Comments of the Week July 21-28
Comments of the Week July 21-28
Welcome to a new feature, where we select the best comments of the week, and invite you to revisit the essays where they were made. —Editors
From my point of view, I think that all this conspiracies, fantasies, myths, etc., is tremendously dangerous; it is a smokescreen that covers the lack of kindness that is missing in this world and even in our church. Here in Chile I also lived situations like this when I was a child, but obviously, I was a child and I could only think and think until the fear went away.
Nowadays they don’t talk about those issues, but they haven’t retracted or corrected publicly either (and they should). It is a matter of time, according to me, for these concepts to adapt a new form and become permanently embedded in our community. The worst thing is that these issues go hand in hand with fanaticism, and if we look at world history we know perfectly well what unbridled fanaticism is capable of accomplishing
-Christopher Silva
Oh my, yes! In the 1960s and ’70s we encountered so many bizarre stories like this. (I used to wonder why it was that so many SDA students believed THEIR dormitories had Ouija boards hidden in the walls! Really? ALL of them?) Some of our college friends in the 1980s wanted us to listen to this or that cassette about some new conspiracy, discovery, prophet, ministry, etc., etc. And even many of the stories in the Junior Guide seemed pretty unbelievable to me. Some stories, even the good-old “mission stories” seemed very made-up, and even disturbing, that people would believe God worked like that.
-Judy Egnew Ness
When we realize this has been a mirror to how the New Testament apostles (especially Jude) crafted their epistles, the conversation shifts just a little higher. As the late Graham Maxwell would say, for any one problem people may have with EGW there are 10 more when it comes to the Bible itself.
-Marcelo Plioplis
This issue of EGW thinking that parts of the apocryphal books are inspired demonstrates that all prophets have a very strong cultural influence that is transmitted to their writings.
-Yuri Tandel
Does Adventist Flood Geology Make Sense? Part 3
Seems to me that the root problem in this whole controversy is the tacit acceptance by many in the church that the Bible is an inerrant document. That is concerning enough, but when EGW is then also considered to be inerrant, we get completely backed into a corner and lose any possibility of changing the way we interpret a text once EGW has weighed in. This is in spite of her own statements that her interpretations should never be considered the last word.
What we need to face up to is that the conclusion that the Noachian flood was worldwide is an interpretation of a Biblical text, not what the text says explicitly. Considering that the people of that time didn’t even know the world was a globe (the descriptions in Genesis are most consistent with a belief in a flat earth), it seems likely they had no way of even knowing whether the flood covered the entire globe. So, not only do we not know the intent of the writer of the Genesis account, we don’t even know that if their intent was to say it was the whole earth that they had adequate knowledge to make such a conclusion.
-Bryan Ness
What I like to call “ad hocracy” has its own problems.
As one example, some YEC (young Earth creationist) believers seek to account for the fact that radioactive dating suggests a much older world than they can accept by arguing that the speed of light, and therefore of radioactive decay (though the connection between those two things is not that direct), was much, much faster during the Flood.
When it’s pointed out that increasing the rate of radioactive decay by the necessary amount would release enough energy to boil the rocks, not just the water, the response is “well, God can do anything God wants and could miraculously redirect the heat.” Well sure, but then it’s just more ad hoc miraculous interventions all the way down to cover the original miraculous intervention… which appears nowhere in the Biblical account.
-David Geelan
Aunty, what does the church think about IVF – for a single person?
The real question is: why does the church need to think anything about this? This is a personal and private decision.
-Holly Lin
An unmarried woman in my church in Florida had a child this way. Her situation was much like the one in Aunt Sevvy’s question. Her family and our congregation rallied around her. It really was a beautiful thing. That congregation also supported other young unmarried women who got pregnant the old-fashioned way. It was a remarkable group of loving people. Too bad all churches are not like that.
-Patti Purdy Hansen Tompkins
