seventh day adventists vs mormons

mormons are forbidden to drink coffee, tea, and alcohol, or to use tobacco. the law refers to "hot drinks" but this was officially interpreted as referring to the above. cocoa is fine, because it contains none of the above. cola is also fine, although some mormons choose to abstain from caffiene even though it's not required of them.

anything with tea leaves is unacceptable, including green tea. i imagine that most mormons stay away from all tea, but if cocoa is okay, i imagine they can take some bits of fruit and boil it, as long as there are no tea leaves. although these things are forbidden, some mormons drink coffee or tea anyway. they can lose certain levels of official status for this.

While in the Navy, I served with both a Mormon and a SDA. I lived with the Mormon's sister in law in his home for a time. The one time I went to a Mormon event with them was to a dance. We were made to quit doing the Twist. My friend would not touch coffe, alcohol, etc. But, when we headed out to Japan, he immediately found alcohol on board the ship. He stayed drunk, pretty much until we came home. That's no indictment of his fath, but an observation of his personal weakness.

My SDA friend remains a friend to this day. The one time I went with him to his church, I couldn't tell much difference in the sermon and procedings from most other churches I had been in. My friend is a dentist. He has a pilot's license and is building a plane from a kit. He goes motorcycle riding, too. We trade emails, but I haven't seen him since 1968.

mormon vs sda
Mormons have the doctrine and covents of the church... which contains a bit of scurpture called the 'Words of Wisdom' whcih states that hot drinks are not for the belly... meaning hot tea and coffee... there is more to the words of wisdom than just that, but that covers the 'hot drinks' part i guess... if you want to know more about mormons you can ask me or visit lds.org, mormon.org

covenants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_and_Covenants

Just some quick reference points on coffee, since that's the only thing people seem to want to talk about about Mormons... :

• The Wikipedia has a decent article on The Word of Wisdom.
• Here is the full text from lds.org
• Mormons aren't prevented from drinking caffeine, but again coffee, tea, and alcohol. And of course no drugs or smoking.
• This does not include herbal tea, which most Mormons drink.
• Some don't drink caffeinated sodas, but that's in the minority.
• Oh, and the last thing which should be first, the majority of the Word of Wisdom contains positive prescriptions, not prohibitions. It's all about health, and talks about eating fruit as much as it talks about abstaining from bongs.

Second, in answer to your first question, some observations on doctrinal differences:

• SDAs are pretty mainline protestants; they just believe that the Sabbath was never officially changed to Sunday. Most Christians believe that one of the fulfillments of Mosaic law at the death of Christ was the change of the day of worship.
• This shows SDAs' Biblical literalism, their sola scriptura paradigm, who can't find the change of day literally stated in the New Testament, so won't bank on it. Mormons are fundamentally, at their core, not sola scriptura. They believe in revelation, in modern prophets (equal in gravitas therefore to Moses or Peter), and consequently that all canon is open; that God can give us more scripture and at times the earth has had scripture which we do not now have. That's the whole Book of Mormon thing--that while the Bible is a record of God's dealings with a small group of people in Israel, he would therefore logically have other records of other dealings with other people--it's just a matter of finding those records. That's a huge difference.
• Sola scriptura also presupposes that God wants his church reverse engineered from reading the Bible. The problem is the New Testament was a post facto collection of church letters and was never written to even be a book let alone a church-building manual; so various religions choose to call its 1500 years later publication in its present 66-book form divine foresight. The LDS on the other hand say that man's role is to live righteously and to pray for direct revelation as to God's will, which is again, a huge huge difference. For Mormons, it's always about the internal journey.
• For the same literalism, SDAs don't believe in ignoring the Old Testament like frankly most Christian religions do. Most Christian religions believe that all the requirements in the Old Testament were "fulfilled" (no longer necessary) after Christ--thus The New Testament (read: the new covenant.) Again, since what was no longer necessary and what was still necessary isn't overt, SDAs error on the side of safety and keep all the commandments. That means they believe the Ten Commandments are still the governing code of the universe. (Everyone else believes they're a neat ethics metaphor at this point.)
• Size-wise, there are about an equal number of members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the SDA have splinter groups, so those 15ish million aren't all the same branch. That's why most charts have Mormons as the 3rd or 4th largest religion in the US, because everyone you would think would be higher is non-coagulated...
• SDAs are Trinitarian, meaning they believe God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are one person with no physical form. Mormons believe they are 3 separate and tangible beings.
• Like Jehovah's Witnesses, SDAs believe that only the righteous are resurrected spiritually, that spirits die unless resurrected. Mormons believe that spirits don't die and that everyone is physically resurrected--that everyone gets their body reunited with their spirit after death.

I'll stop now 'cause I've gotta' get to work, but really the bottom line is that Mormons and SDAs are no more connected than any other two Christian religions. Perhaps more academically similar are Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, since they're both sprung from biblical literalism.

I read that as both the righteous and the (ahh evil lot?) a ressurected? What happens to the (evil bunch?)



By the way, that was a really good post you did, though on this point, I would disagree. As you mentioned, SDA's are fairly maintstream, but rather stringent in their interpretation of the bible. I found JH's beliefs weren't all that mainstream. They for one believe they are the only ones going to heaven, and from their number will be chosen the leaders of the earth (the 144,000 if I remember right), and these people are chosen while they are alive (I found that rather hard to fathom). There was a whole lot of other differences but I don't recall them all now (it was many years back that I last asked).

i thought so too, but neo disputes this.



there's always watchtower online, but it can be tiring to page through.