Right click on SDA Flormer Member Photo's Facebook for a larger picture
A fire storm has erupted with many SDA members over a 'mock-up' end time hunt for Sabbath keepers. In this 'futuristic' melodrama, Sabbath keepers will be hunted down an killed for not taking on the mark of the beast (Sunday worship).
Fear mongering in SDA land is a manipulative way in keeping members fearful of their salvation and afraid to leave the church. Church members, because they are called out from the world, are despised by Satan who will do anything in his power to destroy the 'truth.', actually look forward to being martyrs.
Oh wait, that's Armstrongite mythology too!
Armstrong did the same thing to his cult members. We operated under the same beliefs that many of us would be martyrs for our beliefs. Because we would be martyrs, it was a 'holy thing to do' and therefore none dared lose their salvation by leaving the church. Only cowards would walk away from the glorious 'truth' that had been restored after 1,900 years through Herbert Armstrong. To this very day we have scores of COG members who sit in their respective churches miserable over what they hear being taught, yet too fearful to leave because in the back of their mind "it just might all be true."
It's OK Not to be Seventh Day Adventist had this to say (notice that they use the exact same scare tactics Armstrongism does):
At the very least, it is astonishingly dysfunctional that a church leader would dramatically pre-enact a terrifying prophetic massacre of their people. Can you imagine a Jewish prophet of the 20th century getting together a group of Jews and pre-enacting the Holocaust? Not to warn them to get out of Germany, but just to prepare them for the gas chambers? Or an Old Testament prophet re-enacting the slaughter of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Captivity, not as a warning to repent and turn from their wicked ways, but just to prepare them for the tortures and persecution and martyrdom?
You see Adventists don't see this persecution as punishment from God, not as something they can prepare for and avoid. No, their prophetess Ellen White, had a vision and foretold that because they kept the correct Sabbath, because of their obedience to God, that all other Christians will vent Satan's wrath upon the SDA remnant. Adventists will be hunted down and martyred for keeping Sabbath. Every Christian who continues to disobey God by going to church and worshipping God on Sunday (which they believe is the wrong day to worship) is going to receive the Mark of the Beast.
This recent Adventist theatrical pre-enactment tells us, out here in non-SDA land, that despite their persuasive declaration that the church is no longer fearmongering its youth about other Christians and that it has dropped ridiculous and unbiblical last-day prophecies, that some Adventist church leaders are back to the old scare tactics. "Stay safely inside Adventism, all other Christians are some day going to come after you, torture and martyr you." (Well, actually the word safe to them means eternally, spiritually safe because obviously your physical bodies are going to come to great harm for being SDA.....)
Dictionary definition of fear mongering:
Fear mongering (or scaremongering ) is the use of fear to leverage the opinions and actions of others towards some end. The object of fear is sometimes exaggerated, and the use of fear mongering is often directed in a manner using repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of using this tactic in a self-reinforcing manner, like a vicious circle.
