Community of the Seventh Day Adventist Reformation Movement

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Community of the Seventh Day Adventist Reformation Movement
General
branch Protestantism
Belief Adventists
distribution worldwide (132 countries)
president Davi Paes Silva
1st Vice President Duraisamy Sureshkumar
founding
founder D. Nicolici
Establishment date 1951 ( church split )
Origin and development
Spin-off from

International Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society, Reformation Movement

numbers
Members approx. 30,000
Others
Tax position Free Church
Also called: STAR or STA-REF (German abbreviations)
Website www.sta-ref.de

The Fellowship of the Seventh-day Adventist Reformation Movement (SDA-REF) is a Protestant denomination that goes back to a split from the Seventh-day Adventist Church .

history

Philosophical differences in the Seventh-day Adventist community led the so-called Reform Adventists to split off from the mother church and come together in the International Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society (IMG). One of these ideological differences is the so-called military question as an elementary point :

As “good citizens”, the members of the Seventh-day Adventists were free on the part of their responsible pastors to participate in military service for “emperors and people” in Germany during the First World War, albeit primarily in the medical service.

Many of the parishioners could not share this attitude and preferred to refuse to use the weapon in any form - which, as in the Third Reich , brought them persecution and difficulties as so-called "traitors to the fatherland". In 1925 they founded the “ International Mission Society of Seventh-day Adventists, Reformation Movement ” in Gotha .

In 1951 there was also a split in this church (religious community); the groups of about equal strength at that time, each with 5000 members, initially both existed side by side under the old name; In 1952, however, one of them renamed itself the “ Community of the Seventh-day Adventist Reformation Movement ”.

present

The number of members of the STA-REF is estimated at 30,000 worldwide today. Your Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement is based in Roanoke, Virginia ; the German headquarters are in Flörsheim am Main . In Germany, the number of members in 2003 was given as 200. The Church publishes the quarterly Herald of the Reformation and the children's magazine Der Freund .

Teaching

The center of the teaching is the message of the future coming of Jesus Christ on our earth. He is the Son of God, Lord of creation and crucified from Golgotha and foretells this great, visible event in the last book of the Bible, Revelation : "See I am coming soon ..." ( Rev 3:11  LUT ) This thought also comes in the name the community clearly expressed. Your believers seek to prepare hopefully for this moment in their daily lives. They are convinced that Jesus Christ will solve the numerous problems of our planet (environment, crime, need, disease, death) through a new creation.

The “ Community of the Seventh-day Adventist Reformation Movement ” sees itself as a present part of a historical church of God, which carries on biblical truth from the existence of mankind to the present. Accordingly, the word of God was passed on again and again from the biblical patriarchs through the prophets , Jesus Christ and the apostles , the epoch of Christian decline and the Reformation up to the modern age through honestly studying Christians.

Ellen G. White , co-founder of Seventh-day Adventists , was believed by the fellowship to be another tool of God, authoring numerous books, inspirations, and Bible explanations and interpretations to restore lost Biblical truth to millions of people. This also includes observing the biblical Sabbath as God's day of rest, which is an unchanged part of the Ten Commandments and a gift to humanity. Like all Seventh-day Adventists , believers therefore hold their services on Saturday.

Another important part of the doctrine of faith is the "doctrine of the sanctuary," which regards Old Testament ceremonies of the Israelites and the position of the high priest in the temple as a prophecy or preview of Jesus Christ. Jesus not only died as the “Lamb of God” on the cross, but is also today “High Priest” in a comparable sanctuary close to God. He accepts people who recognize their faulty life, repent and follow him. This biblical understanding is seen as a divine plan of salvation for humanity distant and apostate from God. The community is convinced that this is part of an important understanding of God, which the ecumenical churches regard as a special teaching, ignore it and / or reject it. The STA-REF therefore see themselves as a Reformation movement.

Like the IMG , the STA-REF has a similar theological orientation as its mother church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but interprets it more strictly. This includes the unconditional observance of the Sabbath commandment , the baptism of believers and the religious principle of consistent vegetarianism . This is expressed in a way of life reform that rejects luxury goods such as tobacco and alcohol , unhealthy diet and fads. In contrast to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, both reform-Adventist groups endeavor primarily to live their beliefs and traditions and less the social trend. That is why they reject the ecumenical movement , for example , whose efforts are seen as a unification of a non-biblical universal faith.

Web links

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  1. ↑ Religious Studies Media and Information Service: Religions in Germany: Membership Numbers, remid.de, May 3, 2006.