What About the 60 Million?

I keep getting crosswise of some of my brethren with some of the things I believe about God. My walk with him leads me to believe even more strongly in His mercy. For instance, I believe God will give to saved parents, the babies that were lost to abortion here on Earth. God says he formed us in the womb and knew us before we were even born. Our God is a jealous God, not willing that any should be lost. Therefore, I believe that all aborted babies will be taken home to be with us in Heaven. Me I want the angels to round up at least six or so that we can raise in a loving home, enough that we can have our own flag football team or extra crew for the schooner my kids and I are going to build in the New Earth.

Stephen responded to my assertion that aborted babies would not be lost with this: "This is unconditional immortality which is not a teaching of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and leads to spiritism."

 

So let me ask, "How do you explain our teaching that babies like the ones spoken of in the passage below from Ellen White will be restored to their mothers' arms at the Second Coming and even the motherless babies will be taken by Jesus to the tree of life?". After all, this baby clearly has not reached the age of accountability. Is there some kind of free pass for these babies if their parents belong to the right church. How is that fair to those who never had any chance to decide whether or not to follow Christ?

I have real trouble, Stephen, believing that God is that hard-hearted. We also believe (along with notable Protestant theologians like John Wesley) that many will be saved who never heard the name of Christ but were seeking Him without knowing His name:. 

 

Among the heathen are those who worship God ignorantly, those to whom the light is never brought by human instrumentality, yet they will not perish. Though ignorant of the written law of God, they have heard His voice speaking to them in nature, and have done the things that the law required. Their works are evidence that the Holy Spirit has touched their hearts, and they are recognized as the children of God.” - Ellen G. White

 

Strict conditional  salvation is almost as heartless as the doctrine of an ever-burning hell. God is love and He knows His children. He knows our frame, He knows we are dust, according to Psalm 103:14. God does not wish that any should perish, but that ALL should have eternal life (Matthew 18:14, ). That the God of infinite love, who carefully formed each of those fearfully and wonderfully made, but aborted babies in their mothers' womb and knew what they would one day be, will not finish His work, especially when there would be millions of us willing to raise those perfect babies in a perfect world. For that matter, I believe God will give me my dog back if I ask Him. Would a Father deny his child something that would only do him or her good. Would he not do ultimate good for the lost children who were victims of the holocaust of the unborn? Sixty million dead masterpieces created by God in sixty million wombs will not be wasted I believe.

 

I do not hold to the brand of religion that treats salvation as some kind of magical incantation. Many Christians (or Hindus, pagans or Buddhists for that matter) believe that you have to say the right words and perform the right rituals to get into Paradise. I met a Church of Christ pastor once who told me that because the preacher didn't say "In Jesus' name," but said "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," my baptism was no good. I disagreed. I asked him, "Do you think God doesn't know who his son is?"

 

My acquaintance with God tells me He does what He does, not through magic and incantation. He does what He does because his nature is supernatural or above our 3 dimensional plane of existence. He exists outside of time and is the Alpha and Omega, or as scripture says He lives in the present, the past and the future all at once. God knows who will be safe to take to heaven and the new Earth because He sees tomorrow the way we see today. It's not magic and definitely doesn't require incantations, waving magic wands or giving special powers to people the church hierarchy deigns to "ordain". He picks folks He knows, like Deborah, Gideon, Joseph, David and Simon Peter who can do the job He has for them to do. 

 

People keep trying to stuff God into a conceptual box so they can (a) understand Him with their limited intelligence and in a way that they approve of His actions and (b) figure out how to game the system so God is somehow forced take them to heaven. These folk lack faith. They don't quite trust God to make good decisions, or at least decisions they approve of, unless they have some leverage. Ah, but if we say the right words and perform the correct rituals, He will be forced to let us into Paradise, won't He?

 

Well, no! Remember Christ's description of the judgment - all those folks complaining that they did miracles, preached to the masses, built Crystal Cathedrals and God told them flat out, rituals and incantations and successful fund-raising and all, "I never knew you." God just doesn't fit in those kinds of boxes nor have those kinds of limitations. A lot of that kind of thinking is left over from the long discredited Last Generation Theology - an Adventist theologian's answer to an ever-burning hell for scaring people into the pews and into line with the "authorities". At the core of Adventism, is a kinder gentler, more forgiving picture of the character of God than many strong-willed Christians are quite comfortable with.

 

Timothy objected: "This is the unconditional love and nature of God. If there is a first life, then there is a soul, and the second life depends on our submission and accountability. A baby in the womb is life and has no accountability. 

