By Danny Bell
“Tell me what the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you what the church will be saying in 7 years”. – Francis Schaeffer
The Left
When I first moved to Tasmania in 2013, I inquisitively attended a protest on the streets of Hobart organised by a patriot group Reclaim Australia. They were protesting how our political system is allowing negative socialist and cultural elements like radical Islam into our country. I allowed myself to be part of this movement because I felt a certain comradery with Australians in a cause that targeted common threats. There was unity at rallies – something I had not experienced before – not even in church. We were going to battle, against a danger to our country and its way of life.
It was at these rallies that I stared into the eyes of counter protesters…..the radical “Lefties”….. a bunch of unemployed, unkempt political mercenaries opposing anything conservative. Devoid of reason and emotionally charged, they would use anything to shut down freedom of speech. Their mantra was “love and compassion” but their actions revealed they were violent Christian value haters.
The “Patriot Movement” post 9/11 grew slowly but by 2016 resulted in conservatives being elected on the back of immigration concerns. It was the same in the US with Trump and UK Brexit…..a backlash against left-wing culture and fake media, weakening moral principles upon which Christian democracy is based.
The patriotic movement down-under lost momentum however, because its advocates were targeted by the left with doxing. Lefties would ring our workplaces and threaten bosses with boycott, so the bosses caved in and sacked their workers. Supporters of the patriot movement were set upon in the streets and many disappeared from social media because their families were harassed and targeted. It was dirty stuff.
I was also targeted when my wife, kids and pets names were splashed across social media in an attempt to bully me. I began to see something far worse than Islam and its dangers…..the left were more violent, nasty and vicious than the alt-right. Their tactics were sinister and designed to silence and hurt financially those with opposing views. When studying organisations like ANTIFA and the left-wing revolution, I discovered that everything they stood for…..Islam was against. It was ironic to me that the very thing they clamoured for would one day hurt them. This led me to thinking that God may actually be sending Islam to punish western cultures given over to debauchery and silencing the truth.
History may well be repeating, but what we are seeing now is left-leaning ideologies combining into a restless conglomerate. This is why you will often see unionists, climate religion, anarchists, animal rights activists, feminists and gays all in the same street march. This is the new “diversity and inclusion” culture eerily reminiscent of the Biblical “mixed multitude”. This is why we see ridiculous protests like LBGT groups supporting Islam, which is an oxymoron because Islam doesn’t tolerate homosexuality. We see left-wing girls travelling to the east to prove it’s safe to go into Muslim dominated countries, only to get murdered on route. The left, in its unhealthy desire to virtue signal, leads them to be more afraid of being racist than admitting to factual data about their dangerous beliefs.
The Devil in the Detail
When we hear the iconic saying, “the world is creeping into the church”, we usually think of things like rock music, drugs, sex, revealing clothing or alcohol consumption. But there is a more sinister element creeping in that we are largely ignorant of, because it looks a lot like Christianity. A focus on love, compassion and equality for all sounds wonderful and fits our obsession to get more likes. But the “equality and inclusion” Pharisees are in essence, selfish. The equality is one sided and the compassion is blind. Virtue signalling and political correctness are just below the surface in this new fake populism, and now our church is beginning to mimic these negative socialist ideologies. Below are 5 areas where our church is showing signs of worshipping the Devil of Diversity (DOD);
1. Homosexuality
When Australia voted “YES” to same sex marriage in 2017, it was the nail in the coffin to our beloved country. There were harbingers foreshadowing this tragedy in government, media and our education system, showing we were on a spiral to the bottom. The goal posts were moved while we slept, and I am ashamed to say our church in many ways has fallen into the “diversity and inclusion” lie with astonishing naivety.
Despite the church putting out official statements on homosexuality, there is still a slow acceptance of gay identity in many of our publications and churches. While gays are not barred from attending our churches, there’s a change in reasoning coming from our institutions fostering homosexuality despite no scientific evidence that gays are born.
Closet Adventist gays are now using the “celibate” line to avoid coming out completely. These terms help them to hide behind out of control homosexual attraction. They say there’s no sin in attraction as long as it’s not acted on. They feel safe adopting titles like ‘celibate’ because they think it lets them fly under the biblical radar, identifying their behaviour as deviant. If the act of homosexuality is condemned in scripture, then attractions relating to it are soul destroying. Orientations cannot justify hiding behind words like “celibate”, which is a convenient way of normalising a dangerous liaison.
Gay Adventist sympathisers are falsely saying that biblical Eunuchs were really gay men. They use texts like;
“For there are eunuchs who were born that way; others were made that way by men; and still others live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”- Matthew 19:12.
Being “born that way” can only refer to physical deformity and not orientation, otherwise scripture and Jesus are at odds with each other. The appeasers twist the bible and say Jesus was ok with it because some are genetically attracted to other males just like heterosexuals are. But homosexual orientation is not normal or a natural development like heterosexual attraction in God’s created order.
