Chinese government installs cctv cameras in churches

In the city of Wenzhou, in China, the Communist govt. is forcing Christian churches there to install surveillance cameras. The move is ostensibly an effort to combat “terrorism”, but as the church leaders point out, there have never been any terrorist incidents in their churches. Obviously, this is a new method for the Communist govt. to put the screws to Christians there.

China Aid said churches were told to install cameras at gates, rostrums, offering boxes and ­other places, despite strong ­opposition from churchgoers who claimed the surveillance ­infringed their privacy.

Wenzhou’s surveillance ­camera drive comes amid tighter ­controls on religious activities across the country.

Last week, the far western ­region of Xinjiang – home to more than 10 million mostly Muslim Uygurs – passed new rules ­targeting what it called religious extremism. The rules, which took effect on Saturday, prohibit such “manifestations of ­extremism” as wearing veils or “abnormal” beards, refusing to watch state television or listen to state radio, or preventing children from receiving “national education”, according to the ­official news website News.ts.cn.

Wow!
Now they are FORCING people to watch state television!
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2084169/chinas-jerusalem-anti-terror-cameras-new-cross-churches

Chinese Christians – we are praying for you to stay strong in Jesus.
Christians in free countries – Be careful what you put before your eyes!
Persecution has already started somewhat, but will get worse and worse as the dragon speaks louder and louder, trying to force all to break God’s commands – especially the 7th day Sabbath (from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday).

Adventist Theological Society doesn’t believe Bible is words of God

The Adventist Theological Society is considered by many SDAs to be one of the top “Conservative” “Scholarly” groups. It’s Journal is seen as one of the most authoritative voices in the Conservative SDA camp.

According to its constitution, “The centrist focus of the Society places it against all forms of theological extremism, avoiding theological liberalism and legalistic or literalistic interpretations of the Scriptures.”

To denigrate the “literalistic interpretation of the Scriptures” is to denigrate the Scriptures themselves, and of course the Holy Spirit who gave those Scriptures.

The inspired writers did not testify to falsehoods, fearing that the pages of Sacred History would be clouded by the record of human frailties and faults. The scribes of God wrote as they were dictated by the Holy Spirit, having no control of the work themselves. They penned the literal truth, and stern, forbidding facts are revealed for reasons that our finite minds cannot fully comprehend.

By Ellen White in Testimony for the Church, Number 26.
.

I saw it was a small thing to speak against the instrument, but it was dangerous to slight the words of God.

By Ellen White in Broadside #2.

ATS members, I call on you to repent of denigrating the Holy words of God, and resolve to believe in his words.

Ganoune Diop, SDA religious liberty leader trained at a Catholic school?

According to the official SDA Church website, http://www.adventistliberty.org/dr.-ganoune-diop

“Dr. Ganoune Diop is Director of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church. Before his election in July 2015 at the 60th General Conference Session in San Antonio, Texas, he served as the church’s liaison to the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and as its representative within the international community of civic and political leaders.

Dr. Diop’s passion for God has led him to extensive theological, philosophical, and literary studies. Dr. Diop has a Masters in Exégèses and Theology from Collonges, France, a Masters degree in Philiology from the University of Paris, and a PhD in Old Testament Studies from Andrews University. He is currently a PhD candidate in New Testament Studies. Most recently he was honored with a Doctorate Honoris Causa, granted for his contributions to developing a global culture of human rights and respect for human dignity.”

Well, that doesn’t sound too bad on the surface, but on the Southern Adventist University website, it says of him:

“Ganoune Diop—Ph.D., Professor of Religion, Oakwood College B.A. and M.A., Saleve University; Diploma, Maitrise en Philologie et Histoire de L’Orient Ancien, Institut Catholique De Paris; Ph.D., Andrews University.”

http://southern.catalog.acalog.com/content.php?catoid=2&navoid=14

That is very problematic for me for 2 reasons:
1. Someone is not telling the truth. The “University of Paris”, and “Catholic University of Paris” are 2 separate institutions. The University of Paris is famous for training many popes over the centuries, and, well, the other one speaks for itself.

2. We are directly told by the Spirit of Prophecy for our SDA pastors and workers to not get their training from worldly institutions. But here we have them being promoted to the top ranks of the SDA Church! Why are we so blind? And the field of Philology: “includes the study of texts and their history. It includes elements of textual criticism”. Granted, what Br. Diop studied may not have been this particular type of Philology. But it is very, very worrying, as we are told directly that all “higher criticism” is working against God.

