-
Why I left the Seventh-day
Adventist Church: In 1979 I
started to study the Bible and what some
of the Christian churches around me
believed. I met an older Seventh-day
Adventist woman who loved the Bible and
we did Bible studies together.
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Seventh-day Adventist
Beliefs: Doctrinal Statement of
the 28 Fundamental Beliefs of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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The
Ten Commandments from
Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 according to
the English Standard Version of the
Bible.
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Christian Apologetics: Why should
Christians defend their faith?
Biblical Christianity is being attacked
by critics and skeptics, liberals and
legalists, false teachers and false
prophets all of the time. We can take
heart that God has given us good and
rational answers to respond to those
false beliefs. The only way to answer
objections to our faith is by
understanding what we believe and why we
believe it.
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The
Cultic Doctrines of the Seventh Day
Advent Church:
Any church that is so dogmatic in their
beliefs and cannot change when new light
is given will ultimately die out because
of the obvious errors of their
teachings.
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The False Gospel of Ellen G. White and
the Seventh-day Adventist Church:
From its very beginning, the Church had
to fight against the false gospel of
works-righteousness. God’s grace can be
a difficult concept for some people to
grasp. It goes counter to our human
nature. God’s grace is given to us
freely, it cannot be earned, and God has
extended it to those who don’t deserve
it.
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The Divinity of Jesus Christ: Jesus
Christ is equal with God Himself. In
both Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1, Jesus
is called “God and Savior,” making these
two verses the clearest declarations in
the New Testament of Christ’s divinity.
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Ellen G. White had cultic Arian beliefs
throughout her entire life: Ellen
White taught a false Christ who was a
created being. In her view, Jesus was a
lesser god, a little god.
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There are some things said to be
eternal, or everlasting in the Old
Testament that no longer apply to those
of us who live under the New Covenant.
The words eternal and forever have
different meaning in the Hebrew and the
Greek languages and we need to
understand their uses.
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Dealing with false prophets and false
teachers: It is the mission
of those who have been saved by the
gospel to help rescue those who are
still in the darkness by sharing the
light that has come into the world (John
1:5).
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What is sin?
The short answer: The Bible refers to
sin by using a variety of Hebrew and
Greek words because of the different
meanings attached to each word.
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The
Christian Church is under obligation to
test the prophets:
What kind of
woman was Ellen G. White? She lied about her
sources on many occasions and she was
afraid of being sued for stealing the
writings of other authors.
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Ellen G. White: The Shut Door Visions
and Cover-up: Ellen White
became the leader of the newly formed,
Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863.
Her visions and writings have had a
significant impact on the Seventh-Day
Adventist Church and its teachings. What
did her first visions about the Shut
door mean for Mrs. White?
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Was Ellen G. White a Plagiarist?
Ellen G. White is revered by Seventh-day
Adventists as a prophet and messenger of
God who left a legacy of 25 million
words, including 53 books. What was the
source of her writings? Was she under
the influence of the Holy Spirit when
she wrote her many books or did she
simply copy large amounts of materials
from other writers?
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Who were
Fannie Bolton and Marian Davis to Ellen
G. White?
Fannie Bolton and Marian Davis both
worked closely with Ellen White on her
books and articles and they both had
something to say regarding Sister
White’s literary browning (plagiarism).
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“Ellen
White contradicts the Bible over fifty
times” by Robert K. Sanders
and Sydney Cleveland (Truth or Fables
website).
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Will
Christians have to stand at the end of
time without Christ as their mediator?
Ellen White taught that Christians will
stand at the end of time without
Christ’s intersession as their mediator,
“Those who are living upon the earth
when the intercession of Christ shall
cease in the sanctuary above are to
stand in the sight of a holy God without
a mediator” (The Great Controversy, p.
425). But what does the Bible say?
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Do Christians have to become sinless
before Christ comes? Ellen
G. White, the prophet of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church said we must. Those
people who believe we can stop sinning
in this life have to reject what the
Apostle John said in 1 John 1:8.
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Ellen
G. White and her failed prophecies. Were
they because of the conditional
nature of prophecy? The Seventh-day
Adventist Church often claims that Ellen G.
