Who is Trying to Create a "Religious" State

It's coming and we're looking the wrong way!

An SDA pastor friend of mine who is clearly a card-carrying Democrat justifies his defense of DNC talking points by raising the old Adventist fear of the oppressive religious state and Sunday Laws. His arguments seem really thin to me - at least Biblically. I don't see it. President Trump and V.P. Pence, if they are creating an oppressive religious state, seem to be doing a really lousy job of it. Trump has been reducing federal power at every turn over the past year and has given Americans permission to believe in God without being jumped on with the full approval of government by an anti-religious or at least anti-Christian establishment. 

There is way more potential for an oppressive government to create a quasi-religious state under progressive principles than under constitutional conservatism. Conservatives, for one thing don't believe in abolishing amendments. Progressive Democrats advocate this all the time - the second amendment repeal would simply establish the clean-up-the-Constitution-by-eliminating-the-Bill-of-Rights principle. This is necessary to prepare government to rule over all during the events of the last days.

 The religion that will dominate, of course, will be an unchallenged twisted cocktail of atheism, spiritualism, Marxism, apostate Protestantism and Catholicism with support from international corporate powers and trade unions. Of course, left-leaning SDA friends say that can never happen with modern progressivism in charge.  That's been demonstrated clearly as progressives chip away at the Constitution and give more and more intrusive power to the federal government.

 Houston's hard left Democrat mayor has already shown open hostility toward conservative Christianity, even going so far as to demand copies of pastors' sermon notes. The justification?  Mayor Anise Parker, the city's first openly lesbian Democrat mayor wanted to see if they were speaking out against her bathroom ordinance that forced all public facilities including churches to allow trans-gender men to use women's bathrooms. This was an illegal "fishing expedition" that even leftist judges wouldn't sign off on. The intent was to use the IRS to end conservative churches' nonprofit status. 

The lid was clearly off the not well progressive hidden agenda in Houston. The left tolerates high-church liberal churches (the ones that have already signed memorandums of understanding with the Roman Catholic Church). Dude, I am not afraid of conservative Christians. In the religious liberty realm, the folk who support Trump by and large have been pro-religious liberty all along. Evangelicals - the prosperity gospel, televangelist crowd - don't really count as conservative fundamentalist churches. They've been picking and choosing Bible passages for years with all the dexterity of a South London pickpocket. Evangelicals of that ilk have already sold out and begun signing on with the new and improved global church movement and have banded with high-church (read "apostate") Protestant churches to reunite with the Roman church which is led by a very very progressive socialist papacy.

Throughout our history most presidents have been open about their religious beliefs. Because Trump has received support from Christian groups doesn't mean he's going to establish a theocracy. Democrats have been trying to lay the charge of authoritarianism at Trump's door since before he took the oath of office, but it doesn't seem to stick. Trump's been busily deregulating and freeing up business. He's allowed religious institutions to freely practice their beliefs. It was the Obama administration that tried to force religious institutions and religious people to violate their own beliefs. Dems even tried to make the Catholics pay for abortion insurance for their nuns and teaching staff at schools. They tried to force Christian bakers to use their art to support practices that run counter to their religious beliefs.

At every turn, Trump is reducing the power and limiting interference by government in the lives of Americans. That's kind of the opposite of the sort of religious authoritarianism leftists have accused conservatives and Trump of being in favor of. I know of no real conservative who favors forcing anyone to go to church on Sunday. I have seen European socialist governments cooperating with high church Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church and trade unions and corporations to pass Sunday Laws. In Germany you can be fined or arrested for washing your car or mowing your lawn on Sunday. Europeans, as Democrats will tell you, are so much more advanced than we are.

If you ask me, they are advancing directly toward hell and American progressives are marching along behind them wondering after the Beast. Let us be careful, then, what mast we nail our flag to.

Tom

Has the NAD Joined the Democrat Party?

