Can You Feel It. Have We Reached a Turning Point?

 

One of the last pictures of Charlie Kirk

 

Something Wicked This Way Comes 

A conservative Christian friend castigated a liberal friend on a recent post by another dear friend who regurgitated the progressive talking points of the left against recently assassinated Christian activist, Charlie Kirk. The fellow she decried as not a Christian is also on my friend friend list. He and I have some real go-rounds and his friends, some of them are downright communists and crawl all over me should I dare speak like a conservative Christian..

 

That said, my friend almost invariably states his case pretty politely and then lets me state mine. We go back and forth, but if I am to understand and communicate effectively with my opponents, I must first come to understand where they are coming from. It makes me a much better communicator that way. I can tell I'm communicating effectively too when I state my case politely without name-calling and my harshest opponents collapse into the sort of "You, oh yeah, so's your mama!" level of playground debate. Charlie Kirk was very good at that sort of debate and he too brought that nastiness out in young liberals when he dialogued with them. He was unfailingly kind, but he did not budge on principle. 

 

Personally, I think the fact that his book explaining why the Christian church should not neglect the seventh day Biblical Sabbath is coming out in December and that the book was a big part of the reason Satan inspired his assassination. But God has worked things together for good. Charlie's book "God Said Stop!" is already a bestseller two and a half months before it comes out December 9th. He was dialoguing with Adventist organizations with regard to the Sabbath truth. There was a major conference last March on the Sabbath by Wisdom's Pearls that included conservative sabbatarian churches and speakers like Ben Carson, Paul Kelly, Danny Shelton and Charlie Kirk. It was, I think, a blooming of the fig trees announcing the coming of summer that Jesus told us to watch out for. 

 

But when Amazing Facts and 3ABN wrote articles sympathetic to Charlie Kirk and decrying his assassination, it was so upsetting to the president of the Central States Conference, that he issued a statement on behalf of the church, calling for the denomination to sever ties with 3ABN and Amazing Facts, two of the most powerful ministries in spreading the Gospel we have. Earlier, Elder Josiah called for Ben Carson to be "traded" and that whoever we take in his place should receive full membership and privileges. The official statement he released on behalf of the church through the Central States Conference was right off the DNC talking points list. 

 

To demonize a man who was a partner with us in spreading the 3 Angels Message, is wildly inappropriate for an Adventist church leader. And the vile talk about Charlie, the lies about what he believed and said, are coming from an ideology that denies God, advocates unity by subsuming everyone into one big collective run by all the self-identified smart people on the left. The ideology he seems to be espousing advocates giving power to government leaders to decide what we may say, where we may work, how we may worship and what we are allowed to believe. These people are ready to do away with the first and second amendments in favor of Marxist style global socialism, ironically called "progressive" by the adherents.

 

How can we associate ourselves with THAT! Are there extremists on the right? You bet. When the Democrat State Senator and husband and dog were assassinated months ago by a radical lunatic, both 3ABN and Amazing Facts decried that political violence, though it was perpetrated against politicians who had little or no sympathy with the beliefs of fundamental Bible-believing Christians like us. The man who killed her was as insane as the kid who shot Charlie Kirk. Neither assassin got any sympathy from 3ABN or Amazing Facts, but the CSC president only dumped his load of bile on Charlie Kirk. Obviously, his politics entered into his behavior in a big way. Cryston Josiah, who lists himself in the CSC "statement" as President of the Central States Conference of Seventh-day Adventist, seems to be new to the job as their website still lists him as the secretary. I have trouble believing that the majority of the 9,000+ members of the states covered by the conference - Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and San Juan County in New Mexico are on board with Mr. Josiah's obvious leftist bias.After all most of those states voted for Trump in the last election.

 

I believe we have reached a turning point in the rapid final events EGW predicted for the last days. We're seeing voices proclaiming the 3 angels' message rising up around us and joining us in spreading the Gospel. God has told us that should we neglect to warn the world, the rocks would cry out. Who would have predicted that the Sabbath Truth would be so powerfully put before so many millions? Yet, God works all things together for those who love Him and are called according to his purpose. In a recent study, Seventh-day Adventists came out as the fastest growing Christian denomination at a time when even the Baptists are in decline.

Remember always, Satan is a liar from the beginning. He's so good at it that he has convinced millions of Christian ministers that "you shall be like gods" was the first lie he told Eve. It wasn't. The first lie he told her was, "Thou shalt not surely die.' And he's still selling that whopper throughout Christendom with the immortality of the soul doctrine and the corresponding idea of an ever-burning hell; an idea that has blackened God's reputation as a loving God for centuries on centuries. And this despite the fact that Jesus clearly said God could destroy, not only the body, but also the soul in hell. Tell a lie big enough and often enough, and people will come to believe it without questioning. Paul said the wages of sin is death, but Lucifer redefined death to preserve his first lie. Solomon described death as "knowing not anything." And everybody's favorite Bible verse, John 3:16 very clearly states that eternal life is the gift of God. Without His gift we don't have eternal life. But because the eternal punishment in hell story is so frightening, it doesn't occur to most of us that our souls are not immortal. That would require us to accept that we are not immortal godlings after all.

And for Adventist who are persuaded that we should be insular and reject any dialogue with other Christians, please remember what Jesus said about that:

• “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
• “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,
• for whoever is not against us is for us.
• Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.
  Mark 9: 39-41