) was, and is the trumping key in all of this (Luke 18:8).

Having a Fantasaical, “Hocus Pocus” & “Pie in the Sky” Religion

I found the following set of flowery prose posted by David Asscherick on his website/co-ministry blog (ARISE/Light Bearers) here, to be most comically interesting because it is perfectly emblematic/reflective of the “pie-in-the-sky” mentality that the vast majority of SDAs have where they just have wishful thinking about this world, do token humanitarian works, especially when the world’s cameras are present (thus in natural disaster zones), but “of course” won’t do anything to help people in need which demands an actual sacrifice. So rather than wishing for a magically “better world”, they should be busying themselves with being the disciples of Christ who, according to a primary directive of His (Matt 6:10; cf. Matt 28:19-20), are also engaging in tangibly ‘turning the world upside down’ (Acts 17:6 KJV). And the reason why disciples from the Apostolic Church were able to so “upset” the then mostly pagan world was because their message was so deep and multifaceted, including socio-economics, and not merely religious. Its radical Gospel/Sabbatical Light reached into every aspect of society, including the economical aspect (tangibly impacting e.g., the sales of idols, slavery, etc). As today’s world/society also has this closely intertwined economical and religious aspects, a truly and full Biblical message will also have similar impacts, but as the SDA Church is part of those who preach a half Gospel and themselves are following after the economic principles and policies of the world instead of God’s own for (all of) His People, then it is no surprise that they cannot either see the elucidating Light on this topic, nor of course, making any difference here. They are simply going along, and being swept away by this world’s flow, all leading them down to also receiving the Fuller Mark of the Beast.

So for transparent demonstration, here is how David Asscherick’s comments [quoted in highlighted bold text below], indeed, crucially “fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23; a “glory” which aims and plans to ‘fill this Earth’, and by whoever will fall in line with these plans - Num 14:21; Rev 18:1ff) as it inherently, indifferently[4] tacitly involves sins of omission, pointedly in regards to taking the tangible steps to deal with the systems and entities which are producing those merely decried sinful conditions/results. (And SDAs are indeed great at wailing, decrying and wishing, but when it comes to actually, themselves, doing something about it, they, like the rest of the world, even “sincere/well-meaning” people, they subserviently allow Money and “Mammon” to dictate what they should or should not do and not God. But of course: ‘God is going to reward them by “most deservingly” effectuating the Second Coming in their lifetime.’ According to the Bible (and SOP) statements I have read, based on their rendered works, not only will such a “reward” (=Rev 22:12) not occur in their lifetime (Matt 24:14); but it justly, most shockingly, will actually not ever be given to them. (Matt 25:41-46).

Again, unless this is all mere wishful thinking, the tangible realities of what is involved in each of those conditions need to be realistically engaged, and also, we are logically not speaking of Heaven, but rather this present world, because if Heaven is being discussed/described here, then this whole spiel of Asscherick is completely moot...people allowed into Heaven will, and that already, be perfectly reflecting and emulating the Character of Christ. (e.g., COL 332.3; 361.4):

“In my world, there would be no sexual slave trade, because there would be no customers.”

Barring that every individual in this world become converted, that is really an impossibility. However the actual issue here is that people are willing to engage in enslaving people for sexual trade because others are willing to pay money, and “worthwhile” money for this. So even beyond the issue of sexual perversion here, the actual enabling agent is the ubiquitous reward of money and profit/gain. If there is no such “love of money”, there then would not be people who are engaging in capturing people for sexual trade enslavement. So, again beyond total conversion and also the law enforcement duties here, the real focus that people should be doing, is working to implement and model a viable system where money itself does not have such blind rule.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Alternative Currency’ solution here).

And actually, as much as it makes SDAs spuriously shudder, a cashless society* would actually be the answer here as then money could not be exchanged without being traceable, and people engaged in such illegal activity will be more easily found out by following this inevitable “money trail.”

* For even with cash being still used, people who do not have the sign/identification (and also mentality) pledging allegiance to the Beast Power will not be able to buy or sell especially as the various reward for not doing business with them (or even with turning them in) will surely be made to be greater than accepting their business.

“In my world, there would be no promising politicians, because people would be too informed and intelligent to believe them.”

Nobody likes to be fooled, especially when this will actually be detrimental to them, and so the only reason why “promising politicians” are successful is indeed because people are not informed, and thus not intelligent, on the various issues at hand. And the reason why people are in such a “predicament” is because they themselves do not have the time to, effectively, do the work of such representative politicians. So the solution here is to (1) provide this extra time for people do be able to much more do such self-informing work and (2) also provide a political/government framework where people could literally, even overrulingly, immediately decide for themselves, no matter who they would have chosen to represent them.

So the answer here is (1) making physical work, as well as other life tasks, take much less of one’s time, and (2) having a direct-representation form of government.

(See the NJK Project’ ‘Work’ and ‘Government’ solution here and here.).

It nonetheless cannot be lost in the facts that the main reason why many politician promises fall flat is because of the constraints of money. I.e., when the Politician gets into office, they soon see that there is not enough money in their budget to realize those promises...and no one wants to be known as a ‘raiser of taxes’. So here the pointed solution is the overhauling of this money system.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Biblical Economy’ solution here).

“In my world, there would be no illegal drug use or trafficking, because people would be high on life.”

The ‘no use at all’ and ‘trafficking’ claim here have the similar solutions as the one said above in regards to the sexual slave trade. But here, for the “high on life” solution to be viable, life actually has to first be a better alternative than what those drugs are indeed substitutionarily providing. And, as the present world and what it offers is, sooner or later, quite desperately depressing to many people, leading many to engaging in taking various drugs, as well as turning to other types of ‘mind altering things’ (e.g., alcohol, smoking, entertainment, debauchery, etc), this will require an establishing and modelling a society where life is actually made to be all that it can be, thus indeed a ‘kingdom of God on Earth’ type of demonstration (John 10:10).

(See the NJK Project Overall solution here).

“In my world, there would be no racism, because people would appreciate and celebrate diversity, rather than fearing it.”

That is a simplistic way of trying to peg the cause of the issue here, but it is not really the cause. From my own social and historical observing, studying and also experiencing this matter here, the reason is not because of a fear of diversity but actually because of how that diversity, if begun to be actually “embraced” would impact another. For example, the Jewish nation in Bible times were effectively racists, and not merely, as common today, with people of different skin colors, but with people with similar racial traits as them, e.g,. Samaritans. The reason was because they feared that if they embraced Samaritans, i.e., fully accepted them just as they were and mixed with them and their culture, that this would have a “downward” pull on them and lead them into sinfulness. Varying shades of this “fear” is found in all forms of “racism” today, and in some way, with cause. I.e., will fully/truly accepting embracing others of other cultures/religions/lifestyles/social statuses not have a “downward” influence and pull on a person. It is for such “values” reasons that many people, even way beyond reasons of race, do not mix together, and there indeed is a Biblical command/principle not to be so “unequally yoked”, however when people share the same values, whether in Church, in Work/Business, in Society, it is also common to see them freely, cordially, and genuinely associate with one another, indeed even at a personal/friendship level. But it is when one group of people will have to tangibly undertake or underwrite, and thus be literally affected by another set of values, which they, most times factually, consider wrong, lower and/or detrimental to their, that such walls of division are raised up.

Which all leads to the racism that is found, and that institutionally so, in the SDA Church. Both sides claim to be SDAs, but the issue of pointedly US slavery and segregation, which also tangibly affected prior and present members, has caused this racial division in the Church, between members who claim to share exactly the same religious faith. The actual reason here stems from one of values, particularly that which has been produced by the socio-economic issues of slavery and segregation. As also related here, the reasons from U.S. (and all) slavery and segregation is not actually not/never one of race, but actually of socio-economic factors, including the capability of one group of people to physically dominate another. And so, with early SDAs, the reason why there was a division between Black and White SDAs was because the economically better off White SDAs did not see it as economically worthwhile for them to variously expend towards the evangelisation, and needed education, and also collective denominational supporting of, former, and generally/largely uneducated slaves. That reasoning then went on to lead to the establishment of separate conferences so that ‘Black SDA can take care of their own particularly issues and needs, but with/according to, their own means.’

In regards to worship/worship styles, it is self-evident that. e.g., Black (Christian) people in the U.S. (Including Black SDA), are coming from a historical, and contemporarily lingering, experience where they were better ministered to by appealing to various passages in the Bible which focused on ‘physical slavery deliverance’ issues. And with them for a long time not seeing any hope in the present world, they were also best ministered to by worship services and liturgy which appealed to (the uplifting of) their emotions, thus in a more ‘mind over matter’ way. In similar ways, many others groups appeal to such promises in their own struggle vs. the injustices and sin in this world, but the Black American experience has quite literary concretized their ensuing worship experience, particularly as these issues continued long after slavery had officially been abolished, and as the results of close to 200 years of such injustices, in both Society and in the Church, are continuing to have to be tangibly dealt with. So it is not surprising to see that worship services between U.S. Blacks and Whites greatly differ in what the needs to be ministered to are. And from one group, assimilating the “values” of the other as theirs is either downgrading or meaningless to them. The actual solution would be to deal with those differences, and that would actually be with meeting the underlying needs which are causing this “woeful” living/life/experience, but here again is seen the unwilling heart of people not wanting to variously sacrifice to meet the needs of another in need, and respondingly is the hurt pride of the other group effectively saying: ‘we don’t need your pity or charity” and with them actually, justifyingly solely turning directly to their God for this solace, rescue and aid.

So racism has much more to do with values, and that, at the very root, economic ones, than merely/shallowly skin color or culture. Skin color is merely a generalizing used “identifier” to claim that a person must have certain “values”, while culture is typical the end product of a group’s economic development, for even the leisure time needed to contribute to the upbuilding of culture is determined by economics, as is the way in which this culture is, “quality portrayance wise” made to appeal to the masses. In fact, as my various studies are increasingly revealing (see e.g., here and here), religion itself is actually also fundamentally determined by limiting, even cosmic, “economic” realities. And that is why the Sun (see in here) is used as a Chief symbol for both the Temporal as well as the Religious Economy.

Relatedly, the fatal harm that is allowed to be done through abortion to unwanted, rejected, unborn infants, indeed much more extreme than slavery, is out of a similar non-desire to have to variously, especially if sacrificially, economically provide for that dependent person.

So to solve the issues of, generally termed “racism”, one here also needs to deal with the fundamental cause of economics.

(See the NJK Project’s Foundational solution here).

“In my world, there would be no factory farms, because people would be informed and conscientious consumers, and, wherever possible, would be vegetarian.”

Everytime there is a meat recall because of a contamination during processing, or because of harmful livestock raising conditions (see e.g., the documentary Food Inc), then I think that people do become quite informed as to the risks involved in the production of their favorite foods. Nonetheless, soon enough, business always goes right back up to, and beyond, the pre-crisis levels. The real question/issue here therefore is, will people be willing to pay the extra costs that the proper raising (grain and free range), processing (non-automated), purifying (‘koshering’) and also cooking (non fast food) for the production of these foods would cost. Given the general fact that most people rather pay the lowest price possible for something, I would highly suspect that the answer here would be “No”. In fact, having a (comparatively) appealing/tasteful vegetarian diet (i.e., one that is not merely raw/unprocessed nuts, grain, vegetables and fruits), thus, as common with SDAs veggie foods and soy products, can also be quite costly, because at the source, it also takes much more agricultural resources (including farmland) to produce such foods.

So here too, while vegetarianism is the solutions, the actual reality that will make it a feasible/viable solution is also an economic one.

(See the NJK Project’s Safe, Intensive, non-meat Farming’ solution here).

“In my world, people wouldn’t blow themselves up in the hopes of blowing other people up in the name of religion, because “the earth [would] be full of the knowledge of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:9). That is, they would know who He truly was, and would know that such a thing could never, ever be pleasing to Him.”

Succinctly said, the solution suggested here is one of thorough evangelisation. And just looking at how low SDA penetration and influence is in Muslim countries, much, much more tangible and hands on work needs to be done to realize this wish. As God always knew, it will take much more than mere preaching of the Gospel here, but also an actual living out of all of its principles, and that is what SDAs and other Western Christians just do not want to do as this will variously require/demand too much from them.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Ministry and Mission’ solution here)

And also just taking the (radical) Muslim issue here, given the fact that, as discussed here, such radicals are actually, more widely, justifyingly either seeing this as warranted avenging actions/retaliation and/or only seeing such a ‘warring’ option as the only solution remove the detrimental influences that they are seeing the Western World (and all of the indeed sinful baggage that they carry) is aiming to have, including by force of arms, over their Muslim countries, culture, societies and also religion, (including the ‘democratic will vs. Muslim Law’ issue), it not only indeed take a Biblical demonstration which substantiate that the ways of Christ are vastly superior and true, but also a demonstration at the political level which shows how democracy is to work in even a Theocratic context, where God ultimately sets the Supreme Law.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Constitutional’ and ‘Government Structure’ solution here and here).

“In my world, there wouldn’t be any guns, missiles, or bombs, because there would be no use for them.”

No use of guns, missiles or bombs implies, at a macro level, no reason for wars. And in order to reach such a stage there has to come a state of mutual agreement and cooperation. And as the cause of war, indeed starting from the War in Heaven, to Israel’s Conquest of Canaan, is because two opposing entities are competing for a limitedly single resource/position/authority, in a world that is increasingly decreasing in outrightly, or economically viably, available resources, there will need to be a diplomatic way to satisfactorily resolves all of those potential, and sure to come, points of differences and even vital need. We have already seen covered-up wars for actually the control of cheaply available oil resources, and there are predictions of wars to control freshwater sources. So only an economic solution which resolves these life and living issues will prove to be the reason why nations, at the leading and just decision making of God’s Triumphant Zion, then will choose to ‘beat their (destructive) weapons into constructive implements/tools’ (Mic 4:1-5ff; Isa 2:1-4ff).

Yet ultimately, indeed as also seen in the War in Heaven, and Israel’s conquests, war has its inceptive roots in divergent ideology. And it is not merely the difference of ideas, but more tangibly when only one idea can be implemented to govern a system or way of life. And so War is usually the only, and thus best, option to try to remove from possible power the idea which is deemed to be dangerous. And in our world today, for nations to peacefully and justly come to share the world’s diminishing or more costly resources, thus without the current way which let people who are economically/militarily incapable just slowly die off, the economic systems of Biblical Socialism vs. the World’s Capitalism will surely butt heads sooner or later. Capitalism, (which Asscherick “religiously” had decryingly addressed in one of its foundational elements here [14:38-30:03ff]), of course teaches survival of the richest/fittest tenets where the ones who are capable of securing and exploiting such resources deserve to own and profitingly use them, and those who cannot simply suffer the “natural” consequences. But, as seen throughout the Bible, that is not God’s ideology. And so in order to resolve the also underlying issue for wars, and even, at the micro level, crime, the economy will also have to be addressed and Biblically redressed.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Humane Economy’ solution here).

And as this issue of economic livelihood will ultimately be a matter of life and death, as seen in Heaven and also in the Bible, this side of pervasively reestablish righteousness, war, or at the very least, the deterrence of resorting to war, will have to be, at least in the first instances, until mindsets are completely reformed, a most vital necessity.

(Consequently, see the NJK Project’s ‘Military Security’ solution here).

“In my world, women wouldn’t be second class citizens.”

From what I have observed, outside of purely religious view point, women have been considered as “second class” because of the overall need to balance and need to deal with the matters of the home life versus the ones of the public/business/work life. However as the managing of the home life has become easier and also as many public work have increasingly become “cleaner” and/or required much less physical strength, all allowing more and more women to more acceptingly and easily participate in the work force, resulting in them also being able to, or deemed viable to, pay for a university education on their own, this second class relegation has, pointedly in those advanced Western Countries, gradually increasingly decreased and now, almost completely disappeared. So it can be seen that technological advance, which is all tied to economic capability and growth, is the underlying reason why this quasi-equalization has been achievable.

It could be argued that it was the consequence of sin which resulted in Man (i.e., the Male) having to work harder (Gen 3:17-19), and thus reducing the time he could spend at home also taking care of his children, leaving this work to the woman, and similarly, also justly leaving all of the homemaking responsibilities to the woman while he took care of the supplying, provisional responsibilities. But this may not be the dichotomic need in a perfectly functioning and most advanced world. Both the Husband and the Wife will then be able to equally share in their various livelihood and homemaking responsibilities.

So out of quite pragmatic reasons, the equality of productivity and contribution between the two genders is in direct correlation to economic levels. So resolving that issue, will greatly aid in dissolving these differences. So, especially in still poor and developing countries, therein lies the basic solution.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘World Development Assistance’ solution here)

“In my world, people and the planet would matter more than profits.”

Straightly here, the issue is one of economics. And so the solution involves both dethroning the subjective reign of money where raw materials are not scientifically priced but rather, capitalistically subjectively values according to what one is willing to pay for it, setting the price for all.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Scientific Pricing’ solution here and here).

“In my world, sports wouldn’t be ruined by drugs and money.”

As athletes use performance enhancing drugs to, as implied, enhance their sporting performance, in order to have better statistics, and thus be able to command/attract more lucrative contracts and money, then the solution would be to not base the salaries of athletes according to their performance. However as this better performance is all fueled by a need to compete, then the ultimate solution is to remove this base need to be in competition with someone else or another team and rather revamp or re-invent sports to instead involve a spirit of collaboration, even to jointly resolve a common challenge. (And just not keeping scores or stats, does not actually address the fundamental issue of competing.)

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Non-Competitive Sports’ solution here)

“In my world, fathers would be fathers, and not just sperm donors.”

Would there be any sperm donation if it was not for the money that is paid out for such donations??? Perhaps only as sparingly as organ donations.

Much wider and deeper to the issue here is the one of people needing to take responsibility for out-of-wedlock pregnancies, by both the woman and/or the man. As, stated above, the reason for the denying and/or abandoning of these inherently dependent conceived lives are mainly, in some explicit/direct or implicit/indirect, economical ones, then there will either have a way to make the raising of a child an “economically inert” one or have a viable alternative to sustain the life of any still natural-parentally unwanted infants. So clearly, here too, it is the economy that is, one way or the other the root causal issue.

(See the related NJK Project’s solution for “parent-less” and “vitally at risk’ children and infants here)

“In my world, people would rather serve than be served.”

As empirically seen today, even in the SDA Church (i.e., missions), people do not rather serve because they are not financially remunerated for this. So “economically” making serving just as tangibly rewarding as being served is what is crucial here, and that is actually done by effecting a perfect equilibrium between services rendered and services received.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Good Will Service Economy’ solution here).

“In my world, love and joy would be more than romantic ideals, they would be constant and practical realities.”

Perfect Love actually produces perfect joy, and this is what would produce a perfect society, but in this world, in some degree or the other, there is one system which systematically works to undermine the attainment of this perfect love, and thus joy and that is the strife which is produced by this world’s leading economic system, namely Capitalism, as it contrarily needs base and “hateful” traits of selfishness, greed, covetousness/jealousy, among many others, to reign supreme in Man. And so love is eclipse, and thus strife comes to replace actual joy at various degrees, including most explicitly/completely. (Cf. this post). Indeed in Capitalism, one does not want the best for others, even self-sacrificially so, as Jesus said would be involved in true love (John 15:13), but instead one seeks out the best for oneself. So defeating the Chief enemy here which is pointedly working through the opposite of love, selfishness, is what it required in ever reaching that state of joy. And that is only done when love has come to be a practically and most indispensably necessary to people. Thus in a most righteous economy from which a joyous society will surely result).

And really, the aiding “crutch” to ever getting to see the ‘practical necessity’ of such a ‘pervasive state of love’ is done by allowing oneself to non-indifferently take into consideration the helpless plight of the millions who are in various vital, societal and also spiritual need in the world today.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Founding and Targeted Objectives’ solution here)

“In my world, death would be out of business.”

As great as this may sound, I do not see how this will ever be done before man has

access again to the Tree of Life. (1 Cor 15:26) Indeed its simple removal resulted in Adam and Eve dying ca. 1000 years later. So contrary to the pointed, sole highlighting done by Asscherick in his present posting, that actually is the only thing that cannot be humanly achievable in this (fallen) life.

Indeed while advances in health, wellness and medical science can greatly improve and prolong one’s life, fallen man may actually never be able to live beyond 1000 years. I.e., perhaps God’s design of the body was only good for a 1000 year lifespan at best without the rejuvenating “supernatural elements” contained in the Tree of Life. And just like even from biological organisms, such as foods, can still decay and become useless if frozen, cryogenically preserving people (beyond 1000 years) may not be a viable alternative.

So really the only ‘type of death’ that can be put out of business here is death due to reasons of preventable, curable, and/or intentional causes, -chiefly abortion. Thus various premature death. And really, the ultimate solution to lead to such an outcome is also an economic one in order to adequately provide the measures, relief and medical aid needed to meet such challenges. Then there also are the various “short cutting” solutions in society which contribute to the overall non-wellness of people causing them to become variously sick and unhealthy.

(See the NJK Project’s ‘Domestic Health and Wellness’ as well as Aborting-Abortion’ solutions here and here)

“In my world, Jesus Christ would be King.”

