Adventist Media Response and Conversation

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Loren Seibold is jarred but not enough to do any research

  

I am going to do a couple blog posts on the subject of the recent ATSS presentation by Loren Seibold on What makes a Christian. You can view it on Youtube here.

Here is a transcription of the opening remarks.

I'm going to start out with some political quotations. Yet, I don't intend this to be political discussion. As I thought about it, I could have started out with . Quotations from some rap musician. Who had some pretty terrible lyrics in their song and it gets up at the Grammys and says, I think Jesus, for letting me win this award I just happened to stumble across this first quotation. And I thought this quotation really raises the question, you are welcome to have different views of what kind of Leader, you think Donald Trump is, but this one jarred me, Michelle Bachman said of Donald Trump in 2019 she said:

 

“Trump is highly biblical. And I would say to your listeners that we will in all likelihood never see a more Godly Biblical President Again in our lifetime.”

 

Now just in (unintelligible) that just even if it was with Donald Trump, even if any other politician or entertainer or athlete or somebody wouldn’t it cause you pause?  Wouldn’t you stop for a moment and think how you come to that conclusion. And then Donald Trump added himself,

 

“Nobody has done more for Christianity or for evangelicals or for religion itself that I have.”  

 

That's a huge claim more than Billy Graham, more than Pope Francis, More than Martin Luther, if we're going to go back in history. That's an audacious claim. So again, it raises that question, what does it mean to be a Godly biblical person? This is not an easy question to answer.

He then moves on to the idea that John 3:16 is subjective so you can’t really use that for defining a Christian, that will be the next blog post. But for now, I want to point out the kind of research that you get on Adventist today.  Seibold quotes a small section of Michele Bachman’s statement and asks how would not such a statement cause you to pause, and how you would come to such a conclusion. Interestingly enough for about three paragraphs before that quote Bachman explains why she makes the claim. Now you would think that if it raised that question in Loren Seibold’s mind that he might have taken just a few moments to research the quote and come to an understanding of the quote. But no, we find that he was not curious enough to even do that, instead, he just adds a quote from Trump made two years later, even stating it as if it was connected with Bachman’s quote. I won’t deal with Trump’s quote because people should know by now his New York tendency to superlatives. He does the best, his friends are the best, his buildings are the best, his kids are the best, his enemies are the worst etc. It does appear he means as a President he has done more, as you can see here at about 6:16

If you want critical thinking or even facts it seems that Adventist Today and Loren Seibold are definitely not where you want to go. Here Seibold is jarred by a statement and he does not even look into it. He assumes that his political knowledge is great enough that he can just quote a line from CNN and that is all he needs to do. Don’t think that Seibold does not know that he is being political even when he claims he is not being political, that is just one of the lies that leftist use to try and pretend that they are just objective people pointing out facts.  Quotes taken out of their context are not facts they are pretexts that he uses to shore up his very faulty views.

Here is the transcription of what Michele Bachman said, you can hear it here at about minute 33:

“This President has done more to advance with prolife movement and the prolife cause than any other President has ever done. Just this week, Secretary of State Pompeo had announced the Mexico City policy would be enforced even wider than it had before. The Mexico City policy says not one dime out of US tax.Taxpayer money will go to pay for foreign abortions. Well, that should be a given, but that isn't the way it was under Barack Obama. We were paying for foreign abortion to abortions of people in other countries. Not only have we said no to that, but now Mike Pompeo or Secretary of State, has said even those nonprofits that are contracting with other nonprofits.They can't perform abortion so that policy's gone even further. Plus defunding of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in America. Planned Parenthood is being exposed for their deeds of darkness. And we're pulling back money from Planned Parenthood as well through the Trump administration. So that's just on the prolife issue on the area.

On the area of religious freedom. We are doing more to advance religious freedom and to protect Christians who are being murdered and persecuted in the Middle East. Like we have not seen before, [ Host comments: Christians can now flee to America. That's right couldn't under a previous administration], it was very, very hard. Barack Obama, practically. 99% of the people that he allowed in under the refugee resettlement programs were Muslims, certainly nonchristians. Now that has been completely flipped on his head. And President Trump is now allowing in persecuted Christians, people who are literally are being persecuted. And he's offering them protection in the United States and perpetrators, almost all of whom are Muslim are not getting access through the refugee resettlement Program. So this is a complete turnaround. But on so many different areas. We talked about Pastor Andrew Brunson that the President would not relent until this pastor was released out of Turkey. Now I spoke to pastor Brunson myself at the national for Breakfast and he is back. and his ministry has continued so that goes to areas we could go on with the president has done with standing for righteousness in so many areas one being Barack Obama had demanded and commanded that our military services had to literally go out and recruit people who are transgender to come into the military well it costs About a quarter of a million dollars to do sex reassignment surgery. Why would you recruit people who would come in and have sex reassignment surgery and be on the sidelines? It made no sense. So Donald Trump got rid of that mandate and that requirement. He has stood up where most Republicans.

Would dare to stand up. Donald Trump has had the courage in the fortitude. And I will say to your listeners in my lifetime, I have never seen a more biblical President than I have seen in Donald Trump. He is so impressed me what he's done. We haven't even talked about Israel, he is highly Biblical And I would say to your listeners, we will in all likelihood never see a more Godly Biblical President again in our lifetimes. So we need to be not only praying for Him, we need to support Him, in my opinion, in every possible way that we can.”