March 28, 2024 Show with Shawn Mathis on “Is the Church Pro-Gay?”

Iron Sharpens Iron

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March 29, 2024

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:11: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:10: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:16: Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is
01:22: Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 28th day of March 2024.
01:30: Before I introduce my guest and our topic of the day, I want to remind all men in ministry leadership who are listening that the next free, biannual
01:41: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon is going to be held on Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m.
01:48: to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is
01:54: Perry County, Pennsylvania. And for the very first time, we have the honor and privilege and joy to have as our keynote speaker
02:02: Dr. Joel Beeky, founder and president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
02:10: And not only is admission free, and not only is your lunch free, and not only is your opportunity to be edified by Dr.
02:19: Beeky's message free, and not only is your time of fun and fellowship and rest and relaxation and refreshment free, everybody who attends is going to get absolutely free a heavy sack of brand new books that have been donated generously by Christian publishers all over the
02:40: United States and United Kingdom, personally selected by me. All of it is absolutely free.
02:47: This was by design of my precious late wife, Julie, in the 1990s when she first came up with the idea to have these luncheons, which began as annual events, now they are biannual.
03:02: And I have continued to do, to conduct these luncheons in loving memory and in honor and tribute to my precious late wife after she went home to be with the
03:16: Lord in 2010, and they continue to this day. So if you would like to attend this free
03:23: Pastor's Luncheon on Thursday, June the 6th, here in South Central Pennsylvania, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and put
03:34: Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. But today I am so thrilled to have a first -time guest.
03:43: His name is Sean C. Mathis, and he is the pastor of Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Denver, Colorado.
03:54: And today we are going to be addressing the theme of his book, Is the Church Pro Gay?
04:00: How to Respond to a Moral Crisis with God's Love. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, Pastor Sean Mathis.
04:14: Thank you. Glad to be here. Oh, it's a thrill to have you on the program for the first time, brother.
04:19: And for the sake of our listeners who are unfamiliar with you and the fine congregation where you serve as their pastor, tell us about Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Denver, Colorado.
04:33: Yes, we've been there since 1986. I've been a member of the church since, what, 1995, became a deacon, then a ruling elder, and then they voted unanimously to have them as their co -pastor with Dr.
04:46: Kappas, who since then has retired, and I've been the only pastor here since then, and it's been a blessing to be here and to be used in God's kingdom out in Denver.
04:56: And some people who are unfamiliar with your denomination, who, when they hear the word
05:03: Presbyterian, the only thing that comes to their mind are the liberal mainline
05:11: Presbyterian churches that might be in their neighborhood, who may even be taking a position on the polar opposite side that you take on the very subject that we are addressing today.
05:25: So they may be confused by me having a Presbyterian on the show.
05:30: Obviously, if they were, they haven't been listening very long to Iron Sherpa Sign Radio because I have many
05:36: Presbyterians on my show as guests, but tell us about the distinctives of not only
05:43: Denver Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but, I'm sorry, Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Denver.
05:50: But tell us about some of the distinctives of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. Well, we're generally considered conservative insofar as we follow the old ways, the old paths from the
06:02: Reformation onward. We have our confession that I'm sure a number of listeners are aware of, the Westminster Confession of Faith, that we take seriously.
06:11: And we are blessed in many ways as a denomination to have good practices that follow that as well and have a lot of unity in our denomination, although we're not perfect, to be sure.
06:21: People kind of joke about being the only perfect church, but we certainly are not that. I've been in the OPC, of course, since 1995, and I know
06:28: God has been still working on us, which is a praise. So, with respect to many of the cultural matters and the like, the word,
06:35: I guess, would typically be used to be conservative. And if anybody wants more details on this fine congregation, especially if you live in or near Denver, Colorado, or you're passing through there on vacation perhaps, or on business, or perhaps you have family, friends, and loved ones that live in or near Denver, Colorado, the website is denverprovidence .org,
07:01: denverprovidence .org. And Pastor Mathis also has his own website, pastormathis .com,
07:09: pastormathis .com, and that's spelled M -A -T -H -I -S, pastormathis .com.
07:16: And we'll, God willing, be repeating that later on in the program. Well, before we go into the heart of our theme today, which is, is the church pro -gay?
07:28: How to respond to a moral crisis with God's love? We have a custom here, a tradition, on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest, that guest gives a summary of his or her salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which that person was raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our
07:53: Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them, and I would love to hear your story.
08:00: Excellent, yes. So I grew up out here in Denver in the 80s, going to a charismatic, dispensational church, independent church, a megachurch at the time, in fact.
08:14: We had about 2 ,000 members in the 80s, so yeah, megachurch for the megachurches. It was that big movement from the 70s and the charismatics and the churches out in California with Chuck Smith and all that.
08:26: So that's the way I thought. If anybody, I don't know how much our listeners are aware of dispensationalism and end -time stuff, what is it, 88
08:33: Reasons for Christ to Come in 88, all that, I grew up through all that, expecting miracles and apostles and things like that.
08:40: By God's grace, my father was starting to read other things. He had questioned some of these teachings, such as you can't witness to the
08:49: Jews, for example, because they're special and God's chosen people. Wow, that's an extreme version, because the vast majority of dispensationalists would not take that position, as you probably know.
09:00: I think that's true, but I didn't know any different back then. I mean, this is my church, 2 ,000 members. Yeah, John Hagee is famous for that heresy.
09:09: Yeah, I suspect it's probably, yeah, been much more muted since then, which is a good thing, but that's what
09:14: I was taught back then. We had celebration of the Jews and mourning of the
09:20: Holocaust, and I helped draw a mural and all that, and I remember my father debating them, saying, why can't we preach the gospel to them?
09:25: Because it's offensive to them. And they were Jesus's primary audience, and he was not mincing words with the
09:35: Jews. No, no, he wasn't. Amen. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's a good thing to ask about that.
09:41: I'd forgotten about that part of my past. So my father starts reading Banner Truth, some Banner Truth magazines.
09:46: By the way, I don't know if you're aware of this. The American headquarters is about five minutes from where I'm sitting. Oh, sure.
09:53: Yeah, Carlisle. That's right. Cool. Go down there and visit him. So I don't know how he got a hold of him.
09:59: I was in the military in 1990. I went to the Air Force, stationed down at Eglin Air Force Base in the Panhandle.
10:06: And I'm always in good contact with him, and he gives you some of this stuff. I get the magazine. I start reading more of this stuff.
10:12: I start investigating these matters. I go to the local library and try to find out who this
10:17: Augustine guy is, who's this Calvin guy. I start reading some Spurgeon, Sovereign Grace sermons and things like that.
10:24: And it's working on me, brother. The Holy Spirit's working on me. I'm like 18, 19, and 20.
10:30: I'm like, I don't think I like this Arminian stuff. Wait a minute. That's what I was raised with.
10:39: So yeah, that's the change that God worked on me. But before then, I was a Christian. I was born again in the charismatic circles, probably about age 16 or so,
10:48: I'd guess. It's not exactly clear, only because you have altar calls every now and then.