Fellow SDAs, let’s work to have a pure church that follows all of God’s words simply and faithfully.

Kellogg’s corn flakes were invented by a god-fearing, very wise doctor – John Harvey Kellogg

There was an article on Breitbart yesterday regarding the supposed “strange” ideas of John Harvey Kellogg, and how that means you should be wary about eating corn flakes today. The article is so devoid of truth, that I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously, but in reading the comments, deemed it necessary to put up this rebuttal.

First of all, Kellogg’s pulled all advertising from Breitbart around a month ago, so they started a boycott against them. This is just the latest salvo in their war. breitbart.com

Some of the false statements are: “Kellogg’s failed to mention that its flagship cereal was invented as a cure for masturbation.” No it wasn’t at all. The article’s title is correct in it’s wording “curb”. To try to make “curb” mean to “cure” something is either being an incompetent user of the English language, or else being dishonest.

“Described as a “fanatically religious” Seventh Day Adventist, Kellogg believed that all sex was evil and never even consummated his own marriage, sleeping in a separate bedroom from his wife and adopting all their children.” Jesus Christ is described as “fanatically religious”. And? Plus, the phrase “all sex” is just outrageously wrong. JHK never, ever mentioned that all sex was evil. This is just a bald-faced lie.

“If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin,” Kellogg wrote, “self-pollution is a crime doubly abominable.” Yes, and what is the perceived problem with this statement? Reading the comments helped me to understand why the author thought this statement was strange. Nearly all the commenters are lewd, crude, and vicious – indirectly supporting this statement by JHK. One thing about lewd, crude, and vicious, is that those on the right show more “humanness” in their responses, meaning that the straight-up emotions of lust, greed, hate etc. are on display, unlike liberals on the left who obfuscate, beat-around-the-bush, and compete to see who has the most swarmy self-righteous method of expressing their lust, greed, hate etc.

Many Breitbart readers would be horrified to learn that parts of this article seem to be copied from the liberal Daily Kos website: www.dailykos.com

Actually, John Harvey Kellogg was the most sought-after, most respected doctor running the largest sanitarium in the world of his day (Battle Creek Sanitarium). Ellen White saw angels guiding his hands in some operations. He helped save her life a couple of times. Yes, he let pride get the best of him, and went away from Jesus and into pantheism in the 1890s, but that doesn’t mean what he wrote earlier on this medical subject was false.

To read the actual book JHK wrote called “Plain Facts About Sexual Life” (1877), please look here: https://archive.org/stream/plainfactsabouts00kell#page/n5/mode/2up

Ben Carson appointed head of Housing and Urban Development

Ben Carson was just appointed head of Housing and Urban Development by Donald Trump. This is good news, and am very glad especially to see someone who used to be Seventh-day Adventist (but fell away in the presidential race) in such a high position. For all those who are concerned about the unbalance of power in America (like I am) with Republicans controlling everything, at least there is a voice for the Sabbath near the top.

Let’s keep him and the whole new administration in our prayers, as it looks like there will be many changes for the better. 🙂

USA election 2016 – vote to save baby’s lives

There is really only one choice for president this election. One person stands for aborting babies, one person stands for trying to save babies.

If you don’t want blood on your hands of millions of aborted babies, you must vote, and you must vote for the person who says they will try to save those lives.

UPDATED: The Republican Party, which actively supports the right to life of all developing humans (who aren’t convicted of heinous crimes) will have control of all 3 branches of the US government come January 21, 2017. Hopefully then we will see the end of the horrific practice of killing that so many “progressives” praise.
May God bless America for this one bright spot. 🙂

Tell the World movie by SDA Church

Review grade=C (first part A, last part F)
Recently someone sent me a link to the movie telling the early history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church “Tell the World”. It is produced by the Australian Union Conference and is 2:27:52 long. It is reported that they spent 6 million dollars (Australian?) in its production, as it was done by a professional company, and mostly shot in Canada.

I watched the whole thing on this Sabbath and Day of Trumpets. The first part had me crying in several places, as it is a powerful presentation of how tenuous, or fragile, the beginnings of the Advent movement had. William Miller, Joshua Himes, Joseph Bates, the Harmon family, they are all shown in a very realistic manner, and the events speak closely to anyone who is interested in the beginnings of the SDA faith.

I decided to sleep on the first half overnight, right after the Great Disappointment. I was very excited, thinking how I would be happy to help promote this movie. To be truthful, I did have very minor odd feelings with the depiction of the Great Disappointment, as Ellen was just standing all alone in a field for hours, but that was extremely minor compared to the amazingly good story of William Miller and the Advent movement up to the Great Disappointment.

