Recently while speaking with a conference president he claimed we do not have enough light on the WO issue and therefore the conference has no position on it. However he was quick to compare Mrs. White's credentials as being the same as ordination. Therefore the conference indeed has an unofficial position. I stated that we have enough light but let's look at the fruit of WO. Churches that now ordain homosexuals first ordained women. The president replied, "now you are equating women with homosexuals and that will make them mad." I answered, " I am not equating women with homosexuals. What I am saying is that when we step off the Bible platform the natural thing to do is take another step away."
The president stated incorrectly twice. First he, did away with the ordination issue and said I/we equate women with homosexuals and then he claimed that I/we equate ordaining women with ordaining homosexuals. Neither is true but the first error is the more grievous because the first accusation is claiming that one equates what God has created (women) with a lifestyle that Satan has created.
It is interesting that "pastor Famarisaran", in her sermon at La Sierra, recently linked very closely WO, homosexuality, and God being a women. WE do not need to link such deviations together. All one needs to do is listen to what comes out of the horse's mouth.
When we do not hold the Bible to be our guide, but begin to explain that culture demands such and such, it opens the door to anything. Not all will go to the same place, but there is nothing to stop anyone from going anywhere once the Bible is set aside for any reason. Many who support the making of women, leaders over men, have no desire to ordain homosexuals. Others do.
In this topic we are pointing out that La Sierra University has been a leader in the move to make women leaders of men. And, we have pointed out that they do not hold the Bible in high esteem. To the contrary, they on many points of doctrine reject the Bible. What is called "higher education" is understood by many to be a leading cause of the moral fall in society. I am speaking of secular education. But, sadly, when we examine religious colleges and universities, we find that they sadly share much in common. It may come as a surprise to some, that many religious schools are accredited by the same body as the schools in the world. They share the same standard in many respects.
There is a rapid shifting taking place. More and more those who wish to shift the order of things are taking the next step. Not all go to the same place at the same time but either they repent of their confusion or eventually they will all end up at the same place in terms of accepting homosexuality. No one is static. We are moving one direction or the other either slowly or rapidly. It seems that as the Holy Spirit is being withdrawn on one hand and poured out on the other the movements both directions are more rapid.
These things got me thinking. It is because there is a fundamental maxim of jurisprudental interpretation that
Semper praesumitur pro sententia - the presumption is always in favor of the sentence, has been evaded by these evangelical "feminists" often by denying the "reason" for the precepts found in the Bible.
I have discovered that moral laws have their own built-in protection against the kind of "hermeneutics" that makes it possible to support homosexuality just by virtue of one's advocacy of women's ordination!
If a precept contains a premise that is presumed to be the natural and proper reason, and that premise is conceded to be true; and the peculiar terms and provisions of that precept can be deduced from good and necessary inference from the TRUTH of that premise: then this is an irrefutable proof that the Bible DOES substantively say what is said in those peculiar terms and provisions of that precept.
And even if the peculiar terms and provisions of that precept can not yet be deduced from good and necessary inference – the presumption must still be in favor of the peculiar terms and provisions of that precept as they read at face-value (and everything that can be deduced from good and necessary inference from those terms and provisions at face-value and/or the premises used as the natural and proper reason for them). Or else we can prove ANYTHING we like, and destroy the general applicability of virtually EVERY moral law that we please!
And when it comes to the so-called "sacraments" - Baptism, the Lord's Supper: these so-called sacraments are of that species of Divine Law known as Positive Divine Institution.
