Minoi

Their fingers touched as they gathered the last few grains of rice from the bottom of the shared bowl. Their eyes met and held, startling each in this symbol of their new unity. Both lowered their eyes, embarrassed and pleased in the recognition of the other’s awareness.

Still dressed in wedding finery, each sensed the other’s anxiety. He, the gallant bridegroom, left the last morsel for her. She smiled shyly and raised it to her lips.

He set the bowl aside.

"Minoi," he said.

"Minoi," she echoed.

In the tradition of the Montegnard peoples of upland Vietnam, a married couple never refers to their spouse by their given name. Instead, they use only the pronoun “myself.” In each and every verbal exchange of their married lives from the first ceremonial utterance to the day of their separation by death, they are reminded of the other as themselves. “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” in Adam’s oft-repeated but seldom-lived words.

God, sees us, in Jesus as "Myself." Being human as well as God, the Father sees His Son, literally and completely, as Himself. In this relationship we find the only true "Myself" relationship. Each is literally "Myself" to the other in this sacred companionship. There is no barrier between them, no dividing line. They are the perfect examples and only true outworking of this relationship. Though plural, they are so utterly the same that we worship but one God.

As usual, God not only is this relationship, but He shares it with us. He calls us His Children, His own. In some mysterious way, we are "myself" to God; we are joined with Him so as to be a part of Him. He in us, we in Him, echoes through the new testament.

In an even more mysterious way, we can, with trembling caution, call God "myself," in this new and intimate sense. This profound thought, almost too holy to express in words, is the incredible result of the Incarnation of Jesus. He became one with us that we might become one with Him. No longer, like Moses, need we be afraid to look on His face; we are drawn into His presence, we sit on His right hand and are joint rulers with Christ.

If I were to truly see my wife, Ida, as myself, how happy that would make us both. We would truly be one flesh if we could each see the other in that way. As Jesus said, "One does not mistreat one's own self." If I could listen to her, talk to her, work with and for her, care for her from this perspective...well, I can't predict the results, but it is only the lack of viewing her from that perspective that prevents me from doing so.

If we in the Body, could see one another from this point of view and truly put others ahead of ourselves, our expectations would be reversed. We wouldn't come to expect a benefit; we would come expecting to be a benefit. How beautiful would be the Bride, how glorious would She be! How others would long to join in, and how God would be honored. We would each be joined in mutuality and love beyond our wildest dreams.

Could we but see our neighbors as “Minoi” how our love would shine forth; how attractive would the indwelling Jesus be to them; how beautiful would evangelism be and how effortless. Perhaps a world won would not be too small a possibility should we be able to display Christ our Lord in this way.

"Minoi," my sisters and brothers, "Minoi."

1/24/10

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Welcome to you, new member!

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I've written about my experience in leaving the sDA denomination before on this list. In this post, I'll revisit the topic from a slightly different slant. For the most part, my split was uneventful. I'm still welcomed when I attend with my wife.

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One incident, however, helped seal my determination to leave and stay left.

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A few weeks after submitting my resignation letter, I received the acknowledgement letter from the local church. Oddly enough, since I left the denomination over the issue of the investigative judgment doctrine, the letter of acknowledgment was dated October 22—a significant date in Adventism.

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I attended church with my wife one Saturday. Since she had duties in the children's divisions, I went to Sabbath School with her and sat in on the adult SS class. The teacher was a friend of mine, who took my leaving as an insult, I guess. He was one of the few who said anything to me about leaving and not always in friendly terms.

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To make matters worse, the topic of the SS lesson was, you guessed it, the investigative judgment.

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John began the lesson as usual, then, referring to the seventy weeks referenced in Daniel, he stated, "Win, now how can you say there is no time element in Daniel?" That is, he meant, that the day/year principle was a valid method of interpreting Daniel and Revelation. Without going into detail, this principle is the support for the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 applied to a day/year interpretation which led early Adventists to predict Christ's return in 1844—October 22, to be exact.

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Since I was sitting a few rows behind the class and on the opposite side of the center aisle, he left the class, walked to where I was sitting, and continued to harangue me about this loud enough for the entire class to hear.

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I didn't think it appropriate to get into an argument, so just said, "I don't think we should get into this right now." He stopped his lecture and went back to his teaching. Needless to say, I didn't return—ever to SS.

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He was the only one to hassle me about my abdication. The pastor wanted to give me three studies on the topic to which I agreed. He "studied" the topic only from the Great Controversy. Ellen White's inspiration was a closed topic for me by then, having concluded that the investigative judgment was false made her a false prophet. One other person approached me, but I discovered later that his only purpose was to have gossip to spread among his friends at church.

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I took one thought from this experience.

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Adventists are not really interested in interacting with former Adventist. Perhaps they feel they will be tainted in some way by heretical doctrines, or that, if one leaves, one is condemned already, therefore not worth the effort. Not really sure if this is true or not.

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I find that the freedom from the man-made rules of the denomination is very freeing, allowing me to find an actual experience with the God of the Bible and His Son, Jesus Christ. This is worth giving up all 28 doctrines. He is the only truth, not the SDA denomination or any other.

