We received this mass e-mailer from an SDA:
Dear Friends,
Forgive me if I have not answered your emails in a timely manner. If the 2009 Jubilee timeline is correct, the United States should make its move against Iran before April 2006, setting the stage for the “last end of the indignation” to commence “at the time appointed” pursuant to Daniel 8:19, and culminating with “a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation,” spoken of in Daniel 12:1. If so, the following 4 prophecies will once again reveal their divine inspiration:
1. “In the last scenes of this earth’s history war will rage. There will be pestilence, plagues, and famine. The waters of the deep will overflow their boundaries. Property and life will be destroyed by fire and flood.” -Ellen G. White, Maranatha, page 174.
2. “The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth. Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers of the grace of God. The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude. . . . The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening FOR THE LAST GREAT CRISIS. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones. -Ellen G. White, Testimonies For The Church, Volume 9, page 11.
3. “Transgression has almost reached its limit. Confusion fills the world, and a great terror is soon to come upon human beings. The end is very near. We who know the truth should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise.” -Ellen G. White, Testimonies For The Church, Volume 8, page 28.
4. “In Ezekiel’s vision, God had His hand beneath the wings of the cherubim . . . The heavenly messengers seen by Ezekiel, like a bright light going among the living creatures with the swiftness of lightning, represent the speed with which this work will finally go forward to completion . . . (RH Jan. 11, 1887).” -Ellen G. White, Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Volume 4, page 1161.
On April 21st I was seen by Eugene R. Schiff, MD, a liver specialist, to obtain a second opinion after the first liver specialist had diagnosed me with Cirrhosis of the liver and Hepatitis C. Dr. Schiff is a Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Hepatology, and Director of the Center for Liver Diseases at the University of Miami, School of Medicine in Miami, Florida. He is the co-editor of the Ninth Edition of Schiff’s Diseases of the Liver which sits in the desks of all the liver specialists in the world. He confirmed that my liver is in stage 4 of Cirrhosis [the last stage before a liver transplant] and that I am infected with the Hepatitis C virus; my viral count which normally should be under 50 was 222,000.
Both liver specialists agreed that my Cirrhosis is being caused by the Hepatitis C virus which I contracted as a result of a blood transfusion thirty years ago. Both agreed that my disease is chronic and can be fatal if not treated immediately. Both agreed that the only cure available is a treatment with two very potent drugs; Interferon and Redipen. One is injected once a week and the other is taken daily, both for a period of one year. The list of side effects for these drugs includes severe depression with suicidal attacks, anemia, diabetes and thyroid problems. Both doctors strongly assert that my condition CAN NEVER be cured with natural remedies.
The following day, on April 22nd, I left for Japan. My wife and I were truly blessed and met seventy of the most wonderful Adventists I have ever met in all my travels worldwide. They came from all over the island to study the Jewish Economy, Daniel and Revelation. I spoke 7 hours a day for 4 days.
Upon my return I consulted with a Seventh-day Adventist naturopath and immediately commenced a two-phase, forty-day natural healing program that I found extremely impressive. I finished the first 3 weeks of treatment to heal the liver, rested one week, and then commenced the second three weeks to eradicate the Hepatitis C virus. I took 51 herb capsules daily, juiced three times per day, drank Esiac tea and a Liver tea formula twice a day, applied hot and cold Castor oil fomentations to the liver for one hour daily, and took a fever bath nightly which raised my temperature to 102-104 degrees and kept it there for 20 minutes by adding boiling water. This treatment causes the body to produce 64 times the amount of white blood cells that it normally produces. At the end of my treatment I again had blood tests performed.
The results were not good. The viral count which had been at 222,000 went up to 1,270,000. Needless to say I was disappointed and learned as never before the complete meaning of James 2:10-12. “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”
All the documentation I read, plus the naturopath, told me clearly the importance of rest and lack of stress for healing. During my program I obeyed seven of the eight natural remedies. The program called for 8.5 – 9 hours of sleep in the two 20-day treatments. In my desire to properly complete a deadline in my secular job and bring glory to God, plus speaking engagements, newsletters and answering emails that I now receive from 30 countries, I disregarded rest and my Lord has strongly rebuked me for it.
