Biblical Inquiry on Divorce

[Myron]

36 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

Gregory, some of us will read it all and respond. Give it time

Do so if you wish, Wanderer, but in this thread I will only answer the matter divorce or depth of study.

[B/W Photodude]

11 hours ago, Myron said:

However, the spiritual meaning and application is much more important.  Understanding the meaning of laws is not terribly important under the Old Covenant.  That is a covenant of obedience.  Understanding is important to the New Covenant, which is a covenant of the heart.  Yet Adventists and most other Christians are either Old Covenant believers, acknowledging the law and working hard to obey it according to their own understanding, which is limited or non-existent, or are non-believers, fully rejecting the law as having any application under the New Covenant, which proves they have never read the New Covenant, only sought to justify their sin themselves with fig leaves.

 

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." Joshua 1:8

To the new or old covenant believers, the law had spiritual meaning as well as an obligation to obey it. What reason would they have to meditate on the law day and night if there was not something to see in the law that was not out in the open obvious? When you find it, you will be very blessed.

At no point in Scripture does it stop saying that those who love God will keep His commandments, even to the end of Revelation.

[Dr. Shane]

9 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

One point that Myron does make very well, IMO is that Shane's "study" is quite out of context, and not in accordance with the real story...but as you say, taking time to pursue would be a major project

If he made that point, I missed it and I did read his entire post.  

The original post is very much in context as the subject of this thread is a Biblical inquiry on divorce.  Therefore any Bible texts relating to the subject of divorce are in context of the thread.

The thread's focus should be on:

• The Biblical position on divorce and remarriage
• The exegesis of specific passages related to divorce
• Discussion on church doctrine and changing statements in the Church Manual or 28 Fundamental Beliefs
• Why more articles in our publications do not deal with this
• Why the denomination hasn't published a book dealing with this
• How different Divisions within the church have ability to handle the issue differently
• The role the local church plays and how a divorced member is impacted when they transfer their membership from one congregation to another
• The invariability of God as it relates to divorce in the Old and New Testament

An article published fifteen years ago (more or less) in the Adventist Review reported that 50% of Adventists in Australia quit attending church within three years of getting a divorce.  Read that a few times and let it sink in.

How much money do we spend on evangelism and trying to win souls to Christ?  And when people respond to our evangelistic efforts, we accept them as they are - divorced, single, married or gay.  And yet our position on divorce results in 50% of those dealing with it leaving the church.

Does anyone see a reason to take a hard look at this issue? 

[CoAspen]

I would wonder if the stat still holds true and what the regional stats would be. In my neck of the woods, it does not seem to be true. As I said before, two different churches that I have been a member of had a very conscious effort to reach out to the divorced. 

[Gail]

Shane, when I was single and connected with our Conference's Singles Ministries, what you have noted was true. The retention rate for divorced folk was dismal.

[Dr. Shane]

Locally, here in South Texas, I cannot complain about how I have been treated at all.  There are 26 Adventist churches within 50 miles of my home on the Texas side of the border (there are more on the Mexican side).  I am in the process of transferring our membership from one congregation to another.  Both the pastor where we are leaving and the pastor where we are going have been very supportive.  I suspect that the church organization is supportive. 

The problem seems to be first, those going through the divorce feel guilty.  Often times we are guilty.  Who goes through a divorce and doesn't look back and second guess themselves that they should have done this or that?  The church may not be actively condemning them but the individual is still struggling with guilt even if they are the "innocent" party.  If they can find anything the church has published on divorce it will  normally say the same thing.  Only allowed in cases of adultery or perhaps abandonment by an unbelieving spouse.

Secondly, the members in the pews tend to be judgmental in regard to failed families.  And to a certain extent that is understandable because the organized church has failed to spell out a message of love and acceptance in regard to dealing with divorcees.  Few articles are published in magazines about dealing with divorce.  A lot of articles are published about keeping families together.  Where are the books about dealing with divorce?  I have one compilation from Ellen White and most of that deals with sexual sin and not directly with divorce.  I like what Coaspen shared about a divorce workshop he attended at a church some years ago.  That sounds like a great idea but this thread is the first time I have ever heard about such a thing.  We never hear a sermon about treating divorcees with love and compassion.  While the pastors and leaders in the organized church have the right attitude, it is not flowing down to the members in the pews.

Those are perhaps the two biggest factors that push someone out of the church after a divorce.

At this time I have an issue with the "only adultery" position because:

• I don't think that is what Jesus was trying to say and I have yet to find a Bible scholar that can show me it was.
• An "innocent" spouse is put in a position of exposing the guilty spouse in order to justify the divorce.  Why should I have to tell people that my wife cheated on me in order for the church to accept me and allow me to hold positions of service in the church?
• It elevates the sin of adultery above other sins.  Adultery is a grave sin but so are many others.  Is it worse for a man to cheat on his wife or to come home and beat her and the children?  Is adultery worse than neglect?  If a man refuses to get a job, pay rent, buy food and support his family, somehow he is not so bad because at least he hasn't committed adultery. 
• It can take on multiple definitions.  Does it mean intercourse?  Oral Sex?  Sexting on mobile devices?  Viewing pornography?  Looking upon a woman with lust

[CoAspen]

Disclaimer: I have been divorced and remarried twice.

I believe it is absolutely wrong for the church or another person to single out divorce, under any situation, and make those individuals feel less than a 'wanted' person by the church. Do we lift up our 'holier than thou' nose over overweight church officials, the liars, the cheaters, the back biters, etc, etc, etc? If so, than how can we call ourselves followers of Christ? Was it Christ that singled out divorce as THE sin? My understanding is that after Adam and Eve ate the 'apples', anything that was not according to Gods plan before that had the taint of sin. Christ came and payed the price for that disgression. Humans ever since have trying to point the fingers at others to shift the view away from themselves, as Adam. Men have, in my estimation, played that card down through the ages. Divorce issues, we see from the Bible, was brought by religious leaders, men, not to seek guidance but to further find condemnation. Christ came to seek and save, the opposite. 

