Daniel Xisto of the Takoma Park SDA Church in Maryland was recently hired as the new Peace Church Coordinator for the Adventist Peace Fellowship.
Adventist Peace Fellowship
The Adventist Peace Fellowship is a loosely-knit collection of pro-social justice progressives in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They are a kind of SDA Sojourners group, working to import social justice values into the SDA Church. These individuals formally organized in 2001, and received non-profit status in 2003.
Some of their stated passions include, gender justice (LGBT rights), racial justice, environmental justice (Green Church Movement), demonstrations, animal rights, abolishing the death penalty, reduced military spending, non-combatancy (which I support), and ‘socialist’ redistribution of wealth. The Adventist Peace Fellowship is a sponsor of the Hollywood Adventist church, which boasts a transgender elder, and they hope to sponsor more SDA churches under the oversight of Daniel Xisto.
Who is Daniel Xisto?
As mentioned, Xisto is a pastor at the Takoma Park SDA Church. He is a proponent of Black Lives Matter, according to the APF article. See picture below:
Some of Xisto’s recommended books are White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, Waking up White by Debbie Irving, and Christ in Crisis by Jim Wallis. Among his recommended entertainment is Queer Eye. This material is bad theology, offering only a new religion of racialism with unending penance. It is this anti-biblical circular reasoning coming into the church which destroys genuine relationships and communication.
On September 26, 2020, just a little over a month before the national election, Pastor Daniel Xisto delivered a sermon entitled "World on Fire (Part 1)."
Interesting excerpts from that sermon are:
Around the 6:38 minute mark, Pastor Xisto states that "We have lost so many beloved public figures.." and proceeds to name them. Among them, he names, NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, Actor Chadwick Boseman, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg, whom he describes as a pioneer for women's rights. He names Congressman John Lewis, whom he describes as a freedom fighter.
At around the 7:14 minute mark, Pastor Xisto then says, "Good people are dying, Bad people are thriving..."
At around the 8:58 minute mark, he states, "People are dying everyday due to Covid and the mismanagement of it and you're happy?"
On October 24, Xisto followed up with a sermon on voting, which was live-streamed on Facebook. Click image below:
Highlights
Beginning at around the mark 53:09 minute mark, he quotes Ellen White about voting for temperance and virtue.
Beginning at around the 55:19 minute mark, Pastor Xisto states that one should vote for "virtue , vote for decency and goodness, because history is watching." It is clear, that Pastor Xisto does not believe that one is voting for virtue, decency, or goodness if one chooses to vote for President Trump; he disparages those who will chose to not vote for the alternative and who will don't vote at all. He impugns these people's character and likens them to Pontius Pilate, who Pastor Xisto stated did not recognize a clear choice between Jesus and Barabbas. In a torturous eisogesis (beginning at around the 46:06 minute mark) Pastor Xisto states that there are some who are contemplating sitting out this election, some like Pontius Pilate who want to wash their hands of this decision. Pastor Xisto states that as a result of Pontius Pilate washing his hands, Jesus died.
Pastor Xisto implicitly dismisses the reality that potential voters or non-voters may not want to vote for the "liberal" alternative, because they don't want to get their hands dirty validating the sins and wickedness of the liberal alternative.
Beginning at around the 46:59 minute mark, Pastor Xisto says, that's what privilege is "[white] privilege is being able to wash your hands that have life and death consequences to other people, but not to you."
Pastor Xisto's statements were disrespectful of others because as is evident by the comments to Mark Finley's video on voting, many people believe that one should not vote at all in the presidential election because they believe that their vote would be furthering the beast power. Others believe that the liberal alternative has harmed the community and nation in the past, and will harm them in the future. Pastor Xisto disparages these concerns and likens these people to Pontius Pilate who he says did not have the character and fortitude to vote for Jesus.
Beginning at around the 34:31 minute mark, Pastor Xisto likens this worldly presidential 2020 election to something sacred and holy - the choice between Jesus and Barabbas - the choice between good and evil. He states that the choice could not have been clearer between Jesus and Barabbas and states beginning at around the 42:40 minute mark, "fast forward to today's election and to our opportunity to vote."
At around the 43:19 minute mark, Pastor Xisto denies that he is saying that one of the presidential candidates in the 2020 presidential election represents Jesus, although he just likened this 2020 worldly election to the choices between Jesus and Barabbas.
Beginning at around the 47:16 minute mark, he states that the General Conference advocated that people should vote. He then quotes from the General Conference resolution. Yet the resolution does not advocate voting in all circumstances. It states that voting, when done for the goal of furthering justice, humanity and right, voting " is itself blameless and may be at times be highly proper, but that the casting of any vote that shall strengthen the crimes of intemperance, insurrection, and slavery we regard as highly criminal in the sight of heaven, but we deprecate the participation in the spirit of party strife. Notice the language, it says, at times, it's highly proper to vote."
Beginning at around the 52:19 minute mark, Pastor Xisto then quotes Ellen White's advocacy for voting for prohibition to infer that one must vote in this presidential election (implicitly, for the alternative to Trump). Ellen White advocated voting for temperance and virtue, not necessarily the liberal alternative in this election. There is also some debate as to whether she advocated voting for candidates or issues. This has been debated by many of the commentators to Mark Finley's excellent video on voting.
Beginning at around the 58:47 mark of today's, Pastor Xisto appears to state or infer that his vote for a presidential candidate can be a vote that shows that Black Lives Matter, can be a vote to end the death penalty, can be a stand against racism and police violence, can be a stand for providing access to healthcare, ending gun violence, and defunding war budgets.
Beginning at around the 33:33 minute mark, Pastor Xisto states that if one is a true follower of Jesus, that one will agree with everything that he says in this sermon.
1 Corinthians 13:4-6 states
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth."
Yet Pastor Xisto disparages others who don't agree with all of his sermon as not true followers of Christ. He also insists on his way—that others vote, and vote as he's suggested.
Pastor Xisto stated during the Takoma Park SDA Panel Discussion which took place in January of 2020, (beginning at the 58:14 minute mark of the video featured in Fulcrum7's article on the subject) that "There are a lot of LGBTQ+ who are not here because of the choices that we've made in our judgement upon them." When he referenced "here", he was talking about the Church.
Pastor Xisto's position is contradictory: On the one hand, he claims that the church has been unwelcoming to people of different sexual orientations and states that the church needs to be more welcoming, yet he claimed yesterday in his sermon, that only those who are able to say "Amen and alleluia" to everything that he stated in his sermon, are true followers of Christ.
The Bible does not advocate forgoing and sacrificing a local community, a national community, sovereignty, life, economic health, opportunity, morality, justice and safety, under the guise of being “neighborly” and achieving the “common good.”
This is the new Peace Church Coordinator for the Adventist Peace Fellowship. His wife, Andrea is a former president of GYC. Let that sink in.
The following biblical verse is applicable here to the situation regarding Pastor Xisto’s two sermons and the other matters discussed above:
"You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?" (Mathew 7:16).
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"For they have healed the wound of the daughter of My people only lightly and slightingly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 8:11).
