An email about Elder Frazee’s sermon series on Christian courtship.
N____,
How did those CDs turn out? Do you still think those principles don’t work? I see it a little differently from what Elder Frazee was saying.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Burdick
To: _________@aol.com
Sent: Wed, Dec 2, 2009 2:49 am
Subject: Re:
They are fine in principle but the real world is different in some ways. He needs to temper his discussion with reality in order to reach people. How are they different for you?
Hi N____,
If the Advent movement had accepted Righteousness by Faith by Jesus, Adventists would have become servants to the gospel. They would have gone out to uplift others and help them experience Jesus’ redeeming love. Many hungering young men and women would have joined in the movement and there wouldn’t have been such a shortage of dedicated Christian young people to find as lifemates. By rejecting Jesus we shot ourselves in the foot. If we hadn’t rejected His message, so many desperate young men and women wouldn’t have struck out to search for a mate outside the movement, or completely give up on the hard search which was delineated by a very high standard.
A strict law is only good and useful if it comes with grace. I’ve seen dead people who adhered to the strict dating expectations of EGW. They were dead because they only knew rules and regulations. No friendship with Jesus lightened their hearts. They were a curse to their spouses. They could only obey part of the high standard, because the other part required them to make a happy home, which they couldn’t do. So that made them transgressors. Because if you don’t obey the whole law, you obey none of it. But they felt very justified in the part they complied with.
All this confusion because the righteousness of faith, a contrite and broken spirit, was denied. Its amazing how much misery we will accept just so we don’t bow the pride to the love of Jesus. If we don’t fall on the Stone and be broken, it will fall on us and grind us to powder.
Take care, sister,
David
Editor’s note:
Let me just say here that I do not oppose the courting principles of the Spirit of Prophecy. They are not outmoded and Elizabethan, but are beautiful and correct, even in this 21st century. Human nature hasn’t changed over the centuries. Young hearts can be hurt today just as they were in yesteryear.
But the issue here is that the sinful heart, as religious–as thoroughly Adventist as it can be, is dead to obedience without the atoning grace of Christ working in their heart and mind. Rebellion and insubordination are not respecters of persons. Even the best of us are born capable of the worst. Being Adventist and going to Southern Missionary College doesn’t change our naturally cursed hearts.
Preaching the high standard, even with the best fatherly delivery, without weaving in the redeeming love of Jesus, only hardens the natural self-sufficiency in our hearts. And it does for its adherents as if it poured concrete in buckets for the listeners to stick their feet into, and then once hardened toss them into the deepest sea. Dye the concrete pink and make it smell like roses, but they are still going down. Glub! Glub! Glub!
“But wilt thou know, O vain man, that” “works” “without” “faith” “is dead?” (Jas. 2:20).
“And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” (Rev. 3:1).
Without the love of Jesus inspiring the heart, the unconverted heart just doesn’t feel like loving others. It doesn’t have the Holy Spirit moving it to do good all the time. It cannot grow in grace because grace hasn’t been born yet. But it can comply with rules. So rules becomes the religion. And the natural stubborness of the proud unbroken heart will watch its marriage crumble, its family fly to the four winds of worldliness, and its own personal religion die a long, dismal death, and still hold that its in right standing with God and under His favor because of the empty framework of obedience it still retains.
“The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.” (1Cor. 15:56).
“The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1Pet. 4:17).
How did those CDs turn out? Do you still think those principles don’t work? I see it a little differently from what Elder Frazee was saying.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Burdick
To: _________@aol.com
Sent: Wed, Dec 2, 2009 2:49 am
Subject: Re:
They are fine in principle but the real world is different in some ways. He needs to temper his discussion with reality in order to reach people. How are they different for you?
Hi N____,
If the Advent movement had accepted Righteousness by Faith by Jesus, Adventists would have become servants to the gospel. They would have gone out to uplift others and help them experience Jesus’ redeeming love. Many hungering young men and women would have joined in the movement and there wouldn’t have been such a shortage of dedicated Christian young people to find as lifemates. By rejecting Jesus we shot ourselves in the foot. If we hadn’t rejected His message, so many desperate young men and women wouldn’t have struck out to search for a mate outside the movement, or completely give up on the hard search which was delineated by a very high standard.
A strict law is only good and useful if it comes with grace. I’ve seen dead people who adhered to the strict dating expectations of EGW. They were dead because they only knew rules and regulations. No friendship with Jesus lightened their hearts. They were a curse to their spouses. They could only obey part of the high standard, because the other part required them to make a happy home, which they couldn’t do. So that made them transgressors. Because if you don’t obey the whole law, you obey none of it. But they felt very justified in the part they complied with.
All this confusion because the righteousness of faith, a contrite and broken spirit, was denied. Its amazing how much misery we will accept just so we don’t bow the pride to the love of Jesus. If we don’t fall on the Stone and be broken, it will fall on us and grind us to powder.
Take care, sister,
David
Editor’s note:
Let me just say here that I do not oppose the courting principles of the Spirit of Prophecy. They are not outmoded and Elizabethan, but are beautiful and correct, even in this 21st century. Human nature hasn’t changed over the centuries. Young hearts can be hurt today just as they were in yesteryear.
But the issue here is that the sinful heart, as religious–as thoroughly Adventist as it can be, is dead to obedience without the atoning grace of Christ working in their heart and mind. Rebellion and insubordination are not respecters of persons. Even the best of us are born capable of the worst. Being Adventist and going to Southern Missionary College doesn’t change our naturally cursed hearts.
Preaching the high standard, even with the best fatherly delivery, without weaving in the redeeming love of Jesus, only hardens the natural self-sufficiency in our hearts. And it does for its adherents as if it poured concrete in buckets for the listeners to stick their feet into, and then once hardened toss them into the deepest sea. Dye the concrete pink and make it smell like roses, but they are still going down. Glub! Glub! Glub!
“But wilt thou know, O vain man, that” “works” “without” “faith” “is dead?” (Jas. 2:20).
“And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” (Rev. 3:1).
Without the love of Jesus inspiring the heart, the unconverted heart just doesn’t feel like loving others. It doesn’t have the Holy Spirit moving it to do good all the time. It cannot grow in grace because grace hasn’t been born yet. But it can comply with rules. So rules becomes the religion. And the natural stubborness of the proud unbroken heart will watch its marriage crumble, its family fly to the four winds of worldliness, and its own personal religion die a long, dismal death, and still hold that its in right standing with God and under His favor because of the empty framework of obedience it still retains.
“The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.” (1Cor. 15:56).
“The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1Pet. 4:17).
posted by David | 6:46 AM
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