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Tommy Shelton
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Must Read:
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Mene, Mene,
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The Actual Lawsuit
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Pastor Mike Fortune Says, "Truth Can Afford to Be Fair"

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Pastor Mike Fortune currently serves the Toledo First Seventh-day Adventist Church. We saw a couple versions of his letter floating around and asked him if we could post it. His response made us wonder if we even had to ask.

Pastor Mike sent out copies of the release, "Linda Shelton demands that the evidence be made public!!!", to quite a number of folks. That generated some replies, and his letter below is a response to those replies.

If you visit the Toledo First Church for services, make sure you give him our regards.

From:  Mike Fortune
To:  ******
Subject:  Re: Linda Shelton Demands the Evidence Be Made Public
Date:  Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:24:05 -0500

Thank you for writing ******.

Re: 3ABN, I think there are way too many unanswered questions for any of us to have any clue what really happened there. But quickie divorces in Vegas or Guam, suggested or enacted, are things dirty politicians do, not Christian leaders of multitudes. So I am not impressed with how 3ABN has handled this situation. And while I'm glad there are those ... who have reserved judgment and are helping save 3ABN, I don't think in a million years 3ABN will honor Linda's request. But because some Adventists I know are demonizing her, I forwarded "her side."

I think we have to be Christian first, which includes not only total compassion but total honesty. In my opinion, 3ABN would survive anything because they have experienced too many miracles for them not to trust that God could bring them through another. Should they both, like David, be completely transparent with God and the countless people that, because of the nature of the ministry they do, look up to them. And while one of them is apparently willing to do so, the other is obviously not. So what are we to conclude? Would it be ugly? Yes. Would it benefit one or the other? I don't know. Would it hurt the ministry and the church? Probably. But not nearly as much as I think it does when we who are supposedly lifting up truth hide behind it. I don't like the pretense. That everything is okay. When it's not. If it were, Linda wouldn't be banished writing the things she's writing.

Ellen White wrote in Counsels to Writers and Editors page 35, "There is no excuse for anyone in taking the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that all our expositions of Scripture are without error. The fact that certain doctrines have been held as truth for many years by our people, is not a proof that our ideas are infallible. Age will not make error into truth, and truth can afford to be fair. No true doctrine will lose anything by close investigation."

And if that's true of doctrines, how much more is it true of those who teach and preach them? I will never be convinced that hiding truth and using the tools of the devil to start or sustain the Lord's work is acceptable whatever the fallout.

But maybe that's just me. God bless. ...

Pastor Mike

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