White’s predictions failed because of
the conditional nature of prophecy. But,
the
conditional nature of prophecy does not
cover every type of prophecy.
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1844 and the Investigative Judgment:
Ellen G. White and the Seventh-day
Adventist Church teach that an Investigative Judgment
began in 1844 and that it is a Judgment for
believers only to determine if they
warrant salvation. Was this a hidden
truth for over 1800 years or has God
always known who will go to heaven?
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Who are the remnant people of God?
The Old Testament prophets talked often
about a remnant. The prophets were
called by God to announce His judgment
upon Israel when they rebelled against
Him.
-
The
remnant people of God: The
Holman Bible Dictionary defines the word
“remnant” as, “Something left over,
especially the righteous people of God
after divine judgment.” (This is a
shortened version of “Who are the
remnant people of God?”).
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What are Christians allowed to eat under
the New Covenant? Why did
God give the Law to Israel? What was His
purpose in giving the food and
cleanliness laws, and do they still
apply to us today?
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Death and the
Seventh-day Adventist Doctrine of Soul
Sleep:
The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s
Fundamental Beliefs says, “God, who
alone is immortal, will grant eternal
life to His redeemed. Until that day
death is an unconscious state for all
people.” But what is Death and is it “an
unconscious state” of being?
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What
are the Seal of God and the Mark of the
Beast? Seventh-day
Adventists began as a Church with the
false premise that the Sabbath was the
Seal of God; then they took the next
step and said that the Mark of the Beast
would become Sunday-keeping. Both
doctrines are false and cannot be shown
from scripture.
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The
Seal of God is the Holy Spirit living
inside of us:
The Bible tells
us exactly what God’s seal is for the
New Covenant church.
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The Book of Galatians:
Seventh-day
Adventists addition: They are modern day Galatianists
who are replacing the Jews today by teaching
that you have to keep certain days to be
saved.
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Helping
people trapped in a false gospel:
Soon after Paul’s first missionary
journey was over he heard that the
churches he started in southern Galatia
had come under attack from the
Judaizers, men who preached strict
adherence to the laws of Moses and a
false gospel of works-righteousness.
Paul dealt with the problems facing the
Galatian church forcefully proving that
salvation is by faith in Christ alone
and that the law has no power over those
of us who are in Christ.
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The Sabbath In the Old and New
Covenants: (An
in depth study on the
Mosaic Covenant and if it is for God’s people
today)
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God did not command Adam and Eve to keep
the Sabbath: In fact, there
is no command to keep the seventh day
Sabbath anywhere in the book of Genesis.
No one was told to keep a Sabbath rest
until God gave Israel the Sabbath in Exodus 16.
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Here is the timing of events for the
first Sabbath: The first
Sabbath ever kept was in Exodus 16 which
took place 30 days after the exodus. God
gave it to Israel to keep as a prelude
to entering into the Mosaic Covenant
with them on Mount Sinai.
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The seventh day Sabbath was never a New
Covenant obligation. The
Hebrew word for Sabbath (shabbath), that
is used in the Ten Commandments is never
found in the book of Genesis. No one
before Moses was ever told to keep a
Sabbath rest. (This is a short
article on the Sabbath)
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The Sabbath and the New Covenant:
The first time God commanded anyone to
keep the Seventh-day Sabbath was after
the exodus, as a prelude to giving the
Mosaic Covenant to Israel at Mount Sinai
(Exodus 16; 20:8).
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Is the Sabbath Still Required
for Christians? (by Thomas
R. Schreiner). Believers today continue
to dispute whether the Sabbath is
required. The Sabbath was given to
Israel as a covenant sign, and Israel
was commanded to rest on the seventh
day.
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The Sabbath and all of the other Old
Covenant ceremonies were made obsolete
by the New Covenant:
Christians were expected to follow the
moral teachings of Christ and His
apostles which were based on the moral
principles taught in the Torah, but the
Sabbath and the other ceremonies were
not made requirements for the New
Covenant Church.
