Posted on 04/29/2009 9:35:07 AM PDT by TaraP
Nairobi (ENI). A row is simmering between the Seventh-day Adventist Church in western Kenya and Muslims in the country over reported attempts to convert to Christianity Sarah Obama, the grandmother of U.S. President Barack Obama.
'We had invited her to grace our meeting in Kisumu which was to mark the end of a three-week convention, but although she had prepared, she did not attend,' Lewis Ondiek, SDA central Nyanza executive director, told Ecumenical News International.
Some members of her family had stopped Sarah Obama from attending the service, which was led by an Australian evangelist, John Jeremic. Apart from stating that she is a Muslim, they said she had a knee complication and that they could not guarantee her safety.
The Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya secretary Sheikh Mohamed Khalifa said, 'Mama Sarah should not be forced by anybody to join Christianity since she is a Muslim. Conversion must take place in a voluntary manner.' He said, 'Muslims will not sit and watch one of their own being coerced by some religious leaders to convert to Christianity.'
The 87-year-old Obama captured the media spotlight in the remote, mainly Christian village of Kogelo, in western Kenya, soon after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president in November. She is widely sought after to preside over occasions because of her new status.
'Mama Sarah had assured us that she was converting, and we were ready to baptise her today, but it seems her family has prevailed upon her,' Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper had quoted SDA Pastor Tom Obuya as saying on 19 April.
Sarah Obama is the third wife of Obama's paternal grandfather.
Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan father and American mother who met at a university in Hawaii. He was born in 1961, but his parents split up when he was two. His father returned to Kenya where he worked after independence in the administration of Kenya's founding president Jomo Kenyatta, while his mother settled with Barack and a new partner in Indonesia. Barack Obama had little contact with his father's family after his parents divorced.
The son of Sarah Obama, Saidi Obama, said, 'She would have attracted unnecessary attention, which is not good for her.'
Some SDA leaders had denied they wanted to convert Sarah Obama.
A number of protesting Muslims leaders in the country have sought State intervention, warning of a religious stand-off. Some of the leaders raised questions about Christians being interested in her because she is now seen as influential and richer.
All Muslims need conversion to Christianity.
While then the Muslims don't have to worry about her converting to Christianity. Seventh-day Adventists aren't Christians. I was born and raised one, and by grace called out.
Obama’s muslim grandfather, (his father’s father, his own namesake) was originally a Catholic but he CONVERTED to Islam and changed his name to Barack Obama.
Funny how the death cult doesn’t let the converted “leave”.
A Christian is an individual who believes in Christ. Some 7th Day Adventists believe; some don’t. some Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics believe; some don’t.
To make a broad sweeping generalization about them is factually wrong. Our side wins when we deal in facts and logic. When we deal in inaccurate generalizations we lose.
For instance, they believer Jesus is Michael the Archangel, that all non-SDA Christians are part of the Whore of Babylon; that the atonement was not completed at the Cross (and is still not complete); that going to church on Sunday is the Mark of the Beast; that their false prophet Ellen White is "a continuing and authoritative source of truth" (no sola scriptura); people's sins aren't truly forgiven, but only conditionally pardoned, with full forgiveness only granted once the person proves he can keep the Law and has perfected himself; a person cannot truly know he or she is saved; the Trinity is a "heavenly trio" of the "three worthies," by which they mean three Beings, rather than one Being with three hypostases; Jesus could have sinned and failed in his mission; while Jesus was on the earth He was "not Lord God Almighty." Need I go on?
Yes, there are some SDAs who are Christians, but their system is not a Christian system.
Didn’t granny claim she was there, in Kenya, when Obama was born?
Great post!
SDA still sounds better than Islam, but it’s practically gnosticism.
Oh no! Christians “accused” of practicing their religion! Alert the media!
Except for one thing I forgot to add: They don't believe a human being has a soul or spirit. A human, they say, is merely a body plus breath. When a person dies, he or she just rots in the ground until the second coming, when a new body is created that is made to believe it is the person who died. In other words, there is no true resurrection. It's just slight of hand to make it look like resurrection.
Wow - that’s interesting to find out.
I went to dinner the other night with a friend who came out of the Mormon church after about 10 years. She was telling me some absolutely bizarre stories of secret temples one is not supposed to talk about, going through some veil having assumed the name of a dead person to have their sin forgiven, etc. So weird I had to wonder how anyone could possibly believe it.
There is great value in listening to someone who has gone through it and come out on the other side. Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome! I hope to do what I can to keep others from being deceived. Being in Jesus is sooo much better than Seventh-day Adventism.
The muzzie in chief will take care of this... one call to odinga... that’s all.
LLS
Some of your points are also held by many, many Catholics and Protestants, including theologians. That doesn’t make them right. But those ideas are not outside the definition of Christianity.
