Pacific Union Info on WO...

[Tom Wetmore]

Not only that, the NT Church included house churches in the homes of identified women with no mention of a mamas the defectors elder. The fair assumption is that the women in question were the elder of their house church. 

[Tom Wetmore]

14 hours ago, Green Cochoa said:

What the above fails to recognize is the phrase "the supremacy thus GIVEN him."  God gave men supremacy over women, not merely predicted they would take it.  There is a big difference between "give" and "take."  The Bible itself supports the fact that the command for woman to be in subjection to man was a Divine edict, not merely a prophecy of what God foresaw in the future.  Yes, men have abused their God-given powers.  The abuse should end, and we could talk about that aspect more.  But to say that the subjection should end would be to challenge God's authority in the matter.

So, if that is true that this curse in Genesis 3 is a Divine edict, as you say, or prescriptive, why are none of the other details adhered to? Based on other things you have said I am assuming that a violation of a Divine edict would be a sin.   Nobody objects to men earning their bread without breaking a sweat or having to only engage in hard physical agricultural work. I know of nobody (other than perhaps some old order Amish) that would consider the use  of modern means of eliminating weeds from crops as  a violation of this Divine edict. And wouldn't taking steps to reduce the pain of childbirth also violate it? And wouldn't a woman fond of snakes be committing a sin?

Why only make an issue of mandating that men must rule over women? Wouldn't all the rest be equally mandatory?

[Green Cochoa]

12 hours ago, Tom Wetmore said:

So, if that is true that this curse in Genesis 3 is a Divine edict, as you say, or prescriptive, why are none of the other details adhered to? Based on other things you have said I am assuming that a violation of a Divine edict would be a sin.   Nobody objects to men earning their bread without breaking a sweat or having to only engage in hard physical agricultural work. I know of nobody (other than perhaps some old order Amish) that would consider the use  of modern means of eliminating weeds from crops as  a violation of this Divine edict. And wouldn't taking steps to reduce the pain of childbirth also violate it? And wouldn't a woman fond of snakes be committing a sin?

Why only make an issue of mandating that men must rule over women? Wouldn't all the rest be equally mandatory?

"Modern means of eliminating weeds"?  Yes, they perhaps ARE a violation of the divine edict.  Consider that, for one thing, one year in seven was to be a sabbath rest for the land in which it was allowed to grow weeds naturally.  This actually helps the soil so that in the other six years it is more productive, believe it or not.  Consider, too, that a sedentary lifestyle usually ends in premature death.  That doesn't sound like God's plan, then, does it?  I don't see anything in the Bible that says it's ok, do you?  The Bible says we are to work, and if we don't work we shouldn't eat.  That's the primary cause of diabetes, if I'm not mistaken--eating without working.  But, in following God's laws, "none of these diseases" were to come upon us.  

You're trying to open a hundred cans of worms with a single post, all in attempting to excuse something that does not align with the Bible.  Both your exceptions in this regard (excuses/rationalizations), and those of Gregory in attempting to find a poor excuse for elevating women by disqualifying all of the men in the church, remind me of a story in the Bible.  You may find it in 1 Kings 13.  Jeroboam didn't care whom he ordained to be priests.

[Gregory Matthews]

Green, if you think that this is a poor excuse you have limited knowledge of many of our small congregations.  Yes, the majority of our members are not in such situations.  But, our smaller congregations all to often struggle.

[Green Cochoa]

3 minutes ago, Gregory Matthews said:

Green, if you think that this is a poor excuse you have limited knowledge of many of our small congregations.  Yes, the majority of our members are not in such situations.  But, our smaller congregations all to often struggle.

Gregory, I'm no stranger to small churches.  

[Rossw]

16 minutes ago, Gregory Matthews said:

Green, if you think that this is a poor excuse you have limited knowledge of many of our small congregations.  Yes, the majority of our members are not in such situations.  But, our smaller congregations all to often struggle.