10:54: It's back and forth. You have falling out of salvation, coming back into salvation. Yeah, yeah.
11:00: So then God moved me out of that. Thankfully, I became more and more Reformed and Presbyterian.
11:06: I read in my studies about Calvinism. I wanted to be even -handed. What did the Arminians say, the semi -Arminians or whatever, and the
11:12: Calvinists? And I discovered Dr. Coppice's book, The Five Points of Calvinism, it's called, or Ten Points Enough.
11:22: So he published it out of Denver, out of this church. I got out of the military, go back to Denver.
11:28: I find this church as my first and last Reformed church, and I'm their pastor now. God has really moved me through that quickly.
11:36: Well, praise God. How did you know that God had placed a calling upon your heart to become a pastor?
11:46: Yes. I'd always been interested in theology, and as a deacon, people saw me talk about these things and always being with Dr.
11:56: Coppice at his house, and they let me do a little Sunday school lesson at the time. And a number of people came up to me and said, we think you are fit for the ministry.
12:05: You have the gifts and qualifications. The ruling elders have agreed about that as well. As I asked questions,
12:10: I was always shy about it. I didn't want to push myself into it. And I eventually couldn't disagree.
12:16: I got laid off as an engineer. I have an electrical engineering background, and they're shipping everything out during that big global push at the turn of the century.
12:24: And Dr. Coppice said, now is a good time to go to seminary, and I can mentor you, and you can be a co -pastor out here, probably.
12:33: And that's exactly what happened. Oh, praise God. Just out of curiosity, this is off topic, but did you believe at any time that you were speaking in tongues while you were a
12:47: Pentecostal? And if so, what is your view now about what you were doing?
12:52: I'm always fascinated by that because there are different answers to that question,
12:58: I get. There are some people from the charismatic and Pentecostal movements who, after becoming
13:06: Reformed, retained their continuous or continuationist or charismatic views.
13:13: Others have abandoned them, and I've heard different explanations. Some of them will say that they were trying so desperately to honor and please
13:26: God that they were just imitating everybody around them. And whenever those sounds started coming out of their mouths that they were forcing out, people around them are excited and applauding them because they're confirming that these are actual gifts that they have received from God.
13:46: So, obviously, not everybody has that answer. What's your story in that regard? I did speak in tongues, and in fact,
13:54: I was, quote, slaying the Spirit, if you've ever heard of that one as well. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. I believe it was mass psychology, more or less.
14:03: I'm just imitating what they did around them. We are good imitators, many of us, and without realizing it, we are individuals in community.
14:13: We're not just radical individualists. We are influenced around us. We want positive influence, and that's what
14:18: I did. That's my explanation of the matter. I did it a number of times. Okay, well, that is basically the vast majority of the time.
14:30: That's the answer that I've heard. But today we are, as I've already announced, we're going to be discussing your book,
14:37: Is the Church Pro -Gay? How to Respond to a Moral Crisis with God's Love. And as you know, there are quite a number of books already on the shelves of the libraries of Christians and pastors and even in seminaries and so on about the issue of the sin of homosexuality and how
15:02: Christians individually and the church as a whole are to respond to this sin, especially when it is made evident that this sin is being either practiced by members of the church or at least when it is revealed that some members of the church, perhaps in private counseling sessions, are struggling with this, or when the church is confronted in their community with some kind of public event or crisis where it is a responsible thing for the congregations that are biblically faithful to somehow publicly counteract and respond to what is happening, whether they be drag queen story hours at the library or a whole host of other things that are going on.
15:56: So with the fact that I've already mentioned, there are a lot of things in print and some even really excellent, even by our mutual friend,
16:10: Rosaria Butterfield, who's been a guest on this program. She has written her own books.
16:15: In fact, let me quote Rosaria's commendation of your book. She says, speaking of Sean Mathis' critiques, his critiques are incisive and necessary.
16:30: Pastor Mathis' treatise on concupiscence,
16:37: I said it right about 10 times before the program started, and then when I'm on the spot, it's being shredded in my mouth.
16:46: Mortification of homosexual sin, cultivation of heterosexuality and biblical marriage and other politically incorrect virtues is pure gold.
16:55: This book is a must read. So what was it that came to your mind where you said to yourself, yeah,
17:04: I know that there are a lot of excellent volumes out there on the issue of homosexuality and its relationship to the
17:11: Church, but I've got my own thoughts that I've gleaned from the Scriptures, that I have gleaned from the successful and failed attempts of the
17:25: Church to respond to this. I've got to write my own book on this. What were those compelling factors?
17:33: Well, the first one was hearing a gentleman named Sam Alberry speak to a large audience of Anglicans.
17:38: He's an Anglican priest back in 2018, I think it was, and proclaiming that he was gay.
17:44: He was sexually attracted to men. But it was okay to declare that publicly because he was saved,
17:49: I thought. Paul talks about keeping things private and also talks about the ministry having men above reproach.
17:57: And it was posted and promoted around by Reformed people on Facebook. I said, there's a problem going on here.
18:05: And as I paid attention with the Revoice pushing during that year, as you recall, maybe this is something new.
18:10: Some of the books had come out before, right at that time, and had not dealt with Revoice explicitly or Side B as much.
18:18: And so I thought, I need to look a little more into this. And I did. And I discovered, especially in chapter two, the gay lifestyle.
18:25: And I think that's one of the biggest things missing in a lot of discussion is what exactly are we talking about?
18:31: Are they just heterosexuals that are a little weird? Or is it an entirely different world that will blow your mind? And if anyone reads chapter two, it will blow your mind.
18:39: And also, I thought it important to delve in, not just lightly, as I've seen some of the talks or discussions and the like about Revoice, what the sin is, why it's a sin, why attraction itself is a sin, which was a very big debate, in fact, on these matters.
18:55: And then how God gave us the tools, as summarized in the larger catechism, question 99 of the
19:00: Westminster larger catechism about using the law of God, how to interpret the Bible and apply the law to these questions, not just simply funding, as it were, a black and white text.
19:10: But all the texts related to marriage are also involved in this and all this. So chapters five and six deal with that matter as well.
19:19: Yes. And in fact, the aforementioned Rosaria Butterfield, she even went through a transformation on her views about some of this stuff.
19:31: And she admittedly believes that she was in error, not that she, after her salvation, was in any way putting a seal of approval on homosexuality, but she was far more approving and accommodating to folks like Sam Allenberry.
19:49: And she has changed her view and wrote a book subsequent to her change that I've had several interviews with Rosaria on the show, and that includes the one on her latest book.
20:04: And by the way, I urge our listeners, after this live interview, to go to ironsharpensironradio .com,
20:12: type in the name Butterfield. All of my interviews with Rosaria will come up. I also urge you to type in Perkins, P -E -R -K -I -N -S, for my interview with M .D.
20:27: Perkins of the American Family Association. We had an interview on a critique of Alistair Begg's horrific counsel to a grandmother during a podcast to attend her grandchild's so -called wedding to a transgender person.
20:45: And you could, in fact, if you type in homosexuality, you'll see every interview that I've conducted on the issue.
