I don’t know everything about the SDAs, but from their literature, it seems that you should not work the Sabbath or- else. Of course, they may not have mentioned exeptions (nurses, doctors, etc. What about the military?).
A question for you though. I’ve come across religious tracts and publications from a variety of churches- Catholic, Protestant, JW, and they are all pretty open and upfront about their affiliation. Yet, SDA literature never has the word “adventist” in it. I usually can tell when it’s SDA when I see Sabbath or a E.G. White mentioned, or claims that the “Pope is antichrist” or Catholics worship Mary" or similar blarney. If the SDAs are the true church as they claim, what are they hiding?
Another thing. In E.G. White’s ‘Great Controversy’ she claims Sunday worship was instituted by Constantine, yet I and another poster gave a number of references showing that Sunday worship was followed by Christians long before Constantine. Yet, you made no effort to refute them.
Because these are not at all very easy questions to be answered, but I have asked these questions for you to someone who knows tons more than I could even pray to be able to explain personally.
And this is his reply to you for me since he is much more grounded than I in these facts and matters:
Sunday worship was instituted by Constantine as a CHRISTIAN DAY OF
WORSHIP FOR THE ENTIRE ROMAN EMPIRE, following his Christianizing of
the entire Roman Empire. But in doing so, he merely transferred the
association of the ealier Pagan Sunday to Christianity. Sunday had
been the ages-old Pagan day of worship.
It is true that very early, perhaps as early as the second century,
Christians began to honor Sunday in recognition of Christ’s
resurrection. The drift to Sunday worship from Sabbathkeeping was
accellerated by the strong opposition by Jews against Christianity,
in conjunction with the extreme negative reputation of Jews in the
Roman civilization following their persistent revoltis, resulting in
defeats of the Jews in AD 70 and 135.
We have discussed this history, with abundant postings of documents.
The history is well documented, but also extremely distorted by
Christian historians of the present day insistent upon making a SOLA
SCRIPTURA case from history that the Apostolic Church immediately
began keeping Sunday, historical nonsense which Catholic scholarship
never stooped to, but fallen protestantism, in the dust, discovered
to be not beneath their dignity to raise.
In other words, SDA is hiding nothing, rather on the contrary,
Protestant scholarship has spared no artifice, sensing no shame in
its unscholarly twisting of ancient records, quoting out of time and
context, in fabricating a Sola Scriptura case for Apostolic
Sundaykeeping. Only recently has the Papacy found it useful to give
lip service to this fabrication which for centuries they had denied,
on still solid grounds.
As to our SDA bashfulness in revealing our identity, this is partly
the fault of our insecurity in our own doctrines. We have been
attacked from without and from within, and this has led to
insecurity, causing us to hide our identity. On the contrary, we
have the best possible Biblical and historical
the two go hand in
hand case, but it seems we have few scholars devoting time in
apologetics, exegisis, and eschatology, with a solid background in
history, to present these matters. We have a few brilliant
exceptions> LeRoy Edwin Froom in Church History, achieving world
class status in his Prophetic Faith of our Fathers, and
Conditionalist Faith of our Fathers sets of volumes. Then Edwin R.
Thiele set the world benchmark in cracking the code of the chronology
of the Hebrew Kings, which has remained the world standard to this
day. And Hans K. LaRondelle has written marvelously debunking
dispensationalism, in his benchmark classic, The Israel of God in
Prophecy. Among other world-renowned scholars are Siegfried H. Horn,
and the entire Andrews University school of Archeology, world leaders.
There are a number of other world-class scholars among us. But among
our scholars are a flock of doubters in our fundamental doctrines,
which have retarded the work.
I would agree that our detractors have poisoned our welcome, from the
Jehovah\s Witnesses and Mormons going door to door ahead of us and
behind us, to the massive internet propaganda against Ellen White in
particular and the SDA Church and its doctrines in general.
This forum does not fear these challenges. We know we have a
superior message, firmly grounded in the Bible and History.
Villis
) opinion.