Do they struggle from lack of conference support?

[Rossw]

12 hours ago, Tom Wetmore said:

So, if that is true that this curse in Genesis 3 is a Divine edict, as you say, or prescriptive, why are you none of the other details adhered to? Based on other things you have said I am assuming that a violation of a Divine edict would be a sin.   Nobody objects to men earning their bread without breaking a sweat or having to only engage in hard physical agricultural work. I know of nobody (other than perhaps some old order Amish) that would consider the use  of modern means of eliminating weeds from crops as  a violation of this Divine edict. And wouldn't taking steps to reduce the pain of childbirth also violate it? And wouldn't a woman fond of snakes be committing a sin?

Why only make an issue of mandating that men must rule over women? Wouldn't all the rest be equally mandatory?

What an interesting way to describe the afflictions brought on ourselves out of the result of our sin. We've had to develop ways to deal with what we've brought on. The womens lib movement is their way to try to deal with the affliction but in a humanist version denying a need to handle the issue the way God desires.

We take for granted the hard work it takes to prepare the ground, grow the food, harvest the food, and deliver it to our table. There are difficulties all along the process of growing crops and drought and the environment can turn in a heartbeat. I must work very hard to make the money to pay for that food. The rich in society take many things for granted but if the economy collapses we will understand again very well what hard work is to be able to feed the family. Those curses have not changed. 

The need to take pain medicine for child birth is still an effect and a sign of our fall. It isn't that taking pain medicine for child birth is sin, it's that we must take on more risk to manage the effects of our sin. 

That's the deal with the headship of Adam. We all suffer from the fall and have to find solutions because of sin. Tom, by your logic, it is sin to believe in Jesus in order to manage our consequences of sin.

[Robert]

9 hours ago, Green Cochoa said:

Is it a bad motive to want to be saved?

By works of the law?  Absolutely.  Why?  Because it is denying that "in Christ" you stand perfect now and in the judgement. It is glorying in the flesh....It's having confidence in one's performance. 

[Green Cochoa]

20 minutes ago, Robert said:

By works of the law?  Absolutely.  Why?  Because it is denying that "in Christ" you stand perfect now and in the judgement. It is glorying in the flesh....It's having confidence in one's performance. 

Did I say I was speaking of works of the law, or did you just misrepresent things?  

Edited July 11, 2016 by Green Cochoa
Less is more

[Gregory Matthews]

Green:  My comments have been directed to small churches in the United States.  Is your experience with such mainly in Asia where you have devoted much of your missionary efforts?  Yes, I have experience with small congregations in Asia and Central America.  But, my comments were not directed to them.

Rossw:  You ask if small congregations in the U.S. have been given Conference support.  My response involved two parts:

1)  The issue as to how to divide up scarce Conference resources among the various congregations in a Conference is a very complex one.  Conference Presidents struggle with these issues.  Whatever decisions they make there are always people who wish that other decisions had been made.  There is also a reality that due to changes in the society in which we live today there are simply some congregations that are dying and cannot be revived.  Or, there may be congregations that are dying due to issues within the congregation itself.  I will give you a couple of examples:

a)  I am thinking of a congregation with a beautiful modern building that has had to be closed due to internal strife within the Congregation.   Due in part to my interaction with the Conference, it assigned a senior pastor to work with the congregation in attempting to build it.  However, that pastor had to travel 100 miles and over high mountain roads to get to the area in which this congregation was located. He was unable to revive it.

'b)  In a country in Central America, where I once lived, I often visited a nice SDA Church that had once been the largest congregation in the entire country.  I had had a membership of multiple hundreds.  Now it was an empty building and had no services.  The government had closed the entire town.  No one lived in the entire town.  The roads had been closed.   Police officers prevented the citizens of that country from entering the town.   The only people allowed into the town were government officials and people like me.  Of course this is     NOT typical of our congregations.  My point is that all to often things that are happening in the society around us will affect the      membership of our congregations.  The members of those congregations may have no influence on those changes.

