Written from a Concerned AU Student:
I am an undergraduate student at Andrews University, and I am generally very happy with my experience at our flagship educational institution.
I am also a lifelong Seventh-Day Adventist, and believe that as we grow closer to the end of time it is essential that as a church we stick the close to the Bible, and unite around legitimate church authority.
I am writing to make known to a wider Adventist audience an incident that nonchalantly was brought up in one of my classes. It should be noted this was not a theology course, but rather a basic general education Health and Wellness course, and the topic the particular lecture was on financial health.
The lecture was pretty standard and mundane, packed with much useful information about budgeting and how to be prepared financially for the future. The person giving the lecture was Andrews’ Accounting professor Quentin Sahly, and I appreciated the content on the topic. But . . .
But towards the end of the lecture when referencing the flawed nature of all institutions (so true) an offhand comment was made about how our Church has struggled to “get past this issue with women” but that we would in time “because progress is being made.”
The issue being referenced is the continually rehashed issue of women's ordination. And the “progress being made” is the persistent rebellious efforts by liberal conferences and individuals to disregard the legitimate decision of the corporate church.
I found the comment to be incredibly inappropriate. It is time for us as a Church to come together around Biblical fidelity, not to continue to stoke division over issues brought into the church from the secular culture and sexual revolution.
The apostle Paul makes it very clear that the pastoral ministry is reserved for men. Despite what modern culture says this is not due to biblical sexism, devaluation of the role of women, or arbitrariness but out of divinely inspired sexual differences.
I personally have undergone my own transformation on this issue. I remember clearly riding along in my then pastor’s car in the summer of 2015 when the now infamous WO debate was taking place at the GC, and my pastor explained how abandoning the biblical ordination process would very clearly lead to confusion on other issues for similar reasons, namely homosexual marriage and transgenderism. In my teenage naivete I scoffed at the idea.
But over the intervening years I have seen how so many early proponents of WO have gone on to soften their own previous stances on LGBTQ issues. A Christian sexual ethic has been greatly imperiled by progressive Adventists.
When faithful Adventist donors give money to sustain our institutions they expect those institutions to be committed to raising up a generation of Adventist Christians. The faculty of our institutions need to be reminded of their sacred trust.
I wish nothing but the success of our institutions, but God cannot bless us if we openly reject His Word.
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“To the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this Word it is because there is NO light in them” (Isaiah 8:20).
