SDA Pastor Speaks to Leadership

[Gregory Matthews]

See:

http://atoday.org/an-appeal-from-a-pastor-to-the-general-conference/

[CoAspen]

Most interesting. Our pastor spoke on the subject today, very concerned about the direction of the GC also.

[debbym]

This controlling and authoritative spirit is very disturbing,  and I hope and trust it is to be met with the truth of the character of God, and the working of the Holy Spirit to make known the power of the Gospel.

i am almost completely speechless watching this unfolding.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

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We have no creed but the Bible, except when the Bible isn’t quite specific enough in its language, necessitating that we better clarify exactly what it means so that we can then use our man-made clarification as a basis for a loyalty oath.  

what a great statement!

[Gregory Matthews]

You know, I think that there are some who believe that it will bring on the 2nd Advent to split the denominaiton.

[debbym]

On 10/19/2016 at 4:44 AM, Gregory Matthews said:

You know, I think that there are some who believe that it will bring on the 2nd Advent to split the denominaiton.

Certain radical Muslims believe they can bring the new caliphate who will bring the world to Islam by their violence and extreme assaults.  If they can just shake the world enough they will bring the end of all things as we know it.

Judas thought he could force Christ to take the throne and become the national ruling kings of Israel restoring national greatness by betraying Christ and forcing his hand to assert authority and power.

There are right wing politicians who believe if we have a great enough political crisis it will force the people to reach out to and embrace a religiously controlled government to save the nation.

Agitation that we have slaughtered millions of unborn and we have perverted marriage and .... ad infinitum... trying to let the "believers" know the hand of God is coming against this nation and all the troubles that come will just cause everyone to turn to God in compliance so He can make our nation great again.

This is not a new thing or a new pattern of human behavior in the microcosm or the macrocosm.

The church will appear about to fall..... corporately.  But it is Christ in the church that stands and will never fall Christ is already completely victorious.  The shaking will shake everything that can be shaken and Christ alone in this world cannot be shaken.

If every shaking leaves you holding more tightly to the Savior you can say in trembling...  let it come.  We are just flesh and blood,  and Christ alone,  the word filled with the Holy Spirit bringing Christ home to our hearts and lives is our everything.

[Gregory Matthews]

Good post above.

But, that does not mean, and I do not imply that you are doing so, that we should do whatever we can to bring on events that will preceed the 2nd Advent.

 

[debbym]

No, we should do nothing to provoke premature attacks on truth.  Jesus would leave areas where the conflict was aroused and hatred for truth was putting people out of control.  This did not mean he was conceding any truth just that he knew the time had not come yet.   When anyone tries to force the hand of God.... when we try to take on these issues in our time line by our strikes on the "enemy" ... this is always a mistake.  Jesus never caused any needless pain or suffering... never.  Even when pain and suffering will come, God keeps it to the minimum.

God does not want us to be emotionally wrought up by these things, the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.

What we can do it take the time every day to seek God and receive the heaven bread for strength... ,  and let our light shine.   This does not mean hitting people over the head with our mag lite.  Jesus came like the morning sun, the rising of the Son of righteousness, gently steadily shinning brighter and brighter.  And that light will keep increasing till Jesus comes, steadily and brighter.

[Myron]

This is a rather interesting article and it highlights a number of issues that have not even been mentioned here, much less discussed.  It comes as no surprise to me that this denomination that so prides itself on understanding of prophecy has so little prophetic understanding that they cannot see certain prophecies that shine considerable light on the primary issue here, that of over-reach of authority by the leadership.  Also there seems to be a considerable lack of willingness to have any historical perspective which would show that this is not a new problem but is instead one that has plagued this denomination almost from the beginning.  It may be that God is once again bringing the issue to the forefront because a time of probation is coming to an end and God always brings the issues he is judging into sharp, undeniable focus when a grace period is ending and the final judgment of an issue is about to be pronounced.