.....and He actually is longing to have a people in this world through which He will be able to demonstrate the all-wise principles of His Kingdom to this world (Matt 24:14)...hence the NJK Project.

“What would your world look like?”

“tangibly” (vs. ethereally), like the Kingdom of Heaven.... (Matt 6:10 = DA 20.1-21.3; COL 384.2; cf. e.g., HP 233.2-233.5; 166.3; 169.5; 158.5). [5]

------------------

So as shown above, such a Godly world is actually feasible, and the Biblical, as well tangible, plans have long, already been stipulated and drafted, so the real issue is: Is that what have people, including SDA actually/really want??! Otherwise any such expression of flowery utopian idealism is not of any actually use to anyone, and thus really merely a grand waste of one’s time. And... as the saying goes,- as naturally, consistently seen in the resolving responses given above...: ‘It’s the [Capitalistic] economy... [Spiritually] “STUPIDs”’!!

“Elijah” ‘Restores all things’... “Moses” Provides New Covenant/Light (Matt 17:11)
            In this 2013 3ABN Spring Campmeeting sermon from his 4-Part Series on the various Elijahs in Biblical/Church History, Stephen Bohr makes the repeated claim [at 18:26-19:21ff & 26:25-26:54ff] that ‘Elijah does not bring new light but only restores’. That is indeed true on one hand, -and much of that ‘thorough restoring old/actual ignored or forgotten truths’ can seem to have the effect of been “New Light”.[6] But Bohr’s insistence, which is based on the KJV’s exegetically mistranslating of Matt 17:11 “is coming....and will (future)”, was clearly the proscribed, heretical smug Laodicean stance that ‘they do not need anything, which actually includes “from God”’ (CW 33.1), as that stance leads them to reject anything “prophetically new”. (See more SOP counsels against such a stance in here).
            As John the Baptist had long been imprisoned (Matt 11:2-19) and later been put to death (Matt 14:3-12), see DA 214-225 by the event of the Transfiguration in Matt 17:1-13|DA 419-425, in the statement in Matt 17:11, Jesus most logically also saw Himself as an Elijah, i.e., ‘a presently come one who would indeed say and do many things to “restore all things” (e.g., Matt 5:17ff), but He would also unpack many of the Theological and New Covenant “mysteries” that were concealed in symbols and cryptic/prophetic passages in the OT. E.g, Psa 110:1 = Second Coming hiatus (discussed in here -Search for: “Psa 110”); Luke 21:22 “fulfilled” God’s also threatened destructions against Israel/Jerusalem itself (e.g, Dan 9:26-27); -all depending on whether the Messiah was accepted or not by them. So, in a sense, as God had included both promises of Triumph and Glory or Judgement and Destruction in the OT Scriptures, either part of these promises could be fulfilled at the time of Christ, -all according to the conditionality principle in Jer 18:1-10. So in Jesus having to blaze a new course for God’s Israel given how things turned out to be, including the teaching of a temporary relocating to Heaven for His followers instead of a Triumphing Literal Israel being able to seamlessly restore this Earth back to Edenic glory through God’s restoring/recreating power (=e.g., Ezek 36:35; Isa 65:17ff; 66:22-24), He thus went on to become an antitypical/archetype “new/other Moses” (i.e., for this New (but OT-mentioned) New Covenant =Heb 8:7-13), indeed as (long) promised in Deut 18:15-18 (cf. John 1:21|Luke 9:19).
            So while Elijah, indeed through his patent “recalling message”, does pointedly “restore all things”, as many of the “old things”,especially all things which were revealed by God through Moses, but also to/through other prophets which He spoke to/through, (including Abraham (cf. Gen 20:7; Gen 15:6|Rom 4:3/Gal 3:6; John 8:39-47)) are conditionally dependent “mysteries”, “Elijah” can’t help but, at the very least set up New Light, i.e., “Moses II” new Light, i.e., in regards to God’s already, post-Shaking-revealed and launched “Everlasting Covenant” movement. (=EW 272.1-3ff; 282.2-284.2; 285.1-286.1).
           That is all why these two (Heaven-ascended) biblical figures are the epitome interpretation of the Two Witness in the Rev 10-related, most pivotal, Rev 11 prophecy!!
            And speaking about ‘Elijah restoring all things’, Stephen Bohr’s citings of Elijah’s in the Bible and Church History (=Great Controversy History) involves much more than the “four” that he found and mentioned; but, as the charting below shows, actually 10, which is actually deliberately symbolically significant, indeed with a Last Elijah actually possibly occurring at 7 which, as generally explained about that symbol here, would be a “perfect enough representation”, upon the SDA Church movement.* But because they have failed, God has both prolonged time and launched His also planned “Greater Works” (=15MR 292.3-4) and now the Final Elijah will most likely be, and if actually necessary, a Tenth one, -thus being a “complete enough” occurrences of this restoration provision by God. And then, if that effort fails to bring about a preserving restoration, would an Apocalyptic “Utter End” be done by God (Mal 4:5-6).

* Arguably in the chart below, a couple of “historical Elijah” claims could surfacely be challenged. And these are the claim of the “#4 Apostolic/NT Church” & “#6 the Millerites”. Well, succinctly substantiated here, for #4, the Apostles were, at the very least “effective Elijahs” in that their initial mission squarely focused on completing the work that their Elijah, Jesus Christ had started for 3.5 years. And that of course was to, as Dan 9:27a stipulates, complete the work of, like Elijah (cf. 1 Kgs 19:10, 14), “cause to prevail” God’s (now new) covenant with His Israel. (=Heb 2:3). And the Apostles of course did this powerfully (Heb 2:4) in a ‘double portion of the Spirit of their predecessor “Elijah”’ (cf. 2 Kgs 2:9), Jesus Christ (Luke 4:18-21; Acts 10:38), indeed just as He had told them they would do. (John 14:12).
            For #6, given the actual restoration work that began to be done by William Miller and his “Millerite” followers, the SOP statement in EW 233.1 should suffice to confirm their identification as an Elijah movement (which was relatively followed by their Elisha successor in the (#7) SDA Church and the many “greater and “doubly” advanced” works that it went on to continuingly do, both in terms of teachings and understandings as well as institutional endeavors.
            And likewise that same successive and/or relative/recursive “Elijah - Elisha” relationship is seen with the next, and present started, #8, and the #9 Church Triumphant “Elijah” movements.

[Click chart to enlarge]

GC History "Elijahs"

‘Test Yourself/ves’....(2 Cor 13:5)

Irony of ironies, in the same Sabbath School presentation [13:20-15:56] in which Sacramento Central (“Administrative” [...whatever that position “pastorally” needs to be] Pastor) Harold White, albeit rightly (cf. Acts 17:11), decries people of another audience not having at all/ever caught two glaring errors made by a well-known SDA preacher (Namely: (1) the wise man in Luke 6:46-49 was Jesus, when Jesus (pointedly, -also ironically, correcting White here, as Jesus actually said: ‘His spoken Words’) was/were that foundational Rock; (2) one of the two covering cherub over the ark of the covenant presently was (still “Lucifer”/)Satan); Harold White had just finished [11:55-13:19] giving an actually/relatively cockamamy “looking after His followers on Earth” explanation to the (supposedly) “stumping”(??) question posed to him as to: ‘what Jesus had been doing in Heaven from His ascension until the start of the Investigative Judgement in 1844’, which White claimed “the Bible is indeed silent about”....Well not only is the Bible quite clear that Jesus was intercedingly ministering as Our High Priest in the Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary during that time...you know, in regards to the daily stream of prayers for forgiveness from His followers on Earth (e.g., Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25; Rev 1:12-13; 8:3).... as clearly presented in the book of Hebrews...but another even greater irony....and that literally is the third self-produced one by White in this segment, he had just introductorily said this, -reading what the SS lesson had said [10:45-11:54]!!!

So what gives here: a “senior moment”??...Don’t think so....No... it looks more like, as usual from such SDA’s, a vexed-atious blinding maddening rush to transmit a desperate, Pharisaically hypocritical (i.e. DA 566.5), (actually fly-trapped), mobbing vendetta, -likely in regards to the discussion starting here [yet I don’t see how/where (else) he would have read it since he is not registered in that Forum] where I initially echoed, and theologically expounded upon, Ron Clouzet’s (undocumented) claim here [42:59], -which he probably got somewhere in the Jewish Talmud, that: ‘the Jews changed the, manifestly blood-stained, veil in the Sanctuary once a year, on the Cleansing Day of Atonement) with his sanctimonious punch-line point: ‘Don’t take “my” word for it...particularly in regards to the Sanctuary....study it for yourself!’

Don’t worry.... I don’t actually have to take his, or anyone’s, word for anything...I am just by now sickly tired from having to do other SDA pastor’s/preacher’s research, even basic thinking, work for them....Quite comical how those SDA preachers, like the pharisees in Christ’s day, typically pompously think, and mainly because of the, however vacuous position they hold and exercise, they are so right, and they are the ones who need to be doing the correcting, when they are actually a bunch of highly&roundly cum lauded diplomaed, “blissful”, Satan-actuated (=EW 56.1|John 8:44), {intellectually- and Spiritually- (self-)stunted/shorted}, pompous idiots (Luke 11:37-54|Matt 23) who patently just are complacently dullardly repeating the same tired, and in many cases, actually debunked, “nursery rhymes” (=Isa 29:9-14ff & contra. 1T 262.1), with them merely focusing on how to better/snazzily/entertainingly superficially (re-)package these deficient traditions for their likewise dull-minded and indifferent audiences...

....Perfectly emblematic case in point of such pridefully smugful attitude amongst these, the just “idiotic” SDA (Pastoral) leadership, who moreover believe that (grammatical) exegesis is the enemy of their variously, circularly arrived at vacuous and/or ethereal “theological” fluff: the “exegetical” attempt explanation made here [17:53-20:32] by Stephen Bohr during his “Anchor School of [Plan B] Theology” series on the exegetical harmonizing of Paul’s statement in Acts 9:7 vs. Acts 22:9. Though he manifestly is referring to the explanation made in the SDABC 6:230-231 PDF p.4906-7), he still, -as typical with the present crop/group of, even “educated”/graduated, SDA pastors, can’t get it right, which is moreover indicative of, -and as it is also “face-savingly-necessarily” patent with these SDA pastors, despite his hoodwinking attempt [at 19:41ff] to “gaslightingly” make his audience think that, even if he went into “details”, ‘they are just too stupid to ever begin to get it’, and/or that ‘this stuff is just so complicated’, his own innate and incompetent actual non-grasping, nor comprehension of the grammatical exegetical “details” involved: The “case” issue is not at all with the verb “to hear” (Greek akouo), but instead squarely on the substantive (vs. verbal) term “voice” (Gr. phone) and in what Greek case it was expressed in. And that is simply because the genitive case used in Acts 9:7 is merely (peripherally) saying: ‘hearing about/of the voice’, while the accusative (and not “dative” as Bohr erroneously states) case used in Acts 22:9 with also the negating expression “not” is instead (intrinsically) saying: ‘not hearing towards/into the voice’ (i.e., what it was actually saying/meaning; -cf. Gen 11:7 LXX). It is as basically as simple as that when you actually, innately/comprehendingly know what you are talking about.

Another patent exegetical fallaciousness example from such (obliviously, really, inherently, indifferently) “noviate(d)-lored-fossilized” preachers/teachers, -(all variously, literally, (and that at all leadership levels, -right to the very top), banditly (=Matt 21:13; i.e. selfishly/self-servingly/“indifferentedly”/profiteeringly/capitalistically) “banking” (=John 2:16) on their audience being more stupid/moronic than them), is as the one made by Bohr here [16:21-17:53] which claims that the aorist tense in Rev 11:2 means a past time action....when in grammatical fact, it merely indicates an “undefined” action. For the aorist, actual “Verbal Time” is variously, and independently, determined.
It is most fitting that through such patent, maintained, i.e., with however many decades of being in the preaching/teaching business, indeed (indifferent) “ignorance”, he is just as the ‘degreed’ scholars he remonstrates here [44:38ff] as ‘thinking themselves to know everything because of their prior (formal) education/degrees’!! No wonder indeed that they will all be replaced (=Rev 11:13)...even, wholesalely, when/if/as standing right in their present, bastioned, SDA Church pulpits/offices/platforms (Isa 29:9-14)!!

February 23, 2017

Donald Trump is Not That Prophetic

With surfacely plausible reason, many SDAs (cf. here[01:00:10ff] from Steven Wohlberg; cf. here) are, at the very least possibly, seeing the Presidency of the moronically-impressionable Dognald Jerk Drumpf, (a.k.a. Donald J. Trump) -(who presently is executing the Militant/Crusading Catholic agenda of his WH Chief Strategist Steve Bannon), as prophetically critical as this neo-Constantine the Great type of superpower nation leader can indeed be easily impressed, even manipulated, to execute a Republican/Christian Right agenda which would see the passing of a Sunday Law....But the Present Truth Theological fact is, as variously discussed in this blog that the “Emergency Rescue (=Plan B) Covenant”) Window of Fulfillment for SDAs to have seen the sequitur culminating realization of the Historical Wave of prophecies has long been superceded by God’s Original (=PlanA) “prolonged-time, Jubilee Millennium” plan. The ironic thing is that with SDA Ben Carson being part of Trump’s Cabinet, you’d think he would inherently serve to preempt Trump from falling for a Sunday Law scheme,* but not even a Daniel in Babylon’s Palace could prevent the setting up of the Dan 2 prophecy-slighting/usurping, idolatrous Dan 3 statue (PK 512.1-513.1). But really, as stated here, what Ben Carson is, most-deludedly, poised to seamlessly also prophetically bring about, right alongside the uber-Capitalist Trump, is the anti-Full Righteousness anti-10C Law anti-Sabbatical Seal Mark of the Beast.

* ...Although I have seen that Ben Carson is (indeed) not above violating the Seventh-Day/Satruday Sabbath for political expediency, as he did by having held a combative Press Conference, -(oddly enough, his most animated ever during his entire, otherwise (indeed comedically) quite odd, (seeming) nonchalant, “drowsy/sleepy”, and boring, 2016 Presidential campaign), on a Friday night, November 6, 2015, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, starting at 06:52 PM, and ending 13 minutes later, at 07:05 PM, all ca. 1.5 hours after the sun had set that Friday evening in that area, back at 05:34:20 PM, thus long after the Sabbath had started....And thus making an entire Press gaggle (specially) work, and also for him, during those Sabbath hours. (contra. Exod 20:10|Deut 5:14)

So I guess that he is the “religious” type ‘whose sheep/ox was in trouble/need’. (Matt 12:11; Luke 13:15; 14:5)....pointedly as, around that very time in the 2016 POTUS primaries, he had suddenly become the frontrunner....Certain serious Sabbath Keepers know that it is not lawful to even be interviewed live for TV during the Sabbath....But Ben Carson must have been, also deludedly, (self-)convinced that ‘God Himself wanted him to become POTUS’, and so he could dare allow that suddenly arising criticism of him linger for the Sabbath hours....or worst, dare declare to the Press that he could address them immediately because he was observing the Sabbath....smh...

But the most expecting claim & exposition that I have come across by an SDA Preacher on this anticipation that Donald Trump will fulfill Sunday Law prophecies was from Amazing Discoveries Ministry’s Walter J. Veith. In his ca. late Nov. 2016, presentation entitled “The Trump Card”, a presentation that has gone “viral” on Youtube, -being repeatingly-reposted by many other SDA (see e.g. here, here, here, here); and other non-SDA users (see e.g. here, here, here, here, here), and in several languages (see e.g. here, here, here, here), and thus widely viewed by many, Veith made the claim that the animation show The Simpsons, -which he whimsically claims had predicted the 9/11 Event, had predicted form the year 2000, that Donald Trump would win the 2016 POTUS Election. You can [now] see that claim of his here [ca. 20:55-21:37]. However I had posted (cf. a successful posting elsewhere: here) the below debunking facts in the comments section of that Youtube page...

...And/But there is some partial good news to report here as, after having manifestly themselves, highlighted my posted comment, they evidently went on to delete that video and, (on January 25, 2017), repost an excising version with that claim about the Trump win from 2000 completely taken out!! So good on them for that...The facts were undebatable!......P.S. (Jan 25, 2018): Update: ...But “don’t even “undebatable facts” get in the way of a good “supernatural” conspiracy theory”, as in an October 2017 “updated” presentation of his “Trump Card” sermon [at 37:11-37:30], Walter Weith unwaveringly goes on to make the same, -here below soundly/factually/thoroughly, debunked claim of: ‘the Simpsons show having “clairevoyantly” predicted the 2015+ Presidential run of Donald Trump’. This either means that Veith does not care about the fact or his Amazing Discoveries organization, -who, as seen above, had, -at least in part, long corrected this error, is, or perhaps for this: prefers to be, dysfunctional.

Given Walter Veith’s related striking manifestation of the supernatural in his conversion experience and Christian life, it is not surprising that he would readily ascribe to such a claim of supernatural involvement in regards to future event. In fact much of Walter Veith prophecy-related and prophecy-expositing presentation patently tend to weave such a notion of calculated para-natural conspiring to shape future/prophetic events, e.g. by the Jesuits, the Pope and Secret Societies. But I would easily respond, from copious studies in Biblical Theology and Prophecy that it is not at all that calculated or complicated...As Dan 12:10 involves, people, including SDAs (~Matt 5:20), being motivated by various shades of selfishness, jealousy/covetousness (EW 269-273) and greed, just are naturally acting in various degrees/level of unrighteousness and thus naturally find themselves doing things which fulfill the unrighteousness that God had long foreseen would transpire from such people who are variously disobedient to His Law and His Standard of True&Full Righteousness.

....But as the video with that error/false claim continues to appear on the Amazing Discoveries Africa account (also an otherwise updated version here) account, -(who did not accept/post my submitted similar correcting comment, and as this error-containing video has been propagated widely on the internet/Youtube), as well as those earlier cited repost/repeat videos; most of which have neglected/declined to publicly post my submitted debunking comment, I am indeed still posting my full comment here, along with further detailing/debunking responses that I subsequently made elsewhere in response to some persisting claims of predicting-validity by other users. (Comments by other users are in bold):

Debunking Facts against: “The Simpson Show predicted Donald Trump’s 2016 Election win back in a 2000 show)

December 9, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm

The Simpsons’ Clip/Photo cited at ca. 21:40 in this video, about a Trump Presidency, is from 2015, -(after Trump announced his run in June 2015), and not from 2000 as claimed:

http://www.snopes.com/simpsons-trump-prediction/

December 12, 2016 ~17:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm.1481580958996221

Connie Dobson

Ron30Mon IMDB Bart to the Future - Mar 19, 2000

December 13, 2016 00:36

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm.1481608941093279

The Snopes article is quite clear about where the "confusion" occurred here:

"The images from The Simpsons shown on the left-hand side of the above-displayed graphic did not originate in 2000, however. They were taken from a short video entitled "Trumpastic Voyage," which was posted to the "Animation Domination" YouTube channel page on 7 July 2015, after Trump had announced that he would be seeking the Republican presidential nomination for 2016"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0767439/

You can view that Full March 19, 2000 Episode (=Season 11 Episode 17) here:

https://www.animmex.net/video/2081/the-simpsons-s11e17

http://animmex-regular-cdn-1.finalservers.online/video/b844b3e54fd51ef16a813362981e7f59/584f852e/iphone/2081.mp4

See its Transcript here:

http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?episode=s11e17

There is no “escalator” nor “Campaign Launch Announcement Speech” scenes in that episode.

The show only had mentioned Trump at 10:22 as: ‘having been the previous President before "Lisa"’ (Which is also not ‘before Hillary Clinton wins next in 2020/4’ as Veith points out.)

Transcript: "As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump...."

(Snope provided that clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtparSnQhFc

Trump had indeed priorly made an official attempt to run for President in ca. October of 1999. See Snopes’ cited New York Times Article and:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2000

Amazing Discoveries seems to have admitted to this error. See this correcting comment’s ‘highlighting’ on their original posting of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm

January 6, 2017 09:04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm.1483711472914828

Snopes is more of a TMZ site in other words ridiculous. Unlike Snopes, Walter Veith is known for his thorough research if you care to take time you can listen or watch his 100s of videos and audios on Amazing Discoveries website http://amazingdiscoveries.org/ Now back to the Simpsons in relation to a Donald Trump prediction check out the episode ''Bart To The Future'' season 11 episode 17 aired March 19th 2000. Donald Trump first referenced. All the best with your research ;-)

January 6, 2017 10:53||11:43

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm.1483720980420652

In all sincerity Helen, there are several spurious statements made here:

January 6, 2017 12:03

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HayxXK-stao&lc=z12czzqzvwjlzxexb04cgd5o2my4tb3xt2c

Hello Helen...For some reason my follow up responses are not showing up on the Amazing Discoveries Youtube channel...though they had highlighted by initial response. This here is the response to your comment on the Walter Veith Trump prediction claim posted at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNc1VFrc2MU&lc=z131zbppouboihykf232dh0orladszicm.1483711472914828

You can contact my by email for additional comment or you can post them here.

