The Secular Democrats of America — a group founded and backed by many congressional Democrats — recently released a 28-page document proposing to the Joe Biden team several recommendations that directly target the rights of conservative, religious Americans. Guess who one of the signers is..?
Ryan Bell, the defrocked ex-pastor of the superwoke social justice ‘SDA’ church in Hollywood, California. Yes, him. The I-wanna-hear-my-voice-self-promoting super-woke-religious-atheist-zealot-himself.
In The Document
Accuses the Trump Administration of covering for and fostering white supremacy. This is a common narrative among the liberal left and dominant cultural news media.
Endorses an alarmist view of the earth, demanding that climate crisis be a top priority of the Biden administration. It will be.
Criticizes abstinence-only sex education as a discriminatory religious right form of oppression. Leftism always demonstrates hostility towards the biblical principle of abstinence.
Calls for rescinding the Department of Justice Memorandum, Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty.
Calls for repealing all non-medical vaccination exemptions and mandatory vaccination for children in schools and day care centers. Presents California and New York as examples of such action.
Promotes government funding for medically-accurate sex education (bereft of scriptural principles on sexuality).
Calls for the elimination of exemptions for churches and faith-based organizations of government imposed discrimination laws. This is a serious religious liberty threat for Bible believing Christians.
Repeatedly accuses the ‘religious right’ of imposing a Christian Nationalist agenda on America (in this regard they sound like the average SDA Religious Liberty pundit of Messchatology). Their solution is to restore secularism to federal governance and disentangle religious influences from federal policy. To them, Godlessness is a desirable alternative to a nation informed by biblical principles (more about Messchatology later).
This is a big one. Reverse all sectarian-based restrictions of federally funded fetal-tissue and stem cell research.
Rescind Presidential Proclamation 9645,, which allows for immigration vetting of people from Muslim-rich countries. The purpose of this proclamation was to identify and filter out people who were inclined towards Islamic terrorism.
This is another big one: Appoint an Attorney General to the Department of Justice who will support Governors whose emergency declarations and/or executive orders require even-handed universal restrictions on indoor gatherings, including at houses of worship, to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Black Lives Matter ‘peaceful’ burning and looting riots = good, 100+ people singing Amazing Grace = bad.
Repeal RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act).
Redefine patriotism to include atheism (whatever that means). Apparently phrases like ‘God and country’ are offensive to atheists.
Restrict proselytizing, persuading people from one faith to another, or from no faith to faith.
Messchatology
Roughly 35-years ago many SDA religious liberty pundits began to favor (and in certain cases, promote) liberalism out of concerns for a religious right that opposed homosexual marriage and abortion. Many of them were motivated by eschatological dread rather than compelled by the love of Christ and a love for biblical truth (2 Corinthians 5:14; 2 Thess. 2:10; 1 Peter 1:22). Also at that time, many of them regarded liberalism as bad, but less bad because it was opposed to conservatism—and conservatism is eschatologically ‘bad.’ That eventually morphed into ‘liberalism is good’ in the last decade and a half.
‘Liberalism is good' is rapidly giving way to 'leftism is good' among a majority of NAD millennials & powerbrokers. They find it difficult to resist because once you enter that path it requires a miracle from God to get you off of it (the same would also be true of inordinate political conservatism). However, in progressive Adventism, leftism has become a religion and when you mix religions you paganize the original.
Thus, blending Adventist eschatology with liberal politics is Messchatology. And it is a mess, as illustrated in Ryan’s Bell’s awkward belly-flop into the pool of atheism, from his previous perch on the Adventist palisade.
Incidentally, Ryan Bell is still listed on the Advisory board of the Adventist Peace Fellowship, along with the Lake Union Religious Liberty Director, and Trisha Famisaran.
Many pastors and Adventist church leaders have bought into social justice as an effort to meet the needs that they ‘perceive’, and once they have bought into this ideology, they begin to use secular materials to address it. True, there are some ‘woke’ Adventist pastors who are attempting to use the Bible to validate social justice, but ultimately they begin to use secular material and in time they shift towards godless humanism. This is exactly the path of Ryan Bell, and many more will follow.
Our God is a perfect blend of love and righteousness (Psalm 45:7; 1 Timothy 6:11; Psalm 25:10; 85:10; Proverbs 16:6; John 3:16). The new wokeism disturbs that crucial balance by saying “Only love has value, and by the way, we will use secular methods to determine what love is, not the Bible.”
This is where the Religion of Wokeism is taking people. Avoid it like the CV-19 plague.
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“Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD; Though they join forces, none will go unpunished. In mercy and truth, atonement is provided for iniquity; and by the fear of the LORD one departs from evil” (Proverbs 16:5-6).