For
@Nancy 's benefit however, I'm only to happy to explain. No-one else need read the following, none of it could possibly be true. Could it?
I mentioned I was in the AOG for several years. Youth pastor, frequent preaching, suburban mission work. Enjoyed my time there in the smallish city I was in. Made some good friends.
We moved to Auckland, and attended suburban a church nearby. Congregation size around 350. The assistant pastor/music leader and I became close friends, and are to this day. However, i don't want to disparage any one individual, because there were many fine genuine Christians in that fellowship. My wife and I attended there for about 3 years. We visited a couple of other churches also, and enjoyed some great Bible study groups.
During my time with the AOG, I adopted the futurist view of prophecy, common to most pentecostal churches of that era, the mid 80s.
For a few different reasons, we became disillusioned with the leadership there. It began to follow the mindset developing in America of the time, which has today grown to full blown "you can be rich like me" if you give more. The focus in the preaching may have tickled some ears, but not mine. It's been a long time, so I don't remember specifics. Just a growing dissatisfaction with stuff.
Nor was I content with the preaching of prophecy. The futurist hermeneutic didn't satisfy my growing hunger for truth. I spoke to several people, and no-one could give me satisfactory answers to my questions. The conclusions made concerning antichrist, wars and rumours, the role of Israel, Russia, Iran and America etc came from disparate texts with no linking mechanism and no apparent historical or current time logic. 1948. Did some mention date setting? Several books had Christ coming before the millennium finished. 1988. "The Late Great Planet Earth" was a book I gave away to many. But I couldn't explain it. Some of the points made seemed to excite people, but there was still no linking chain of reference from one projected scenario to another.
It was at that time my work moved into the bush, miles away from any church and very isolated. Having no fellowship of any serious note, we feel away from the church altogether. I still had faith, and frequently witnessed to friends and neighbours, but becoming more and more doubtful concerning the second coming and its timing. I couldn't answer questions from scripture. I still believed Jesus was coming soon, but I couldn't quite pinpoint why. My previous assurances began to crumble, realising the paucity of real authority in much of what I had been taught.
A few years later, having no church, and now living in rural Waikato in the middle of the North Island, I came to a bitter realisation. My marriage was in trouble, my older kids, who I had dedicated to the Lord and promised to raise them in the faith, were now in the world doing the same things l had been doing when I first came to Jesus 20 years previously. My life, and theirs, was falling apart. I went into a quiet room and wept before the Lord and confessed my unfaithfulness, begging the Lord to heal my marriage and bring my kids home. I told the Lord I needed to start my faith from the beginning. I wanted Truth. I wanted a faith that wouldn't fail me, or Him. I needed to start afresh, relearning the gospel, and all the associated truths whereby we could be saved and assured of God's kingdom. God spoke to me in the depths of my spirit, saying, "seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you". And that's what I did. After 5 years of study, I learned and relearned scripture.
My wife and I have now been married for 48 years. We have 6 children, and all of them are baptized. We have 14 grandchildren, and one of them, an 18 year old grandson, is being dedicated tomorrow by his church as youth pastor.
The gospel isn't complicated. It's made complicated when surrounded by various lateral pathways and textual criticism and diluted compromised truth. We all see this on this very forum. And I have written often concerning the gospel from an adventist perspective. And despite my testimony,, and the testimony of the church itself on its readily available websites there is still numerous false presumptions regarding what we teach, which means you don't believe us and think we are liars. What I love about Adventism? Their love for Jesus. Their appreciation of His love and care for man, His grace and mercy and faithfulness to sinners.
Something what i love about Adventism. Prophecy, understood historically, makes perfect sense. Having been raised Catholic, the prophecies concerning antichrist, the specific prophecies that describe various beasts and their horns and heads etc once obscure and subject to guesswork and not a little imagination, were an absolute eye opener. Seeing them in such a new light, aligning not only with church history, but also secular history, brought the papacy into a light never before realised, and set me on a journey of discovery that makes me wonder how on earth cannot others see what I see? Again, I've shared such views on this forum, but Protestantism it seems no longer to exist here. And the prophecies all, without exception, link together in one chain of truth that is monumentally encouraging knowing how closely God cares for His people. My assurance of the second coming as being soon, is now absolutely legitimate and with sound reason. No guessing. No claivoyance. No imagining numerous discordant scenarios to fit disparate texts that have no link with one another and little context taken into account. We
are at the very end of the last days. And rather than relying on fanciful movies and novels, the bible, correctly understood, forms a firm foundation. That's why, after 30 years, I'm still an adventist. And no-one has offered any better alternative.