Understanding Adventist Beliefs: The Holy Spirit

[@oleksandrhrytsak400]

Thank you for you important research.

[@AdventistOrgChurch]

Thank you for your feedback and encouragement.

[@espiritosfera]

I'd like to say that was so inspiring for me the thoughts about the "kenosis" of the Holy Ghost! It was so insightful for me. Thanks a lot...

[@AdventistOrgChurch]

It's wonderful to hear that the message resonated with you and brought deeper understanding. May the Holy Spirit continue to guide and inspire you on your spiritual journey.

[@deavenalajenio6777]

Amen

[@gc2137]

A wonderful resource on this subject is a book called COMING OF THE COMFORTER by Leroy Froom. God Bless! 🙏

[@TraciLebo]

At Jesus' Baptism,The Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove. Does that mean God the Holy Spirit takes the form of Objects when he comes? Is there any other known example of what He can come in? So God the Holy Spirit should not be mistaken as an Angel?

[@ElijahAndMoses]

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT, THE TRINITY AND THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD I always wondered what was so significant about the second Commandment that Rome found it necessary to remove it altogether from the Ten Commandments. But it appears that there is a fundamental truth in that Commandment concerning where God's presence is that is intended to protect us from all forms of false worship. The second Commandment tells us that we should not bow down before any image. This implies that God is not in any image. Which means that God is not everywhere. The Bible tells us that God is in heaven; and heaven is not everywhere. Heaven is above the earth and that is where we should direct our worship to God, where He is. He knows everything that happens everywhere and can go wherever He pleases but His abode is in heaven where Jesus, our High Priest and intercessor, is presenting our cases to Him. - "Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens" (Heb. 8:1). Furthermore, both the prophets Daniel and John saw God in heaven with the angels gathered around His throne and Jesus being separate and distinct (Dan. 7 and Rev. 4, 5). Daniel said "the Ancient of days did sit" (Dan. 7:9) and "one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days" (Dan. 7:13). John said "one sat on the throne" (Rev. 4:2) who was worshipped as the Creator to whom it was said "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Rev. 4:11), with Jesus appearing before Him to receive a book and power and authority, as the Lamb who was slain, while the angels sang, "Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." (Rev. 5:13). God is not everywhere all at once like a vapour while part of Him or an image sits on the throne representing Him. God Himself sits, of whom man was made in His image after His likeness, "made after the similitude of God" (James 3:9). Logically, if God is everywhere, He can be worshipped wherever He is. One could then bow down and worship before a stone, a tree, a person or any object, not as worshipping the object but as worshipping God, since God is in it. That would open the door for the worship of false Gods as no one would be able to tell the difference whether you are worshipping the true God or not. It would not be consistent to forbid worshipping before an object if God is in the object and one is worshipping, not the object, but God who is in the object. This is evident in the experience of the children of Israel in the wilderness. God appeared to them in a cloud and they were not forbidden to bow before Him in the cloud - "And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud" (Ex. 19:9), "And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door" (Ex. 33:10). If God is not in a particular place, say in an image, it means that there is at least one place where He is not. He cannot be everywhere and not everywhere at the same time. The idea that the Holy Spirit is God present everywhere was precisely the argument that Dr. John Harvey Kellogg put forward to justify his pantheistic teachings. And Ellen White told him that he was wrong. Initially, he said that God was in everything. And when God instructed Ellen White to oppose it, he modified it by saying that at the time of his first presentation of the matter in the book "The Living Temple" he did not believe in the Trinity. Because of that, he said he had not given a clear explanation of the matter. He went on to explain that he had now come to believe in the Trinity and could better explain his idea. The new explanation was that it was not God the Father, but God the Holy Ghost who was everywhere and in everything. Ellen White told him that he was wrong. And we can see why. If God the Holy Spirit is everywhere and can be worshipped, it is a doorway to replace worshipping God and Christ in heaven entirely. Another modified version of Kellogg's idea