The story of King Saul is not simply an interesting history for us to consider, like the story of Abram and his two wives (Galatians 4) it is an historical and prophetic allegory, showing in type what God would later do in his Kingdom (Church).  Stephen E Jones details this prophecy and its types in the booklet Wheat and Asses of Pentecost, available to read free on-line at http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.net/teachings/books/the-wheat-and-asses-of-pentecost/.  In short the reign of Saul shadows the church during the Age of Pentecost, during which a man who was never trained for such responsibility rules God's people, and also during which time the proper ruler of God's Kingdom receives his training in God's law and its application by the adversity and persecution he must face by the hand of Saul.  

Here, it is necessary to take a short aside to give the biblical explanation of Pentecost, which few Christians even begin to understand.  It is not simply the day on which the Holy Spirit came down as tongues of fire on those in the upper room.  It is first seen in the Old Testament as the day on which God came down to the top of the mountain to speak the terms of his covenant to his people.  It is the spring feast called Shavuot or Weeks or Wheat Harvest.  It occurred on the 50th day after the wave sheaf was offered before God representing the resurrection.  It is to fulfill this prophecy that Jesus rose on the third day after he was offered as the Passover Lamb.  Because it is the time we learn to hear God's voice (provided we don't follow the example of Israel and run from God's voice as most Christians still continue to do) it is the time we really begin to learn and apply God's law.  It is also represented by the Bar Mitzvah (Son of the Law) ceremony, after which all men were to present themselves before God at the temple three times a year.  The first time Jesus presented himself in this manner he told his Mother that he remained at the temple because he had to learn his Father's business, which meant it was time to begin studying God's law in real depth and for real understanding, something Christians today absolutely refuse to do.

Pentecost was a leavened feast.  The main sacrifice of the day was not the ram, it was the two loaves of leavened bread.  Adventists pride themselves on having a deep and thorough understanding of prophetic symbols, which is not true and will not be until they start obeying the command God gave to Ellen White over and over to study the law as prophecy (something neither she nor they ever obeyed), but they do have a good understanding of the symbol of leaven.  It is sin.  This signifies that during this time all our offerings will be offered to God mixed with sin, and the offering he really desires is us and our characters which are deeply flawed by sin.  Most of the offerings were supposed to be placed on the altar and either consumed by the fire or else cooked by the fire for the priest and/or the supplicant to eat.  This was not true of the bread of the Pentecostal offering.  It first had to be baked before being presented to God.  Why?  Because the baking kills the leaven.  Any other offering could not be offered with leaven at all, live or dead.  This offering could not be accepted without leaven, but the leaven had to be killed by exposure to the fire first.  God's fire is his law, and the law kills the flesh, draws the dross to the top where it can be removed and any of a number of other prophetic metaphors God uses to illustrate these matters.

The character of Saul and the character of the leadership of the church are very similar.  This is not something limited to the pope or the president of any denomination.  Where a denomination is ruled by an oligarchy such as the Mormons or a general conference and some form of CEO which is subordinated to that conference they still share in those same problems.   Because they still contain leaven there will always be problems in this leadership.  Because they refuse to expose themselves to God's law and study it deeply for personal understanding and application the leaven remains alive and you will never be able to avoid serious problems in the leadership.  One of the greatest sins that accompanies power (authority) is the belief that the only way to approach God is through those in whom he has placed his authority, that everything they do must be right (they believe this, at least in outward behavior) and encourage those under their authority to believe it as well; thus we errantly believe our church leadership must be free of the struggles we experience and must have a higher level of morality.  Unfortunately most of us are all too willing to believe, and even expect that to be the case.  

The greatest sin common to those in authority also seeks to keep those same people always under that authority instead of trying to teach them what they need to operate independently as a fully mature son of God.  At the end of his article Mr. Patterson speaks of the toleration of Jezebel.  Jezebel is one of the biblical symbols of the Queen of Heaven, along with Asherah, whose totem pole stood beside the altar of burnt offering in the courtyard of the temple for most of its history.  Occasionally some reformer would remove it, but most left it standing.  