20:54: But so you've come to the place where you have written this book.
21:02: And let's go initially through some of the things that Rosaria even lists in her commendation for your book as to what she views as pure gold in the book, concupiscence.
21:20: See, I said it right that time. Yes. Concupiscence is something that many people may be unaware of it actually having a root in aberrant understanding of a homosexuality that has been endorsed by the
21:38: Roman Catholic Church for centuries. But if you want to define that and also give us some more details on it.
21:48: Yeah, so concupiscence is a old -fashioned word for the remnants of original sin within us, the attraction towards sin that's embedded in us that we're born into.
22:01: And the Roman Catholic Church denies that it is sin, properly speaking. But it may be it is in their theology a prerequisite for it.
22:09: But it is not itself sinful and therefore needing judgmental repentance. Right.
22:14: That's actually why the Roman Catholic Church has no problem at all ordaining a candidate for the priesthood.
22:27: They have no problem at all ordaining someone who admits that they are, they'll even identify themselves as gay or homosexual.
22:37: They won't even say, you know, I struggle with this or that, or they might say that. But they may actually publicly identify themselves as homosexual.
22:48: But as long as they take a vow of chastity, the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church has no problem ordaining such folks.
22:56: And they have done that for centuries. That's correct. And it's caused lots of problems.
23:03: And it's something that has become imitated by evangelicals, unfortunately. Unfortunately, yeah, that is the case there.
23:10: They end up arguing what's called Side B. You mentioned Albury before and Wesley Hill and Coles.
23:17: It's called Side B, which is we're not the libs, we're the conservatives. We have the traditional sexual ethics.
23:24: Well, if they do, it's the Roman Catholic version of it, not the Protestant. By the way, I don't know if you're aware of this, but I arranged and moderated a debate with Dr.
23:33: James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who's also co -author of The Same Sex Controversy.
23:40: He debated Dr. Gregory Coles in Lancaster. Yeah, I saw some of that. I didn't get to listen to the whole thing, but I did see some of it.
23:48: And Rosaria Butterfield raved to me about how excellent she believed the debate was.
23:56: So if anybody in our listening audience wants to watch that debate, you just go to YouTube. And if you type in James White versus Gregory Coles, C -O -L -E -S, that will come up.
24:08: Now, as far as the mortification of homosexual sin, what do you have to say about that in your book that may be lacking in emphasis in the church at large?
24:23: With respect to killing, original concupiscence, and sin and the like, yeah,
24:32: I have the chapter on that defining what it is. And it's not a special technique. People want to blow it out of proportion in one sense, but at the same time, it is a harder sin.
24:42: There's a lot of recidivism. There's a lot of people claiming they've overcome it, and they end up backsliding in these ex -gay ministries that we read about.
24:51: So in Chapter 6, I go into some of the practical things, the means of grace, church discipline, friends you hang out with or you shouldn't hang out with, more practical things like that, control over the
25:02: Internet, filters and things like that, which is a big problem in those circles. And of course, we're going to expand upon all of this in greater detail as the interview progresses, but the cultivation of heterosexuality in biblical marriage.
25:21: Now, going back to the aforementioned debate that I arranged and moderated between James White and Gregory Coles, Gregory Coles does not view it as not only important or necessary, but he doesn't even view it as helpful to attempt to cultivate heterosexuality in the lives of those who profess to be struggling with this unnatural and sinful desire, but also so much to the point in opposition to the idea of cultivating heterosexuality amongst folks like Dr.
26:11: Coles, who believes that the physical consummation of homosexual desire is sin.
26:19: He is not one of these folks from the Side A homosexual group who believes in same -sex marriage or anything like that.
26:28: He does believe that sexual relations are reserved solely for a married man who is married to one woman and that sexual activity is only to take place in their marriage bed and nowhere else and with no one else.
26:49: But at the same time, he is so adamant about the cultivation of heterosexuality not being a right move, at least not with everybody, that he identifies himself publicly as a homosexual.
27:09: He does not believe—or I should say gay, a gay Christian, that's the way he prefers to identify himself.
27:18: He does not believe he needs to repent of even the attraction that he has, and he, on top of all that, believes it is a blessing from God because, according to him in the debate that he had, since the world and the culture is so saturated with sexually enticing images that are predominantly involving women, he views his gay same -sex attraction as being a blessing from God because that does not entice him at all, and therefore—
28:02: That's twisted. Yes, it is. Sorry. In fact, I don't even think it's true that in our day and age, the imagery of women in sexually provocative ways and manners is necessarily dominant at all.
28:23: I mean, there's plenty of imagery of men in sexually provocative poses and states of dress in all kinds of places and on the internet and catalogs and TV and movies, and so I don't even know where he's coming from on that, but you want to respond to that?
28:47: You already gave part of the answer, and the other half of that is that which is not spoken of—that's why
28:52: I have chapter two—many gays are bisexual is the word we would use, I suppose.
28:58: So these claims that I'm gay, so that means I'm not really attracted to the opposite, may or may not be true depending on the circumstances in their lives and whatnot, but the numbers show, and in fact, lesbians, for example, have higher rates of giving birth out of wedlock, which tells you they're not lesbians, and there's a higher percentage of gay men impregnating them.
29:22: There's a lot of talk about being one thing but actually acting another.
29:27: Are you saying that there's a higher rate of lesbians being pregnant out of wedlock, higher than heterosexual women?
29:34: I believe so, yeah. It's in my book. I can look it up real quick or after the interview.
29:40: Okay, well, we have to go to our first commercial break anyway. If anybody has a question for my guest today,
29:49: Pastor Sean Mathis, on is the church pro -gay, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
29:56: c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, and obviously with a topic like this, this will likely evoke some folks having personal and private questions to ask, and we will obviously honor your request to remain anonymous for those reasons.
30:22: But if it's a general question about what the Bible has to say and so on about this sin, please give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence.
30:33: Don't go away, we'll be right back. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an
30:45: Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my long -time friend and brother
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33:05: But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
33:19: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
33:26: In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
33:31: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
33:37: I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
33:45: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
33:57: I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
34:04: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
34:13: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
34:23: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
34:42: God bless you. Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur.
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39:27: That's royaldiadem .com. We're now back with my guest, Pastor Shawn Mathis, and we are discussing his book,
39:34: Is the Church Pro -Gay? How to Respond to a Moral Crisis with God's Love. And one thing
39:40: I'd like you to do is compare the moral crisis that is occurring in the world, in society at large, in the secular realm, and compare that with the moral crisis in the church.
39:59: Yeah, we're a shadow following along the substance of the demise of our culture with respect to sexual ethics and how it's playing out in the churches, or excuse me, in the schools, and the media, and the businesses, and the policies at the federal, state, and local levels.
40:14: Disney and all these other problems perhaps people have heard about, or some haven't. A lot of people aren't going to hear about it if all they have is the mainstream news media because they're not going to tell you how bad things have come and gone.
40:27: So the churches, there's always peer pressure upon us and our leadership, as we see in the case of Side B, which wants to give us more or less a watered down version of what's out there in society.
40:38: We see that with Coles making excuses for his attraction to gay sex, and this is not good.
40:46: I mentioned this in chapter one. I set it up so people understand how serious these problems are. My own area, my own backyard in Denver, I discovered a unicorn festival, it's called, at a park.
40:59: You think, oh, this is great. The kids, the girls especially, have these people dressed up as princesses and the like, and it's all pink and pretty with unicorns, and then you discover there's a drag queen story hour there.
41:10: They don't tell you. It's not on their brochure, but they had four different meetings throughout the day at that park, and men were walking around dressed up as women with beards.
41:22: Who's going to know about that until it's too late? So your kids walk into that, and you're like, whoa, what's going on here? But they're already being groomed, is the word.
41:30: They're being manipulated to be comfortable with what you should not be comfortable with.
41:36: That's the idea of grooming. Yeah, and we have a listener who is remaining anonymous from Hanover, Pennsylvania, and the listener says, in the last number of weeks recently,
41:55: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has featured interviews with authors on homosexuality.
42:01: Why is there such a focus on that and not much of a focus on heterosexual sin?
42:07: That's the exact same thing nearly, and it might even be the same person, somebody commented on the publicity for today's show in social media asking nearly the same question, and the answer that I gave, and you could give your own answer,
42:24: Pastor Mathis, but the answer that I gave is the reason that I tend to focus more as far as guests and topics on the show with the sin of homosexuality is because the homosexual sin has become a movement that is powerful and terrifying, really, and this movement is seeking to destroy the lives of anyone coming in their path to oppose them in every sphere of life, whether it's religion, whether it's politics, whether it's medicine, whether it's sports, whether it's entertainment, whether it's education, we could go on and on, whether it's employment,
43:19: I don't know if I mentioned that already, you don't typically have heterosexual adulterers and fornicators say, not only must you tolerate and approve of what
43:30: I'm doing, you must celebrate it with me or I'm going to make your life a living hell, I am going to make it a point to try to get you fired from where you're employed or prevent you from getting hired if you're applying for a job, and I'm, we're going to try as a movement to get you fined heavily financially, we could go on and on and on.
43:52: Now, of course, I'm not saying by those statements that I believe that every or even most people involved in the sin of homosexuality are firebrands and militant activists,
44:05: I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that you don't have a comparable movement happening in our modern day, our current culture, you don't have a comparable movement of heterosexual sinners doing that.
44:22: Am I overstepping here, Pastor Mathis? Oh, you said it well. One gentleman in the
44:27: Midwest burned a gay flag and he got like 15 years for it. Wow.
44:33: 15 years? Yeah, it was, it was insane. It's in my book and the intro.
44:39: That's why I set it up because a lot of people don't understand how much power and clout is going on here. We don't have, as you point out aptly, heterosexual fornicators and adulterers trying to get the rest of us who don't do that fired.
44:52: You're not participating in my sin, we're going to fire you for being a straight person who's married and doesn't commit adultery.
44:58: It's an order of magnitude different. And then on top of that, as I mentioned, the grooming and the predatorial practices, especially in the male homosexual circles are off the chart compared to heterosexuals.
45:09: It's a problem. It's a problem we try to hide in the churches. I mentioned that in the book, that is a heterosexual problem of male predators.
45:15: And people like to point that out and it is a problem. I grant that. But again, orders of magnitude different.
45:21: That's one reason why I wrote the book. And by the way, Anonymous in Hanover, Pennsylvania, if you give me your full name and mailing address, of course,
45:30: I'm not going to identify you on the air. But if you email me that information, you have won a copy of Is the
45:37: Church Pro Gay? How to Respond to a Moral Crisis with God's Love by my guest, Shawn Mathis.
45:43: And by the way, since the listener mentioned that I've been doing a number of interviews like this lately,
45:50: I want to highly recommend one that I forgot to mention earlier, with Dr. Matthew Roberts.
45:57: He has written a superb book that you should get a hold of Pride, Identity and the
46:07: Worship of Self, which is published by Christian Focus Publications. If you go to Iron Trip and Zion Radio dot com and type in Matthew Roberts in the search engine, that interview will come up.
46:19: It was just conducted very recently on March 21st. So I thought I'd throw that out there. And now you mentioned the targeting of the youth.
46:32: There are many either who are involved personally in homosexual activity or they're just advocates of homosexuals.
46:42: They're they're leftists and are fully supportive of the
46:50: LGBTQ so -called community, which, you know, it's also another reason that we talk about this so much is that you don't have an adulterer community or fornicator community, but for some reason you have a gay community where people are being treated by their sexual perversions.
47:13: They're being treated as if this is an ethnic or national origin issue or religion issue or, you know, it's it's it's reached the point of sheer insanity.
47:28: But you'll have many of these folks swearing that this is untrue.
47:35: This is the slander of right wing heterosexuals, the slander of right wing
47:42: Christians, perhaps especially. In fact, let me give you a brief story.
47:47: I was at a meeting at the town hall where I live several years ago when there was going to be a law passed that officially and legally recognized those in the so -called
48:05: LGBTQ community as a protected status group. And keep in mind that somebody who seems to be aware of this told me that in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in its entire history, there has never been a single instance of somebody being physically harmed by someone because of their homosexual preference or activity.
48:31: But yet they seem to need to make this protected status group a legal issue.
48:38: But during this meeting where the public was invited, a woman who was a member of a local
48:46: Baptist church stood up and she was talking about how fearful and terrified she is to even enter into a public restroom with her grandchildren.
48:58: And because she has no idea what's going to be awaiting in the other side of the door. And after she got up and gave her little speech, a woman who is either a so -called lesbian or just an advocate for that activity, she got up and she said, oh, you've got it all wrong.
49:16: LGBTQ folks do not get involved in molesting children.
49:22: The people that do that nearly all the time are middle -aged, married, heterosexual men.
49:31: And I got up after she finished her diatribe and I said,
49:37: I want everybody to really reflect carefully upon what that woman said.
49:44: She was making the case, although she didn't use these words, for homosexual superiority, because they would never molest a child or put children in danger because of their sexual proclivity or their sexual identity.
50:02: They would never put children in danger. People like me, I said, they're the ones that they are telling you that people like me are the ones to be targeted and feared.
50:15: But this is really something that seems to go over the heads of people.
50:20: They're not just claiming equality. They are claiming superiority, even if they don't use those words, aren't they?
50:26: That's certainly the case. They want to turn the tables and make it as though the rest of us are morally depraved and they're upright, upstanding citizens.
50:35: That's an old propaganda technique. And unfortunately, people fall for it, partly because we've been told to be nice, winsome, and don't question people's motives.
50:44: Just take them at their word. That's right. We do have time to squeeze in another question before our midway break.
50:51: We have Morris in White Plains, New York.
50:58: And Morris says, I'm curious as to why you chose the word gay in your title.
51:06: I personally don't think Christians should use that term. They should be referred to as homosexual or even sodomites, but not gay, because that is a stealing of a completely decent and wonderful word, which meant happiness at one time.