 

I think God is quite able to raise up murdered children freed from the stain of sin. Adam and Eve,had they not been tempted could have lived eternally. Why not an unstained infant? If a child is knit together by God in the womb and another person ends the life that God has carefully created the child is unstained; murdered before the child has even been able to commit his first sin. Why would anyone think God would not object to having His babies killed without having had a chance to experience His love and choose life. 

 

Stephen objected. "You did not limit it to babes as in the picture. You included the unborn. There is no such teaching in Adventism."

 

Again I think such an idea is woven into the very Scriptures. An unborn child is a baby and a human. At least that's what God says about it. The idea that a fetus is a "clump of cells" is a progressive fiction and for that matter downright satanic. God sees the end from the beginning and knows the choices the little human being would have made. I firmly believe that God does not just toss out 60 million human beings that Satan killed before they had a chance to know Him. I'm sure there are "progressives" out there who would cheerfully stand beside the lake of fire with a pitchfork, shoveling babies into the flames. They are collectivists and think everybody ought to share in the same fate. I cannot imagine the God of infinite love being that cruel. You may face eternal death (Ecclesiastes 9:5) for your own sins, but innocent babies should not be lumped in that "collective".

 

Our founding fathers didn't have millions of abortions in their day; scarcely a handful. Ellen G White also said we'd discover new truth in the years to come. I think what is unique about our church is we really do believe God is loving and merciful. Unborn children are no less His children than the Hottentots who have never heard Jesus' name. I think we are learning more about Him as the years go by. When somebody puts forth beliefs about God's character that paint Him as harsh and unkind, it doesn't sit right because the God you know isn't merciless. Now if you choose to reject Him okay. You get removed from the universe permanently as you expected. But the innocent who were made by God, knit together in the womb by God Himself, have been murdered before they can make any such choice. You wanna tell me God abandons His handiwork because the devil decided to kill it before it was finished?

 

I don't think so! What kept me out of the church till I was 17 was the harsh picture of God that the Last Generation theology proponents were peddling. Then I met the actual Jesus and rejected the "only if you are a rigid, strong-willed Christian capable of Earthly perfection." bunk they were peddling. You can't tell me God will abandon 60 million plus innocent children as well. And they ARE innocent. And they are children. That settles it for me!

 

The idea that an unborn child is not a "soul" until he draws his first breath outside the mother's womb is messed up. God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul. He was a fully formed adult at the time. The idea that a "fetus" hasn't drawn breath and hasn't a soul, reveals a profound lack of knowledge of biology. When a baby is formed in the womb (knit together by God no less), he or she is ALREADY BREATHING. Its mother breathes and imparts oxygen and food to the child through the umbilical cord, an incredible design by God to see that the "clump of cells" gets oxygen and food. So, in essence, the child is breathing from the moment God begins to form it in the womb. 

 

God is merciful and he knows us from the moment of conception. Salvation is not a crap shoot where you win if the roll of the dice is in your favor. God is, as I said, not willing that any should die, but that all should be saved. Why do you think he waited until now, when there are more people alive than have lived and died throughout the whole history of the world, to finish the Gospel commission and come in the clouds? He waited for telecommunications, transportation, the Internet, rockets and satellites to allow the Gospel to reach every kindred tongue and people, that He might take home the absolute most numbers of people He can without their seeing death. God hates death. He longs for that moment, that twinkling of an eye when he changes us, gives us immortality and takes us home. There are, we are told, going to be more people on the Sea of Glass to celebrate God's triumph than we can number. God is not exclusive. He is inclusive. He wants every person in His kingdom who is safe to turn loose in the universe with both eternal life and free will (intact so that we may reflect His image). 

 

I find nothing in this that conflicts with the picture of a loving merciful God who would give His son to make sure we have the greatest chance of sharing eternity with Him. He's our Father and what Father is going to abandon more than 60 million babies aborted or miscarried? Are you prepared to tell a mom who miscarries that God doesn't care about her lost baby and won't give it back to her in heaven? Not this father! One of the founders of our church described little babies in heaven being restored to parents. I'm a parent and I will gladly take a whole flock of those babies.Sometimes I think that pernicious doctrine that infants lost cannot be saved comes from cranky old Christians that don't like the idea of being bothered by a lot of rambunctious infants and toddlers running around and walking on their grass. 

 

This I know. Jesus loves us, child, adult or old person, rich or poor, red, and yellow, black or white and carried every one of us in his heart when he went to the cross. I will not cheapen his sacrifice by telling people that Jesus won't accept anyone who doesn't say that canned phrase about "accepting Jesus" or isn't baptized with the correct words by the properly credentialed church official. God is love. PERIOD!!!! You cannot convince me otherwise. I know him too well!

 

So people with mental disabilities get the lake of fire too? Downs Syndrome? Autism? So, give me a list of people who will be excluded from heaven by God who gave his only begotten son, because they are mentally impaired or didn't manage to get born. I have no doubt that women who have lost babies prior to that age of "accountability" will get her babies back. My infant brother will be restored to my mother's arms. And I will get my football team of unwanted "clumps of cells".

 

The only thing I've found that shows the Old Testament God as particularly harsh penalty-wise, was his response to the pagan practice of sacrificing babies to Molech. The Israelites got up to that sort of thing on the ancient hilltop shrines and grove temples. God REALLY REALLY hated infanticide and I don't think he blamed the babies for it. I sure wouldn't want to be the people who did that stuff when I stand in the judgment.

 

That misconception of God as an angry god, comes from his harsh "fatherly" punishment of the Israelites and pagans for their evil practices. The Aztecs used to slaughter and butcher more than 26,000 captives annually. The Canaanites, Israelites among them, ran up similar annual numbers and you don't want to know what horrors were perpetrated in those pagan temples and groves. The Mexican pyramids have special channels to capture the blood runoff. Canaanite, Greek, Roman, Druidic and Egyptian temples were worse than today's serial killer lairs. They believed that the more the victims screamed, the better the harvest would be. The pagans murdered hundreds of thousands to make the crops grow - the victims' crime being that they were still virgins. 

 

Hey, if you slaughter tens of thousands of my children, I'm going to be pretty angry with you too and for good reason. I'd probably go medieval on you with an "automatic" weapon if you were murdering my babies. Nowadays, we only need protest the slaughter and we get treated like criminals for speaking out about it. 

 

I suspect God is pretty angry with us for the 60 million we've allowed to be slaughtered because Margaret Sanger and her ilk thought people of color were human weeds that needed to be plucked up from among us (her words spoken to a KKK women's group back in the 20s). I don't much blame God for allowing that batch of willful sinners back in ancient Israel to be punished. The interesting thing is that God didn't rain down fire indiscriminately on folks to stop it. He simply backed off and let evil people destroy other evil people as evil people are wont to do. Seems He is doing the same with us. We've already ginned ourselves up a nice plague to thin the numbers. What are we going to do next? A nice nuclear war with Russia? A newer more deadly strain of CoVid? We could have that soon. A university lab in Boston has already combined original Covid and the Omega variant and created a Covid strain with an 80% kill rate in rats. We're still sending money to research labs in China and they certainly don't like us. Even our progressives don't get a pass from them. 

 

God will shorten the time to Christ's coming else no flesh would be saved. The wages of sin is death. God doesn't have to hand you a paycheck. The devil auto-deposits it in your account. Forgive the length of this post, though. It's a subject that riles me up! Too many people have joined with Satan to harm the innocent and the faithful. Knowing God for more than 50 years, I believe God will make all things new and right and just - not the social justice being peddled by today's unchurched, but justice actual and true given us by our Father in Heaven.

© 2022 by Tom King

 

Forbearance and Unity

Ted Wilson Wrestles With the Unity Backlash from the Women's Ordination Vote

In the wake of the kerfuffle over the 2015 San Antonio General Conference and subsequent measures to "promote unity" by the General Conference administration, GC vice president Tom Lemon, chair of the Unity Oversight Committee, made remarks about the issue. Lemon spoke about the different entities he'd met with since the last Annual Council—in North America and elsewhere. In all these meetings, he said, he didn’t find "one person who gave any hint… [of] rebellion." The attitude was "we are children of God, and we are in this thing together…." "I heard an understanding of mission and commitment to mission that would warm your hearts." Lemon saw no evidence of the rebellion, which evidently GC president Ted Wilson fears. As a result, it appears that Lemon resigned as director of the church's Unity Committee apparently under duress, although any information as to why he resigned was not forthcoming. This sort of thing does not increase confidence in President Wilson out here in the hinterlands. His reelection to a third term in 2022 was unusual as GC presidents for generations have limited their terms to two, further creating concerns that the Wilson was setting up a dynasty in Silver Springs, especially those who remember how difficult it was to dislodge his father Neal Wilson. Messenger to Adventism, Ellen G White weighed in on the matter of controversial decisions being made at the GC in response to discontent in the field over the 1888 General Conference.

“In no conference should propositions be rushed through without time being taken by the brethren to weigh carefully all sides of the question. Because the president of a conference suggested certain plans, it has sometimes been considered unnecessary to consult the Lord about them. Thus propositions have been accepted that were not for the spiritual benefit of the believers and that involved far more than was apparent at the first casual consideration…. Many, very many matters have been taken up and carried by vote, that have involved far more than was anticipated and far more than those who voted would have been willing to assent to had they taken time to consider the question from all sides” ( EGW 9T, p. 278, italics supplied).

