The Florida Conference Youth and Young Adult College Retreat is a yearly event sponsored by the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. On July 7–9, 2023, the event was held at Camp Kulaqua, a church-owned facility. This retreat is intended for Seventh-day Adventist college students, ages 18–24, and their friends. [1]
The Florida Conference Youth and Young Adult Ministries published a video on Instagram of the “worship scenes” from the retreat. The problem with the video is that this isn’t worship. You cannot tell the difference between what the Florida Conference calls worship and what takes place at secular concerts, in which the audience gets up and jumps, cheers, shouts, runs, and dances, because that’s exactly what you see in the video. Tragically, we have come to a place in Adventism where anything we do, as long as it is done in the name of God, is valid and acceptable. Nothing is off-limits anymore. Today, worship is changing to mimic as much of the world as possible. We are no longer looking for worship that is set apart, unique, or distinct from everyday dance club scenes.
Worshipping God has nothing to do with dance music, lasers, fog machines, lighting, special effects, or fireworks. All this is done for show, to add energy and excitement to an event. This is what they do at secular rock concerts, since it is all about providing the best possible form of entertainment.
These displays, sadly, are becoming the new normal at our youth gatherings. All of this emphasis on entertainment undermines the holiness and solemnity of our worship experience. The main focus is no longer on reverence, spiritual contemplation, or connecting to God; it’s all about generating the highest level of amusement possible.
“The third angel’s message is to be given in straight lines. It is to be kept free from every thread of the cheap, miserable inventions of men’s theories, prepared by the father of lies, and disguised as was the brilliant serpent used by Satan as a medium of deceiving our first parents. Thus Satan tries to put his stamp upon the work God would have stand forth in purity. The Holy Spirit has nothing to do with such a confusion of noise and multitude of sounds as passed before me last January. Satan works amid the din and confusion of such music, which, properly conducted, would be a praise and glory to God. He makes its effect like the poison sting of the serpent” (Letter 132, 1900).
“I knew those who led the people into these noisy demonstrations, and as I arose to speak, they commenced dancing and jumping up and down, crying and shouting loudly, over and over again … I bore my testimony, declaring that these fanatical movements, this din and noise, were inspired by the spirit of Satan, who was working miracles to deceive if possible the very elect. I said that it was not God’s will that His pure, holy, sacred truth should be thus misinterpreted and brought into disrepute. The truth remained the truth still. These demonstrations did not change the unerring character of truth, but Satan was working to deceive and delude honest souls. Satan’s agents were working vigilantly to make use of human minds in mingling the truth with tares and indecent practices, to bring a stigma upon the truth and make it of none effect” (Letter 132, 1900).
Sources
[1] https://www.kulaqua.com/florida-conference-youth-and-young-adult-free-college-retreat/
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A conference is quick to openly reprimand and discredit a person for preaching the truth, the straight testimony, but doesn’t even flinch with this type of gross, satanic inspired behavior that definitely discredits the church as a whole. Where’s the oversight? Where’s the accountability? If a conference can come in and take over a church until it stabilizes, why are they not doing the same with these rogue conferences? The GC, NAD, Union and the respective conference are complicit in this crime against heaven. They obviously have no shame to be known by this kind of trash, i.e., “fruit”.
Leaders of the GC, Division, and Union are simply too occupied purportedly somewhere else carrying out God’s mission. Apostasy is not something they have time to address. Because of this, “whole conferences will be leavened” (TM 372) and they will be held accountable.
And they should be!
I agree with you 100%, thank you for your post!!
Diana, that was my first thought, where are the leaders of these conferences??? They need to speak up!! I also think that pastors should be preaching and informing their members that this type of worship is actually going on, as most SDA members are oblivious to this, and it is happening in many churches.
Honestly… How is it possible to continue sighing and crying when the denomination just keeps on pushing further into apostacy. I thank God that he sees our tears and hears our cries, because it’s painfully obvious the denomination couldn’t care less. There is only one way for this mess to get cleaned up – “For the LORD shall rise up… he shall be wroth… that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.” Isa 28:21
I agree wholeheartedly. That is why I am no longer a member of the Conference Church. My wife and I meet with Adventists of like mind—that is, we all desire to worship God and His Son in the beauty of holiness, and spread present truth to everyone we can before probation closes (2 Corinthians 6:2). And from the look of things among God’s professed people—and in the world at large—we won’t have long to wait. It gets worse every day. Get ready, get ready, get ready! Jesus IS coming soon!
Amen!
Time to prepare spirituality!
I pray we will all have oil in our lamps when the time arrives!
I am glad your family turned away from the trinity error. Although there is still a lot more for the Lord to teach us, it is a good first step to stop using derogatory terms that are not found in the bible to describe our awesome God.
The first angel’s message is a call-back to worship the One True God; but SDAs skip over that part & go right into the perceived reference to the 4th Commandment. No mention of the Sabbath in Daniel or Revelation. Daniel wasn’t tested on the Sabbath but on food & on WHOM to bow down to. Fear God, and give HIM glory, for the hour of HIS judgment is come: worship HIM. He, him, his; thou, thee, thy/thine – in every language these terms mean ONE individual, not triplets or the Three Musketeers or a trinity. One person! At this point in history we should all be in agreement as to who God is, but we’re not; so no wonder this message is treading water – very sad.
Thank you David, I attend a very small, conservative, traditional SDA church, and I thank God every day that I do. It is a blessing.
Yes, Jesus is coming soon, and I want to walk as close to Him as I can, stay in His lane, and keep my eyes only in His direction and focused on Him. This type of worship, in my opinion, is demonic and where are the “Watchmen” our leaders in these conferences should be speaking up and expressing that this is wrong, however, that’s not the case, they seem to be going right along and approving of it. I’m heart-broken!!
DAVID LEE: My brothers both joined a church that is not a Conference Church. (Non-Trinitarian) I was very upset and worried that they had made a wrong decision. I prayed a lot about it, however, after a lot of studying scriptures, asking a lot of questions, and seeing some things that are going on in some of the SDA churches, I concluded their decision was OK.
I don’t believe that what we believe regarding the Trinity is a salvation issue. One thing that does bother me a lot, is the way some SDA churches are worshipping. It appears to be very worldly in my opinion. I prefer a conservative, traditional church and want to be part of the remnant.
I couldn’t agree with you more. It is heartbreaking to watch this type of worship, knowing this is our denomination and our SDA youth supposably worshiping our Lord and Savior. If I was just shown the video and knew nothing about it, I would think it was some Satanic cult worshipping Satan. It appears to be demonic to me, however, that is my opinion only. God bless us all!!
A good example of worshiping lucifer
EXACTLY!!!!!
That Instagram logo is catholic, it seems the Jesuits are behind these apostasies within the SDA church.