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Unforgiven Sin

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Sin separates humanity from Creator. Scripture is plain about that and so I was taught. Each and every sin is a time bomb, discovered only in the investigative judgment on the day when my case comes before the Judge of all the earth. With divine precision, all my sins will be examined and my guilt determined thereby. A loophole is extended within this terrifying scenario. The loophole is this: all confessed sins are laid upon Jesus. His shed blood cleanses me from my sin and sins. Of course, the operative word here, is “confessed.” It is not just the “big” sins, no, no. It is the little ones, the sins of neglect, the sins that are not even known to be sins. Every sin.

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At fourteen, I tried to remember and confess every sin; utter failure. Always, a sin just out of remembrance, hidden behind a veil of forgetfulness, a sin unrecognized as sin, a sin hiding in plain sight, unremarked, tripped me up every single night as I drifted into sleep. Or, as was far too common, I fell asleep before I finished my list. I woke with a sense of dread, failure, unsaved, for by now I forgot all those which remained unconfessed in sleep.

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There are many SDA doctrines with which I now disagree, the sabbath, Ellen White prophetic mission, the investigative judgment, the state of the dead, diet as a requirement for salvation. But, for me, the most insidious, the most heinous is this doctrine of guilt. It colors everything from interpersonal relations to one’s view of Father and His Son to one’s relationship with the SDA denomination and with fellow adherents.

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Blessedly, I discovered, John 1:29 “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Such relief. I also discovered Romans 5: 1-11 where Paul assures us that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” while still enemies, He reconciled us.

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The key text for this particular belief is 1 John 1:9—“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins.” “If” is the key. We, according to this verse are forgiven only if we ask for forgiveness. One problem exists. The word “confess,” is better translated, as “agree.” If we agree that we are sinners (which follows logically from verse 8 in which we are not to claim we are without sin). We need only agree with Jesus’ own assessment of us that we are sinners. Done. Finished, Guiltless. Besides that, the Lamb has already, by His perfect life, death, and resurrection, already taken away our sins and those of the entire world. We are without condemnation (Romans 8:1). We are considered holy and blameless from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4).

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Whew! What a relief it is to know that all those pesky, forgotten sins have already been dealt with and we stand in the presence of the Judge of all the earth without anything that separates us from Him and an eternity in His presence. O joyous day, the day of judgment. No fear, no trembling, no worry, peace.

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In trial, tribulation and trouble,

I say, “God is love.”

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In illness, weakness, death, sorrow and doubt,

I cry out, “God is love.”

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In genocide, wars, persecutions,

I declare , “God is love.”

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To His command? to slaughter man, woman, child and beast,

I shakily affirm, “Somehow, in this, too, God is love.”

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He? continually proclaims, “Peace on earth, good will toward man.”

And

“My love is always the best and highest for friend and foe alike.”

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So, with Job, I confidently proclaim, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,”

for He is only and always, Love.

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Today, in the mail, we received a copy of Ellen White’s book, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan. Now, I’ve spent a great deal of time reading that book in the distant past. It was also the chapters in it that describe the investigative judgment that helped propel me out of the SDA denomination. When I submitted my resignation letter to the pastor, he asked to visit me three times. He did, but never used scripture, not even once. He only used the GC which made no sense to me since those were the chapters which convinced me of the error of the IJ and of Ellen White herself.

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Anyway, back to today’s delivery of a copy of the GC in my mailbox. Though I couldn’t see it, I was fairly certain that is what it was which my wife confirmed.

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It’s arrival triggered a memory from my days as a theology major at PUC (Pacific Union College). I was browsing the bookstore when a fellow browser said, “Did you know the White estate forgot to renew the copyright on the GC? It’s now in the public domain.”

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“Huh,” I thought. “Well, maybe that’s in God’s plan to get it out to more people.” I was right. The publisher of this copy is in one of the upper-Midwest States. They must send out thousands of these. I’ve heard of whole towns being blanketed in them. Some on doorsteps and some in mailboxes.

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I firmly believe that God has each of us in a place where we can be best benefitted and where we can best benefit, so I’m not opposed to people becoming SDAs, but I still cringe when I think of that horrific doctrine being included into someone’s theology. It only engenders fear and destroys the meaning of the cross of Jesus. I wish neither on friend or foe.

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God is love 2 first person

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My love is patient,

My love is kind.

My love envies not,

My love boasts not,

My love is not proud

My love does not demean.

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My love seeks first the blessing and benefit of others.

My love is slow to anger,

My love keeps no record of wrongs.

My love Delights in good,

My love rejoices in the truth.

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My love always protects,

My love always trusts,

My love always hopes,

My love always perseveres.

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My love never fails.

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My love loves my enemies,

My loves is good to those who hate me,

My love Blesses those who curse and mistreat me,

My love turns my other cheeks

My love Withholds not from the needy.

My love gives to all who asks,

My love Demand not the return of what is stolen from me.

My love Does to all as I would be done to.

My love Loves my enemies

My love Is merciful to the unmerciful

My love Sends rain on the unjust

My love is kind to those who are ungrateful and unrighteous.

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My love never fails.

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What Father requires of us, He Himself is and gives that same to us. When He says, “love your enemies,” He is saying, “Love your enemies as I love mine.” This is true in all that He desires from us, not just in love.