My email: njkprojectsda@gmail.com

(a) TMZ is “ridiculous”, but deliberately so...for entertainment purposes, but they are journalistically accurate and are a, if not the, leading breakers of news in the entertainment world....As far as I have heard/seen, Snopes is likewise factually/realiably the same in regards to fact-checking...That is why both Snopes and TMZ are regularly cited by main news networks.

(b) I have taken ample time viewing Walter Veith’s Sermons. Currently I have downloaded and viewed over 301 video files (ca. 60 GB) of Veith Sermons/Seminars. And I also cite/recommend some of his work, e.g. his Creationism presentations and his Testimony, on my blog. But I do have a main objection to his fundamental view that: “everything in regards to prophetic fulfilment is from a Jesuit Conspiracy’, Biblically seeing it as spiritually, prophetically and theologically deficient...

The Jesuits/Papacy/Roman Catholic Church are neither that good nor that calculating. They are just naturally acting, without much calculation in my view, and thus are naturally helping prophecies to be fulfilled.

E.g. Veith claims that the Jesuits created Islam....Well Islam is why the Protestant Reformation/Church survived Papal opposition..So the RCC would have seriously shot itself in the foot here.... Succinctly said: Rev 9 shows that it was God who allowed Satan to form Islam.

(c) Walter Veith is indeed well-researched, but here he made a mistake. He clearly just accepted this claim without verifying it himself. On my Youtube account, my answer here is marked as a “Highlighted Comment” and thus appears as the topmost comment. (Though that does not appear when viewed in my other Youtube Accounts). But if so, that would mean that Amazing Discoveries itself marked it so, which means they recognized their error.

I had submitted a more detailed follow up response (to Connie Dobson’s comment above) but it evidently was not allowed to be posted here. (Maybe it had too many (supporting) links). That response shows with video proof that the March 19, 2000 “Bart to the Future” episode did not contain any of that Donald Drumpf (a.k.a. Trump) candidacy speech segment. That was actually aired after he had made that announcement in June 2015.

You can find that follow up commented (successfully/acceptedly) posted on other Youtube channel postings of this video (make sure to press “read more” of course):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFU0Snpcf7o&lc=z13xzffjbw3iynoyd04cgd5o2my4tb3xt2c

(d) My Biblical/Prophecy research is posted at the “Theological Views Blog” NJK Project

http://njkproject.blogspot.com

SDA Church (Administrative) Commentary (Matt 15:7-9, 12-14; 23:16, 24)

General Conference’s “Great Controversy” Project

-In their manifestly Division-independent, planned 175,000,000-book, mass-mailing, Great Controversy project, (cf. the NAD's plan here), the SDA Church should instead send out members/literature evangelists door-to-door to target the households without, or with inadequate, internet (e.g., only ca. 16% of the ca. 120,000,000 U.S. households*), and also, to avoid, indeed, rationally and truthfully, wastefully, giving a hard copy of the book to a household where every one is illiterate (offering instead free literacy courses instead/first).

*If the plan is still to ‘send the “book to every home in the country”’, then the U.S. alone will (quite typically) receive 69% of the currently globally settled 175,000,000 book project.

-175 million books, is grossly ca. 15.1% of global households.

-as it is said that children editions will also be included in this printing/mailing total, then manifestly/logically, part of this total will duplicately, or more, target a single household, (unless a book will only be mailed to the children of this household.

-in all seriousness, given the highly divisive and controversial issues in the Great Controversy book, why is it being specially prepared and mailed to (presumedly) non-SDA children??!

-Even in its current 60 translational languages, the Great Controversy book is not translated in enough (uniquely spoken) languages to have this claimed/expect “global” impact, especially as this project’s printing will, as usually, probably be mostly in English; and with almost half (70 million) being printed in Portugese and Spanish for distribution in the South American Division alone. (And there was not explicit indication that this project’s printing will actually be in all of those 60 translated languages.).

-It is comically, quite telling of the indifferently persisted, “elementary” mentality of/in the SDA Church, indeed even/especially of the leadership, to see all of the “excitement” and “fanfare”, (as a youngster being all excited for having a birthday party; -see this “exuberant, quasi-hysteria” in the GC Project’s Dedication Ceremony (10-10-11)), for this achieved initiative of a quite “no brainer” project of: ‘Church members giving a copy of the GC book to, actually, (primarily) a friend, relative and/or acquaintance’. Seems simple enough that (a) Church members should have already been doing this, indeed by buying a copy to give away from their local ABC Bookstore, and (b) this should have been entirely out of their own pocket/expense.[7]

If the average printing costs of each GC book in this project is ca. $1.00 USD (cf. here), then that would result in $175 million USD having been expended for this project, and that probably out of collected tithe and/or (evangelism) offering funds. (And mind you, as stated here, this GC book is freely available online. In fact, if it is here to be ‘personally given out’, i.e. to known people (vs. mass/random distribution), then for most of those ‘familiar recipients’, a simple (and inexpensively, custom made) email/Facebook invitation to the online copy would have been quite sufficient. And in/for our day and age, $175,000,000 would have been more than enough to produce a top-of-the-line, aka. “blockbuster”, theater released, motion picture[8], or even, as actually suitable, a multi-episode TV series[9], on the Life of Christ which includes the contributions of the Desire of Ages (and other applicable segments in the SOP (e.g., COL), as well as what the Gospels actually, i.e., exegetically, do (accurately/correctly) say; -and even if this major production was only to be distributed on DVD and/or shown on SDA/Christian Television Networks. (~LDE 214.2; Ev 122.3-123.1)*

* Indeed/Case in Point, by direct genre comparison, the recent, The Bible (2013) TV Mini-Series on the History Channel which was 10 one-hour episodes and cost under $22 Million to produce (and, despite many (deserved) bad/bashing substantive reviews, has thus far been viewed by ca. 95 million people). Therefore with $175M, the SDA Church could have produced ca. 40 episodes (e.g., ca. 8 per each Conflict of the Ages series book.)

In that GC Project ceremony, the Church leaders iterated that ‘they had seen how God had led in this Project,’ and no doubt He did, but actually in the ‘let it be according to your (still/here little) faith’ (i.e., elementary vision)!! Indeed this is all the ‘restrained, non-detailed/unexplained and terse way in which God will deal with those who insist/prefer on being Spiritual babes, -until they experientially learn the “lesson”, and that, through the hard way, that: they need to Spiritually mature. (= Isa 28:5-13; cf. 1 Cor 2:14-3:3ff; Heb 5:11-6:3ff; John 16:12).

Clearly, as seen from the above factual realities, as usual with the SDA Church, something will give from those Cross-less, Laodicea lullaby, propagandizing, Spiritually-inebriated fairy tales, and also as usual, as similarly seen and done in the world, it will be the (various) ‘least of these’ who will be neglected.

P.S. (February 24, 2017): The recent production spearheaded by the SDA Church in Australia of the excellent ($5.5 million) “Tell the World” movie retelling the story of Millerites and early SDA pioneers was indeed a great realization. It is a perfect demonstration, -(though the cast choices could indeed have been more morally judicious, i.e. involve serious Christian actors...probably would have been more economical also than those Hollywood C-List actors) of what can be cinematographically, professionally, done to better reach this age/generation....

Alternate online posting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu8QkxXOQYE

...That all commendingly said above, the Present Truth message of God’s Advanced Light & Full Righteousness, True Remnant =Church Triumphant (Rev 14:1-5ff; 15:1-4ff; LDE 59-61) today is to not merely “Tell the World”, but to “practically” Show The World!! (=Isa 58; Matt 25; LDE 218.3-219.1).. See this depicted parable.

Post Script (July 14, 2012)

“Pendingly” Possible Roman Catholic Church Lawsuit (Psa 37:33-34)

Now wouldn’t it be something if the circulating rumors, (see e.g, here [see an NAD’s denying response here]), that the Catholic Church is, upon this GC Project, suing the General Conference of SDA’s over the claims made in the book the Great Controversy against it. Getting right to the point here, having known things widely and Spiritually here through the understood new course of God with the SDA Church, where He is indeed working to enter into full, SOP-prophesied “whirlwind”judgement (=Ezek 13) against it, and that to punish her for her abominable world-patterning ways (=Ezek 16:35-59), I would therefore straightly counsel like Jeremiah to ‘give in to Babylon here, and cancel the project.’ And that only because, as suggested by my above counsel that the EGW book, the Desire of Ages (DA) should have instead now been so circulated, and that actually as either a major TV Series and/or Movie productions. In other words, The SDA Church has not yet preached, neither lived/practices (=Living Testimony) the full Gospel Message per se (=Matt 24:14), as this DA circulation would do, to now be literally putting the cart before the oxen and presenting a message of what will take place when this Full Gospel message is knowingly rejected. But of course, in Jeremiah’s day, that apostatised generation just did not accept that they were being fought against by God Himself and rejected that Divine Counsel of Jeremiah. So it is with the similarly sinful-self-oblivious, even -indifferent, SDA Church. And so, in the similar way that the similar Jerusalem Destruction II scenario played out, interestingly enough also after ca. 40 years of probationary warning, as did the Jerusalem Destruction in Jeremiah’s day, the SDA Church, like those first century Jews will surely “take up arms” against any such Litigious threat instead of withdrawing the project, especially as much more than that project would probably have to be cancelled then, (i.e., Prophecy Seminars, the GC Book itself, etc), to avert any further prosecution.

The most interesting legal and judicial fact of the matter is that, yes the SDA Church has a right under its freedom of religion to preach whatever it thinks is truth. Manifestly this common Western right has up to now been fully upheld by the United States, where I can even see that Muslim clerics also have a right to preach against the “Great Satan”, the U.S. if it wants to, even claim that acting militantly towards it is lawful, but the there is the checking/converse right that the U.S. has a right to defend itself against this threat. And in a similar way, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) does have a right to sue for the defamation which it sees SDA’s are causing it. So there would quite literally be a judicial standoff here where both parties would be fully in there right. And that may be the “standoff” decision the that U.S. Supreme Court, the probable, even default, judicial venue for this Constitutional Case, would come to, (and yes I am in this post script giving litigation and judicial, advice, even “pointers” and encouragement, to the Roman Catholic Church, and the U.S. Supreme Court, (see my “expressed” summary reasons here), consider it all an Amicus ~~Curiae~~ Dei Brief) (=Ezek 21:18-20ff), resulting in the SDA Church having, yes, the right to freely preach what it believes, but the RCC also having a right to be compensated for any damages it claims to have suffered from these statements against it (including: tithing revenue losses due to leaving “spooked” members, etc).

And the reason may all focus on a religious issue which may be beyond the Constitutional Jurisdiction of the US Supreme Court (USSC) to actually rule upon and settle. That is, while the SDA Church may prove that the historical portions of the Great Controversy are factual/historically true, it may not even have the chance to prove to the court that this translates into a incontrovertible/exclusive Factual/Biblical/Prophetic Truth, as the USSC cant decide what is and what is not a Biblical Truth. Case in point, the “freedom of speech/religion right” to speak/preach against homosexual lifestyle and behavior has been deemed a bias/hate crime in certain Western countries (e.g.,/i.e., Canada) on very pertinently similar grounds... and the U.S. itself, with its latest Federal Decisions and Legislative Acts favoring the homosexual lifestyle is steadily moving to a similar Constitutional stance. And so that right of the SDA Church to “impunitively” express its belief here would not be upheld, yet it would free to continue to preach this message, but now “at a cost”. I.e., the RCC can sue it whenever it wants to for such claims of this being a Biblical Truth against them, and so for, at the very least, ‘unproven defamation claims’. However the USSC, in order to avoid having to continually consider this matter, may order the SDA Church and the RCC to enter into a future settlement agreement where the SDA Church would be paying a sort of a perpetual “damages tax” to the RCC if it wants to continue preaching these claims. Should the SDA Church refuse, it is then that it could legally be outlawed simply because of not paying for those damages....Shades of 70 A.D. yet, where the Jews, who had been subjected to Rome, broke that “yoke” by refusing to pay taxes to the Romans, and then began their futile revolt against Rome which brought about the utter destruction prophesied by Christ ca. 40 years before.

And so would be the incredibly just ways of God, as stated in the SDA Shaking applicable passages of e.g., Ezek 16:43; cf. 11:21; 22:31 (= the Mal 4:5-6/Luke 1:17 reforms, see explanation here), where He would allow the SDA’s Church chief reason of being rejected, judged and destroyed of refusing to heed, practice and preach Christ Full Gospel Message (see e.g., here), and thus here not first fully and properly circulating the Desire of Ages, to be the reason why they would suffer either total corporate destruction or perpetual subjugation.

...And look, not even the fact that their presently are 6 Roman Catholic Judges on the U.S. Supreme Court bench would have come into play here at all in that indeed fair/just/lawful decision....Now that’s all... ~~Poetic~~ Divine Justice!!! (e.g., Ezek 22:31)

March 20, 2014 - Similarly, see the claimed, (if valid), potential Legal-Financial issue.

Dereliction of Actual GC Presidential Duties & Responsibilities?? (Matt 23:23-24)

Given all of the standing, and most definitely, hindering, “Denominational Abominations” in the SDA Church today (cf. here; and, topically relatedly, see the GYC 2011 Charge/Commitment sermon by Sebastien Braxton (cf. here) and the Worship Hour sermon by Dwight Nelson, both addressing head on the chief (and related) hindering issues of individualism/competition & various divisions in the SDA Church), it’s odd that the current GC President[10] feels that preaching an Evangelistic series during the SDA Church’s 2013 Urban Evangelism initiative [which will probably be the main/focal satellite broadcast event....Update: Evidently they decided to go the other “moronic” route and as reported in here, tried to reach the New York Metropolitan area through complete broadcast/SDA media blackout.] is a priority for him!??* (=Matt 23:15!! -Joel 2:13a; cf. 1 Kgs 22:13-38!) (See here at [01:01:52] -It indeed is “Hypocritical”, cowardly (=Rev 21:8a.1 = RH, May 9, 1899 par. 19-20) derelictional, ““Humility””: ala. 1 Sam 15:20-33ff!!!!...I would want my tithe money back!!! - Same thing pertinently goes for the present North American Division president Dan Jackson -See here at 01:26:41-01:27:03; (cf. here): I.e., seems that, [despite being a Canadian], this bobble-figurehead (i.e.: ‘whatever they want in “the South”’) slob has gladly also drank of the (U.S.) SDA racial segregation-spiked Power-Ade!! (=RH, June 18, 1901 par. 1-3ff|21MR 346.1-3ff = 5T 79.4-81.1ff)...And, in Heavenly Intelligence (GC 615.1; COL 293.3-294.1) fact, as spasmodically seen throughout this sermon, Jackson is (also) actually, definitely going Satan-Senile!!!...A Babylonian-bazaar of War-losing (Ezek 7:18; Isa 54), clownish, strawed(EW 284.2)-darnels(EW 118.1) are these W.O.E.-full SDAs, -pointedly, indeed, its blood-nosed (EW 36.2-Ezek 7:17) mal-leading “leadership”. (Matt 23:13; 31-36; 21:31-32; 1SM 108-111)) {=Psa 2:12}. (Matt 3:7-9|Luke 3:7-9|DA 105.2-107.1) Studying out, preparing/formulating and proposing pointed Biblical policies/initiatives/solutions (to be duly, formally representatively voted upon) to have those offenses eradicated in the Church would be more “impressing”!! (cf. (his quoted [44:23ff]) 6BIO 225.1-7 = Letter 58, 1910)

And what is now worst with GC President Ted Wilson is that he is “moronically” now seeing this evangelism task as God-ordained because he will be able to ‘preach his series from the first Church in New York where he had begun his pastoral ministry in that city back when he was a pastor’ or, manifestly even: as the SOP counselled NYC work was the subject-matter of his doctoral dissertation (cf. here) ..Ecclesiastically representative enough....30+years ago. That all results in selfishly, detrimentally being a ‘jack of all trades’ instead of being the ‘master of the one he is actually elected to be...GC President.’ And given the Church’s still entrenched waywardness that is both quite an all-consuming responsibility and thus a greater “dereliction of duties” if/when not properly/actually done. Which leads me to this next, related, recent development, point:
It does not get much worse...and that is when a (GC) President of any entity thinks his main task is being a, moreover whitewashed white-swashing, cheerleader...because, by definition, a “cheerleader” only task is to get the crowds to disillusionedly cheer, even if their team is getting trounced on the playing, -with plastered smiles, obliviously enthusiastic demeanors, and all. All the while those “cheerleader” cannot do a single direct/tangible think to actually affect the development of the game on the playing field. But wait...”plastered”, it actually can get worst...and that is, as just said, when Church leaders decided to hypocritically act as ‘sin, error, and waywardness whitewashing plasterers’ (Ezek 13) and all to mask the fact that they actually are, and also are thus shapingly presiding over (=Matt 15:14): “tombs full of dead men bones and all uncleanness”. As Jesus said: ‘deal, and that head on, and swiftly so, with your cherished and revered corporate sins, and also the personal ones which are leading you to think that it is perfectly acceptable to so (mis-)lead/guide God’s work.’ (Matt 23:23-28).

And again, as above with the GC Book Project, with many, if not the vast majority of SDA Churches/member (at least in western countries) being located/living in (large) urban area[11], what is so ‘revolutionary, ground-breaking earth shaking and visionary’ about holding full-fledge evangelistic/ministry efforts in them, indeed also, as local conferences and their members should have already been fully doing. (=HM, November 1, 1897 par. 11; -and would actually be the ‘getting out of our comfort zones in order to allow God (supernaturally) work’ advocated in this MTC London sermon [22:26ff]) In EGW’s day there was, especially early on, a general shunning of the cities, however since those early days, (as seen by EGW’s ca. 1899+ “get out of the cities admonishments” e.g, Mar 141.1-8; LDE 95.1-97.2) and particularly by today this has quite manifestly been reversed. (See this dedicated SDA supporting ministry). So this “Mission to the Cities” call is nothing more than a circuitous “Get to Work Church Members” call...but most evidently: 5T 379.3; cf. 2T 545.1!! Of course, as with the “no brainer” GC Project Book, Church members will probably see all of this as a disculpating, unprecedented inspired initiative, which will indeed self-excuse them as to why they had not done this due, obvious and quite readily achievable work before!?? Keep feeding (formula) milk to adults for their “Spiritual meals” and see how “developed or productive” they’ll ever be! (Heb 5:11-14). And Ohhh the derisive insult to Pioneer, Little Flock SDA, mid 19^th century living, James White, to dare compare this 21^st century, “17”,000,000-member funded, GC “Paper Route” Project to his revolutionary, faith-dredging and “-dregging”, first Adventist Review (t.k.a. The Present Truth) issue distribution initiative!!

Post Script: “Retarded|ing-ly” Slow (=15MR 222.2)

Soooo...., from here, since it takes the focus of the entire General Conference and also its 13 Divisions to, and that in ca. 3 years, “properly”, [according to their curtailedly limited standards of “right-doing”], reach one large city of the world, and since the Second Coming depends on them, actually much more fully, engaging in this work (e.g., Matt 24:14), in, at the very least, those large cities of the world, then SDAs actually do plan on being on this Earth for, quite literally, at least an additional thousand years. (E.g., the ca. 300 cities of 1,000,000+ people X 3 years.) But of course, their “theology” says that ‘time will run out before then’. (And at such a rate, we’ll indeed see about their planned ‘650 large cities in the next few years.’ -All “smells” (EW 274.1) like the ‘Babylonian-ish’ (Rev 18:2-3) typical, capitalistic, ‘Mammon’s-money-dictating/deciding’ ways as usual here.) And for such a case, then ‘sorry for the other cities which were not so, (actually for New York today vs. its state in EGW’s days), pamperedly (i.e., “firstly” go to e.g., Tokyo, Istanbul, Karachi, Delhi and/or Jakarta instead) warned, worked, nor “cultivated”.’ Like I have stated above, this is all a work that each Local Conference should be capable of easily doing on its very own...that is of course if all of their members got involved. And “since” ‘the cost of advertising’ (e.g., this) manifestly is the actual hold up here, then why not “start” in the cities of the world where these cost are much lower, or practically not as necessary, for surely the world-circling news from the supposed/expected sure success of these “right” ministering efforts will provide all, (indeed much, much more, -pointedly by having come from an independent, objective/neutral, journalistic source), of the (costly) “advertising” you “need” elsewhere. Uhhh... Duuhhh!! (Isa 28:7-13).

Again, all just the fruit of a systemicly dysfunctional Church. And, provingly enough, nothing worst than, as exegetically explained above, a developmentally immature, and in this case, retarded, Church which then cannot rationally, nor rightly, function outside of any strict instructions, and gets all confused and lost when principles need to also be extracted and applied.. Indeed, as with the toddler and his miniature, seatable/driveable, battery-powered car: ‘it just can’t get any better than this’, or at the “reasoned” least: ‘that’s just perfect for me’.