is that the Holy Spirit is really Christ himself or both God and Christ in an omnipresent form. This is also not correct as it places God and Christ on earth rather than in heaven. The pioneers of Seventh-day Adventism stated in their Fundamental Principles of faith published in the 1889 Yearbook that God was everywhere present by His representative, the Holy Spirit. At face value, this would suggest that this representative is omnipresent. But it is perhaps more consistent with scripture to say that He is everywhere present by His representatives the holy spirits. Holy spirits are ministering spirits sent from heaven - "And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." (John1:51). "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" (Heb. 1:14). This is consistent with the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma that are translated in the Bible as spirit. These words are also translated spirits, thus indicating that the Holy Spirit need not be seen as one individual being who is omnipresent but many spirit beings representing God everywhere. From this perspective, there is no denying that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, sent at Pentecost is a person - only not a God-being to be worshipped. Like the Angel of Revelation 18 who comes down from heaven with the latter rain - a similar occurrence as that which took place at Pentecost except more extensive - the Comforter would be seen as a messenger sent by Christ from heaven, as stated repeatedly in John 14-16. Ellen G. White describing the latter rain speaks of a mighty angel from heaven being sent to do this work and further said, "Angels were sent to aid the mighty angel from heaven" (Ellen. G. White, Story of Redemption, p. 399). It should be noted that Jesus's warning against blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is not implying that the Holy Spirit is more to be revered than Jesus Himself. Jesus went back to heaven and promises to return to this earth to take us to His Father's house in heaven. He left the Holy Spirit to guide us until He returns. If we reject that guidance by blasheming against the the Holy Spirit, there will be nobody to guide us. The situation is similar to what God told the children of Israel in the wilderness - "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him." (Ex. 23:20, 21). It is simply warning us not to reject the Holy Spirit's guidance. It is not forbidding us seeking to understand who the Holy Spirit is or what the Holy Spirit does. So, there we have it. The church has now fully accepted Kellogg's idea. Ellen White said that the initial presentation by Kellogg was the alpha of deadly heresies. She said that the omega would follow shortly afterwards and would be accepted. And it did follow shortly afterwards in Kellogg's modified version, based on his acceptance of the Trinity. And the church has now fully accepted it - that God (the Holy Spirit) is everywhere and should be worshipped. So, based on current practice, Jesus is worshipped, the Holy Spirit is worshipped but the One true God is almost entirely ignored. Jesus, praying to His Father, made it clear who the "only true God" is and identified Himself as the one sent by God - "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17:3). Nowhere in the Bible is worship given to anyone else except the one seated on the throne who is referred to as "LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come" (Rev.4:8) and to the Christ, the Lamb, as it will be in the new earth - "And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." (Rev. 21:22). God is the Father of Christ. Accordingly, Christ, the Lamb is seen with "an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads" (Rev. 14:1). It is the name of the Lamb's Father that will be written in their foreheads. Whatever one's concept of the Godhead, the term "godhead" is used only three times in the Bible (Acts 17:29, Rom. 1:20 and Col. 2:9) and in none of these places is the expression used to replace the idea of God being a single individual who has a Divine Son who is worshipped alongside Himself. And not even once does the term "godhead" in scripture allude to the worship of anyone else. All worship should be directed to God and Christ in heaven. It is not about where we are when we worship but, like sending a petition to the king of England, we do not send it to Spain or Australia but to him in England where he is. Similarly, Jesus in teaching us how to pray directed that we say, "Our Father which art in heaven". We should not be praying to nor worshipping anything on earth. We should pray to God in heaven, approaching His throne through Christ, our Mediator, and we should direct our worship to heaven where God is. This is the substance of the second Commandment that Rome has removed.

[@timoflink2686]

You have a lot of faulty logic in your reasoning.

[@ElijahAndMoses]

Such as?