I spent years trying to learn just what doctrines constitute a worship of the Queen of Heaven and until I heard a study by Ty Gibson on 3ABN about 10 years ago I only came up with a big blank.  Scripture is nearly entirely silent on the subject.  Mentioning the worship of the Queen of Heaven does not actually tell us what that worship is about, and scripture gives little to no information that can give us a definition.  In Jeremiah 3, God speaks of the reasons he divorced Israel, and states that Judah was much worse because she committed adultery with the same gods, but rather than doing it out on the streets as Israel had done she brought it into his house, thus defiling his temple.  Ty Gibson found many of the specific doctrines that constitute Queen of Heaven worship through the study of Marian worship in the Roman Catholic Church.  Unfortunately, Mr. Gibson was not able or not willing to see how the Judah denominations had incorporated those doctrines into the temple of God, and call for us to remove our own toleration of that woman Jezebel in our own worship.  He was able to see that much of the character of Mary in Marian worship is instead attributed to Jesus by Protestants, but he was not willing to see that this is still a sin because many of them are not biblical at all.  Thus Mr. Gibson failed to see the forest for the trees.  Israel made no attempt to hide her sins and neither does the Roman Catholic Church.  Judah hid her sins in the temple and called them the true worship of God and it was this lack of honesty about the matter that made her sins worse, and Mr. Gibson's condemnation of these sins in the Roman Catholic Church while not pointing them out in SDA doctrine and calling us to account for it was also a major sin.  Take the plank out of your own eye before removing the mote from your brother's eye.  It is harder to see the plank but that is why God provides us with so many mirrors.  He is not concerned with having use remove the mote; he wants us to look in that mirror and see the plank.

One of the primary signs of the worship of the Queen of Heaven is her efforts to keep us tied to her apron strings as the only way to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Whether he realizes it or not, Mr. Patterson is addressing this Queen of Heaven doctrine head on with this article.  Anytime a denomination sets itself up as the only true way to the Kingdom of Heaven they are committing blasphemy.  Jesus is the only door to the Kingdom and no part of his body (denomination) is the only true way in.  Each has its own function, its own revelation, and all are in some way necessary.  And because they are part of a leavened feast all of them have serious faults and this will continue to be the case.  

Mr. Patterson said, 

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As I understand it, based largely on the instructions to the delegates at last summer’s GC session, the only consensus our multi-year study of the issue of Women’s Ordination produced was a consensus that the issue could not be affirmed nor denied by Scripture.  And as a result, the vote taken last year was, at least in the consensus view of our best theologians, merely a vote of preference or conscience.  This is not to suggest that there aren’t many who believe this issue is clearly established in Scripture.  Indeed, many feel it absolutely is.  Unfortunately, the convinced fall on both sides of the dividing line, though neither in large enough numbers to produce a sufficient majority to cause the final caucus of theologians to speak in a clear voice.

And herein lies the root of the problem:  if this issue has not been established clearly as a Biblical issue, but instead is merely an issue of preference or conscience, I could, I suppose, live with an effort to force our people to act against preference for the sake of unity (though I wouldn’t love it).  But do we really want to be responsible before God for forcing our people to act against conscience?  Is that not precisely what religious tyranny is, and the exact opposite of religious liberty?  Can anyone else hear the voice of Martin Luther here:  “Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted, and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience.  Here I stand, I can do no other; may God help me. Amen.” (Ellen White, The Great Controversy, page 160)

And let me just add another thought, speaking as a pastor who spends his days in direct contact with the members of a church in North America:  have we given our people so few opportunities for cynicism and disillusionment that we would dissolve their duly appointed and functionally loyal union over an issue that our scholars have concluded isn’t Biblically clear?  We think we are having financial troubles now, I can’t even imagine what this would do to the people already inclined to abandon the default giving practices of the generations past.

And to go one thought further, is this really the issue upon which we want to spend our leadership capital?  I don’t think it takes a prophet to see that there could soon come a day when a union does actually embrace a position not just contrary to the preferences of disputable policy, but rather, in fact,  clearly contrary to an overwhelming consensus of our theologians.  Shouldn’t we rather save our gunpowder for that day rather than waste it on a cosmetic battle over something we haven’t proven from Scripture?