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In the following paragraphs, I have taken passages from 1 Corinthians, Luke and 1 John, fiddled with them a lot, and tried to bring this principle of interpretation clear by adding “His love” to the beginning of each item in the list.

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In keeping with my obsession of late in playing with the first, second and third person nouns, What is below can also be written in the first person “I am love,” and “You are love.” This moves the statements from the descriptive to His claims about Himself and finally makes a prayer of acknowledgement back to Him.

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We can rejoice that what He is, that in which He desires us to be like Him, is what He is and what He supplies to us by His indwelling Spirit. I no longer need to try to generate love, grace, faith, or any other of the Christian virtues. Each is what He is and each is a gift given to us for our blessing and the blessings of those around us.

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Win

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God is love

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His love is patient,

His love is kind.

His love envies not,

His love boasts not,

His love is not proud

His love does not demean.

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His love seeks first to bless others.

His love is slow to anger,

His love keeps no record of wrongs.

His love Delights not in evil,

His love rejoices in the truth.

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His love always protects,

His love always trusts,

His love always hopes,

His love always perseveres.

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His love never fails.

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His love loves His enemies,

His loves is good to those who hate Him,

His love Blesses those who curse and mistreat Him,

His love turns His other cheeks

His love Withholds not from one who needs.

His love gives to all who asks,

His love Demand not the return of what is stolen from Him.

His love Does to all as He would be done to.

His love Loves His enemies

His love Is merciful to the unmerciful

His love Sends rain on the unjust

His love is kind to those who are ungrateful and unrighteous.

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My wife, as I have said before, is still an Adventist. One Saturday, she returned from church and quoted her pastor as saying something like, “
We Adventists have the law, but we have added Jesus to the law.” This may or may not be an exact quote, but the sense of it is absolutely true.

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Adventists still teach, preach, and live the law of Moses, well, at least partially. They keep the Sabbath, a part of the Mosaic law; they speak against eating unclean meats.

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In the past fifty years or so, a general movement within the denomination is to emphasize love and to speak more about the grace Jesus. .”

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It is my impression, looking in from my now outside position, is that grace and Jesus are being superimposed on top of the Mosaic law. The words of Ida’s pastor are, therefore, a reflection of current church trends.

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Law, however, is opposed to grace and grace to law. Paul says in Romans 6:14: “Sin shall not have mastery over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. “He could not have put it much more clearly than that. If under law, then sin has mastery. If under grace, then sin cannot master. John says in chapter one of his gospel. “The law came through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus.” Again, the contrast, negating law and supporting grace only. I don’t intend to share all the scriptures which contrast and define the relationship between the two antagonistic ways of viewing our relationship with father.

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OK, just two more which popped into my consciousness. Romans 14:5-10 speaks of not judging anyone else by what day they keep. At first glance, it might be construed as only referring to judging another. But it is clear from the text itself, that Paul is telling the Romans not to just about what day is being kept sacred: one or another or no day at all. If we are not to judge in such matters, then it matters not which day or no day on which we worship. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to what to eat. Again, no stipulation is placed by him on what we eat, whether offered first to idols or not or whether it is clean or unclean. OK, that’s enough to say that the Mosaic law is not to be imposed on the Christian believer. In another post, I’ll talk about the law of faith and grace, but, for now, will let it rest and just say that we are under no obligation to keep any part of the Mosaic law, whether chiseled in stone or written on papyrus.

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Our relationship with Father is entirely by grace, through the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 2:1-10.

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/a Dream—or, Maybe Not

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From dreamless sleep, I startled into full consciousness, Looking down at the quilted form of my body. “So I’m dead,” I thought. The slow rise and fall of the covering quilt belied my conclusion.

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A rich baritone chuckle sounded from everywhere and nowhere. My senses trembled as if seated on a massive bass speaker. I turned, unsure what to expect. I saw nothing.

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A warm hand took mine. “Come, dance with Me.” We lifted through the ceiling, the roof, high above the town’s weary lights. All grew smaller until my town was but a tiny dot of light on a rough map of the United States. From the Mississippi to the Atlantic, lights spangled the night. To the west, vast dark spaces reigned with bright cities scattered randomly in the dark. On the west coast, major cities, San Diego/Los Angeles, the Bay area, Portland, Seattle, were strung like pearls along the edge of the sea.

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“Pretty, yes?” came a surround-sound voice.

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“Breathtaking, trite though that may sound.” I do not know why I was not terrified. Arms encircled me, held me in a warm embrace.

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“Let’s dance,” said the voice.

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Dance we did. Sometimes dizzyingly fast, sometimes upside down, sometimes a slow gentle waltz. We danced to His melody, whispered and sung by turns as if He were the entire orchestra, chorus, and soloist.

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The earth faded to a small blue blot suspended in ink. We plunged into the sun. I felt its warmth as if on earth, standing in a sunny garden. , Hurtling out its far side, we circled Venus, swept past Mars, dove through the rings of Saturn paused to take in the sight of Jupiter’s moons. Then I was above our galaxy, seeing, for the first time by any human, its spiral shape. .

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“let me show you something even more spectacular,” He said.

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WE paused, suspended in the void. He turned me toward a red giant star. I watched as it swelled, engulfing its planets, absorbing them into itself. It exploded. I ducked and pulled away.

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“Fear not.”

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I felt the stream of subatomic particles ruffle my hair and tickle my innards. I felt none the worse for the experience. With its outer shell moving at near-light speed into the void, its core shrank to the size of our sun. It continued its collapse which normally would take thousands of years, into a neutron star. It continued to shrink until a single teaspoon of its material weighed millions of tons. Finally, it collapsed into a black hole. Its gravity so strong, even photons of light could not escape. It drew particles, stars and any other matter, within millions of light years, into itself.

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“Fun, huh?” came the voice.

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“That was all in compressed time, I take it?”

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“Yes indeed, but let’s move on. We’ve just begun.”

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He danced me to a pair of neighboring galaxies. Stars streamed from one galaxy to the other.

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“It’s cannibalizing its neighbor!” I said.

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“Yes. That is so.”

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“Because of Adam and Eve?”

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“驰别蝉.”

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“But I thought you set them up, so to speak. I mean, tell young kids not to do something and that is the very thing they will do. Then you went and created that snake that monstrous beguiling dragon to purposely seduce them.”

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“that I did.”

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“then how can you blame them, and us?”

“There is purpose behind all that I do, including that monstrous seducer, the serpent of Eden.”

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It still doesn’t seem fair.”

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“Perhaps not, from your perspective. But from mine, it is all a part of the interweaving of each person’s life and actions. Believe me, I experience more of the pain of humanity than any you could ever experience in a million lifetimes.”

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“闯别蝉耻蝉.”

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“Yes, exactly.”

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We left the boundaries of the universe, all that I knew of reality. It was dark, a night of palpable black.

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“Where am I?” I asked.

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You are within me, in the me that is all that there is. You are experiencing the reality of me that David and Paul spoke of. ‘If you flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, behold, I AM there.’ And ‘In me you live and move and have your being.’ Do you feel me flowing through you as we dance?”

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“Now that you mention it, I do.” The sensation of movement stopped. I looked around. It was as if I were blind. No light, not even the glimmer of the universe I left behind. Like a switch being thrown, light flooded my being. More than vision, more than the light of the sun. all my senses. Like glorious music, extraordinary taste, scent that no perfumer could concoct. Rivers of delight flowed from nerve ending to my brain and back again. I still saw nothing in the intense light..

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As if donning a new pair of glasses, everything suddenly snapped into focus and I saw. Millions, probably billions, of beings like me, with heads, arms, legs and torso, surrounding me. Though they crowded inn, packed like sardines, I could see through them, to perimeter of the mass. In the center, a couple stood, head and shoulders above the rest. They wept tears. They held out their hands, reaching to pull others to themselves. Few responded.

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Most of the billions were soft, spongy. Encountering another person, they briefly molded themselves into a corresponding form to the one encountered. Parting, they became an amorphous shape again. Another group threw chains over those who were near them. Their words exploded from their mouths clothed in black. Each enchained being was forced to serve the one who held the chains.

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At invisible tables, many sat counting something, also invisible. They paused, now and again, to write with invisible pens on invisible paper. Sometimes they smiled, occasionally laughed in delight, sometimes frowned in anger or disgust. They clustered near one another, groups of mostly men, passing invisible objects between them, trying to find an advantage, to accumulate more of these non-existent objects.

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Some of those in the three-dimensional realm of humanity, were hard and wore sharp spikes. They forced their way through the crowd, stabbing and slashing their way to some unknown destination. Their progress was marked by howls of pain and curses. Occasionally, someone died when a spike penetrated too deeply. The spike carriers moved on as if nothing untoward happened.

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Some attempted to elevate themselves above the throng, though this was difficult in three-dimensional space. They mounted unseen stairs, held see-through documents before them and read very persuasive words to those around them. Their words were grey, part true and part false. Sometimes they spoke of political power, sometimes of scientific achievements, sometimes of the kingdom about which they knew nothing. They, too, like the chain-wielders, sought power and dominance over others.

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Here and there, a bright being skittered about, bouncing off others and laughing as if they held the universe’s most hilarious joke within them. They drank invisible liquid from invisible glasses which were filled from invisible containers by invisible attendants. Others, moved zombie-like in random patterns, occasionally ingesting a calming substance into mouth, lungs or arms. Others sat, apparently comfortable, in small groups looking at a point in space. Occasionally they laughed, frown, expressed horror or delight at what they saw.

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In all this vast array of semi-humanity, few willingly stayed close to others for long. It was one vast roiling mass , each seeking their own fulfillments.

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Then, He directed my eyes to a small group, then to others, scattered within the seemingly boundless crowd. These were linked like puzzle pieces, to the rest of their group. Puzzles are not an apt description, though. In reality, each was joined to all the rest in a perfect sphere, a three-dimensional yin and yang of mutuality and support. As I was pointed to each group, they lit up, drawing me toward them, expressing delight at my presence. When one left the group, an umbilical cord trailed behind them still attached to the group. When they returned, they were reabsorbed into the whole again. Groups communicated with groups, an invisible but potent connection that joined them together in joyous praise.

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“Who are these?” I asked my dance partner.