 

2)  I am thinking now of two examples of small congregations in a Conference where I do not believe that the Conference provided support that the Conference could have provided.  In one of those  I personally contacted the Conference and expressed in detail what I felt it could provide but was not.  The Conference did not agree with my assessment as to what it could provide.

NOTE:  In a 3rd case, which involved a congregation which was not small, the  congregation hired its own pastor and paid that person directly.  I   contacted the Conference, gave them my evaluation of the potential of that person to become SDA clergy and strongly advised the Conference to place him on the payroll and to put him on track for ordination.  The Conference acted on my recommendation and  that African-American is ordained and employed in a so-called White Conference and pastors congregations that have been largely White.

 

 

[Tom Wetmore]

@Green Cochoa and @Rossw - The most charitable view is that you are missing the point.  I am more inclined to believe you are just avoiding the point and obfuscating in order to not acknowledge the absurdity of your own perspective on the curse of Genesis 3.  

The point is it is descriptive of the curse or consequences of sin. All of it. Not just one part of it. Jesus died to redeem us from all the consequences of sin.  He overcame the world that through him we might also overcome.  We should strive to live our life as redeemed people, living up to God's high ideals, and not continue to live out the curse of sin.  Yet another token of the headship heresy is this determination that this one aspect of the curse, men's dominance of women, is not a curse of sin but rather something to be glorified as a Divine edict, as if it is his ideal for mankind.

The illogic of the idea that it is prescriptive is that this is the only part of the curse that is treated that way.

[Green Cochoa]

36 minutes ago, Tom Wetmore said:

@Green Cochoa and @Rossw - The most charitable view is that you are missing the point.  I am more inclined to believe you are just avoiding the point and obfuscating in order to not acknowledge the absurdity of your own perspective on the curse of Genesis 3.  

The point is it is descriptive of the curse or consequences of sin. All of it. Not just one part of it. Jesus died to redeem us from all the consequences of sin.  He overcame the world that through him we might also overcome.  We should strive to live our life as redeemed people, living up to God's high ideals, and not continue to live out the curse of sin.  Yet another token of the headship heresy is this determination that this one aspect of the curse, men's dominance of women, is not a curse of sin but rather something to be glorified as a Divine edict, as if it is his ideal for mankind.

The illogic of the idea that it is prescriptive is that this is the only part of the curse that is treated that way.

You are simply incorrect.  All of the "curse" was a blessing in disguise.  God cannot truly pronounce anything evil.  "Every good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James).  

Mrs. White says plainly that work was a blessing that sinners required in order not to be idle (idleness is the devil's workshop).  Yet she calls it a "curse."

     The earth is to be made to give forth its strength; but without the blessing of God it could do nothing. In the beginning, God looked upon all that he had made, and pronounced it very good. The curse was brought upon the earth in consequence of sin. But shall this curse be multiplied by increasing sin? Ignorance is doing its baleful work. Slothful servants are increasing the evil by their lazy habits. Many are unwilling to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and they refuse to till the soil. But the earth has blessings hidden in her depths for those who have courage and will and perseverance to gather her treasures. Fathers and mothers who possess a piece of land and a comfortable home are kings and queens.  {SpTEd 104.1}  
     Many farmers have failed to secure adequate returns from their land because they have undertaken the work as though it was a degrading employment; they do not see that there is a blessing in it for themselves and their families. All they can discern is the brand of servitude. Their orchards are neglected, the crops are not put in at the right season, and a mere surface work is done in cultivating the soil. Many neglect their farms in order to keep holidays and to attend horse-races and betting clubs; their money is expended in shows and lotteries and idleness, and then they plead that they cannot obtain money to cultivate the soil and improve their farms; but had they more money, the result would still be the same. 
     Melbourne, February, 1894.  {SpTEd 105.1} 

Notice in the above that the curse is not "multiplied" by planting weeds, or even by GMO stuff, but rather by idleness, slothfulness, laziness, and an unwillingness "to earth their bread by the sweat of their brow."  In other words, Ellen White clearly backs the idea that a sedentary lifestyle is a curse.

