We got mail…

Risking heaven for a cup of tea

Hello there; greetings from Australia! Earlier this year, my female cousin traveled from South Australia to visit her father in my state of Victoria. She is a strict Seventh-day Adventist. Her father lived near me, so she visited me a few times for lunch over the course of the two weeks she was here. Since leaving the Adventist church, I enjoy drinking tea and an occasional coffee. Of course, to be courteous I offered her a cup of tea while making one for myself after lunch. She said no, thank you; she felt she would be sinning if she accepted it. I said that I crave my cup of tea. She replied and said, “But would you want a cup of tea to come between you and Heaven?” 

I saw the absurdity of this assumption. But if I were still in the Adventist church, I would have gone along with it hook, line and sinker. She also urged me to adopt a vegan diet. I tried that diet many years ago, and I lost so much weight I looked gaunt. People outside the church noticed I looked ill and were concerned about me. I need some animal food in my diet such as eggs, fish, natural yoghurt, butter, and so forth to feel healthy and be a healthy weight. It’s so sad, really, as my cousin is well meaning and caring.

—VIA EMAIL

Response: Thank you for writing! I so understand the dilemma of having that conversation with your cousin! The problem with the Adventist conviction about the “health message” is that those arguments feel natural to us because of the years we spent thinking INSDIE the Adventist worldview. They find our mental synapses and resonate, and suddenly all the old doubts and fears are triggered. 

The problem, of course, with the Adventist health message is that it is based upon pagan, new-age arguments that fit well with the Adventist “physicalism”. Because Adventists have no idea that we have spirits separate from our bodies that can know and worship God and that are born again with eternal life when we trust in the finished work of Jesus for the payment of our sin, they believe they have to discipline their bodies in order to hear the Holy Spirit.

Of course the New Testament does speak of disciplining our bodies and obeying the Lord’s commands to the church, but those commands and passages are NOT intended for UNBELIEVERS. They are not instructions for how to be good or to please God. The gospel of Jesus’ death for our sin, His burial, and His resurrection is the only thing that can bring us into a place of being acceptable to God. When we recognize our sin and fall at His feet, accepting His shed blood as the payment for our sin and His resurrection as the source of our LIFE (see Rom. 5:10), we are born again and pass from death to life! (John 5:24). When we have LIFE, we are adopted by the Father and loved unconditionally by Him. Our diets, as Jesus told His disciples, do not make us clean or unclean. What comes out of our mouths flows from our hearts and makes us unclean (Matthew 15:19, 20). 

Adventism believes its health message because they believe meat, dairy, and stimulants make our brains unhealthy and thus unable to hear the Holy Spirit. This is a pagan idea. It is the religions such as Buddhism and Hare Krishna that endorse veganism and ascetic diets that also believe these diets enhance their spirituality. Their vegan, low-protein diets induce mental fog from protein deficiency because this foggy state makes them feel more open to spiritual impressions, hallucination dream-states, etc. Adventism teaches doctrines of demons. Paul was clear that nothing is to be refused if received with thanksgiving, and teaching that deny certain foods come from false teachers who teach doctrines of demons ( 1 Tim. 4:1–6). 

Have you read Cheryl Granger’s article on the Adventist health message? If not, PLEASE do. It is incredibly detailed and well-documented and shows exactly where EGW got her ideas—and it was not from God! Here is a link: From Where Did The Adventist Health Message Come?

 

No gospel at all

I went to Sabbath School today with my family. I had the commentary that Proclamation! did for the quarterly. I had also read the articles you sent plus many others. I sat amazed at how people in the class talked about salvation in regards to its being like the Israelites: “Obey and live”. 

Yes, some framed it in having a relationship. But no one—and I mean nobody—mentioned the gospel at all. I actually had already commented to the leader about the fact that the Mosaic covenant was fulfilled at the Cross and also that the Abrahamic covenant was a different covenant. He seemed a bit agitated. So after that and hearing nobody mention the gospel once, I had to get up and walk out. 

I truly believe God has led me in this understanding and led me to FAF and your ministry. Thank you for what you, your husband, and everyone involved with FAF and Life Assurance Ministries are doing.  

—VIA EMAIL

 

Commands of Jesus

I thank God for you everyday. I can’t remember if I sent you this list  before. I thought it would be a good list to publish in the weekly Proclamation!  I have a friend who posts on Facebook and reminds me each week, when Friday comes—you guessed it: “Sabbath is here!” I wrote back to her that I no longer was under the law but under God’s mercy and grace. Then, as you would expect, she replied: “If you love me keep my commandments.”

 I sent her in reply this list of Jesus’ commandments that I received from my Baptist church pastor. He wrote: “I have taken these from the table of contents in John Piper’s book, What Jesus Demands from the World. Please note these are not quotes from Christ but a list of things He commanded.”

• You must be born again
• Repent
• Come to Me
• Believe in Me
• Love Me
• Listen to Me
• Abide in Me
• Take up your cross and follow Me
• Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength
• Rejoice and leap for joy.
• Fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell
• Worship God in Spirit and Truth
• Always pray and do not lose Heart (Faint)
• Do not be anxious about the needs of daily life
• Do not be anxious about the threats of man
• Humble yourself
• Do the Will of My Father in Heaven
• Strive to enter through the narrow door (Gate)
• Love Your enemies
• Love your Neighbor as Yourself
• Lay up treasures in Heaven
• Do not take an Oath
• What God has joined together let no man separate
• Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things of God
• Do this in remembrance of me
• Be Baptized
• Let your light shine before others
• Make Disciples of all nations teaching then all that I have commanded you.

—VIA EMAIL