Follow-Up (07-07-13): Obviously the participating “rank and file” membership has seriously taken to the spurious lead of their fallen-while-in-their-pulpits/offices (Matt 9:36), false shepherd (Ezek 34:1-22) leaders who, as discussed here, indifferently and dismissively, flint-facedly (Jer 3:3) “belie-ve” that “Medical Missionary” work merely is ‘having compassion’ which leads them to do such, (pun-intended), conversely “benign” things such as, as e.g., reported here, here and here: loading one’s groceries into their car at the supermarket {because who can manage unloading a cart into one’s car trunk}, holding cooking classes {at least they have (a choice of) foods to cook}, hugging homeless people {that should keep them warm during the winter months}, passing out flowers in a retirement home {probably faded by now}, paint-job “makeovers” {at least they have 4+2 walls}; visiting with people in an emergency room {‘better get to them while their accidentally down’}, flashing heart hand signs around the city {now why didn’t Jesus think of that}...among other, literally infantilely “retarded” (i.e., for supposed-to-by-now-be “Graduate School Educated and Trained” workers), things...They are indeed “religiously” not at all interested nor concerned about saving the lives of the annual tens of millions from whom are many who are, meanwhile, then dying. (=Luke 10:31-32).

...And with all of those “Compassion” T-Shirts, paraphernalia and public disrupting, city center, interjecting Pep Rallies (as if Central Park, or even Battery Park was not big or close enough), whatever happened to Christ’s unequivocal counsel in Matt 6:1-4; cf. Zech 4:6??? All so that they could have their: actually omissionedly “Babylonianly-hateful” (21MR 380.1; 19MR 176.1), “We’re here - We’re queer [and not at all “peculiar” (Titus 2:4|SpTB08 7.1)] - And we don’t know Who to fear (Rev 14:6-7|Matt 10:28|Matt 25:46|DA 825.4|Rev 14:9-11|Rom 1:21-32 = Pro 1:22-29ff)”, basely straying animalistic, “Sister S&G” (Isa 1:1-17|Ezek 16:48-50), non-“natural/actual”-life saving (Luke 10:31-32), pridefully (LDE 219.2-3) mesquinly, crudely and lewdly flamboyant and decadent (Rev 3:17), drums-beatsing (cf. here), bull-horning (Matt 6:1-2) parade. All seems clear to me that they, by literally, ‘rejecting the True Witness’s counsel, and instead faithlessly, variously ‘taking things into their own hands’ (=Num 20:10-12), that they forfeited a chance for God’s Spirit to work for them...e.g., impressing the NYC media to much, much more, and prominently, cover them and their work....And isn’t an “Annual Compassion Day” inherently a “1-day, annual event”??!
This SDA “Mission to the Cities”, “Compassion Tour with its cotton-candy “solutions” and actions is merely all the natural part of the: “Laodicean shallow, superficial, easy-going, cross-less” ‘sentimentalistic’ False Latter Rain Revival” (probably/really unwittingly, but still. self-applyingly stated here [38:42ff] by a GC SDA Leader)....because “SDA” are not really here to actually/vitally help, but, also retardedly, moronically, cheapenedly, “fulfilledly, quite proudly”, rather here to ‘manipulatively influence’ [certainly not “advancingly” (SpTB08 8.4) from e.g., the universities (PCO 78.1-6) publishing (SpTB08 7.1-8.3) “influential” institutional centers established by the comparatively, almost literally so, “handful” of SDA pioneers] in order to, literally, peddle their “half-baked” (Matt 5:17-20; 2 Cor 3:7-18) “other-half-accursed” (Matt 23:5; Gal 1:6-9) “gospel” (all contrary to God’s available “abundant” (John 10:10) persistingly enduring ideal =Isa 55:1-3ff|Ezek 34:23-24ff; Ezek 37:24-26ff; John 7:37-39; Rev 7:16-17; 21:6-8)....Let me and the NJK Project know when you all will have stopped your selfish: ““living” and letting die”!! (It’s so telling that it is SDA’s in poor/poorer countries which have an inkling about what, actually loving (Matt 22:39), this “benevolent” help is to be about: e.g., here, here and here...but doing such also needed help in First World societies is either not “societally cool” enough, or too “showing up”, and thus “improfitable” or “counterintuitive” & “controversial”, for First World SDA’s. -Luke 12:47-48) . . . And, (from statistics), with “First World” SDA Divisions (namely [T&O/mem]: the NAD [$1273], EUD [$945], TED [$657]) amounting to 52.43% of the World Church’s Tithes and Offering Total while only having 8.23% of the Total SDA Membership, one would sure hope that this ‘richer [$657+] “right hand”’ is ‘firmly clasping’ that body’s ‘poorer [$338-] “left hand”’ (~1 Cor 12:20-27).

MTC Follow-Up (10-16-13): In the light of the presently going on “Tokyo 13” SDA Missionto the Cities chapter, the “Reality Check” question that should be asked, answered and factored is: If Since the answer to a survey question to the people of New York City asking: “What major event happened in your city in June 2013?” will not be: ‘the SDA (MTC) NY13 Evangelism work’ then New York city was not “evangelized” as SDA evidently indifferently prefer to wishfully believe, as that concords with their overall fundamentally flawed & self-limiting & -defeating collective “Capitalism-kowtowing” (contra. Acts 17:7b; cf. COL 293.3-294.1) way of viewing, and doing, things (Psa 66:18; Luke 16:13); -paramountly including with them resultingly having got their “personally profiting, self-interest, vacuous satisfaction” from thinking to have heeded Jesus-Christ in that, above-debunked, pathetic effort and demonstration (Matt 13:58 cf. Matt 8:13; 9:29)...Fact is, they certainly did not ‘turn NYC upside-down and are expectantly not to now do that in Tokyo’ (contra. Acts 17:6), especially as they think that they merely need to exactly replicate what they had ‘templately’ managed to do in NYC (Matt 9:16, 17)...Capitalistically-reflective and token-work-indicative enough, Tokyo 13 was only planned as a 7 day event (Oct. 13-19) whereas NY13 was done over a month....

*Persisting Dereliction (05-17-14): And as it inherently was in the NY13 instance commented on above, the GC President Ted Wilson has again derelicted his actual duties and responsibilities, which clearly are far from being accomplished and resolved, to, (and following, -as he later gleefully relates here [00:48-07:03], similar prior acts in Vietnam and another part of the Philippines), hold the (also merely) 9-Part, Hope Manila 2014 evangelistic series. It is however naturally quite fitting and emblematic to see the SDA GC President himself, i.e., representative of the highest Spiritual position in the Church, doing an “elementary” “Evangelism 101”, series for this is actually just perfectly representative of the overall prevailing Laodiceanly indolent (Spiritual) mentality of the Church who are, most evidently like their “leader”, clearly totally clueless about what the pressing and hindering (internal/fundamental) issues in the Church which he/his office/position should be fully concerned about resolving, including in regards to the Theological and Biblical correcting and/or solidifying of the many vacuous, lored and debunkable evangelistic proof claims which he, as do other SDA evangelists, typically make. Clearly SDA’s are quite satisfied with their infamous, 1200+ daily member revolving rear-exit-door leak. And this is all just as ridiculous as would be the President of the United States, who is also the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military, to leave his presidential duties to go conduct a Drill Sergeant’s basic training session at an Army base. The (SDA) Church has a distinct office of President and Evangelist, but most pertinently like the actually-no-longer-humble King Saul (1 Sam 13:8-14), Ted N.C. Wilson instead thinks that he “expediently” should be doing both himself. Indeed Wilson’s detouring here is all representative of him thinking that everything, including the leading of the global Church is alright, and so why not just put it on auto-pilot and doze off... Frankly he just is either indifferent, insouciant, (Spiritually) clueless/witless and/or plain “dumb-ed” (Isa 28:5-13) & “blind-ed” (Isa 29:9-16) (=Matt 23:15). Fact is, it is the (persisting) various derelictious lack of proper leadership by the General Conference which will, actually already long has, “misleadingly” hinder God’s Plan (“B”) with/for the SDA Church (=LDE 59-61 =Isa 42:14-25).

And as most strikingly, and supposed to be: enduringly, object-lessonly seen from the episode of ‘King David, the Ark and Uzzah’ (2 Sam 6:1-11), when the (topmost) leadership in God’s Israel come to and implement inherently/deficiently erroneous (Num 4:15; 1 Chr 15:13-15) decisions, which they should have known better (Deut 17:18-20), they put at great, even life, peril the lower “rank and file”, and even if those decisions were “well-meaning” and/or “expedient”. (=PP 705.3) For, (as with the major reason for the SDA revolving-back-exit-door issue of being confronted by valid, either unsatifactorily, or outrightly not, answered objections to glib evangelistic claims and beliefs), when that lower grouping comes to encounter obstacles and hardships which were to have been detrimentally preempted by fundamentally proper/Biblical decisions, then even their own best/sincere/valiant will not prove to be an averting or resolving match.

The Actual Membership of the SDA Church

After years/decades of knowing that much less people faithfully, weekly attend SDA Church Services than are listed in Local Church books (probably as much as 60% less), the SDA Church has finally undertaken the task of auditing its membership numbers. (See this Annual Council 2011 announcement; and also the due/tangible Local Church responsibility/implication/requirement as also elaborated on in this Doug Batchelor statement [mp4] [mp3] [32:03-39:02]). I recall visiting an SDA Church in New York City in 2006 and rolling my eyes at the non-updated informational figure in their bulletin that the Global membership of the Church then was ca. 8,000,000. However, according to the Churches official statistics, that was the membership in ca. 1993. (And it actually was {‘being cited as’} 15,115,806 in 2006). However, if the commonly known figure of 50-60% inaccuracy proves to indeed be the case, then that ca. 8,000,000 would be the around the actual present day attending membership of the Church. (See my comments on the further, most logical, reducing of that total starting here).

Just from the fact that merely 15.1% (32,000) of the available ca. 212,000 fighting men in the 4 tribes Gideon sent messengers to (see Judge 6:34, 35 & Num 26:27, 34, 47, 50) believed in God’s leading of Gideon and responded to his call thematically compares to the whole baptized membership of the SDA Church and who indeed consider themselves (still) members of the Church. Then, the cutting of this 32,000 number by 69% (Judge 7:2-3) compares to this ‘accurate membership’ initiative of the Church as it involves which of those baptized members are actually, faithfully, (merely) attending Church,. Then there is the issue of who among those who are “faithfully attending” are merely ‘pew-warmers” vs. those who are also actively involved in Gospel Work, Ministry, Missions, -just as Jehovah Witnesses rightly and distinctly do reckon their “active” membership (cf. at the end of this forum post). A similar 97% cut then would probably also transpire, as it did with Gideon (Jud 7:4-6). Such an overall 32,000 to 300, thus 99.1%, “adjustment” in the present SDA Church membership figures would yield ca. 159,375 Active Members. Then would EGW’s ‘1/20 (5%) solemn warning’ (ChS 41.1-2|LDE 172.1) would sound like great news!

As explicitly stated by God in the Gideon episode, He is not at all impressed by mere numbers, but rather by genuine dedication to the cause. (RH, September 6, 1881 par. 3) And that surely has not changed today with God as He indeed remains All Powerful/Mighty. That is why the numbering of His Israel was greatly restricted, even with a due offering to God associated with it (Exod 30:11-16); and especially, as David did, in regards to reason of just ‘gauging the Military strength of Israel’ (1 Chr 21:1-17. Even the ensuing plague that killed 70,000 men in Israel (1 Chr 21:14) was designed to show that God is not at all dependent on mere numbers. Indeed He was intending to destroy even more (1 Chr 21:15).). Similarly, Church Membership today, (which is systematically done by the SDA Church), and is perfunctorily used to show ‘how the Church is thriving’, should instead be meticulously reckoned according to ‘who is actually actively involved in Church Work, Ministry and/or Missions.’

It wasn’t to many years ago when Sabbath School teachers used to take a weekly census of the amount of such Gospel (including Community Services) work done by members in the past week. Of course that, still wrongly, was merely to show how active the Church was overall, and not to determine which members were active in sharing their faith or meeting community needs as Christ did. So clearly, an accurate membership count according to “active work” can easily be done in the Church, but, non-sequiturly and ironically enough, the emphasis of the Church is merely on its membership increasing, and not on it fully being an active membership (John 15:5-6, 8). And so it is just natural that those who have joined the Church but are then not active, be not “bothered” in this regard lest they become annoyed and leave the Church, and thus lessen its membership numbers. The Church has preferred to produce ‘fruit of any quality’ vs. ‘nurturing and cultivating to produce “choice fruit”’, and thus it does have ‘spoiled, and in turn spoiling, (=leavened and leavening) produce’. As Jesus said in Matt 22:14: ‘many have been called, but, even from those who, commendingly, have responded (Matt 22:1-13), the choice ones are few.’

Given the quasi-Socialistic remuneration system of the Church, there really is no tangible advantage to either local Pastors, nor the Global Church itself for that matter, to claim a larger actual membership than what it really is, other than merely for, influencing, thus indeed “propagandizing”, (which are quite truthfully substantively misleading), reasons/intents.[12] And such self-aggrandizing, and thus self-trusting, reasons is indeed what God is pointedly against as the reason/motivation for numbering His People. Clearly the Church fears that actual numbers, based on even ‘merely attending’ members, will “harm the work and cause of God, by disheartening and discouraging present members!?? There is nothing more useless than people who are motivated and convicted by a mere display rather than by the actual substance. If people are just joining the Church, or even remaining in/adhering to it, because of its ‘high, and increasing numbers’, and/or ‘because many other people are’, -‘thus because the Church/Truth is then “popular”’, (or at least is made to seem to be popular), then that clearly is a most unbiblical motivation/incentive, and indeed will only, detrimentally result in such “bad fruit” remaining in the Church, and indeed also naturally just ‘spoiling the rest.’ And the implied notion that: ‘God is greatly blessing/growing the Church’, while most of its membership is, like Gideon’s rejected 31,700, actually, really uninterested in the cause and is ‘fearing the enemy rather than fearing/believing God’, or (then) are indifferently slothful even when seemingly interested in the task at hand, is indeed leading many in the Church today to wrongly believe that ‘they can indeed continue as is and God surely will continue “bless and increase” their numbers, as He has been doing’. Thus they do indeed believe that they have come to be successful by their own (preferred, unbiblical) ways and “power” and not by what God actually expected/demanded of them (Judge 7:2)!
...Relatedly, as Ed Williams personally emotionally testified in this ASI 2013 ‘”F.A.R.M -Former Adventist Recovery Ministry’ seminar presentation [...07:42-08:07ff], he himself had left the Church for 42 years, (and only received one inquiring/seeking out visit)...and when he returned, his name was still on the Church’s membership books!!???...as he enjoins....”We’ve got to change that...”, [see a similar (2014) statement by Doug Batchelor in here [41:58-42:28-44:00]], indeed as that, at the very least, starkly/candidly demonstrates/substantiates a “Cain-like” (=1T 113.3ff) total disregard for members by, primarily, local Church pastors and leaders.....And there may be a mixture of (vexatious) disappointment and assumed (apostate) privacy reason why remaining members do not want to inquire and visit members who have left...But “that’s what friends (Pro 18:24), (or at the very least, “siblings” (Pro 17:17)), are (indeed supposed to be/) for”. . (cf. Gal 6:10).

So Is It (Now) God or Mammon??!

Got to wonder, in the light of the currently quite diffusely ready access to the internet in, pointedly, First World countries, if the SDA Literature Evangelists (L.E.’s) working therein start off their canvass by asking, even, suggesting:

‘Do you have ready access to the internet?? Because if you do you can freely read, download (and in various eBook formats), or even hear, a copy of many of the books that I have to sell.’ [I.e., the major SOP|Conflict of Ages series books, Bible Readings For the Home, (cf. here).] (E.g., here here here or here here here or here)

However, given the pervasively controlling Capitalistic mindset of/in the Church, that is probably not the due/“right-doing” case (cf. in this 2004 Magabooks Canvassing Guide), since the object probably is to ‘first make a profiting buck from these sales’ vs. (substantively) spreading the SDA message. And of course the given reason for this persisted, profiting salesmaking in regards to these books, in such areas where they can freely, readily be accessed/obtained online, is that: ‘these L.E.’s, (who are mostly college/private academy students need to make money, indeed a profit, in order to help pay their tuition, and/or sustain a living’.[13] However that base rationale is easily torpedoed by the Spiritual fact that: if it was being honestly, benevolently and “other-interestedly” (-all Biblical character traits that indeed cannot be upheld/mixed in Capitalistic endeavors), the canvassed person would probably be so touched/impressed by this ‘paramount generous and genuine person-interest’ over simply ‘the making money/a profit’ that they would be then interested to buy the other books which are not freely available online (e.g., Health Cookbooks, The Bible Stories (abridged), etc.). In fact, it can even be provided for, that the person can later send a freewill offering in the name of the colporteur to their L.E. program to cover would be revenue of the freely offered/accessed book(s).

Such a ‘person over money’ approach would surely be accompanied, if even necessary then, by the more insistent urging of the Holy Spirit upon the heart of the recipient of such selfless interest that the L.E. would probably end up making much more money than through the (no doubt)-currently-persisted Capitalistic approach. As recounted here, I personally experienced such grateful appreciation when canvassing many people who were interested in my books, but could not afford them, gladly generously contributed to my then, if necessary, freely-offered Darkness Before Dawn booklet. As stated there, apart from a couple of days, such free offerings did not end up incurring costs-covering losses, especially not in regards to my overall earnings during the whole summer program.

Hint, Hint: This people-first approach is all in line with the basic and core SOP principle/counsel in MH 143.3!!

In Lock Step With the Baals

It is most comically telling to see SDA’s buying into the Capitalist mentality that even humanitarian causes have to merit a free gift/donation, and so, as Capitalists do, go on to ‘stand on their heads for two days, or walk around the world, -especially barefoot, provide some entertainment or simply monkey around’ in order to bring awareness to a humanitarian cause and/or solicit supporting donations: See this video by the Adventist Midwest Health group which includes the Adventist Bolingbrook, La Grange Memorial, Glen Oaks, Hinsdale Hospitals. Seems to me that a simple appeal to SDA’s in even solely that Midwest region could have provided all of the needed funds for that cause. E.g., each member could do away with a single non-essential expense for that month and instead donate that money to this cause. Or how about, at the very least, a more systematic contributing by self-imposing a “selfishness tax” of, e.g., 10%, upon all non-essential and purely self/flesh gratifying expenses such as the purchase of an updated Ipod/Ipad, a vacation package, a brand new car, etc. In other words, be honest enough with yourself to realize that you are frivolously expending money to gratify yourself while millions of people in the world are dying from causes that this money would have helped avert. Yet, as discussed here in regards to the popular ‘brand philanthrocapitalism’, that ‘self-taxation’ method is but the very least and actually base solution. The actually solution is to straightly and entirely, sacrificially give to help those in need. The Bible indeed teaches to ‘give 1 to the one who has none if you have 2’ (Luke 3:11; cf. Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35; 2 Cor 8:7-15) and not, as the capitalist teaches and most readily accept today ‘wait until you have, e.g., 70, and then, if you really want to, give 1’.

“Seek Ye First the Kingdom...”

So my parents recently (June 2012) went on an SDA Vacation Cruise which featured preachers/speakers from 3ABN. But, to be technically accurate here, as their prior plans to fully book the 3ABN seminars fell through when a planning to attend third party, (which included their grandchildren) cancelled those plans, they also, initially, reneged on their (my parents’ own) reservation, but then, just in time for the distinct and later Royal Carribean cruise deadline, they booked a “generic/secular” cruise on that same cruise ship. That however involved that, as per the 3ABN arrangement, all of those seminars, except for Sabbath Day meetings would not accessible to them. That was an unfortunate circumstance for them but, nonetheless, all along the planning and prior 3ABN reservation dealings, they were disturbed by the extra costs that were being required in order for one to be given access to the cruise-long 3ABN seminars and meetings, as they had an issue with these “Gospel” meetings costing more money and thus also being restricted to only those who paid for it, then they did not make that expense. Indeed such an ‘attendance fee requirement’, particularly for (also) non-SDA’s, is all contrary to Christ’s charge in Matt 10:7-8, especially as those SDA’s claim to similarly believe that ‘the Kingdom of Heaven (=Second Coming) is at hand’. So why not freely open the doors of those meeting to anyone who wants to attend on that cruise, and have any added costs be paid out of the ministry’s evangelism fund?!! But of course not, for as “forcedly” typical with SDA’s, money comes first, and money is the commanding god. (see Matt 6:24; =Rev 13:16-17). And so, increasingly bothered by those unbiblical restrictions, which became more vividly evident while on the ship, my parents decided to “boycottingly” not attend the free/open attendance Sabbath Day meetings. They just did not agree with the “money-first spirit” here. Indeed quite a grand wasted evangelism opportunity, and, sequiturly enough, the whole thing for 3ABN only, merely, turned out to be an inward-focused, “SDA Vacation”.

