A Stand on Biblical Sexual Morality

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Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Well welcome back to The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, and I am not joined by my co -host this week.

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We are bud -free and Jim Osman -free. We have someone else that is going to come in, and it is a friend of mine up from Canada, Pastor Mike Hovland.

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Mike, welcome to The Wrap Report. Yeah, thanks for having me. You and I first met,

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I guess, a while ago. We were in the Grace Advance Academy together. You and I were the two guys on Zoom and everyone else was in class, so while they were talking in class, you and I were just chatting through Zoom.

01:01

So that was pretty good, but we've kind of kept in touch, and now you have a podcast that is on with the

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Christian Podcast Community, so we're glad to have you there. I should admit, you had your co -host there, and I saw the name come in when he applied, and I saw the name

01:26

Lauren Dick, and I went, this is just a woman host. That was my first thought.

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Then I realized, oh wait, Lauren's a guy's name. That's funny.

01:39

I never think of Lauren as a possible woman because he's just got such a great beard.

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Doesn't look like a woman at all, and doesn't look like a guy I want to mess with either. Yeah, but it's the

01:54

Abide in the Word podcast. You're the pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship up there in Alberta, right?

02:06

Was that it? Yeah, Lacrete, Alberta. Lacrete, Alberta. Your podcast that you did recently is what got me to want to have you on and talk about some things going on up there in Canada.

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And for some people, they'll know the name of Grace Life Church up there in Edmond, Canada, which you used to be one of the pastors there before you came out to where you're at now to be the preaching pastor where you're at now.

02:38

So, you were pastoring with James Coates, and you were still a pastor there, if I remember correctly.

02:44

You were kind of in this transition state when he got arrested. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I was associate pastor with James for four years.

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And when I came up here, they kept me on the elder board for a while just to kind of...

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And actually, our churches are still fairly well connected. I even still draw a paycheck from Grace Life Church because of the way that we've set up the finances and stuff.

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So, we're here. We're pretty much a self -supporting church up here, but we've still got some connections to Grace Life.

03:19

Well, that's good. That's good. So, first off, tell us a little bit for folks who don't know you, they should go and start listening to your podcast, right?

03:28

Learn a lot more about you. But for folks that don't know you, just share a little bit about yourself, if you wouldn't mind. I don't know what to say about myself.

03:39

Mike Hovland, 42 years old. I've been a graduate of the Master's Seminary.

03:48

Yeah, I don't know. I'm a believer, been a believer about 20 years and live in the...

03:56

Really, we live up here in the almost as north as you can get. A friend of mine said, you know, it's not the end of the earth, but you can almost see it from up here.

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And that's kind of where we are. It's minus 35 degrees here right now today.

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Now, that's Celsius, but we're in the cold north up here.

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That's really cold. But yeah, yeah. There's really nothing exciting about me at all.

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But I love being a pastor and being able to preach the word, study the word, minister to people.

04:31

Just love it. There's not much better than that right there. Yeah. So let's talk about what is going on up in Canada.

04:42

And there is a bill called C -4 that recently passed that first, if you could, for folks here in America that haven't been following with this, could you explain what this bill is about?

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And then how in the world did this get passed? Especially the way it got passed.

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Well, I don't know if I can tell you how in the world it got passed like that, but Bill C -4 is a bill against conversion therapy.

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And conversion therapy is defined as trying to change a person's sexual orientation.

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And this whole thing goes just one way. So to heterosexual, change a person's gender identity to cisgender or the gender that they are born with.

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Or change a person's gender expression so that it conforms to their birth gender. Or repress or reduce the same.

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So anything that would try to change or repress or reduce anyone in those ways, that is now actually going to be illegal in Canada starting on January 8th.

05:58

So I think tomorrow that is. So that's the bill. And the penalty for it is up to five years in prison.

06:09

I think two years for advertising. So if I put up an ad and say I do conversion therapy, that's punishable by two years in jail and the government can take that off the internet or take those ads down or ask me to do that.

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But it's so broadly defined. It's any practice, treatment, or service designed to do that thing.

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So as far as I understand, if I pray for somebody who's homosexual and I pray for their conversion,

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I'm doing a practice that's designed to change them, to convert them to follow Jesus Christ.

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And so now maybe they're going to clarify this in the courts or something, but that's the bill.

06:56

And we can go into more detail on that maybe later if you want. But this bill, there was an earlier version of it.

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And then the government kind of shut down for the winter or summer or whatever. And then they kind of brought this one back after the election.

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So Bill C -6 was before that new election. So then they reintroduced the bill.

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And it went through unanimously in both the House and the Senate. So no conservative

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MPs spoke out against this thing. They didn't say anything about it. And the way that I understand how it went through is the

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Liberals and the NDP party and the progressive parties in Canada were going to use this thing to kind of shame the

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Conservatives or whatever. They were going to use it as a political wedge. The Conservatives said, oh, we're too smart for that.

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We're just going to fast track this thing through. And so nobody said nothing both times.

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And so now we've got really this horrible bill, which, yeah, puts pastors and parents at risk of five years imprisonment for trying to do any of these things.

08:16

That was what you just said there was the thing that I was shocked at when I heard you on your podcast.

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When you and Lauren were talking and you mentioned that this is so broad that if a parent has a son and that thinks he's a girl and the parent tries to correct him, they're actually it's under the criminal code.

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They could be arrested under criminal code. That is mind blown to me.

08:50

Yeah. And, you know, almost even worse in my mind is that and let me just read right from it.

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Here's here's one of the offenses of this of this code doing anything for the purpose of removing a child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside of Canada.

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So if you're if your son, like you just said, has a has a problem and you're a parent and you go, you know what?

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I better get out of Canada so I can help him because I'm it's illegal to talk about it in Canada.

09:21

Well, you could go to jail for trying to get him out of Canada to do that. Wow. And again, it's only it's only one way.

