But there were false prophets also among the people,
even as there shall be false teachers among you,
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies,
even denying the Lord that bought them...
A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject;
2 Peter 2:1/ Titus 3:10
Ripped from the Cyberpen of Admiral Ncube at Spectrum Magazine (2/9/2023)...a psuedo-Adventist journal
"On February 3, 2023, Clifford Goldstein, editor of the Adult Bible 
Study Guide, wrote an article in the Adventist Review titled “America in Prophecy? More Than Ever, Thank You.”
It was an attempt to critique an essay I wrote for Spectrum titled “An Even Greater Controversy,” in which I questioned some Adventist prophetic speculation about the future of America. As a starting point, my essay was meant to provoke a conversation by
critiquing a reading of Revelation 13 regarding the role of America."
We begin with pointing out that they obviously believe the interpretations hammered out by the Church pioneers, who literally spent hours in prayer pouring over Biblical texts, needs to be revised to fit their own progressive modern worldview in how prophecy is t be understood....yes, self ordained "progressives" the the rescue from our Church pioneers!
"As a starting point, an understanding of Revelation 13 focused on
America in prophecy is clearly a product of our pioneers having
conversations about their context. Using a religious lens, they tried to
make sense of conditions in 19th-century America."
See above response.
"Goldstein goes on to dismiss the influence of Manifest Destiny on 
our pioneers by defending it. By arguing that the continent “was relatively uninhabited,”
he renders the displacement of Indigenous people inconsequential, which
is what Manifest Destiny (and the Doctrine of Discovery) is all about.
Manifest Destiny regards the displacement and plunder of “relatively”
few Indigenous communities as immaterial because the expansion of the
United States was divinely ordained, justifiable, and inevitable. But
history records that an estimated 5 to 15 million Indigenous people were
living in North America when Christopher Columbus reached the continent
in 1492....Interestingly, Ellen White uses a similar phrase in The Great Controversy: “The nation must arise in territory previously unoccupied.” One may ask, “Unoccupied by whom?”"
Ah yes, that POISON of the WOKE LENS seeps into the Church. America was very lightly populated compared to the world at the time. I even had professors in college explaining that the whole population of North America (modern continental U.S., Canada and Alaska) was maybe the size of Indianapolis, scattered over that vast territory....so yes, by any objective measurement--it seemed uninhabited. The colonists didn't walk into to large populated established empires, rather they found vasts swaths of uninhabited land with small pockets in indians they came into contact with.
Revelation teaches that waters represent large populations. Earth represents the opposite.
"In any case, America’s exceptionalism is even suggested by Ellen White:
"When the land which the Lord provided as an asylum for His people, that they might worship Him according to the dictates of their own consciences, the land over which for long years the shield of Omnipotence has been spread, the land which God has favored by making it the depository of the pure religion of Christ—when that land shall, through its legislators, abjure the principles of Protestantism, and give countenance to Romish apostasy in tampering with God’s law—it is then that the final work of the man of sin will be revealed."
Clearly, an allegorical interpretation of the earth in Revelation 13:11 is problematic. Maybe Adventism is better off removing that this contentious interpretation represents uninhabited land."
Clearly, an allegorical interpretation of the earth in Revelation 13:11 is problematic. Maybe Adventism is better off removing that this contentious interpretation represents uninhabited land."
You see, this persons problem with prophecy is that it doesn't look pretty under the Lens of Woke of which they are viewing it....
"It is increasingly admitted that the distribution of global power has
been shifting away from the United States as other countries amass
power, whether economically or militarily. The waning of American
hegemony does not take away the country’s influence in global affairs.
But there is growing evidence that a sentiment of America as a singular
shining city on a hill, one to which all other peoples should aspire,
warrants contemporary critique."
2 points in response: First off, America influencing other nations to implement the mark of the beast doesn't have to be a military threat.
Second, there is his anti-America swipe via his "a sentiment of America as a singular
shining city on a hill, one to which all other peoples should aspire,
warrants contemporary critique". Now if that doesn't drip of Woke Idealogy/Influence...I don't know what does.
"Clearly, an interpretation of Revelation 13 highlighting America as 
the
stage for a Sabbatarian remnant hunted by Americans who want to kill
everyone who doesn’t keep Sunday holy sounded plausible to some in the
past. But it does not today. Our pioneers read prophecy as an extension
of their time, and so did Ellen White in her predictions. Our danger is
in binding God to our calendar without being open to contesting views
and critiques ....dangles Adventism’s witness on an irrelevant edge."
So not only has his WOKE LENS broke his faith in prophetic interpretations about America in prophecy---but has spilled over into the Mark of the Beast and the counterfeit sabbath---the POISON of Woke entering the Church and upending people's faith.