The Seventh Day Adventist Church started the Creationist Movement

In my Systematics and Behavioral Ecology class, I was presented with a paper published in a BBC (British Broadcasting Company) publication. It was about the theory of evolution and Charles Darwin. During the discussion it mentioned the fact that the Seventh-day Adventist Church started the creationist movement. I was shocked. I was like there is no way that we did that. About a hundred years ago we were no more than a drop of water in the ocean compared to say the Baptists, Methodists, or Catholics. So I must say I was skeptical of this Brit's report that we were the founders of the creationist movement. Furthermore, I have never heard us make this claim and it seems to me to be a good thing to say to other people about our church.
But this one statement by Ellen White kept coming to my mind as I thought of SDA's and their relationship to the Creationist movement, "Had the Sabbath always been sacredly observed, there could never have been an atheist or an idolater. {PP 336.1}" So maybe we did...

So I did a little research and it appears to be true in many respects. George Mcready Price a Canadian adventist school teacher wrote a pamphlet and some books on Geology declaring that a flood caused all the fossilization that we see today. Unfortunately some of Price's statements were not all substantiated by lab science. Price was consulted by William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes trial. His pamphlet was read by many in different faiths. His work eventually led to the founding of several creationist oragnizations. One of them is our own GeoScience Institute.

The quote begs a second go round, " "Had the Sabbath always been sacredly observed, there could never have been an atheist or an idolater. {PP 336.1}"

Adaptation

We are the product of our environment. Well not entirely, but partly. A water lily is nothing without a swamp. Moths fly in the night (most of them do). Some trees grow on virtually nothing. The water Ouzel (American Dipper) sings in the middle of fierce rapids and frigid blizzards. There are beautiful colored butterflies in the desert. Flowers grow in mud.

But it is not all good, the swamp is mostly gunk and slime (not a scientific description). The night is dark and when scary things happen. The crags and cliffs and precipices and crevasses are ominous. The torrents and rapids are relentless and brutal. The blizzard claims the lives of all, except a few hardy things. The desert is mostly sand and wind. The mud is brown and dirty.

Each of the good things has in it something special that can respond to the environment in a way that will make its little world better. Likewise we as Christians, can have something in us that helps to make the dark cold world we live in better. Something inside us. It is a force greater than natural selection. It is the gospel. Through the gospel we can make any area we live in bright.

It is true then that we are a product of our environment. We cannot help it. But we are able to choose whether we will be part of the bad part of the environment or the good. There are mosquitoes in the forest and there are butterflies.

Boula-Boula

This recipe comes from The Joy of Cooking



BOULA-BOULA

Simmer in boiling water until tender:
2 cups of grean peas
Puree them through a fine sieve or in a blender
Reheat and add:
2 tablespoons sweet butter
Add:
2 cups canned green turtle soup
1 cup dry sherry
Heat --> but do not boil the soup. Spoon soup into heated cups. Top each serving with:
2 tablespoons whipped cream
Place briefly under broiler. Serve at once.


With a name so cool as Boula-Boula, I expected something great. To my dismay, turtles and 2 tablespoons of whipped cream were involved. Basically, you are eating fat and salt that is green and slimy. Therefore, for those of you who might gasp at the ingredients and consider the possibility of a turtle soup guzzling apostate. Consider it not so. I would like to present to you a reality that we may find useful. Namely, we Christians are a lot like Boula-Boula. We bear the name of the greatest servant of humanity that ever lived -- Christ. But we are often, upon closer inspection, only green slime. By God's grace, we can truly live up to our name and send an alternative recipe to the Joy of Cooking 2.0 that includes a more appetizing list of ingredients.

He Read An Awful Lot

"John Milton was probably the last person to read everything that was ever published."

Dr. David Calhoun of the St. Louis Covenant Theological Seminary.


Really good lectures, you can tell he knows what he is talking about. It is just like he is talking about sports, fishing, cars, butterflies =), or outdoorsing. In other words, it is very natural. A true master of his subject. He was trained at Princeton. They are free. They come from a Presbyterian perspective. Click the links to check them out.

Ancient and Medieval Church History


Reformation and Modern Church History

Job

Below is a trailer about John Piper's book on Job. It is a powerful poem dealing with Job's story. I think of it as a powerful sermon.



The entire book is on You Tube. If you click on these links you can hear the book.
Part 1
I like part 1, because it makes a powerful statement about how the father was never present at any of the feasts that his sons gave.
Part 2
Part 2 was eyeopening, because it portrayed Job's wife in an entirely different way. It also was powerful to think that Job considered his prayer answered when his wife was not struck with a disease.
Part 3
The line I took away from this part was that proverbs in the mouths of fools are not beneficial.
Part 4
Part 4 is my favorite, because it talks about Jemima and how she was extra sweet. Her sweetness, surprisingly, is attributed to the trials of Job and his wife, "Beauty for ashes". It is always so. We can take our trials and become extra sweet or extra sour. Jemima exemplified the fruit of Job taking the former. It was also fascinating to see that Job actually needed those trials. Through those trials he depended solely on God and saw God deeper and more completely.

Perservere in Soul Winning

God requires a constant doing on the part of His people; and when they become weary of well-doing, He becomes weary of them.

Ellen White Early Writings pg. 268

Show Me Thy Glory

Nothing can make us stable Christians, but to behold his glory, a revelation of Him to us. No excitement, no intellectual acumen, no strength of logic, nothing can secure us but a revelation of God to our souls. We should therefore persevere and insist that this be done for us, that we see God's glory, and be fixed on Him. The church should pray for ministers and for candidates for the ministry, that God would reveal to them the deep secrets of his love and mercy; that He would open to them the ever flowing fountains of exquisite and perennial blessedness to let them drink therefrom and never thirst more. O do the churches think and feel how much they can do for their ministers, by praying the heavens open, and letting down on their hearts such rays of glory as shall forever enrapture and hold them in awful apprehension of God's presence and character, as that the spirit of the Highest shall come upon them, and the power of God overshadow them, and transform them from men of clay, to angels of mercy and power to a fallen world? Why do they not pray? Brethren, why do you not pray--pray that God would show you, would show the students here, the community, the whole church in the land, and in the world, his glory? Pray, and give God no rest, till He glorify his people before the nations?

For the whole sermon click on the sermon title
REVELATION OF GOD'S GLORY
December 20, 1843
by Charles Finney