I can’t seem to get it.  Why do we argue about these things?  Why do people who should be helping the hurting sit around and talk about minor issues?  How many of us have gone looking for a prostitute so we can tell her about Jesus?  How many of us have stopped to help the bum on the street?  How many of us go to the prison to visit the child rapist and tell him God loves him?  How many of us look at those that sin has ruined and think “He got what he deserved”?  Well I am glad you can sit up on your high horses and talk about the fine points of religion. I am struggling to find my way.  The last thing I care about is if any of you care what I eat.  If I want to not eat meat, why should you care?  If I want to keep the Sabbath, why do you care?  Since we are all here discussing the fine points, I guess all have heard about Jesus love.  No?  Well then, why not tell them.  Some of us are just trying to find our way through this old world.  I have been to SDA churches that you could feel the Holy Spirit moving through.  I have been to Baptist churches where the same was true.  So why do some people in both want to tear down the other?  If you have the truth, tell people and let God’s Spirit change the lives of those around you.  Don’t spend your life dicussing things.  Do something.  Or is it as I suspect that most of those hear just want people to agree with them and they really don’t give a flip about the rest of us?  For all of you, I leave you with this.  I have attended church 1 time in the last 2 years.  1 person has called to see why not.  I guess most of them are on sites like this one beating each other up over not being legalistic or beating each other up over not being legalistic enough.  Thanks for telling us about how we can escape hell.  Oh that’s right, you were too busy discussing if hell goes on forever, or not.  Never mind, I will go ask someone if they can introduce me to a Saviour.

Thanks for this post cog. You have made a very good point.

Hi Child of God,

The most important thing above all is depicted in a short enunciation of the gospel written by Apostle Paul in chapter 15 of his first epistle to those in Corinth

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures(1 Corinthians 15:1-3)

Here we have defined the gospel in a nutshell, a gospel which we are invited to receive, to stand in it and to hold fast, being assured that this gospel is sufficient to save us. Not only this gospel is sufficient to save us, it is the only means of salvation, rejecting it is resulting in eternal perdition.

As being of “first importance” is this message of the gospel that Paul received from God (according to his own words recorded in Galatians 1:12), and no other message is more important than this, otherwise the gospel cannot be called to be being first in importance. It’s the message about Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, things that happened not in our life, but in the life of another, our Lord Jesus Christ. The message of the gospel is not about ourselves, about something we can do and be saved, but about something somebody else did and which has nothing to do with our subjective experience.

At the same time, this message of the gospel is not limited to a description of the historical facts of Jesus life, death, burial and resurrection, but includes a message about the goal of his death, the reason behind his death, namely, “for our sins”, in our behalf, and as the Bible testifies in other places (Isaiah 53, Romans 3), Jesus death was not for his sins, because He had none, He had lived a perfect life, in perfect obedience to his Father, but his death was a substitutionary death, a death in our place, for our sins. He suffered God’s holy wrath against our sins in our place, he put himself voluntarily under our deserved condemnation in order for us to be put under what he deserved, being in this way acquitted, justified in God’s sight. By this wondrous and marvelous exchange, He was accounted as a sinner and we are accounted as righteous in God’s sight, and we are delivered by His suffering from the future

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:24)

And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:11-13)

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.  For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Rom. 5:9,10)

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:12)

This message of salvation through Christ alone, by faith alone was obscured in history in different ways, and these ways are subtle enough in order to pass undetected. The Reformation recovered the wonderful truth of salvation by Christ alone, through faith alone, in which Christ’s life and death was sufficient to save people perfectly and faith alone was sufficient to appropriate the benefits of Christ’s atonement for sinners obtained and finished on the cross. But the Rome has objected in this formulation to a single word, “allein” in German, “alone” in English, “Sola” in the latin formulation of the reformer’s creed “sola fide”. The Roman Catholic Church affirmed that our salvation was by Christ, but not by Christ alone, through faith, but not through faith alone, and the entire disputation revolved around something which can be considered a secondary, insignificant issue, a single word. But this single word made a world of difference.

Both the reformers and their catholic opponents affirmed that sanctification is not optional and is necessarily linked with justification, but catholics made justification depending on sanctification, on what happened inside the believer, his status before God depending on his sanctification, on what he did by the power of the Holy Spirit. Rome rejected the pelagian idea that we can win salvation by performing good works on ourselves, apart from God’s grace, apart from the internal working of the Holy Spirit, but sinners good works still decided his destiny.