Unfortunately, what appears to be the defining issue of the present administration thus far has been the General Conference president’s failure to report the findings of the Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) to the 2015 General Conference Session after paying hundreds of thousands of dollars of tithe funds on the project that was to solve the issue once and for all. But the findings of the carefully selected committee were out of harmony with his ideas on the topic. A large majority of the Glacier View gathering of the best SDA theologians in the world had said that Scripture did not forbid the ordination of women. Wilson and those who supported him did not agree and Wilson did not allow the study report  to be presented at the San Antonio session before the divisive vote was taken. He failed to mention that a super majority (62 for and 32 opposed) of the TOSC and nearly all of the concurrent world division reports favored permitting divisions the option of ordaining women. One result has been ongoing turbulence in the denomination and the three-year search for the proper way to punish noncompliance. 

Ellen White noted that “the very beginning of the great apostasy was in seeking to supplement the authority of God with that of the church” (GC pp. 289-290).  We need to pray for our church, its General Conference president, and the members of the General Conference Executive Committee that they might think twice (or a dozen times) before voting into policy “laws” that will take all of us down a well-beaten historical road; a road that has always led Christianity to some very unchristian practices done in the name of Christ. Many incarnations of Christ's church have confused spiritual unity with ecclesiastical compliance. May God help His church!

Sister Ellen became troublesome to the GC following the 1888 General Conference and was invited to go to Australia for much of a decade. Mrs. White made the most of the "opportunity" and left the church administration to work out its issues with God's guidance. When she returned to America, she championed the creation of union conferences to decentralize church authority. She counseled that shifting decision-making authority further afield would make the work out in the field more effective and responsive to issues that sometimes occurred half a world away from Battle Creek, the GC headquarters at the time. The creation of union conferences helped loosen the authoritarian grip of the leadership. And once God burned down the press building in Battle Creek, the GC admin decided God was displeased. As a result the General Conference moved from what had become an Adventist quagmire to Silver Spring.

Recently, a new issue as flammable as the Righteousness by Faith controversy post 1888, has risen. Much heated rhetoric over women's ordination has been delivered from pulpits, discussed in the aisles of our churches after services, in church-sponsored conferences, over church potluck tables, and in magazines and publications approved, disapproved or tolerated by the General Conference. Prominent Adventist theologians have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Seemingly harsh actions that have been taken at the General Conference have troubled the saints in North America. Enforcement committees have been proposed by the GC Executive Committee that seem to have the power to disband whole unions or local conferences that do not hew to the theological positions of the General Conference executives. The GC position is that the matter was settled in San Antonio. Other SDA leaders have questioned the San Antonio actions as the product of a flawed and even manipulative process. Some folk charged with examining the issue, like Tom Lemon, have found themselves removed for not vigorously supporting decisions originating in Silver Springs.

We stand on the precipice of momentous events in Earth's history. Of course the devil is going to seek to divide us. We see it happening in the secular world as the political prophecies of Revelation are working themselves out on the nightly news. Is squabbling over issues of whether authority should reside in Silver Springs or in the congregations of the saints something inspired by God or by some force outside the church seeking to divide us when we should be working tirelessly side by side to reach the world. Should we be putting bureaucratic burdens upon the army of the Lord. Ought we instead to use every tool in our arsenal, every resource available to us to complete the Gospel commission? Certainly, establishing a veritable Adventist FBI to root out heresy as defined by church managers won't unite the church. A Unity Conference didn't do much to put the GCs fears to rest either.

Ellen White, during a similar upheaval in our history said, "The church may pass resolution upon resolution to put down all disagreement of opinions, but we cannot force the mind and the will, and thus root out disagreement. These resolutions may conceal the discord, but they cannot quench it and establish perfect agreement. Nothing can perfect unity in the church but the spirit of Christ-like forbearance” (EGW, Ms 24, 1892, italics supplied).

At a time, when we are currently the fastest growing denomination in the United States if not the world, it probably delights Satan to stir up division in our midst. Lucifer is a master at using authority to overturn our actual agreements among the brethren. Then he tries to convince us that we who run roughshod over our brethren are thereby more sanctified than those they suppress. My prayer is that we may resist the devil when it becomes evident that he is among us, that he may flee from us. In this way we may truly have Christian unity, not just submission to human authority. In God's church, it is He who is our Lord, who is our direct guide and savior.

© 2022 by Tom King