Pastor Doug Hardt: Vaccines, Liberty and the Bible
A term promoted by Dr. Robert Malone? – borrowed from Mattias Desmet? – attempting to make parallels with Nazi Germany and the rise of Hitler in the 1930s? where millions of people have been “hypnotized” into believing mainstream ideas about COVID-19, including steps to combat it such as testing and vaccination? Yes, I’ve heard of it. What nonsense (Link).

Just because you’re swimming against the crowd, just because you’re in the minority, doesn’t mean that you’re right. Occasionally, the consensus opinion of medical scientists, experts in their fields of study, who have devoted their lives to studying such things as pandemics and vaccines, is actually right.

Pastor Doug Hardt: Vaccines, Liberty and the Bible
Oh, I have, but this “Religious Liberty Weekend” was full of misinformation and outright falsehoods regarding COVID-19 and the vaccines against it – which I’ve discussed in this forum in some detail already.

The talk of Conrad Vine, which you directly link to here, doesn’t make sense to me. He’s discussing a GC position on vaccines published in 2015 – well before the current pandemic began. His claim that the GC ADCOM exceeded its authority by releasing a position statement on immunization in 2015 just doesn’t fly for a number of reasons. I particularly agree with David Hamstra where he addressed Vine’s argument on liberty of conscience regarding vaccines:

As far as I can tell, Dr. Vine’s line of reasoning that makes every health choice a matter for claims of conscience makes every potential choice into a matter for a claim of conscience, for which domain of human activity does the Holy Spirit not want to guide? And if every choice deserves protection for conscience’s sake, then no choices can be given protection for conscience’s sake because sinful human beings would become ungovernable. (Link)

In short, I think one’s personal liberty of conscience ends where the nose of someone else begins. I see this as the very basis of reasonable civil governments and the enforcement of reasonable civil laws – ordained by God Himself (Link). So, unless you’re living on an island, by all means, the civil laws of the land, which Paul claims has Divine Authority to set up civil laws that may in fact restrict individual liberties for the good of society as a whole, should be obeyed unless they directly violate a clear command of God to the contrary. No such Divine command exists regarding vaccines – which I see as nothing short of a gift of God to combat diseases that have long plagued humanity with endless suffering and death – having historically killed off billions of people in this world. Thanks to vaccines, many of these diseases have either been completely eliminated or significantly reduced.

After the Flood
Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!

The Flood
Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…

The Flood
Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…

Pacific Union College Encouraging Homosexual Marriage?
Where did I “gloss over it”?

Review of “The Naked Emperor” by Pastor Conrad Vine
I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.