Adventists believe some strange things. Some Adventists believe even stranger things. There's a small but vocal group within Adventism that denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, a core teaching of biblical Christianity. Some other groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Christedelphians teach this too.
Prolife Andrew over on YouTube has some amazing videos on the problem of abortion in the Seventh-day Adventist church. Andrew, unlike his church, is pro-life. Andrew cites some very telling statistics about abortion in the Adventist church in the embedded video below.
Some time back I wrote a comment on Taylor Marshall's blog. I'm putting my comment up here too now. My point was to argue that there are two separate issues that are often conflated.
I found a "liturgical" aspect of Adventist services rather amusing - they don't realise that it's Catholic. I've pointed out quasi-liturgical rituals in Adventist services before, but people have denied them. This "Responsive Reading" seems fairly common, and it's not just Adventists that use it. In Catholic churches it's sometimes spoken and sometimes sung.
My view on the Old Testament atrocities is that human history, and especially the activities and rules in the Old Testament, are a play laid out by God to teach us something at the end.
Some baptise by immersion, full or partial, and some by pouring. Some restrict baptism to full immersion. What does the Bible say?
I've actually had them tell me that the biblical instruction not to put something in front of a blind man so that he falls over it is a ceremonial law.
Some Christians don't like to celebrate the events in Jesus' life, and they follow a pseudo-Jewish calendar that includes passover and the other Jewish holy days.
Three times the Bible refers to Passover as the Passover of the Jews. John 2:13, John 6:4, John 11:55.
Did Jesus die on a Friday and rise from the dead on a Sunday? Or did he die on a Wednesday or Thursday? And did he rise from the dead on a Saturday?
Pope Francis has demanded and obtained the resignation of the head of another sovereign state, and will appoint his own temporary supervisor until the state elects a new head of state approved by the pope.
In the recent discussions with Adventists I've started to realise that Saturday observance, in the way modern sabbatarians teach it, is actually more than just a theological difference, more than just a minor error. It's a complete defect in the nature of the New Covenant.
With no weekly 7th day sabbath under the New Covenant, Christians chose the most important day of the week to hold as special - Sunday, the day Jesus rose from the dead.
Adventists, and others, dislike the way the Catholic Church has set aside various days of the year for celebrating Jesus Christ. They label such things as "pagan" even if they aren't pagan at all. (The word "pagan" is a synonym for "Catholic" amongst many of this crowd, irrespective of actual religious origins of any practice or teaching.)
Adventists like to distinguish between the law of God and the law of Moses, between a moral law and a ceremonial law.
To complete the collection of posts I have on the virginity of Mary, I'll address the brothers of Jesus named in the Bible.
Someone emailed me and wrote: "The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 in the Torah match the Ten Commandments in the KJV and all the protestant bibles. That in itself is proof that the Catholic Church changed the Ten Commandments."
While Catholics and Lutherans (and some other Protestants) have agreed that both sides mean the same thing when they use different words, there remains tension with some regarding salvation by faith alone vs salvation by grace alone. Our response to grace is sometimes mistakenly seen by Protestants as being our own works, and therefore of no value to God.
@CatholicAndSDA
Recent comments