A similar message we were taught in the Adventist church. The Adventist message denies the believer the full assurance of salvation, making his future salvation depending on his ability to live a perfect life, and even if it does not hold him to an absolute standard of perfection, nevertheless his sanctification decides at the bar of the investigative judgment if he will be saved or not, in direct contradiction with the gospel of God’s grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone. The seventh-day sabbath as long as it is just a personal preference, an issue on which believers are free to disagree without condemning one another is a practice which, even strange, is not antithetical with the gospel. Unfortunately the Adventist position regarding the sabbath makes it the overarching theme of the judgment, in which eternal destinies are depending on respecting it. The evangelical churches are condemned as Babylon, apostate churches, in the same category with the Roman Catholic Church, when instead it is the Adventist Church which, by it’s message of the gospel which denies people full assurance of salvation based on Christ’s sacrifice alone on account of his merits alone, making justification depending on sanctification, places itself on the Rome’s side as far as the message of the gospel is concerned.

This does not imply that God’s Holy Spirit does not work in the Adventist Church and in the Roman Catholic Church. There are people who are elect who are chosen by God, regenerated by the Holy Spirit and are worshiping in these churches. Usually because these churches have a fine way of obscuring the message of the gospel, they are not aware that many things they believed alongside the gospel are antithetical to the central message of the gospel. This is why it is not of little importance to discuss even the fine points of theology which are not obviously tied with the central message of the gospel, but which nevertheless, in an indirect but sure way are affecting people’s experiencing the full benefits of the gospel message (if they are regenerated and true Christians) or are keeping the unregenerate away from seeing the simple message of the gospel. By subtle reasoning and subtle ways of denying the gospel, adding or subtracting from it, more or less, people are led astray from Christ and his gospel. As former adventists, we share a burden for liberating people from a toxic system of belief which is antithetical with the gospel, and the internet is in my humble opinion the best way of sharing the gospel.

It is in the cultic mindset instilled by the leaders of the church a fear of exploring alternatives to the authorized belief of the church. Just raising questions regarding the sanctuary message, the validity of 2300 days adventist interpretation of prophecy, the issue of finished atonement on the cross, is seen as a proof of infidelity toward God and his church, his messenger, etc. People are afraid to talk about issues openly, in public, but on internet they are free to study by themselves, without anybody watching, interacting if they want with former adventists who had a similar experience as theirs, without risking being persecuted, shunned, by their adventists friends, relatives, pastors, local congregations. By God’s sovereignty, as former adventists, we had the opportunity to know the adventist mindset from our own experiences, and we think that are called by God to share the gospel and to interact primarily with those who are part of a culture which we know from the interior. As a former prostitute has a calling from God to share the gospel message with her former colleagues, as a former prisoner will have a calling to share the gospel of God with his former cell colleagues, being prepared by God to share the gospel especially with this people, knowing best their culture. The gospel message is for every tongue, tribe and culture, and according to God’s gifts, people are prepared by the circumstances of their life to be witness in contexts with which they are familiar. As former adventists, we think that the context with which we are best familiar is the adventist culture. This is why we think that in order that our years spent in the Adventist Church will not be lost without a purpose, we should use the information and experience we had as formers to give our testimony to our former colleagues, testifying about God’s sovereign and free grace, about the message of justification by faith alone, through Christ alone, a message which is lacking in the SDA Church. Sure, the SDA Church teaches that we are saved by faith, but not by faith alone, that Christ’s atonement is essential for salvation, but not sufficient, that we can have today assurance of salvation but we can still be condemned to eternal death at the second coming of Christ, that, as the current Sabbath School Lessons prepared by Angel Manuel Rodriguez from BRI affirm, the sacrificial part of atonement was finished at the cross, but the atonement still continues in heaven, not being finished as the message of the gospel gloriously affirms. As the church of Rome needs to come to grips with it’s additions to the gospel, the SDA Church needs to renounce it’s additions to the gospel and embrace the gospel of the reformation.