But here is the kicker. While my parents were variously boycotting those “free” Sabbath Day meetings [See pp. 313-315 in this document], they came to strike up a conversation, and then friendship, with the person who had come to clean their room that Sabbath Morning and they told him not to, explaining the Sabbatical reason why. Well by the end of that conversation, the young man said that he also wanted to attend (such a) Church and got instructions from them on how he could find/contact a Seventh-Day Adventist Church in his home area!!

Now, and, unless 3ABN can provide concrete facts/info to the contrary, and/or the Final Judgement will bear out, I am willing to bet that this was the only convert, or, depending on the future choices he made, “reached”/potential convert to the SDA message that was made on that entire “SDA Vacation” cruise!!!

As Jesus also went on to (fully and literally [based on NASB]) say in Matt 6:33, punctuating His discourse on ‘not worrying about securing even the basic necessities of life (Matt 6:19-32, 34; -contrary to what 3ABN had chosen to do in this matter):

“Continually seek first the Kingdom (of God) and His Righteousness [=2T 35.2], and all these things shall be provided to you.”

And in this ‘SDA Vacational Cruising-matter’, the only thing that was actually ‘lacking’, since the Cruise itself was fully paid, was evangelistic encounters!!

“As CCM artist Sara Groves ‘unspokenly’, amply expressed it: “Seek ye first, -what a verse!” [Song: “The Word”] (DA 825.4|Matt 8:11-12)

“Reclaim Your Faith” Campaign (Isa 5:18-22)

The Amazing Facts Ministry and the General Conference (see a previewing of series here [09:28-15:17]) had set out to do a special weekend series to try to reclaim the, (however ambiguously stated) known many SDA’s and former SDA’s who were no longer attending the Church. However, talk about the wild and mind-boggling irrationality of ‘shooting yourself in both feet,’ and that, ‘in order to win a race’, as, when they did do the 4-part series (see here), it was, for some mindless reasoning, generically watered down to: ‘an effort to reach out to all/any Christian who is no longer attending Church,’ a number which is said to be as high as 72-75% of the claimed membership of various (North American) denominations/Churches. I am not sure if this “genericizing” (and this may have always been the intent of this series) was (at least Freudianly) defensively done so that it would not be thought that ‘only SDA have this issue/problem’, or if this was, and again, for some mindless reasoning, as explained next, done to try to get Christians to go back to Church, but it was indeed quite self-defeating for the purposes of SDA’s.

First of all, the bottom line truth in regards to SDA’s is that people who no longer attend the SDA Church actually no longer see/believe that the Church is the ‘Remnant bastion of Truth which has the keys to making through final events’ that it claims to be. Indeed, having believed that, is most likely the reason why those people had joined/been baptized into it in the first place. That “Reclaim Your Faith” series had tried to present 4 major reasons why people no longer attend Church, however while these may be the applicable/pertinent cases for other Christians, in regards to the SDA Church and its entrenched prophetic message claims, this is not actually its causes for decessions. In other words, people mainly leave the SDA Church because they have found some manifest and unresolved fault with anyone of its Fundamental Beliefs, and particularly its renowned 5 distinctive ones of: the Sabbath, the State of the Dead, the Sanctuary, the Second Coming (i.e., its Eschatology) and the Spirit of Prophecy. Also key here is the Theological tenet of Theodicy, which is intrinsically related to one’s understanding of God and the Future. But in their effort to here appeal to Christianity in general, such specific issues were not addressed in this campaign. Again the self-deluding belief of the Church is that: ‘they are doing a great job of proving the Biblicalness of their beliefs’ and so this cannot be a/the main reason for decessions. However, while in recent times, such efforts to better defend the Churches Fundamental Beliefs have, more than less, been done, with especially a younger generation of preachers not seeing the validity of/in indifferently ignoring standing objections, as it was being customarily done in mainline Church publications/presentations, the existing entrenched dysfunction in the Church has still effectuated its jamming part to make such efforts of no effect, by it not being soundly, fully and harmoniously being diffused to all Church members. So the “shepherds” in Israel have really either not properly fed their flock, nor led them to fertile grazing pastures, and thus it is no reason that those sheep are being “lost” at a wholesale paste.

Indeed it is really most irrational for someone who would not have any substantive problem at all with the SDA Church’s Fundamental Belief to leave the Church for some, therefore, most trivial issue as, e.g., ‘someone being unkind to them’. Indeed just as someone would not refuse to claim their won $1,000,000 prize because ‘the receptionist at the claims office was rude to them’, a person who has properly and firmly understood Biblical Truth, will not give it up because of such, comparatively, really inconsequential/irrelevant reasons. So the real problem here with the Church’s decessions, which in cases of newly baptized persons, who are usually, actually quite enthralled by their newly learned teachings in the first few months after their baptism, is not really that ‘someone was mean to them’, but rather, more crucially, that they were no longer seeing these teachings as being so/that “valuable”/true. Any given: ‘someone was mean to me’ reason was really/truly just a (camouflaging) excuse. And enjoined with this “losing of value” is the issue of inadequate/deficient “follow-up” teaching and pastoring after these people were baptized.

Secondly, and also related to the issue of ‘deficient, lacking, and even atrocious, shepherding,’ even if/when a teaching of the SDA Church may be soundly presented, i.e., with all objections to it being soundly silenced, and this ‘defeating understanding’ being clearly, and readily, known to/by all members, there still remains the pivotal issue, as discussed here, that these intellectual/Theological teachings do not really have any tangible/practical value/significance. The fact of the matter is that God never does, nor requires any obedience (=worship), without it actually having a quite tangible/practical, and most beneficially so, purpose. Yet that next/furthering step is quite lacking, if not entirely so, in the SDA Church’s system of belief. If these further understandings had been known and taught, it would have provided a most anchoring, object-lesson, point wherewith baptized members (including those who have been born in the Church) could see the tangible reason, and thus value, of what they are believing. In fact, the common/major issue of ‘members not being loving/kind/friendly’ is rooted in the fact that the SDA Church is not bothering to pursue God’s/Christ’s expectation for those who claim to be followers of them.

So, the actual issue with SDA Decessions, contrary to what the Church would (either indifferently or obliviously) have you believe, is all rooted in their deficient Theology, and that fault squarely falls on the various levels and sector of its leadership; -which is why they will be duly judged for this (Ezek 34:1-22; SpM 369.7 cf. this post).

And so, in regards to this “Reclaim Your Faith” campaign when, on one hand, you do not at all address these actual issues in the SDA Church, nor actually are in a position to resolve them, and on the other hand, you are quite painstakingly and quasi-explicitly to your targeted audience, (i.e., by making sure to never say anything distinctive or distinguishing about the SDA Church in that series, but to keep things generic, including not mentioning the name of the Church, (until GC President Ted Wilson, probably convicted by his own sermon against this ‘denominational covertness’ albeit passingly did so in the final night [05:39])), encouraging Christians to rejoin their Sundaykeeping Churches, where, if they do so, they will actually just hear many explicit or implicit messages against the teachings of the SDA Church, and even pointeldy against the Church itself, then you are indeed just decidedly/deliberately shooting yourself in both feet, and while deluding yourself to think that ‘you are endeavoring to reach these people with the Truth.’ Indeed such action will just serve to potentially put these people further out of the reach of the Truth. And even the attempt to make this series pass as a generic encouragement for people to “reclaim their faith in Christ” and “in the hope of the Second Coming”, will, at best, just lead these Christians to return to Churches where they will be set on the path to receive the Mark of the Beast. In fact the only thing that was distinctively said about the SDA Church/its Beliefs was the actually deliberately most ambiguous statement by the speaker Doug Batchelor when encouraging former churchgoers to go to their Church on “the Lord’s Day Sabbath” (see in the final presentation [32:52]), which non-SDA defaultly and only understand to be Sunday. And this supposed “altruism” will probably just result in many who had left the SDA Church, for especially doctrinal reasons, and may have since then been unchurched, go join a local Sundaykeeping Church. And so, what’s the use of a Church which is so theologically deficient that it, and not only in this regards, is just actually doing Satan’s work!!? (~Rev 3:9!) I mean, I just don’t begin to get it, the “Remnant Church” which believes that the end of the world tomorrow during which those who observe Sunday then will have the Mark of the Beast, and freely preaching from its own denominational channel and platform is going out of its way not to encourage people to join their Church!?? In fact the more secular America is, the better in terms of not precipitating final events before the time. Or was this all just a reverse ploy by the SDA Church to get as many people as possible formally and more staunchly than ever back into the Mark of the Beast camp??! Which ever way one tries to understand this rationale, it just points back to a complete lack of spiritual discernment by the Church’s leadership, again all stemming from their foundational, deficient theology. (= e.g., LDE 50.2-4)

So in summary, it seems most logical to me that this series should not only have been focused to speak to the specific issues of why people are actually/truly leaving the SDA Church, which as stated about all ultimately involves the teachings of the Church, (and a Church which has the Full teachings of Christ will naturally also be most loving and caring), and, if to be made to speak to the Christianity in general, then why these non-former SDA’s should seek to now join the SDA Church and not ‘their previously attended Sundaykeeping Church.’ Indeed if a local SDA Church was to go out in their community to invite these such “reclaimed to general Christianity” people to a SDA Evangelisic series, (as it also could/should have instead been done during this “Reclaim” series), they then are more likely to naturally say/think: “I am now already/again attending a Christian Church which is, or will (probably) be, teaching on these topics (especially as merely generic, initial, topics are usually listed in SDA Evangelistic invitation bills), and thus will straightly reject that invitation.

And in regards to the common Denominational name hiding done by the SDA, wasn’t that name chosen for pointed evangelistic purposes. So what’s the distrusting logic in hiding it??! Proud corporation usually spend millions of dollars to have, and keep, their name/brand before as many people as possible, but not so for the SDA Church Organization. All this really speaks of being ashamed of themselves, and/or their Beliefs, which in turn is reflective of themselves not really knowing why, and/or understanding/believing that, what they believe/teach is valuable.

It was also a major argument for returning to Church that ‘they believed that the Second Coming was closer than ever’ citing Heb 10:23-25, however as contrary what was glossly and glibly read in that passage, the way in which to foster and maintain such assembling is through genuine love and good deeds (i.e., a Church that is Christlike in love and deeds), and not merely because the end of the world is coming. Indeed if that had been Paul cited reason, since Jesus has not returned for ca. 2000 years since then, the Church would long ago have been disbanded. Instead the manifested love and good deeds that foundationally brought and kept them together is what kept the Church together and organized, especially when the great, recurring periods of persecution came against them. Ironically enough, one of the major reason why many SDA’s no longer attend the Church is because of such claims that: ‘the end of the world is very near’ (i.e., in less than 5 years), as normatively done in Evangelistic campaigns, pointedly in the usually first of second night when speaking on the “Signs of the Time”. And so when e.g., 5, 10 years go by and those pointed claims prove to have been false, then many, especially those who had been led to stake their entire reason for ‘joining the Remnant Church’ on that claim, naturally leave. So in summary here, the actual main reason for joining the Church is because it, by being a loving community, has works of good deed to do, both towards fellow members and towards others in need. And lest people think that this will only generate ‘loaves and fishes’ converts/members, given the recursive, relative sacrifice that all who are so blessed in are to impart to others (=2 Cor 8:7-15), those who do not have this Christlike spirit to help others in need, thus those who are, and remain selfish and covetous, will not want to be part of such a, truly Godly, community.

So, summarily recapping here, the effected thrust and results of this unprecedented ‘Reclaiming’ effort by SDA’s, which they probably deemed was under/in some Latter Rain anointing was, and that quite literally, a call to non-Churched Christians to “Go Back to Babylon”, which was simultaneously saying to Churched Christians “Do Stay in Babylon”!! (all contra Rev 18:1-4ff).

An Already “Doomed” People!! (Ezek 7:10)

-In this 03-10-2012 sermon [34:58-38:55], Dwight Nelson, ‘bless his heart’, makes the exhortation that: ‘the SDA Church better not abandon unity or else, then, it will be doomed’. However by his own detailing of existing and entrenched divisions and disunity in the Church it is objectively clear that this line has already been crossed, and now reigns supreme, in the Church; -and, given the greater light of this Church, thus at an abominable level. And so that is why, as Divinely revealed since, “at most”, June 1999, God has already decided to act and enter into full judgement for these also then long-existing Denominational abominations (=Amos 3:6-8; cf. Ezek 11:22-23; 1 Sam 15:28-29). If anyone in the Church has not, nor, even by now, cannot, see these actions as abominably such, then they are really either completely indifferent or just plain spiritually blind. And here’s an aid: just duly take into consideration the avertible death, suffering and potentially salvific lossness, that such waywardness by God Remnant Church has enabled and furthered during this time. (cf. here). And if you do not think so, then you do not really/actually believe that you were God’s (key) Remnant Movement!!

Indeed, the Church has long ago “sold itself (Ezek 16) and its soul (Matt 16:25-27)” to this ‘most abhorrent, chiefly selfish, pervasive capitalistic, Mark of the Beast, mentality’; and its resulting, wrapping up, Shaking judgement for such apostasy has long been put into action (cf. Matt 23:37-39). So the only thing that can be “wished” here is that: there persistingly won’t addedly be another spiritually moronic mentality, (all borne out of variously deficient exegesis and theology in the Church, fittingly enough, caused by its entrenched disunity), like Ancient Israel, that “God cannot act outside of the physical, even nominal, structures and organization of a cause that He had previously led in establishing (cf. LDE 59-61), and all that is ‘“believedly” left to be done’ is to ““inevitably” go down with the doomed ship”, for that really is only the “faultingly honorable” mentality of a shipmaster who was directly responsible/contributive to the dooming of that ship!! (Isa 28:14-20) As in the days of the nascent NT Church, it was only those who came to fully/truly accept, embrace, and uphold God’s replacing, Remnant, New Israel movement then (see e.g., Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7) who came to be anchored enough in the newly unfolding New Covenant Truths to come from under that determined doom (Matt 23:37-24:2) and then, either Spiritually and/or physically, survive it when it tangibly manifested itself in the Jews’ 66-70 A.D. irrational warring events.

Way Too Little!,... Way Too Late!!

Succinctly said here, while I can shallowly appreciate the efforts of David Fiedler to try to revive the long neglected, even almost entirely abandoned “Medical Missionary” mandate of the SDA Church in his Adventist City Missions ministry (see his many (historical and experiential) sermons on this in here & on Youtube), it comically is quite symbiotic of the typical “well meaning”, but still really “selfishly and self-servingly indifferent” specious Capitalistic Spirit that presently overarchingly and specifically/individually controls the SDA Church and its (even “best” acting) members, resulting in the usual useless “token” work. Summarily said:

(1) You do not have to go ‘up to 60 miles’ outside of a world’s city to get all that Fiedler’s ministry facilities are selling and offering. Just go to, e.g., a Super Wal-Mart, or your local fitness center. Not to mentioned that they will surely be much cheaper in those urban stores, especially when the gasoline cost for the 120 mile (round trip) drive is inextricably factored in!
[Not at all surprising, as announced on his website, Fiedler has had to close his d’Sozo restaurant in late December 2011, after about 2 years of starting up enterprising, due to “financial pressure”. He sanctimoniously gleans a ‘“University of Hard Knocks” educational benefit’ from this and it indeed is so as it is God trying to instill into the hard head of SDA’s that anything short of his full perfect will which does not involve the typical and revered z/jealous, sectarian, individualistic, “go-it-alone”, Capitalistic, Shaking-foundational spurious approach by SDA’s (=Ezek 8:3-6ff - discussed in here) will ever begin to be, and/or truly be, successful!]

(2) While in the days of EGW such lifestyle & wellness issues was a major, even critical concern, even among Americans, and really then had no conceived solution, which is what made John Harvey Kellogg’s pioneering treatments and solutions offered at the Battle Creek Sanitarium so world-renownly “influential” then (see some historical photos here), the critical problems of today have become much worst and even more critical and deal with problems of hunger, fresh/potable water, diseases, vital poverty, abortions, etc. So “giving someone a massage” or “selling them a health food meal” is LOL most irrelevantly not-influential. In fact claiming that it is really characterizes the claimant as a delusional, religious fanatic. Furthermore, such services are indeed optional as most people don’t see them as really necessary; i.e., at best, in our day, when, by the improvements in society, the 19th century life-damaging issues have been removes, they’ll only pursue such “health and wellness betterment” if they really want to live “7-10 more years”. On the other hand, the various people in the world who are in vital and critical need and are suffering from curable, preventable and/or intentional causes, don’t have that luxury and most here can’t even make it past their first 7-10 years!

(3) In this area of Medical|Gospel Ministry there are “cosmetic” elective needs and there are urgent vital needs. But in all of its “medical”, and even evangelistic endeavors the SDA Church has faithlessly and basely chosen to be disobedient to Christ’s Gospel Mandate and has instead chosen to variously concern itself with cosmetic needs, and that for reasons of self-seekingly doing, fittingly enough, the “non-messy”, glamourous and showy works. (=Zeph 3:7) Thus in such deeds, they have entirely opted to go by the religious philosophy of the Pharisee and Levite in Luke 10:30-37, because, just like these religious hypocrites and ‘outlaws’, their actual, controlling aim is not to help people in either physical or spiritual need, but to merely “look good”, and “seem to be good.” (Matt 23:27-28; 7:21-23; James 2:14-17; DA 825.4) And worse, that is the (supposed, but spurious), image/character of God that they are presenting, and endeavoring to present, to the world. (Psa 50:21 {Psa 50:1-23}; Matt 23:15)...But such will have their, presently being, in a ‘the faster & sooner (you stiff|hard|flint necks|heads|faces hit God’s own Amos 7:7-9 “Shaking-effectuating” “adamant” wall) the better’, Divinely accelerated & fast-tracked (=Isa 42:16-17; 28:13) “reward”, including within their lifetime...culminating in them one after the other (“seamlessly”) going to their graves without (1) seeing the return of Christ as/however as they “snottifully” may profess and claim, but (2) also then by being sent to a hellish Second Death for, moreoverly, having (selfishly) squandered their prime opportunity. (Matt 25:40-46)

Only a project with plans to truly have the Matt 25:45 reach as the NJK Project is, will indeed fulfill Christ Gospel mandate which indeed involves actual “Medical Missionary” work. And (contra even the more in-city/on-site efforts here) that is the full scale and actually life-saving type of work which will actually “influence” our present world; -both vitally and spiritually. Nothing more telling than the spiritual bankruptcy of a Church, as were First Century Jews, than them not understanding the spiritually purposes and principles in God’s Prophetic guidance of the past, and them trying to blindly “woodenly” implement them some 100+ years later. (=Lam 2:9; Ezek 14:1-5). As advancing times have created deeper and wider problems to deal with, God’s guidance have correspondingly expanded to also addresses those new confrontations.

The “View” From Behind A Veil

From a simply surface, mindless, impressed and/or shallow listening of the 2012 Annual Council sermon by Ted Wilson most would, and probably go forth from there and agree amongst themselves that he had preached a most Biblical sermon on Medical Missionary Work. However the there is literally a night vs. day; light vs. darkness difference and dichotomy with what SDAs are presently doing with the Medical Missionary and what they are actually supposed to be doing today. As stated in the section just above, they are trying to do today what should have been done over 100 years ago, and worst, according to the lesser needs mandate than what is presently the case.

A good indication of this, for lack of a more appropriate term: “retardedness” of pointedly SDA Church Leaders, who are indeed atrophyingly “leading”, or actually, stalling, the members of the Church into such “lesser, insufficient and really irrelevant works”, is the claim of Wilson at 18:34 to EGW’s statement:

“Medical missionary work has been presented as the entering wedge of present truth. It is by this work that hearts are reached, and those once prejudiced are softened and subdued. This is the work that is to be done today.” 4MR 374.3 [1902]

that:

“If it was good in 1902, wouldn’t it be good 110 years later, in 2012!?!”

Well the exegetically responsible answer is both yes and no. If you are talking about the Biblical principles involved, as well as God’s demonstrated approval of this, then of course: Yes. But in regards to practical methods of doing the Gospel Work, which is based on what the actual and most vital needs are then, no. As EGW variously said:

“It is impossible for Christians of our day to occupy the position of our fathers, to do as they have done, and stop there. We cannot be accepted and honoured by God in rendering no better service, in reflecting no greater light, than they. In order for us to be blessed as were our fathers, we must improve our increased light as they improved theirs. We are required by God to act as our fathers would have acted had they lived in our day and been blessed with the privileges and opportunities granted to us. BEcho, Jan 4, 1897 par. 5; See also: RH, Sept 13, 1898 par. 6; 1T 262.1; 3T 64.3

So to claim, as Wilson and the SDA GC is, that medical missionary work today is to be mainly focused and effectively, if not outrightly, limited to trying to meet the mainly “wellness” needs that existed (in the world’s cities) 100+ years ago, and not towards meeting the most urgent and vital needs that exist in our world today where tens of million of people are annual dying of preventable, curable and/or intentional causes, is both hypocritical and blind. Indeed many will see right through the not-so-hidden SDA Church’s self-serving intention in their grossly curtailed and shallow “medical missionary” efforts in cities (as if people in e.g., New York city are languishingly dying on sidewalks, and that because they have not had a (SDA) vegetarian meal), by weighing what will then be most obvious: ‘Let’s see... you are spending, e.g., $25 million to try to influence people like me who are choosing not to have a healthy lifestyle while you are letting other people die of hunger, lack of freshwater etc.[14] The only influence that they will be exerting then will be the one of their “Angel of Light” ring leader, the Devil. Indeed all of these spuriously revived efforts are part of the false Latter Rain which will precede the True One, the one which actually involves the practicing of the Full Sabbatical Present Truth Message of God for today.