The NAD just posted a message to all Adventists to basically send up prayers based on Democratic National Convention talking points. The message asserts - (1) that innocent children are being cruelly snatched from their immigrant parents, and (2) the Bible is being used to justify cruelty by a Trump administration official.This is a bit worrisome to me. I think the devil has us looking right when he's going left.

Sadly, the first talking point is based on a distortion of the facts.This is not a new problem. This procedure was instated by the Obama administration. The left excuses this because they say the former president never intended to enforce these rules. One has to ask why then make the rule other than to deceive voters that he actually cared about illegal immigration. Democrats are ultimately responsible for the current immigration enforcement policies that see immigrant families split up after crossing the border illegally. Trump laid out a number of provisions that must be included in any proposed immigration legislation that would be acceptable to him. The ball is in the Democrats' court....

It should be noted that the kids are separated from the adults largely so they won't be running around the detention facility where there are drug mules, sex traffickers, smugglers, drug cartel enforcers and terrorists and in some cases their actual parents but not always. Also remember these are not legal immigrants. Once they make sure the kids are with their actual parents and not some sex trafficker, they will be repatriated to Mexico where they may start immigration applications to come back legally. 

Separating the kids is done for their own safety. The pictures of crying children in cages largely come from pictures taken in 2014 during the Obama administration.

#2 - Jeff Sessions was being castigated by hostile reporters and asked how he could tolerate this horrible situation as a good Christian person. Sessions quoted the Bible with regard to obedience to the law. It's not like he proposed establishing a theocracy. Truthfully, if you check out what Sister White said you will find a much different sort of threat on the horizon.

• "The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand of spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling on the rights of conscience. .."  - EG White

We Adventist must stick together,
unified in our diversity!

She was talking about "apostate" Protestantism. When I was a kid growing up in the church, I was taught to fear Baptists and the Church of Christ - those nasty conservative Christian churches.  But, if you take a look at who is taking the lead on hooking up with the Pope, it's been Anglicans (Episcopalians), Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists and other black-robed "high" churches. These guys have signed agreements with Rome already and have begun inviting Charismatic and TV based Evangelical churches to also join with Rome.

Also, the other member of the alliance are spiritualists including Mother Earth worshipers, radical environmentalists and progressive socialists who also favor creating a powerful global government. The papacy has already released two major encyclicals proposing a global world government (with teeth as Pope Benedict suggested) and even suggested it be organized by trade organizations, Labor Unions and international political parties (and there's really only one of those - the Communist Party).

Anybody else creeped out by that? Yet, our church leaders seem to be bound and determined to support leftist talking points at every turn. I've seen talk from the top about supporting environmental initiatives that turn ever more power and authority over to central governments. I'm concerned that the upper echelons of our church are drifting into the arms of that threefold alliance.

This is why I'm really concerned by moves from the administrative levels of the church toward centralizing authority once again in Silver Springs. It makes it a whole lot easier for government authorities to decapitate and cripple the church than it would be if we were diversified in authority and decision-making. The devil is subtle and devious. We have been told what to watch out for in the end times. It mystifies me that our church leadership seems to be missing the real danger that progressivism poses to the church. Progressivism operates as much like a religion as anything. It's especially obvious if you deviate from the progressive "faith". Progressives immediately want to end free speech, freedom of the press and even to gag ministers in the pulpit. Attempts have already been made in places like Houston, Texas where the Democrat mayor demanded that Houston pastors hand over their sermon notes to investigators to see if they spoke against her open bathrooms law. Not only is such "fishing" illegal and a violation of free speech, but judges won't even allow cops to search a car or home if they don't have evidence of probable cause. 


We need to look for the signs of Christ's soon coming. Jesus said we'd see them. We just need to not be like the leaders of the Sanhedrin in Jesus' day and convince ourselves to expect to see something rather different from what the prophets have told us to expect.

I love my church and I will never leave it. I will, however, speak up when I think there's a problem. That's just being a responsible "member". The church is a fellowship, not a dictatorship. We work together. We obey Christ, not man.