[@icelohia6533]

Your explanation of the nature of the holy spirit does not reflect the true nature of the Father, and His leadership in His household, why would he need another person to to co-run His household, this makes the Father ineffective or incapable that He has to use another person to carry out what needs to be done, its so ILLOGICAL. Typically speaking do I need another husband/father figure in my household to run my family, this is clearly demonstrated in the first Commandment, He doesn't need another being to co-exist so as to run the affairs of the house. So this trinity idea is FLAWED, and should be changed.

[@catholic4sure976]

*The apostles, the Old Testament prophets, nor Christ taught that Adam and Eve kept the Sabbath. I am pleased that the Adventist teach, "God changes not" because God didn't command Gentiles or Christians to keep the Sabbath. Yes, "God changes not" . *Ellen G. White having not found a single verse in Genesis 2 commanding or noting that anyone kept the Sabbath, claimed a vision to say, "God showed her" something entirely untrue* And then, based on that, claimed because Adam and Eve kept the Sabbath, and therefore *"all mankind was obligated to keep the Sabbath"* since there wasn't any Jews in Gen.2* There isn't any Sabbath keeping by anyone in the entire book of Genesis. The basis for the persecution and slander of Christianity founded upon a supposed vision of Ellen G. White which took root in Adventism and those who followed Ellen G. White and the Adventist Church. The works of the Adventist Church is not the work of the Holy Spirit

[@WhiteHorseStudioArt]

The very verse in Genesis 2, states that God blessed the seventh day, and "sanctified" it. That means "to make holy." "Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." Genesis 2:3. It's smack dab right there in Genesis. Before the Jewish nation even existed. So it's for all humanity. And it's in the 10 commandments. Why is it that people have a problem with just 1 of the 10 commandments? They should call it the "9 commandments" instead. If God "made it holy" then that means it IS holy. I'd rather obey God, than human religions that randomly assign a day as holy. Like Sunday, which comes straight out of paganism. That makes no sense to me. I'd rather go to the Bible and get the facts straight. This is not to say that people who go to church on Sunday are lost or anything like that. God judges people on what they understand. Not what they don't understand. Because He's fair. But if we're talking about authority, the Bible has authority over any religious tradition. The Sabbath is not bad, it's just His day of rest. Is it wrong to rest? Why not just do what God says? What if there is a blessing in actually resting and spending time with God. God owns our entire lives. Giving Him a day would seem like it's not that hard. I'm not condemning or judging anyone. I'm just saying, if you find out about the Sabbath day. It's not a bad commandment. It's talking about resting on His holy day. Maybe people are too selfish, living their lives.. they can't set apart a day, I don't know.

[@catholic4sure976]

@@WhiteHorseStudioArt Count the number of people who keep the Sabbath in Genesis 2 and tell everyone here how many and their names.

[@WhiteHorseStudioArt]

@@catholic4sure976 Lol. That's like asking me to count the number of people who God told in Genesis 2, not to murder, not to lie, not to worship other gods. It's not necessary my friend. Because it's a given. It was a perfect world. They would have had no desire to disobey Him. The note-worthy thing, is that God "sanctified" the seventh day. He never sanctified another day after that. It's human tradition that instituted Sunday as a day of rest. As a replacement for the Sabbath. Which makes no sense. I understand your point. That He didn't specifically record it, like Him telling Adam and Eve "Keep this day with Me." But it makes sense they would have spent the Sabbath with Him, speaking face to face. Since He rested, He probably spent it with them, communing with them, enjoying the beautiful world around them. Anyways. "Holy" is a special word. I can't call something holy, if it's not. If God calls it holy, it's His thing. I'm not going to mess with it. Not judging you or anything. Just saying.

[@jerrystilwell7666]

Read Genesis 26:5, Abraham kept God's laws and commandments.