Where it concerns "sacraments" and other positive institutions Christ has seen fit to ordain for standing perpetual use among Christian Churches, an Anglican author in 1828 by the name of Rev. Jeremy Taylor wrote that:
[Link removed by moderator]
"…All institutions sacramental and positive laws depend not upon the nature of the things themselves, according to the extension or diminution of which our obedience might be measured; but they depend wholly on the will of the Lawgiver, and the will of the Supreme, being actually limited to this specification, this manner, this matter, this institution; whatsoever comes besides it hath no foundation in the will of the Legislator, and therefore can have no warrant or authority. That it be obeyed or not obeyed is all the question and all the variety. If it can be obeyed it must, if it cannot it must be let alone. The right mother that appeared before Solomon demanded her child; half of her own was offered, but that was not it which would do her any good, neither would she have been pleased with a whole bolster of goat's hair, or with a perfect image of her child, or with a living lamb; it was her own child which she demanded: so it is in the divine institution; whatsoever God wills that we must attend to; and therefore whatsoever depends upon a divine law or institution, whatsoever is appointed instrumental to the signification of a mystery, or to the collation of a grace or a power, he that does any thing of his own head, either must be a despiser of God's will, or must suppose himself the author of a grace, or else to do nothing at all in what he does, because all his obedience and all the blessing of his obedience depends upon the will of God, which ought always to be obeyed when it can, and when it cannot nothing can supply it, because the reason of it cannot be understood, for who can tell why God would have the death of His Son celebrated by bread and wine? why by both the symbols? why by such? and therefore no proportions can be made, and if they could yet they cannot be warranted."
And more importantly,
[Link removed by moderator]
"§18. 2)
All positive precepts that depend upon the mere will of the lawgiver (as I have already discoursed) admit no degrees, nor suppletory and commutation; because in such laws we see nothing beyond the words of the law, and the first meaning and the named instance, and therefore it is that in individuo which God points at, it is that in which He will make the trial of our obedience; it is that in which He will so perfectly be obeyed, that He will not be disputed with, or enquired of why and how, but just according to the measures there set down; so, and no more, and no less, and no otherwise. For when the will of the lawgiver is all the reason, the first instance of the law is all the measures, and there can be no product but what is just set down. No parity of reason can infer any thing else, because there is no reason but the will of God; to which nothing can be equal, because His will can be but one. If any man should argue thus, Christ hath commanded us to celebrate His death by blessing and communicating in bread and wine; this being plainly His purpose, and I finding it impossible to get wine, consider that water came out of His side as well as blood, and therefore water will represent His death as well as wine, for wine is but like blood, and water is more like itself, and therefore I obey Him better, when in the letter I cannot obey Him; he, I say, that should argue thus, takes wrong measures, for it is not here to be enquired which is most agreeable to our reason, but which complies with God's will, for that is all the reason we are to enquire after."
Plainly, a Divine Positive Institution is that law of God which cannot be justly and fairly deduced from good and necessary inference from the nature of things, the moral law of God, or any other expressly enacted Divine law. In Positive Institutions, it is not our right to "reason" about what we should do or why we should do it, but must yield strict, minute, exact, blind, unquestioning obedience to the specific and particular explicit terms and provisions of that particular precept.
If the principles concerning the very CONCEPT of a positive institution had not been so exact, precise, and austere and strict and severe as they truly are, well then the positive institutions of God would have NEVER had this built-in protection against the kind of "hermeneutics" that the neo-gnostic pepuzian collyridian feminists are using, that just by virtue of advocacy of women's ordination, those very same hermeneutics will lead to the advocacy of homosexuality! When God requested of Moses to build a tabernacle for Him, He didn't leave it to Moses or anybody else to infer any acceptable pattern thereof from the already antecedent prevailing laws, much less the moral nature and reason of things: but He gave specific particular directions for that particular case, so particular that in fact they had no precedent at all for them in even the already antecedent prevailing Divine laws - much less the moral nature and reason of things! He didn't say, whether it be right or rational or just or charitable to build it! He did'nt say "build it any way you KNOW is right or rational or just or charitable to build it" - but, "See that thou build ALL things EXACTLY and PUNCTILIOUSLY according to the pattern I showed thee in the Mount!" Not "whether or not they have any precedent at all for it in the prevailing antedcent Divine Laws", but "GO AND OBEY ME AT ONCE WITHOUT QUESTION!"
In due time, if possible, I shall insert another post concerning the role of women in the church, and note the attacks that the most conservative enemies of this feminist neo-pepuzian movement of Women's ordination have always been launching against the Seventh Day Adventist Church, yea especially against Ellen G White where it concerns women speaking in public MIXED assemblies for religious purposes!