Tom King

Violating the Third Commandment

Once in a while someone pops up to take a shot at the kind of Christian witnesses who proclaim the message that we are "...saved by faith in Christ, not by works lest any should boast." Why this message makes some brethren angry, I will never understand, but it does.

We keep rejecting the message of righteousness by faith. 1888 was the first time and there has been resistance every time since to it's proclamation. I saw it int the 60s and 70s. Righteousness by faith was always a little too loosey-goosey for some of the brethren, preferring the stick to the carrot a little too fondly I think. The authoritarian wing of the church has never quite trusted God to keep the troops in line simply through the power of a deep relationship with him. Like the Roman church, they think we need to insert some "leadership" between ourselves and the Almighty.

They need centralized power and strict rules with strict enforcement or they fear all sorts of rule-breaking horror will break out. They measure hemlines. They tell us how deep could be the water we could wade in on Sabbath. Any deeper than the knees and we'd be considered swimming which would be a sin, I was told. They had big discussions about whether it was moral or not to roller skate to music.They didn't just give a hard time to champions of righteousness by faint like Morris Venden. They tried to run Ron Halvorsen Sr. out of my little town. The same sort of folks even criticized HMS Richards Sr. for being too excited about righteousness by faith and felt he should spend more time preaching on the law. Even poor Del Delker was attacked for singing with young men with guitars and banjos. They went after anyone who placed any emphasis on righteousness by faith or who questioned church authority or encouraged young people, thereby endangering their authority.

Ron Halvorsen Sr.

What a group of Keenites from the church I grew up in did to Morris Venden was Satanic and these people believed they were doing it all for Jesus. As though Jesus needed them to act as some kind of security force. For the same "crime" of not emphasizing the law, they also went after Ron Halvorsen Sr.. Both those men filled the church to the rafters. I never left a sermon by either of them that I didn't feel that I was going home to heaven one day. This group of "saints" hated both men. Why? I believe it was because both men appealed directly to the members without deference to that good old boys network of power brokers. I fear that what one dear saint said to me once is true, "What we need in this church is a visit from the Grim Reaper." 

James and Ellen White

We have a serious problem in the church and it isn't with the likes of Morris Venden. After the manipulation by Elder Butler at 1888 GC meeting to suppress the message of righteousness by faith, James and Ellen White wrote that they no longer had confidence that the GC administration spoke with authority for God to the church. Shortly after James died the GC wrangled an invitation to Ellen to go to Australia. She did, but when she came back, she was no less the warrior for Christ. God had already burned down the GC's power base in Battle Creek and forced it to move to Silver Springs. On her return, Sr. White led a minor revolt at the 1903 GC and the members of the church created the union conferences to divest the central administration of much of its power. Ellen said angels walked the aisles at that conference. With this new "unity in diversity" model the church spread around the world like wildfire until our tiny church had the second largest parochial education system in the world, a huge medical work, a massive publishing work and the largest mission work in the Protestant world.

HMS Richards Sr.

Since then, the authoritarians keep trying to recover their power. They use manipulation, bullying, "working policies" and subterfuge to try and accomplish what they think God wants. And the membership keeps resisting. Why? Because they know Christ and they recognize the enemy when he is among them. We may love our children

I believe it's a clear violation of the second commandment that is happening here at the end of time. There's a reason God put that command early on the list. The second commandent is not about cussing. It's about thinking to speak for God when He has given you no such authorization to speak for Him. To invoke his name in vain just to justify your own ambition and lust for power, is a mighty sin. It's the very sin that brought down Lucifer.

Jesus' followers are the meek, the kind and the unassuming. That doesn't mean they won't get up on their hind legs and fight you when you seek to rule God's church or to turn it into an image of the authoritarianism of the Beast. We imitate Christ. He is our master. When you ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?", remember. That might involve flipping over the money-changers' tables and cracking a few whips. And our role model in that was NOT a member of the Sanhedrin at the time.

God bless us all. Unity in diversity is the way forward! We follow Christ, not jumped up middle managers. No one must place themselves between us and Him. I would not want to answer for that before the judgment throne of God.

Yours in Christ,

Tom King