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“They are those to whom I reveal myself, those who respond to my call. Look a bit closer.”

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I did. Their garments scintillated, iridescent. Now white, now red from a different angle as they moved. Other colors and never-before-seen shades shimmered as they moved. Those outside the group often shielded their eyes from the blinding colors.

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“Beautiful,” I breathed.

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“Yes, these are the Bride of my Son. To them are added those who are being saved. They are my witnesses, my martyrs, my holy priests and kings. You are one of them, back in your physical reality.”

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“How can this be?”

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“From eternity past, I knew you, planned you, knew you. When just the right time arrived, the right people, the right lineage, the right place were brought into being, you were conceived and were born and now live the life I planned for you from forever past.”

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“奥丑测?”

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“I want you to know Me as I am. I want you to know that I am everywhere and everywhen. You dwell within me. You live and move and have your being within me. Literally. It is not a spiritual pie-in-the-sky-someday living within me. I am the temple of Revelation. I am the home which Jesus left to prepare for you. I am the all that contains the all. There is nothing outside of me, no space beyond, no finite or infinite place or time outside of me. You were conceived, birthed and live within me and by my purposes. Nothing can separate us for there is nothing else to come between. I inhabit you and you are one of those who inhabits me. All others will someday come into that relationship, though, for now, they resist. There is, in actuality, no place to hide from me, no place to which to flee to escape me. I am relentless in my love for you and all those whom I’ve brought into being. There is nothing that I will not do to woo and win you and any and all of your fellow humans. I have sworn by myself that I will do this thing.”

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“Oh,” I said again, overwhelmed.

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I woke. Morning light streamed across my quilt. A grand sense of well-being flooded my senses. I hurried to my computer, not wanting to forget what I was shown. It fades now, lost in the myriad experiences of life. . Only a deep sense of awe, of reverence, of incomparable peace remains. Memories occasionally flood my spirit, reminding me of the sacred time He danced me within himself.

4/11/23

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????????????? ????????????? Hello All,

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For the past couple of months, I’ve been working my way through the first five books of the Bible changing all references by the writer to God or Yahweh from third to first person. For example, Genesis 1 says In the beginning, God… In this version, it reads, In the beginning, I*. (The star represents a word which I changed from third to first person.

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If you are interested, please contact me at my email address? below and I’ll send you an electronic copy in Word format. Other formats can be done as well.

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Thanks and blessings,

Win

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Winslow617@...

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We gathered around the picnic table one Saturday afternoon, my four cousins, their parents, and my family of five. Someone blessed the food and we began passing it left -to-right between us.

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As was customary in those long-ago nineteen-fifties Adventism, our family were Sabbath keepers and vegetarians. Our cousins were neither. Farmers from Nebraska, they ate meat (shudder, gag). You see, they didn’t have “the truth” set forth by the oyster-eating Ellen White. They went to church on Sunday, had no guiding prophetess or even prophet, ate meat (probably pork, too, though I never asked.).

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Potato salad, beans, chips, and hotdogs circled the table until they returned to rest at their original positions. Happy conversation filled the air. We like the Fultons. LayMoyne was just my age. We usually tossed a baseball back and forth when no family duties required our presence. He was a much better player than I, so I learned from him. His brother Danny was a favorite of my brother and sister. The youngest two of their family were not ready for the big-time cousin play, so they hung on their mother’s skirts.

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When the hotdogs came to me, I took one, thinking them to be Linkettes or Big Franks from one of the Adventist protein-bending factories. I wondered at my mother’s strange hand gestures. She was trying to tell me something in a language I’d never learned. Along with the other food (you can see this coming, I’m sure.) I ate the hotdog. I didn’t die. I wasn’t struck by lightning, I didn’t regurgitate. It digested just like the rest of my food and I was nourished by it.

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Later, my mother told me that it was (gasp) a meat hotdog. Never having tasted meat, I did not detect any difference between it and the highly-processed and fake-flavored analogs produced by Loma Linda and Worthington food factories. (Who does the taste testing for those indigestible foods anyway? Are they meat eaters? Do they eat pork so they can judge things like Wham or do they recruit an apostate Adventist? Never found the anser.)

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Then, when visiting my grandmother in Iowa, my mother ate chicken. Horrors! How can this be? She who taught us to keep bodies clean of all meats for our soul’s salvation sake, ate chicken. I don’t know if she tried to hide it or not, but that’ a true story.

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Oh well, not really important, just little snippets from childhood’s memory bank. Not sure there is a moral to this story. I still prefer vegetarian food, though not from a can. Forced by diet to eat meat, I cringe from the aesthetic, not from the religious or morality angle. But hey, I’m still alive and eating, so it can’t be all bad!

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3/27/23

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All of life is tragedy or farce until viewed through the lens of God’s purposes and plans.

Then tragedy turns to profit and farce becomes wisdom.

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I woke from a vivid dream, a dream full of portent, heavy with decision. It lingered in wakefulness and hovers these nearly twenty years later….

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As I have said before, I grew up on the grounds of two different SDA hospitals. The first was Porter Memorial in Denver until age seven. The second, until sixteen, at Paradise Valley hospital in San Diego. In those days, hospitals were much simpler, much less hierarchical, much more service and mission oriented. Paradise Valley contained, in addition to the hospital, a grocery store and gas station, a book-and-bible store, a K-12 school, a Quonset hut used for meetings, its own water supply, its own phone system, and, the point of this piece, its own church.