The next day I eagerly looked forward to watching the last half. It is mostly about the prophetic gift of Ellen White, and her and her husband’s work to build up the church. Somehow tho, the feeling was different. The whole spirit of the second half seemed odd, and not according to the excellent spirit of the first half. Many things in the last half were not according to the historical record, either. It seemed somehow “Hollywoodized”, with no Holy Spirit giving guidance.

The last 7 minutes are credits, and at 2:21:11 it says: “Its (SDA Church) core mission, as captured in the prophetic message of Revelation 14:6-12, is to proclaim the good news of God’s love and forgiveness as revealed in Jesus Christ and to tell the world of His Promised soon return.” This is just wrong. The core mission of the SDA church is to give the Three Angels’ Messages. Of course that includes the promised return of Jesus. The 3rd Angel’s Message especially is all about warning us to keep the Sabbath to give glory to God and escape the wrath to come.

I started looking for more info on the movie on Youtube, and saw a video by Adrian Ebens. Now I disagree with him on his anti-Godhead doctrine, but he had a sermon directly on this movie, and showed how some of the workers in this movie had connection with demon possession in other movies they’ve worked in.

Sadly, the casting for the film makes me think that this film should be rejected outright. Tommie-Amber Pirie, who plays Ellen White, has starred in: “How to plan an orgy in a small town”. She also played the part of a possessed woman in a different movie called “Bitten”. OK, maybe playing the part of Ellen White caused her to repent? Well, since she played Ellen, she has top billing in a movie called: “Clusterxxxx”. The last four letters are very vulgar. No wonder the last half of the movie, largely featuring Ellen, James, and Bates, is discomforting to watch.

Timothy Paul Coderre, who plays Joseph Bates, starred in “Rulers of Darkness”, which is about a “terrifying entity in the woods.”

Also, Aaron Hartzler, who did the screenplay for this movie, “is an actor and writer, known for Gay Propaganda (2002).” According to the description for that short movie, it basically does what the title says – spread the gay culture.

I watched the entire movie. While the first part is fantastic, and true to history, the last part has a different spirit. Perhaps the fact that several of the stars (like the woman who plays Ellen) have appeared in Satanic possession movies, has introduced an evil spirit into this film?

I recommend everyone thinking of watching this movie to BEWARE! Perhaps small snippets could be used to good effect, and God could bless, but I really don’t think the movie as a whole is giving glory to God.

experience like a comic book scene

Last week I went down to the island of Shikoku. JR has a one-day rail pass where you can take the slow trains for around 23usd, so my 8-hour journey was quite inexpensive. I stayed in some building up on the top floor where there was nobody, and enjoyed the nice view from the open window. The concrete floor was a bit harder than the park bench a few weeks ago in a different city, but there were absolutely no mosquitoes. 🙂

The city is said to have 172,000 people, but, like most smaller cities outside of the Tokyo/Osaka/Northern Kyushu areas, it is bleeding young people, and dying. I asked someone where the busy part of town was, and they mentioned “Ginza Street”. When I arrived at the long shopping arcade around 6:30pm, it was ghostly silent except for the sounds of a few high school students going by on bicycle. Not a small number of buildings in the city looked abandoned, and some cats surprised me when jumping out of what I thot was the window of somebody’s house, but coming closer, saw that it was a hole into a really dilapidated “cat house”.

Anyway, my purpose was to go to the Seventh-day Adventist church there. I heard they have the 2nd largest SDA church on this island of over 4,000,000 people. Around 20 people attended on Sabbath, and I was refreshed to see the pastor basically agree with me about the sad pace of evangelism in Japan, and how our SDA church needs to be more active in winning souls, and less compromising with the world. Also, there was a young lady from Africa there, and we had a heartfelt talk about faith and Jesus and duty, and near the end of my time there she said that I must have been sent by God to help her faith. 🙂

But the comic book scene happened in the morning, just a few meters away from the church in the parking lot of a convenience store. My stomach wasn’t right, so I had sat down on a curb in front of the store. An elderly Japanese man came out, and sat on a block behind me, but soon came over and sat by me. We had a good talk, but with his old-folks’ accent/mumbling (probably caused by him not having many front teeth!) I couldn’t understand more than around 30% or so. Then one of his friends came down to sit by him. The 3 of us talked about things in that city, island etc. We talked about bicycles, as many people ride a special bicycle path there (I did too around 13 years ago), about the Hiroshima Carp baseball team who won their league pennant this year for the first time in 30 years, fishing, sightseeing etc.

