Hi Brother Richard:
During my childhood I lived grew up with secular parents. During my teens I lived with a Catholic stepfather and during my young adult life in lived in the world of rock music and hippie values and on top of that I have been and still am a Democrat. I bought into the world hook and bate and I called it freedom. I wanted my freedom more than anything else in my life.
I knew there was a God, but He was not a part of my life. I only saw whites against black, rich against poor, discrimination against Jews and that there was good and bad. I knew we had laws of the land that dictated how we were to behave and follow. What I learned as a child from moving around a lot due to the military I saw values were different in one place and values different in another place. This confused me greatly growing up in that I did not know what was correct and what was not.
As a small example when I lived in Texas not only could boys and girls see each other during gym, they could even do sports together. When I went to Rhode Island there was a curtain between the boys and girls at gym and they never were allowed to play together. Even moral and Christian values differed from place to place.
The civil rights movement, the hippie movement all in the 60’s had a great impact in my view of life. I saw what people called Christian Values were the ones that put the Japanese into internment camps where they lost all they had and never got it back. I saw segregation by Christian Values against blacks and the poor.
I saw the United States between the have and have nots and that this country that was claimed to be under God was part of the problem. I saw those that were the underdogs of life by the prejudice and righteous thinking people who called themselves Christians and I saw myself as one of those as underdogs due to my disability. I had a banner I carried against those that I felt were evil in the way they treated others and this called Protestant Principles which is the title of this topic were them that were like that.
What I did not realize was that I was not free at all. I began to see the world as getting ugly with values such as abortion and homosexuality, etc., as wrong and that in some way I was in chains and knew I needed something different. All those years I can look back and see the hand of God trying to reach me, but I was not ready to receive it. It was not until a friend gave me a Bible and my mother came back into my life with her Judaism that He was able to make an inroad into my life.
Since my joining the church I have put the two together believing that as a church, as the remnant of God’s people that we also were and are the underdog against Protestant Principles Values and how we treated people. This nation is no longer under God and though as hard as the mainstream Christian believers may try and they will try to change the course of what is happening here, but will fail. Why? Because this nation has gone in the way of Rome both physically and spiritually. Only God now can save the people and the coming of Jesus is the only cure.
This nation has laws that dictate what we can and cannot do. It is still against the law to murder and steal. It still has punishments they believe to fit the crime. This is also true of many countries that do not have Protestant Principles in their nation. Though I believe for myself that the six commandments are good and pure values that we should live by they are and belong to God. It would be good for all to live by them, but they are not ones that we can force upon others such as to not covet.
I will not force my Christian values on others. I will respect the laws of the nation and follow them until they force me from being able to worship, as I believe. I live my life by God’s laws, not man. I will obey His commandments in my life and share God and His values wherever I am able to do so.
What I see is that the Protestant Churches and the Rome Catholic church are trying to force their values of God onto all those that do not believe their way. I read this with the Puritans that came here that they were going to make this new world a Puritan faith nation. Force is against the nature of God. If we choose to live under His principles then we are bound to obey them and suffer the consequences if we don’t. We are not a theocracy nation. What we have been is a nation with religious freedom unknown in this world until now. And that is soon to change. We cannot separate the first four from the six last of God’s Laws. They are all one that are proclaimed by God. They belong to the people who follow Him, not to those that do not. We cannot force God’s principles upon those that do not believe or accept them.
What I know today is within the Seventh-day Adventist church we have standards that are from our God. When we accepted this faith for our lives we are bound by keeping them and living them. Our only authority is within this church and when people break those laws of God we are admonished to enforce them, not force them upon them. If they do not obey then we are told to banish them from the church, we cannot do more than that. Yes we can do many things to help them, but we cannot force them to do right. They must decide what is right and live by it.
I doubt Brother Richard we will every see the same. As I recall it took God forty years to get Egypt out of Moses. Maybe if I am wrong God still has another ten years to go, but as long as I obey His principles in my life, follow His will in my life and witness of His will in my life I believe that whatever these Protestant Principles are I am not lost for what I believe them to be and that I do not believe in, but believe in God and His laws for myself and pray that others will come to that same place with God.
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Liane, the Zoo Mama
Romans 8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.