·                                 Description: H:\$\My Websites\TreeOfLife.lan.io\SDAcomms\SSNET\bak\2011_12_02_ssnetOrgBlog-Sarah’s_Covenant_or_Hagar’s_files\e557163d6d2ac242c505bf7e503ba27cAndy © says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation. 

December 8, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Dexter, What specifically are you thinking of when referencing “the Achan’s?”

And also, when talking about “church discipline,” well, it seems to me that that tool is hardly ever used for the purposes it should be used, only for pressuring such ones among our members, and among our pastors, that dare to take a stand for that which God is truly calling them to do, to stop doing just that and to get in line with the majority… That is, church discipline is a tool being generally abused for applying such peer pressure as will in effect be nothing less than that persecution of God’s own People which churches throughout history are so well known for…

To frame that same problem just a bit differently: Just like so many other churches, our beloved Adventist societies too are only too often trapping themselves into various species of abuses of our faith and of our religion, or isn’t that true?

What we do need much more of, is improving upon that reality which should be… (but isn’t necessarily existing) and which our church is so very often claiming, that is, that we are truly a Bible believing people that keep on studying the Holy Scriptures to the point that we are a church that are closer to the truth of God than any other church body… May I suggest this Bible study: http://tinyurl.com/c6c3moy

But where can I find even one internet forum, or any other forum, even one Sabbath School study group, where that is true and where the principles outlined in Ellen White’s book, Counsels on Sabbath School Work (cf.http://tinyurl.com/cxhkgql,) are truly being followed??? I truly believe there is a need among all of us to study and to heed the advise, that is, the guidance, that God is so gracefully providing for us in that book!

Sola scriptura! The Bible and the Bible only!… Has that become only too much of an empty phrase often repeated among us?

Could it be that we are, in more ways than one, being the sons and daughters of Hagar, the slave mistress of Abraham, that is, by being slaves of tradition, albeit “Seventh-day Adventist” tradition, by making all too many assumptions re the faith we claim that we have?… But which faith and conviction was much more truly the faith and conviction of our pioneers… the ones before us that truly did study their Bibles for the purpose of finding ever more light than that which thus far they had come to see and understand…

How could we, I and you, each one among us, turn that around such that there would be more of a reality to a claim of ours that we are the sons and the daughters of Sarah, the People of the Promises of God?

Consider it! Selah!

Andy ©

Click to EditRequest Deletion (120 minutes and 33 seconds)