And so SDA’s are here, in their “staunch Conservative” demonstrations, just acting out the part of the wicked and slothful servant of the Matt 25:14-30 parable, and who, as the SOP points out, would have similarly buried and not improved any amount of talent that they had been given to him to manage and increase. (COL 355.3).

But in all of this shortsightedness and lack of vision, you really cannot fault these blind, blinded (by God) and/or self-blinded SDA leaders. They are really doing “the best they can”. But it really is that their condition is all due to their money-worshipping belief and resulting character which has led them to do as the first century Jews did in regards to the increased light of God’s OT Law, they have preferred to themselves (since I won’t (=EW 285.2)) wear a veil over their heads so that they would not have to see, and thus walk, according to its shining bright Gospel light! (=2 Cor 3:12-18). Fact is, when it comes to God’s Present Truth, they are choosing to remain in the shade and/or complete darkness, less of course, the Second Coming does not occur before they die. LOL... “Suit” yourselves... (1T 263.1)

...Not of Truth (John 14:6), the Half- or Partial-Truth (Matt 25:41-46) and, Anything but the Truth (Luke 18:22-23)

It is ROTF SMH LOL comical to see that SDAs (also) believe that to get the attention and conviction of the world they have to now engage in public disruption activities such as public singing; “flash mobs”; street “preaching” (a.k.a. heckling); etc. (E.g., here; here; here; here). Tellingly and fittingly enough, the “Church Militant” has had to resort to “guerilla tactics/warfare” as this is all the natural result of its reveredly preferred sectarian, individualistic and dysfunctional operating way. Not at all surprisingly, God’s actual plan is so much more noble, honorable, significant, impactful, comprehensive, and effective: (Isa 58)!!

...Relatedly, is it only me or is the aberrable phenomenon of “SDA Harlem Shake(s)”, e.g., here, here, here, here and here, not squarely a neo manifestation of Israel’s Golden Calf debacle.... (Exod 32:1, 5-6ff)...I mean the, particularly when in Church/Sanctuary: ancient/paganistic Egypt-rooted, now also, base, vile, sens|xual, possessed, chaotic, irreverent, sacrilegious, demeanor & all....

Enshrining Insubordination

Given the undivorceable fact that the SDA Church twice postponed the Second Coming because of a rebellious insubordination towards God’s call and mandate (see e.g., 15MR 292.3-4; EV 695.1-696.2), the naming of a institutional building as the “Centennial Complex”, indeed revering things just as basely and Spiritually devoidly as the world does, is tantamount to Israel building a ‘Silver Anniversary’ Altar in the Wilderness to commemorate the “achievement” of their 25th Year of wandering!!

And what is ironic and doubly wrongful here is that the Institutional Campus where that ‘commemorating building’ is: Loma Linda University, was supposed to be the professional facilitating headquarters from where global “Gospel, Medical Missionary, Evangelism” work was to be done (see e.g., LLM 411.4-412.2), but instead this objective has long, also, as typical with SDA’s, selfishly “Capitalistically” devolved into: ‘Profiteering, Market-Paid Medical Services, Career Assuring and Upbuilding’.

‘Put Your Money Where Your Lying Mouths Are’!

“Freudianly/Candidly” just from the fact that the GC and NAD president literally focused most of their explanatory time here [28:10-30:39] on saying ‘the GC and its NAD are endeavoring to have distinct headquarters in order to distinguish themselves’ and that ‘they wouldn’t mind staying together’, and not actually stipulating what the purported ‘affected growth basis’ and ‘better efficiency’ reasons are, is indeed candid proof in itself that there actually really is not a need for this, surely, multi-, even tens-of, -million dollar venture. If they actually really believed that ‘Jesus was coming back very soon’, as they not only mantra/emptily claim, but also use as an excuse whenever it is self-serving for them, (e.g. compoundedly, with their redundant expense for having Hatefully-Racist “Regional”Local Conferences), then they would put such money, including all other funds similarly expend on, basically remodelling/revamping, other SDA Institutions, on Evangelistic and Missions projects!

Indeed follow instead the clarion “real belief” example of Francis Chan who, along with his Church leaders+(most) members, scraped the building a $60,000,000 “Chanville” establishment in order to focus more having/doing actual/tangible, and also inherently/overtly, locally and far-reachingly “witnessing”, evangelistic/missional resources and work. (See here [29:40-44:49ff]).

Being Unequally ~~Yoked~~ Stoked

Is it me, or, (and knee-jerkly call me a legalist if you just do not Theologically know any better/other), is there something portentously wrong with SDA’s letting someone, a woman, who is wearing (upper-form snuggling) pants, wearing earrings, a necklace and a (moreoverly, “bling”) ring, and also (non-natural toned) cosmetic make-up, teach SDA Sabbath School, -namely Brittany Ryder (see video here) at the Come and Reason Ministry Sabbath School of Tim Jennings. At best she is a non-SDA guest teacher [didn’t ‘inclusively’ seem/sound like one], at worst she is an SDA who rejects the SDA’s Biblical dress reform message. (Cf. e.g., this (2007) sermon (Dwight Nelson) and this (2009) sermon (Mark Howard); also within this post, and this Spiritually related experience). So then, what else in the lesson will she similarly ignore and curtail, and thus refrain from presenting to that SDA audience??![15] Clearly the Biblical “principle” for dress reform is not being understood at all here.

That all is thus really the implicated pragmatic reason for not letting those who do not fully embrace the Remnant Church’s Message to teach and/or be in a teaching position in the Church. It can only, deliberately or inherently, lead to a misguiding and/or drawing back of the True/Full message. (cf. the similar experience at Andrews University in this post). As this Sabbath School is held at the Collegedale City Hall Court Room in Apison Park of Collegedale, TN (after having previously been held on the Southern Adventist University Campus), it may be an evangelistic outreach, yet that still does not justify having, thus effectively, ‘the blind leading the blind’.[16]

(This must all be a (natural) derivative of the Come and Reason Ministry’s spurious Character of God chief tenet. See its exegetical/Biblical refutation here.)

Some may have dismissively said that Ernie Knoll’s “prophetic” dream (#49) of ‘a self-important and ostentatious woman “only wearing red, high-heeled shoes and much jewelry”’ making a grand entrance in the (Sacramento Central) SDA Church to go help lead out in the music’ is the Divinely-warned of, utter end result of following this course of ‘indifferently gradually abandoning the various reforms of the Church in order to follow after the ways of the world’; and even here in their gradual, but steady, various, but all related, devolving in regards to (un-)dress. Indeed the music that was then led was, as customary with Sacramental Central, probably still hymnically reverential, yet there was still something most, Biblically wrong and quite offensive with the one who was leading out. And this demonstration at the Come and Reason Sabbath School is an intermediate step in that gradual decline. Indeed the acceptableness of the Message/Music is not independent of the vessel carrying it. (Cf. Exod 20:22-26, discussed here.)

The Revived Issue that Divides
This ongoing & developing section(s) on Women Ordination has been relocated to a dedicated blog post here:

http://njkproject.blogspot.com/2010/01/sda-woman-ordination-deliberations.html
http://njkproject.blogspot.com/2010/01/sda-woman-ordination-deliberations.html#hermeneutics

The Church’s “Achilles’” Heart[-lessness] (pun-will be intended)

Having long, i.e., since 1997 (see in my bio-post), perceived, ascertained and Biblically/Prophetically confirmed that the chief sin of the SDA Church is the Ezek 8:5-6 “Idol of Z|J-ealously” (discussed here), where it is the “zealous” norm for people to be left to capitalistically strike out on their own to try to achieve their various Biblical understandings and ministries, when I was watching this presentation of [PostScript (04-17-2016): the now late] Rick Howard on the story and subject matter of his new book, the Omega Rebellion (see my comments on it and some of Howard’s derived views starting here), and was hearing him say that just a short while before, “last Friday night”, that he had had collapsed due to, and was hospitalized for, a (minor) heart attack while setting up for his presentation at another Church. Well the first indignantly irrate feeling that mustered up to my mind as he was stating how God had helped him through all of this was: “....well that’s how you finish off someone who God has just rescued.” I.e., this common practice amongst the SDA Church where, due to a systemic, entrenched/pervasive Capitalistic, dysfunction in the Church despite its great telecommunication resources which, at least in the U.S., (where Rick Howard is doing most of his book touring), are up to pace with the North American advanced standards, people who ‘have a message’ still have to act like pre-1849 “The Present Truth” (later the Adventist Review) days, in order to communicate their message to the Church and have to physically go from Church to Church and/or Campmeeting to Campmeeting and most literally repeat the exact same thing over for that “new” congregation.

It must be from my long-observed (i.e., since 1997), and abhorrence of this systemic and revered dysfunction in the Church, but right during my early instances of preaching during my pastoral practicum days while study at Andrews, I would find that I would get most bored with myself when I preached the same sermon again to (even) another “audience”. It seems most normative, and self-behooving to me that a (1) Church and a particular member which both agree that they have a special message from God, and (2) belief that “time is very short” and (3), combining (1) and (2), that they have a very special and urgent message from God for the Church for this ‘fast running out time’ [all, in terms of ‘time running out’, as discussed here, derived from flawed theological/prophetic understandings], as it was all believed and/or involved for Rick Howard’s book, that they would still, effectively, pass this message through their idolatrous “jealous”, capitalistic fires in order to have it be consumed as an offering benefiting the Church. In other words, as Howard states when giving the story of the writing and publishing of the book, since he had at the very beginning received a formal, default endorsement/“blessing” from a vice-president at Pacific Press, which implies/involves that ‘when the book is finished we will publish it’, but that evidently did not turn out to be the case at all. In fact Howard had to go the way of the self-publishing way, even having to pay up front for the printing costs. And all that with then a GC President in Ted Wilson who is openly against Spiritual Formation, because, unlike the pioneer days of SDA’s, today the Church’s leadership dysfunctionally really has no say at all, or evidently interest, as to what the Church’s publishing houses publish. And then, when the book was finally published after about 1.5-2 years of a finished manuscript being unpublished, it is now Rick Howard who has to go around from Church to Church to notify and publicized this supposedly ‘urgent message from God’ book!?? In fact, I highly suspect that Rick Howard actually decided to temporarily “shelve” his finished manuscript when he was not seeing any willing takers of it when he was finished and thus ‘left it up to God to have it published “in His time”.’ In other words, the real hindrance here was not actually spiritual, i.e., people hinderingly objecting to the book being published, but rather, as usual/typical, artificial and spurious capitalistic economic ones.

What should have occurred instead in all of this was that Pacific Press should have, itself, published the book once it was completed, with the local conference having had provided any “sabbatical” assistance to Rick Howard while he was researching and writing the book, so that it can be finished as soon, and as well, as possible, [self-daftingly not minding here the inherent deficiency of the whole idea of a lone person researching and writing any Biblical topic (cf. here)], then the GC, particular with Ted Wilson being supportive of this topic, should have uplinked via satellite and SDA Television a special presentation of Rick Howard’s testimony, story and discussion of the book to, for collective meetings, all Churches which have a downlink satellite, with the presentation also being available through live streaming on the internet for people or Churches which (still) do not have the downlinking resources. And did I mention that the book should have long been translated into all of the uniquely spoken languages of SDA Church members.

In fact, in this electronic/digital day & age, this should all have been systematically and defaultly done via a (free) ebook route (which virtual has no tangible reproduction costs) and even be freely available online, with a special contractual agreement with SDA members providing a expense and reward disbursement to the author and publishers. E.g., if half of the NAD ca. 1,000,000 members contractually agreed to fund each new publication by an SDA publishing house by giving $1 a year for it, I am sure that this $500,000 fund per newly published title would be more than the present average revenue of their published titles....Corroborating statistical case in point, at less than $1 per week alone, the full membership of the NAD alone would have produced the (shockingly low) $38.8 million revenue which the now jointly restructuring Review and Herald PA ($21.8M) and Pacific Press PA ($17M) made in 2013!!

This all is quite the normative thing to do if you really believe that “time is running out”. But NO... that is not the case, for the present practice is instead all just the dysfunctional mindset and state of the SDA Church which capitalistically chiefly values making money over righteousness and God’s Kingdom (Matt 6:24-34). Indeed it is more concerned with self and wealth than with actually “Finishing the Work”. And so it will get its favoredly sought for reward, which inextricably include the consequence for not having finished the work in this opportune time.

As also inculcatedly found in Rick Howard’s testimony, the SDA Church think that the trickle way in which God is occasionally answering some of its prayers are evidence that God is perfectly satisfied with it administrative and ministering ways, while all that has been occurring here is the also Divinely applicable Luke 18:1-8 depiction where God does not want to embarrass His cause by allowing the SDA Church to reap the adversarial consequences for it general waywardness, which would then inclusively involve God wrathfully, “unjustly” also ignoring any “good” work that the Church may do. Yet there is always/also God’s Isa 42:14-25 approach where, by favorably answering and blessing some of the prayers and works of the Church, He is actually just working to fasten them in their deception so that they could later, “surely” reap the full consequences of their unrighteous course (=2 Thess 2:11-12). All just like a law enforcement sting operation where the end goal is to completely eradicate an entire criminal enterprise and leave no loose ends, and so, that criminal organization may be under passive surveillance for years, and even be infiltrated by even “facilitators” and “agitators” acting in a “non-entrapment” way, in order to have the charges against them firmly stick and keep them lock up for a maximum sentence.

Similarly just like a parent will ignore the pleas of an especially irresponsible teenager to have their own car, but won’t mind fully paying for their public transportation travelling expenses, God is not “dumb enough” to abundantly bless this Church while it is relishingly wallowing in all of its “waywardnesses”. Indeed what kind of skewed message/testimony would it then, under Latter Rain power, give to the world if God would so bless it while in such a state of imperfection and unreadiness. Just in the area of racial segregation it would be “telling the world” to resolve its racial/class issues by systematically setting up the same racial divisions as it has. But of course the Church believes that it is the Latter Rain which will purify them from all of its unrighteousness. (Contra LDE 192.3-196.1). In fact, as presented in the potentially possible Roman Catholic Lawsuit above, the SDA Church trying to more pointedly do its work while themselves being in a state of actionable unrighteousness will just prove have the same results as the incomprehensible defeat of Israel at Ai due to “sins of Achan” (ST, May 5, 1881 par. 1-16; RH, September 23, 1873 par. 1-30ff), with it incurring various binding and costly direct and indirect “losses” from its opponents.

So, in summary, the key to knowing whether one is fully doing God’s will or not is to diligently, Biblically ascertain if they are doing God’s will or not, and not being partially or wholly just reverently bowing to other idols instead because God will never force anyone to do His (perfect) will, particularly, as with the SDA spurious systemic capitalistic approach to conducting God’s work, as vividly manifested in this Omega Rebellion book episode, He has already clearly spoken, in the Bible and SOP, on those underlying issues and due operating principles. (Relatedly, see more on this whole issue below here.).

December 3, 2012

God’s Inherent Object Lessons in the Conversion of Angus T. Jones to Seventh-day Adventism

This section has been relocated here: http://njkproject.blogspot.com/2009/10/angus-t-joness-conversion-testimony.html

Links of Angus Jones Conversion & Testimony Story:

This section has been relocated here: http://njkproject.blogspot.com/2009/10/angus-t-joness-conversion-testimony.html#atjoneslinks

GYC: Revival Without Reformation = Laodicea Jr.

Simply said, if GYC, {and btw, (relatedly enough), e.g., here is “GYC” of/for non-SDA’s}, intends to implement its typically reviving sermons and presentations from GYC in the present abominable dichotomizing/sectarianizing/isolating dysfunctional operational “organizational” structures of the SDA Church, it will continue to only bring reports at the next GYC of tepid, at best, “realized work”. Having GYC’s in several other countries which minister in the area of the convention for a weekend is, LOL, not “Finishing the Work”, that is only token work, which is the sleeping pill of choice for Laodicea.

Frankly the greatest operational error of GYC was when it allowed the higher ups in the SDA Church to convince it that a Youth “General Conference” was evil and that they should instead structurally assimilate themselves with the wider (richer) SDA Church in order to be in God’s will. (contra Matt 23:1-3ff) Well the result of that assimilation is that you get the present voiding: ‘Revivals without Reformations’ false starts from each annual GYC. I see it as being in God’s will and order that both Revival and Reformation, as distinctly defined by the SOP in (e.g.,) LDE 189.3, where:

-“Revival signifies a renewal of spiritual life, a quickening of the powers of mind and heart, a resurrection from spiritual death”

-“Reformation signifies a reorganization, a change in ideas and theories, habits and practices.”

should, and would, have fully occurred in a non-diluted General Youth Conference, where, as denominationally, inherently implied in that titling, the SDA youth of, eventually, the entire global Church would be formally organized under their own leadership and structure, and all that this entails, and would thus be in a tangible position to structurally, fully execute what they have been taught at annual GYC conventions. While the assimilation re-titling of GYC as Generation of Youth for Christ may sound great, as the Bible reveals, God is a God of Order (see PP 376.1), and organizationally having a General Youth Conference, in order to have Gospel Order for the conducting of God’s ‘work by that army of rightly trained youth’, actually counts where it matters: i.e., not in mere profession and ideology, but in executed actions. (cf. Luke 11:27-28).

But instead you are getting with GYC as it organizationally is today, the revered ‘go-it-alone’ and “fend-for-yourself’ approach of the larger/“elderly” SDA Church, with, e.g., young people being “cooled off” and deadened by the entrenched dysfunctionality and selfishness-based abominations of the Global Church. I mean, how can a young person having just heard, and Biblically shown how, e.g., racial divisions is a Latter-Rain hindering abomination in the Church (cf. 8T 251.1) do anything actually enduringly significant about it when the organization of the Church prefers to have racially divided congregations and conferences?!!

Summarily and succinctly restated, the only viable solution for the genuine and Biblical Spiritual “Revivals” which occurs at every GYC[17] is to have an accompanying structural, now, by expanding necessity, Global organization which does not merely ‘organize the annual conferences’[18], but as it was the intended function of SDA Organization, and as done in apostolic times, provide a framework through which all those who want to be actively involved in God’s can collectively and inter-supportingly do so, and not have to fend for themselves and go at it alone. (=6T 235.1-242.1)

Could that result in an effective, if not tangible, fracturing of the SDA Church, i.e., between the GC and this fully organized GYC? Probably.. In fact, the youth may actually choose to organize and meet in their very own Churches, i.e., plant a new Church(es), where all that they are Biblically learning at GYC conventions can be fully honored and upheld. Then so be it indeed... That is the result of fully adhering to God’s truth and actually just how the Shaking of the SDA Church will occur...when those who prefer to be silent and indifferent to the abominations done in/through the Church are left behind as those who want to eradicate them actually take the concrete measures to do so. (Isa 52:11|2 Cor 6:17-18)[19]

So “Triumphant Success” here really all depends on how serious GYC is about ‘Finishing God’s Work’!!

Wasteful, “Tire-Spinning”, Slothful, Self-limiting Redundancy
Note: Certain of the possible many specific references and documenting for the following statement haven been deliberately omitted so as to not take up my own time here. The people, either examplarily spoken of, and/or generally alluded to, know what they are, individually and collective, doing/have done!!

Over the recent years, since ca. July 2001 when sermon internet streaming/posting/archiving became much more common and efficient in SDA circles, I have literally listened to tens of thousands of SDA sermons. Case in point, my current/standing archive of downloaded sermons dating back to ca. August 2008 has over 11,000 audio or video sermons (thus: on average ca. 43 sermons/week) for a total hard drive size of over 750GB! And that only is a total of the listened to or viewed downloaded sermons that I have (due to hard drive space limitations) selectively saved/retained over that time. For David Gates alone, I have over 600 sermons/70 GB!!). And one of the things which I have readily seen from this systematic SDA sermons observing work is that a substantive part of many of these sermons from what can be technically termed SDA “Preachers” (i.e., leaders/pastors who are invited to present messages at multiple local SDA Church and/or convention gatherings), is that they most annoyingly repeat the same things over and over, whether in whole or in part. And, as later discussed, it is really not the ‘inevitable/inherent case to me’ because I personally have been so copiously, systematically viewing their sermons, since, as I have been accessing these sermons from online postings, then that can quite feasibly literally be the case for anyone.

