"God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 - unOFFICIAL ADVENTIST FORUM

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And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with
– even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department.
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#22372 - 01/20/05 06:55 AM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: ]
Sid Registered: 09/27/04 Posts: 1222 Loc: CA	Quote: Those were my original thoughts when I came up with the idea anyway. Looking at it so far, I feel kind of disappointed. Maybe it's just this bad day in this bad week I'm having -- maybe it will look different tomorrow. I thought it was only me having a bad week! My week was pretty awful too. Misery loves company. I pray as the week draws to an end, the weekend will provide you with rest and a renewed spirit Nico. Nico, I thank God for sending his Holy Spirit to speak through you. I know it was His Spirit through you that gave birth to the idea for a study group for Desire of Ages. It will be exciting to see the fruits from what He has done through you! We need you here. I need you here.
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#22373 - 01/20/05 03:47 PM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: lastsupper]
Beryl Registered: 04/05/03 Posts: 2148 Loc: Perth, Western Australia	Yes, Nico, I agree with Sid -- we ALL need you here! The part that struck me (DA p.21) was the sentence, when refering to the angels, that said, "by gentle and patient ministry they move upon the human spirit, to bring the lost into a fellowship with Christ which is even closer than they themselves can know". Imagine that -- the fellowship which we have with Christ is a closer fellowship than the angels themselves can understand! What a wonderful privilege we can have! I pray that God will help me to form an even closer bond with Him than I now have. God bless, Beryl _________________________ "Grace is God doing for us, in us and through us that which He requires of us but which is impossible for us to do in or for ourselves."
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#22374 - 01/22/05 05:17 AM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: Vera]
Nicodema Registered: 11/22/03 Posts: 777 Loc: Beyond your grasp	Sid, thanks for your prayers. I believe the Lord is choosing to answer them, though He sometimes moves in mysterious ways -- I'm actually down with the flu -- but it meant I got today (Friday) off from babysitting and have had to spend the day resting and doing quiet things. My first thought in chapter one comes from the following: Quote: There is nothing, save the selfish heart of man, that lives unto itself. No bird that cleaves the air, no animal that moves upon the ground, but ministers to some other life. There is no leaf of the forest, or lowly blade of grass, but has its ministry. Every tree and shrub and leaf pours forth that element of life without which neither man nor animal could live; and man and animal, in turn, minister to the life of tree and shrub and leaf. We typically regard the "cycle of life" as presented to us in nature today as being the result of the fall, i.e., animals preying upon other animals, birds eating insects, etc. Yet this passage seems to suggest otherwise. How do you -- or how can we -- reconcile this seeming endorsement of this system as built-in by the hand of God with our notion that death had not entered the world until sin did, and our notion that the predatorial "laws of the jungle" with "nature red in tooth and claw" was an after-effect of the fall? (Do you understand my question here? Am I making sense?) _________________________ "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" -- T.S. Eliot
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#22375 - 01/22/05 05:22 AM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: ]
Nicodema Registered: 11/22/03 Posts: 777 Loc: Beyond your grasp	This passage is, of course, a classic: Quote: Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. "With His stripes we are healed." By His life and His death, Christ has achieved even more than recovery from the ruin wrought through sin. It was Satan's purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God than if we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. _________________________ "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" -- T.S. Eliot
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#22376 - 01/22/05 06:21 AM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: ]
cricket Registered: 11/11/03 Posts: 4766	Quote: with our notion that death had not entered the world until sin did Perhaps we can reconcile our notion through the idea that the death we typically think of is not the death that results as the wages of sin.
