The mother of one of my coworkers has recently joined the Seventh Day Adventists. What are these people about and is it considered a cult? I was unable to locate anything on Rickross.com

Thanks for your help!

has a fine track record. Among other things, they're renowned for thier commitment to healthy living, and they pioneered warnings about tobacco use and the benefits of well balanced vegetarian diets decades before such information reached the mainstream. The Adventists have been dedicated missionaries and operate many of the best hospitals and clinics in Third World countries. They have an excellent medical school in Loma Linda California, too.

Personal anecdote: Twenty years ago I met a medical student who was from a Seventh Day Adventist family. He told me so many physicians were members of his parent's church that there was a display board that lit up with pager numbers during the services. That way any on call doctors would know they were being paged. Otherwise, the worship service would've been disrupted by a chorus of beeping pagers!

The mainstream Seventh Day Adventist church is great. You may be worried because some fringe churces have split off or been disowned by Seventh Day Adventists. David Koresh (Waco) was involved with one of these fringe churches--they are not representative of mainstream Seventh Day Adventists at all.

As long as your friend's mom is in a mainstream Seventh Day Adventist congregation, things should be fine, though its always important to retain one's common sense and set firm limits any time a group or leader start getting losing a sense of compassion and lose any sense of humor about themselves.

Just don't listen to their spiel about the Catholics. I was given a little booklet by one 7th Day Adventist entitled "The Secret Terrorists" - In this book they claim that the Catholics are at the root of everything that is evil in this world, and even claim that it was the Catholics who sunk the Titanic, and get this one - that it was the Catholics behind the World Trade Centre disaster! I have never read such nonsense in all my life - yet some of these people are distributing this booklet as if it was the absolute truth.

Otherwise, they are a nice bunch of people but some of them do seem to focus on this anti-Catholic tangent, which to me seems quite bizarre.

Well when the leader of any group (the new Pope...) is a confessed former Nazi soldier, you're going to get some strange comments on both sides of the equation I suppose. :?

The current Pope was never a Nazi Soldier. He was forced against his will into the Hitler's teen group, the brown shirts, and he and his brother managed to escape from it, I believe, before WW2 commenced.

Also, the Pope is 77. That would make him 17 years of age at the end of WW2, too young for conscription.

However, there are certain groups and churches that would like to believe that what Angela writes is true. Please deal in the facts.

Oz

After I wrote this post I realise it's a pretty old thread now, but I thought, what the heck, I'll still post up my two bob's worth.

Some do consider them to be a cult but basically, the Seventh Day Adventists are okay, at least here in Australia. Pretty low key really and yes, they did promote and still do promote healthy eating and lifestyle. We also have Seventh Day Adventist Hospitals and I have had family go there and noone has ever tried to convert them at any stage.

My good mate from across the road to me is a Seventh Day Adventist and when she first starting coming over to visit me many years ago, she would discretely leave behind some Adventist reading matter on my table. She said it was what her mother wanted her to do because she had lived with mother for years after her husband died and reared her kids there so I guess she felt she owed it to her mother to do this. But I notice as soon as her mother died, she stopped leaving the pamphlets.

Her being a Seventh Day Adventist never caused me concern and we both respected and still do, each other's ways. We are able to share many interests in common, mostly our one of keeping chooks, that is chickens, and ducks and growing vegetables and stuff like that. But if I had a family member who converted and was in close contact with them, as in living in the same house, that could be a different story. Maybe, maybe not, would all depend on how enthusiastic they would be with their new conversion. Though I imagine they would slow down some in time if this were to be a problem.

Welf

Question - why is the media considered a credible source when dealing with "cults," but not when it reports something negative about an "established religion?"

The Seventh Day adventists also tend to focus on the "Revelations" book of the Bible and they are really into the prophecies and how we are approaching the last days, etc. etc. This may seem harmless enough but it is getting into "David Koresh" territory, what?

the 7th day adventists are fairly mild. they have a decent approach to healthy living, that is, diet. they are somewhat laughable because of the way they promote 'the christ' object, as a 'savior'. i wouldn't say they are dangerous, just a little eccentric, and there is no chance of anyone getting brainwashed.... as far as i know. but maybe i'm only saying that because for a while they had a restaurant near me where they served the most delicious vegan food.

partition ~~~~

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The above post made me snicker. A friend of mine who has a SDA pastor in the family told me that while he preaches strict vegetarianism to the flock, he has been known to inhale beef burritos right after church! :roll: :lol: