Thursday, September 5, 2019

SDA Issues - Schäffler's Folly

"Christian B. Schäffler, a seasoned Seventh-day Adventist journalist and longtime director and founder of APD (Adventist Press Service) located in Basel, Switzerland.
Specifically, he believes that the Bible doesn’t address homosexuality as an orientation, and that homosexuality is “an innate dimension of personality.” In other words, homosexuality is what a person is and not only what a person does. Here is what Mr. Schäffler wrote:
There are really only seven passages in the Bible that
refer directly to homosexual behavior, and none of them are associated with Jesus. The Bible says nothing about ‘homosexuality’ as an innate dimension of personality. Sexual orientation was not understood in biblical times. Passages in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament have been interpreted as involving same-sex sexual acts and desire.” Email from Christian B. Schäffler (schaeffler@apd.info), Monday, August 26, 2019.
The word “innate” means something we are born with. So according to Mr. Schäffler, homosexuality is an “innate dimension of personality.” This would mean that homosexuality is an inherent biological characteristic that people are born with, and if this is who they are – the logical conclusion is that they cannot change.

The simple truth is that before sin entered our planet, before the fall of man in the Garden of Eden and before the existence of sexual perversion – God created male and female to be HETEROSEXUAL.
God created both man and woman to be attracted to the opposite sex. God designed for male and female to reproduce heterosexually and to enjoy sexuality within the will of God – one man and one woman joined together in holy matrimony. The Bible says that “everything” God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Heterosexuality is God’s will for mankind, and it’s time for our own people to re-engage the truths of Genesis and to re-engage with Jesus.
Homosexuality and sodomy are described here as the works of unrighteousness.
This means that homosexuality is not equal to heterosexuality. Homosexuality came after sin while heterosexuality was created before sin."
AndyRoman/AdventMessenger

We have far more to fear from within than from without. The hindrances to strength and success are far greater from the church itself than from the world … But how often have the professed advocates of the truth proved the greatest obstacle to its advancement!
--The unbelief indulged,
--the doubts expressed,
--the darkness cherished,
encourage the presence of evil angels, and open the way for the accomplishment of Satan’s devices” (Last Day Events, p. 156 E.G.W.).