Soli Deo Gloria

GABRIEL PROKSCH - 11 October 2008 09:48 AM

Hi Child of God,

The most important thing above all is depicted in a short enunciation of the gospel written by Apostle Paul in chapter 15 of his first epistle to those in Corinth

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures(1 Corinthians 15:1-3)

Here we have defined the gospel in a nutshell, a gospel which we are invited to receive, to stand in it and to hold fast, being assured that this gospel is sufficient to save us. Not only this gospel is sufficient to save us, it is the only means of salvation, rejecting it is resulting in eternal perdition.

As being of “first importance” is this message of the gospel that Paul received from God (according to his own words recorded in Galatians 1:12), and no other message is more important than this, otherwise the gospel cannot be called to be being first in importance. It’s the message about Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, things that happened not in our life, but in the life of another, our Lord Jesus Christ. The message of the gospel is not about ourselves, about something we can do and be saved, but about something somebody else did and which has nothing to do with our subjective experience.

At the same time, this message of the gospel is not limited to a description of the historical facts of Jesus life, death, burial and resurrection, but includes a message about the goal of his death, the reason behind his death, namely, “for our sins”, in our behalf, and as the Bible testifies in other places (Isaiah 53, Romans 3), Jesus death was not for his sins, because He had none, He had lived a perfect life, in perfect obedience to his Father, but his death was a substitutionary death, a death in our place, for our sins. He suffered God’s holy wrath against our sins in our place, he put himself voluntarily under our deserved condemnation in order for us to be put under what he deserved, being in this way acquitted, justified in God’s sight. By this wondrous and marvelous exchange, He was accounted as a sinner and we are accounted as righteous in God’s sight, and we are delivered by His suffering from the future

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:24)

By trusting in this message of the gospel we are delivered today from the judgment, from condemnation and we are today delivered from death, eternal death, to eternal life.

And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:11-13)

We may know today that because Jesus’s death we are delivered today from the future wrath of God so that in the day of judgment we may have peace, fully knowing that Jesus’ sufferings in our behalf already delivered us from God’s wrath.

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.  For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Rom. 5:9,10)

Our certainty regarding our future salvation is found in the simple fact that we were loved when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son and God has nothing against us, because anything he had against us was resolved by Christ’s death. God’s holy wrath was unleashed against our sins imputed to Christ, and we are free of any charge regarding any payment for our sins. Death is the payment for our sins (Rom. 6:23) and Christ payed our debts in his death. And if he did this for us when we were enemies, shedding his blood for us when we were enemies, much more, when we are now in a better state, being reconciled by his blood, this blood will deliver us from the wrath that is to come. Not only we are assured that are saved now, but also our future salvation is guaranteed 100%. Why? Because the gospel is the good news of justification by faith alone, without works, and we are not required to add our works to Jesus’ works in order to maintain our salvation, to secure it, or to improve it. Our salvation is in Jesus’ hands, it was resolved at the cross, and we are perfect in God’s sight, justified, not only today, but for eternity, for all time, through Christ’s sacrifice.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:12)

This message of salvation through Christ alone, by faith alone was obscured in history in different ways, and these ways are subtle enough in order to pass undetected. The Reformation recovered the wonderful truth of salvation by Christ alone, through faith alone, in which Christ’s life and death was sufficient to save people perfectly and faith alone was sufficient to appropriate the benefits of Christ’s atonement for sinners obtained and finished on the cross. But the Rome has objected in this formulation to a single word, “allein” in German, “alone” in English, “Sola” in the latin formulation of the reformer’s creed “sola fide”. The Roman Catholic Church affirmed that our salvation was by Christ, but not by Christ alone, through faith, but not through faith alone, and the entire disputation revolved around something which can be considered a secondary, insignificant issue, a single word. But this single word made a world of difference.

Both the reformers and their catholic opponents affirmed that sanctification is not optional and is necessarily linked with justification, but catholics made justification depending on sanctification, on what happened inside the believer, his status before God depending on his sanctification, on what he did by the power of the Holy Spirit. Rome rejected the pelagian idea that we can win salvation by performing good works on ourselves, apart from God’s grace, apart from the internal working of the Holy Spirit, but sinners good works still decided his destiny.