Of course, divorce is not always the best solution to a problematic marriage, but neither is overeating to solve an emotional issue. Both happen, so why not seek a solution rather than condemning? What the Bible has to say about divorce should be no more important than any other issue that causes pain to individuals and is not in compliance with Gods plan for humans. What I believe is important and should be the subject of intense Biblical study, is God expects us to treat others. But that ain't sexy!!

My post is in no way meant to disparage Shanes topic but rather to ask the question, why is it necessary for the question to be asked.....in general, not specific to him.

[Dr. Shane]

4 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

Is this really the church's or anyone else's business?

I think it becomes an issue when a divorced person is not asked to serve at all by the nominating committee.  Or when the divorce person volunteers to help with a Sabbath school or Pathfinders but never receives a call.  It isn't such an issue in respect to the Pastors, Union or Conference officials.  The prejudice lies in the rank-in-file members sitting in the pews.  Those are the same members that sit on the nominating committees and decide who will be asked to serve.

[Dr. Shane]

1 hour ago, CoAspen said:

My post is in no way meant to disparage Shane's topic but rather to ask the question, why is it necessary for the question to be asked.....in general, not specific to him.

Part of the issue is for those of us that have gone through a divorce (or two) and want to be at peace with God.  If I did something wrong that I need to repent of, fine.  I want to own up to it and repent.  But as I search the Bible and dig deeper I realize that it may not be that simple.  Did Abraham need to repent for divorcing Hagar?  Of course not.  God told him not to consider it grievous.

Now consider a woman who is physically abused in front of her children on multiple occasions and finally divorces her husband.  She wants to feel at peace with God regardless what other people in the church say.  Yet, when she reads the church literature on the topic she finds no place that allows her to divorce for physical abuse.  What she finds is that she should have legally separated and lived like that forever.  But she didn't do that.  She divorced the brute.  So now how does she gain peace with God.  Does she confess her "sin" and repent of it?

That is why this topic needs to be discussed.  Not just to change attitudes of many sitting in the pews but to allow those that have gone through it to find peace with God.

[CoAspen]

Quote

That is why this topic needs to be discussed.  Not just to change attitudes of many sitting in the pews but to allow those that have gone through it to find peace with God.

[Gregory Matthews]

Earlier, Shane made a statement, below, that is important:

An "innocent" spouse is put in a position of exposing the guilty spouse in order to justify the divorce.  Why should I have to tell people that my wife cheated on me in order for the church to accept me and allow me to hold positions of service in the church?

 

[Gregory Matthews]

To expand a bit on what Shane said above:

All to often, the divorced person is expected to justify the divorce well beyond those who may have a need to know.  In actual fact,   it is the local congregation that has the authority to discipline.  No person should have to justify beyond that and others simply do not have a need to know.  This probably happens most often when the divorced person is either clergy or some other denominational employee.  In such cases one might say that there are denominational administrators who have some rights as to credentials.  O.K.  If so, once that decision has been made, the person should not have to justify again and again and again.

NOTE:  On a personal basis, many here know that I am divorced and I have remarried.  In my case, I have probably been treated better than some have been treated, both by members and by denominational officials.  As a general  rule, I may tell people that adultery was NOT a factor.  But, beyond that I do not generally comment.  Frankly, this is probably part of the reason that my ex-wife and I have a positive relationship today--no attempt has been made to paint her as a sinful villain outside of the grace of God.  The bottom line is:  We live in a world that had gone wrong.  Sometimes marriages are outside of what humans can heal.  There are simply some things that  God does not heal in this life and such healing is only left for eternity.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Folks, in this area of life, we humans sometimes attempt to place more of a burden on people than God does.

[Myron]

On 4/26/2017 at 10:02 AM, Shane said:

If he made that point, I missed it and I did read his entire post.  

The original post is very much in context as the subject of this thread is a Biblical inquiry on divorce.  Therefore any Bible texts relating to the subject of divorce are in context of the thread.

 

 

 

 

 

Shane, 

From what I can see you did not miss anything, but Wanderer did.  (S)he is very effectively demonstrating how Ezekiel 14, the strong delusion and itching ears work.  I hear what I want to hear, see what I want to see, and absolutely nothing else unless and until I am willing to acknowledge my idols of the heart and cast them down.  This is a portion of scriptural teaching that is almost entirely absent from all Christian teaching, SDA included.  

Casting down any idol of our own is a very difficult process because we love those idols.  We are emotionally invested in them by an entire lifetime of "learning" what "truth" is.  Now we are being asked to acknowledge evidence that what we have always believed to be the truth is not.  This is the problem of any generational sin.  The term has come in vogue in recent years, but I am fully convinced few really have any understanding of it.  It comes from God's statement of his name in Exodus 34:6, 7.  The means by which God visits the sins of the fathers on the children is the children's refusal to acknowledge that their parents and past teachers could possibly have been wrong.  Furthermore, I have found over the years that a great many Christians believe that honor your father and mother means that you never point their sins out to them.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There is no honor in allowing them to continue in their sins, but at the same time only they can repent of their sins and start moving into the truth.  Are we really supposed to remain in sin because our parents either never knew something, or refused to repent when God finally did reveal the truth to them?

The stronger the emotional attachment to any idol, the less likely we are to see and/or acknowledge any evidence proving its falsehood.  As a result, since I refuse to put stuff out piecemeal as separate posts that can be easily ignored if you don't agree with them, I end up being better able to see someone's idols.  Wanderer has an idol.  My point is that there are two contexts here and both must be examined.  Wanderer can only see one of those contexts, and since I spent a great deal of time pointing out the need to see the bigger picture of the New Covenant perspective Wanderer believes we are in complete agreement that the Old Covenant (very limited and legalistic) perspective does not matter at all.  Wanderer completely ignored my discussion of the meaning of Galatians 5 in this matter.  By teaching some portion of the Old Covenant form of the law as still binding we make it all binding on us, therefore must be studied from that perspective.  Also, although I did not quote Galatians 3 at all, I did discuss the carnal form of the law as being still necessary as a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24) and must necessarily first be discussed from the limited carnal perspective.  Wanderer denies either one of these two perspectives, so will not even acknowledge that my post discussed them as being just as important to this body of people as the wider perspective.