. . . The fall of Adam changed the order of things; the earth was cursed: but the decree that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, was not given as a curse. Through faith and hope, labor was to be a blessing to the descendants of Adam and Eve. God never meant that man should have nothing to do. But the more and deeper the curse of sin, the more the order of God is changed. The burden of toil rests heavily upon a certain class, but the curse of idleness is upon many who are in possession of God's money, and all because of the false idea that money increases the moral worth of men. Labor is to human beings what they make it. To delve in constant toil, seeking momentary relief in liquor-drinking and exciting amusements, will make men little better than the brutes.  {SpTEd 89.1}  

And here she is clear that labor was to be a blessing, not a curse.  The curse of the ground is what leads to greater labor, a blessing.  So, was it really a curse, or was it a blessing in disguise?  The same question needs to be asked regarding the submission of women to men.

[Rossw]

Green, that's what makes the SDA humanist movement so questionable. Of course they must destroy headship in order to move their agenda. To do that they twist Genesis 3 into a curse. Is the promise of verse 15 also our curse according to the SDA humanist movement?

[CoAspen]

We are made in the 'image' of God. We are called 'humans'. WE have our good points and bad points. So calling me a humanist doesn't bother me. 

Are you a farmer?? If not, why?According to a 'thus saith the Lord', you should be, eh?

[Robert]

12 hours ago, Green Cochoa said:

Did I say I was speaking of works of the law, or did you just misrepresent things?  

You brought up Sunday vs. Sabbath....Thinking your Sabbath keeping saves is salvation by works. Anyway, that's another subject....

[Robert]

3 hours ago, CoAspen said:

We are made in the 'image' of God

That was before the fall of mankind.  Compare these:  Gen 1:27 vs Gen 5:3

Yes, after conversion you could argue that our minds/characters are being recreated in God's image, but not before conversion....

[Green Cochoa]

4 hours ago, Robert said:

You brought up Sunday vs. Sabbath....Thinking your Sabbath keeping saves is salvation by works. Anyway, that's another subject....

To speak of the law does not make one a legalist any more than Jesus' telling His disciples that if they loved Him they should keep His commandments made Him a legalist.  The law, even though it has no power to save of itself, is still the law, and we must follow it.  In this case, the law was spoken in the positive.  No command exists in the Bible forbidding the keeping of Sunday.  If keeping the Sabbath will not save you, as you claim, then keeping of Sunday should not cause you to be lost either--isn't that about right?  

Wrong.

And if ordaining a "husband of one wife" to church eldership will not save anyone, then ordaining a woman eldress should cause no harm either, right?

Wrong again.

[Tom Wetmore]

I just now carefully reread Genesis 3 and noticed two things that I had not really focused on before.  While finding no credible textual support for the eisegetical and twisted interpretation that Green has given it, I was more convinced that the interpretation as I have understood it is correct. The two aspects that I had not noticed before were who each point it is about that God is addressing and what exactly God curses and who he does not curse.  God does not curse the man or the woman.  God cursed the serpent.  And God cursed the ground. The curse on the ground effects that which comes from the ground, Adam and vegetation or food, logically ties into the the sin he committed of eating what was forbidden.  Now his food comes with much pain and toil and he is bound to the earth, in the end he returns to the ground from whence he was created. But God is speaking only to Adam at that point.  Eve was not created from the ground, so this was not addressed to her.  The curse on the serpent obviously adversely effects the snake, but it also ties the serpent to the ground, it also becomes earthbound and becomes a great source of fear for the woman that had been so beguiled by it at the tree.  And refuting the notion that the God gave rulership over Eve to Adam, for that part God is only speaking to Eve.  He does not say to Adam "You shall rule over your wife."  He is speaking to Eve and says "Despite what your desire is, your husband will rule over you."  It is more of a warning to her.