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So if if if if I want to go and if let me

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I don't know how what you have on your show, but let's just if I'm a if I'm a pervert and I want to push someone in these kind of sinful directions against what

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God says, that's that's OK. I can I can coach them. I can I can talk to them.

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But if I try to if if as a parent, even or a pastor, or even if even if somebody wants help, even if someone says,

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Mike, could you please help me? Because I am struggling with attractions that that are that are unbiblical.

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And I don't want this and I hate this in my life. And can you please help me? Well, of course,

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I'm going to and we'll talk about that. But but it's going to be illegal now. And so this is the thing, folks, as you're hearing this,

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I want you to pick up what Pastor Mike is saying. There's a couple of things. One, the idea here that if you if you have someone who actually is struggling with these sexual sins, their gender identity, their homosexuality, they're struggling with it.

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They want to change. They come to somebody and ask for help. They're not in trouble for asking for help.

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But pastors, teachers, parents could be in trouble for offering the help.

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And just to think that this is worded the way it was worded as you guys read it on your podcast, you read excerpts of this bill.

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It's clearly one way. It's clearly just bent toward sexual perversion.

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It's clearly bent toward an anti Christian view, an anti biblical view of of sexual morality.

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The thing that got me was how it's as you already said, you have someone who is heterosexual and they want conversion to homosexual.

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That's perfectly legal. It's just the other way around is not. And now that that specific wording.

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So the wording is not any conversion therapy. The way that they say, you know, it's wrong for conversion there.

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It's not because they're accepting one directional conversion. And so this is,

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I mean, as a pastor, I know dealing with it in America, but as a pastor, how does this then affect or how do they maybe think that's going to affect counseling?

11:58

Well, you know, it's hard to know what they think because they don't say too much about it. Although, you know,

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I think your American listeners would would be helped to understand that Canada's a few steps down the road, more progressive than America.

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And and so it is it is very anti Christian. It's viewed very much as, you know, it's just it's viewed very much as bigotry just to even hold a view of biblical morality.

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And and there's no real discussion that can be had in those things.

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And I think that's the same in America. Right. Let's let's talk rationale. Let's talk logically.

12:41

No, no, no. You're just a bigot. We don't want to talk to you. So I forget your actual your question already.

12:50

Let me see what you just said. That that tactic is just to shut down discussion, right?

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When you don't have a good idea, if you're you're trying to you're trying to convince them when you're right, but they bring up something, you don't have a good argument.

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Just shut down the conversation. Well, how do you do that? Well, you're just a bigot. Now, regardless of the fact that most of the people that claim that say

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Christians are bigots, clearly they don't understand the definition of the word bigot.

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I actually have a theme. I have it saved on my phone because I would use it so often when

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I would engage with atheists, because they would constantly call me a bigot because I'm Christian.

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And I had the definition of a bigot as a meme that just or as a picture that I could just post all the time because I needed to so often because it's like you don't quite get what this word means.

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I don't think that this word means what you think it means. I'm going to have to look that up.

13:51

It does. And when they say all

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Christians are wrong, that's actually what bigotry is, when you put a group of people in to a bucket that way and then and then say they're all wrong because of because of the group they're in.

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And yeah, you're right there, Andrew, that it would seem to me that the bill is just designed to to make everyone be quiet about this thing and just let the progressive agenda kind of go forward and get everyone on the same page, because and I think this is important, too.

14:30

There's already laws that exist in Canada that would would would have kept out any kind of I don't know what

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I want to say, unhealthy, unhelpful practices of conversion therapy, like like like, for example, like there's nobody doing shock therapy or there's nobody there's nobody doing wicked therapies in Canada to to torment homosexual people or something like that.

15:02

Right. And so we didn't we didn't need this bill for that. So so this bill does seem like it's it really is aimed at the the

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Christian people that are left in our country and and it's going to shut us down and keep us out of the out of the social engagement.

15:20

And I think that's what they want. Well, yeah, and I mean, no one's throwing people off of buildings.

15:28

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. That's Islam. Oh, I'm sorry. Wait, that's they do that. But no one criticizes them. Sorry. But but it is a thing where it's it's shutting down engagement so that only one point of view is allowed to be discussed or or had in public.

15:46

And it's as you said, with with promoting and advertising, it shuts down people being able to to promote, you know,

15:55

I mean, I don't I can just see very shortly after this the claim that, well, churches believe in this biblical view of sexuality, which contradicts this

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Bill C -4, and therefore all churches can't promote their churches, can't advertise their churches.

16:16

I can see that as a very simple next step. Yeah, yeah.

16:21

And taking away the charity status of churches as well as something that they've already already talked about.

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And whatever is happening in Canada, it's coming our way. We were doing Apologetics Live last night.

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And in Apologetics Live, it was Justin Peters and Anthony Silvestro and I, and we're discussing our predictions for 2022.

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And, you know, one of the things Justin predicted is based on what's going on in Canada, we shortly will see churches in America being removing 501c3 status, their nonprofit status, if they don't believe in, if they don't support a homosexual agenda.

17:00

This is, I mean, that's not farfetched anymore. I mean, with everything else we've seen in our countries.

17:08

But as far as for churches in Canada, do you see a lot of churches that are supporting this bill?

17:16

Or is it because I mean, I know there's liberal churches there, but are they kind of silent about it? Or are they coming out and and promoting it?

17:23

Because and the reason I'm asking this, because I see this in America, where you have the churches that are trying to push the homosexual agenda, and they're vocal about it.

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So every time there's something they can claim as a win, they're out there cheering. Are you seeing that there in Canada?

17:41

You know, I don't know. Like, I'm not super up on like the news or anything like that that's going on.

17:50

So I'm, I always tell my friends, you know, if there's like a tornado or a nuclear war or something, just like, give me a call, because I probably won't know about it.

18:02

But I, you know, I know, during the COVID stuff, there was, there was liberal churches that, you know, with with female pastors that with, you know, pride flags on their status or whatever, and their articles, and they were saying how great it was, we're all locked down.

18:17

And I'm sure that there's, there's churches, and I don't even know if I want to call them churches.

18:24

But there's, there's groups like that, that meet in buildings on Sundays, that would celebrate something like this as a great win.

18:32

Then there's, there's kind of like, I think there's another group of kind of very culturally

18:40

Canadian churches that wouldn't support any of this, but don't want to raise a ruckus, don't want to say anything, just want to, they're just going to keep doing what they do.

18:51

Maybe they'll even take down their sermons off the website and just kind of keep kind of bunker down and protect themselves.

18:58

And then there's another group of pastors that have kind of been, have found each other in this last year, as far as, you know, being some of the few churches that are open in the country.

19:11

And a bunch of us have found one another and have been supporting one another and encouraging one another and got some, some, you know, group texting kind of things going on.

19:24

And we're all going to make a stand against it and preach on this kind of especially to see what, just to see what we can do and to kind of make a stand for God and His Word.

19:36

Yeah. And that's, and that's where we want to spend a lot of the time today talking about, because that's, I think that's a great move that you guys did.

19:43

And, and this may shock some people here in America, but this didn't actually start with John MacArthur.

19:53

He actually came to it late and he's just, he's just promoted it a lot better than anyone else maybe. But, but this is something you guys,

20:00

I mean, I heard it on your podcast first. And so, so first talk about the group that, of pastors that started getting together, how that kind of came about, and then what is the stand that people are going to take or that the pastors are going to take?

20:17

Yeah. So a group of faithful pastors across Canada, most of them, a lot of them are in Ontario.

20:26

A lot of them are the pastors that got fined, arrested, you know, took, took various stands during the

20:34

COVID to keep their churches open. And I don't know how the group started, but somebody started a signal group and we kind of text on there and just keep in touch and pray for one another as, as they're going, you know what, the health authorities are coming to our church this week.

20:53

Do you want to, can you pray for me and pray for us? What do we, you know, what do we do in this? You know, it's been a, it's been quite a year.

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And so when this thing came down, some of those guys said, well, you know what, we should, we should take a strong stand on this and preach against it.

21:09

And some of those guys are just real, real fireball kind of guys. And I, I really appreciate those kinds of guys.

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And, and, you know, they want to, if there's a bees nest, they want to throw a couple of good rocks at it and see what happens.

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And so there's some guys like, like that, that are just great brothers in the Lord. And, and they started saying, okay, let's, let's, let's get together.

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Let's preach against this. Let's take a stand. And there, there was a, and these are like Baptist, Presbyterian, Theonomist, kind of post mill, all mill, pre mill, just kind of the, from, from it's actually a bunch of guys.

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Probably we, I wouldn't have had a whole lot of fellowship with before, but have just really come to appreciate them this now that when, when there's only a few guys that are even willing to keep the church open, then those are the guys you want to stand with, right?

22:05

Well, that's what persecution does, right? It just, it separates a lot of the people who claim to be

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Christian from the real Christians. And then what you have left is you have Christians that, yeah, we have differences in our theology, but guess what?

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We're standing for Christ. And, and, and all of a sudden, some of those things we have as differences that maybe we would have fought over in the past.

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They're not as important right now as standing on the truth of God's word. And therefore, Hey, we're going to make new relationships.

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This is what persecution does, right? So, so what? And it's been awesome to see their churches growing and, and, you know, they'll, they'll be telling how many baptisms they did lately.

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And it's just amazing what, what God's doing and, and just bringing Christians who want to go to church and they're coming in droves everywhere, except here where I am in Lacrete, where, where really the whole community has taken a stand and it's been open.

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But all of these other guys are in places where, where they're the only church in the area and people are driving for hours to, to be and meet with them.

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So yeah, great, great bunch of guys and decided together that, that we would take this stand and then use various means.

23:21

ARPA is one, I think it's the association of the reformed for political action, something along that line.

23:28

So there's this ARPA group that kind of got together and set a date. And then the

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Liberty Coalition is also something that came out of that. And that's where it started was with the Liberty Coalition.

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And then they, James and James Coates and Andrew from the

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Liberty Coalition emailed MacArthur and, and kind of got him on board as well.

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And he's been really pushing it. I mean, they've used, Grace, do you send something out? Master's Seminary, Master's University, the

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Master's Conference, TMI. I mean, I think I've gotten about a half a dozen different emails.

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You know, the MacArthur Center, I mean, they have, they've just said, okay, every email list we have, get it out there.

24:14

So yeah, it's been kind of interesting. Like I just, I started getting them in. It was like, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they were all saying pretty much the same thing.

24:22

Yeah. Even today, there's a new video that John put out on it. So he's, and you know, it really is a blessing to the

24:29

Canadian guys to just know there's, there's faithful pastors that are out there that support us, even though they're not going to get arrested for this, but it really is a blessing to know, you know,

24:39

I'm not standing alone here. And, and, and even it encourages the, some of the fainter hearted guys that, that might be a little bit afraid to do something like this.

24:50

You know, what's really interesting is that back several years ago, a bunch of us got together.

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We wanted to put out a statement about, against social justice in the gospel. And someone had the idea of reaching out to MacArthur and seeing if he would do it.

25:06

And so we were discussing, some of the discussion was, you know, could this be, I mean, John MacArthur has been in so many of these battles, you know, maybe this will be his, his last hurrah, the last battle that he takes on, you know, is social justice.

25:20

And he got behind it. And, you know, and we were, you know, afterwards we were like, man, it was so good that John MacArthur got behind that.

25:27

I wonder if this is going to like, this may be the last big, you know, battle that he fights.

25:33

And we were so wrong, you know, you know, he's been battling churches staying open. Now he's battling, you know, this issue of, of biblical sexual morality.

25:42

I mean, it's like the guy's 81 years old and it's like, he doesn't seem to have any, any stop in him.

25:49

It's like, no, there's another biblical truth that needs to be fought for. And he's right there willing to fight for him.

25:56

Usually people, when they get older, it's like, okay, I've had enough of the fights. I just want to sit back and cruise.

26:02

He doesn't seem like a guy that wants to cruise. It's like biblical truth, biblical truth, biblical truth.

26:09

Yeah. I love that about him. He is just willing to take a stand and almost looking for the next, you know, almost looking,

26:16

I don't think he's looking for a fight, but he's not contentious, but he, he does want to make a stand for the truth and it's, it's awesome.

26:24

Yeah, that's right. So let's talk about this stand that, you know, you guys up there in Canada decided, what's the plan?

26:34

Well, we are going to all preach on biblical sexuality and conversion on January 16th.

26:47

So that's really the plan. We're all going to preach on it and just kind of draw awareness.

26:54

I don't know. We're just going to preach on it in our churches and, and send a message that we're not going to back down.

27:00

We're not going to be quiet. We're, we're going to continue to do what, what we did. And then it'll be for the government to decide what, what do they need to do to us?

27:09

Are they going to ignore this? Are they going to charge us? Are they going to, are they just going to kind of keep this for another day in their back pocket when, when there's more public support to, to persecute pastors?

27:20

But that's what we're going to do is we're going to take a stand. And then we're going to do this every year on the anniversary of, of the bill coming into law on the anniversary of it.

27:32

So that weekend that it, okay. So now, so yeah, January 8th,

27:38

I think is when it came into law. So I, I'm not sure exactly what the date would be next year, but we're going to kind of do this year in and year out.

27:47

So this is a thing that's not just Canadians are doing. There's many. I mean, as I said, when I heard about it on your podcast,

27:53

I went, you know what? I went to my, the preaching schedule and said, okay, I I'm, I'm really close to finishing the gospel of Mark.

28:01

And I don't know, you probably understand and appreciate this when you get toward the end of a book and it's like, you're, you're starting to prepare for that new book and you're reading through the new book over and over and over.

28:11

And you're ready for that. You know, you, you want to jump into that and you're like, okay, I want to, I want to kind of get that. Well, I'm, I'm pushing that off a little bit.

28:17

I decided no one more week won't hurt. And because I, I, when I heard your podcast,

28:22

I said, you know, this is something that we should do here in the States as well. And, and then I found out there's a lot of others and this was before MacArthur put the emails out.

28:30

But now there's a lot more men that are planning to stand up on the 16th and preach a message on a biblical view of, of sexual morality and here in the

28:43

States. And my encouragement, whether you're listening in, in Canada, whether you're listening into America and, and actually the second most listeners we have is in France.

28:53

Um, I don't know why I don't speak French, but, uh, but maybe you're in France, wherever you are, if you are a pastor, my encouragement to you is whatever you had planned to preach on, on the 16th, maybe put that off and, and, and say, you know what, let's stand together around the world and make a stand that we are going to stand up for a biblical view of sexual morality and, you know, mention why we're doing it.

29:24

I plan to, to explain some of the bill that went on in Canada. And if you're not a pastor, we're going to, the, the reason

29:33

I'm dropping this podcast early, uh, is, you know, it should have dropped next

29:38

Wednesday. I'm going to drop it immediately. Why? Because I want to give you guys time to listen to this and then go talk to your pastor about the importance of taking up this stand.

29:50

Now, I will say, if you go to, um, I, it was either on grace to you or I forget where they had it, but if you just do a search, a

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DuckDuckGo search, cause we don't use Google, uh, do a DuckDuckGo search on a stand for biblical sexual morality, and you'll find where MacArthur asked people to sign, to sign for, you know, to say that you're taking a stand.

30:15

And I encourage folks to sign that the more signatures we can get, especially in Canada, will help their bill immediately.

30:22

But here in America or wherever you are, it becomes a thing where when, when more of these bills start to come our way, we have a number of signatures already signed that we want to take a stand against this.

30:34

And that gives that, that leg up on, on some things like that. So I would encourage everybody, every church, uh, to be on, on January 16th, 2022, that you would take a stand and speak against this agenda, this anti -Christian agenda that we have, uh, coming our way.

30:56

And right now Canada is, is facing it. So, you know, what are, what are some things?

31:03

Because what I want to do is get into what the scripture says about these issues to deal with the scriptures themselves.

31:10

I mean, if, if someone is going to take a stand on this, what I would like to do is say, okay, what, what should we be discussing?

31:17

What is the scripture's point of view on this? Before we do, um, as giving you time to open your

31:24

Bible, which is good, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to give a quick word from our sponsor, which is MyPillow.

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So folks, if you want a great night of sleep, uh, if you want to get yourself, uh, uh, a restful night, especially if you're here in America, it's

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American made. They, they make their pillows here. The, I have tried many of their products.

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Now, if you guys are regular listeners to the Wrap Report, you know, that I mentioned the different products.

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I have the pillows. I have their mattress topper. I have their, they just tried, uh, as, as it finally got cold enough, uh,

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I got their sheet. They're not their sheets. They're their slippers. I love the slippers. I recently got their, uh, their down blanket.

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And that has, that is really warm. Mike, you're up there in Canada. That's what you really need to keep yourself warm.

32:19

Cause I actually went usually, usually in the winter, I have to go to like wearing heavy pajamas and we keep the house at 62 because, well, we got

32:28

Biden. And so Biden is making sure that everything costs way more. So we have to keep our house real cold so that we can, we can afford it.

32:35

And, uh, so I was figuring I was going to sleep in extra heavy pajamas this year. This blanket,

32:40

I'm like in shorts when I go to bed because that blanket is that warm. It is, it's really neat.

32:47

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32:55

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33:00

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33:14

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33:25

Their, their pillow that they usually sell for about $80 was about 30. So it was a great price because some of the people are going $80 for a pillow.

33:35

That's because you haven't slept on it. When you do, you'll understand why people are paying $80 for a pillow. But, uh, if you can get it for 30, even better.

33:43

So, uh, go to mypillow .com, use promo code SFE. So, Pastor Mike, let's, let's get into some scripture here.

33:53

What does the scripture say about the, these issues of homosexuality, uh, gender?

34:03

And this is something that I, I, the whole gender issues that we're dealing with today. I think I'm like, we don't have a specific

34:10

Bible verse that we can go to that explains the difference of cisgender because this is so far to the

34:20

Bible or any culture in all, you know, 6 ,000 years. Yeah.

34:26

I had to look it up. I had to look up what is, what is the cisgender and it's the opposite of transgender.

34:32

So it would be the, the, and I don't even know if I say it right, but the, the gender that you, you are from birth.

34:40

Um, so what, what does scripture say? And maybe I'll, maybe I'll just say this for whoever is interested.

34:47

Uh, when, when, when the guys first said, let's do this, we, we, uh, we said, okay, we're going to do it, um, right away, uh,

34:57

December 8th, I think it was, or, you know, right away that week. Now in Canada, when, when a new law gets passed, uh, it has to get signed by the queen, queen signs it.

35:06

And then 30 days later, it comes into effect. So the guys were talking, okay, let's do it. And we were, we're making the initial plans and it was, it was

35:14

Tuesday. And they said, yeah, we're going to go ahead and do it. And then on Thursday, Friday, they said, you know what, let's just, let's wait until, um, after Christmas, after the new year, and then we'll do it then when it actually comes into law.

35:25

But I, I went ahead and preached on it already because for me on one side, once I'm going, once I'm kind of planning on, on preaching on something, um, and, and it's kind of fresh in my mind,

35:37

I want to preach it. And I don't want to start preparing a new sermon Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So that's really good because now, now

35:44

Ed Litton can just use your sermon. Cause now, and, and still preaching, I figured Ed Litton would want to preach the day after.

35:49

Oh, wait, wait, no, wait, that's right. Ed, Ed Litton thinks that the Bible only whispers about homosexuality. So he's, he's not going to preach on that.

35:58

I wasn't whispering, but, but I, I went to, uh, you know, first, uh,

36:03

I went to Genesis and I think it's, I think Genesis is just so clear. God created us in his image.

36:10

He made us male and female. Um, there's, there's the reality of the creator there.

36:16

He made us distinct. Um, um, you know, there's, there's a difference between a male and a female.

36:22

Our, our biology is different. He made us one for another. And he, he put the first man and the woman together in the first marriage.

36:30

Genesis 2 24. And the two are to be one flesh. We're, we're, you know, we, we, the, the woman

36:37

Eve came from Adam's flesh and, uh, they were literally one flesh. And then they were joined together in marriage and became one flesh.

36:45

And of course that was designed to be a picture of Christ and his church and, uh, his, his love for the church.

36:53

And so, um, to me, it's just, it's really clear. God made us the way that he made us.

36:58

And, uh, and we need to acknowledge him and, and the, the place that a lot of this gender dysphoria stuff comes from is just from man suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

37:10

And according to Romans one, we're given over to a depraved mind. And, uh, and as, as we refuse to acknowledge

37:18

God and be thankful, he gives us over to a depraved mind, even to the extent that it says the, the, the, the men and the women gave up natural relations and, and burned with lust for one another.

37:29

Now, um, so, so to me, it's, it's just, it's just that simple. Um, the, the good news is, is that anyone can be saved from a sinful lifestyle from suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

37:43

If they would turn and acknowledge their creator and acknowledge Jesus Christ. And, uh, and so that's a, it's a sin.

37:51

It's a forgivable sin, but if you're going to come to Christ, you have to change. You have to turn from those lifestyles, homosexuality, gender dysphoria.

38:02

I don't even, you know, I'm not, I'm not all up on all of what to call it or anything, but, um, you have to turn from that.

38:11

And, uh, and, and so I love first Corinthians six, nine, where, where Paul says, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were justified.

38:20

You were sanctified in the name of, of Christ. And so may, do you want to, do you want to jump in on anything in there,

38:28

Andrew? Yeah, well, I would say, I mean, you're right. I mean, he gives a list of sins in first Corinthians six and says, but some were such for some of you that, and I, you know, this is one of the things that we see is that yes, people could have formally been engaged in homosexuality, but they're converted to Christ.

38:48

And that's exactly what this bill, that's the specific thing that this bill wants to, wants to address and attack is that once some,

38:57

I mean, this is the, in my mind, the hypocrisy of this whole agenda.

39:03

If you think about it, there's, they're saying that, Hey, we should be open to people and whatever they, they, however they identify, whatever their, their sexual preferences are, if they choose that, they want to have sex with the same gender, which by the way, we're not even supposed to have genders anymore.

39:23

So now what is, what is homosexuality, right? Because now we're not even supposed to have male and female.

39:28

I mean, this is how convoluted it is. You can't even properly define homosexuality anymore because you're not supposed to have that, right?

39:38

This whole thing, you there, their whole thing of saying, well, you, you, you can only convert one directional, but the scripture says, and such were some of you.

39:49

Now, I always turn to, to Romans chapter one. And Romans one, if you look at this in, in verses 18, it starts in 18, but you end up seeing for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, which is what you just mentioned earlier,

40:13

Mike. But then it goes on to explain that every person is without excuse. Everyone sees that they can, they can see the power of God, the, the attributes of God.

40:24

They, they know he exists, but, but then it ends up in verse 22 going down and it says professing to be wise, they become fools, right?

40:33

How do they become fools? Well, first thing they do is exchange the glory of incorruptible God for corruptible man, for animals, making idols, things like this.

40:42

So that's, that's kind of like stage one of foolishness. Then you have stage two of foolishness, verse 24.

40:50

Therefore, God gave them over to the lusts of their, of their hearts to impurity.

40:57

So, so stage two is, and you see this in like every culture. When you have a culture that turns away from God, the first day they turn to idols, then they turn to sexual, to, to satisfying their sexual desires and, and lusts, right?

41:13

And, and then verse 25, exchange the truth of God for a lie. So now they start to, to change what truth is, right?

41:22

We got to redefine truth. As we're saying, people don't even know what a male and a female are.

41:28

Can't even figure those things out. Okay. Because they want to... Actually, let me just stop you there,

41:34

Andrew. Let me, let me just stop you there because in the preamble of this bill, it says, it says this, whereas conversion therapy causes harm to the persons who are subjected to it.

41:46

Whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society because among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations.

42:09

So the government of Canada actually has done that. They call it a myth that men are born male and female.

42:17

And you just, you look at a man and a woman and you can just, unless God gave you over to a depraved, foolish mind, you can tell that we are different and we've been made for one another by a loving and good creator.

42:30

So sorry to interrupt, but it's just, when you said that, I just like, yeah, that, I wanted to come back to that. Well, here's the thing, you know, they put this in the preamble, right?

42:39

Now for years, what I was doing when I wanted to keep in touch with what is going on so that I can provide for our audience here, be on the forefront of this nonsense.

42:52

I used to listen to about three or four of these transgender homosexual podcasts so I could hear what they're actually saying.

43:02

And here's the thing, you know, they say that this is a myth, right? The cisgender identity is a myth.

43:09

Do you know where I get the argument that cisgender is not a myth? From transgender podcasts.

43:16

Because like one of them, it was like this light bulb moment where I listened to this guy who hosts a podcast and he's saying that he's going through the transition to being a girl.

43:26

And he's, and through this whole podcast is him explaining his transition. But you know what he's doing?

43:32

He's doing everything that's stereotypical female. He's getting breast implants.

43:39

He's talking about how he has to learn how to wear makeup, learn how to wear dresses. Now, like think about that.

43:46

You take a step back, go, wait a minute. What's he doing? He's saying, well, I'm a girl and I'm identifying in every stereotypical way that girls behave.

43:55

But by the way, there is no gender identity. Well, if there's no gender identity, you should just say

44:00

I'm a girl and dress any way you want. You don't have to look any different. But the fact that on both sides, they keep trying.

44:07

And when they do this, they overemphasize the stereotypes, right?

44:14

You hear guys that will have a higher pitch voice than most women will have, or women that have a deeper voice than most guys.

44:21

They try to like overemphasize those things. Why are they doing that? Because they know there's only two genders and they're trying to identify with the opposite gender.

44:34

So you could look at their behavior and know that there's only two genders. They know it.

44:41

But God made it plain to them, right? That's what Romans 1 says. Yeah. And so many people say, they ask the question, is this homosexuality in our culture, is this going to bring about God's judgment?

44:58

I mean, what does Romans 1 say about that? Is this going to bring about God's judgment?

45:05

It already is God's judgment. And that's what it feels like in Canada too.

45:11

It just feels like our whole country is under judgment right now in multiple ways and areas.

45:18

And it'd be great to see us turn it around. And the only way we're going to turn it around is if we continue to preach the gospel and call people out.

45:28

And one of the things that I like to say, and I think it's important to say is the only hope for the homosexual or the lesbian or the transgender person or the thief or the murderer or whatever, the only hope is for them to be converted to Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel.

45:48

So actually, one thing that I think it was James Coates had said something like, the government of Canada has criminalized the work of the

45:57

Holy Spirit and the work of the Christian minister as well, but the work of the

46:02

Holy Spirit in regenerating and transforming sinners and saving them by grace.

46:08

So that's a judgment. When a country makes it illegal to bring about the gospel, that's going to result in a whole lot of people, at least humanly speaking, a whole lot of people are going to be in hell because of this law.

46:29

And that's going to be a huge cause for God's judgment on the lawmakers themselves who have put this into law.

46:41

Yeah, I mean, the thing is that the gospel conversion, right, the gospel message is to bring about conversion for all kinds of sin.

46:50

I know they hate the idea of us saying it's a sin, but it's interesting because they would think that what we're doing by sharing the gospel is a sin.

46:59

They call that abuse, right? So what you end up seeing here is that this is something that is

47:07

God's judgment on these countries. And it's two things that I can't believe.

47:12

I can't believe the queen actually signed this. It just shows that she really doesn't have the power.

47:18

She's just a queen in name only because she's claimed to be a

47:24

Christian. We know there's reason to question that. But she has at least stood on biblical principles at times and kind of taken a stand.

47:36

I know that when friends of mine got arrested in England for preaching against homosexuality, part of their argument was they appealed to the queen and saying that they were reading from the

47:50

King James Bible, which is the Bible that the queen has endorsed. And there was a statement that she had made about supporting that reading from the

48:00

Bible shouldn't be illegal. And so it's mind -boggling to me that she would sign that.

48:06

The other thing that's mind -boggling is that we're seeing in our world today, right now, countries like China and Russia are the ones that are standing up against this nonsense and showing some leadership.

48:18

I mean, it's crazy. We would look at communist countries that have more biblical truth.

48:25

Because I don't know if you follow what's going on in China right now, but they've actually outlawed what they call wimpy men.

48:32

Men are not allowed to play video games for more than I think it's like an hour. Men are not allowed to, they have a whole list of things that they say feminizes men, and men are not allowed to do those things anymore.

48:47

And so it's real interesting that we have communist countries now, they're showing more leadership than the free world.

48:55

More righteousness, which is crazy. And I think, again, it's

49:02

God's judgment. But part of this judgment is just turning us over to these kinds of things that are going to destroy our country and ourselves and our children.

49:20

So that's why we have to stand while we can now and kind of do what we can now to stand against this.

49:28

You know, a lot of people ask the question, Mike, that why is it that Christians seem to target homosexuality, or that somehow they think

49:39

Christians think that homosexuality is a worse sin than any other? Is there grounds for that?

49:46

Do you think that Christians target that, or do you think that it's just our culture is targeting it, so that's what we have to respond to?

49:56

Hmm. Yeah. You know, is it a worse sin than other sins? I have to kind of say so based on Romans 1, like it does seem like it's a further degradation, further going down into being given over to sin.

50:14

Although right after what we just read in Romans 1, there's just a whole list of all kinds of unrighteousness and evil and wickedness.

50:22

I don't, you know, I don't know. I honestly don't see, like I don't have a lot of personal interaction with homosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people in my ministry.

50:39

I think we see it, though, a lot in just society at large, and they're always, they're pushing their agenda, and they want everyone to acknowledge it the way that they do.

50:54

They want everyone to affirm what they think, and so they push for that, and then we stand against it and say, well, no,

51:02

God has said something in his word that's different than that, and that's where I think the battle comes from.

51:08

I don't think that I've met any Christians that are stronger against that than any other person.

51:15

When I see these so -called pastors who are living in that kind of a lifestyle,

51:30

I think I would, in some ways, I would treat it almost the same as if you told me you were a

51:36

Christian, Andrew, but then you told me at the same time, but you always steal, and you just can't stop it, and that should be okay, right?

51:44

Every time you go to Walmart and you grab a few chocolate bars and put it in your pocket, I would confront you on that sin as well.

51:51

I think the thing is that in that kind of a situation, it's a sin that people aren't repenting of and turning from, whereas other sins,

51:59

I think people are more willing to say, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to have to stop my stealing if I'm going to follow Christ, so I think that comes into it, too, a little bit.

52:07

Yeah, and I mean, there's a reason we as Christians are talking about this more and more, because of bills like this, right?

52:13

When they put a bill like this, we have no choice but to speak about it and speak out against it, and it's really because there's been a shift in this area.

52:22

You think about years ago, I remember back in the 80s and 90s, the argument was we should be allowed to do whatever we want in our own bedroom, and people said, but you're not going to keep it in your bedroom, and guess what?

52:34

They were right. It didn't stay there, and so what you end up seeing is it used to be there was a time those that practiced homosexuality, they said it was a curse.

52:45

They just couldn't help it. They were cursed with this. Then they just said, well, this is a cross that they have to bear, but now they want it to be a crown that we all celebrate, and that's the problem is that they want to force everybody to celebrate and affirm their sin, and it's not the issue of homosexuality as much as because they want everyone to affirm it.

53:12

If there was a push that everybody should be a thief or affirm stealing, now maybe you don't have this in Canada.

53:20

We have this in the States where a bunch of cities have said, hey, if you steal something under $1 ,000, not going to press charges.

53:28

That's really going to keep down, and it does bring crime down because now all of a sudden, anything under $1 ,000 is not considered a crime, so yes, the crime rate comes down.

53:39

The actual crime increases because now you have all these teenagers that are doing these flash mobs where they just go into a store and just take everything, anything under $1 ,000.

53:51

Our brilliant country has come up with the idea that IRS said, well, if you stole something and didn't return it by the end of the year, you have to report it on your taxes.

54:01

Wait, really? You really think people that broke into stores to take things that were under $1 ,000 are going to report it on their taxes?

54:10

Wow. I don't know who's dumber, the people that make these laws or what they think of the people they're making the laws for.

54:20

I don't know which one's a dumber, but when you end up - I've seen these videos of people stealing stuff, and I've wondered what is going on, and they pull up and just start grabbing stuff off shelves, and now

54:33

I know why that's happening. There was one brilliant store that what they did was every product on their store was like $9 ,999, but you can get a $9 ,990 coupon at purchase.

54:52

Basically, they just marked everything way above so that in case the government, the state just goes, oh, we're going to raise that because we're trying to lower criminal activity, but it encourages it.

55:05

Now, if they were doing that and then saying, well, you have to affirm stealing, then the church would stand up against stealing because stealing is wrong.

55:17

The fact that our culture is pushing for approval of this and pushing, and this is the whole thing, they're being intolerant in the way they're doing it.

55:28

They're pushing on others who don't hold to these views that you must hold to these views.

55:33

That's what this bill does because this bill is very clear to say that there's myths about this, and it's wrong to hold these views.

55:44

They're basically saying that those of us who have a biblical view is wrong. Well, of course, what are we going to do?

55:50

We're going to stand up and say, no, it's right because thus says the Lord. God has spoken.

55:59

The end of that preamble that I didn't read, it says, and whereas in light of those harms, it is important to discourage and denounce the provision of conversion therapy in order to protect the human dignity and equality of all

56:14

Canadians. There's that kind of language. They have to denounce. Basically, biblical sexuality, the government has said we got to denounce that.

56:25

You're right there. You know, I read Carl Truman's book,

56:31

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, recently, and very, very helpful as he traces the intellectual and societal shifts that have led to the sexual revolution.

56:45

And that's the thing now is that it has to be. It's not just enough for me to say, you do whatever you want to do, but I think it's wrong because that's now viewed as violence against the homosexual.

56:59

But to not affirm the person's self -identity and self -thinking is viewed as some kind of a hate crime against them.

57:11

And it's not that. I'm just trying, you know, we need to acknowledge our creator

57:18

God in this world that is his world. And so I can't affirm things that are against God.

57:27

And so I feel like I have to at least tell you that. And I feel like in a righteous society, we would have the right to proclaim the gospel and tell you what

57:39

God says. And you know what, if you don't agree with it and you don't want to follow it and you want to rebel against God, well, you know,

57:46

I would warn you that God's going to judge that kind of behavior. But I would leave it at that.

57:53

But yeah, now that it's just kind of this wave after wave of pushing for everyone to agree with this.

58:02

And, you know, I don't know, maybe we've failed in the last hundred years of kind of resisting this mentality.

58:12

I don't know. But I do pray for revival and for transformation of our country and your country.

58:19

Yeah. You know, it's interesting because like what you had just read, you know, whereas in late that it causes harm.

58:28

Right. Well, you know what? This bill causes harm, too. This is the whole thing when you they're saying, as you had said, it's the it's all about self.

58:40

But it's really not because because if it was all about if it was truly about self and not causing harm, you'd look for a bill that says, hey, we should be tolerant toward people that have other beliefs.

58:52

But this is not that this is we're going to arrest you and call you a criminal and charge you if you don't agree with us.

59:02

That is a harm. I mean, I don't see how the threat of prison, you know, of jail is not a harm.

59:11

I don't see how restricting what we could say to our own children is not a harm.

59:18

And they're saying, oh, well, it causes harm to a certain group of people. So what you're saying is that group of people is more significant in society or have to get special privilege because you're doing something that's restricting another group of people.

59:33

So it really is not about the self. It's about a really, as I think we know politically behind it, it's a

59:41

Marxist agenda, but it's it's an agenda. It's an anti -Christian agenda that we see from the culture.

59:48

So let me wrap up with that and ask you, this is the last thing I'll give you a chance to say anything, anything that you want to share, anything you want to wrap up with.

59:58

Then what I want you to do is let folks know how they can get ahold of you, where they could listen to your sermons. You know,

01:00:04

Ed Litton may want to get your sermon in case he does want to preach because we know he doesn't he doesn't have his own sermons.

01:00:09

He always preaches other people. So, but, you know, how could people get your sermons?

01:00:15

And then lastly, you've talked a lot about the gospel. So if there's people that have come in there, maybe they listen because they're looking at this topic.

01:00:23

They know what's going on and they wanted to hear what we were going to say about it. If you could, in closing out, explain to them what the gospel message is.

01:00:34

Sure. Well, our church website is gbflacrete .org.

01:00:40

So Grace Bible Fellowship, gbflacrete .org. You can email me at Mike at gbflacrete .org

01:00:48

if you're so inclined. Our sermons are available there. We have a YouTube page.

01:00:53

We have the Abide in the Word podcast, like you already mentioned. I have no idea how to find that, but I'm sure you could find it if you wanted to.

01:01:03

I think that's one way to find that is just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org

01:01:09

under the show notes. And then that's where it is. There's a whole list there.

01:01:15

Yeah, good. Good. And, you know, the gospel, I would just say it starts with God, the

01:01:23

Creator. He is holy. This is His world. He's a just and a righteous

01:01:29

God and hates everything that's contrary to His glory and His goodness. And so He hates sin and will judge it.

01:01:37

And because of that, we're in trouble because we are sinners. We have all sinned and suppressed the truth and unrighteousness.

01:01:44

We have all sinned and fallen short of the perfect holy standard that would be required to have fellowship with a

01:01:50

God like that. And so we are going to go to hell, except for this one way of escape that God has designed and planned for His glory is that He sent

01:02:01

His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Son took on humanity, took on a human nature, lived a perfect life in this world as our representative and died on the cross to pay for the penalty for our sins.

01:02:14

And He paid on that cross. He paid God's wrath, God's justice against sin for everyone who would ever trust in Him and believe in Him.

01:02:24

And this Jesus died and then rose again the third day and is alive now and seated at the right hand of God.

01:02:31

And if we will turn away from our sin and turn to God to worship and live our lives for Him and to honor

01:02:40

Him as God, if we will trust in Jesus Christ by faith, just trusting the person of Christ to deliver us from God's wrath, if we will trust in Him, our lives will be transformed.

01:02:53

We will turn from sin and we will be reconciled to God and then we'll enjoy fellowship with Him.

01:03:01

And this is really what we need, us Canadian pastors and really all of us as we kind of stand against the wickedness of our society, we need to know how to find our joy in living for God, no matter what our circumstances are.

01:03:15

And so that's one of the, I'd say the greatest thing about Christianity is that you are reconciled to God and you have a relationship with Him now that doesn't matter what happens in this world, nobody can take that away.

01:03:30

And so I would urge you if you're listening and maybe you kind of found this some unorthodox way and you're listening to this podcast and you haven't trusted in Christ, turn from your sin and turn to Jesus Christ.

01:03:42

He will forgive all of your sins and make you righteous, reconcile you to God, and you too can enjoy this

01:03:49

God and live forever in heaven with Him. If you don't, God will judge you and punish you with an eternity in hell paying for your own sins, which nobody could ever pay for.

01:04:04

Well, Pastor Mike, thanks for coming on. I do admit that I was just looking for an excuse just for us to get together again.

01:04:11

So are you going to make it to Shepherds Conference? You know, I don't know because I'm not,

01:04:18

I'm travel banned from coming into your country right now with the way things are.

01:04:24

I would love, I love Shepherds Conference. I was at every Shepherds Conference since I graduated seminary and love being there, but I don't think

01:04:32

I'll be able to make it at least for the next few years here. Yeah, that's the crazy thing going on.

01:04:37

Now, I think that's why Shepherds, like usually it closes out like within weeks and this year it didn't.

01:04:43

And I'm going it's because there's going to be no international people there, I think. Yeah, it'll be different.

01:04:49

I'll have to report back to you how it is. But I thank you for coming on. We continue to pray for what's going on up there with you guys in Canada.

01:04:57

Folks, if you guys would continue praying for them, pray for next Sunday as many of the pastors in Canada, many pastors in America will be doing the same and elsewhere in the world.

01:05:08

The difference is in Canada, they're going to be doing a criminal offense. We didn't get into, we didn't get a chance to get into, but we've dealt with this in the past of Romans 13, is this, would this be seen as breaking the law by doing this?

01:05:23

And I think if you've been a regular listener to this podcast, you know that we take the stand that we stand on God's word first.

01:05:31

And that is the priority. So glad that you've listened. If you enjoyed this, please share it with others.

01:05:37

It helps others to get the same good teaching that you got. So that would be a great encouragement.

01:05:43

Until next week, that's a wrap. It's time for eternity .org.

01:06:22

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