Some of your points illustrate out the uniqueness / wackiness of the SDA. That doesn’t make them non-Christian. I’d compare it to the wacky ideas of a Pat Robertson or the wacky ideas of Calvin, Wesley and Luther.
Some of your points are not the position of the SDA. They are positions of members of the SDA. I’ve heard SDA sermons that explicitly emphasized sola scriptura and relegated SDA leaders to the level of Calvin, Wesley, Luther, etal.
The official SDA position, in SDA Fundamental Belief #18, is that Ellen White is "the Lord's Messenger" and her writings constitute "a continuing and authoritative source of truth." This is not consistent with Sola Scriptura.
The points I have made ARE the position of the SDA church. For instance, the point I made about Jesus not being Lord God Almighty. That comes directly from their Bible Commentary. Also, everything Ellen White wrote is official SDA doctrine, because of FB #18. The Fundamental Beliefs are merely the sanitized version the SDA denomination uses in speaking with evangelicals, to keep the evangelicals from knowing all of its true beliefs. The church is much more explicit in its Church Manual and in the words of its leaders that are given only for SDA membership consumption.
They did not hold a sword to her throat and tell her they would decapitate her if she didn't swear allegiance to Jesus Christ. They simply extended an invitation. When she declined, the said "Ok".
There is nothing that makes Adventists not Christians. And the vast majority of their/our beliefs have been held and debated by other protestant churches. For example soul sleep as someone mentioned. This view was very common in protestant church history. Even Martin Luther believed it see below. And Adventist do thing their are true christians in every church.
* William Tyndale (1484-1536), English Bible translator
o “And ye, in putting them [the departed souls] in heaven, hell and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection...And again, if the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good a case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of the resurrection?”—William Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (1530)
* Martin Luther (1493-1546), German reformer and Bible translator
o “Salomon judgeth that the dead are a sleepe, and feele nothing at all. For the dead lye there accompting neyther dayes nor yeares, but when they are awoken, they shall seeme to have slept scarce one minute.”—Martin Luther, An Exposition of Salomon’s Booke, called Ecclesiastes or the Preacher (translation 1573)
o “It is certain that to this day Abraham is serving God, just as Abel, Noah are serving God. And this we should carefully note; for it is divine truth that Abraham is living, serving God, and ruling with Him. But what sort of life that may be, whether he is asleep or awake, is another question. How the soul is resting we are not to know, but it is certain that it is living.”[3]
o “But the soul does not sleep in the same manner (like a person on earth.) It is awake. It experiences visions and the discourses of the angels and of God. Therefore the sleep in the future life is deeper than it is in this life. Nevertheless, the soul lives before God.”[4]
* John Milton (1608-1674), English poet and Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell
o “Inasmuch then as the whole man is uniformly said to consist of body, and soul (whatever may be the distinct provinces assigned to these divisions), I will show, that in death, first, the whole man, and secondly, each component part, suffers privation of life...The grave is the common guardian of all till the day of judgment.”—John Milton, De Doctrina Christiana (never published)
* Isaac Newton (1642-1727), English polymath
“...’We had invited her to grace our meeting in Kisumu ...”
Those RUTHLESS Christians! They know NO bounds to their forced conversions!
Thane you clearly do not understand what Adventist believe no matter what you think. They believe in the trinity and divinity of Christ 100%. The only people to ever say christ was a created being I know of were asked to leave the church. What you are getting confused is that yes some Adventist believe Christ acts as the head of the angels he created and was called michael the arch angel. BUT not that he was created or not devine. Only that it was a title and well office. Even if wrong this would not in any way make Adventits not Christian.
“For instance, the point I made about Jesus not being Lord God Almighty. “
Ellen White, James White, and virtually every other SDA founder were Arians. If you find a copy of SOP Vol. 1 that wasn't sanitized by the denomination, you'll find in the first few paragrahs Ellen White refering to Jesus as a created being who was later raised to the level of having Divine Authority.
Later in life, Ellen became essentially a tri-theist, rather than a Trinitarian, teaching the concept of a "heavenly trio" or "the three worthies," which is a poly-theistic concept Christianity does not believe. Christianity has always said God is a Trinity: One Being with three Persons - the distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit are distinctions within God, not external distinctions but internal ones.
Yes, SDAs will say Jesus is "Divine," but what is meant is that Divinity is like a characteristic or attribute. Thus, many SDAs will claim Jesus's Divinity died at the cross, or that He became un-Divine while on earth. The Bible says Divinity is one particular Being: Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, El-Shaddai. The SDA Bible Commentary says that while Jesus was on earth, he was "not Lord God Almighty." God cannot just stop being God. Divinity is who He is, not some attribute or characteristic that He has.
Believe me, I know what Adventism teaches. I was one for my entire life. It was when I really looked at the beliefs and compare them to the Bible that I realized they were wrong.
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