51:23: Now, that's an interesting question, because I happen to—I don't know everything that this person believes, this listener, about that issue.
51:32: But I tend to try not to use the term gay unless I'm just quoting something that the culture is using, using a modern vernacular of things.
51:46: But I try not to use that in regular speech myself, because I do believe—I agree with the listener—that this term has been robbed from us, just like the rainbow.
51:57: If you could explain as far as what our listener asked. Yeah, the title is a riff off of Albury's book,
52:04: Is God Anti -Gay? Okay. But would you—
52:09: And of course, yeah, queer makes it a longer title, too. The artist had a hard time with the subtitle, for example.
52:15: You can't get all the subtitle large enough, so you have all these considerations. But it's a riff off of Albury's book.
52:20: Now, do you have any sympathies towards that issue of, you know, Christians— Yeah, I have emotional sympathy, because I grew up in the transitionary period in which you played
52:31: Smear the Queer, for example. And the word didn't mean anything other than the odd man out who has the ball, and you get to tackle him, right?
52:37: Every man goes after the one guy with the ball as a kid. And it changed. The word gay changed in my lifetime from, as you said, happy to what it is now.
52:46: And it has been co -opted. It has been taken from us. And I'm not willing to fight that matter right now.
52:52: It's there. It's already in our vernacular. It's just how things change, unfortunately. Well, we have to go to our midway break.
52:58: And I'm asking you to use this time wisely. Please write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.
53:11: And even if you can't buy anything that they're offering, please at least contact as many of our advertisers as possible, simply saying, thank you for sponsoring
53:23: Iron Sharp Radio. That should go a long way to appease those who are spending a lot of money to keep the show on the air, to know that it is not money spent in vain, and that people are actually appreciating and benefiting from this program.
53:39: So please at least thank our advertisers. And of course, send in your questions to Pastor Shawn Mathis on his book,
53:46: Is the Church Pro Gay? Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com
53:52: gives the first name, at least city and state and country of residence, and you may remain anonymous. Don't go away. I'm Dr.
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54:51: For details on the eight volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.
55:00: For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,
55:07: heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, that Dr.
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58:59: Tell Pastor Dunn you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hello, my name is
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01:00:04: podcast and visit our website and the YouTube page. We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a
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01:00:37: Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. If you love
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01:08:14: Before I return to my interview with Pastor Sean Mathis on his book, Is the
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01:10:59: and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to my guest today,
01:11:06: Pastor Sean Mathis, as we continue our conversation on Is the Church Pro -Gay? And let's see here, we do have a question from Lemuel in Spanish Fork, Utah, who asks, you mentioned earlier something about side
01:11:23: A and side B Christianity in relationship to the sin of homosexuality.
01:11:29: Can you be more detailed in explaining this to your audience so that they may understand what you're even talking about?
01:11:35: Very good question, if you could, Pastor Mathis. Certainly the language came out of the 90s when they had debates, roundtable debates, and there was a side
01:11:44: A and a side B to every discussion. The side A in today's vernacular means those who are okay with gay marriage, gay sexual acts, and the like.
01:11:56: Side B says we're not okay for gay marriage, we're not okay with the sexual acts, but they both have in common the roots, which is they don't have a problem with the attraction to gay sex itself.
01:12:08: Okay, and you could also hear more about that in detail by not only watching the debate that I arranged with James White and Gregory Coles, but listening to an interview with Rosaria Butterfield, who goes into that issue within great length.
01:12:25: Let's see here, we have Tilly in Briarcliff Manor, New York, and Tilly asks, do you think that people in a congregation who affirm the ideas of side
01:12:43: B Christianity and affirm the concept of identifying yourself as a homosexual as long as you are celibate or chaste, should those people be put under church discipline for having these views, especially if they are publicly promoting them?
01:13:03: Yeah, depending on the promotion, you're going to find most of them aren't going to say I'm a pro -gay church, but obviously if someone says that explicitly, then they ought to be under church discipline.
01:13:12: There ought to be an investigation to figure out what's going on, and why is this happening, and stop it.
01:13:18: More importantly, just stop it. I have a whole chapter, chapter seven, what a pro -gay church looks like, a composite picture with lots of details of where these churches go.
01:13:26: Once you are not ashamed of talking of things that should be of shame, as Paul talks about in Ephesians, for example, warns about in Ephesians, then you're on the first step towards becoming just full -on gay.
01:13:37: Now, why don't you go through some of the telltale signs.
01:13:43: Now, are you referring to, when you say pro -gay church, are you referring to the full -blown leftist apostate church that has a rainbow flag hanging out above their doorway, and they call themselves open and affirming on their sign, so you just said no.
01:14:03: So what are you speaking of exactly? That's part of it, too. I'm drawing a biblical line.
01:14:10: Attraction to sin is a sin. Attraction to beating women but never practicing it is still a sin, and churches that want to make excuses for that are pro -gay, no matter what degree of pro -gay, it's not relevant as far as I'm concerned.
01:14:25: So my book takes that stance, and this chapter covers this going from the, as it were, the light version of it, the we're okay, we're kind of like you version of it, and then showing where it has gone, and we see this, for example, in one of the churches in San Francisco that was in the
01:14:44: PCA, and they were, Pastor Harold was his name, and hey, they're confessional, they're this, they're that, but then by 2006,
01:14:52: I think it was, they're okay with female leadership, and then his son comes out gay in 2012, and now in 2022,
01:14:59: I think, when he finally retired, and one of the videos I watched, he had rainbow flags on his socks, he had a rainbow lapel, and they have full -on gay marriage and queer leadership.
01:15:12: Yeah, there seems to be a phenomenon where you have people who change their long -held views of biblical morality when it comes to the issue of homosexuality.
01:15:29: They change them just because they may have a child, for instance, that in their teens or maybe even older has come out of the closet, and they just hate the thought of condemning that person as a reprobate or as a lost person, and they go back into their studies, they delve into their
01:15:56: Bibles, trying to twist the scripture. Of course, they would never view it that way themselves, but trying to come up with some biblical arguments, and then, of course, likely investigating the arguments of so -called
01:16:10: LGBTQ theologians, trying to reconcile the
01:16:16: Bible with this abomination, and it's really sad, because you would think that would drive them to be even more zealous and passionate in their evangelism to these loved ones, hoping to see repentance, but what's the comment on that?
01:16:38: You're exactly right, and I think it shows a weakness already in much of those leadership.
01:16:44: The situation came along, and they were already predisposed to giving in or making excuses somewhere.
01:16:51: You find that I have stories, a number of stories of that in the book, big -name leaders who admit that they're soft on homosexuality, that question, because someone close to them in their family, a brother or a sister or something like that, has gone gay.
