Recently the Potomac Conference—against the voted position of the world church, ordained Joanne Cortes to the gospel ministry. The Columbia Union was complicit in this act not recognized by the world church. The great escalation that has occurred now sees officers from the North American Division, which is over the Columbia Union and itself part OF the 13 world offices of the General Conference, actually participating in this act of insubordination just 17 miles from world church headquarters.
Jesus told a parable: God sowed good seed in His Church but while men slept the enemy came sowing darnel into the wheat. Darnel is a weed. Superficially it looks like wheat. God’s enemy is adept at creating fake ideas and distributing them among the truthful ones.
When you become part of a church, you have read your Bible, you understand something about God’s purposes for His world and His church. You anticipate arriving at the destination God has set.
We joined ourselves to Jesus and His Church anticipating a Bible faith. We want a thus saith the Lord for how we live-out our Christianity. How then is it that so often we see smiling, blank-faced people advocating for the same social justice packages advocated in godless secularism?
There are different destinations. God’s plan is to prepare as many as possible for translation, to enable them to pass through the time of judgment keeping true to Jesus all the way.
There is also a satanic agenda to overturn God’s created order, to rewrite the world and recreate it after other ideas, in a creaturely image. There is no God, some think, so they volunteer to be god for the rest of us. They believe they will redistribute things better than they were originally distributed. They treat the Bible merely as a primitive starting place. They want to build out from the Bible, to continue advancing past the Old Testament morality to a superior New Testament reality. From there they race onward with what they think are even better trajectories of justice. But these new trajectories are just photocopies of secular schemes.
The world is at danger from overpopulation, and the Church suddenly sets out a statement on birth control.
The earth is at risk because of changing weather, so the church releases a statement echoing that idea.
The earth is at risk because of a new disease; the church dutifully complies with its edicts, stripping away freedoms just as speedily as the world demands. What the regime says the Church does.
But why WO? Why women’s ordination? What is the bigger picture here? Why are some so bent on placing women in positions God has designed to be filled by spiritually qualified male leaders?
Satan has one and only one opportunity. He must undermine God’s order. As God enlists participants to uphold His order, Satan enlists participants to undermine God’s order. In the Bible only spiritually qualified males are appointed to positions of elder 1Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). This does not mean that one sex is superior to another; it is simply that God, who designed basic male and female physiology, basic male and female mental and psychological dispositions, set up this order. But from Genesis to Revelation primary human spiritual leadership is consistently male.
God’s prophet thunders against the unfaithful in Isaiah 2:6. He says that God abandons His people:
“…because they are filled with influences from the east, and they are soothsayers like the philistines, and they strike bargains with the children of foreigners.
O My people! Their oppressors are children, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray and confuse the direction of your paths” (3:12).
God has foretold that other agendas would be brought in from outside the Bible. We are a Bible Church. Then when people consider becoming part of the Church, will we be surprised when they evaluate the Church based upon what they see in their Bibles?
Women’s ordination is anti-evangelistic because it is a practice rooted in a different religious system. Second wave feminism is rooted in humanism. It attempts to undermine and de-instantiate God’s world order.
The convenient thing is to roll along with the currently preferred world order, to go along with the regime. But God does not call us to the convenient thing. Nor did we sign up for the convenient thing.
If North American Division headquarters officers can lead the Church toward the convenient thing, leading out in ordinations which the world church has forbidden, where are we? The NAD is itself part of the General Conference. It is not an additional layer of church governance, it is literally the North American office of the General Conference. For officers of the NAD to participate in the ordination of a woman is rebellion at the highest level. If there is no accountability there, then why should we support it in any respect? If the NAD can do whatever it wants, we are no longer a Bible Church; then anything goes. If they can do this this year, what can they do—and what will they do—next year?
Friends, may I urge you to join me in exercising your Protestantism? Possibly your Protestantism is getting rusty. Join me in preparing a less-than-a minute-long video letter to NAD president G Alexander Bryant, who is also a General Conference vice president. He is the single individual especially responsible to the General Conference for upholding world church policy in North America. [Watch this video to learn more.] Focus your attention on this individual. Help him discover faithfulness in doing his duty to uphold the world church’s biblical decision not to permit divisions or other units to unilaterally engage in illegal ordinations.
If you need help sending me your video file, I’ll link right above here to a playlist I’ve created that has video instructions for how to send me your video file.
Somewhere I read this solemn call to action:
“If God abhors one sin above another, of which His people are guilty, it is doing nothing in case of an emergency. Indifference and neutrality in a religious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crime and equal to the very worst type of hostility against God.”
At least let’s not you and I be guilty of this crime. Make your concern felt. Thank you for your time and attention.
Friends, may I urge you to join me in exercising your Protestantism? Possibly your Protestantism is getting rusty. Has the enemy succeeded in demoralizing you? Do you feel that resistance is futile? If Jesus ever felt that way, He resisted anyway.
We must contend for truth the same way.
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Pr Kirkpatrick has been engaged in pastoral ministry since 1994, serving several congregations. He has authored books including Real Grace for Real People, and Cleanse and Close. He has been plenary speaker at symposiums and a presenter on several continents. He presently serves as pastor of the Fremont and Muskegon MI Seventh-day Adventist churches.
Every morning Larry shares short Bible devotionals for those who want to start their day with God.