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I don't know what the instruments are called, but this is very, very cool...

Gail, When we confine God to our understanding of the bible, and believe we have it all figured out.... and something occurs outside of that framework and our faith crunches... we are in for a major growth spurt. When we are able to turn to God and His word and find our God is still prepared, a present help in time of trouble, and has made provision and His promises to us can stretch to whatever new demands that happen... then we are in for some great exercise of faith. when we think we have it figured out, and event or demand of faith finds still us confined to what we have known and we find it is not enough... we may lose faith, and walk away from the bible. for example, God's righteousness exceeded the righteousness of the pharisees. they had the law they had it all figured it out, they had the Scripture God box, but God was greater then they understood, and God's rigorousness was so much higher then they could even imagine.. So Jesus taught the sermon on the mount and people got out of the bible box that day.

Fear-driven society- reminds me of Michael Moore's, "Bowling for Columbine". And how many years ago was that?

I would say it's even simpler: What will you do with Jesus?

You mean the Adventist hermeneutics Bible box?

I have personal knowledge of an Adventist church who has an associate pastor who is homosexual. He has been on the pastoral staff there for many years.

Another excellent example of your extreme bias coloring your perception of others and their statements. It causes you to misunderstand what is said and read everything through the cloudy lens of your own partisan POV. Putting words in others mouth that are actually from your own head, not theirs.

Apparently Terry is not seeking ordination, but confirmation as an SDA clergy for the purpose of employment. It seems to me he may be overt about his orientation because there are others in this struggle and he may well be attempting to make a change in how this situation is addressed, for those others who are struggling with this issue. Setting precedents can be very effective. Being attracted is not committing adultery or fornication in your heart. It is not sexual sin to have an alternative orientation. People who have concerns about homosexuality take in steps the distinctions between orientation and gender identity, and perhaps the issues of cross dressing, and latency. Those who have fears and distrust and condemnation, and judgement of various degrees may find it very difficult to sort these issues out and see clear to a healthy conscientious position. Tests of character in the area of sensuality are serious, and sin in every area is blinding to us and numbing. We continually need the Holy Spirit to tune and re-tune us. Just personal trauma or loss and strong emotions may leave us Spiritually vulnerable and impact our discernment. There isn't anyone who does not need to be careful. No one is so above their their humanity that they can just live heedless and confident in themselves. Paul said, "i keep my body in subjection lest i myself be a castaway." And he was a Godly spiritual powerhouse.

Bonnie, you fail to get the message......I have mentioned no names and kept my comments generic, should work well for either one or anyone.

I have so many that I want to quote. No Gerry, an Adventist hermeneutic is not the same as having an Adventist Bible. I wanted to try to describe the difference and Debbym took my thoughts and put it far better than I could. And hch, that is not quite what the Jews did. They actually had a wonderful system of Hermeneutics. Their problem was 2 fold: First they had lost much of the historical and cultural events that could help them so a better exegesis to give them a more proper analogy. Second, they did not do enough study of the Bible. In the Jewish school system in Jesus' day the children would first learn to read and write and basic skills and learn the Bible and when they were done with this system they were probably at the equivalent to a 6th grade education in our standards. But then they could either go on in other fields, or else go more into religion and study with great Rabbis. The problem was that once reaching that stage of education they sadly got away from the Bible and began focusing on the thoughts and applications and arguments and disagreements of the great rabbis. These developed into traditions and speculations upon traditions. Mrs. White talked about the conflict with Mary, Jesus and the educational system of the time. While most "uneducated" Hebrews had at least the equivalent of 2 to 4 years of college by our standards (basic skills and the Bible and moving on into trades) some out of the way towns, such as Nazareth only had the first 6 years of education. They never expected the headlines to read "Local Boy makes Good." The "wickedness" of Nazareth was not like Sodom or Times Square. It was that they thought they were limited with their 6 years of schooling Sometimes when we deal with inferiority we turn it into contempt to look down on those who we see as better than us. So Jesus probably had the 6 years of synagogue schooling, but after that the big city rabbis wanted him to come where they could get him into their advanced education and there the conflict would be. So getting to their hermeneutic, I believe that I follow their basic hermeneutic system only that I focus more on the Bible and live in a day where archaeology and linguistic studies gives us a stronger base in exegesis. They understood that the texts had a local application. But that it is the eternal word of God and thus cycles around again where the principles of earlier texts can be drawn into an analogy for what we are facing today. Both the Rabbis and Paul would talk about making an analogy. Hermeneutics are things such as Do you see the Bible as historical or do you not see it as historical. If you see it as historical then you can ask whether or not they have a fundamentalist mindset towards the passage or not. And you can ask if the person sees the text that we have today as coming directly in it's final form exactly as we have it today, or if different sources were edited together. As for me, I believe that the Bible is historical. I tend not to be a fundamentalists. I tend to see the Bible produced similar to Mrs. White's books with her having a vision and then studied it out and presented the information to us in the best she could. I believe that we should start with an exegesis of the passage. What did it mean to the local people. How could the work have been finished then and how could God have set up the kingdom at this time? What went wrong? What were the issues the people then faced. Are they similar to what we are facing. I'd be worried about an Adventist hermeneutic like how the Adventist Theological Society says not to use any higher criticism. Granted higher criticism has been used in bad ways and deserve Mrs. White's criticisms about how it is misused. But in his book on Old Testament Theology which is a text book in many seminaries (not just ours) Elder Hassel said that while there is evidence of editing, we need to pretend that it is not there. We have to treat the text as if the form it is today was it's original form. Sadly this does not fit. There are passages in scripture where we have to treat very carefully to try to make it fit this hermeneutic. For example, the book of Amos has two very different writing styles. The one writing style has curses on Israel's neighbors and the 7th nation is Israel (the northern kingdom). And the book is focused on the sins of the Northern Kingdom and how they were going to face exile. The second writing style is based on the first but places Juda in the 7th spot moving Israel to # 8 (which affects the writing style) and it applies the message of the one writing style to Judah. Indicating that there was a prophet named Amos who came to the Northern Kingdom and spoke against them and their need to repent or face exile. Someone about 100 years later in Judah took Amos' message and said "This is not merely our cousins to the north. We are now equally as wicked and if we don't repent we likewise will go into exile. " I know that I will be stepping on some toes here, but we have the story of Isaiah of Jerusalem dealing with issues in his day, which included the wonderful reformation of Hezekiah. Then there is Hezekiah's illness, and the visitors from Babylon. If Hezekiah shared with them is true riches, his God, they could bring that back and Hezekiah's reformation could have covered the whole world leading in a few Generations to good king Joshua. But sadly he only showed them his stuff. They went home with memories of his stuff and eventually they came back for that stuff. But then in following chapters we find two different messages. Deuteronomy 4 predicted that the exile could be the last days. So we find a section of Isaiah sounding like William Miller on the imminent coming of the promised one. Then we find chapters no longer focusing on the imminent coming of the Messiah but about being back in the land and setting up the post exile society and focused on the temple. Whether we want to believe that it was all predicted by Isaiah in Jerusalem, or if there was the Isaiah of Jerusalem and his school of students carried on into the exile where another prophet arose first wanting to preach the message on how the Messiah can come to lead them back home from exile, but since the work was not finished had to deal with the great disappointment of going back and starting another period of time in the land before the Messiah comes. (Just as Daniel and Ezekiel do). Being aware of these sections help us in reading the texts.