Well what has now prompted a special posting on what I had been observing for years in SDA preaching circles, is the most emblematic example of the grandly involved “wasteful, “tire-spinning”, slothful, self-limiting redundancy” observed in a Feb. 2013 “Road to Redemption” “evangelistic outreach/revivalist effort” at the Campus Hill SDA Church on the Campus of Loma Linda University by invited popular speaker/preacher Jonathan Henderson. And that was in the fact that he (recognizingly/knowingly) effectively preached the same sermon at the first (mov) and last presentations of that 10 sermon series!! Seriously!??? It would be one thing if that was conveniently done for the very little non-SDA’s who attended these meetings, but actually the subject-matter was for SDA’s. And the compounding fact of the matter is that he had preached an almost identical, also available online, series at the Redwood campmeeting in 2011, moreover, not to mention that he also individually (i.e., weekly) preached those same sermons during his pastoring at his local Church...and that actually more than once since at least 2007, including the exact same sermon/subject-matter 3 times, with the last two being within ca. 1 year...and my point here is that all of these sermons are readily available on the internet. So there actually is really not a need to have preached them more than once. As I said, that occurrence with Henderson was “emblematic”, because this is patently done by other, also popular, SDA “preachers”. E.g., (at least until recent months) David Gates (who now does not seem to be engaged in the same level of public speaking as before (i.e., before all of his ‘imminent doom’ predictions fell flat); Ed Reid who boastfully trumpets that ‘he is the only SDA preacher who has been to every NAD campmeeting’, but what he doesn’t say is that he has been preaching the exact same sermons/series at these speaking opportunities, and likewise at other churches-held meetings, as he similarly does with his NAD Stewardship presentations (cf. here), and, most tellingly, not even bothering to update his powerpoint facts and slides over the times (e.g., since Jan. 2011, the chairman of the RNC is now longer “ominously”, as Reid postulated, the ‘Roman Catholic seminary educated’ Michael Steele...and George W. Bush is no longer the U.S. President!!, not to mention by now that, as David Gates also liked to urgently emphasize, the “inquisition-enthusiast” “rottweiler” Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI is no longer the Roman Catholic Pope!!!); etc. (= literally Matt 25:18, 24-27f|EW 36.2). See relatedly more on this above here. (And Samuele Bacchiocchi used to do the same “verbatim” thing with his week-end Sabbath Enrichment Seminars (e.g, here then here), but at least, and even while he was teaching at Andrews, he was writing 17 copiously and widely researched, scholarly books!!).

On the commendable flip side, there are among SDA preachers, the noteworthy examples Dwight Nelson, and similarly/equivalently Doug Batchelor. Namely, I have been listening to Dwight Nelson’s sermons since I began attending Andrews in 1997 and I have not seen/heard him preach the same sermon twice. In fact, unlike many other preachers, I can't even recall him giving either the same illustration or anecdote, or even making the same/exact point more than once, and that would include doing this through rewording restatements as other preachers do. And for Nelson, who pertinently, and manifestly pointedly, has been the Andrews University pastor since 1984, (a ‘congregational “tenure” continuance’ which is literally unheard of in SDA circles, and is probably unique, by literally at least one decade (e.g., vs. the recently reassigned Doug Batchelor after 20 years at Sacramento Central)), that is all despite the fact that his primary audience, the University students literally entirely change every 4-6 years. So like most other SDA pastors, he would have a justification for recycling/representing his prior sermons, but, at least since I have been listening to him, he has not done so. (Comparatively/Contrastingly, I have seen that Jonathan Henderson has had no qualm in recycling/re-presenting his sermons from, at least 2007+ (some of which are available online, -which is why I have noticed this), while still pastoring the same Church. In the other “commendable” case, Doug Batchelor has, as far as I have been seeing since ca. the early 2000's, (and as I am observing now through his expanded 1995+ sermon archive, also earlier), also similarly not preached again the same sermon at his local Church, the Sacramento Central SDA Church, though he on the other hand frequently restates that same points which he understandibly ‘evangelistic justifies’ due to his targeted and indeed reached large and globally widespread non-SDA audience. And I would substantively also “excuse” those point-repetitions given the other applicable facts that Doug Batchelor, compared to most other SDA “Preachers”, is also systematically involved in other distinct Pastoral work such as Sabbath School; Annual Public Evangelism and/or Revivalism; (Live) Weekly Radio Program; Training School Teaching. And yet those sermon, and mainly Sabbath School lesson, ‘repetitions’ are actually on evangelistic issues, -though, as discussed here, I still have an issue with him not improving or correcting such points, and/or presenting inherently “bankrupt/fluff” ones. Now while both Nelson and Batchelor will do the SDA preacher typical thing of preaching the same sermons when on a preaching engagement to another SDA congregation/audience, which are moreover almost always posted online, my point here is that, unlike other SDA preachers, and especially compared to those who do not have a local Church pastoral responsibility, they have not, indeed exceptionally from far it, effectively slothfully, engaged in recycling/repeating the same pastoral sermons. And also commendable here, is what I have observed thus far from GC President Ted Wilson, who involves the effort to not be repetitious, as many would actually expect him to be, in his various global speaking engagements. (See a sermons listing here.) Perhaps, as possible for a Presidential level position, and as involved in some SDA TV program ministries such as It Is Written, this may be due to someone else having those speech/sermon writing responsibilities, but in an ideal collaborative context, all SDA pastors would have their sermon preparation greatly facilitated by having had all of the underlying, time costly, scholarly and exegetical matters and issues either already fully resolved or such studies facilitated.

It would be “naturally” easy to claim in defense of the other SDA preachers that “not everyone is created with the same intellectual abilities, so it would not be fair to expect every SDA Pastor to do this. And while that may be “naturally” valid, in the Spiritual realm that we are here dealing in, God has clearly shown that he can and will “inspire” even intellectually strengthen anyone who is proclaiming His word; indeed as He most marvellously did with/for His third-grade educated, physically and traumatically enfeebled, “weakest of the weak” “messenger” Ellen G. White. So, as James 1:5 involves, any pastor, who is really worth his (supposed/claimed) “calling” can always find the complementing help with/from God. Indeed as most of this preaching “inspiration” is at the very least tangibly realized by copiously taking in God’s Word, and also, as it was also the case with EGW), reading/study other Biblical/religious works/materials, the inability of an SDA Pastor, or as later discussed more, a “Preacher”, to be able to present fresh and new, even contemporaneously pertinent (a.k.a. “Present Truth”) content to his congregation/audience, can surely be pinpointed to them not being familiar with, at the very least, God’s Word. It thus is tellingly not surprising to me to hear from Dwight Nelson and Doug Batchelor that they consistently and continually, most basically read their Bible. I.e., Nelson says that he entirely reads through it every year (in a different version) in just the month of January, and then again over the course of the other 11 months of the year; -[which, it is said, would require ca. 10 minutes per day, (thus ca. 2 hours/day for 1 month)], and Doug Batchelor has said that he typically goes to sleep listening to audio tapes of the Bible.[20]

Now in regards to the repetitive messages of SDA “preachers”. It may surfacely/“naturally” seem justified for them to repeat the same sermons when they fulfill a speaking engagement. However, and pointedly in this long-established internet age, there is something that is thus so inherently duplicitous in such a rationale, that it is most manifestly evident that these preachers are not actually really burdened with widely presenting this, their “important”, message to many people, but really, at least subconsciously, are content with being thus able to easily accomplish a “SDA rock star” status, with their ‘lone|first-album, never ending tour’. (And it is quite “natural” for these to also tout their ‘business executives like 6+ figures frequent flyer mileage’...). In other words, if you really believed that God is using you to “ongoingly” communicate urgent and important messages to His Church, then you would, in this mass media and especially internet age, actually be preaching that sermon only once, have it taped and then posted online for others to freely view, (e.g. , contrary to what the SDA (now-called) American Christian Ministries is still doing, and with even its oldest recordings (and, not surprisingly, has long been variously surpassed by the free-distributing, donations-aided, SDA AudioVerse ministry)), including the possibility of presenting it on (downloaded) video at a local congregation. Then you would return to your study and be seeking God for additional and other light to present at another speaking engagement rather than simply preaching the exact same sermon again...for years... Factored into the wastefulness of the common repetitious SDA approach are the actual expenses made for having that “live” preacher come and repeat that same sermon. These travel, accommodation, even “special” feeding costs, not to also mention the displacement and congregating costs for the audience to hear live this sermon/series which is almost identically available on the internet, actually substantially add up when all SDA preachers, who again, typically all do this in their speaking engagements, are collectively considered here. One would think that we were still in the relatively (i.e., technologically) Dark Ages of the mid-19th century when William Miller was doing this type of repetitive preaching to spread his message.

And the real kicker here is that, contrary to claims of an urgent and important, Present Truth, message, by the time such a SDA preacher has completed the whatever most-limited rounds for the spreading of his message, several months, even years have passed, and also that message has inherently long no longer been a Present Truth, e.g., someone is no longer that “ominous” Pope and/or that conducive (U.S.) President. So either those preachers actually never thought that their message was really that urgent, or else they would have instead been encouraging the ready distribution of an already presented sermon, or they just do not really care. The lure of “personably” making a name for themselves (e.g., being able to later have claimed that they are ‘greatly/globally travelled; not to mention the inherent personal “perk” of them personally widely travelling and visiting many parts of the world), is evidently more paramount than the most immediate dissemination of the message they proclaiming. And when members have this default example of self-interest before them by those leaders, to the point where they personally make an effort and displacement to attend their meeting but are just presented with a message that they had sought to hear from an available posting on the internet, then in the future, these people will not waste their “own time” and bother seeking out those sermons, and will instead just wait until that preacher comes around in person to a local congregation again. This all leads to a Spiritual stunting of the Church at large. If leaders are really just self-interestingly doing the easy thing, then why should not members also, who themselves have to mainly work in non-ministry sectors for a living.

And that is all really the effective, underlying overwhelming motivation here. Borne out effectively not wanting to be further burdened by God into delving into additional messages, these preachers either believe that they have done all that God would ever inspire them with, and/or, and even worse, that they are doing/have done enough for God. And so they are quite satisfied with just re-preaching these same sermons which, again, are already widely available online. Most ironically enough, here are people who desperately claim that they are wanting the blessing of God’s Latter Rain, but are preferring spinning their tires in the same rut rather then “seeking to advance” (Dan 12:4b).

In a Biblical, and thus ideal scenario, thus one in which the Church is cooperatively working together rather than the present dysfunctional case of everyone fending off for themselves, a preacher would only preach a sermon once, have it recorded/taped and then either broadcast on SDA media networks, and/or made available on a dedicated SDA website, as also available today. Then other pastors would encourage their members to access those posted presentations, or present them on video in their congregation instead of setting up a series of meetings just so that that preacher can come in person to preach that same (non-evangelistic) sermon/series. Not only would much money and time be saved in that way, (all things cumulatively considered probably quite comparable to the “wasteful disbursements” for holding a GC Session which, ironically enough, Henderson was decrying in both of those mirroring series sermons (see here [19:09ff] and here [55:02ff])*), but it would again free up time for that preacher to delve into other studies wherewhence God would be able to communicate additional light to them. Also against the manifest excuse that some think that live repetitions allow them to make changes and improvements to their prior presentations, I actually see that this occurs for less than 3% of the repeated message, and usually merely in regards to cosmetic alterations. So most of the message is usually just repeated verbatim. And those dedicated sermon posting websites such as e.g., Audioverse; 3Angelstube; Rightly Trained; etc; could actually be providing transcripts of the messages, (which actually make it, much more easier for Search Engines to list those messages, thus inherently increasing the potential internet out-reach of these messages), which could be updated for those typical 3% later alterations.

That is precisely, as discussed here, the “substantively, more efficient”, deliberate approach that I have chosen for my ministry work, with its present, internally updated, blogging form. I easily could have converted to present ca. 70 blog posts studies encompassing over 2300 (single-space) manuscript pages into full blown sermon/seminar presentations, (with accompanying powerpoint illustrating), and literally taken this “show on the road” and thus have enough material to non-repeatingly present a different seminar/series and sermons for at least literally 2-3 full years. But the various manifested hostile dispositions and offensive actions; as well as the Laodicean lukewarm/tepid Spiritual reactions, to these blog postings thus far have clearly shown that SDA’s are substantively not willing to engage such more deep Biblical presentations, let alone them clearly preferring “milk” sermons which merely entertain them. (cf. Ezek 3:24-25, 26-27). Indeed anything that requires a tangible response from them, as these messages do, just merely bounces off their then turned-off hearing. So it is certainly not worth even an initial displacement to me... and I’ve got other things to work to get done with that time.

But in SDA circles, it has become the “logically” accepted norm for members to play dumb and just glibly accept the repetitious sermons of these (star) preachers. And this all, deservingly results in a self-detrimental circle, where the Church is indeed merely, and smugly so, content with going around in circles rather than advancing. And really, as seen with bedtimes stories, there is nothing more effective for putting an already groggy person to sleep than repeating an already known story!!

* And, unlike what Henderson suggested in his 03-16-13 sermon (mp4) [12:54-13:53], which, as typical of him, is expressedly and tangibly so, at the very least surfacely, preposterous(-sounding) that it w/should rightly be summarily dismissed as a “pie-in-the-sky” level of SDA Pastoral sermonic/theological/spiritual “fluff”, instead of the SDA Church doing the radical thing, as is inherently involved in what he is advocating, of effectively ‘jumping out of a plane without a parachute’ in ‘giving all of its tithe money (for a year)’ (ca. $2 Billion [=ca. $38M/week]) to aid severe disaster-relief and/or humanitarian causes, such the one in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, as this would literally involve the Church’s global operations coming to a grinding halt, with e.g., Church employees (=220,760), not being able to pay their bills, having to, where available, turn to the government for employment insurance assistance, and/or the complete depletion of any reserves it may have, among other domino-effect damages, the Church should instead be rightly asking for a sacrificial “second tithe” from members, (thus for another “Systematic Benevolence”), from the “90% of resources” that they do have, which would at the very least simply involve them not making an expense which should be considered as frivolous (e.g. savings for a vacation, not buying a brand new car, even selling an expensive car for a cheaper one), and even Church employees who are being paid by the tithe should also be sacrificially so participating in providing that “second tithe”. In fact, such a tangible and magnanimous example set before the membership could result in the full gathering of the first tithe which is statistically said should be around $14 Billion! Even the ca. $900 Million which are annually, globally collected in offerings, and which are usually for discretionary expenditures could mostly be redirected for use in such a humanitarian effort.

And if the SDA was instead systematically, heightenedly (re-)organized (i.e., as long-proposed (=since 2004) here; cf. here) as a whole to cooperatively and coordinatedly meet such humanitarian needs, not only would such funds be readily available to do this, but there would also not be any hardship or decline in quality living standards for participating members and Church employees. (=EW 16MR 34.1) Any less/short/other than the needed systematic, sustainable, and actually effective method to do such work is, given the SDA Church’s already granted, (but being squandered), ‘empowering blessings/resources “to gain wealth” (Deut 8:18)’, thus ‘even most dangerously/vitally for them’ (e.g. LDE 59.3; cf. Deut 8:19), is like putting a band-aid on a gaping, oozing gash, when surgery is necessary.

Notes

[1] E.g. As I had encountered in this Net 2011 presentation[54:37-55:31ff] as the impetus for the 2-part post on the 7 Trumpets and Plagues here|here (which (initially) took 5 solid months of Bible study/research and writing work to ‘prophetically, timingly’ complete), SDAs typically claim that the first plagues of Revelation (Rev 16) are literalistically fulfilled. So they therefore do not give any interpretation of what they thus do not even consider as being symbols/symbolism, in these first plagues. But they, surely by the Sixth Plague (e.g. here[01:10:03ff]), (oddly enough with Steve Wohlberg: by the Fourth Plague for here[11:35ff]; the again literalistically for the Fifth[15:20ff] and then also fully symbolic with the Sixth[17:20ff]), they then see things as possible. Only in God’s added “advanced” light on Final Events stemming from His Comprehensive, Various-Permitted-Developments-Ready, (Prophetic) Wisdom, is it fully understood, as now being applicable, that all of the Seven Last Plagues can, and indeed do, have most indicative have symbolic/veiling meanings. (See e.g. for this prophetic charting).

[2] See DeVasher’s other similar/related sermons on this issue, from this archive: (02-26-11) Isaiah 58; “From Glory to Glory”: (03-26-11) - Part 1 & (04-02-11) - Part 2; and (08-20-11) The Golden Rule [emphasizing in this sermon, only the (Personal) Evangelism aspect in the Golden Rule versus its also Benevolence works mandate. (cf. MB 136.1, 4, 137.1-2)].

[3] And there may be a most tangible necessity for potentially such a drastic action in Heaven, for as with the Flood which God promised to never utilize again (Gen 9:11), and so had to immediately act with Babel in order to avoid things devolving to the point where He would need to use it again, or another even worse destruction (i.e., “fire” 2 Pet 3:10), theologically speaking, just like an individual sacrificial lamb could only be offered up once; and as ‘there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins willfully committed after a knowledge’ (Heb 10:26; cf. Rom 14:23b), which will most fully be the case after the Second Coming (1 Cor 13:12; cf. Num 14:22-23); and with it manifestly not being an option to (further) incarnate the Holy Spirit as Jesus was (see here), lest God the Father/the Godhead then Eternally lose its Universe-reach that is manifestly tangibly effectuated through the Holy Spirit, indeed just like Jesus forever lost several key attributes of His Divine Nature due to His Incarnation, if sin/another GC was again allowed to develop, there manifestly may thus not be another means of then Redeeming those who would have ascribed to that opposing Universe View, and, without this justified drastic action of God (cf. Heb 10:27)... sin would thus, from then on, forever be present in the Universe. In fact/Really, as discussed in here, it would have actually be long demonstrated through what Jesus did, that divergence from God’s will will is both surely the wrong course and will ultimately cost the very life of this all-Wise God, and thus must not be allowed to fully develop again.

Which is indeed the reason why God variously, painfully/costly to Himself, refrains from making things concretely and/or perfectly known by us (chiefly the fact of His existence), as He sees that we would likely not be able to handle it (cf. John 16:12-13; Exod 33:20; cf. EW 56.2), for if He had, then He would have to summarily, immediately destroy us for any act of unbelief (= straightly, rebellion). But that will no longer be the case in Heaven in regards to His Perfect Will, though, as discussed also in here, evidently, in regards to knowledge of Himself, there may still be an area something that is not fully revealed as we will only “see” His face according to a “perception”, versus actually visual, level. (=Rev 22:4)

[4] And as the following (Oct 12, 2012) comment of mine was not accepted for posting in response to this blog post of Asscherick:

Interesting objectives here David, but the question is, unless you were actually speaking of Heaven & the New Earth, how are these all realistic. E.g., how will death be ‘taken out of business' this side of the Second Coming.

See my achievable objectives and feasible plans for a Kingdom of God modelling world/society here. wherein e.g., ‘abortion will be aborted’.

it sequiturly shows that that ministry actually has no desire to: (1) tangibly show the Kingdom of God to this World (as involved in fulfilling the “witness” of Matt 24:14);* nor (2) working to save the lives of infants being aborted.

* I mean, e.g., even FBI prosecutors have to corroborate/evidence their “testimony” by producing a tangible bomb explosion to successful demonstrate in court that the explosive that an attempted terrorist had was capable of doing the damage that they are claiming was attempted to be done.

[5] If I was Spiritually “half” (=2 Cor 8:7-15) awake as the vast majority of SDA’s are, or even 3/4 awake as some of them have begun to be by understanding how there is a benevolent works mandate squarely in Christ’s end time expectation (=Matt 25:31-46), I would here mindlessly fully endorsingly recommend the SEYC 2013 sermon series by Kameron Devasher which endeavored to flesh out the meaning of Christ’s model prayer stipulation in Luke 11:2a (KJV) (=Matt 6:10), but as already stated above, before about the extent of Devasher’s Gospel Truth/Mandate understanding and/or acceptance here, as he now further “drawing backly”, self-interestly only emphasized an evangelizing focus for such good/“benevolent” works, it indeed falls short of the glory of God who Himself silently does (“raining” =Rev 18:1ff) good to both the righteous and unrighteous/His enemies (Matt 5:45-48) and let’s that unmerited providence itself convict the unjust (cf. Rom 12:20-21). Indeed Jesus (prophetically) knowingly (John 2:24-25) did good to many who were not really interested in what He was offering Spiritually (e.g John 6:26-27ff), if for nothing else, also to “Finish His/God’s Work” (John 15:22-25; 16:8; 17:4)*

It is pivotally comical to tangibly see the, effectively or inherently ‘EW 56.1 “drawing-back”’ Spiritual shortcomings/deficiencies, in Devasher’s, thus moronic/“stupid”, understandings here, pointedly in relation to the “Full and Free” (i.e. no strings attached) work that should be done towards all people, in especially vital need, as seen in his, and often preached, sermon involving the Four Living Creatures (his SEYC 2013 sermon), as, as stated below here, he, most literally, ends his exposition of them as being nothing more than Israel-lot identification flag logos, -‘as done for the vast parking space in e.g., Orlando’s Mega-Theme Parks’!??? As presented in this blog post, the actual and full Spiritual Meaning and Implication of those Four Living Creatures is so much more Theologically and also Prophetically significant and involved, that it most literally makes such sermonic claims be as vacuous as ‘Sabbath-Morning (moreover, (elementarily) caricaturish) cartoons’!!!