“Transgression of physical law is transgression of the moral law; for God is as truly the author of physical laws as He is the author of the moral law. His law is written with His own finger upon every nerve, every muscle, every faculty, which has been entrusted to man. And every misuse of any part of our organism is a violation of that law.” -Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, pages 347, 348
For the past 20 years I have been a strict health reformer and I continue to walk two miles per day as I have done during that time. I feel great and I have none of the symptoms of Cirrhosis, although I’m told that if I don’t undergo treatment immediately I will soon need a liver transplant. After much prayer, Pat, the boys and I have serious problems with injecting such dangerous drugs into my body for a whole year. God’s counsel to us is clear: “There are many ways of practicing the healing art, but there is only one way that Heaven approves. God’s remedies are the simple agencies of nature that will not tax or debilitate the system through their powerful properties.” -Ellen G. White, Testimonies For The Church, Volume 5, page 443.
At the end of this week I fly out West to commence a 20-day natural treatment program at a Seventh-day Adventist Institute. I solicit your prayers that God’s will may be done in my life.
Your brother in Christ,
Lou Munilla
Paul’s reply:
Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose Wonderful Name I write you, Lou,
Regarding your health, you could even be letter perfect in your keeping of the external commandments and miss the mark. Listen to Paul:
“Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6).
By saying this I am not implying you should not follow the directions from your naturopath, or that you might not suffer if you do not. The point is that you could do it all just so, and still perish. What happens and appears on the outward does not determine and tell us the inward story. That is the problem with Seventh Day Adventism and Ellen White, for example. She and the religion she has spawned are externally focused and miss the more important elements of spiritual reality, which determine everything that happens in the physical realm.
As John the Baptist put it:
“A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from Heaven” (John 3:27).
Your health condition goes deeper than the physical necessities. You begin your letter by glorying in calamities to come on mankind. But what of the calamity that has come upon you? Is it not enough that you are facing a life-threatening illness? Who cares what happens in 2009 to the rest of the world, when you may not even be here? Do you think that God is judging you any less than He will judge everyone else? Have you considered why you are sick? No, not the physical reason you give, but the spiritual reason, which you do not know. I will tell you: You are following and practicing the works of men, the paths of the destroyer. You are even forsaking rest to participate in them, preaching the words and works of Ellen White, a sorceress. Is it no wonder you are sick? Here is what God says He will do for those who follow His commandments and ways:
“And said, If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God, and will do that which is right in His sight, and will give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon you, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD Who heals you” (Exodus 15:26).
Read God Heals Today, His Way.
Lou, I went to your letter about the Asian tsunami of December 2004. Here is the quotation from Ellen White in The Great Controversy that you used in your letter:
“He [Satan] has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows. When he was suffered to afflict Job, how quickly flocks and herds, servants, houses, children, were swept away, one trouble succeeding another as in a moment. It is God that shields His creatures and hedges them in from the power of the destroyer. But the Christian world have shown contempt for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He has declared that He would—He will withdraw His blessings from the earth and remove His protecting care from those who are rebelling against His law and teaching and forcing others to do the same. Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. He will favor and prosper some in order to further his own designs, and he will bring trouble upon others and lead men to believe that it is God who is afflicting them….
“He will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations [fires], in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast….
“It will be declared that men are offending God by the violation of the Sunday sabbath; that this sin has brought calamities which will not cease until Sunday observance shall be strictly enforced; and that those who present the claims of the fourth commandment, thus destroying reverence for Sunday, are troublers of the people, preventing their restoration to divine favor and temporal prosperity.”
This is blasphemy. It is God, and not Satan, Who is in full control and decides to send judgments on the earth:
“You shall be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire” (Isaiah 29:6).
“Thus says the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil” (Jeremiah 29:17).
“Son of man, when the land sins against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out my hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it…. If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts…or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off man and beast from it…or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out My fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast: Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, says the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness. For thus says the Lord GOD; How much more when I send My four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast?” (Ezekiel 14:13-21)
“For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 28:23).
Ellen White is saying that Satan is the LORD. She glorifies Satan as the one judging the earth. To him she gives the power. That is because she served Satan, teaching knowledge for salvation, and not Jesus Christ, Who is LORD. She was legalistic, serving the Sabbath and dividing by doctrine. We are not deceived; Satan comes as an angel of light, and his ministers are often very religious.
For true health you must repent, Lou. For God and truth’s sake, health or not, you must repent. Turn away from false religion and to the true Lord Jesus Christ, Who is not sectarian or an Adventist. He is the Advent. You are not upholding the Sabbath; you are desecrating it by your works. Give glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is here, and not to Ellen White, who is not, or surely you perish and all the health regimes in the world will not save you.
And, by the way, the pictures accompanying your article are not of the tsunami, as claimed, but are pictures taken in October of 2002 of a tidal bore at the Quiantang Jian River in China. If you can be deceived by men in physical things, how much more by seducing spirits with a fake christ? Consider.
Contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, which brings judgment to the house of God, and then the world,
Paul Cohen
Lou’s response:
Paul,
Consider the book of Job. Was it the Lord or Satan who sent the judgments?
Of course I can lose heaven in spite of my efforts to use natural remedies. Is this good reasoning? Should I start eating arsenic since it does not matter? Of course not.
The bitterness and hate you show against EGW tells me that you were once a faithful SDA and obviously something she said disagreed with what you were willing to do and you have made it your goal to counsel others that she is a sorceress. I feel sorry for you brother. May God give you the eye salve to realize your mistake and turn before it’s forever too late. I became a SDA in 1983. I have read 69 books by EGW and have never known her to contradict the Scriptures. But she did say this:
“Many who have backslidden from the truth assign as a reason for their course that they do not have faith in the Testimonies . . . . The question now is: Will they yield their idol which God condemns, or will they continue in their wrong course of indulgence and reject the light God has given them reproving the very things in which they delight? The question to be settled with them is: Shall I deny myself and receive as of God the Testimonies which reprove my sins, or shall I reject the Testimonies because they reprove my sins?
“In many cases the Testimonies are fully received, the sin and indulgence broken off, and reformation at once commences in harmony with the light God has given. In other instances sinful indulgences are cherished, the Testimonies are rejected, and many excuses which are untrue are offered to others as the reason for refusing to receive them. The true reason is not given. It is a lack of moral courage — a will, strengthened and controlled by the Spirit of God, to renounce hurtful habits.
“Satan has ability to suggest doubts and to devise objections to the pointed testimony that God sends, and many think it a virtue, a mark of intelligence in them, to be unbelieving and to question and quibble. Those who desire to doubt will have plenty of room. God does not propose to remove all occasion for unbelief . . . but he who turns from the weight of evidence because there are a few things which he cannot make plain to his finite understanding will be left in the cold, chilling atmosphere of unbelief and questioning doubts, and will make shipwreck of faith.” -Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Volume 5, pages 675, 676.
Victor and Paul’s reply:
Lou,
A brother in the Lord, Victor, has written you a reply, which I enclose here. Regarding Job, God gave Satan specific instructions on what to do and what not to do. It was not the other way around, as you think. Even Satan confessed to God:
“But put out Your hand now, and touch against all that is his, and see if he will not then curse You to Your face” (Job 1:11 LITV).
In the end we hear this declaration:
“And Job answered Jehovah and said, I know that You can do all, and not any purpose is withheld from You” (Job 42:1-2 MKJV).
I do not hear Job saying that of Satan, but I do hear you and Ellen White doing so.
Paul
Victor’s reply:
Lou,
We have no animosity toward Ellen, the SDAs, or anyone else. Did God have animosity toward His people when He sent His prophets to tell them the truth about themselves so that they would repent and live? Yet wicked people accused prophets like Jeremiah of betrayal and falsehood, as you revile us now.
What you perceive of us comes from the interpretations of a child of darkness, a son of a sorceress. We have spoken to you to examine yourself before God and repent of your self-righteousness, not to cease good diet or medical care. We did this for and not against you, sent by God to deliver you. Lou, you really are a brute beast that cannot understand anything, and that is exactly what the prince of darkness purposed in sending you White. He has license to destroy the wicked. It is no wonder you perish in your sins. While you cannot speak as of God, you speak as of White. That is because you are an idolater and a liar. Yet, it is not her fault but yours. If you had desire and solemn respect for truth, she would not be able to seduce you.
We have never been SDAs, thankfully, and you do not feel sorry for anyone but yourself. Is that not true? Why lie? As to your White quotes, “Shall I deny myself and receive as of God the Testimonies which reprove my sins, or shall I reject the Testimonies because they reprove my sins?” and, “In other instances sinful indulgences are cherished, the Testimonies are rejected, and many excuses which are untrue are offered to others as the reason for refusing to receive them. The true reason is not given. It is a lack of moral courage — a will, strengthened and controlled by the Spirit of God, to renounce hurtful habits,” you would do well to apply those words in principle to yourself. The entire last paragraph also suits your case very well. False prophets and prophetesses, while they say many true things, have their power and influence in misapplying the truth. That is the true deception. In this case, our counsel to you is to believe and apply those words to yourself. However, you must perish in your wickedness, so you will not believe us. To some it is given, and to some it is not. It is not given to you.
Testimonies have been sent to you, and you reject them. Therefore, “he who turns from the weight of evidence because there are a few things which he cannot make plain to his finite understanding will be left in the cold, chilling atmosphere of unbelief and questioning doubts, and will make shipwreck of faith.”
In the true faith, of which you are bereft and foolishly scornful,
Victor