A similar message we were taught in the Adventist church. The Adventist message denies the believer the full assurance of salvation, making his future salvation depending on his ability to live a perfect life, and even if it does not hold him to an absolute standard of perfection, nevertheless his sanctification decides at the bar of the investigative judgment if he will be saved or not, in direct contradiction with the gospel of God’s grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone. The seventh-day sabbath as long as it is just a personal preference, an issue on which believers are free to disagree without condemning one another is a practice which, even strange, is not antithetical with the gospel. Unfortunately the Adventist position regarding the sabbath makes it the overarching theme of the judgment, in which eternal destinies are depending on respecting it. The evangelical churches are condemned as Babylon, apostate churches, in the same category with the Roman Catholic Church, when instead it is the Adventist Church which, by it’s message of the gospel which denies people full assurance of salvation based on Christ’s sacrifice alone on account of his merits alone, making justification depending on sanctification, places itself on the Rome’s side as far as the message of the gospel is concerned.

This does not imply that God’s Holy Spirit does not work in the Adventist Church and in the Roman Catholic Church. There are people who are elect who are chosen by God, regenerated by the Holy Spirit and are worshiping in these churches. Usually because these churches have a fine way of obscuring the message of the gospel, they are not aware that many things they believed alongside the gospel are antithetical to the central message of the gospel. This is why it is not of little importance to discuss even the fine points of theology which are not obviously tied with the central message of the gospel, but which nevertheless, in an indirect but sure way are affecting people’s experiencing the full benefits of the gospel message (if they are regenerated and true Christians) or are keeping the unregenerate away from seeing the simple message of the gospel. By subtle reasoning and subtle ways of denying the gospel, adding or subtracting from it, more or less, people are led astray from Christ and his gospel. As former adventists, we share a burden for liberating people from a toxic system of belief which is antithetical with the gospel, and the internet is in my humble opinion the best way of sharing the gospel.

It is in the cultic mindset instilled by the leaders of the church a fear of exploring alternatives to the authorized belief of the church. Just raising questions regarding the sanctuary message, the validity of 2300 days adventist interpretation of prophecy, the issue of finished atonement on the cross, is seen as a proof of infidelity toward God and his church, his messenger, etc. People are afraid to talk about issues openly, in public, but on internet they are free to study by themselves, without anybody watching, interacting if they want with former adventists who had a similar experience as theirs, without risking being persecuted, shunned, by their adventists friends, relatives, pastors, local congregations. By God’s sovereignty, as former adventists, we had the opportunity to know the adventist mindset from our own experiences, and we think that are called by God to share the gospel and to interact primarily with those who are part of a culture which we know from the interior. As a former prostitute has a calling from God to share the gospel message with her former colleagues, as a former prisoner will have a calling to share the gospel of God with his former cell colleagues, being prepared by God to share the gospel especially with this people, knowing best their culture. The gospel message is for every tongue, tribe and culture, and according to God’s gifts, people are prepared by the circumstances of their life to be witness in contexts with which they are familiar. As former adventists, we think that the context with which we are best familiar is the adventist culture. This is why we think that in order that our years spent in the Adventist Church will not be lost without a purpose, we should use the information and experience we had as formers to give our testimony to our former colleagues, testifying about God’s sovereign and free grace, about the message of justification by faith alone, through Christ alone, a message which is lacking in the SDA Church. Sure, the SDA Church teaches that we are saved by faith, but not by faith alone, that Christ’s atonement is essential for salvation, but not sufficient, that we can have today assurance of salvation but we can still be condemned to eternal death at the second coming of Christ, that, as the current Sabbath School Lessons prepared by Angel Manuel Rodriguez from BRI affirm, the sacrificial part of atonement was finished at the cross, but the atonement still continues in heaven, not being finished as the message of the gospel gloriously affirms. As the church of Rome needs to come to grips with it’s additions to the gospel, the SDA Church needs to renounce it’s additions to the gospel and embrace the gospel of the reformation.

Soli Deo Gloria

Thank you Gabriel.  For answering so nicely.  What you said is so true.
Diana

Well stated, Gabriel!  As former insiders, we are very familiar with the inner-workings (the culture, doctrines, and policies) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  Collectively, my wife and I have more than 100 years of experience in Adventism.  The most loving and compassionate deed that anyone can do is to warn others against heresies they experienced firsthand--especially the most subtle ones masquerading as Evangelicals.  This is why the inspired writers of the New Testament devoted so much time and effort to dispel and expose numerous heresies.  The greatest fortress against any heresy is to be thoroughly grounded in Scripture.  The theology we embrace really does make a huge difference.  The Gospel plus anything else is no longer the Gospel.