 

Anyway, it was also quite interesting that after that I found this article that tracked my thinking on this - http://juniaproject.com/curse-genesis-3-a-lament/ .

[APL]

Tom - in your reading of Genesis 3, where does it say that God cursed?  Genesis 3 only says that God stated that the serpent and the ground are cursed. The curse is the effects caused by sin. God is just stating what is going to happen, not that God is causing it or desires it.  The same is true of the change in relationship of men and women.  God did not desire it, but sin brought it about.  What is disturbing is that there are those that want to preserve the effects of sin and not look to the restoration of God's true ways.   Just as some say Eve was striving for something that God had not given her, they are striving for men to have something that they should not have.  But do they see it that way?  Nope.  

[Rossw]

9 hours ago, Tom Wetmore said:

 The curse on the serpent obviously adversely effects the snake, but it also ties the serpent to the ground, it also becomes earthbound and becomes a great source of fear for woman  that had been so beguiled by it at the tree.  

So your telling me Genesis 3:15 is only about women continually fearing snakes after and because if the fall?

[Rossw]

Tom, is this a portion of the curse?...

Yet your desire will be for your husband,

[Robert]

7 hours ago, Green Cochoa said:

The law, even though it has no power to save of itself, is still the law, and we must follow it.

Gal 3:10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.”

 

[Green Cochoa]

6 hours ago, Robert said:

Gal 3:10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.”

 

Jesus said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments."  Are you His disciple?  We do not keep the commandments to be saved.  We keep them because we love our Savior.

Which reminds me…why do women wish to be ordained?  To have equality? To have authority? To feel "empowered"?  To do something they could not have done without being first ordained? To earn more money? . . . . . . . Or is it because they are following a "thus saith the LORD", and, out of selfless love for their Master, desire to obey Him in all things?  If the latter, where is the command for them to be ordained?

[Tom Wetmore]

12 hours ago, APL said:

Tom - in your reading of Genesis 3, where does it say that God cursed?  Genesis 3 only says that God stated that the serpent and the ground are cursed. The curse is the effects caused by sin. God is just stating what is going to happen, not that God is causing it or desires it.  The same is true of the change in relationship of men and women.  God did not desire it, but sin brought it about.  What is disturbing is that there are those that want to preserve the effects of sin and not look to the restoration of God's true ways.   Just as some say Eve was striving for something that God had not given her, they are striving for men to have something that they should not have.  But do they see it that way?  Nope.  

I think we are in agreement.  Point well taken on the precise wording.  My concern was less about whether God "cursed" or pronounced a curse and more about the object of the curse.

[CoAspen]

I find it rather interesting that people use a "thus saith the LORD", until they need to go to EGW for support. All that I have read on the thread is still the same by the Anti-WO group, God doesn't call women there fore they are 'deluded' when they claim such. There seems to be no recognition of 'ordination' as a modern concept. Adam was the first to blame a women for his troubles and it has continued since. I will admit that I do not understand humans attempts to limit God as to what He does or can do, rather astonishing and arrogant. Those against also seem to have other complaints about the church in many areas, so it makes me wonder just what kind of 'church' they really want. 

I don't think 'ordination' is the real issue. Equality of the female sex in all matters is the real issue and hanging point in the discussions. Men want to designate the role of women in life while straining for Biblical support. That should be seen as affront to God. Using 'thus saith the Lord' is hiding bush for pride and prejudice, is my take.

The conversations go round and round in circles, lost in a labyrinth it seems by ones own choosing. I think it is very important to study the reasons for the '40' year wondering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. Was it perhaps because of a lack of faith in God? Did they want it all done their way? Was that not a form of 'limiting' God to human forms of reasoning and desires? We are supposedly believing in a God unlike all others but yet we see Him as rather vengeful, keep that women down, she messed up my whole plan for the human race! Really? Can't go there. Period.