[@catholic4sure976]

@@jerrystilwell7666 Gen.26:5 Since there is no example of any of the Great men of God from Genesis to Exodus keeping the Sabbath, the Sabbatarians, attempt to use Gen.26:5 as a place of refuge to imply that the Abraham kept the Sabbath and Holy Days but, no such thing is taught by that scripture. The Sabbath and Holy Days are uniquely contained in the law of Moses (Mal.4:4). In an absurd fashion, the Adventist and others attempt to imply that Abraham was under the law of Moses by quoting Gen.26:5. Moses was not even born for several hundred years. It is a grave error to attempt to read scripture backwards instead of forwards. The law of Moses is 430 years after Abraham DIED. Nehemiah 9:14, specifically tells us that the Sabbath was made known at the time of Moses. It is utterly foolish to imply that Abraham kept the "Passover"! What ignorance! The Passover is not until 430 years later. Or that he kept the "Days of Unleavened Bread" associated with the Passover. What biblical scholar would say, "Abraham kept Pentecost" ? Any Jew or Christian scholar would laugh him out of the room. So what law is it that Abraham kept? What "commandments" did Abraham keep? When the flood destroyed all people except Noah and his family, God made a covenant with Noah and "his seed after him" . Since Noah is the only head of family on earth, every race and human being who is born after him, is "his seed after him" . In other words, ALL peoples (nations) for all time. They are to keep the laws of the covenant with Noah. The Noahide Laws are spelled out in Genesis 9:1-10. They do not contain any Sabbaths or Holy Days, that was specifically given only to the Children of Israel. The Noahide laws do contain moral commandments and laws. Since Abraham is a born a "seed after Noah" he is obligated to keep the Noahide laws. And these are the "commandments and laws he kept" . Abraham was not under the law of Moses! What the Armstrong's and Ellen White attempted to do is force the scripture to say that Abraham was under the law of Moses, which any biblical scholar or learned person in the scriptures knows is utter foolishness. Since the law of Moses does occur until 430 years after Abraham is dead!. Thus, you will not find Abraham keeping a Sabbath or Holy Day. Clean and Unclean meats as an example. Noah's Covenant plainly and clearly says that "every creature" is good for food. In Gen.9:3 God "sanctifies" by scripture every creature to be eaten. The Apostle Paul makes reference to this in 1Tim.4:4, Gen.9:3 "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." The Apostle Paul agrees saying in 1Tim.4: " 4For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 5For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. " The Law of Moses is the law of the Covenant with God and the Children of Israel, and in that law, they are not permitted to eat unclean animals. It only applies to Jews, not to gentiles. Lev.11 was not a part of any law for Abraham to keep, it was even given as a law for 430 years! How absurd to make Abraham under a covenant and a law that was even given until centuries later. In Mt.15:16-20 Christ makes clear that nothing a man eats can defile him but what comes out his heart is what defiles him. Likewise, there is no commandment to keep the Sabbath until the law of Moses! Neither is there any example of anyone keeping a Sabbath until Moses. It is ONLY when the commandment is given that we find an example of people keeping the Sabbath and that is Exodus 16, not Genesis. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Abraham wasn't under the law of Moses. Moses was even born for centuries and the law was given until 430 years later. It is rather ridiculous to think that Moses whom wrote the book of Genesis failed to mention a single example of anyone keeping the Sabbath when he points out from chapter 3 on, sacrifices of animals, grain offerings and circumcision and a host of other things. The Sabbath was not known before Moses. Nehemiah 9:13-14 points out that the Sabbath was "MADE KNOWN" at Sinai, not at creation. Moses, to whom the Sabbath was FIRST revealed, uses a literary prolepsis in Genesis to describe the Sabbath. In other words, because it was revealed to him for the Jews (Exodus 31:12-19, Ezek 20), He writes it into the creation story because it was entirely UNKNOWN before then. And scripture bears this out. Moses does this also in Gen.2:12, Moses writes of the land of Cush (Ethopia, KJV) while Cush is not born until 1600 years later! Just as in Gen.2, there is not any land named after Ham's son "Cush" until 1600 years or more later, so in Gen.2, there is the seventh day but not commanded until Exodus 16. So, Moses may describe the blessing of the Seventh day in Gen.2 while the COMMAND TO KEEP IT, does not occur until Exodus 16.