School Saves

By Andrew McChesney

A luxury car pulled up at a Seventh-day Adventist elementary school on the first day of classes in Ukraine. Two children carrying bouquets of flowers emerged from the car, together with their parents. Ukrainian children often present teachers with flowers on the first day of school. “We want our children to study at your school,” the father told the school principal.

Image © Pacific Press

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the principal replied. “We don’t have room.”

The father persisted. “We will buy new desks and chairs for all the students and pay double the tuition,” he said. “Please let our children study.”

The principal wondered whether father’s expectations might be too high.

“You know that we don’t have government accreditation to hold final exams,” she said.

“Your kids would have to take them at the public school.”

“That’s no problem,” the mother said. “We’ll help you get accreditation.”

“You know this is a Seventh-day Adventist school?” the principal said.

Adventists are dismissed as a sect by many people in the former Soviet Union. But the father knew it was an Adventist school, and he was not deterred. “Yes, and we want our children to study here,” he said.

The mother explained that the family had vacationed at the Black Sea a few weeks earlier, and the children had made new friends from the school. Every evening, the children had excitedly told their parents about the school and pleaded to go. Then the mother handed her business card to the principal. She was a city judge. Her husband was a high-ranking military officer.

The children entered the second and third grade at the school, and they immediately loved it. But as the weeks passed, they began begging their parents to read Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories to them just as their classmates’ parents were reading to them. The mother told children to ask the teacher to sell the book to them. “Then I will read to you every night,” she said. The children bought the book, and she read to them every night.

The months passed, and the children asked to go to Sabbath School and church. The parents took them every Sabbath. The next summer, a year after the family first heard about Adventists while on their Black Sea vacation, both the mother and father were baptized.

“Adventist education is closely connected with the mission of the church,” said Ivan Riapolov (pictured), education director of the Euro-Asia Division, whose territory includes Ukraine. “You cannot separate Adventist education and Adventist mission. Wherever schools open, the church grows.”

Thank you for your mission offerings that support Seventh-day Adventist education worldwide.

Amen!(0)

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/inside-story-school-saves/

Further Thought:

“When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country [the United States] shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near.” — Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 451.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

“We have tended to overlook the fact that Sunday is the day of worship of the opposing forces … in the story line of the Book of Revelation. Sunday is an extremely important symbol, revealing the unbelievable craftiness and sophistry of the dragon. … This … change of God’s law expresses in one simple action the very essence of the hatred of the dragon against God in the cosmic conflict. Its simplicity is highly deceptive. The dragon has sought to usurp God’s place in the cosmos by depicting himself as the true object of worship and arguing that God’s law is unjust — that it should be changed. The dragon changed the law at the juncture within the Decalogue where God is identified as Creator and Redeemer, the only one worthy of worship (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:1-33; cf. Revelation 4:11; Revelation 5:9, Revelation 5:13-14). The change of the law manifests not only the dragon’s hatred for the will of the Lord (the law), but it is also his attempt to usurp God’s place by becoming the object of worship. … The universalization of this change in the law would assure him victory.” — Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, “The Closing of the Cosmic Conflict: Role of the Three Angels’ Messages,” unpublished manuscript, Pages 53, 54.

Discussion Questions:

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The post Friday: Further Thought ~ The Seal of God and Mark of the Beast: Part 2 appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/friday-further-thought-seal-of-god-and-mark-of-beast-part-2/