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Our family moved onto the hospital grounds in mid-December, 1952. We met in a church built in the late nineteenth century. The main sanctuary consisted of a platform, a main floor and a two-step-high raised “balcony.” We always sat on the front edge of this raised area on its north end. Downstairs were children’s classrooms.

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The brethren decided we needed a new church. A board went up showing the amount of money earned. Members went from house to house soliciting pledges. Building began.

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When finished, it was a white concrete boat of a building. A bell tower without bells stood on its west side. It held nearly a thousand people. A real balcony graced the back. The platform was backed by a curving wood wall in golden oak. The baptistry was behind a vertically sliding panel which lowered to reveal the head and body of baptizer and baptize. I was second person to be baptized, at age nine, in this new church. Elizabeth “Sissy” Jackson, the daughter of the store managers, asked first to be first.

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Now there was no need for the “old” church, the one in which Ellen White had spoken and thus held sacred by many congregants. It was torn down. My friends and I helped. It was even memorialized in an eight-millimeter movie. The boards were dumped in a nearby “canyon” to be burned.

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As I was contemplating leaving the SDA denomination, I dreamed the dream. It combined elements of both churches.

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The scene was inside the “new” church. Congregants were scattered around the main floor. My wife and son sat near the back on the west side. I walked down the aisle to sit on the front row. An assistant pastor already sat there. Stacked around the thirty-foot walls was the debris of the old church. It reached in chaotic piles halfway to the ceiling. As it is in dreams, I suddenly held a torch and knew it was my duty to light the old board on fire. They were old and dry, would probably ignite with a mere spark, much less, a torch. Touching this spot and that all around the body of the sanctuary, a flame ignited with each touch of my torch, then immediately flared out.

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I returned to sit beside the assistant pastor and said, “We need to light this on fire.” He remained sitting, facing forward, unmoving as a statue as did all the people. I tried again, then gave up.

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No longer holding the torch, I walked up the aisle. My wife and son joined me. We walked out. No one tried to stop us.

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As dream became reality, I thought to myself “This is really significant, but I cannot base a major decision like this on a dream alone. “Please confirm this to me,” I prayed.

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Immediately two verses flashed into my mind: “Come out of her my people that you do not participate in her plagues,” and “Abraham went out, not knowing where he went.”

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So it was confirmed to me that I was free to leave my childhood church, abandon my three-generations deep ties to the SDA denomination. It has been a glorious journey and I am grateful to the dream giver.

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Song by Charles Schlagle

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SDA and Covenants

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In one of my theology classes at Pacific Union College, the professor mentioned the old and new covenants. Somehow, the Mosaic Covenant became the Eternal Covenant which then became the New Covenant at Christ’s death. This didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t. Lots of sleight-of-hand, lots of jiggering to make this equal to that was required to make the old equal the new.

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I let the thought remain dormant until twenty years ago when a childhood friend introduced me to the concept of covenant in scripture and in many cultures even today. I read everything I could find on the subject. The joy I found in understanding and living within the New Covenant was tremendous.

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A covenant, in all of scripture, refers to a blood covenant, the semi-mythical “blood brother” ceremony of Native American culture. Each party to the covenant sheds a bit of blood. Hands are shaken, mingling the blood. Now they are to-death friends. There are many variations and often more complex and meaningful rituals connected with this ceremony, but for the purposes of this essay, these can be set aside for now. (See Genesis 15 for the most complete covenant ceremony in scripture.)

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Adam was created as the covenant head of this earth meaning that what he did, what happened to him, would happen to his whole family, that is, to all of us—death.

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Jesus came to establish a New Covenant, making Him the covenant head of this world. He became the Last Adam (see Romans 5:12-21, 1 Corinthians 15:45)

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Jesus died the blood-covenant death that Adam the First should have died. When Jesus died and was resurrected, all the consequences of Adam’s covenant-breaking were absorbed by Jesus, the new Covenant Head. What happened to this new Head also passed on to all of His adopted offspring, all humanity, that is, we inherit His life in place of the inheritance of death from Adam the First.

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Now back to my theological problem from college days.

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Last Saturday, my wife came home from church talking about the covenants. Her pastor said (almost a direct quote) “The New Covenant is the Old Covenant plus Jesus.”

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This is the dilemma of Adventists. They need the Sabbath to exist as a denomination. Without it, they cease to exist as a distinct organization. In order to do this, the Ten Commands written on stone must still be valid. Therefore, the appeal to the Old Covenant. This is not unique to Adventists. Most, if not all, Evangelical, fundamentalist, and other non-defined denominations appeal to the Old Covenant for their foundation in one way or another. This is layering grace atop law. It doesn’t work. The New Covenant is an entirely new way of relating to Father. It is not an external but an internal relationship. It is of heart, not head, of spirit, not flesh. (see Jeremiah 31:31, Luke 22:20, 1 Corinthians 11:25, 2 Corinthians 3:6 Hebrews 8-10; 9:15, 12:24)

The New Covenant replaces the Old with an entirely new way of obedience, from the heart empowered, not by human will, but by the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is a thing apart, an entirely new way, a new life, a new creation.

