What is your point here John317. Are you saying that the church I love is 'evil'? Why do you criticize the actions of our church. Do you no longer support the organization? Is our church now Babylon? Just what is your point?

I don't see, in the handshake picture how anyone can tell where the pope's thumb is exactly and can judge whether it is a mason's handshake or not. I don't think that everything that every single person does is calculated to be done a certain way.

John317,

You would do well to use sources uncluttered by an obvious bias to criticize and berate the Church. All the strange conjecture by your sources about its hidden meanings are rather simply off target.


You would also do well to read more carefully what I said before going off on a tangent of elaborating on the meaning of the word "honor." I did NOT say we gave it to him to somehow honor the pope. You obviously ignored my rather clear statement, which I got from the original source, Dr Beach himself, that this medallion was NOT to honor the pope. I clearly said that this is the wrong assumption of some people. It was simply a memento, a gift, given on the occasion of a meeting. This was not a medallion specially designed to be given to the pope, but one given to a wide variety of people as a remembrance of the SDA Church. It has more to do do with honoring the SDA Church that the giver represented than the one receiving it.


Tom

In my opinion, John, any website that exists for pointing out the cooperate sins of the denomination, would not be a site I would not choose to frequent. The Holy Spirit is to convict of sin, not some website. It is far better to light a candle than curse any supposed darkness. I found it interesting that the creators of this website feel that they can call for the disfelowship of people. Below you will see what I am talking about. This is a direct quote from the article. (To be honest it sounds like something which would have been printed on the previous John Osborn's writings before he came back to the church or in the magazine "Our Firm Foundation")

CALL TO REPENTANCE: The giving of a gold-medal, a symbol of the SDA church, is a corporate sin. B.B.Beach represented the Seventh-day Adventist church. We call on both Br. Beach and the General Conference to publicly repudiate the 1977 gold medal gift to the Pope in the pages of the Adventist Review. If not, they should be disfellowshipped. They did not represent true Biblical Seventh-day Adventism.

John, after reading all that stuff you posted, I have only one thing to say....

All that stuff you copied and pasted here strikes me as a legalistic mind unregenerated by grace....

Have a nice day, John....

Some would say that the medal was getting our message across the hard way.

As for the hand shake? Can you say conspiracy theroist? Yeah, I knew you could. The Vatican also has a time machine in the basement they could sell him. Oh, but they don't sell their treasures do they?

Thanks for posting this Taylor.

I just see all this controversy as the work of Satan. HE would seek to divide us. Our task is to Love one Another. If Jesus was walking this earth .... He would show love to the Pope. We are to do the same. For truly ... Love Won Another. It serves no purpose to hate. For Hate will not Win Another.

We in the SDA church have many differences in beliefs. WE are first and foremost Christians. We need to start acting like that. And accepting of our differences would be a good place to do that. We as Christians do not have to agree. One may worship on Saturday one on Sunday. One may eat meat and one may not. But we can come together without calling for disfellowship due to differences in understandings.

Tolerance Tolerance Tolerance.

Actually, the handshake is Beach refusing to kiss Pope's hand which he gave him in a kissing position . So in the kissing position it stayed during the handshake.

*GP*

My refference to masonic handshake was to demonstrate a simple point... and the point is: you can make huge deal even out of such simple things like handshake.

The medallion was not minted specifically for Pope. It was GC medallion that was given to statesman from GC. Some of the points that John gave are actually complaints from Reform SDAs, which I think stretch things a bit... such as that 8 angels represent Sunday :). Although I am very uncomfortable with paintings/engravings of Jesus of any kind.

You are right Cool ... You can find these extremist complaints readily on the web. There are both liberal and conservative extremists web sites out there. I take both extremes with a grain of salt because you have to have too much imagination to believe that stuff. I just don't find it productive. I will stick with the clear word of God which tells me to love one another. And the Pope is just a man.