Expert: Mr. McClellan - 11/13/2011

Question
Greeting to you Mr. McClellan, I'm really encouraged by the answer and advice you gave me on marriage. May God bless you in Jesus name. You said something about 7th days Adventist, please help me with detailed information about them. I have for long been longing to serve God with all my life, and it will be better for me to come back now i have not gone far with them. I did not want to miss track again, after what I passed thought for some years in the hands of Family Radio. I tried to download the PDF but I can't find it. I will also be happy if you will send to me the PDF of Kingdom of cult. God's grace to you. Ikechukwu

Answer
Hello Ikechukwu,
I'm truly sorry for the long delay since my last communication to you. I know that getting the right answer is most important to you as it should be to anyone.

Answer these questions: Do you sincerely believe that what Jesus taught and demonstrated by his own life is the way to be reconciled to God, that it is the truth about how to live now and that you will be raised to life eternal if you remain faithful and trust in his word?
Read Acts 2 and Romans 6 and answer this: Are you willing to do what Peter told all those people that they must do in order to obtain God's forgiveness and then added to the saved (forgiven)?
Are you willing to let love be the motive for everything you say and do once you are forgiven?
If you answered "Yes" to these questions, then what are you waiting for? Go be baptized so that your sins will be forgiven and you will be as clean as if they had been washed away like dirt. Then, you will be as if you had been literally born again and able to begin life anew with your faith in Jesus to guide you.
Acts 22:16, Romans 6, 1Peter 3:18-21.


Rather than me trying to write what would take many pages to explain, I want to direct you to a few sites that will tell you most of what you want to know about a great many things. Just remember, the people who wrote them are just humans and none of them are able to present miracles to establish that everything they say is true beyond doubt. Miracles such as described in the Bible do not happen now. All who claim otherwise are either ignorant or liars.
http://www.apologeticspress.org/
http://www.scripturessay.com/article.php?cat=books&id=7
http://www.waltermartin.com/cults.html
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/fprophets.html

My original messages is below.
I hope this will be helpful to you.
All my best to you and I wish you a joyful holiday season and a very happy and successful new year.
Mr McClellan

For some reason, I did not receive notice of your letter in my email until just now. I hope you haven't been waiting long.

First of all, I trust that you have read the Bible many times and are very familiar with what it contains even if you aren't sure about what it all means just as almost no one does mostly because of the way they try to interpret it.

I was going to give you the site address where you could get the PDF of Kingdom of the Cults but it seems to have been removed. The book was recently updated and I suppose they don't want people getting the older version for free so that will have to buy the new one. Oh well, the author's definition of "cult," which seems to have become pretty much the standard definition, is wrong anyway. That's because, according to what the writers of the Bible taught, his own theology is wrong. No matter, the information he gives about those groups popularly called cults (which includes SDA) is valuable as long as you know, first of all, how to identify true Christianity. Obviously, almost no one knows how to do this or there would not be all of the differing "denominations" that exist and all claiming to be Christian. As Paul said in 1Cor. 1:10-12, All Christians should believe and practice the same things because Christ did not teach a bunch of contradictory ideas. That is to say, "Christ is not divided." True Christianity is not made up of a bunch of denominations teaching different doctrines which mostly come from the teachings of a lot of other men's ideas about what Jesus and his apostles taught. Two of the most popular and better known are John Calvin and Martin Luther. They are where the names "Calvinists" and "Lutherans" come from. For example, the Baptist churches typically follow the teachings of John Calvin and what he thought the Bible said. Lutherans, of course, typically follow the peculiar teachings of Martin Luther but both groups, as well as most others, combine the teachings of Calvin and Luther. They simply do not recognize that these two men were dead wrong and that by following their teachings people will remain at enmity with God.
It is precisely because of a number of serious misconcepts that people have accepted as the truth that it is very difficult to explain to them, and to you, what the real truth is. It seems that the best I can do is hope that you'll read "the scriptures" and think about what I point out to you concerning them.
Here is my advice. When you read the New Testament, pay close attention to what Jesus taught. You should see that he taught his disciples to be unselfish and not to let themselves put any confidence in material things to keep them safe or that rich people are rich because God favors them above the poor because they are better than the poor. Jesus taught them that a person's motives for his behavior was what determined whether their actions were right or wrong. Love and concern for the welfare of others was to be the motive for everything you do just as it is
God's motive for everything he does and we are supposed to be imitating God if we are to be his friend and a citizen in his kingdom which, on earth, is called "the church" and there is only one true church because there is only one way to God; one set of beliefs that people MUST understand and practice in order to be acceptable to God.
As I have already said, it's because of some serious misconcepts that people are lost and confused about the Bible and have bought into the false doctrine of relativism that says no one can actually know what the Bible teaches and that all we can do is make a sincere guess and trust that God will accept whatever we decide is right even if it does not agree with what he actually requires. Now, isn't that an absurd idea? Can you see that this ridiculous idea puts humans in a position of authority over God that actually requires God to accept what we think he should require? We've begun to think that God has no choice but to accept our interpretations of what he says no matter how they may differ from what he meant.

I must stop for now and finish my reply at a later time but I hope you are paying close attention. I will try to help you understand what the misconcepts are that I've spoken of and how to more accurately understand what the Bible really has to say about God and how to become friends again.
Sincerely,
Mr McClellan