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From Sabbath keeping to Worshiping on
Sunday:
(Evidence that the early church
worshipped on Sundays from the Bible and
the writings of the Early Church
Fathers). From the book of Acts we know
that the early Christians began to meet
daily for worship and to celebrate the
Lord’s Supper (Acts 2:46-47), but they
also continued to worship with their
fellow Jews in the synagogues, and at
the temple.
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The early church met on the First Day of
the week: Sabbath-keeping
was never made a requirement for the New
Covenant church. From the book of Acts
we know that the early Jewish Christians
continued to worship with their fellow
Jews in the synagogues for a short time
until they were thrown out.
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From Sabbath to Sunday is a
shortened version of “From Sabbath
keeping to Worshiping on Sunday” without
the quotes from the early church
fathers.
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Quotes from the Early Church Fathers
about the Sabbath and the Lord’s day:
The writings of the Early Church Fathers
are not scripture, but they do tell us
what the first generations of Christians
did and why.
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The Sabbath and the First Day of the
week according to the New Covenant:
The new covenant has much to say about
the Mosaic Covenant’s legal demands on
Christians.
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Did the
Catholic Church Change the
Sabbath?
Seventh-day Adventists claim that the
weekly Sabbath was changed by Rome and
needs to be restored. This idea was
first made popular by Ellen G. White and
the early founders of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church.
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Israel and the New Covenant.
God promised Israel they would be a
great nation and He would bring the
other nations to righteousness, “if”
they obeyed Him and kept His covenant.
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Understanding
the Old and New Covenants:
The Old Covenant
established promises that looked forward
to fulfillment. The New Covenant shows
us how Jesus Christ fulfilled those
covenant promises.
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Understanding the Old and New Covenants
(condensed version): The
Old and New Covenants are described in
simple language.
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What difference was there
between the Law of God and the Law of
Moses? God wrote the
Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), on
tablets of stone, and then spoke all of
the additional laws to Moses personally
because the people feared hearing from
their God, Yahweh directly.
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What was the law placed beside the ark
of the covenant?
The book with the words of this Law
refers to the Book of Deuteronomy. It
was to be placed beside the ark, not in
it. Only the Ten Commandments were
placed in the ark. Seventh-day
Adventists make a false distinction
between the Law of God and the Law of
Moses.
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People ask, “If the Old Covenant is
obsolete, is it okay to commit murder,
adultery, or steal today?”
The answer is no! Christians still have
a covenant to live by. We
are under the New Covenant now that Christ
gave His life for us, not the Old Covenant
that God gave to Israel to keep.
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The Old Covenant was made up of 613
individual laws: God made
no distinction between the moral and
ceremonial laws in the Mosaic Covenant.
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The
Law of God vs. the Law of Moses:
The Seventh-day Adventists and many
other Sabbatarian groups make an
artificial distinction between the Law
of God (The Ten Commandments) and the
Law of Moses. There is no Biblical
distinction. They are one and the same
law! They were the Old Covenant that was
replaced by the New “Better” Covenant.
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Law:
What is It’s Meaning in the Bible:
The ultimate expression of keeping the
Law was expressed by Jesus Christ. As
Jesus demonstrated his love for the
Father by keeping the Father’s
commandments, so those who truly love
Jesus will keep his commandments.
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The
End of the Law: From Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to
Understanding Biblical Truth. By Charles
Caldwell Ryrie.
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The
False Two-Law Theory: Some
groups teach the false, “two law”
theory. They believe that there were two
separate legal agreements, or covenants
that God gave to Moses for the nation of
Israel to keep.
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The New Heavens and the New Earth in
Isaiah 65-66:
The Seventh-day Adventist Commentary
comes to many false conclusions about
Isaiah 65 & Isaiah 66 and the
Sabbath in the New Earth.
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Why the New Covenant made the Old
Covenant obsolete: The
covenant God made with Israel at Mount
Sinai eventually became known as the
“Old Covenant” (2 Corinthians 3:14), or
the “first covenant” (Hebrews 8:7; 9:15, 18). There was only one law God gave to
Israel, not two.
