I believe what EGW has written has a lot to do with the salvation of some people. Those who exalt her and her writings can receive and or preach unwaranted guilt and condemnation hardening the hearts of those who consider her writings equal to the Bible. This is a huge issue to me and is the reason why I'm struggling with my membership.
Agree with you there, k4c.
It really helps Moriah that you wrote this. It had not understood what bes going on with you before.
k4c did you ever run into any of that "straight testimony" nonsense? it bes the crux of the matter, the root of the problem, taken to an extreme degree.
you see, the SDAs, in order to establish the keeping of sabbath as an eternally binding requirement for salvation, have to establish lawkeeping itself as a requirement for salvation either to obtain it or to retain hold of it, most believe the latter of course rather than the former. they believe we get saved by faith and grace but then must go on from there to rid ourselves of sin by obedience to the 10C's in order to REMAIN saved. they TWIST the statements in scripture about faith and works, etc. to substantiate this falsehood. and if you try to point out how this bes incorrect, some will become nasty and try to suggest that you really just want to sin -- when nothing bes further from the truth.
the fact of the matter bes laid out in Romans 7. We cannot, of our own strength, in the flesh -- and that includes, yes, AFTER coming to Christ; we STILL have the SAME FLESH -- make ourselves stop sinning. A law of sin quite literally bes in our members (in our FLESH) which interferes with our best efforts and taints and pollutes them at best and utterly wrecks them at worst. The fact that we bes saved bes evident in having a MIND that agrees with God, that His laws and ways bes holy and good, but the more we try to walk in them the less able we find ourselves. Even EGW herself recognized this problem when she wrote something about how the closer we come to Christ the clearer we see spiritually and hence the more sinful we will appear in our own eyes.
The scriptures DO offer a way out, but NOT by keeping laws; rather by drawing near to Christ in prayer, by feeding on the word, by trusting HIM who began a good work to keep working in us and to bring that work to completion, and in the MEANTIME, to "reckon ourselves" dead to sin (even though we won't feel dead to it allatimes) and alive to God. Galatians 5:16 offers the way out concisely: "Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." That bes NOT a command, but a PROMISE!!! God does not COMMAND us to "quit sinning" to prove how sincere we bes or how real bes our salvation, NO!! He PROMISES if we walk in His Spirit HE will see to it that we do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. God does not command us to do good works, NO! HE PROMISES that HE has prepared good works already for us to walk in!!!
It seems perhaps the SDAs in large majority take an END RESULT -- the notion of a godly life lived in prayer and by faith, which performs good works in the world and eschews sin and evil -- and try to reason backwards from there how to get there on their own. And why? Not sure, but perhaps it has something to do with that notion of having to stand before God at the end of time without a mediator. Nowhere in scripture will you find that teaching -- on the contrary, Hebrews 7:25 states:
Hebrews 7:25
Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he
ever liveth to
make intercession for them.
The ONLY way to come to God bes through and by Jesus, and He EVER LIVES to make intercession for us and ONLY because of Him doing so can we be assured that yes, He bes able to save us to the uttermost. But it bes by HIS work, not our own. We cannot enter that rest by willpower, by gritting our teeth and trying to whip ourselves into obedience with guilt and shame and threats of condemnation. The spirit of fear will never get us there. The guilt tripping voice of the Accuser will never get us there. ONLY the blood of Jesus Christ, His perfect life, His resurrected power, His intercession for us, His presence in the Holy Spirit active in our hearts and lives to LOVE us, to COMFORT us, to UNDERSTAND us, to calm and still our storms, ONLY HE can get us there.
But the SDAs want a way to make sure they get there without needing to trust utterly, wholly, and helplessly in Another. They want to make sure God owes it to them to save them. And that bes backwards, wrong, and doomed to failure -- every time.