We are human.  As such we are not very honest, most especially with ourselves, and the church greatly encourages this self-delusion because it is what keeps us under the authority of the leadership that feeds on us instead of feeding us (Ezekiel 34).  I have regularly said, "If you cannot be honest with yourself about yourself you will never be able, we are seeking to prop up our beloved idols, and will usually attack anyone with the gall to point our hypocrisy to anyone, most especially us.  Keep this in mind as you discuss this topic because you are trying to get us to face up to one of our most beloved idols.  

I don't know if you are called to point out anyone's idol of the heart on this, but simply asking for additional texts that are not being considered in the matter will attack those idols.  I have already pointed out the call to cast out the bondwoman in Galatians 4, quoting from Genesis 21:10. This is a specific call by God for a divorce from a prophetic perspective, using an actual divorce from the OT.  Also, don't forget Jeremiah 8:3 (read the entire chapter) because here God specifically says, "I gave Israel her writ of divorce."  God is a divorcee and is calling his body to be a divorcer.  Since so many call divorce a sin they are calling God a sinner by their doctrine.  Don't allow them to try to explain this away.  They are calling God a sinner by their ignorance and that cannot be minimized by any explanation they make.  By John 9:39-41 the more work they put into explaining this away the more responsible they make themselves for their own sin in this matter.

Good luck with your study.

[Myron]

On 4/26/2017 at 10:02 AM, Shane said:

How much money do we spend on evangelism and trying to win souls to Christ?  And when people respond to our evangelistic efforts, we accept them as they are - divorced, single, married or gay.  And yet our position on divorce results in 50% of those dealing with it leaving the church.

Does anyone see a reason to take a hard look at this issue? 

 

 

 

 

On 4/26/2017 at 1:36 PM, CoAspen said:

I would wonder if the stat still holds true and what the regional stats would be. In my neck of the woods, it does not seem to be true. As I said before, two different churches that I have been a member of had a very conscious effort to reach out to the divorced. 

 

 

 

 

On 4/26/2017 at 9:29 AM, B/W Photodude said:

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." Joshua 1:8

To the new or old covenant believers, the law had spiritual meaning as well as an obligation to obey it. What reason would they have to meditate on the law day and night if there was not something to see in the law that was not out in the open obvious? When you find it, you will be very blessed.

At no point in Scripture does it stop saying that those who love God will keep His commandments, even to the end of Revelation.

 

 

 

Shane and CoAspen,

The stat holds true, and not simply in this matter, but in almost every matter where the studies are showing that we are not able to retain membership.  What is the root cause?  Irrelevance.  The church is supposed to be a place of healing, not a place of judgment.  Sick people start denomination hopping looking for solutions to their problems, instead they find themselves constantly condemned for those problems and told they cannot fellowship with us (the generic us, not just this denomination) until they have overcome those problems on their own, or they are told the law no longer applies, therefore, there is no need for healing because Jesus now accepts them just as they are, so those problems never get addressed, yet because the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin (John 16:7-11) they are fully aware there are still problems in their lives for which they much seek God's remedies.  They continue searching and they will leave any denomination which has nothing relevant to say in the matter.  

My own calling since 2001 has been to study God's law from a perspective of relevance to everyday life and to teach others how to apply it outside the church doors.  (Nevermind that there is not a denomination out there that actually applies it within the church; most, this one included, work very hard to divorce biblical principles from their own practices and set up church law -- traditions of men -- in the place of the law of God.)  Up to this point I have not been allowed to teach what I have learned widely, but where I am allowed to teach I find that it is rather well accepted among those who have already admitted they are sin sick and need healing, whether they are churched or not, although that often determines whether I teach this stuff directly from the Bible or present it as simply some pretty good advice from alternate sources than what the mainstream teaches.  Yet as soon as you get among the "Pharisees" and those they have brainwashed into believing their traditions are the real law of God, I immediately run into those who claim that none of this applies at all in real life and those people are in the majority.  Now there is "faith" for you.

In one situation where God placed me as an anonymous observer, I watched a lay pastor try to conduct a service for which he was unprepared because he had gotten a date wrong in his calendar. Because he was unprepared he decided to simply open the meeting up to questions from the men he was there to teach.  I don't recall the specific question and probably could not share it for ethical reasons anyway, but something this guy brought from scripture in answer to that question brought the follow-up question, "Yes, but what does that really mean?  How do I do that in my life right now in this very situation?" Since this teacher had no practical understanding of the Bible verse he had just quoted as the best advice to follow he squirmed for a little bit, then tried to return to the previous discussion started by a question about creation in which this teacher had quickly devolved into whether or not Adam had a belly button, and that was the specific issue he kept trying to go back to as the questioner kept trying to press for a useful answer.  

Granted, this man was a lay pastor so you could expect that he would find himself out of his element and in over his head with many such questions, but the sad fact is that even our doctors of theology, our "Christian" counselors and teachers and any other church official very quickly find themselves in no better situation when pressed with the question, "Yes, but what does that really mean?  How do I apply that to the here and now and this situation for which you gave me that advice."  One could say that this stuff has become nothing more that cliche to most of us, but that is not an honest assessment.  It has alway been nothing more than meaningless cliches to the lay people, and not much more than that to our highest officials.  People get offended at me quite regularly for using that word, cliche, "because that came straight out of the Bible."  Yeah?  Well, can you tell me what it means and how to apply it in everyday life?  No?  Then it is cliche to you, and you simply put it out there to avoid any real attempt at solving this person's problems.  It may be excusable from a layperson, but I seriously doubt it.  They should still have knowledge of where or who to go to to find real solutions, but if you are a professional pastor or counselor you simply prove yourself to be a charlatain.  And yes.  I have seen such useless and counterproductive advice from the pros.