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The Law of Moses & the
New Covenant: What laws from the
Old Covenant are Christians expected to
keep? Acts 15 tells us about the Holy
Spirit’s determination on how Christians
should view the relevance of the Mosaic
Covenant now that Christians live under
the New Covenant of Jesus Christ.
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The New Covenant and the Jerusalem
Council: There was a
controversy in the early church over
whether or not the Gentile converts had
to keep the laws of the Mosaic Covenant
so a council was convened in Jerusalem
to decide the matter in A.D. 49/50.
(excerpt from
The Law of Moses and the New Covenantl)
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Jesus and Paul both had the custom of
going to the synagogue on the Sabbath:
Just because Jesus and Paul had the
custom of going to the synagogues on the
Sabbath day to preach to their fellow
Jews does not make that custom a
requirement for us today.
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Why are the Gentiles under condemnation
if they were never under the Old
Covenant Law? The
Bible says that sin was in the world
before the Law was given to Israel.
Romans 5:12-14 says, “Therefore, just as
sin came into the world through one man,
and death through sin, and so death
spread to all men because all sinned.”
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What the New Covenant says about the End
of the Old Covenant Law:
Many things from the Old Covenant Law
have plainly changed
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Why God brought the Old Covenant to an
end:
The Mosaic Covenant was Conditional and
always depended upon Israel’s
faithfulness to keep the Covenant. There
are nine specific covenants revealed in
Scripture. These nine covenants fall
into two basic categories, conditional
and unconditional.
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The Old
Covenant Law has Come to an End:
The Law had a
beginning and an end! The Sabbath Ended
at the Cross! Christians are to
live by the New Covenant now, not the Old
Covenant.
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The Old and New Covenants are Not
the same: Seventh-day
Adventists have absolutely no idea how
the Biblical Covenants work. Their
Church does not teach them about the
covenants.
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The law of sin and death, and
the curse of the law:
Once
God gave the law it actually increased
sin. The Law magnified sin and was added
to point out the need for redemption.
The law made sin even more sinful by
revealing what sin is in contrast to
God’s holiness.
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Who can take part in the New Covenant? Have
you been told that the New Covenant was
made with Israel alone and that the
Gentiles have no place in it? Nothing
could be more wrong!
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Christians
are told to live by the law of Christ.
Paul argues in Galatians that the law
given to Israel at Mount Sinai makes no
claim on any Jew or Gentile who believes
in Jesus Christ. Christ-followers are
told to be led by the Spirit and fulfill
what he called “the law of Christ.”
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What does Jesus mean when He says, keep
His commandments? The
disciples’ love for Christ is revealed
in their obeying His commands. Christ
has set the pattern of love and
obedience and His disciples are expected
to follow His example.
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No
longer a slave to sin and the law:
When we try to keep the Old Covenant
Law, we commit spiritual adultery and
are slaves to sin.
Paul used two illustrations to show that
we cannot be under two competing
covenants, or legal codes, at the same
time.
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Jesus was
a Jew. He lived and taught under the Law
to free us from the curse of the Law: The night
before he gave his life as a sacrifice
for our sins he gave His Church the New
Covenant. Paul was a Jew. He taught us
to keep the New Covenant. Paul said the
Old Covenant was fading away and ready
to vanish.
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What is Sin?
(It’s much more than just transgressing
the Law): The
Bible refers to sin by a variety of
Hebrew and Greek words. This is partly
because sin may appear in many forms,
from deliberate wrongdoing and moral
evil to accidental failure through
weakness, laziness or ignorance.
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Old Covenant signs and the New Covenant:
Under the covenant agreements that God
made with Abraham and the Israelites,
three practices were instituted by God
to serve as signs of obedience which the
Israelites were expected to follow
throughout all their generations,
circumcision, the Passover, and their
Sabbath observances.
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Commandments
change at different time periods: The solution
distinguishes between a code and the
commandments contained therein. God
communicates with His people through
covenants.
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What
is a Biblical Covenant?
A covenant was an agreement between two
parties that laid down conditions and
guaranteed benefits, depending upon a
person’s keeping or breaking the
covenant. It was sealed by some form of
witness.
