T
TrustAndObey
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Any message that professes to lift up Christ and the truth of His word should be attractive and appealing. People should be flooding through the doors at an unprecedented rate. They should be drawn to us like moths to a flame. It is inexcusable for an SDA church to be struggling with 40 on the books and 20 attending like so many I have seen in this country. Most of our growth that we do experience here in North America can be attributed to 'sheep stealing' from other churches.
Again I ask, if we have such a special, exciting end-time message, where are all the unchurched people? Why are they not flocking to us?
I agree that the message of salvation should be (IS) attractive and appealing, but I think the reason our church isn't being flooded is because our church doesn't teach the fairytale about immediate life after death.
It's pretty consistent in the secular world that there is some kind of "spirit world" and even people that do believe in Christ but don't attend church, seem to think they'll get a second chance after the second coming.
Our message on those subjects isn't what they want to hear Night.
When my older sister asked me about the Adventist church I started telling her what the bible really says about death and I said "if you think about it, the truth is just as beautiful as the fairytale." She was NOT happy that I believe we sleep after death AT ALL.
In fact, she said "what is so beautiful about sleeping while your children grow up, your grandchildren grow up? Come on, you DO go straight to heaven when you die and you get to see all of that."
Our view of death and the fact that we exert some human effort to actually limit what we do and don't do on the seventh day, was enough for her to label us a cult.
She loves me, but she definitely thinks I belong to a cult.
Her church is more about feelings and the feel good philosophy that you can do anything you want as long as you believe Jesus is the Son of God and that His death on the cross covered any behavior you want to do, WITHOUT asking for forgiveness apparently....no human effort whatsoever.
She told me that I'm exactly the type of person that she has avoided her entire adult life because I take scripture too literally and put too much faith in words written by MEN thousands of years ago.
(We've patched things up but we do NOT talk about our Christian beliefs anymore, period).
In order for my sister to even want to hear anything else about my church, I'd have to tell her something like "okay, you know what, I DO think we go to heaven right when we die."
I'm not willing to do that.
I wanted to comment on the "going through the motions of church" comment Greg made, but I have to do something real fast. I'll be back shortly.
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