Defending the Christian faith (maintaining doctrinal purity) is a sacred mandate.  As Gabriel ably pointed out, let us preserve and uphold the five “solas” of the Protestant Reformation.  Two people, holding opposing views, can both be wrong about a biblical doctrine, but they can’t both be right.  This compels us to to expose the captors and to evangelize the captives.  Biblical truth makes a world of difference--the difference between life and death and between bondage and freedom.  Getting the Gospel right is most essential in light of our eternal destiny. Those who are intent upon accurate answers will no longer remain in a toxic-faith system.  Indeed, the Bible is God’s voice speaking to us.

In awe of His saving grace,

Dennis Fischer

Flyinglady - 11 October 2008 01:20 PM

Thank you Gabriel.  For answering so nicely.  What you said is so true.
Diana

Good to see you Diana, and thanks for encouragement, especially when it comes from a nice lady like you. I’m glad you’re still coming to this forum from time to time.Hope you’re well and God is making things easy for you, through trials and temptations.

Dennis, you know very well that in spite of our internal acquaintance with the theological system of Adventism, our former colleagues think about us that we never truly, really, understood Adventism. Somehow, doesn’t know how, we missed the true message and our rejection of the Adventist ‘truth’ is because we didn’t “got it”, and or because we have been hurt by somebody in the church.

Gabriel

Gabriel,

Yes, there are those who try to invalidate our testimony as though we never really understood Seventh-day Adventism in the first place.  They conveniently ignore our SDA theological training completely.  Moreover, they ignore our longtime experience in the culture of Adventism.  Many former Adventists never attended any other school than an Adventist one--from kindergarten through graduate level.  They further overlook our close ties with our SDA relatives and friends.  Oh yes, they certainly try to discredit our denominational employment as well.  Somehow they simply don’t “get it” how God is calling ever-increasing numbers of their members into biblical Christianity.

Only eight percent of all Seventh-day Adventists now live in the North American Division--the cradle or birthplace of Adventism.  Their growth today is largely in third-world countries where access to information technology is limited or nonexistent.  Cyberspace affords us the priesthood of all believers--an equal playing field.  The arrival of online religion is as consequential as when the printing presses brought the written word to medieval Europe.  Information technology is a tool that empowers and enriches the lives of even the lowest social class in our society.  With a click of the mouse, we have instant access to the published, extrabiblical writings attributed to Ellen White.  With Google alerts, we have daily access to the major news in the Adventist world.  I receive at least twenty Google alerts daily.  We are no longer solely dependent on the Adventist Review and Union papers to get our information.

Even though we were deeply involved in Adventism, we knew very little of what was going on.  It was very difficult to obtain information about anything that the church hierarchy did not see fit to divulge.  All this changed, of course, with the dawn of the Internet.  Adventist college students can now investigate the claims of their religion professors in the privacy of their dormitory rooms.  Older, online Adventists no longer have to subscribe to Adventist Today and Spectrum magazines to get additional information about their church.  The facts about their church are at their fingertips in seconds today.  Needless to add, this largely affects the evangelistic thrust of Adventism as never before seen.  Most significant of all, our sovereign God is busily performing rescue missions that never fail.  To God alone belongs all the glory!

Dennis Fischer

Thanks Gabriel for the welcome.  I come by here every so often to see how every thing is going.
God has been good to me.  I have my ups and downs.  God has shown me that when I praise Him in all things, the downs are tolerable with Him at my side.  Besides when I praise God I am not thinking on the down side.  Praise God for that.  He is so awesome.
Diana

