In relation to the crisis transpiring in the Episcopal Church at the present time I cannot help but reflect upon the Bible story of Eli and his two sons: Hophni and Phinehas. 1 Samuel 2:25 - If one man sin against another, the judge (that is, the priest, who was appointed to be the judge in many cases, Deut. 17:9), shall judge him, shall undertake his cause, arbitrate the matter, and make atonement for the offender; but if a man sin against the Lord,(that is, if a priest profane the holy things of the Lord, if a man that deals with God for others do himself affront him), who shall entreat for him? As Christians, we are to love our fellow man, no matter what the sin. However, when it comes to the Priesthood, one must conform to the revealed Will of God, (See I & II Timothy), and not foolishly attempt to live in "Practiced Sin" as the Apostle John refers to it in his 1st Epistle; and as Paul exhorts us in the 1st chapter of Romans: "Working that which is unseemly". The warning to the Clergy in the Episcopal Church is clear and unavoidable: 1 Samuel 2.29 - "You kick at my sacrifice which I have commanded; not only trample upon the institution as a mean thing, but spurn at it as a thing you hate to be tied up to.’’ The House of Deputies of the U.S. branch of the Episcopal church, is more concerned with humoring the minority, than Honoring the Most High. Eli's two sons,(Church Delegates),did the utmost despite imaginable to the offerings of the Lord when they committed all that outrage and irrelevancies about them that we read of, and violently plundered the pots on which, in effect, "Holiness to the Lord" was written (Zech. 14:20), and took that fat to themselves which God had appointed to be burnt on his altar. Eli,(The contemporary Clergy), had bolstered them up in it, by not punishing their insolence and impiety: "Thou for thy part honourest thy sons above me,’’ that is, "thou hadst rather see my offerings disgraced by their profanation of them than see thy sons disgraced by a legal censure upon them for so doing, which ought to have been inflicted, even to suspension and deprivation ab officio et beneficio—of their office and its emoluments.’’ Let us pray for our true brothers and sisters in the Episcopal Church, and be sympathetic to their repentance, and may God save us from the apostasy that is to come...
