Responding to Dr. David Gushee’s “Reformation Project” Presentation

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. Last year I first saw the video that we are going to be beginning a review of.

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It was widely publicized when it first appeared.

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I cannot explain why it was only recently that I had the opportunity of really reviewing it, especially since I had read

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Dr. David Gushy's book before seeing this presentation.

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Many of you will remember that I believe it was 2011, if I recall, that Matthew Vines first burst on the scene with the video recorded in a church in Kansas and we played the entirety of that video, responded to it.

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That material was still available online. It ended up being a little over five hours in length, playing all of Matthew Vines' materials.

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Most of you will remember that we had challenged Matthew Vines to debate on Twitter.

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He had said, well, after my book comes out, and of course after his book came out, we aren't friendly enough to debate.

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And I believe that Matthew Vines recognizes that his position is not defensible against knowledgeable opposition.

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Dr. David Gushy is an ethicist. He is not a biblical scholar. He is an ethicist and comes from what

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I would call a moderate to liberal Baptist perspective, certainly not as conservative as I would be, but still claims to believe that the

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Bible is word of God and has become, as he puts it, a very strong ally of, as he expresses it in this presentation, the church's sexual minorities, which would include not only homosexuals, but evidently bisexuals and transgendered as well.

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I just point out in passing that the biblical argumentation one would have to muster to even identify transgenderism or bisexuality as a

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Christian minority would actually differ from that, which one would have to use to make that argument in regards to homosexuality.

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But maybe we'll touch upon some of that as this unfolds.

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I would rather be talking about the most recent ISIS atrocities. There are many subjects that are more enjoyable to address, but the reality is we recognize that this is the topic of the day.

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This is the topic that is being utilized by the totalitarian left to seek to completely destroy the religious freedoms of Christians in Western cultures and to silence the proclamation of at least the biblical gospel.

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I think that even those who are supporting the concept of gay

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Christianity will discover in time, unless God grants repentance and protects us from the direction that we're going, that even the gay gospel, the gospel that cannot define sinfulness any longer outside of just not being the best that you can be, that eventually the secular totalitarians will turn on them as well.

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Right now they're their allies, but they will not be for long. Anyway, what we need to do, as unpleasant as it may be, is understand where someone like Dr.

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David Gushie is coming from. As I said, I've read his book, and if I feel the need and we have time once we review this entire presentation that was made at the

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Reformation Project gathering, I marked in the

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Kindle edition materials that needed to be reviewed, and maybe we will be able to have a chance to do that.

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Let me start off by saying that when I mentioned, when

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I linked to the YouTube video of this on Twitter, I was concerned by many of the responses that I got.

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I am obviously going to be identifying Dr. Gushie's position as thoroughly unbiblical, embarrassing to the church, and something that needs to be repented of, because he, of course, identifies my position as something to be repented of.

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It's sinful, etc., etc. There isn't any middle ground here. But what

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I was concerned by was the fact that many people who would identify themselves as being supportive of my position were completely unwilling to even listen to what

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Dr. Gushie was saying. And I am concerned by this. I obviously believe that Dr.

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Gushie is very much in error, and is seriously compromising biblical authority, and Christian theology, and Christian morality and ethics.

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But I can say that having read his book and listened to his presentations. I don't believe you can say that if you can only go a few minutes in and go, ah, ah, and just turn it off.

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And so, I realize not everyone is called to read the dozens of books that I have read on this subject since 2000, 2001, whenever it was.

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We had that first encounter on KPXQ, on the Marty Minto Show, Jeff Neal and I, with two advocates of quote -unquote gay

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Christianity, which eventually led to the writing of the same -sex controversy. I don't know how many books

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I've read. I started a new one on a ride yesterday. I don't like reading them.

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I'm not saying that everyone has to read all of these books. No one could. I would not ever encourage anyone to do that.

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But, if we're going to meaningfully interact with this subject in our society, we have to be familiar with why it is that someone like David Gushie, who held a different viewpoint, changed his perspective.

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Because he's just the first. It's happening literally every day. We may not hear about it, because people aren't as well -known as Dr.

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Gushie is. Others may change their perspective, but they're not willing to become a spokesperson and appear at Matthew Vine's events and take the strident position that he has taken.

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But, I have been warning you for a very long time that we are going to start seeing this with such regularity that the temptation is going to be that I'm the only one left, and that's not the case at all.

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But, from my perspective, the vast majority of people who would call themselves believing evangelicals, and as Dr.

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Carl Truman has demonstrated years ago, this issue will demonstrate the utter inability of the term evangelical to function in a meaningful fashion any longer.

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Because, if you can call yourself an evangelical, and yet on a subject as basic as how to define fundamental categories of sin, come to different conclusions, the term evangelical has lost its meaning.

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But, utilizing it in its vaguest and broadest terms, the reality is that the vast majority of conservative,

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Bible -believing evangelicals have opposed homosexuality out of ignorance.

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Ignorance both of the positive biblical teaching, God is creator,

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God designed man and woman, God has roles for man and woman, these are good and proper things.

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You experience life in its fullness, to steal from Albert Moeller, human flourishing, when you submit to God's revealed purposes in these matters.

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So, the positive foundation laid out in Matthew chapter 19, from the beginning

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God made them male and female, this is what the family is to look like, there's a father and a mother, there's a husband and a wife, these words have meanings, to redefine them is an act of rebellion.

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So, the positive teaching on human sexuality, marriage, so on and so forth, as well as the negative prohibition against sexual deviancy, against the perversion of God's gift of sexuality to man, which includes the famous passages, and knowing their context, and knowing what arsenikoites actually means, and that we do know what it means, and that when you try to undercut our knowledge of that, you're fundamentally undercutting our knowledge of everything the

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Bible says, it's a two -sided thing, and unfortunately, let's be honest, for the vast majority of Christians of my age and generation, we didn't know these things.

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I've admitted honestly on the program that I was a seminary graduate before I could have told you exactly which biblical texts bore on this particular subject, both negatively, you know,

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Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, Romans 1, 1st Corinthians 6, 1st

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Timothy, all that kind of stuff, as well as positively, in regards to the positive teaching on the subject.

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And so, given that reality, the day when

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Bible -believing Christians can be ignorant of these issues is long past us, and we all know it, and we're playing catch -up now.

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We will not be given opportunity by this society to speak a positive word of truth.

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Gushy will be interviewed by CNN and everybody else because they love people who have abandoned historic

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Christian positions and are trying to redefine, force us to redefine our faith.

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They love that. That's why Matthew Vines will get all the airtime. They're not breaking my door down to talk to me, and I really doubt

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Pierce Morgan's going to have Michael Brown back on again. But we have a lot of work to do, and one of the reasons

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I'm beginning this series, and yeah, I could end up just as long as the Matthew Vines response was, and I pray

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God will bless it in the same way he blessed and continues to bless that response to Matthew Vines. The reason we do this is because the whole purpose for the existence of this ministry is to equip believing

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Christians to give an answer for the hope that's within them, and now we're having to give an answer for even allowing

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Scripture to define sin itself. And here we have a man who claims to be an evangelical, and yet he is saying that we are being un -Christlike, that we are opposing what

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Christ would have us to do, and that we must change fundamentally our understanding of the gospel itself.

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Well, we need to respond to it. We need to respond to it accurately, fully.

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We do not need to respond to it, however, with insult and hatred. We utterly damage our own position when we respond in a way that shows that we haven't even bothered to take the time to listen to what the other side has to say.

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That is just simply not the appropriate means of doing this. Now, we are going to be playing, and Robert, I'm looking at Twitter, and there was a gentleman

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I'm not trying to pick on you, and I appreciate the fact that you did go through it. You weren't the only one that made those kind of comments, though.

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There were people on Facebook as well. So please don't think I'm just picking on you. I am going to minimize my interaction with online social media because, obviously, it is our intention to post this material and make it available both in mp3 format.

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Though it may be a little bit difficult, we will be playing the video and making it available in video format. How long that will be allowed to be,

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I don't know, but we will do our best. I will be playing the entirety of Dr.

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Gushy's comments just as I played the entirety of Matthew Vine's comments. That is called fair use, by the way, for those of you who might want to seek to suppress this.

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And in this context, fair use in allowing Dr. Gushy to have full say and to never be in a position of someone being able to say, well, you were taking him out of context.

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We're going to play the entirety of the context and respond to every aspect of it in a critical fashion.

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And I wish we could be spending more time in the text of scripture. There was an amazingly small amount of scripture in this presentation.

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But we need to understand the form of argumentation he's using and respond to it appropriately to the honor of the gospel and our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So with that, here is

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Dr. David Gushy's presentation and we will be stopping and starting it as the opportunity and the need arises.

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We are so honored to hear from Dr. David Gushy, who is widely regarded as the leading evangelical ethicist in the

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United States. He's the author of 20 books, including the one that he has just published called

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Changing Our Mind about his change of heart and thinking on LGBT inclusion in the church.

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I would like to welcome our keynote speaker for tonight. Please give a rousing round of applause to Dr.

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Gushy. It is a thrill to be here.

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I am so excited to participate in history being made here.

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So excited to partner with Matthew Vines and the Reformation Project. So excited to be here with you.

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And I so much appreciate the warm welcome that you all have offered to me in the time that I have been here.

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I don't know that I deserve it, but I'm appreciative. I would like to begin with a text of scripture that has been really speaking to me.

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I've been finding myself going back to it again and again. It's not in my prepared remarks that Matthew has seen.

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It's above and beyond. Then I'd like to pray. I keep being driven back to Jeremiah.

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And in Jeremiah chapter 1, I feel like I just keep going back to Jeremiah chapter 1.

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Jeremiah is commissioned with a call to speak an unpopular word to his own people. And he is not especially happy about that calling, but he does what he's called to do.

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And there's a word of challenge at the end of Jeremiah chapter 1 that may speak to all of us in one way or another.

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By the way, if you're tweeting, it's at D .P. Gushy. I mean, Jeremiah and Twitter all in there together.

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It is the year 2014 after all. So maybe this speaks to you as you prepare to go back to your places of service, to your families and friends and churches.

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God says to Jeremiah, but you, verses 17, gird up your loins.

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Gotta love that expression. Stand up and tell them everything that I command you.

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Do not break down before them or I will break you before them. And I, for my part, have made you today a fortified city.

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An iron pillar and a bronze wall against the whole land. Against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land.

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They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you. For I am with you, says the

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Lord, to deliver you. Now, I simply comment, you know, this isn't a part of the argument.

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And both sides believe that they are the ones who are on the

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Lord's side. But the irony to me, of course, is that the message that Jeremiah was entrusted with to deliver to the people was a message not of, you've had it wrong for 2 ,000 years.

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You are to abandon the universal perspective of the Jewish people that existed in the days of Jesus.

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You are to abandon the universal perspective of the Christian church.

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And the clear result of biblical ex -Jesus. And you will be attacked for that.

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And therefore, I am with you. That's not what Jeremiah was. Jeremiah was given a message of judgment because the people had, in fact, broken

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God's commandment. And showed no respect for God's law.

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And, in fact, we're engaging in the very sexual sins that are defined in Leviticus chapter 18.

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And remember, in Leviticus chapter 18, the beginning of the Holiness Code there, the beginning and the end of the chapter, it is defined the nations before you did these things.

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And because of that, the land is spitting them out. And that includes all of the sexual laws, which includes the relationships of close, incestuous relationships, bestiality, and homosexuality.

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So here you have an ethicist who is not going to be able to give us a single positive word from Jesus to the apostles about homosexuality.

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Because there is no single positive word in scripture concerning this subject.

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Instead, what you're going to have is you're going to have the law of love. This vague concept, the law of love.

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And he's not even going to bother here. He does it in the book, of course. And I'm probably conflating those things. Because when you're listening to an author speak and you've read his book on this subject,

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I don't think it's unfair to listen to what he says in light of what he's written.

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But you're going to have the law of love made the overarching exegetical parameter.

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And then you're going to have each of the specific texts on homosexuality turned into vague...

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We don't really know what Arson of Coed is. There's a scholar over here that isn't really certain about this.

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And so his uncertainty becomes ground for all of us to be uncertain, etc., etc. And that's what you end up being presented with.

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That's not what Jeremiah was doing. And if anyone is going to listen to the words of Jeremiah and make them their own, it's going to be the one who is seeking to honor

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God's revelation to his people and to protect it from, as Jeremiah did, the lying penitents of the scribes who were trying to revise things, who were trying to find a way to defend their kind of lifestyle, which they had developed, which was against God's law.

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So I would take that perspective myself and say that I think it's an inappropriate appropriation of that particular text.

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Let us pray. Lord God, I believe most of us in this room are confident that we are participating in something far greater than ourselves, that your spirit is all over what is a movement for the gospel, even when people say it's contrary to the gospel.

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Now please note this. We are told that we are being the radicals when we say this is a gospel issue, that it is something that requires division because it is a gospel issue, that we are fundamentally destroying the capacity of the definition of sin and hence the proclamation of the

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Savior, and yet Dr. Gushy, if his words mean anything, is saying this is a gospel issue and recognizes that we are saying to him, you are opposing that, which means that we are the ones who are opposing the gospel.

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Why is it that only our side is held accountable for the radical nature of this division when both sides recognize it can't be both?

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There is no third way. There is no middle way. It seems to be pretty obvious to me.

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It is a movement for justice. It's a movement for love. It's a movement for a more Christ -like church.

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And I pray that all of us in our own way will do what you have called us to do in that movement and that we would stand up tall and strong, that we would not be afraid of anyone, and that we would play our part in finally ending the discrimination and hurt that has come to our

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LGBT brothers and sisters for far too long. Lord, thank you for your forgiveness of me for my tardiness on this issue.

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Thank you for welcoming a family as big as your love, and thank you for this chance to gather tonight.

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts together in this place be pleasing in your sight,

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O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Now, obviously, the reason

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I did not stop and comment on each of these statements is they are going to be expanded much more fully later in the presentations.

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There wasn't any reason to do so. We'll be able to respond, I think, in a better fashion later on, so remain calm.

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I've called this address, Ending the Teaching of Contempt Against the

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Church's Sexual Minorities. Very quickly, fundamentally, you have the assumption that I do not believe

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Dr. Gushie even attempts, really, to substantiate, is that you can have within the church, not sinners, not those who experience temptation toward every kind of biblically defined sin.

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Those are not disputable issues. Those are facts.

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You have within the body of Christ those who experience temptation toward every kind of sexual sin and every other kind of sin.

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But the assumption that is made is that the embracing of these temptations as a

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God -given gift constitutes the creation of an appropriate minority within the church.

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Obviously, fundamentally, the church is made up of those who bow the knee in repentance and faith under the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ. The anti -lordship movement has certainly laid a foundation for the existence of the gay

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Christian movement. And I don't even know how someone who denies the

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Lordship of Christ denies that repentance is a fundamental aspect of the work of the Spirit of God in the heart of any redeemed individual.

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I don't know how those individuals can even begin to deal with this subject. So, fundamentally removed from any biblical concept of saving faith and union with Christ, that whole movement actually is.

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But, obviously, I do not believe that the church has sexual minorities.

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And I would challenge immediately, where do you get from apostolic example, the recognition of sexual minorities?

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I mean, it's being taken as a given. And it's being taken in societal conversation today that people just are homosexual.

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It's not a choice. I accept, as a reality, that there are people who experience same -sex attraction and have experienced it from as early as they can remember.

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But I don't think they're the majority of this movement. It is just like Dr.

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Gushy will, and I wonder if you'll notice this, and we probably won't get to it today, even though we're going to go another hour from now.

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So we're going to do 90 minutes today. We won't get there. But there is a point where he will lay out his conclusion.

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He won't substantiate it. But he'll lay out his conclusion that if you're going to, he will promote the idea of the redefinition of marriage, so as to allow two men and two women.

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But he will insist upon only two and monogamous and lifelong covenantal unions.

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Now, I think just on any logical, ethical, moral, biblical basis, you just want to go, keep going, keep thinking this through.

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There's a reason for the two part. There is a reason. It's the male -female thing. That's the reason.

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It's the gender binary. It's God's great order. It's all there. You seem to have skipped that part somehow, and I think the explanation for this will be forthcoming as to what causes somebody to miss that.

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But when he makes that statement, the applause isn't nearly as strenuous and strong as many of his other points.

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And there's a reason for that. All meaningful studies of the experience of especially male homosexuals in the homosexual movement has nothing to do with monogamy.

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And the percentage of homosexuals, active homosexuals in Western culture, who are seeking monogamous relationships is tiny.

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Tiny. So, his conclusion could only be for a very small minority of this movement.

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And my suggestion here, and I'm hoping that Dr. Gushie will listen to this. It's not been my experience that many will within that movement.

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But I hope that he will. And Dr. Gushie, my challenge to you would be, why do

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I not hear this movement that you now consider yourself to be a spokesperson for, an ally of, why do

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I not hear the gospel being preached? The real gospel, including the wrath of God, the concept of sin, and God's wrath against, well, the behavior of, well, most of the studies

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I've read, I'm going to be incredibly generous here, 90 to 95 % of the homosexual movement engages in that type of activity that you would identify as sinful.

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Why don't I hear a call for repentance, a warning about the wrath of God within that context?

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Questions that need to be answered. I want to talk tonight about a small minority group that was, for almost 2 ,000 years, the object of a tragically destructive, religiously motivated contempt on the part of the

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Church of Jesus Christ. The church's teaching about this group was grounded in a number of biblical texts drawn from across the canon of scripture, as they had been interpreted by Christian leaders and reinforced by centuries of Christian tradition.

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This destructive pattern of interpreting these texts went back near the origins of Christianity and eventually was very broadly shared by Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant strands of the church.

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One could even describe it as a rare point of unity for these warring groups. They could agree on little, but they did agree on this.