The most common excuse I run into for refusing to study God's law and learn how to apply it in a practical manner to everyday life is, "We do not live in a theocracy."  Really?  You do not believe God is your king, regardless of what lower jurisdictions you also live under?  That's not the answer you give me when that lower jurisdiction has a law you want to disobey and you think you have found a Bible verse to give you that "right" to disobey the authority under which God has placed you (Romans 13:1-3).  And what about when you get to heaven?  Who will be the king there?  God or you?  Whose laws will be the "law of the land" while you are there?

For Adventists, there is another question that may not apply across the board to all other denominations, although there are others that believe they also have this calling.  When you come out of Babylon what nation will you enter?  Since God called up Babylon as a beast (four sore judgments, Ezekiel 14:21) to devour you until you repent according to the iron yoke law (Dt 28:48) embedded in the law of tribulation (Deuteronomy 28:15-68) God is not going to release us to continue doing things our own way.  Why did he apply this law of tribulation to us in the first place?  "If you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you," (Dt 28:15).  How long does this punishment last?   "If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me,  I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins," (Lev 26:23, 24).  In other words, until we repent and start following him, God will not relent and end these punishments.

As Photodude said, God's law remains in effect.  That means we need to continue studying God's law in much greater depth than is being done now, and we need to make sure it is God's law, and not man's traditions in rebellion against God and his law that we are actually following.  

That means, Shane, you continue studying this issue since God has called it to your attention, and you do so whether you can convince the church that it is sinning by its traditions or whether they instead continue to choose their rebellion against God in this, and a large number of other matters.

[Gregory Matthews]

Myron, in reference to The Wanderer as a "(S)he."  As is  generally known here,  The Wanderer presents himself here in CA as a male.

If you challenge that, such is not a subject that we want to get into here in CA.

 

[Myron]

16 minutes ago, Gregory Matthews said:

Myron, in reference to The Wanderer as a "(S)he."  As is  generally known here,  The Wanderer presents himself here in CA as a male.

If you challenge that, such is not a subject that we want to get into here in CA.

 

 

Thank you, Gregory.

I'm not challenging that.  I simply don't spend much time here and did not remember whether Wanderer was male or female and did not want to take the time to look it up, nor did I want to offend by getting it wrong.  Of course, offense tends to be in the eye of the beholder, and if someone wants to be offended it won't matter much if I go out of my way to be offensive or go out of my way to avoid offense; they will be offended regardless.  

[Gregory Matthews]

Myron:  Good response. 

 

[GayatfootofCross]

2 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

 

I am so sorry!

[CoAspen]

I just love the 'piousness' that sometimes gets displayed when people become so enamored with their own view points they feel fully righteous in calling out others (... I end up being better able to see someone's idols.  Wanderer has an idol.)  There seems to be an addiction to pointing out perceived sins, according to ones own definitions(......you never point their sins out to them.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There is no honor in allowing them to continue in their sin....) I am often reminded of the words of Christ, which seems to be the most important part of His statement in my opinion, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. I remain puzzled with the issue of 'sin pointing' so that it has such a strong attraction.

[Gregory Matthews]

Really? Then you are just as full of it as he is. Buzz off the whole lot of you. May you rot in the continual BS you keep generating about people here or permit others to do.

Earlier The Wanderer said the above to me.

 

Wanderer:  Here is what I said was a good response on the part of Myron, see below:

I have issues with what Myron posts.  But the following one was appropriate and good.  I stand by that, whether or not your agree with me.

 

Quote

Thank you, Gregory.

I'm not challenging that.  I simply don't spend much time here and did not remember whether Wanderer was male or female and did not want to take the time to look it up, nor did I want to offend by getting it wrong.  Of course, offense tends to be in the eye of the beholder, and if someone wants to be offended it won't matter much if I go out of my way to be offensive or go out of my way to avoid offense; they will be offended regardless.  

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Well, his response that I called good was primarily aimed at me.

 

[Myron]

On 4/26/2017 at 4:51 PM, Shane said:

The problem seems to be first, those going through the divorce feel guilty.  Often times we are guilty.  Who goes through a divorce and doesn't look back and second guess themselves that they should have done this or that?  The church may not be actively condemning them but the individual is still struggling with guilt even if they are the "innocent" party.  If they can find anything the church has published on divorce it will  normally say the same thing.  Only allowed in cases of adultery or perhaps abandonment by an unbelieving spouse.

 

 

Shane,

Because Ellen White, and by extension the rest of the denomination, never studied God's law in any detail they know next to nothing about the sacrificial system and the meanings of each of the individual sacrifices.  For instance, Ellen White, and therefore most of the rest of SDAs, even the highest level theologians seem to teach and believe that it is the daily burnt offering that is the sin offering.  We are in good company; Nadab and Abihu did not understand this difference either and that was the specific cause of their deaths (Lev 10:16-20).  In Ellen White's discussion of this even she never even got this far in Moses investigation of these deaths, and when God called this matter to my attention in 2001 or 2002 I found her writings to be of absolutely no help in the matter because she could never get past her temperance idol, and therefore past the past Moses preliminary assessment before he even started his investigation of the cause of their deaths.  Now SDAs argue themselves blue in the face trying to claim everything beyond verse 9 has no bearing on the matter, and many even claim verses 16-20 are nowhere to be found in scripture, even after you show them they are in every Bible published!  Idiots!  This is what idols of the heart do to a person.

Leviticus 1-7 covers all the various sacrifice that are included in what, if we used Catholic terminology, would be called the Ordinary of the temple service.  Unlike the Catholic Ordinary, there are three offerings listed here that do not necessarily happen daily.  In fact, the Sin Offering cannot be presented daily by every supplicant because it cannot be presented until all restitution has been paid in full.  This is why Jesus said in the sermon on the mount, “Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift," Mt 5:23, 24.  

