Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00579)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Larry F Kolts <llkingston2@j...> 
wrote:
> What is amazing is that these revelations about White seem not to 
have
> hurt the Adventist movement in the slightest. They reported as U.S.
> memebership around 680,000 in 1990 and in 2001 reported 861,860. 

If I were to profess a belief in something, my motivation for that 
would be some apparent mappin between the content of the belief and 
the truth. What we can glan from the Ellen White story is that many 
people (perhaps most) do not see truth as having anything to do with 
selecting what they will and will not believe.

A more remarkable instance of the same thing it that Christians 
generally are still waiting patiently for the return of Jesus Christ 
after 2000 years. Since the original prophecy was that he would toss 
out the emperor Domitian and destroy the Roman empire, that is not 
merely an amazing display of patience, but an axtraordinary triumph 
of determined belief over empirical demonstration that the belief is 
false.