Then they asked me what I was doing there. I pulled out my Japanese 1858 Great Controversy, and showed them. They didn’t say much, and I didn’t press it, just told them that I came to go to the church just across the way. But around a minute later, the second man who came to sit (who was drinking sake) started talking about religious things. He said Japan has many gods, and we respect them all. I mentioned something about how we should worship the one true Creator God. His voice got a little edge to it, and before I knew what was happening, I saw the first man riding away on a scooter. That’s when things got interesting.

He started talking about how we must have the sun to live. I said the one who created the sun is more important than the sun. Then he asked me if I knew about “Evolution” (all this was in Japanese). I said “yes”, and then took a light tone, (perhaps it seemed almost mocking to him?), asking him if it was possible that a rock could, over time, turn into a human? He said that it is like a child comes from its mother. I asked him if his mother’s mother’s mother was an ape or a rock. He seemed to soften a bit, and said “Well, all the gods are the same, they all lead to the same place”, to which I replied, “There is only one true God – Jesus Christ. He made everything, and we should worship him”. Suddenly his eyes changed, and he picked up his cane pointing to me like he was going to hit me, and said “You’d better not ever say things like that in Japan! Get out of here!” It was all so sudden, and comic-book-like, here’s an old man with a palsied arm starting to get tipsy, suddenly angry to the point of violence about being told that there is only one true God. I was smiling, and thinking he was half-joking at first, but when I saw his grip tighten on the cane, and his face turning a bright red (perhaps 1/2 from the sake?), I decided I’d better go, so picked up my backpack, and without turning around, walked away. I did notice that there was a young man at the smoking stand watching us, and could hear the old man talking excitedly to him as I walked away. Who knows, maybe a seed was planted in the young man’s heart?

Yes, the Great Controversy is alive and well, and being played out in big and small ways all over the world. Just as the title says, it’s between Christ and his angels, and Satan and his angels. We have a big role to play too. May we be ready to fulfill that role at any moment, even if it is like a comic-book scene. And yes, the thot did cross my mind, that doing this same thing in this same city around 80 years ago would have gotten me thrown in jail or worse. Let’s work to redeem the time, because that will happen again, but on a global scale in the end-times.

New Nepali SDA Church in Greensboro, N.C. USA

I got an email from someone who knows the former Mission President of the Nepali Mission of Seventh-day Adventists – David Tamsang. He gave me this report recently. Let’s pray for him, and help him as we can!

Oh! I am thrilled to hear the good news that Pr. David has established new congregation and officially organized the new Nepali-Bhutanese Church at Greenboro, North Carolina. The Local conference and GC personnel are very happy and recognized officially. It is historic events and really he struggle for months with prayer. I heard in that area more than fifty thousand Nepali Speaking refugees are there thirsty for truth. Again he plans to move to other areas……. He faced lot of difficulties staying in laymen home without stipend but our Lord Jehovah has really blessed the mission for lost souls.

save css files in utf-8 if having problems displaying in firefox or chrome

If your css files are fine, and display properly in Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox or Chrome, the most likely culprit is that you need to save the css file in UTF-8. If you are using Notepad to edit, when saving, click on “Save As”, then go to where it says “Encoding”. You DON’T want ANSI. Click on the arrow by ANSI to open the list, and click on “UTF-8”. Then save. Now it should display perfectly.

This was extremely frustrating for me, and I wasted a bunch of time thanks to Firefox’s and Chrome’s strict insistence on only displaying what the current standards state. IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, and IE11 are much more reasonable from a real-world point of view.

How to display css files in Firefox or Chrome? Save in UTF-8!

NAD Statement on Shooting Deaths in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas

The North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists has been busy the past few years opining on every “social justice” issue that trends on Twitter. Their recent one is regarding the shooting deaths of several citizens and police officers.

As NAD has turned more and more leftward in the past 50 years, it is no wonder that their works often get featured in Huffington Post, which is the standard-bearer for leftist thought.

While the Adventist Review is a little more circumspect, editors/moderators there have a definite left slant to things, so often they remove comments that offend them.

On July 15, 2016, I read this article, and saw a truthful comment by an “Evelyn” that had surprisingly been allowed:

Seems too many of our pastors are too learned to preach the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy . Much of the sermons are more story telling than (milk) than the soul searching messages that we need to prepare us to stand in these days of the investigative judgement. And to make it worse the few who sound the warnings are marginalized , refused hiring and denied speaking engagements by the very leaders who feel sympathy for “racist acts”.

I replied to her:

Your post is powerful, Evelyn!
Seems to me, that our SDA leaders have focused on the dreaded “Religious Right” for so long, that they don’t realize they have been almost totally bamboozled by the “Irreligious Left”.

which got removed.

My takeaway is that our church really is in bed deep with the Irreligious Left, and likes that to be kept quiet.

May we pray for our Church leaders to repent, and follow the example given by our lovely Saviour – Jesus Christ.

America’s one percent sicker than heterosexuals

Survey finds excess health problems in lesbians, gays, bisexuals. According to this story by Yahoo news https://ca.news.yahoo.com/survey-finds-excess-health-problems-lesbians-gays-bisexuals-224741845.html 1.66% of the population in their survey of 69,000 people were either “gay” or “lesbian”, with an additional 0.7% being “bisexual”. Their health is much worse than the majority heterosexual population.

Gilbert Gonzales of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville and colleagues found that compared to heterosexual women, lesbians were 91 percent more likely to report poor or fair health. Lesbians were 51 percent more likely, and bisexual women were more than twice as likely, to report multiple chronic conditions, compared to straight women.

Gay, lesbian and bisexual people were also more likely than heterosexuals to report heavy drinking and smoking.

While gays and lesbians reported worse psychological distress than heterosexuals, bisexual people suffered the most, the survey showed.

Of course they try to spin this as the majority society not being “inclusive” of different people, but actually, this study shows the facts that people who practice an abomination that God calls “sin”, feel the effects of that sin.

Christians, beware when your pastor tells you we need to be “inclusive”!!!
True Christianity is very exclusive:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

Matthew 10:37-38

Brexit leading to Babexit?

–Andrew Roberts, The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2016:

“The role of bloody-minded insurgents willing to do the opposite of what they’re told by the authorities has long been central to great political events in British history, and the 17,410,742 people who voted to leave the European Union can certainly be ranked among their number. Almost every single agency of the international Establishment was deployed to thwart them – the CBI, IMF, Bank of England, OECD, big business, Goldman Sachs, all but one party leader, the World Bank, Presidents Obama, Hollande and Abe, the EU Commission, two-thirds of the cabinet, the Treasury, The Guardian, Davos, The Times, and so on – yet over 17.4 million people told them precisely what they could do with their expert opinion. The popular uprising campaign was not like the Poll Tax riots of 1990 but much more firmly in the mainstream of the long British tradition of legitimate peaceful protest. In this way, too, it was a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution, soaked as that was in blood. This popular uprising has toppled the established order without calling upon the tumbrel, the scaffold and the guillotine. It will secure its place in history as a result.”

While I’m personally not so sure it is bigger than the French Revolution, as it was the free choice of the British people to get into the European Union to start with, this does seem like an historic event. Of course for Seventh-day Adventists, and hopefully most all Christians, it brings to mind the toes in King Nebuchadnezzar’s vision that couldn’t get quite all together. Personally, I think this is a great victory for the common British person, and congratulate them on basically rejecting the leftist, globalist mantra of “We know what’s best, believe in us, and do as we say”. I also see this as a direct blow to those championing Climate Change, and those in rural/small town areas who are tired of being led around by city folk who don’t even know where their food, power, and stuff comes from.

Looking at it specifically from the end-times angle: There is nothing more conducive to a Laodicean condition than “business as usual”. For far, far too long, that is what has been taught and practiced in the church and most governments of the world too. So maybe God is starting to move on hearts to prepare people for the Revelation 18 Babexit? I hope, and pray so.

pope and cairo’s grand imam hug and kiss

Pope Francis met with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque on Monday, May 23, 2016. It was described as a: “peace conference”

“A statement quoted Tayeb as telling Francis: “We need to take a joint stance, hand in hand, to bring happiness to humanity. Divine religions were revealed to make people happy, not to cause them hardship.””

So now religion is to make people happy? Jesus’ religion caused him and his followers to suffer, be persecuted, and die (but gain eternal life).

The Vatican stated that both leaders had: “underlined the great significance of this new meeting”.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-top-imam-embrace-historic-meeting-vatican-114906546.html?ref=gs
Yes, God has told us that there will be a one-world Babylonian system at the end time that will force everyone to worship it, or be killed. They will coalesce around Sunday worship, and all those who honor God by keeping his 7th day holy will experience the opposite of happiness until Jesus comes.