As a first-year primary teaching student, Emmett Harle’s part of a wellbeing program called the Avondale Character Experience Laboratory. It’s built resilience, which helped Emmett just complete Australia’s premier alpine walk. Source: https://wp.avondale.edu.au/news/2022/12/05/hello-adventure/
AT News Editor Rebecca Barceló Has a Bilingual Thank You for Your Year-End Fundraiser Support!
AT Latin America is growing by leaps and bounds as we expand our content in both Spanish and Portuguese. Check out AT News Editor Rebecca Barceló’s bilingual “thank you” for your support of our year-end fundraiser that is powering this exciting work! And if you haven’t yet given, do your part here! Source: https://atoday.org/at-news-editor-rebecca-barcelo-has-a-bilingual-thank-you-for-your-year-end-fundraiser-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=at-news-editor-rebecca-barcelo-has-a-bilingual-thank-you-for-your-year-end-fundraiser-support
Monday: Near-Death Experiences
Some of the most popular modern arguments to “prove” the theory of the natural immortality of the soul are “near-death experiences.” In his book, Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon — Survival of Bodily Death (Atlanta, GA: Mockingbird, 1975), Raymond A. Moody, Jr., presented the results of his five-year study of more than one hundred people who experienced “clinical death” and were revived. These individuals claimed to have seen a loving and warm being of light before coming back to life. This has been regarded as “exciting evidence of the survival of the human spirit beyond death” (back cover). Over the years, many other similar books have been published, promoting the same idea. (See lesson 2.)
Read the resurrection accounts of 1 Kings 17:22-24, 2 Kings 4:34-37, Mark 5:41-43, Luke 7:14-17, and John 11:40-44. How many of them talk about any kind of conscious existence while the resurrected ones were dead, and why is that answer important?
Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com
All near-death experiences reported in modern literature are of people considered clinically dead, but not really dead, in contrast to Lazarus, who was dead for four days and whose corpse was rotting (John 11:39). Neither Lazarus nor any of those raised from the dead in biblical times ever mentioned any afterlife experience, whether in Paradise, in purgatory, or in hell. This is, indeed, an argument from silence, but it is in full agreement with the biblical teachings on the unconscious state of the dead!
But what about the “near-death” experiences so commonly recounted today? If we accept the biblical teaching of the unconsciousness of the dead (Job 3:11-13, Psalm 115:17, Psalm 146:4, Eccles. 9:10), then we are left with two main possibilities: either it is a natural psychochemical hallucination under extreme conditions, or it can be a supernatural satanic deceptive experience (2 Corinthians 11:14). Satanic deception could indeed be the explanation, especially because in some cases these people claim to have talked to their dead relatives! But it could be a combination of both factors.
With this deception prevalent, and so convincing to many, it is crucial that we stick firmly to the teaching of the Word of God, despite whatever experiences we or others might have that go against what the Bible teaches.
| How fascinating that NDEs often now come with the imprimatur of “science.” What does this teach us about how careful we need to be even of things that science supposedly “proves”? |
Amen!
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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/monday-near-death-experiences/
¿Sola Scriptura? Muy complicado
Los adventistas del séptimo día se han identificado históricamente como el “pueblo del libro”. Esa frase pretende transmitir la idea de que tomamos la Biblia como nuestra única regla de fe y, por lo tanto, estudiamos diligentemente las Escrituras para descubrir sus verdades. De hecho, la Creencia Fundamental Adventista #1 declara, en parte: “Las Sagradas […] Source: https://atoday.org/sola-scriptura-muy-complicado/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sola-scriptura-muy-complicado
Sunday: Mysticism
Our world has been flooded by the strong waves of mysticism. The word “mysticism” is a complex term that encapsulates a huge variety of ideas. From a religious perspective, the word implies the union of the individual with the Divine or Absolute in some kind of spiritual experience or trance. This characterizes the worship experience of even certain churches. The phenomena can vary in form and intensity, but the tendency always is to replace the authority of the Written Word of God by one’s own subjective experiences. In any case, the Bible loses much of its doctrinal function, and the Christian remains vulnerable to his or her own experiences. This kind of subjective religion does not provide a safeguard against any deception, especially end-time ones.
Read Matthew 7:21-27. In light of Jesus’ own words, what does it mean to build our spiritual house “on the rock” and to build it “on the sand”?
Image © Justinen Creative from GoodSalt.com
There is a strong tendency in the postmodern Christian world to downplay the relevance of biblical doctrines, regarding them as tedious echoes of an obsolete form of religion. In this process, the teachings of Christ are artificially replaced by the person of Christ — arguing, for instance, that some biblical story or another cannot be true because Jesus, as they perceive Him, would never have allowed that to happen as it is written. Personal feelings and taste end up being the criteria for interpreting the Scriptures or even for rejecting outright what the Bible clearly teaches, often about obedience to God, which as Jesus said is so essential to building one’s house on the rock.
Those who think that it matters not what they believe in doctrine, so long as they believe in Jesus Christ, are on dangerous ground. The Roman Inquisitors who condemned to death untold numbers of Protestants believed in Jesus Christ. Those who had “cast out demons” in Christ’s name (Matthew 7:22, NKJV). had believed in Him. “The position that it is of no consequence what men believe is one of Satan’s most successful deceptions. He knows that the truth, received in the love of it, sanctifies the soul of the receiver; therefore he is constantly seeking to substitute false theories, fables, another gospel.” — Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 520.
| How can we fight the very human tendency to let our emotions and desires cause us to do things contrary to the Word of God? |
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