01:17:09: And I actually have heard of one particular person. Do you know who
01:17:14: James Brownson is? No, I do not. James Brownson, for years, was a highly esteemed
01:17:25: Reformed professor and scholar who had the traditional and biblical understanding of the sinfulness and even the damnable nature of homosexuality, and he was originally approached by me to debate
01:17:45: Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and he originally agreed to do the debate because he had changed his view because his son came out of the closet, just like I was speaking of in a general sense before, but that's a specific area where he radically and 180 degrees turned his view around, and in fact, it's more than side
01:18:12: B. It's side A, where he believes that his—and he teaches that homosexuals can actually marry people of the same gender, but he wound up, after agreeing to do the debate, his wife was overly concerned—well,
01:18:30: I shouldn't say overly concerned. His wife was very concerned because he has an ailment in his brain that would have likely made the debate more difficult than we would have liked, so he backed out, but it's still—that is a more tragic thing to me than when you hear about somebody who was raised in a leftist religion or with no religion at all who come up with these ideas and defenses, but to somebody who was a respected biblical scholar and professor to switch sides, if you will, that's much more problematic, isn't it?
01:19:21: It's very problematic, especially when they have a big name and a big ministry that people recognize.
01:19:27: They're like, well, he's been faithful for 30, 40 years, and he's talking this way, so maybe
01:19:32: I should reconsider myself and what I think. Peer pressure is real. We have to remember this. Timothy Keller, his brother, died of AIDS.
01:19:39: In an interview with Gay City News, he's like, well, this actually influenced my whole perspective on this matter, and it should not have.
01:19:47: It should have influenced it in reinforcing, like you said, the desire that you want these people converted and you want them to repent and the like, and his conclusion is
01:19:57: Christians have no more or less of a right to tell other people how to think and live their life than anyone else.
01:20:04: That is civilly with respect to laws and everything else, and we see where that's taking us right now. Now, what ultimately, before he entered into eternity, was his theological view on this?
01:20:15: I actually conducted an interview with Phil Johnson years ago where we took
01:20:21: Phil Johnson, who is the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, grace to you, we took the audio of Tim Keller's interview at a left -wing university in California, and I believe it was called the
01:20:40: Veritas Forum. That's what they called it at the school. Correct. Where a liberal was interviewing
01:20:46: Keller, and he was not in a full -blown manner promoting homosexuality, but he was clearly being intentionally vague and dancing around issues to a real frustrating point.
01:21:06: In fact, I even think his liberal interviewer was frustrated by it. It always seemed obvious that Dr.
01:21:15: Keller was very fearful about how academia would view him, and knowing that academia is so saturated with leftist individuals and concepts, he really never gave a strong biblical warning about this sin.
01:21:38: Did you see this? He did not. Yeah, I've watched it. The listeners can go to type in Veritas Forum, Timothy Keller on YouTube.
01:21:46: You should be able to find it. It was there at Columbia University in 2011 or 2010.
01:21:52: Oh, it was Columbia in New York. Yeah, yeah. Okay. For some reason, I thought it was in California.
01:21:59: And he was asked, point blank, if you're gay, do you go to hell? And Timothy Keller, I'm paraphrasing, of course, is no, you don't.
01:22:06: You go to hell for rejecting Jesus. And that's not biblical. It's not faithful.
01:22:11: It's not confessional. You can go to hell for both, but you will go to hell for at least the one, being homosexual.
01:22:18: I mean, unbelievers who never hear Jesus are still sinners. And if they're homosexual, they're going to go to hell.
01:22:24: It's not complicated. It's sad, but it's simply that true. And he didn't say that. It was bizarre. Yes, and I would recommend our listeners to check out the two -part interview
01:22:35: I did with Phil Johnson, where we examined that interview of Timothy Keller at Columbia and dissected it and critiqued it.
01:22:45: So, if you type in Timothy Keller or Tim Keller in the search engine of IronTruck and ZionRadio .com,
01:22:52: that two -part interview will come up, because the other part was actually him doing the same thing in regard to alternative ways to get to heaven.
01:23:02: I don't know if you remember that as well. It's been a while. I do remember, but I haven't listened to it a long time.
01:23:09: And this is a good example of the prior question you brought up, one of the telltale signs of going in the wrong direction.
01:23:15: And this is one of them. It's a red flag. Okay, we have
01:23:21: Byron, who is located in Montauk, Long Island, New York.
01:23:29: And Byron asks, why is it that typically when a church or denomination comes to a conclusion that women are eligible to be ordained into the pastoral ministry, it is not long before eventually the church or denomination caves in to the other demands of the left and begins doing the with active homosexuals?
01:23:58: Sure. They're related. They're both matters of sex slash gender. I know they want to make distinction in academia about those things, but whatever word you want to use, because if it's okay for a straight male to act like a woman, which is what gays do half the time, people don't realize it, maybe think of it that way, they're acting effeminate, especially if they are the pastoral partner, and all of them are at one time or another in their life.
01:24:25: And then women acting like men, which is what's happening in the case of having female leadership. Well, I mean, obviously, though, however, it's not always that easy to detect who is acting out in a homosexual manner, because look at Rock Hudson.
01:24:46: There was nothing effeminate about him. And I've seen, in fact,
01:24:52: I've known women who were involved in homosexual activity who were extremely feminine and girly girls, you know.
01:25:03: So, I mean, it's not, the stereotypes don't always exist. Correct.
01:25:10: That's why I said with respect to the gays, the gay men, it depends on what part of their life or where they are on these matters.
01:25:19: But certainly that aspect of being effeminate is there somewhere in their life, because they start young, they're usually, they have a higher rate of molestation in their life as teenagers, young men, which means they are more effeminate that way.
01:25:36: And they tend to be the ones that the older men want to be attracted to. So the young become old, eventually, as they move from one stage to the other.
01:25:44: I'm not an expert in all the stages in their life. It was more than I ever wanted to read and research. And I have a lot.
01:25:50: You have the book in front of you. I have a lot of footnotes and bibliography there on these matters. But that's the long short of it.
01:25:57: And isn't it, when it comes to what the listener was asking about, why is it that nearly every time a denomination acquiesces to the demands of the left -wing culture about ordaining women, the demand of the feminist culture, they fall into eventually ordaining homosexuality and viewing it as a completely acceptable manner of behavior in life?
01:26:25: Isn't that primarily an issue of hermeneutics? Because you are adopting a hermeneutic that is teaching you and teaching others that this was just a temporary cultural kind of a thing, that usually that's what feminists, who are even evangelicals, will say about Paul's prohibitions, that he was not speaking universally for all ages.
01:26:53: And of course, Paul makes it clear that that's not the case, because he goes to Genesis as his reason.
01:27:00: Yeah, he roots it in creation. Yep. But don't you think it is a hermeneutical issue that is causing this?
01:27:06: There are. There is a hermeneutical. That is, there's a theological and doctrinal matters that are involved.
01:27:13: I grant that. And they should be discussed, but they should never be discussed in a vacuum or in the abstract. But the book has taught me,
01:27:19: I learned through the book, through researching this, a lot of people already have a weakness.
01:27:26: They're already attracted to, they already are making excuses in their heart for these things, and so they reach out to a readily available theology to justify it.
01:27:36: Right. And you mentioned victims of molestation, especially in the male category of homosexuality.
01:27:47: Right. It almost seems counterintuitive that if somebody was molested by a man, that they would be seeking sexual pleasure with other men.