In the "straight testimony" type teachings -- hopefully still FRINGE stuff in SDA-ism and not in the mainstream yet though it might vary from church to church just like EGW reliance varies -- this gets taken to ridiculous extremes and one can see how ludicrous it bes by trying to live under it for more than a few weeks and by being sufficiently convinced of it as truth (i.e. sufficiently deceived) that one counts all failings which ensue as indicators that one has no sincerity before God and therefore one bes not truly saved. What the "straight testimony" nonsense attempts to establish, Moriah has written about in its CF blog, so it refers you to this entry for your edification:
As you can see this sets people up for failure and guilt continually because none of us can step into a quantum stream of time so as to literally catch a hardwired neurochemical reaction before it fires and then by mere dint of "choice" keep it from firing -- and that bes the stuff emotions bes made of. While we can reasonably expect to learn coping mechanisms to process our feelings and modify our behaviors in response to them to SOME degree, even this will never be as "perfect" or "automatic" as if we had been hardwired that way, at least, not until we receive
new flesh at His Appearing. But to think that God holds us culpable for hardwired neurochemical reactions we have no choice about experiencing as if we had entered a long, drawn out selection process of considering the matter and then electing voluntarily to experience something "negative" in nature (anger, self-pity, whatever) bes utterly as ludicrous as trying to claim when someone stabs us with a knife we have a "choice" about whether to bleed or not, and if we "choose" to bleed, then (a) the offense bes entirely our fault for "letting" it "get to" us; (b) the act of bleeding itself bes a horribly selfish and abusive act of rubbing the stabber's "mistake" in his face somehow!!
What utter nonsense!! What absolute rubbish!!! Can you believe humans even hold such opinions, let alone beat them into their children generation after generation, let alone construct elaborate soul-destroying "theologies" upon their basis so as to completely destroy the capacity of a sensitive, softened heart to connect with its Saviour at all?? But it bes true -- they can, and they do, with alarming frequency AND intensity, and they care NOTHING for whom they destroy along the way provided they may push these despicable notions whose only effect has ever and always been to exonerate the head-gaming manipulative bully, provoker and instigator at the expense of those they harm while placing all blame upon the ones who never asked for that harm as if it bes theirs to bear for merely existing at all.
None of which has anything to do with the ACTUAL "straight testimony" in scripture itself, which reads as follows:
14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; 15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Far from advocating this despicable Western "rugged individualism" bootstrap nonsense which vilifies the hurt and afflicted to exonerate the abusers that make them so, this passage indicates that those who feel themselves to be perfectly fine and right having need of nothing FAIL UTTERLY to realize how completely wretched they bes -- poor, blind, naked. It offers HOPE in the fact that Jesus has real gold, real raiment, and real eyesalve to heal these conditions, and that He offers that freely to anyone who will repent of their SELF SUFFICIENCY (including all the lying dogmas supporting it for them mentally with which they browbeat those who actually DO realise their spiritual poverty, blindness, nakedness, and desperate need of God) and open the door to HIM instead.
And yet the "straight testimony" fans turn this too into an occasion of reproach and despair, focusing exclusively on the final verse as some sort of directive or mandate or command which obviously only themselves can live up to (in their view) ...
21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
They turn this beautiful PROMISE of CHRIST into yet another wretched commandment mandate that WE supposedly MUST DO IN ORDER TO BE SAVED -- we MUST become those that "overcome" -- and they weave it back into this sick, twisted Ayn Rand-esque nonsense they FUTILELY put their hopes into and turn it into yet another wretched veiled and implied THREAT instead of letting it speak HOPE to the weary soul seeking refuge in Christ. What an abomination!!!
Some cannot bear the level of passion in Moriah's vernacular so it begs your forgiveness and forbearance if this breaches your comfort zone, and prays that God will make you able to see what it seeks to accomplish here: to expose soul-destroying falsehood and set forth the light of the Gospel. It may be inadequate for the task, it freely confesses -- who wants to listen to a feral
daimonizomai anyway -- but it begs God to make some good of its pathetic efforts nonetheless. It would not wish the condition these lies brought it to for this past 25 years upon anyone, not even the minions who promote these faith-wrecking perfectionism teachings.