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No layering of new on top of old is necessary. The old wineskin is discarded, the ferment of the New Covenant is held in a new wineskin. Joy replaces drudgery. Peace replaces uncertainty. Fear vanishes and becomes peace. No longer are we held in bondage to sin for “we are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:14).

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I wish I could approach my wife’s pastor with this good news, but I know that she is too steeped, as I once was, in Old Covenant rules and language. As Paul said, “their eyes are blinded by the Law so they cannot see until this very day.”

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Oh for the time when Father removes the scales from humanity’s eyes, when the cataract of Law and self-salvation are removed. What a time of joy that will be!

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12/15/22

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One-hundred seventy-eight years ago today, New England was in flames. It was not a literal burning, but a religious conflagration. Those on one side, mocked and derided those on the other. It was a day the world was to end, a destruction of all that was, the death of all but a few. It was December 21, 2012 amplified in a smaller drum, the twenty-six states, a bit more than half our present number. The population was concentrated on the Eastern seaboard, The west was still mostly unexplored. The territory gained in the Louisiana purchase still known only by its native inhabitants.

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This date, these many years later, is but a footnote to the grand push of these early United States in their headlong rush to the Pacific. It is memorialized by a small sect numbering around twenty-one million in the entire world, about three one-thousands of the population of the globe. Even in this tiny fraction, there is a loss of awareness of the significance of the day.

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So, what is so significant to this religious body about October 22? These early believers of a 1812-war hero, former atheist turned ardent Bible student, believed Jesus was to return to earth on that date. Families were divided, congregations split, towns and villages and cities were absorbed in this apocalyptic scenario. It was a day of breath holding for both groups; of glorious anticipation among believers, a certain smug anxiety in those who did not subscribe to William Miller’s dire warnings.

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Believers withdrew, in varying degrees, from the world. Some sold or gave away all they had to friends and relatives. Some are reported to have sewn “ascension robes,” made of bed sheets and other white material, the better to illustrate to Jesus their readiness, their purity at His appearing. Some climbed trees or barns to be that much higher up when the anticipated event occurred. Most Adventists, so named for their belief in this second advent or coming of Jesus, withdrew into groups. They meditated, prayed, in a solemn sense of the believed-in event about to transpire.

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When the sun rose on October twenty-three, those who so believed entered into what they called, The Great Disappointment. Most turned away, red-faced and impoverished. Many became atheists. Some returned to their churches of origin, their belief in the soon-return of Jesus shattered on the rocks of reality.

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A handful, however, continued to seek to understand. They searched scripture, prayed and discussed. On that day, October 23, 1844, a man was walking through a stubbled corn field, when he saw what he later called, a vision. In this vision, he suddenly understood that the date of October 22 was correct, but the event was incorrect. This insight echoes to this day, October 22, 2022 within the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, now 21 million members strong all around the world.

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Under the massaging of Ellen and James white and Joseph Bates, the Great Disappointment was turned into the dubious joy of the Investigative Judgment doctrine, one of their four key pillars. In the United States, especially among Western Adventist, this doctrine has been neglected, watered down, re-explained to the point that few of them really know anything about this key doctrine. Around the world, especially in Latin America, India and Africa, it is still urgently taught and believed. It fuels the fire of evangelism and remains a topic of Sabbath-afternoon discussion. In the US, the General Conference and conscientious, some call them “fanatical” Adventist, the conservative branch, still focus on the terror of the Investigative Judgment, trying to turn the juggernaut of the North American church back to her roots. It is a wedge, a schism, which may well cleave the church into two, creating two more denominations to rest among the forty-thousand Protestant denominations.

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This doctrine was the straw which broke my Adventist back. “There is now, therefore, no more condemnation (judgment) for those who are inn Christ Jesus,” wrote Paul in Romans 8 verse 1. That single verse destroyed my belief in the Adventist church as a saving institution in August, 2005. I’m so very grateful that this no longer weighs me down and separates me from the Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world. (See John 1:29, 1 John 2:1,2)

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This is a day for me to celebrate my freedom from a system of beliefs which bound me to a Sysiphian round of endless works, none of which gained access to the Lord Jesus, but bound me ever tighter to the denomination until the tone was shattered and the bonds broken by His grace.

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October 22. I don’t know why it still raises its head every year. Perhaps something so ingrained is difficult to expel from memory. Perhaps it is a gentle reminder of my Jesus-given freedom. I choose the latter.

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10/22/22

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4 X sda my path Out-1

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On my mother’s side of the family, I was a fourth generation Adventist; on my father’s a third. This gave me a bit of cachet in the church, since my mother’s roots go back to within twenty years of the denomination’s founding. Many of my first and second cousins remain Adventists to this day. There was, for me, a certain smugness in this realization. It’s a bit like being a minor royalty in England.

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My earliest memories center around church and “Sabbath” school. After my birth, we moved to Colorado, my father’s State of birth. He sold books as a “colporteur.” Mostly they were books by Ellen White, the prophetess of the Adventist church. We rented a room from the Johnsons, a non-Adventist farming family in Fruita Colorado. Even at that young age, perhaps three or four, I knew we were different from them.

