My path out of traditional religion: A short deconstruction story (September 14, 2024)
I was "educated"/indoctrinated in Seventh-day Adventist parochial schools all the way through my first quarter in college (at Pacific Union College) in the Fall 1975. Don Vollmer (famous within Adventism as a member of the Wedgewood Trio, a fundamentalist folk group) was my 8th-grade bible teacher for the 1970-71 school year at Redlands Junior Academy, and he had us reading a book by Adventist author Fernando Chaij titled Preparation for the Final Crisis . The book is basically an exegesis of Ellen G. White's quotes (EGW was the founding prophetess of the SDA church) from all her writings about "The End Times" and "The Time of Trouble." In his chapter titled, appropriately enough, "The Time of Trouble," he quotes this from a chapter in "The Great Controversy" (also titled by EGW, "The Time of Trouble"): "The assaults of Satan are fierce and determined, his delusions are terrible; but the Lord’s eye is upon His people,...