I have no concern over the potential financial problems Mr. Patterson thinks this may cause.  Probably I would be very happy to see them.  Let the godless organizations be pruned off the vine so that fruitful ones can be grafted in.  But the final paragraph of this quote is the important question.  There has been some argument in the Church (not just this denomination) over what really constitutes salvation issues.  This is not the only denomination engaging in useless and foolish arguments (Titus 3:9) over things that have little or nothing to do with our Salvation.  At one point Paul was frequently engaged in these as well, but learned his lesson when he failed to convince anyone to his point of view.  At that point he decided his only purpose was to teach salvation issues, or as he worded it, "Christ and him crucified," (1 Corinthians 2:2).

Is there anything in this issue that rises to a salvation issue?  Is it true that I cannot be saved if I am ministered to by a female priest?  If that is not the case why are we talking about decertifying unions that do not submit to the GC authority on this matter?  What gives the GC such authority?  Or is it that like Saul after the first year of his rule he started using his anointing and divine right to rule as "authority" to do whatever he pleased and usurp authority God had not given him?  This is rebellion.  In Saul's 18th year, when God finally had enough, he sent Samuel to tell Saul,

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For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.” 1 Samuel 15:23

Saul continued in his throne for another 22 years.  God used him to test the people and see if they really loved him or if they still "needed" a man as intermediary between them and God because they still refused to hear God's voice for themselves and obey (See Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Deuteronomy 13:1-5, and Ezekiel 14:1-11.)  Most of the people preferred Saul to being under God's direct covering, and when Saul lost his covering the people who remained under his covering lost the covering of God.  David had to leave Saul's house and go to God in the wilderness in order to learn God's ways and Saul continued to tell the people that David was there because he no longer had God's covering and had been rejected by God.  

If Stephen Jones is right the Pentecostal era lasted for 40 Jubilee cycles, just as the reign of Saul lasted 40 years.  This means the Pentecostal church age ended in 1993 and then God began a transition into something else, which is prophesied by the Autumn Feast Days.  Any denomination that began before the end of the Pentecostal era is Pentecostal in nature, meaning temporary, and subject to the errors of its own leaven if it does not take extraordinary measure to avoid those sins -- except that such efforts only come through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The evil spirit from God that came over Saul (the church) after God rejected him only leads the church into more and more sin, especially killing the Davids, who as tabernacles kings in training are learning God's heart and can see the spirit behind the law.  After Saul rejected God and was rejected by him Saul could only see the letter of the law, and the types and shadows of the Mosaic system, not the law itself, which is spiritual (Romans 7:14), and having rejected God he also rejected that law.  The church has done the same, and like the Jews of the Post-Exilic period wrote all kinds of commentary (Talmud) that put away the law of God in favor of the traditions of men.

God always had reformers (Davids) who kept his light alive, and in the late 1400s he began to allow them greater power and greater followings, but because they started movements during the Pentecostal Church Age upon their deaths those movements all denominationalized and set up their own Sauls, whether individual king-like leaders, committees called apostles or whatever, or General Conferences.  All of these have placed their own traditions of men over the word of God, and have used submission to themselves and their authority as "proof" of submission to God and citizenship in his Kingdom.  Periodically God brings this stuff to the fore to test us and see if we truly love him.  

Several of you in this thread have spoken of this already, but seem to believe you can serve both Paul and God.  The time has come for those of you who have recognized this test and lamented the possibility of the denomination being split.  Joshua saw this spirit in his own day, a time which the Bible speaks of the Kingdom/Church being the closest to perfect it has ever been or will be before the second coming.  As a result, in his retirement farewell speech he told the People

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But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  Joshua 24:15

You can only find God by learning from him directly, in both scripture and nature, not by going to those who have codified the traditions of men and twisted the scriptures to "prove" those traditions.