2. Feminism
Many like to divide feminism into parts so they can distance themselves from its radical side, but feminism is feminism and has become a cancerous growth on society standing on a platform of false equality… getting a better deal than men…as simple as that. This feverish movement has unfortunately begun to spread into Christianity and our own church is showing signs of infection with gender inclusiveness and leaders legislating other forms of misandry.
I have previously put a case forward that our biggest feminists in the church are our men. If this is the case, then we need to admit the brainwashing runs deep in our institutions and schools where feminism is programmed into our young men. Data shows that churches grow better with healthy numbers of men and yet this simple solution eludes us, with expensive summits and overseas trips on how to revitalise our dead church. It’s what we need to STOP doing rather than what we need TO DO that will return the flush of health to the cheeks of our church.
Ellen White had this to say:
“I was shown Isa. 3:12: “As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them.” I saw that this text applies to these last days of peril. Children are not generally controlled. They are suffered to come up with their wills unsubdued. They are indulged in pride and at last the parents must yield to them. Children receive the sympathy of their mothers, and the mothers affect the fathers. Satan comes more readily to the women and children and works through them to influence the fathers, and then unitedly, without an opposing influence, they imperceptibly slide downward, and yet have a name to live; but they are dead.” Lt 16, 1861.
If anyone is in doubt of the insidious nature of the push for female supremacy, they need look no further than the vitriol coming from the supporters of the DOD. One can only hope God sends Islam to the west, because one thing is for sure….feminism doesn’t survive long in Islamic influenced culture.
3. Racism Increasing
Amidst the insanity from the agents of diversity comes a new kind of racism. Fuelled by past injustices, certain ethnicities are rising up again to what they see as oppression by white people. The unusual twist however is the large majority who favour this line are actually white people assisting coloured’s in greater numbers than previously seen in history. Virtue signalling white protestors march to end ‘white privilege’ and oppression of minorities in western culture.
In Australia white people were made to apologise for something they didn’t personally do to people who didn’t personally suffer. Millions of dollars is spent appeasing “oppressed” cultures instead of healing, actually created a national divide. Apparently white people are a disease upon society because they are the only ones committing atrocities. On our national taxpayer television, we saw a black woman pretending to defecate on a cushion representing white people. In 21st century Hollywood, the villain is always white and he’s not as smart, sexy or capable as a coloured person. Throw into this socialist stew the DOD and you have a cocktail that will bring any prosperous country to its knees.
What’s really worrying is this strange racism is entering Christianity. Adventist institutions and media foster the nonsense of white privilege and continued oppression of coloured classes. This was demonstrated recently when a group of dissatisfied coloured students made a video about being marginalised at Andrews University. Checkout the response from Andrews…..lol. Instead of putting down the rebellion, the leadership buckled under and self-flagellated, giving credence to the false claims. To date there has been no proof of the supposed oppression, despite constant inquiries.
In other parts of our church black preacher’s target “white leadership” saying they alone need to repent. This is despite knowing the church has black leaders too. The incredible thing is not the boldness of the coloured preacher making the statement, but the approving white dhimmis’ sitting alongside him. Adventist media also chimes in and supports a call for whites to stop oppressing black people. Adventist Today published an article that basically says white people are the problem. The racist comments against white people that followed on their Facebook page made for some astonishing reading but have since been removed.
Other examples of soft racism in the Adventist church are the deliberate racial segregated events. There are also colleges and other institutions based around race in regions with a white population. Take for example the Allegheny East Conference in the US where the whole staff is black but the demographics for the same region is majority white. Will white non-Adventist people who live in the area feel at ease to attend or even take their children to all black churches or schools? Diversity isn’t obviously working for such conferences worldwide. Some Adventist sources are calling it “Ethnikitis” and listing it as a church disease.
We saw early warnings for this kind of divide being laid down in a statement by Ellen White predicting increasing racial tensions…..white people joining in with coloured, engaging in violent divisions:
“As time advances, and race prejudices increase, it will become almost impossible, in many places, for white workers to labor for the colored people. Sometimes the white people who are not in sympathy with our work will unite with colored people to oppose it, claiming that our teaching is an effort to break up churches and bring in trouble over the Sabbath question. White ministers and colored ministers will make false statements, arousing in the minds of the people such a feeling of antagonism that they will be ready to destroy and to kill.” Maranatha, p. 142.
Ellen White wrote the above during a time of racial tension at the turn of the 19th century but the context also has an apocalyptic tone, “as time advances”. Racial tensions that were thought settled, far from subsiding will resurface. Cultural clashes are at an all-time high across the globe with protests, illegal immigration and tyrannical wars ending in genocide of some description. Cultures with opposing values are being driven together and resulting in human catastrophes not seen since the World Wars.
