I believe you are mistaken about Dr. Ford's church membership being revoked. Only his ministerial credentials I think.

At Glacier View the old guard circled the wagons and preserved the tradition at all costs.

mel

I'll admit I haven't read your whole post, but will when I get time to do some heavy reading.

My personal theory is that Desmond Ford was a Jesuit. Though I can't prove this, what other reason would he have to go about with such nonsense to try to undermine the faith of Adventists and give the world a solid reason to reject the SDA faith? They use this doctrine to reject anything the Adventists reason concerning "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come" (Acts 24:25), though the man's claims are completely ridiculous.

Or maybe he wanted attention:
Acts 20:30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

I can give my explanation on the Investigative Judgment as soon as I get time. But of course I will read the posts here first.

That seems clearly to be based on the unstated assumption that the SDA church's teaching on the Investigative Judgment is false and has little or no Biblical support. If it is merely "tradition," I say let it go; but if it has the support of the Bible, it doesn't matter who is against it, it should be kept.

Anyone interested in studying the Biblical evidence in support of the Adventist view of the IJ should thoroughly check out Bradley Williams' recent book, The Silencing Of Satan the Gospel Of the Investigative Judgment: http://www.investigativejudgmentgospel.org/My_Homepage_Files/Page1.html

Regardless of the "IJ" the basic fact is that type met antitype at the Cross. All of the animals sacrificed previous to the Cross pointed to the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the whole world. The antitypical day of atonement was at the Cross. All other theories must bow to the one incontroversial fact that Christ made the atonement at the Cross. The antitypical day of atonement to which the type pointed was the Cross.

mel

I think that's a very limited, elemental understanding of the atonement and of the meaning of the sanctuary services. There is more to the atonement than the death of Christ on the cross, just as there was more to the atonement than the killing of the animal in the courtyard.

The blood had to be carried into the sanctuary. In the same way, Hebrews 9: 23 says Christ's blood was necessary to cleanse the heavenly things. Obviously there was something that needed to be done besides the shedding of Christ's blood. His death was essential, but what He is doing now as our High Priest is no less necessary. His work in the first apartment has to do with the confession of sins, but His work in the Most Holy Place deals with judgement and the blotting out of sins.

While I too agree that Dr. Ford is wrong on many things, may I sort of dissagree with your comment that he has too much confidence in theologians. I see Ford's downfall as not his cofindence in theologians but his lack of knowlege in Old Testament, approching ALL topics from his extensive knowlege on the thoughts of Luther and the Reformer's understanding and his (conscious or unconscious) presuposition that no one understood Paul until Luther came around and that Luther is the only one in history to understand Paul, and that Luther is the final word on Paul. And thirdly the time in history where he lived, there has been some recent fantastic studies in Paul such as E. P. Sanders "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" and "Paul, The Law and the Jewish People" and P. J. Thompson "Paul and The Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles" (1990) and J. D. G. Dunn "Jesus, Paul and The Law" (1990). Ford is too old to be aware of these newer studies. I can not blame Ford for doing the best with what he had avaible from his background. I would blame people like Ratslaf and younger people for only rehashing what Ford has to say without looking for the newest and best studies. Like the study of medicine, Ford had to work with his time in history and the knowledge availble to him in his field of expertiese. And like doctors, the younger ones need to keep up with the latest research and not continue to practice medicine strictly as it was practiced in the 1500s.

Two other things about Ford that bother me is his principle of prophetic interpetation in which he believes that the original Bible writer had all types of interpetations on their mind, instead of a local issue that later generations could draw analogies from. Daniel was not interested in Antiochus, Domintian, the pope nor the final antichrist. He was interested in Deuteronomy's prophecy that the exile was to be THE last days, and if not than what was God's plan for the land, the temple and the house of David. The focus of the book of Daniel is set in the early days of the Persian empire. But people living at the time of Antiochus, Domitian, the events between what the papacy was becoming compaired to what the Bible said, and those who will live under the final antichrist all found or will find principles and hope in Daniel's expirence.

The final issue with Ford is actually a further application of my first one. He is NOT an Old Testament scholar. His field of knowledge is the Reformation and a fair amount of knowledge in Paul (some of it now outdated but was pressent truth when he studied). If you needed heart surgery, and went into the hosptial for surgery and you were told "You can wait until tomorrow and have our cardiosurgen perform your surgery, or we can let you have your opperation right now if you want our brain surgon to operate." I don't care how great a brain surgen he is, it is a different part of the body, a part out of his expertiese that needs the surgery, I'll wait for the surgen who's studied the heart. So with Ford. I trust him where his knowledge and studies are, but when he trys to speak with authority outside of his field of study, then I am not interested. Ford has too much of a tendency to speak with equal authority whether he has the background in the topic or not.

While I'm open for debate on Catholic spys, we have to be careful talking about Jesuit spys. Yes, they started out that way, but have become so sucked into liberal theology that they basically no longer have faith in God and thus little interest in wanting to defend a particular church or undermining another, and have become a bigger pain to the Papacy as Ford is to us. Now there may be other Catholics who have taken their place, but they are not Jesuits.

Second: I don't see anything particularly sinister about Ford. A couple of things stupid (Speaking with equal authority on what he has studied and what he has not studied)and taking money from a church while preaching against beliefs central to their belief. But I see nothing sinister in it. What he was teaching is well with in the frame work of his background and study. If that was my background, especially in that point of history, I'd probably believe the same. He is fair and honest to what he knows. He only has a big mouth of speaking as if he knows what is outside of his scope of study. Doing something stupid is not a sin. If I tried to speak with the same authority on the Reformers as he does on the Old Testament, I'd be just as stupid. While I'm willing to speak on the reformers, if it gets too deep and he and I were to dissagree I'd defer to his knowledge. He should have done the same with the Old Testament.