What a session this was! For all those who said that PEARL would be unable to exert the pressure and influence for a course correction on the GC leadership, you were wrong. Where the majority of the delegate body failed, the Holy Spirit moved. Was this a resounding success? No. The church body has not embraced the necessary repentance, revival and reformation to understand the need for, and thus produce and sustain, the broad-based course correction required. But significant gains were made in the continuing campaign to educate the global membership on the major issues.
These Are
Official statements obscuring beliefs
The error of the 2015 immunization statement
Official statements serving the United Nations agenda
The GC consultative status with the UN
… and the only mechanism, effective in driving grassroots education of church members on issues, sparking debate and igniting the reforms:
6. the business meeting vote campaign driving
7. local conference and union awareness and prompting response
The Highlights!
July 3: Thursday Afternoon:
The first promising sign was affirmation of Fundamental Beliefs 1 and 18 at the start of the session, reasserting that the Bible and writings of EGW are the only authoritative sources voted by GC session, as PEARL also educates.
Next was clarification of the mission. “Make disciples of Jesus Christ who live as His loving witnesses and proclaim to all people the everlasting gospel of the Three Angels’ Messages in preparation for His soon return”.
PEARL-inspired motions were raised, to discuss the issues threatening unity: Official Statements, UN status, ecumenism…, not the minutiae on the agenda. Recognition: Sharyn Hole, Kimberley Ferreira, Tiffany Steinweg, Georgia Kenny, Ingrid Wijngaarde & Rosemary Benjamin.
Then the immunization statement changed. Yuliyan Filipov raised the PEARL motion, and we are greatly indebted for his boldness! Ted Wilson again spoke to counter the motion. It drew his personal intervention, and he assumed it would be a knock-out blow; maybe it was, for him.
Summarised, he accused the delegate of spreading misinformation, made references to “conspiracy” and “minority”, causing prejudice towards the motion to address the false claim of the 2015 immunization statement, namely that the health emphasis is based on the Bible, EGW and peer-reviewed scientific literature.
He then unveiled an alternate version of the statement, one no longer “based on … peer-reviewed scientific literature”, but now “informed by peer-reviewed scientific health literature”. The delegates voted as Ted Wilson desired. Someone within the inner circle of the GC top structure must have realized the new version was not the same as that which was published on the gc.adventist.org website for a decade. They had ten years to address this. They failed.
July 4: Friday Morning:
Overnight, the published version on the website changed. The official statement, which has endured the greatest amount of scrutiny during recent history and had been re-affirmed in 2021, changed; without a single delegate voting for discussion or approving the change. The update was carefully crafted to evade the most obvious of the PEARL objections. In an attempt to contain the fallout, Ted Wilson explained that the wrong version was published for a decade and no one from GC ADCOM noticed. And he said … “we just have to take the responsibility” … for not noticing the wrong version for 10 years, but he did not explain what the nature of that responsibility would be. However, soon after this debacle, a new General Conference president was voted in, maybe there was some accountability after all?
July 7: Monday Afternoon:
Artur Stele announced that the three officers of the General Conference (president, secretary and treasurer) would study all the statements, and consider where these are published so that they would be not confused with the fundamental beliefs.
Where does this all leave the PEARL campaign?
Yes, the statement survived the session, but not unscathed… it was an outcome no one imagined. We all anticipated that the majority of delegates would not rise to the occasion. Some of us agonized that the delegates might vote the statement to doctrine! Optimists hoped and prayed for the statement to be rejected at the GC. The Lord delivered a fourth option no one ever imagined, the statement was changed.
Yes, all the statements survived the session, but clearly there is mounting pressure about Official Statements published under the heading ‘Beliefs’. This layout also recently changed to ‘What We Believe’, and ‘Fundamental Beliefs’ have now been changed to ‘Official Beliefs’ which causes even more confusion with ‘Official Statements’.
Key Takeaways
The PEARL campaign, and all its courageous members presenting the argument in business meetings, have been vindicated. If you listen to Ted Wilson’s speech as to why the phrase “informed by” is preferred to “based on” you will see that Ted Wilson himself supplied wonderful ‘PEARL’-arguments against the former version of the statement.
While the PEARL argument has been vindicated, sadly, those who were against the campaign, supporting and defending the previous version, they are rebuked. Yes, many administrators, pastors, elders and members have gone on record defending error. By changing the statement, the GC has betrayed such zealots. This should prompt necessary self-reflection, why counter the reformation work, and so zealously defend error?
The PEARL campaign must continue!
a. The Immunization statement: The statement has been edited to attempt to remove/address the most obvious points of criticism, but now the new version makes it even more obvious that this statement is based on the admittedly inferior, fallible and uninspired source which is peer-reviewed scientific health literature. They also had to insert “health” because ‘science’ is fraught with theological dangers like evolution etc., so GC opted not to be informed by science in other fields, the arbitrary acceptance of ‘health science’ alone is itself also an admission.
b. All statements: All Official Statements and where these are published will be reviewed. More danger lurks in many of these Official Statements which needs to be uncovered to caution the church membership. Maintain focus and demand action. Ted Wilson defended the existence of Official Statements on precedent; PEARL considers this practice contrary to the Church Manual (p 30 Church organizations around the world recognize the General Conference in Session as the voice of the Church).
c. U.N. status: The relationship with the United Nations is apparent in many of the Official Statements, Ted Wilson denying that there was anything with the UN proves that educating on this fact is of utmost importance.
All PEARL contacts and interests are encouraged to watch the presentation by Tim Rumsey and note that the only driver of institutional correction on UN status is broad-based education and action by members:
The Death of Truth: God Says, But I Think. How One Church Split from the United Nations | Tim Rumsey, Specifically, from timestamp 46mins30secs
GC2025 settled the age-old question, what happens when the immovable object (GC) is hit by the unstoppable force (PEARL) … the object moved … ever so slightly and with so much disguising of the fact… but PEARL is moving GC. And PEARL must not stop.
PEARL has been blessed by this moving song of encouragement, please listen, feel inspired and share and continue!
Support PEARL with your talents, time, voice and prayer! Thank you!
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“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).