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The Major Covenants in the Bible: There
are 9 major covenants in the
Bible. The Bible’s entire plan of
salvation is structured around the
covenants that God has made with His
people throughout time. God’s plan of
salvation is expressed in the Biblical
covenants.
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Abraham kept God’s commandments,
but which ones?
Genesis 26:5 says, “because Abraham
obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my
commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Abraham kept all of the commands given
to him up to his time.
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God promised to make a New Covenant for
us to live by (Jeremiah 31:31-33):
God said it would not be like the
covenant He made with their fathers
under the Old Covenant. The New Covenant
is not the Old Covenant all over again.
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What was
“fulfilled” and “accomplished” in
Matthew 5:17-18?
in Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus said he did
not come to destroy the Law but to
fulfill it. By instituting the New
Covenant, Jesus would fulfill all of the
Law’s demands. Jesus fulfilled the Law
both by His obedience to it, and by His
sacrificial death, through which He
satisfied the law’s demands for those
who put their trust in Him.
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The Sabbath was made for man:
Mark 2:27-28 says, Jesus said to them,
“The Sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the Sabbath. “So the Son of Man
is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus was
talking to the Pharisees who were
imposing restrictions on the Sabbath
that God never intended. Context is
everything.
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Acts 15 & the Jerusalem Council:
Acts 15:28-29 says, “For it has seemed
good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay
on you no greater burden than these
requirements: that you abstain from what
has been sacrificed to idols, and from
blood, and from what has been strangled,
and from sexual immorality. If you keep
yourselves from these, you will do well.
Farewell.”
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The Apostle John was not saying keep the
Ten Commandments in any of
His writings. We have to see how John
uses the different words for “law” and
“commandments” in his writings to understand his
meaning.
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Colossians 2:14-17 and the Sabbath:
The Old Covenant has been fulfilled! All
the sacrifices, Holy Days, Feasts, New
Moon celebrations, and Dietary
restrictions have been fulfilled and
brought to an end by the New Covenant,
including the weekly Seventh-day
Sabbath.
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Colossians 2:16-17 and the Seventh-Day
Adventist Church: The
context shows that the “festival or a
new moon or a Sabbath” were the
regulations of the Jewish yearly
calendar.
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The Book of Colossians and the
Christian’s Record of Debt:
Our debt to God is far more immense than
anyone can know. What you see on the
surface is only the tip of the iceberg!
Whether we admit it or not, we all sin
every day in thought and deed!
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God’s divine
rest in the book of Hebrews:
The author of Hebrews warns his Jewish
readers about some of Israel’s difficult
history under Moses’ leadership in the
desert wilderness. As a result, the
author cautions the followers of the Son
of God not to repeat this same pattern
of failing to enter into God’s eternal
rest.
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The
Sabbath Rest of Hebrews 4:
The rest in Hebrews 4 is said to
be a “sabbatismós” rest. What
does the word “sabbatismós” mean (with
an expositional study of Hebrews 4:1-12)
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Hebrews 4 and the Seventh-day Adventist
Church: Ellen G. White admitted that
there is nothing in the New Testament
commanding us to keep the Sabbath. Jesus
Christ is the “rest” that God wants us
to enter into, and we can do that right
now. We can do that “Today.”
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What does Romans
14 say about our Christian liberty?
Romans 14:15, together with the related
texts in 1 Corinthians 8 and 1 Corinthians 10, contains what has often
been called the “stumbling block”
principle. It is the principle of
Christian life and conduct that whatever
we do or say should not become a
hindrance to the faith and life of a
Christian brother or sister.
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Ephesians and the New Covenant Church: Jews
and Gentiles form one body of believers
under the New Covenant. The Mosaic
Covenant had served as a dividing wall
or partition that was meant to separate
Israel from the unbelieving Gentiles.
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What is
the Royal Law of Liberty in James
2:8-13? There are two laws
at issue, not one! The Royal Law of
Liberty and the (Mosaic) Law. James says
the royal law is the law of love.
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The ark of the covenant seen in heaven:
Seventh-day Adventists try to make a big
deal about the ark pictured in heaven
but fail to apply the same principles to
the rest of Revelation as a whole and
this vision in particular. The temple,
the court yard, the alter, manna and
Aaron’s staff are all seen too.
