In my book Lord Save My Church - tackling the tough answers I state that there are questions that have only wrong answers. He who asks the questions controls the agenda.Someone may ask, What to you believe, this or that. I have discovered that in many instances the answer is neither. And so I will reply, Give me another option. A friend once asked me a question about the nature of Christ. It was a 'this' or 'that' kind of question. My reply was Neither. He then replied that if I didn't believe what he did I didn't believe in victory over sin. My answer was that though I didn't believe as he did, I do believe in victory over sin. He said I must be the only one who believed different that he but believe in victory, I must be the only one. I told him there were a lot of people like me.A fanatic is a person who believes in one truth at the expense of another truth. If you have to throw out one truth to make room for another, the the new truth is not true! When it comes to faith and morals, there are many whose guitar has only one string. But they may have a large follow of people because the average person would like to have a narrow view rather than a broad view of the gospel. To me this is true for those whose string plays only 1888, the nature of Christ, or the Moral Influence theory.My suggestion is, Don't let a fanatic make a fanatic out of you!
I own a natural foods store. These type of stores are magnets for fanatics. You can't reason with these people. It runs the gamut from Canola oil being a government conspiracy to sicken us all, to raw food being the only way to eat--oh, yeah, and wheat is bad, and watch out for soy. I believe that because of our eschatology, our church tends to attract spiritual fanatics. It is usually best not to get into an argument with them. In their minds they are here teach you, and are not likely to listen to anything you say that goes contrary to their ideas--no matter how Biblical and logical your answers may be.
This forum needs a like button. I like this post . . . so true!!
Mr. Raven, I wish you hadn't said that. You have just shot yourself in your bank account. I am the president of the international organization Fanatics Ltd. Our motto is " Pass the clover juice" We were about to buy three train cars full of your products. Needless to say, we are going to take our business somewhere else!
Then again, I don't think we want to be too much like Spectrum. I noticed that they got rid of their "dislike" button.
This is the best adventist forum topic ever!I believe taking the hard line on some of this stuff amounts to little more than running ahead of The Lord. I mean won't it be embarrassing to get to Glory only to find out that the answer was actually (d), none of the above? Or worse yet, that some of us have forfeited Heaven altogether for harboring a controversial spirit over things that are clearly less important for this time than, say, things like the Sabbath, state of the dead or, for adventists in particular, the sanctuary or the spirit of prophecy. (I do hear that the church has statistics concerning theological and lifestyle decline in developed regions where the spirit of prophecy is being devalued. Just sayin'.)Some of these difficult theological arguments have actually led people to finally doubt Scripture. In fact if I recall correctly, it seems that inspiration (or, at least, history) points to squabbles of this type as the reason for the eventual decline in devotion of the apostolic era church.Boy, sometimes I really feel like I've had my head in the sand. Moral Influence theory? In the Adventist Church?! If somebody tried to put that one over on me, I think I'd be forced to use some sort of cutting sarcasm like: "Look, it was dark outside when I was born, but it wasn't last night!" Or "Dude, You said that out loud."I guess I can't talk much. I stood in the pulpit back in '91 and gave the Sabbath sermon in my local church, right out of Counsels On Diet and Foods (and nothing much else). I thank God that Pastor Dale Martin took me under his wing the next year as I was complaining about the cheese and eggs in buffet line at the Lay Evangelists Training Seminar. He gave me the old "Lighten up, Kid. Did you ever notice Jesus ate fish in His glorified body?" lesson. Told me he took his family to Dairy Queen once in a while. I was shocked. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate brewer's yeast and flaxseed as much as the next five-percenter. But I can't walk around the potluck table with a magnifying glass, and I don't believe the devil is IN the shampoo you buy at Walmart (I actually heard a woman say that in Sabbath school once).
Yes, Newbie, a similar thing happened to me. Some years ago I was riding in the car with my brother when he asked me to hold his D.Q. cone while he dropped some things off at the dry cleaner. He was gone about 8-10 minutes. It was a pretty warm day in Florida and the cone did not melt one bit while he was gone. I was amazed! (No, I did not lick it!)