There is a sacrificial law that looks like the sin offering in every detail except one.  That detail is that this is called asham instead of chata.  Depending on the translator asham is generally translated as trespass or guilt.  Gesenius Lexicon also says it can be translated as blame.  I have never been able to develop an explanation for this sacrifice that seems completely satisfactory.  On the face of it, it seems this is God playing a gotcha game; "You sinned once but I am going to demand two separate sacrifices from you -- one for sin and one for the guilt associated with that sin."  A loving God would never do this, so there is a serious problem with such an understanding, although I know many Christians, including many SDAs who very happily advocate for such a capricious god.  You even mentioned them in this post speaking of how they like to sit in the pews passing judgment on everyone else, (but as I point out all the time, never taking the plank out of their own eyes.)

Because Adventists never study redemption law in any depth, the do not know what happens with the guilt/blame for a sin when the redeemer purchases your bond.  If you sin and do not have enough money or other property to pay the restitution a bond is created by the court and auctioned off.  The person who purchases this bond is your redeemer.  This is distinct from a kinsman redeemer who bears a right of redemption, meaning he can force any bond holder to relinquish the bond of any of his close relatives.  The sinner is the servant of the bond holder, whether redeemer or kinsman-redeemer until the entire bond is paid off.   The redeemer pays the restitution owed for the sin, and as a result, the "victimhood", if you will allow me to use this made up word, is transferred to the redeemer.  God's law requires the victim to forgive the sinner at this point because once the restitution is paid in full it is as if the sinner never sinned and there is no more victim. Well, not so fast.  The debt's owner has been changed, but there is still a debt owed, so there is now a different victim of my sin as far as I and the original victim are concerned.  I have no further obligation to that first victim, but I still have an obligation until either my debt is paid in full or my redeemer forgives that debt.  

It is easy to see that victimhood passes to the redeemer, but what is not quite so easy to see and understand is that my guilt also passes to the redeemer according to God's law.  Remember, Moses told Aaron that the reason he was required to eat the priest's portion of the sin offering is that by so doing he took upon himself the guilt of the supplicant's sin and bore that sin before God.  Remember that Moses told Aaron that the reason Nadab and Abihu died was because they refused to eat the priest's portion and thus bear the guilt of the sins of the congregation before God.  This self-righteous condemnation from these two priests is the drunkenness that killed them.  This self-righteous drunkenness is the judgmental condemnation you see from the people in the pew who are placing a large burden of guilt on those they accuse, even if there is no sin according to God's law, and this guilt must be dealt with by the law of the guilt offering, no matter who is bearing it.  

If my understanding of these matters is correct, or even just in the ballpark somewhere, it would be a rare thing for the sinner to bear this guilt himself in its entirety; he simply does not have the means.  But there is more to all of this.  By bearing the guilt for the sins of the sinner the priest (redeemer) is now made responsible for the sanctification of the sinner.  Sanctification is an educational process when it is understood properly.  If I redeem your bond, I now have the responsibility to take you under my wing, teach you by God's law how the action you took was theft requiring restitution in the first place, make sure you understand the effect of that action on your victim(s) (why God says what you did is sin against them), how all this works both on the victim and on you (a measure of psychology here) and even how and why when you break one commandment you have broken them all.  (This stuff is interwoven like a net, and you cannot pull on one strand without having a cascade of effect spreading throughout the entire net, which is another reason I don't like breaking my teachings into tiny little pieces.  Nothing happens in a vacuum, but we prefer to think they do and that the consequences of my actions really do not spread past me and maybe one or two other people.)

You can't teach what you do not know, which really is the primary reason the priesthood (whether of believers or more specialized professional clerics symbolized by the Levites) fail in all of this and refuse to bear the sins of those placed in their care.  If they knew this stuff, and how their refusal rises to the level of sin against those they believe to be sinners unworthy of any consideration, they would not be so foolish as to sit back in self-righteous judgment against those they are accusing.  There is a listing in Vine's Expository Dictionary, which I have not been able to locate recently, but which I have read many times. It may be Satan or devil or demon, but it may also be some other related entry.  It tells of a teaching from the ancient rabbis that when we accuse Satan of making us do something we are in essence accusing yourself.  In essence, it is an ancient statement of the current playground taunt, "When you point at someone else you have three fingers pointing back at yourself."  The blame on the accuser is generally greater than the blame on the accused.  This is especially true when the satan (Hebrew for accuser or more specifically, prosecuting attorney) in the case at hand is supposed to be the advocate for the defense, as is the case with the priesthood.  Actually, there can be a legitimate claim made that the priesthood, like the Holy Spirit, who convicts us of sin (John 16:8) yes is our advocate before the judge; but for the most part the Pharisees you described forget their primary duty is as an advocate for the defense, not the prosecution.  As a result, they condemn themselves.

Turn the guilt over to Jesus as if it were an actual sin, even if you suspect it is not.  Part of the process described in ritual is learning God's law, God's definition of what is, and is not sin, and through this act of sanctification you will learn to release guilt for things that are not sin, and/or the guilt for sins which have been paid in full, whether by your work or Jesus' sacrifice.  Many of those same Pharisees attempt to hold us guilty in perpetuity even for those sins as well, thus sinning against us.

[CoAspen]

A continuation of a judgemental attitude towards others and much presumption, i.e., (Because Ellen White, and by extension the rest of the denomination, never studied God's law in any detail they know next to nothing about the sacrificial system and the meanings of each of the individual sacrifices.) Didn't realize the author of the above statement was a personal acquaintance of EGW's and others study habits. 

Quote

This self-righteous drunkenness is the judgmental condemnation you see from the people in the pew who are placing a large burden of guilt on those they accuse,........

Does this person understand what they are saying? Can they not see the parallels in their own words?

