Ben Carson’s lead in the US Republican Presidential nominee has literally put the Seventh Day Adventist faith on the spotlight with both positive and negative reviews. Most of this reviews have been based on people who ‘lived’ close to SDAs or are friends of practicing Adventists and most often touched on their experience with and their misconceptions of the Adventist faith than facts and numbers (well lets say verses).
I today bumped into a statistical look by Pew Research Center whose slogan is Numbers, Facts and Trends shaping your world. I am in no way refuting nor endorsing their numbers, but I must take offense either with them for out-rightly so tainting our faith or if their numbers are correct then take offense with a people whose faith has been compromised by the world.
Here are their statistics for America. My comments are in brackets, italics and underlined.
Seventh-day Adventists make up one-half of 1% of the U.S. adult population (0.5%), little changed from 2007 (0.4%). That stability stands in contrast to U.S. Christians overall, whose share of the population has dropped by nearly 8 percentage points (from 78.4% to 70.6%) over that same period.
Seventh-day Adventists are among the most racially and ethnically diverse American religious groups: 37% are white, while 32% are black, 15% are Hispanic, 8% are Asian and another 8% are another race or mixed race.
All Adventists in our survey say they believe in God, including nine-in-ten who are absolutely certain about this belief (89%) (about 11 percent of Adventist are not certain about God? Huh!). By comparison, 63% of all Americans say they are absolutely certain that God exists. Roughly eight-in-ten (83%) Adventists say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 53% of U.S. adults overall.
Fully two-thirds (67%) of Seventh-day Adventists say they attend religious services at least weekly,(probably means 33% of professing Adventist are not really Adventists. So you in Church but not really in Church. Revelation calls it Lukewarm. The bible says better be hot or cold rather than lukewarm for God will spew you out!) higher than most other Protestant denominations that are large enough to be analyzed in the survey. In addition, 86% of Seventh-day Adventists say they pray at least daily (compared with 55% of all U.S. adults).
A big majority of Adventists (89%) believe the Bible is the word of God (now am worried about the 11% Should we start evangelism inside the Church first?), including about half (48%) who say it should be taken literally. And two-thirds (66%) say they look to religious teachings and beliefs as their primary source of guidance on questions of right and wrong, double the share of Americans overall who say this.
Most Adventists (85%) believe in heaven, but far fewer (52%) believe in hell.(Sounds like we have not spent enough time doing Bible study inside the Church) The relatively low level of belief in hell by Seventh-day Adventists stands out among evangelical Protestants, 82% of whom say they believe in hell.
Adventists are actually somewhat divided over abortion. About four-in-ten (42%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 54% say it should be entirely or mostly illegal. This latter group includes one-in-five Seventh-day Adventists (19%) who take Carson’s view that abortion should be illegal in all cases. (really need that Bible study in church)
Seventh-day Adventists are more united in their opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. About six-in-ten (59%) say homosexuality should be discouraged by society, and a similar share (63%) oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. (Sounds more like, nearly half of Adventists polled support gay marriages to be legalized)
Fully two-thirds of seventh-day Adventists (67%) reject evolution, saying that humans have always existed in their present form.(Sounds like 33% of Adventists who profess in the Bible as the Spoken word of God do not believe in the Bible. They refute the creation of Adam and Eve and the creation of the world in 6 literal days and thus refute all the Generations of Adam through to the birth of Christ.)
END OF POLL
That sounded harsh right? But if we Adventists would not fully have bible studies to firm our Faith in God then we really are not the remnant Church. Our Adventist life is a fraud at best. Being holier than thou and shaloms on Sabbath yet when we go to our schools or work places our lives are in no way a reflection of the love of Christ, we are a fraud.
This poll should wake us up to realize time is really not on our side.
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