4. Forced Racial Diversity
Racial diversity will happen naturally if left alone but the peddlers of inclusion are at the forefront of twisting history. Western countries are swept up in the biggest lie to hit our planet. What is that lie? Mixing cultures and races into one big homogenous haystack will benefit society! Racial diversity will eventually happen but when we try to manufacture it, something goes terribly wrong.
One of the most disastrous human experiments of the 21st century has to be mass immigration and its failure to produce the outcomes gullible governments were hoping for. The backlash against leaders who sold out to the pipe dream of diversity are now paying the price. It has been proven quite succinctly that the west will not fix the problems of poorer countries by importing the disenfranchised. 3rd world countries are 3rd world countries for a reason. Western cultures that fall for the DOD are feeling the full effects of the lie.
This socialist mentality can be seen in our very own ADRA, who has not only been helping illegal immigrants at borders, but has been banned by governments for their activities. ADRA has clearly been smitten by the DOD and continues to spend millions in aid to make it happen. It’s quite possible that Syrian terrorists still had crumbs on them from sandwiches given out by ADRA at the border. This insanity is translating into books flying off our shelves from Adventist leaders twisting the scriptures to convince us that diversity and inclusion is the way to go.
What these peddlers of the DOD in our church don’t realise is that scripture doesn’t support unbridled mass immigration. Even God set up a system where asylum seekers could be vetted before being accepted;
The slayer shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and explain the case to the elders of that city – Joshua 20:4.
Leadership falsely associates helping all asylum seekers for kindness when in fact it can be a kind of Corban.
Christian churches thinking their actions will favour opinion about themselves are birthed by educational institutions at the forefront of this stupidity. Andrews University recently created a new position “to provide leadership for equity and diversity on campus”. When were our campuses not diverse? In fact most of our institutions don’t reflect the demographic region they reside in but are overbalanced with minority cultures and rewarded for being such?
The nonsense goes on and on with the Church fostering similar ideals to the world. For example, mixed race marriages are pushed from all sides despite there being evidence that they are more unstable. So called success stories are being pushed by Adventist media without regard to the lifelong damaging effects it can have on the children from such relationships*. We were told over 100 years ago:
But there is an objection to the marriage of the white race with the black. All should consider that they have no right to entail upon their offspring that which will place them at a disadvantage; they have no right to give them as a birthright a condition which would subject them to a life of humiliation. The children of these mixed marriages have a feeling of bitterness toward the parents who have given them this lifelong inheritance. For this reason, if there were no other, there should be no intermarriage between the white and the colored race.—Manuscript 7, 1896.
The contextualisers for diversity will seek to weaken this statement by association with attitudes towards coloured people at the time, but the underlying principle stands……where there is racial tension it is inadvisable to intermingle. Backed by recent research into the negatives of interracial marriage, the time tested statement by Ellen White stands as a warning to our church which it’s ignoring.
5. The Mixed Multitude
To explode the myth of diversity, we need to understand first and foremost that not all races are equal, and that whenever diversity and inclusion are mentioned, it essentially means anti-white. The underlying false assumption by the progressives is that all cultures contribute positively to humanity…..well…..they don’t.
In the OT God separated people into races after the flood and some races became just plain evil. Also, the “mixed multitude” who attached themselves to Israel during the Exodus gave Moses the most grief. It’s not necessarily about skin colour, but the mixing of diverse and opposing cultures in scripture rarely resulted in any good. The only time it kind of worked was when God oversaw the assimilation to his laws. The same is fact today; nations whose foundations are based on anything but biblical principles fail their people and bring disastrous consequences into Christian based countries.
Conclusion
They shall not cleave says scripture, as future east and west attempt to co-habit. We are seeing this already with the flood into the west, but the startling new development is that white western dhimmi’s are uniting in force with minority cultures, making a good case for Stockholm syndrome. Who will be the unruly mobs that are swayed by popular opinion when Jesus said; “he who kills you will think they do God a service” (John 16:2)? Will it be our brothers from Islam or will it be the homogenous rabble baying for blood of their detractors?
Where is our church in these developments? Are we prepared to resist being political players and drawn into Satan’s diversity plan? Or are we enablers of the new socialism, becoming part of what EGW saw as a dangerous development in our church?
* This goes without saying that childless couples in later life who choose to marry into mixed families are not as much at risk, but cultural problems can still surface.
Danny Bell – lives in Tasmania and has a BA Theology Degree. He has been a pastor for 6 years for the Seventh-day Adventist Church; a state School Chaplain for 2 years, a Family Court Mediator for 5 years. He has also been editor and regular contributor to papers like, Trench Mail, The Mashup and other online Adventist and Christian publications. He is a Men’s ministries pioneer, helping establish it in the Adventist church in Australia and runs a small man-friendly church near his hometown. He can be contacted on his facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/adventistaustralia/ or by email: adventistaustralia@outlook.com
0
0
0