I couldn't agree more! I see so many people claiming to be Adventist with what they consider "new light". The problem is that most of them are trying to cram that new light down other people's throats. The crazy part is, their new light is generally something other churches already hold in great esteem.
I'll be perfectly honest, I find most of it to be a HUGE distraction from the big picture. It's a stumbling block.
For instance, a poster from here posted something in another forum about what "Progressive" Adventists believe and it sounded like a completely different church than the Adventist church.
Regardless of one's beliefs and what "umbrella" they try to squeeze under if they answer a "What do Adventists believe about...." question without clarifying that they do not hold the fundamental belief of Adventists, they are bearing false witness in my opinion. At the very least they should preface their answer with "I'm not a Fundamental Adventist, but here's what *I* believe........." Put their own necks on the chopping block instead of confusing people about what the Adventist church teaches and believes.
If a person knows their views differ from what the mainstream church teaches, then they really are bearing false witness if they try to conceal that fact, and they have to answer to the Maker for that some day. And frankly, some of these "new" ideas are a little frightening (like not holding to the literal 7-day week of creation) and it does upset me when people claiming to be Adventist have decided to go with the majority on that subject............
I used to go to a lot of chatrooms and there were people in there that I knew were Fundamental Belief Adventists that had a completely different view of the trinity than I do.....that didn't make them any less of an Adventist than I am, that's for sure. We still had the same fundamental beliefs, we just differed on what they meant to us personally. Our fundamental beliefs list our doctrine of the trinity in a very vague way, so there are times that subjects like that will be believed differently by different people. HOWEVER, the fundamental belief does not give way to some "out there" interpretation either.
For instance, if an Adventist started claiming that Jesus was satan's brother or something wacky like that, then they can not fit that under one of our beliefs, period. If they do, it's bearing false witness.
Back to my point.....these little discussions about the differences really are a distraction and a stumbling block. I see Traditional Adventists being accused of being "narrow-minded" or "afraid of change" all the time when the truth is, most of us joined the church knowing the doctrine and agreeing to it beforehand. I'm not afraid of change, never have been, and if I felt that other churches taught the Bible better than Adventist churches, I'd go to those churches, not try to change this one.
An online friend of mine went to an Adventist church for years, but recently switched to Messianic Judaism. She was of Jewish bloodline and decided along her learning path that she should keep the biblical feasts. That's not a belief held by the Adventist church, so she didn't want to be a hypocrite I guess.
Since then I was suprised to find out that most Messianics believe a person's "soul" goes to heaven or hell immediately upon death and I know this is something my friend disagrees with. In fact, she's one of the people that I talked to the most about the state of the dead because it was not what I had grown up being taught. She gave me great material to see the truth about what happens to us when we die. However, in order for her to find a church that taught what she liked about the feasts, she had to compromise a fundamental belief of hers and I think that's really sad.
I will say this about her, she never once misrepresented that the Adventist church believes in keeping the biblical feasts. She always prefaced answering a question about them with "*I* keep them, but..........."
Long story short, I think that when a person's fundamental beliefs differ greatly from the Adventist doctrine, they are bearing false witness to say their beliefs are the Adventist's beliefs.
I would like to remind everyone that this is a non-debate area and this forum was set up so that Traditional Adventists could discuss the stumbling blocks before us specifically. I think all of us in here know we have a lot of Work to do, like Vaudois pointed out, and we cannot let ourselves get distracted all the time. CF has features set up so that we can debate this in the bigger section if we so choose, or we can use the features to keep people from distracting us. I think we should use our time here wisely.