[Myron]

On 4/26/2017 at 4:51 PM, Shane said:

At this time I have an issue with the "only adultery" position because:

• I don't think that is what Jesus was trying to say and I have yet to find a Bible scholar that can show me it was.
• An "innocent" spouse is put in a position of exposing the guilty spouse in order to justify the divorce.  Why should I have to tell people that my wife cheated on me in order for the church to accept me and allow me to hold positions of service in the church?
• It elevates the sin of adultery above other sins.  Adultery is a grave sin but so are many others.  Is it worse for a man to cheat on his wife or to come home and beat her and the children?  Is adultery worse than neglect?  If a man refuses to get a job, pay rent, buy food and support his family, somehow he is not so bad because at least he hasn't committed adultery. 
• It can take on multiple definitions.  Does it mean intercourse?  Oral Sex?  Sexting on mobile devices?  Viewing pornography?  Looking upon a woman with lust

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Good point.  Why don't we set aside the issue of adultery only, and whether it is actually biblical or is simply a tradition of men which we try to force the Bible to support by cherry-picking certain proof texts and ignoring the vast majority of what the Bible says on the subject?  Since you are focusing here on what adultery really is, why don't we search for the biblical definition of adultery, which the church quite intentionally seeks to limit?  If you seek to limit a definition it becomes a bit easier to prove you are not committing the sin, even when you actually are.

It has been said that any law code that does not fully define its terms is pretty poor indeed.  I am not going to accuse God of setting forth a very poor system of laws, but based on the principle of Deuteronomy 13:3, 4 God very often does not state things explicitly so that we show our love for him by seeking further clarification from him, or our hatred of him by either making it up as we go along, or turning to other sources that are not God to tell us what the mind of God is on some matter.  This problem has existed from the beginning and the first scriptural example of a violation of this principle is Eve's encounter with the serpent.  Eve added her own conditions to the commandment of God ("Neither shall you touch it," something God never said), a sin (Dt 4:2), although not a law revealed to her at that point, and as soon as the serpent knew that Eve was so willing to be so careless with the word of God it knew it had this battle won.

Since there is no explicit statement in God's law telling us what adultery is we have to use other means to legitimately "trick" the definition out of God, rather than tricking everyone we teach and/or accuse in the matter by using our own definitions and claiming they are God's.  Normally I start teaching something like this by defining what sexual intercourse is according to God's law, but that actually means we are starting from a place arrived at through assumption and speculation.  Those are valid study tools in any system if they are used properly.  In God's educational laws they are addressed directly in the laws of clean and unclean fish.  In the water (speculation) only those organisms that are attached to rock on the ocean floor are firm.  Everything else is either a fluid medium (the water itself) or is in constant motion in relation to that fluid medium.  It is hard or impossible to pin down facts, yet there must be a means of finding truth in that place.  

Here it is not necessary to speculate.  God has provided us with numerous examples of what adultery is, how it works, how we have violated that law and how we make restitution for those violations so that even lacking an explicit definition for adultery, we can still figure out that explicit definition.  We simply have to do the word study and see what has been given us by implication.

This is one of the few words in scripture that can be examined in a rather straightforward manner because there is only one Hebrew word translated as adultery, and four Greek words translated as such, all four of which are either the root or derived from that root -- essentially a single word.  The Hebrew na'aph appears 31 times and is translated in the following manner:  adultery (17x), adulterer (8x), adulteress (4x), adulterous (1x), women that break wedlock (1x).  Again this is extremely straight forward, making our task considerably easier.  Next, we examine each instance of this word to see how it is used.  I am not going to do this for you here, and it has been long enough since I did this that I do not recall exact statistics.  However, in between one-half and three-fourths of these instances, we are not talking about a breach of the relationship between a man and a woman, we are talking about our relationship with God.  

Obviously, then, the majority of these texts are not speaking of sexual intercourse.  Since the entire law of God is a prophecy of the plan of salvation there is some greater reality going on here and we cannot ignore it.  Since God is divorced, is divorced based on the adultery of the northern kingdom, and is divorced according to this law we must examine the full meaning of the word na'aph (adultery) according to God and his law.

The simplistic definition is apostasy, but that is still rather limited.  Beginning around 10 months ago God first called this matter to my attention, and while the primary study was completed in a couple of weeks time, he still occasionally calls this to my attention to refine my understanding further.  The study at that time cannot be considered exhaustive because I did not go back and check every verse again both to verify my memory of previous studies, and to show me things I missed in those studies, but it is reasonably accurate because I had done some of those exhaustive studies in the past.

It is here that we need to branch off into the study of the word for sexual intercourse, since it is clear from the study of the word na'aph that adultery is based on illicit sexual intercourse of a very specific type -- the sexual relations between a man and a woman who is married to someone else, and a married woman who has sexual relations with any man other than her husband.  By the definitions given in God's law as spoken to Moses on the mountaintop fornication is not adultery; it is its own class of sin with a much lesser penalty, but since it is closely related to adultery, as revealed by our next word study I am not going to quibble too much about the very loose standards of interpretation by our church leadership.

Adultery is something much more than simply a sexual sin against the flesh.  To understand that we must now search for God's definition of sexual intimacy.  That is both a very simple task and an extraordinarily complex task at the same time.  We all know that in the KJV sexual intimacy is denoted by the word knew.  Why is this?  That is the precise translation and definition of the Hebrew word Yada.  Did you ever watch the Seinfeld show?  Do you remember him and his Jewish friends repeating the Yiddish (pidgen Hebrew) yada, yada, yada everytime someone was telling him something he did not really care to acknowledge?  "I know, I know, I know."  So mental/intellectual knowledge is somehow brought into all of this.  

On blueletterbible.org we find the following statistics for yada:  The KJV translates Strong's H3045 in the following manner:  know (645x),  known (105x),  knowledge (19x),  perceive (18x),  shew (17x),  tell (8x),  wist (7x),  understand (7x),  certainly (7x),  acknowledge (6x),  acquaintance (6x),  consider (6x),  declare (6x),  teach (5x),  miscellaneous (85x).  Long ago I learned from my word studies that the picturesque and descriptive nature of the Hebrew language, combined with the symbolic nature of prophecy requires that all definitions of a word be considered at the same time.  We cannot simply state that this time it is speaking of sexual relations and the next time it is speaking of the great secrets of the universe and another time it is speaking of some level of knowledge between these two things.  