* Relatedly I found Devasher’s claim in here [ca. 21:21] that ‘Jesus did not refer people to His Father when Jesus was going about preaching,’ and indeed as the validation for Himself, to substantively be subjectively/fancifully quite disturbingly odd to say the least, because, as a copious amount of, actually “muscle flexing” statements of Jesus, pointedly towards sharp, indifferent opposition (e.g., John 5:15-23ff; 30-38; 8:38-47ff; 10:22-42) easily, explicitly state and show: speaking about His Father and that He was indeed from Him and exactly just like Him, was what Jesus deliberately was all/only about... Manifestly it is because Devasher would have no valid/substantive reason to be doing the same thing with his (relatively recently “familirized”) father-in-law, current GC President Ted Wilson, that he vexatiously, fancifully set this up as the standard for what Jesus did (or should have done??!)...

[6] Prime example, the presentation of the teaching about “God and the Future” may seem to be entirely “new light”, especially as EGW herself, contrary to many of her direct revelations, did not have that Theological understanding, but as it is actually directly based on what the Bible and SOP (direct revelations) really teach on this issue, then it is not at all “new light” but the rediscovery of what had always been the Truth here. (The same thing had occurred with the several rediscoveries of forgotten Biblical doctrines done by the SDA Church Elijah movement.)

[7] Indeed ‘all according to an “Elementary” mentality’, i.e., “Primary” level, and at best for some, “Secondary” (High School) one, but indeed not a “Tertiary” (University) level, in the same sense/reality that it is normatively University-educated people who are given jobs/task, indeed “careers”, which will involve “complex/innovative problem solving”, whereas people with only a High School education usually are not given such intellectually demanding work/problems/issues to deal with. How much less for merely Primary-educated people.

Thus this ‘passing out of published books’ project, and that to known people, and also doing inherent Church ministry work in local cities is: “Elementary/Primary level” type of work. Doing more demanding work, such as Church-Organized/Sponsored Foreign Missionary work, or even founding an original ministry to do this work in foreign fields is still on the “Secondary/High School” level. However not doing merely the work that “can” be done, or is readily facilitated, but instead setting out to create ways and methods to thus be able to do what otherwise would be sanctimoniously indifferently ignored, is on this Tertiary/University level.

So when this actually, purposefully, ‘educationally, Tertiarily-most-blessed’ Church merely settles for “Secondary/High School” work/tasks, or worst, as here in those two “major/best” GC initiatives, gets| goes “gaga” for setting out to do Elementary/Primary “errands”, indeed as simplistic as having a paper route, or delivering groceries, one really has to Spiritually wonder about the, non-pejoratively, but factually/clinically, stated, “retarded” spiritual state/mentality of the Church (= Isa 28:9-13|Heb 5:11-6:3ff). And all of this slow/sluggish-minded thinking is because they idolatrously refuse to comply to the Present Truth of God’s, unequivocal and binding, end-time|eschatological ‘(Full) Sabbatical Rest’ mandate (Isa 58|Matt 25:31-46). Along the theme, thought and frankly here, quite frustratedly-jeering spirit of what the Christian band P.O.D. (=“Payable on Death”) [more widely known for their song "Alive" (video)] has expressed in a “motivational” song (see/hear here): ‘[Uhhhh...].IS THAT ALL YOU GOT??!!!’ (cf. Psa 94) I.e., ‘Are such, (as normative), “paper-pushing” types of endeavors really the best that you “could” come up with??!’ -All in all, a much, much, more tempered expression of my actual (human) sentiments (=Jer 18:19-23)...and look, it’s also, pertinently, ‘doctrinally correct’....now do you all have “any questions”!!!!!....Really???!... how does this pertain to you all???? ‘Glads “you’s” asked’!! (~~1 Sam 27:1~~ John 9:41; Isa 58:1ff)

[8] Case in point, the top 10 grossing “Hollywood” movies of 2011 cost on average $151,000,000 to make (ranging from $90-$250 million).

[9] Probably costing on average ca. $10-12 million per episode, thus ca. 15-18 episodes could have been produced.

[10] Notwithstanding, see a growing listing of his sermons here; also by Youtube here.

[11] E.g., in the Local SDA Conference to me, ca. 75% of Churches, encompassing ca. 90-95% of its members, are/live in large urban/metropolitan areas.

[12] E.g., the surely-known-to-be-inaccurate statement by ‘assistant to the GC President for evangelism’ (cf. here) Mark Finley during this GYC 2011 presentation [01:40:37] that: ‘the SDA Church is 17 million members “strong” around the world’. The well-known truth by the Church’s leadership, indeed leading to this approved ‘accurate census’ initiative, is that this is not the actual case. So while, at this point of not knowing exactly, it may be passable to still cite the, effectively assumed, 17,000,000 figure, to however emphatically qualify this as “strong” is, at best, pure propaganda, and at worst, a guileful lie. Even Finley’s ensuing qualifying of the Church’s growth as ‘rapid’ [01:40:45], because it is baptizing ca. 3000 people per day is also at best only within this, quite narrow, spectrum having propaganda on one end, and guile on the other, as the Church is actually only growing by almost half of that total, -by only ca. 1700 people per day, as, as discussed here, it is also losing ca. 1300 people per day. And when(ever) those accurate census figures will be in, then that decession total will probably be even higher, maybe even indicating an almost growth stagnation in the Church (=Rev 3:15!). Can’t truthfully dismiss away these screaming, pivotal realities! Perhaps such high decessions are mostly caused by those leaving baptized members having come to see beyond the typical, effectively, propagandizing, SDA Evangelism approach. In a related way, as related in this post, and as seen variously throughout this blog, I also experienced this snapping-out-of-it, “disillusionment” when I began to see that many things that were being taught, were, proof-wise, substantially quite wanting/deficient, and further exegetical/scholarly studies had to be done to have the rock-solid, and also, full Truth, -which actually came to lead me to see beyond the “levelled out” level of Truths indifferently, preferentially, “elementarily-maintained”, (i.e., in a ‘the square root of 2 is 1’), way by SDA’s. So one can’t blame those who just left because they couldn’t afford to make the similar investments as mine of time, resources and effort to dig out the concrete truth for themselves, and/or were led away by quite plausible counter-arguments of other Christian denominations, or even, for that matter, the secular arguments of the world which the SDA Church really does not (at least comprehensively) have either a matching/superceding response to, and/or, in regards to an also involved, socio-economically-based decession aspect, an ideologically distinguishing, and substantively provisionally efficient, Biblical alternative, as the Apostolic Church had managed (e.g., Acts 4:32-35).

So, in line with what Jesus said in John 8:32: ‘only the Truth will set you free’ and when(ever) it is that the Church will finally begin to face such realities as, pertinently here, (1) its actual attending/active membership, and, relatedly, (2) its abnormally high decessions, then it will come to see what its “open wound” problem is, and, hopefully, seek to have it closed up so that it can heal/recover (cf. Isa 58:8), especially if they are indeed ‘endeavoring to heal “sick[er] people”’ (cf. Matt 7:1-2 & 3-5; ~Luke 4:23). And as this “wound analogy” involves, -the sooner the better. (For one thing, it would self-resolved their self-reported boggling (treasurer statistical) observation that: ‘only ca. 40%-50% of the Church’s [presumingly financially capable] membership return a faithful tithe.’....Well...duuhhh!!!) Resorting instead to (even patronizing) propaganda efforts and/or outright/knowing guile/lies, while these are indeed effective for ‘misleading people into joining and remaining in, e.g., a cult,’ will indeed never begin to resolve the entrenched problem of the Church, which is indeed “misleading” members to think that ‘everything is “A-Okay”’, i.e., as implied from Finley’s full statement [01:40:55ff]: in regards to ‘Church growth and evangelism in countries/places which are “open” to the Gospel’. So indeed, ‘why see any Church problem, or seek to make any changes, in regards to the Church’s work in those ‘A-Okay’ areas!!

And, Spiritually/Biblically speaking ‘praising God’ [01:40:52] for such actual, Laodicean, stagnant mediocrity, (Rev 3:15-16) qualifies as effective Divine ‘slandering/blasphemy’, for this is neither the quality, or level of, work that Spirit of God either is endorsing, or expects to be done, by “His” (i.e., Ezek 11:22-23; cf. EW 270.1) Church. (Rev 3:17-19)...

...Unless Mark Finley was here actually speaking of ‘a fellowship/community of 17,000,000’, i.e., from ca. 12.5 million baptized members. Well in that case, -17 million vs. 17 million... that completely ~~fooled~~ misled me!!... But he did say “17 million members (strong)”...

[13] As seen in here, it is quite “Freudianly” telling to note that the 3 explicitly stated, thus main, goals of a Pennsylvania Youth Challenge L.E. programs was to, (and enunciated in that order): (1) “earning tuition money” (2) ‘pray with the people the L.E.’s meet’ and (3) ‘focus on the spiritual health of the students themselves’. If, at the very least, one of these main goals had been ‘to get the Message to these people at any cost’, then this free internet books access’ solution would have long been thought of. However, like a chief tenet of Capitalism, it is required to profit as much as possible from others, and for as long as possible, and so, as long as a capital resource can be patented and/or, as applicable here, secreted, to maintain such ‘exclusive profiteering control’, then why even bother to think of a better alternative to achieve the (supposed) end goal/product/service.’

[14] Of course this is the point where SDAs typically knee-jerkedly, defensively/“disculpatingly” exclaim: “What about ADRA??!” Well indeed: What about ADRA??? What significant-dent difference is it actually making??? Even assuming that its cited statistics here are/were an annual report vs. the cumulative ones that they manifestly are, i.e., the Total work of ADRA since its creation in 1956, the 1043 Development and 854 Relief Projects that it has done/or still doing, in 131 countries which have benefited 40,740,106 people with a total value of $281,435,008 would merely represent for one year, helping less than 1% of people in need in the world today (cf. here) with less than $0.02 per day. And those figures are not even annual ones, but a 56 year total!! The fact of the matter is that the SDA Church would, from its present Given foundational resource, increasingly be doing thousands of times more than that meagre output, and that annually, if it was actually, duly “organized” towards this feasible end.

[15] Case in point, ala. 2 Pet 3:16, her insinuatively claiming [at 36:00ff of video] that Rom 14:2 is saying that ‘vegetarians are weak in the faith’ when in its fuller historical context (see 1 Cor 8:4-13), this is speaking to those who in the company of Gentiles are abstaining from eating their prepared meat, (or the ones that they sell at their public markets), even if clean meat, in order to avoid eating meats which may have been sacrificed to idols, which Paul had enough faith to know could not affect him even if it was. Indeed in those days, there was not an issue of vegetarianism as there has come to be in our day, at God’s guidance for these times. Jews and Christians then had no restriction on eating clean and kosherly-prepared, meat (which is actually more exacting in its guidelines than mere vegetarianism. I can bet that those Jews and Christians then would have gladly abandoned kosher meats for vegetarian meat alternatives instead. And, as similarly said by Jonathan Henderson here [03:17ff] and here [05:51ff] (a point which, if I recall exactly, I had first heard from Doug Batchelor in his 1997 Prophecy Seminar Series), if SDA’s today were to strictly follow the dietary laws in the Bible in regards to permitted meat eating, they too would readily be glad to turn to the much simpler vegetarian meat alternative. [Of course God gave these restrictions out of necessary health implications.]).

[16] Notwithstanding, I fully understand and believe the view of ‘recognizing the work and spirit of God working with people in non-SDA denominations’, as expressed by Wintley Phipps and Barry Black in a panel discussion (video) on that topic, but I am pointedly here against the notion of someone who manifestly does not fully embrace the Remnant Message to teach, or be able to properly/fully teach, inherently/effectively, that Remnant Message itself as it is also entrenchedly found in the SDA Sabbath School Guide. (See also my related comment here.)

[17] E.g., when was the last time you heard a preacher at a General Conference explicitly/pointedly expound on the Laodicean condition of the Church?? All you get at those elderly (not to mention 5-year) General Conferences are vague at best, ‘“Go Forward” as is’, cheerleading, as if everything is A-Okay in/with the Church. Sorry but the SDA Church really needs to “Go Back”... “Back” to the spirit and devotion of their founding pioneers, (as counselled in the True Elijah Message). Only then can it go it Go Forward, on what will then be a radically different course then the present one it has long lost its way in.

[18] And there has got to be something efficiently wrong, especially in this (high speed) internet age, with the, up to, if not, more than, $6,000,000 that is expended for hosting and attending this annual conference [=(2012 Prices) Registration: $129 + Meals: $70 + Housing: ~$417 + (avg.) Transportation: ~$250 = ~$866 X 7000+ Registrants; -that’s ca. $30,000,000 over 5 years!! (The organizing/hosting and (+2400 delegates)-attending costs for a World Church General Conference (mainly administrative) session are said to be $6-$12M)]

Have satellite and/or internet streaming broadcasts from service and seminar presentations held at various local churches where the youth living in that local area have congregated, e.g., various SDA College Campus Churches, (and what can’t be done via an (interacting/social networking) website that a ‘ministry booth’ has to do), and collect and use those $6M/yr to fund actual/tangible ministry work!! Again, it all depends on what your actual objective is: “a show” or “the Work”.

Teleconferencing GYC Superiority

Higher Annual Attendance and Participation

Indeed the various (supposedly) objectives and aims of the annual GYC meetings would be exponentially multiplied, and that, all across the board, under a TeleConference approach versus the present one. It is a most fundamental approach of SDAs, indeed going along in lock step with their revered Capitalistic approach, to engage in a “Righteousness of the (Expending) Rich” to determine who, or who is not devoted to the faith. And so those who can come up with the $1,000 to attend a GYC conference must surely the those “Righteous Ones”. Under a Teleconferencing approach, attending and being a part of a local hosting GYC site would not be any more costly than what is required for that person to attend their weekly local church. And so under that approach, much, much more Youth than merely 3000-4000 would be able to attend by such gatherings being simultaneously done in potentially every major city in the world. Then, wherever applicable, there could be at those local gatherings a local chapter of those ministry which typically have a booth presence at GYC, and thus, with much more youths encountering these ministry opportunity, participation in them would surely be dramatically increased. And by also being held at a local city level, i.e., the SDA Youth in major cities gathering at a large enough local Church, it would similarly be much more efficient than even the present Regional GYCs. (Also as there is ‘mutual support in numbers’, having such a simultaneous session would be a psychological encouragement for all attendees to encourage full/fuller participation in all that would be done during the conference.)

More Seminars and Presenters

As stated before, plenary sessions could be simulcast via satellite and/or internet streaming, and, with it actually being physically impossible for a person to attend more than one of the non-plenary seminars at once, many, if not each one of the local hosting sites, can have its own seminar, which would, as in GYC audio and/or video recorded and later shared online. This would result in much more seminars taking place each year, and really not having to pick and choose and reject prospective presenter/seminars. I am sure that all of the people who have thus far held seminars at GYC’s come up with more than one seminar topic per, e.g., 3-4 year cycles. So, under this model, they would be able to present one every year.

Better Outreach Opportunities

While “carpet ~~bombing~~ canvassing” one GYC city with outreach work on one afternoon may have a “wow” effect, which make some people think that something incredible has just taken place, under a satellite approach to GYC, not only would there then be much more participants, but the follow up would then be automatically assured as the youth who had participated in those outreach could themselves work to follow up on interests as they would be in their local area, not to mention/emphasize that they would be in that local area throughout that whole year.

Much more can be said here as to the global advantage of a Teleconference for annual GYC’s, but if one cannot see the light by now, their spiritual senses are really beclouded by, at the foundation, a spirit of individualism and selfishness where they are either only or predominantly, both in these remote, single-city, costly Conferences for themselves and how good it makes them feel by being capable to attend them (= a Capitalistic Spirit), and, as stated before, not really serious about Finishing the Work. It is not at all surprising to read (e.g., DA 20.1-21.3) that God’s Creation cannot, as demonstrated by this selfishly operated world, function, even at all, if everyone is just in it for themselves instead of having a default inter-operational approach. The sooner all SDAs learn that fundamental lesson instead of continuing to adhere to Satan’s opposing (Capitalistic) view, the faster they’ll be able to actually begin to do something significant in terms of fulfilling the mandate of Matt 24:14.

[19] Relatedly, see this GYC 2012 seminar presentation by Kameron DeVasher on the Biblicalness and benefits of Church Organization and Order (though his view on the meaning of Israel’s Four Camp Standards (=Four Living Creatures) is, as with his prior sermon statements on this topic (e.g., here 00:00-21:35), still spiritually, theologically and prophetically (Rev 4:6-7) merely “natural” (1 Cor 2:14) and void (e.g., these were not (“merely”) so that ‘Israelites could find their camps/tents, as with the illustrative parking markings for a Central Florida/‘Disney Theme Park’ [16:32-18:04ff; also claimed here (2013) [27:57-35:23-39:08 & 53:46-56:11]], -[because knowing where your 1 of 4 camps is located still does not pinpoint where it is amongst the ca. 150,000+ other tents in that camp yours actually is]). Also Devasher cowering/cowardly counsel that the SDA Youth just merely assimilate themselves in the existing SDA governance/organization in order to effect a difference, is, as typical with SDAs, oppositional to any of their claims of wanting to ‘finish the work soon’, because, it will literally take generations until, typologically enough (i.e., Num 14:20-38; 15MR 292.3-4), the present generations of, mainly adults, who clearly, stubbornly just do not want to make any of the needed reviving and/or reorganizing changes, have all passed away and then that there are enough “young” people, or people of similar stock/mindset on those committees before any actual change can be executed. So, as typical, despite all mere professions to the contrary, SDAs do, by their actions, plan on being in this world for many, many years/generation.

And as discussed here from the SOP in the post on the SDA Church Shaking, it is when the Church Organization is tangibly and obstinately obstructing the doing of God’s will and work that ‘a new organization is needed’ (1SM 176-185).

[20] Given the present focus of just the Religious aspect of my own multi-faceted ministry in listening to mainly the sermons of popular SDA Preachers, as these reach more SDA’s with their sermons, I either go to sleep to, or awaken myself by, listening to the Sermons of these SDA Preachers (on top of other viewing instances during the day), and really actually do a large part of my Bible and SOP ‘reading’ in a second hand manner by what these preachers preach on and quote in their sermons (but certainly not limiting myself to this input source). I am sure that if my present ministry duties involved pastoring a local congregation then I would also be involved in systematically and copiously reading the Bible and SOP, however my actual obstructing issue with this, and the actual reason why my ministry, (which was initially planned to be entirely evangelistic, and perhaps also pastoral), is as it presently “oversightingly”/correctively/reformatively is, is that, knowing what I know from my studies about the greater depths that can be achieved in translating the Bible from its Biblical languages, including manuscript issues, I am literally leery of encountering either inevitable and/or outrightly gross inaccuracies in all and any Bible versions/translations available today. And that is really the underlying reason for the long-proposed collaborative WBSC Research Endeavor. In other words, I personally so want to be sure that what I am believing, let alone proclaiming, is rock solidly accurate, as it indeed can be, that, e.g., me reading a single chapter in the Bible would (on average) comprehensively involve works of days of research and study, i.e., in regards to the pertinent underlying, foundational manuscript/textual, syntactical and exegetical issues involved. Indeed, and despite the various blog posting work which I have done in this blog thus far, I would have actually much more preferred to have had all of that fundamental work completed first. But as, thus far, no one wants to do that WBSC work, as they evidently do not see, nor perceive, thus do not know nor understand, the need to make this expense to “buy that field”, I have had to, most dejectedly, work with either what I had and/or what I was able to, to some acceptable extent, manage to do. But that all is certainly not my ideal and, as I have repeatedly experienced, “scholars”, including SDA scholars, who have, and are, smugly/pridefully/self-importantly claiming that: ‘there is no better scholarly accuracy that can be attained’, are really just, ironically enough, ignorant (John 3:10), and thus effectively, comprehensively incompetent...all part of them blindedly “aiding” to fully fulfill Ezek 34:1-24ff. And what is the worst, is that they deludedly, -fittingly enough, circularly from their built up edifice of defective, and lack of, actual Biblical exegesis, think that such an approach is most Spiritually, sanctionedly expedient as being ‘“timedly” necessary’ (=EW 36.2). Talk about, for these pompous Theological|Biblical|Spiritual|Practical “half-bakes” (Hos 7:8; 2 Cor 3:4-18): ‘rowing with just one oar, on one side’.

And the same actually recursively applies with the SOP. While most SDA’s are smugly satisfied with simply quoting her to prove their point, there actually is a most necessary work to systematically study out everything that she has written, to, at the very least, documentingly “retrofit” it for the “non age-of-faith” times that we now live in, where people, including Christians, don’t simply accept something as true simply because someone claims it, even if “inspiration” is also claimed. And so, as planned as one of the hundreds of projects of WBSC, an exhaustive commentary on the writings of EGW themselves is long in order, among many other related documenting and deeper study resources that should be produced.

But SDA’s are typically, and that Capitalistically, satisfied with merely what is readily feasible and so inherently only do things merely according to a gradually “evolutionary” process and certainly do not, contrary to our founding pioneers, do anything which would require a quantum leap.

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