01:28:02: It seems to me what you, I mean, obviously, your average person is not an expert on the human brain and all that comes with it.
01:28:13: But any idea from your research why that is, that somebody who would have a terrifying, horrific nightmare in their life, like being molested by somebody of the same sex, would actually pursue same -sex activity after that?
01:28:28: It seems to be counterintuitive. Yeah, intuitive, sure. I think it comes from, with respect to the men, because there's a sex difference between the men and the women.
01:28:40: If something happens to the women, she'll end up either hating men for the rest of her life, for example, so she'll react differently than the male.
01:28:47: The men learn more through example than by teaching how to be a man. They'll learn teaching how to add two plus two to be sure, or how to fix a house.
01:28:56: But with respect to expectations, with respect to attitudes, with respect to standing firm, for example, and resisting and doing the right thing or whatever, they act like a man to, in these matters, they learn by example.
01:29:11: And since they are usually molested when they're younger, when sexuality is new to them, right, the early teenage years, 13, 14 or so, they have in their mind, this is what a man does.
01:29:25: This is how a man acts. That's what I think. I don't know that for a fact. And there's a lot of debate about some of these things and a lot of things hidden, because as we progress into the 20s and the 30s now in America, I passed
01:29:37: Obergefell ruling in 2015, more and more of these studies will be hidden, shunted down and wiped away from the internet,
01:29:44: I'm sure. Now, in your research for this book, have you come to any conclusions about whether or not there are any clearly significant differences between the phenomenon of male and female homosexuality?
01:30:08: Not especially. Most of the research I found was on male sexuality, not as much as on female, on lesbians.
01:30:15: I try to find more on that. Maybe it's just the resources I had access to through various places and the like.
01:30:22: But again, yeah, there's a difference in what I have seen and their reactions and how they act.
01:30:31: And in fact, in the homosexual community, we talk about community. It's actually communities, plural. The men and women don't get along with one another.
01:30:40: I have a section of my book covering that, a page or two showing us from their own mouth. We don't get along with one another.
01:30:45: We put on a front. So the world thinks we are a community. But the lesbians don't like the homosexual, the gay men, the gay men don't like the lesbians.
01:30:53: They have different bars and they don't together. They don't like the transgender guys, which are usually men, by the way.
01:31:01: Yeah, that is an interesting phenomenon where you finally have an outcry against transgenderism, not only by people who profess to be homosexual, but by feminists as well.
01:31:17: I mean, feminism, you wonder why even now there is still a relative quietness from feminists.
01:31:26: They should be much more openly and vociferously protesting this.
01:31:32: Yeah. It's not a threat to them. Women aren't threatened by gay men. Well, I mean, it definitely is a threat to feminism, though, because if you are pro women and you see the sports, for instance, being robbed from women because of the participation of biological males and you just see the whole diminishing of the importance of being female biologically.
01:32:00: Sure. But if but if and I think this is the case, most of feminism is very individualistic.
01:32:07: It's all about me, what I can do. It doesn't bother them that the women down the teenage girls down the street have to compete with a man.
01:32:13: It's not a threat to her, per se, the feminist who's usually in 30s or 40s or something in 50s and 60s. They've gone past their prime.
01:32:21: That's how I think about it. But at the end of the day, in practical terms, on one on one at the churches, for example, the women aren't going to put up as much defense against this.
01:32:31: They're not sexually threatened by gay men. As a rule, at least in their mind, they're not.
01:32:38: I see what you're saying. And I would like you before we go to our final break, which is coming up in about six minutes.
01:32:44: I really want you to highlight and be detailed about some primary issues that you address in the in your book, because I don't want time to fly away where we do not address the things that are of greatest concern to you in the book.
01:33:00: Yes. So the danger, as I mentioned, the book is written to warn the church of danger and equip them for these times we find ourselves in.
01:33:09: The dangers in particular are the sexual compulsiveness of gays, their miserable life psychologically and practically, and the medical riskiness of the
01:33:19: STDs and the like that is through the roof. They have a miserable, terrible, dangerous life.
01:33:27: And the church should not be naive about this and think that they're just like the rest of us. They need to be converted and saved to be sure.
01:33:34: But you approach this whole matter. The church should approach this whole matter with a clear eyed understanding of what they're getting into or rather what they should avoid and how they should be aware of dealing with this special group of people.
01:33:47: That's what we have now, special in the sense of set off and unique, right? Public professor, a professor of public health at Yale University did a huge study.
01:33:57: He himself was gay and he showed the biggest source of difficulty and troubles in the gay life are from the gay community.
01:34:05: Men, gay men rag on each other all the time. A new family structure study that came out of Texas in 2012, a huge one.
01:34:12: And he got access to thousands and thousands of families, including several hundred, a large sample of, quote, gay families, right?
01:34:19: Adoptees and the like. And he got all this, all the stats and numbers that you can get about where they raised in a bullied household or bullied that they have gay friendly laws in their state.
01:34:31: He got all that data point and he showed that, again, lesbian couples with kids, a gay couple, gay men couple with kids, the kids grew up in welfare more often than a normal family, more depression, more touch sexually three to ten times more, for example, by the adoptive parents.
01:34:49: It's not that clear. I wish it was. It says the parents or guardian or care caretaker.
01:34:55: Right. So, yeah. So it's a small it's a very small but not quite there. Yeah. It's still it's still it's the same for all the categories.
01:35:03: It's comparing them there. It's still it's still scary in these matters and to equip the church.
01:35:10: And once it understands what it's dealing with, we deal with different sins differently. That very first question tends to have the assumption that was given to you on this on our meeting here has the assumption that all sins are equal.
01:35:21: They're not. This is a heinous sin. I cover that in the book and prove it, that there are degrees of sinfulness in this life before God, to be sure, every sin sends you to hell.
01:35:31: But in this life, even Christ himself said, what do you say to terrorism? It would have been better for us.
01:35:36: I don't get more. They would have repented having the truth that you had. They had a greater sin. The Jews did, because to whom much is given, much is required.
01:35:43: And the church seems to be aware again of this community. It is different. And therefore, our responses and how we deal with it should be different.
01:35:51: And, of course, to equip us as churches to be pro godly, to not make excuses for them, to use the means of grace and practical protection, like I said, filters on the
01:36:00: Internet and protecting the kids, keeping them off Tik Tok and things like that, because the kids are especially.
01:36:08: Influenced by these things, and we need to stop platforming side B speakers. This is how they get a foothold, and so they run around, as you pointed out, with Cole's making excuses, or as he said, if I had a wonder pill that makes people gay people straight,
01:36:22: I take the time alone instead. I mean, this is not what we want people to hear at all, no matter how much they may seem to be, quote unquote, conservative.
01:36:29: They're not. They're just, as it were, side A without the practice. And so revoice is still ongoing.
01:36:37: We have gay pastor Greg Johnson, alike, left in good standing, unfortunately, and he's out there trying to push this stuff, and so are the rest of them.
