MOUNT SALEM, St James – The Mount Salem Seventh-Day Adventist church in St James yesterday threw the weight of its congregation’s support behind Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller during a special service in honour of her first anniversary as the country’s leader.

“This is a message from God… you are a strong, resilient woman. don’t let anybody ruffle your feathers… don’t be side-tracked. you are to do what is right under God. (who) has called you to carry out his word,” Pastor Michael Harvey, president of the SDA movement’s North Jamaica mission, told the prime minister.

Harvey, who delivered the sermon entitled ‘What happens when the King is not honoured?’, used the opportunity to address a range of issues, some of which the prime minister touched on earlier in her speech to the congregation.

Chief among them was the need to acknowledge the Almighty in order to restore the nation’s comprehensive well-being. Echoing Simpson Miller’s exhortation for the nation to return to a Godly life and embrace the concepts of peace, love and humility, Harvey warned the congregation that a failure to identify, address and punish wrongdoing – sin – would result in ultimate ruination.

Using as a take-off, Gibeah, the biblical story of Israel’s civil war over the refusal by the tribe of Benjamin to hand over a gang of rapists whom a Levite man allowed to rape his concubine in lieu of a male guest, Harvey highlighted the unfortunate consequences that could be occasioned by a refusal to disassociate with sin.

“It is not just those who peddle drugs… compromising saints contribute to the decay,” he said.