Genesis says we are created in the image of God.  Yet deeper study of the basic concept of creation in general, and the idea of being created in the express image of God in particular, are on-going creative processes that will not end until Jesus hands over the completed creation to the Father at the end (end of what?) and God is finally all in all, (1 Cor 15:28).  The entire sanctification process is about creating in us the express image of our Father by education in his laws which define his character.  This is knowledge, specifically knowledge of God.  When we seek knowledge of other gods we are committing adultery against him for he is our husband, even individually, but certainly corporately as the church.  This is a further context of Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."  In this particular context, we are all spiritual women who are wives of God."  Yet in another context we are all children of our Father/god, and yet another where I am teaching you, one of us is the father teaching his son or daughter, or the husband teaching his blond wife.  In others, the roles may be reversed because you have the knowledge I need.  All of this is irrelevant to our physical gender, our physical genealogy.  

I have already stated that the food laws are all primarily education laws and are to be studied as such.  If you begin to understand this stuff I have been discussing here you should now have no difficulty understanding that all sexual laws and all agricultural laws are also educational law, and must be studied as such.  

Up to know what I have said is all well and good, if rather controversial.  I can demonstrate it from scripture.  But from this point, we are up against the limits of my knowledge.  People here often whine because I call them too lazy to really study anything, which is true -- both parts.  I make the accusation and they are too lazy, something you took note of in your original post, although you were more diplomatic about it.  I also am too lazy to do much study unless and until God presents me with the need to bone up on something.  It isn't uncommon for me to take the study beyond what I absolutely need to know, but not by very far before the laziness kicks in and I give up the study because I have no immediate need of further information on the matter.  This is a natural human condition, and I am not going to ignore it in others or in myself.  They may choose to believe they are not inherently lazy, and they may have better self-discipline, at least from a fleshly perspective, making it easier to hide from themselves and others, but that laziness is still there and regularly shows up when I start requiring them to check the scriptures I provide them or to provide me with scriptural proof of their claims to me.

So far God has not required me to study this matter any deeper, yet there are great depths to be sounded and plumbed.  Let me call your attention to Leviticus 18.  These are sexual laws defining who you may not have sexual relations with, but more importantly, once you start seeing these laws as prophetic shadows of some greater reality, you can see that what is really being forbidden her is the deepest mental and spiritual knowledge of someone that is in some way represented by these various relationships.  Up to this point God has not made it necessary for me to study what these different people represent, and although I have an understanding that because he makes me aware of these things I have the obligation to learn them, I have not yet studied or meditated on them much and really don't have much intention to do so, which is the very sin I have been accusing Ellen White and this denomination of being guilty.  If I do not spend the time on it I will probably find that when God makes it absolutely necessary for me to know this it would have been much better for me to have studied it now.

As teachers or as students we have need of some level of intimacy with each other.  The level of intimacy varies based on a number of factors, and the highest level of mental and spiritual intimacy is limited husbands and wives.  As I pointed out in another post, biblically there are two kinds of wife, the free woman, and the bondwoman, and most of the marriage relationships shown in the bible are the later.  God's law makes no distinction between a man's household and his business.  In fact, it makes it fairly clear that a man's household is business and the two cannot be separated.  Therefore his wife is his business partner.  But there are two kinds of wife, the bondwoman who is his junior partner who shares in the benefits of the household, but who must always obey his commands, and the free woman, who is his equal, and without whose agreement he cannot make a binding contract; he must consult her in every decision, at least the major ones.  Therefore, in a business which is a partnership, the senior partners are "freewoman wives" from a spiritual perspective and the junior partners are bound wives, and the associates are the children and bondservants.

Galatians 3 says there is no difference between the heir and the bondservants until the heir has gone through the "adoption" ceremony.  Middle Eastern adoption is not like our adoption, comes in three stages, the first of which is either his christening/circumcision ceremony on the 8th day after his birth or the ear opening ceremony of Exodus 21, and the final is the adoption of the fully mature son who is given the signet and made a full partner in his father's business.  The adoptee may or may not be a natural born son.  In other words, regardless of his birth status, he has gone through the steps of bondservant (associate), blond wife (junior partner), and finally received the full adoption as fully mature son/wife (senior partner).  As you study adultery you will need to eventually determine what levels of intimacy is appropriate for that relationship, discern what kind of relationship you are in with that person and whether you have crossed the line of appropriate knowing for that particular relationship to know if adultery has been committed.

You probably are not yet ready to deal with such considerations, yet I needed to present that background knowledge to you in that way so that you have a chance to understand why I say what I will be saying next.  Gossip is adultery.  Actually, by the biblical definitions I gave earlier, and the nature of the relationship of most gossips to those about whom they are gossiping it is fornication, but since I have already agreed to use the terms synonymously as the church does, even though there is a clear biblical difference, I won't fuss too much about that here; much gossip starts as adultery and after the first confidence was broken is fornication because it is passed between people, none of whom have a legitimate awareness of that knowledge.  

This is true if I share pornographic knowledge of my wife with someone.  This is true if having learned of that pornographic knowledge of someone I start sharing it with still others.  This is true if as a partner in a business, seeking to end my partnership with one and enter with another I share proprietary information with the company I am seeking to enter.  This is true on the physical level if I have sexual relations with any of my close relatives.  All of it, whether the gossip or the physical relations, is illicit knowledge and is, therefore, either adultery or fornication in God's eyes if not my own.  It is really that serious.  This is what adultery is in God's eyes.

Now in light of this information let's take a quick look at each of your bullet points.

I don't think that is what Jesus was trying to say and I have yet to find a Bible scholar that can show me it was.

It is not what Jesus was trying to say.  Have you read Dr. Jones book yet?  I will link to it again here.  http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.net/teachings/books/the-bible-says-divorce-and-remarriage-is-not-adultery/chapter-1/.  Jesus was telling these people that following the normal Babylonian practice of only giving verbal notice of divorce and refusing to give the writ of divorce as God's law required caused anyone who remarried to be living in adultery according to God's law.  Jesus did not speak about grounds for divorce in Matthew 5, and I doubt he did in the other passage of Matthew where he spoke of this, Matthew 19:9 which is the same discussion addressed in the other Gospels.  Only the Gospels make this statement; it is not found anywhere else in scripture.