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Later, we moved to Denver where my father worked as a mental health tech at Porter Memorial Hospital, now Porter Adventist Hospital, and later as an occupational therapist. We lived on the hospital property which contained, in addition to the hospital, a nurse’s dorm for student nurses, a grade school through tenth grade Adventist school and apartments for staff. We were immersed in Adventist culture.

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When I turned seven, we moved from Denver to San Diego where we lived on the grounds of another hospital. On this hospital’s 100 acres, we also had a church, a grocery store which sold vegetarian meat analogs, a gas station, a “Book and Bible” store, and a school covering grades one through twelve.

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I had the freedom of the entire hospital grounds because it was a village nestled in a town, surrounded by a city. We were safe because everyone knew us. We got away with very little. There were always adult eyes watching our every move, or so it seemed.

I attended the school from first to tenth grade. My friends came from the school and church. We all knew the boundaries of the property and knew that we were “in” and everyone on the other side of the line was “out,” meaning that we Adventists were “saved” while those on the other side of the line, often just a narrow street, were not saved. Of course this led to a superior attitude among the adults and even we kids. Later, when we were free to travel outside the boundaries of the hospital property, we felt as if we were entering alien territory.

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Looking back with the insight of sixty years, I can clearly see how insular an provincial we were, both adults and children. I suppose the seeds of my rebellion in late middle age in leaving the church, began here, where all was black and white and everyone on the other side of the line was not of us. Exposure, in later life, to a State agency opened me to the possibility that there were nice people across that dividing street and that there were other ideas that could be more trustworthy than those within the safe walls of denominational creeds.

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X sda investigative judgment terror

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It was a rare San Diego thunderstorm. Evening came on, but the clouds were so thick we barely noticed the change as day slid into night. Lightning and thunder seemed almost continuous. Rain sluiced our windows, soaked into bone-dry soil, then overflowed into gutters and storm drains.

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We finally slept. Then a lightning bolt struck an air-raid tower. These were yellow steel towers perhaps 30 feet tall, dotted around the city for warning the inhabitants of an imminent atomic attack. Its rise and all, its mournful wail, was familiar to us, for every Monday at noon, they cried their warning. I often thought that would be the perfect time to attack. The Russians never sent their missiles or planes. The cold war froze to a stop 25 years later. We never had to do more than duck-and-cover drills. Back to that stormy night.

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My sister, age six or seven, woke, startled, by the sirens. She screamed in terror. It wasn’t the air raid sirens that she feared, but Jesus. She was afraid that she would have to meet Him in His judgment.

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This was important in the fifties and sixties for we believed, a la Ellen White, that there was an on-going judgment, begun in 1844 against all who named the name of Jesus. One never knew when one’s name would come up in judgment. If, at that moment, there were any unconfessed sins in one’s life, that person’s name would be blotted out of the Book of Life forever. They would join the rebels who would be destroyed by the wrath of God sometime down the road to eternity.

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I experienced this terror once. My brother and I were home alone. Sometime in the wee hours, a bright light in the east shone into our bedroom. It was perfectly still, but very bright. We wondered at it. “Is it Jesus returning in the clouds at midnight?” we asked each other. I called the police department inquiring if there were any helicopters in east San Diego county. Hearing their negative response and noting that the light did not move, we went back to bed, our fears only partially resolved. Next morning, we discovered the neighbors on the hill above us had installed pool lights on a high pole which shone directly into our bedroom window. We were relieved.

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Looking back, these stories are almost funny until I remember the terror of a lost salvation, of the anticipation of burning alive, of the exquisite pain promised as long as a fragment of my body remained.

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The Adventist hell is shorter, but just as painful, as the hellish doctrine of hell. It’s good to be relieved of its terror and to know that Jesus, in His death, resurrection and glorification, removes all judgment from us. (See Romans 8:1)

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X SDA-On Returning to My Roots

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What is it that draws me back, that entices me to revisit anti-Adventist web pages? Why do I feel this compulsion to read and reread the quirks and foibles of those early pioneers, those sincere, but oh so mistaken ones? Why do I need to read of the failed “Shut Door Theory,” The myriad other failed “prophecies” of Ellen White, the greed of GC presidents, their desire for power? Why do I rejoice at the scandals listed on these web pages? Especially, why do I revisit writings by other ex-Adventists recounting their journeys out of the denomination?

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I binged on these topics last Sunday, for the entire day and a bit of Monday, too. Today, Tuesday, I feel as if I have a hangover or withdrawals. I’m so full of Adventist history and errors, it’s leaking out through my ears—and my mouth. I assault my tolerant wife, still an SDA, with all the ancient dirt. She humors me, but for only so long before she asks, “Why are you reading this stuff? You’ve already made up your mind, why read about it again?”

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She’s right, of course. What does it profit me? Not a thing, not a single thing. I’m never going back, the grass is too green on this side of the fence, the water is too sweet to return to the brackish waterhole of my past.

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So, again, I ask myself, “奥丑测?”

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My answer lies too far buried in my psyche to dredge it to the surface. Knowing this, I still know that I will, once again, in a few months, spend long hours revisiting that which, by now, should be very faint in my rear-view mirror.

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