-
What is
the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The good news
is, Jesus did not come to show us that
we can keep the Old Covenant law if we
only try harder. Salvation is through
faith in Jesus Christ alone and not by
any works we do.
-
The New Covenant is a better covenant:
Jesus Christ came into this world to
show us the meaning of love. God’s love
for us was revealed in the death and
resurrection of His one and only Son.
Christ died for us so we could have
peace with God and have eternal life.
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What does it mean to be born again?
Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, we are
all born spiritually dead (Genesis 3).
Cut off from God and with no hope of
salvation in ourselves. It is only
through God’s divine act of grace that
we can be saved from our spiritual
condition.
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Do you have a saving faith?
We have to believe by faith that Jesus
was God in the flesh, and that He died
for our eternal redemption. How we
respond to what Jesus did for us reveals
the true nature of our faith.
-
Repentance and confession are part of
our coming to faith in Jesus Christ.
Jesus came into this world to preach the
kingdom of heaven and call upon us to
repent. Jesus said in Mark 1:15, “The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of
God is at hand; repent and believe in
the gospel.”
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Knowing who you are in Christ Jesus:
The Bible describes our salvation in
terms of a process: past, present, and
future. When we are saved, we enter into
a lifelong process of becoming more like
Jesus Christ Himself. Our salvation is
sure and we can know with certainty that
we are saved and will be with Christ for
eternity. When we come to Christ certain
things happen in our lives.
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We serve in the new way of the Spirit.
Under the New Covenant, we have the
total and complete forgiveness of ours
sins through faith in Jesus Christ
alone. And we have God’s promise of the
Holy Spirit living inside of us as a
guarantee of our eternal inheritance.
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Be
Transformed into the Image of Christ!
Our sinful nature is in constant
rebellion against God. The only way we
can overcome our sin problem is by
receiving a new nature from God
Himself.
-
How do we overcome our sinful
nature? We are all born
sinners. Our sin nature is in constant
rebellion against God. But God loved us
enough to take the initiative to save
us.
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Do you know what
it means to be “in Christ”?
When God created Adam and Eve, they were
created to live inside the perfect love
of God. God intended that they should
get their self-worth and significance
from Him! He was their creator and he
knew what was best for them.
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Good
works and the royal law of liberty in
the Book of James: There
are two laws at issue in this passage,
not one. The royal law of liberty and
the Old Covenant (Mosaic) Law. The
“royal law” in James 2:8-9 is the law of
love.
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The New Covenant made the Old
Covenant obsolete: The
covenant God made with Israel at Mount
Sinai eventually became known as the
“Old Covenant” (2 Corinthians 3:14), or
the “first covenant” (Hebrews 8:7; 9:15, 18). There was only one law God gave to
Israel, not two.
-
The law of sin and death, and the curse
of the law: Once
God gave the law it actually increased
sin. The Law magnified sin and was added
to point out the need for redemption.
The law made sin even more sinful by
revealing what sin is in contrast to
God’s holiness.
-
Is it possible for anyone to keep the Ten
Commandments?
If someone tries to live a good life by
keeping the Law of God, can that person
know for certain they will be with God
for all eternity? If no one can actually
keep the commandments then why did God
give them to Israel in the first place?
-
What does Jesus mean when He says, keep
His commandments? The
disciples’ love for Christ is revealed
in their obeying His commands. Christ
has set the pattern of love and
obedience and His disciples are expected
to follow His example.
-
We are
justified by faith apart from works of
the law (An outline of the
book of Romans).
-
Trying to keep the law will only bring
God’s curse (An outline of
the book of Galatians).
-
Helping people trapped in a false gospel:
Soon after Paul’s first missionary
journey was over he heard that the
churches he started in southern Galatia
had come under attack from the
Judaizers, men who preached strict
adherence to the laws of Moses and a
false gospel of works-righteousness.
Paul dealt with the problems facing the
Galatian church forcefully proving that
salvation is by faith in Christ alone
and that the law has no power over those
of us who are in Christ.