An "innocent" spouse is put in a position of exposing the guilty spouse in order to justify the divorce.  Why should I have to tell people that my wife cheated on me in order for the church to accept me and allow me to hold positions of service in the church?

This makes it necessary for us to address two other laws of God, one of which is not explicitly stated in scripture but is there and I can teach it, but don't want to extend this study any further.  I will speak on that one first.  It is called by Dr. Jones the law of victims rights.  Judaism and Islam believe that the judgments God's law are a duty.  Christians long ago rejected this but their only answer to this was to throw away the law of God.  They could not reconcile forgiveness, which is a law contained in the Mosaic Code, with the rest of what they understood about the law, so the solution is "nail it to the cross."  Only the handwriting (the sentencing document) is nailed to the cross; the law itself remains in effect (Matthew 5:17-20). 

The primary law of forgiveness states that once restitution has been paid in full or once we have reached the Year of Jubilee all sin must be forgiven.  You are not allowed to hold a grudge beyond those two points, whichever comes first. However, the law of victim's rights says the victim has the right to forgive any portion of the debt or the entire debt before the restitution is repaid.  Furthermore, once the victim makes that forgiveness, no one else can reinstate that debt for any reason.  The victim does have some option to reinstate the debt and cancel the forgiveness based on the exception given in Matthew 18 where the king (God) forgave the servant who owed 10000 talents of gold but refused to forgive the man who owed 75 pieces of silver.  Those who are extended mercy must pay that mercy forward.  If they don't God is fully justified in removing the mercy he first extended, and every other victim will also have that same right.

The second law is the Law of Malicious witness found in Deuteronomy 19:15-21.  If there is a sin here, and you have forgiven your ex-wife for it, you can no longer bring that matter up.  It is as if she has never sinned.  God's requirement in this matter is, "As far as the east is from the west," Ps 103:12.  If you bring it up again you are being a malicious witness.  If you are divorced, you or your wife paid the required restitution for the sin of adultery (one of them, the more merciful one. God's law demands both parties be stoned to death as the proper restitution for adultery Lev 20:10) so from that point on full forgiveness is required.  While this is one of the few laws where the sin and judgment are made public matters which defile the entire community, if the spouses of the adulterers invoke the Law of Victim's Rights, and either divorces the offending spouse, or forgives them and remains married, the matter is no longer anyone else's business, and any attempting to make the matter their business are violating the Law of the Malicious Witness.  The answer is to do them what they are trying to do to the one they are accusing.  This includes the pastor himself, the conference president himself, or the GC president himself and all the little sons of satan (Matt 23:15) sitting in the pews.  Yeah, like that is going to happen.  The lunatics are running the asylum, they are not going to fix the problems they have created. 

Finally, given the information we examined earlier, this is illicit information for them thus they are committing fornication and attempting to get you to commit adultery AGAIN, against the formerly offending spouse.  This also qualifies as a malicious witness. Sin upon sin upon sin is not the answer to this problem.  MYOB is.

It elevates the sin of adultery above other sins.  Adultery is a grave sin but so are many others.  Is it worse for a man to cheat on his wife or to come home and beat her and the children?  Is adultery worse than neglect?  If a man refuses to get a job, pay rent, buy food and support his family, somehow he is not so bad because at least he hasn't committed adultery.   

James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." Once you get involved in this kind of in-depth study it becomes rather simple to demonstrate how breaking the law at one point breaks every point, especially if you are limiting yourself to the summary of the law called the 10 Commandments.

Let's look at this from the perspective of the Law of Vows which is found in Numbers 30 among other places.  Nevermind that I consider the standard Christian marriage vow a very unwise thing because we are setting ourselves up to fail in a vow that we cannot keep by the power of the flesh alone, that is not biblical because it denies the possibility of divorce at all, where we claim the bible allows it at least in the case of adultery, and because if we demand the wife obey her husband we are forcing her to be under the Old Covenant and be a bondslave of her husband in perpetuity.  All of these other things tend to be implied in some way in this vow, at the very least by the husband's vow to love and cherish his wife.  If he truly does that he will not beat her and her children, he will not neglect them, he will get a job, pay rent, buy food and support his family.  These are all confidences he has promised her in this vow.  As I have shown by the expanding of the definition of adultery from merely sexual intercourse to the full and deeply intimate exclusive knowing of her, violating this confidence in any way is adultery.  If you or the church or he chooses to fashion a garment of fig leaves (traditions/doctrines of men) to justify him as not actually committing adultery it does not change the fact that in God's eyes, and by God's law he has committed adultery and if he or these other people fashioning this fig-leaf garment claim to have a full understanding of God's law, God will judge him and them as guilty of the adultery they have committed (John 9:39-41).

It can take on multiple definitions.  Does it mean intercourse?  Oral Sex?  Sexting on mobile devices?  Viewing pornography?  Looking upon a woman with lust

These are not multiple definitions.  They may be subdefinitions, but they are not separate definitions, and if you claim they are you are attempting to make garments of fig leaves.  As already demonstrated, expanding things out to include God's full definition and not simply man's forced limitation of that definition, all of these things involve some kind of an intimate level of knowing.  The question then becomes, is this level of intimacy appropriate in my relationship with this person.  Jesus said looking upon her with lust qualified.  I am saying if you are not her husband or doctor just looking on her nakedness qualifies.  For the doctor, there is no right to look on her nakedness any time he or she pleases either.  If the nature of the disease or periodic exam does not require that nakedness, the doctor commits adultery, or at least fornication by asking her to disrobe.

Does any of this help?  You are not going to be able to get the church, or even just this denomination to go there.  It makes their heads hurt and requires them to think, to work to discover God's will and give up simplistic and false doctrines that they really love.  "Those who do not work will not eat," 2 Thes 3:10.  This is their spiritual condition and you are not likely to change it, most especially because they believe they are well fed.