Child of God - 09 October 2008 10:49 AM

I can’t seem to get it.  Why do we argue about these things?  Why do people who should be helping the hurting sit around and talk about minor issues?  How many of us have gone looking for a prostitute so we can tell her about Jesus?  How many of us have stopped to help the bum on the street?  How many of us go to the prison to visit the child rapist and tell him God loves him?  How many of us look at those that sin has ruined and think “He got what he deserved”?  Well I am glad you can sit up on your high horses and talk about the fine points of religion. I am struggling to find my way.  The last thing I care about is if any of you care what I eat.  If I want to not eat meat, why should you care?  If I want to keep the Sabbath, why do you care?  Since we are all here discussing the fine points, I guess all have heard about Jesus love.  No?  Well then, why not tell them.  Some of us are just trying to find our way through this old world.  I have been to SDA churches that you could feel the Holy Spirit moving through.  I have been to Baptist churches where the same was true.  So why do some people in both want to tear down the other?  If you have the truth, tell people and let God’s Spirit change the lives of those around you.  Don’t spend your life dicussing things.  Do something.  Or is it as I suspect that most of those hear just want people to agree with them and they really don’t give a flip about the rest of us?  For all of you, I leave you with this.  I have attended church 1 time in the last 2 years.  1 person has called to see why not.  I guess most of them are on sites like this one beating each other up over not being legalistic or beating each other up over not being legalistic enough.  Thanks for telling us about how we can escape hell.  Oh that’s right, you were too busy discussing if hell goes on forever, or not.  Never mind, I will go ask someone if they can introduce me to a Saviour.

My goodness “Child of God”.  That is a sad story you have to tell.  I am so sorry that you have not had a good experience with your church.  The Bible says in Hebrews 10:25, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” I agree with you that we need to take an active role in spreading the good news around us and to actively seek out those who have not heard about Jesus and His love.  There is a role for the church in this, but the church is not perfect and if my spiritual life is founded on the church I am sure to be disapointed and fall.  However, if I view the church as a mission field in itself, I am challenged and in turn blessed by encouraging God saints and seeking to build it up.  My wife and I finally decided that we were not going to be discouraged by individuals in the church but that the church was a vehicle used by God to build me up and encourage me to be faithful.

The text goes on to say “all the more as you see the Day approaching.” God knew that in our world today with moral standards low and secularism, violence, immorality and attacks coming against God’s Word from all sides, that we would need our church family more than ever.  My wife and I finally decided that we would look past the shortcomings of our churches members and would focus on coming to worship the One that is worthy of our worship and not turn our church into a social club.  We focussed on coming to encourage God’s saints and lift up Jesus in our lives and just enjoy His special presence and time with us.

We started by going out to the street and spending 30-45 minutes just standing on the street in front of our church waving at all the cars that went by.  We stood out there in the rain and blowing snow and waved.  For the most part people waved back and some honked and some just look at us like we were strange.  But my wife began to have patients (she’s a dental hygeniest) that she would tell about our church who would say “Oh ya, I know that church.  There’s a couple that stand out front and wave!” God even used that to bring one person driving by into the church and her whole family!  Not only that all the members began to want to know more about this couple standing out front and we began getting invitations to everyones houses for lunch etc.  It was an amazing blessing and I miss it sooooo much!

A few years ago we decided that we wanted to take an even more active role in reaching others for Jesus so we decided to sell everything that we have and ask God to reveal where He wants us to go and what He wants done with the resources He has entrusted to us.  I spent many years in Canada’s arctic before marrying my wife and moving to the states and I had a real burden to see a church started in the arctic.  In the 13 years I was there I never came across another Adventist and I got to the point, because of the spiritual isolation and secularism that I no longer considered myself a Christian.  The once saved always saved is decietful as I once was saved, then I wasn’t saved and now I am saved again by God’s grace.

Just over a month ago, I moved back to the arctic.  God opened doors in a miraculous way and my wife and I know that He is leading us.  Unfortunately the housing market crashed and we are having a challenge selling our house, but God brought us this far and I know He will take care of every seeming obsticle.  By the way, I just got internet yesterday and have checked this site for the first time in many months and the first thing that came up was your article.  I believe that the Holy Spirit uses those who are willing to be used by Him and that you need to hear my testimony in this regard.

That brings me to my point.  I am here without a church, without the love of my life and feeling very isolated and overwelmed, with nothing but God’s promisses to be with me to the ends of the world including the arctic.  I am especially saddened that something I love so much, and miss so much, and no longer have acess to, you see as only being there to serve your needs.  I’m sorry if you think I am being hard on you, but I want with ALL my heart for you to not take what God has blessed us with, for granted and I would encourage you to take an active role in being a blessing to everyone around you including God’s polished and tarnished saints.

Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

Mark 10:28-30, ..."We have left everything to follow you!” ... “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.

An amazing investment opportunity to receive 100 times what you put into it in a period where good investment opportunities are hard to find.  And… the investment will continue paying dividends throughout eternity!

God bless you Child of the Most High God!