01:36:47: But we need to be aware of these things and to be wise about it. We would act differently if it was
01:36:54: M13 gang members from Mexico. I'm converted. Well, I'm glad you converted, but we're not going to pretend nothing ever changed and nothing ever happened and that you can have access to the kids or whatever else, because these people do trafficking of kids, right, or drugs and everything else.
01:37:11: Being born again doesn't mean there's not consequences after you're converted. That's one thing we have to remember in the church instead of making excuses.
01:37:18: And when you have two to four percent of men attracted to adults, prefer men two to four percent.
01:37:27: In contrast, around 25 to 40 percent of men attracted to children, pedophiles prefer boys.
01:37:34: You hear it's disproportionately greater amongst the gay population to be attracted to boys.
01:37:41: And so, again, it is a problem. And you can talk about raw numbers because there's more straights. What are we, 95 percent people in identify straight.
01:37:48: Well, now it's 97. The numbers are moving in the younger circles because of peer pressure, because these people are platformed and the like.
01:37:54: And we bring them into the church as Coles wants to do, as Albury wants to do, actively gay lesbians and gay men, they say, and living out organization that Albury used to be a part of endorses a an affirmation out of England, which says, quote,
01:38:10: We encourage evangelical congregations to welcome, accept sexually active lesbians and gay men. No, you can accept them so far as they're in the door.
01:38:19: You're not going to shoot them or something or throw them out the door, but you're going to keep an eye on them. They're unbelievers. They're actually they're sexually active.
01:38:26: They're saying, I am sexually active. I have my boyfriend. You find out about the gay men. They have lots of boyfriends. And it's an open relationship.
01:38:32: These things have to be known in the church and not played around with. We already have NAPARC churches, not
01:38:38: Greg Johnson, NAPARC churches that have gay ministers still in them. Wow. Church officers, excuse me, not gay ministers, gay church officers.
01:38:46: I don't know what position they play in. This is Greg Johnson's claim in his exit interview about two years ago that many in the
01:38:53: PCA knew about his gayness. That's his one claim. The other claim is that there are still secretly gay church officers in these
01:39:00: NAPARC churches, according to him. Wow. Well, we have to go to our final break and we're going to pick up where you left off when we return.
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01:48:15: We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com.
01:48:24: But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
01:48:37: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
01:48:45: In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
01:48:50: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
01:48:56: I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
01:49:04: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
01:49:16: I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
01:49:23: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
01:49:32: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
01:49:42: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
01:50:00: God bless you. Chris Arnzen here.
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01:51:08: IRON. That's CVBBS .com. Enriching minds and maintaining the theologically reformed influence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through their financial support.
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01:51:28: Bible believing kingdom building devil fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in scripture alone.
01:51:38: Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image bearing prophets, priests and kings.
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01:52:26: Folks, I want to remind you that this program, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &
01:52:33: Associates. If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice, please call
01:52:41: Buttafuoco & Associates at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit their website 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com
01:52:48: and make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Also, folks, once again,
01:52:54: I want men in ministry leadership to be aware that the next free, biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon is being held
01:53:02: Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loysville, Pennsylvania, Perry County, Pennsylvania, for the first time featuring my dear friend for many years, in fact decades,
01:53:15: Dr. Joel Beakey, founder and president of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
01:53:21: Everything is free, including the heavy sack of free brand new books that every man in attendance will receive, personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the
01:53:32: United States and the United Kingdom. To register for absolutely free, remember, email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:53:40: and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. And we're now back with Pastor Sean Mathis.
01:53:48: We are discussing Is the Church Pro -Gay, his new book, and you hit the nail on the head,
01:53:54: I believe, with a very important issue in that there are many
01:54:02: Christians, and who knows, maybe even the majority, even who would be in our theological orbit.
01:54:10: They may be extremely conservative, they may be confessionally Reformed, and they may be very strongly biblical in the vast majority of things, but they will publicly declare, either when evangelizing or counseling or preaching, that heterosexual sin is not in any way different than homosexual sin, other than the fact of the people who are involved in that sin.
01:54:44: And that seemed to be at the root of Gregory Cole's heresies, because, as I have said on this program and many times in conversation with folks, lust and fornication and adultery are the abuse, misuse, and twisting of God's gift of heterosexual attraction.
01:55:16: You can never say that homosexual attraction is a gift. So, am I overstepping here?
01:55:23: No, you're correct. Homosexuality is forbidden in every and all cases, whereas heterosexual desires and attraction and the actions are not forbidden in every and all cases.
01:55:32: It's allowed in a certain case called marriage. Right. Well, I want you to close the program by summarizing what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.
01:55:45: Perhaps even give a special word to those listening who are struggling with this sin, or perhaps they have never even heard arguments you've given before.
01:55:57: They may be full -blown physically involved in this sin. Just, if you could, summarize what you want the
01:56:06: Christians to most know, and also a word to those guilty of this activity. Yes, we need to stand firm as churches and Christians preaching the fullness of the law and the gospel, the law which tells us what is right and wrong, and homosexual practices, as well as thoughts, desires, and all the means, causes, and occasions that lead unto this act.
01:56:28: And orientation itself, or whatever we want to call it, is a sin. As we read in James 1 14 and following, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
01:56:39: And then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.
01:56:46: This idea of attraction to sin is not a sin as fully rebutted by this passage.
01:56:53: We tempt ourselves. That's what that attraction is. We're playing around with it in our mind, however that looks like, or however way we want to describe it, not to be repented of.
01:57:01: You cannot overcome this terrible sin, or any sin for that matter, without acknowledging that it is sin, and that you're attracted to it, and that's wrong in and of itself.
01:57:10: And there's victory, and redemption, and justification, and sanctification, and adoption, and the fullness of heaven for those who repent, hate their sins, and cry out for mercy to Jesus Christ our
01:57:23: Lord. And the churches need to be firm in these things and stand in the confidence of the gospel and the truth of God's Word.
01:57:32: And I'm assuming from what you just said that you are equally opposed to, as I am, this notion that exists—it's probably a tiny minority, but it does exist within fundamentalist and even some
01:57:47: Calvinistic circles—that view those involved in homosexual activity as beyond hope.
01:57:53: They cannot repent because God has turned them over, and therefore those people who hold that view don't even evangelize people who identify themselves that way.
01:58:03: Correct. They can be and they have been converted. Butterfield is a good example of that, but the danger—we've got to be careful—is not to turn them into a special interest group and be naive about what we're dealing with.
01:58:16: Well, I want to make sure our listeners have your websites. Once again, the website for Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Denver, Colorado is denverprovidence .org,
01:58:31: denverprovidence .org, and Pastor Mathis's personal website is pastormathis .com,
01:58:40: pastormathis .com. You can find out more details about is the Church Pro -Gay book on the latter website.
01:58:47: I want to thank you so much, Pastor Mathis, for being an excellent guest today. I look forward to your return to the program.
01:58:56: That'd be excellent. And I want to remind our listeners, please, if you can afford to do so, we really need your help financially at Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
01:59:07: Please go to irontrip .io,
01:59:13: and you can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion, and there will also be a mailing address that appears on the screen where you can mail your checks if you are preferring that method.
01:59:24: I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater