@Ross Kennedy: After all, who hasn’t struggled with their faith …

Comment on Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe by Sean Pitman.

@Ross Kennedy:

After all, who hasn’t struggled with their faith -Peter did- and even Jesus appeared to. Perhaps judgementally, I find myself being somewhat suspicious of those who claim an absolute and unwavering belief in every tenet of Christian doctrine. Ministers also need ministering to.

Dear Pastor Kennedy,

This isn’t about pastors or teachers who are honestly struggling with certain doctrinal questions while remaining true to their duty to promote the fundamental goals and ideas of the various churches they are paid to represent. This is about those pastors and teachers who have already made up their minds that the church for whom they work is fundamentally mistaken. Yet, these same pastors and teachers continue to take a paycheck from the very organization that they no longer support and often actively oppose from pulpit and classroom and in other public forums.

Such cannot be sustained by the SDA Church, in particular, any longer in their actively subversive activity on the Church’s dime. Integrity demands that such persons resign and move on to other vocations where their beliefs are in line with their work. And, if integrity is lacking on the part of such pastors or teachers, the Church itself must take action and actively remove such individuals from their positions of paid responsibility within the Church organization.

There simply is no other choice for any organization that wishes to long remain viable and relevant…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe
In any case, any further comments concerning the morality or lack thereof of those involved with the LSU situation will no longer be posted here on Educate Truth. However, You are free to send me a personal E-mail if you wish (my E-mail can be obtained by visiting my website listed below).

Sincerely,

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe
@Ron Stone M.D.:

Well, Sean, atheists have written books explaining what, why, and how they have rejected God’s Truth. Those at LSU have explained what they believe and why they have accepted Man’s word and rejected God’s Truth. You say we can never know anything about this, and they must not really “understand” what they are doing.

I don’t know if they do or do not really understand what they are doing; and neither do you. Only God knows for sure…

Not only would I and others here disagree with you, but I believe the atheists would disagree. The idea that church members cannot be “judged” by their words and actions is simply not biblical.

And the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross would have claimed at the time that they knew exactly what they were doing too… but did they really? Jesus prayed for them saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” – Luke 23:34 NIV

It is quite possible that even if a person is very adamant that he/she knows exactly what he/she is doing, that this person may not really know. This is a possibility that only God knows for sure. You simply cannot make this particular type of moral judgment with complete accuracy. You and I can judge the rightness or wrongness of the word or act (specifically regarding a doctrine like the literal 6-day creation week), but we cannot judge the rightness or wrongness of the heart; the motive.

There is a difference between being mistaken and sinning. Sinning requires a deliberate rebellion against known truth – something that you cannot tell for sure in cases of doctrinal disagreements on such things as the literal creation week or the true origin of the Sabbath or any other such commandment that deals specifically with man’s relationship with his or her God and God alone.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Adventist Review: Pastors Who Don’t Believe
@Ron Stone M.D.:

Sean says Moses and the Prophets are “empirical” evidence then says they are not!

Moses and the prophets are only “empirical evidence” in support of the Bible’s credibility if they actually say something true regarding the real world in which we all live (which I think they clearly do).

However, if Moses and the prophets did in fact clearly contradicted the real world (i.e., real history), the hypothesis that the Bible’s credibility is supported by them would be effectively falsified (as is the case for the Book of Mormon, for example) in such a situation.

It is in this sense that things like biblical prophecy must be held up for testing before biblical prophecy can be rationally accepted as credible (at least any more credible than the Book of Mormon).

In other words, biblical credibility is dependent upon the empirical evidence. Without the empirical evidence, there would simply be no greater rational reason to believe the Bible as any more credible than some moral fable that someone simply made up as a “cleverly invented story”. – 2 Peter 1:16 NIV

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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