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#22377 - 01/22/05 12:29 PM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: CaregiverDee]
Nicodema Registered: 11/22/03 Posts: 777 Loc: Beyond your grasp	So then - are you saying you believe that God intended the law of the jungle, of fang and claw, of prey and predator, from the beginning? If so, that makes for a very different characterization of God than what Christians have typically understood ... ... on the other hand, if comprehended in the sense that is spoken of in the referenced passage, as that of being all life ministering to other forms of life, there is a distinctly "green earth apocalypse" flavor to the thing. (I'm not certain whether it would be accurate to label this a Buddhist- or Hindu- flavored thing so I call it a "green earth apocalypse" flavored thing instead. This is my own term, derived from an extremely visceral visionary experience courtesy of a certain entheogenic tea in which I perceived -- that is, lived through by hallucination -- the creation of the new world through, and following upon, the destruction of the old by fire. When I say visceral I do mean visceral, for I was the earth in this experience. It was kind of a Hinduesque vision with a Mayan aeonic transition overlay -- if you get my drift -- though I suspect most here will not. LOL.) _________________________ "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" -- T.S. Eliot
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#22378 - 01/22/05 01:49 PM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: ]
Beryl Registered: 04/05/03 Posts: 2148 Loc: Perth, Western Australia	Quote: How do you -- or how can we -- reconcile this seeming endorsement of this system as built-in by the hand of God with our notion that death had not entered the world until sin did, and our notion that the predatorial "laws of the jungle" with "nature red in tooth and claw" was an after-effect of the fall? .... (Do you understand my question here? Am I making sense?) Yes, Nico, you make complete sense! And some things will need to wait until the New Earth for the complete answer. However, reading in Genesis and Isaiah, I feel that we can get a partial answer. Genesis 1:29, immediately after creation, we read, "And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground -- everything that has the breath of life in it -- I give every green plant for food." And it was so". So, there would have been no carnivorous animals or birds, all eating the same diet of the plants of the field. However, with the entrance of death into the world -- and it affected both mankind and every other living creature -- there would have been a need for carnivorous fish, birds and animals in order to deal with the RESULTS of sin. Did God actually create some carnivorous creatures? Or did He just allow some to change and so be able to cope with a change in diet. Remember, mankind lived a long --- long time coming from their perfect state, and I should imagine that the same would have applied to the perfectly created animals, so the quantity of "dead flesh" available would not have been much to begin with. There would have been plenty of time for adaptation. When we come to Isaiah we find several pictures of the New Earth. "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them ...... etc." (Isa 11) "No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there." Isa. 35:9. "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox." Isa. 66:25. The prophets would have used the illustrations from the animals which they knew, but I think we can be sure that death will not be part of the New Earth scene, and once again there will be no need for the carnivorous fish, birds or animals. Are those thoughts any help to you? God bless, Beryl _________________________ "Grace is God doing for us, in us and through us that which He requires of us but which is impossible for us to do in or for ourselves."
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#22379 - 01/22/05 03:40 PM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: Vera]
Nicodema Registered: 11/22/03 Posts: 777 Loc: Beyond your grasp	Quote: Are those thoughts any help to you? Yes -- but they don't explain how Ellen White seemed to portray the carnivorous predatory cycle as part of the evidence of "every life ministering to another life" in contrast to the "selfish heart of man" which alone "lives unto itself." This would only make sense if God built that into the fabric of the "Original Plan From the Beginning." Because surely if He did not, then man would not be alone in not becoming food for something else and the contrast would not be a valid one. However, I find the passage itself highly poetic as well, so the value may lie in discerning its literary structure. The idea of the "sun shining to gladden a thousand worlds" is one example -- as far as we know in our solar system, our sun "gladdens" only 9 or 10 "worlds" along with a number of smaller satellites and a host of asteroids which can hardly be classed as "worlds" -- so clearly the language in this particular passage is meant to be hyperbolic, illustrative and poetic rather than literal, concrete or instructive. And perhaps that is the real point here -- to recognize the presence of these literary structures in EGW's writing and comprehend the impact of them on how we interpret a given passage, as we proceed with our study of Desire of Ages. By the way I can't wait to get into my favorite chapters in here!! Like you can't guess which ones they are!!! _________________________ "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" -- T.S. Eliot
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#22380 - 01/23/05 12:01 AM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: ]
Beryl Registered: 04/05/03 Posts: 2148 Loc: Perth, Western Australia	Perhaps we have all missed two little sentences which comes just before the passage which we have been discussing. "Now sin has marred God's perfect work, yet that handwriting remains. Even now all created things declare the glory of His excellence." So, in this passage, yes, rich in poetic structure, we find EGW referring to the world as it was after the entrance of sin, not in its Edenic perfection. All creatures minister to the rest of creation -- even if only by manuring their environment, and returning to the earth the vital elements to keep feeding the soil! Just a thought. Beryl _________________________ "Grace is God doing for us, in us and through us that which He requires of us but which is impossible for us to do in or for ourselves."
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#22381 - 01/23/05 12:04 AM Re: "God With Us". Desire of Ages Chapter 1 [Re: ]
Beryl Registered: 04/05/03 Posts: 2148 Loc: Perth, Western Australia	Quote: By the way I can't wait to get into my favorite chapters in here!! Like you can't guess which ones they are!!! Patience, my dear -- PATIENCE!!!! _________________________ "Grace is God doing for us, in us and through us that which He requires of us but which is impossible for us to do in or for ourselves."
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