Tuesday, February 1, 2022

SDA Issues - The Cortez Controversy

"The Book of Hebrews is the focus of the new Adult Sabbath School Lesson for the first quarter of 2022. The author of this quarter’s Sabbath School Lesson is Dr. Felix Cortez-Valles. He is an Associate Professor of New Testament Literature at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. On page one of the current Sabbath School Lesson, Felix Cortez is identified as the “principal contributor” for the January through March 2022 edition.

What is most concerning is that Felix Cortez is also a graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana, according to Andrews University.  Universidad Iberoamericana is a Jesuit university located in Mexico City, Mexico. It was founded in 1943 by the Jesuit Order to advance “Ignatian spirituality” and “Ignatian discernment.”

According to Andrews University, Felix Cortezcompleted a Masters degree in Modern Literature at Universidad Iberoamericana (México, 2001), with an emphasis in Literary Theory and Hermeneutics.” Hermeneutics? This is the study of the science and principles of Biblical interpretation. Felix Cortez learned from the Jesuits how to study and interpret the Bible and is now preparing the Sabbath School lessons for the Seventh-day Adventist world church to study on Sabbath mornings.

It gets even worse. According to Andrews University, not only did Felix Cortez graduate from a Jesuit university, he was also president of the Adventist Theological Society from 2014-2016 while at the same time serving as the “chair” for the “Catholic and Pastoral Epistles Section of the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature from 2010–2016.”  

Q: How can you be the head of an important Adventist society and the head of an important Catholic society at the same time?

 Take a look at what Ministry Magazine, an official church journal, said about this theological conflict of interest in 1944:

How dare a man contemplate, or have the temerity to present, the degree of doc­tor of divinity, gained in the universities of Babylon, as a credential for teaching or preach­ing this threefold message, the second stipula­tion of which is, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen…. Come out of her, My people.’ How dare we accept such a Babylonian credential in lieu of mastery of the truth? Shall a man go into Babylon to gain strength and wisdom to call men out of Babylon?” 

“Someone needs to sound an alarm. We need to grip ourselves and halt a growing trend that, if it becomes entrenched, will bring disaster through neutralizing our message. ....Otherwise we shall go the way of all other religious bodies before us, who started out with a heavenly message, but who have bogged down in the morass of worldly scholarship with its erudite haziness, its loss of spiritual vision, and its blurring of truth, until its virility and its power to witness have virtually disappeared. We must not lose the very heart of our message to the world. We who proclaim it to others must not violate its mandate that we may be better prepared to announce the theory to others.” 
 
Tragically, the well-worn path that leads to Rome will only end in misery and defeat: “And the beast (Rome) was taken, and with him the false prophet (apostate Protestantism) that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.” Revelation 19:20." AdventMesenger