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It was hard to find many dissenters to this tradition as it was grounded in knowledge sources at the very center of Christianity, scripture, tradition, and major church leaders, what they said generation after generation.

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Everyone just knew that the group that was the object of this negative teaching was well worthy of the church's rejection and disdain.

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Everyone just knew that this disdain was biblical and that it was attested by the highest authorities of the church.

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Indeed, expressing rejection and disdain for this group became a core part of Christian identity, even

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Christian piety. The church's negative teaching about this group was comprehensive.

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The church taught a disdain for this group as a whole and for all individuals in this group. The church taught that this group was morally inferior.

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The church often taught that this group was evil and had a particular association with Satan. The church taught that all members of this group would be eternally separated from God.

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The church taught that the worship practices of this group were worthless. The church warned its adherents about associating with this group.

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The church ascribed particular vices to this group, including sexual degeneracy and violence, especially against children.

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Even the term used to name this group became a slur in itself, while other even more derogatory slurs were developed against this group.

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The church at times was willing to welcome individual members of this group into its fellowship, but this welcome was equivocal.

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Converts from this group were often relegated to second -class status if they were welcome at all. Often their group background came up, especially in relation to questions of leadership or ordination.

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This reflected a lingering taint associated with this group, a taint that even conversion could not wash away, at least some of the time.

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Often this half -welcome was withdrawn, and members of this group were exiled not only from the church, but from the communities in which they lived.

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While the leaders of the church almost never explicitly taught that its members should perpetrate violence against this group, this unfortunate group was indeed regularly victimized by violence.

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Because these outbreaks of violence were so frequent, a special term was coined to name them, a term which survives to this day.

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Meanwhile in everyday life, bullying was common against the members of this group. Name -calling was constant.

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Social separation was routinely enforced. Preaching regularly communicated contempt for this group.

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No Christian wanted to be seen as too cozy with this group for fear of sharing in its moral taint and losing the support of their own family and friends.

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When this group was targeted by the state, few Christians could be found who would stand in solidarity with them.

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From the perspective of the members of this targeted group, Christianity was everywhere and Christianity was dangerous.

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The church's Bible, cross, tradition, clergy, and scholars carried not positive but negative associations, associations of harm.

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Members of this targeted group sometimes knew of the beautiful teachings of Jesus. They had heard great sayings like, love your neighbor as yourself, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.

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But members of this targeted group, very much the least of these in Christendom, rarely experienced any golden rule, any love, or any mercy from the

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Christians who heard and proclaimed these beautiful words. Have you figured out who

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I'm talking about yet? Eventually, the centuries -old tradition of disdain for this group, which lay deep in the marrow of Western civilization and survived the transition into secular modernity, metastasized into a massive eruption of state -sponsored violence.

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By the time it was over, one -third of all members of this group in the entire world had been murdered. I am one of the scholars who have sadly documented that most

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Christians stood by doing nothing to help the targeted group while they were being targeted for death. Perhaps you have by now figured out that the targeted group

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I am talking about is the Jewish people, victims of an unchristlike body of tradition generally called

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Christian anti -Judaism, which fed into and married up with a broader economic, cultural, and political anti -Semitism.

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I discuss this unchristlike body of Christian tradition in many of my writings, including my first book, which

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Matthew mentioned, Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust. Note, I will say the word unchristlike 14 more times in this address.

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When you hear it, think, in violation of the nature, ministry, and teaching of Jesus Christ, our

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Savior and Lord. Or just think, harmful and unloving, the opposite of what

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Christ was and is like. I chose the term very carefully. Now, there we go.

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I just want to mention something at that point. When we define unchristlike,

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I'm sorry, I cannot take overly seriously Dr. Gushy's definition that he just gave.

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Because the only way to define unchristlike is to go to Christ's own teachings. And when you go to Christ's own teachings, you find very strong denunciations of religious hypocrisy, pronunciation of the wrath of God against sin, the reality of coming judgment.

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You have Jesus giving parables where the judgment is vividly portrayed as God's enemies being brought before him and killed in his presence.

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You have Jesus saying that anyone who teaches anyone else to not follow the least of God's law will be least in the kingdom of heaven.

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I mean, it's so easy to present the idea of the

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Jesus who carries the little lamb and has long, Vidal Sassoon hair and that kind of thing.

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You know, that squishy, gushy Jesus. That kind of Jesus is the

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Christlike one. You have to define Jesus based upon what

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Jesus actually taught and did. And that even includes the book of Revelation.

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I recently preached a sermon on the Jesus that modern secularists don't like.

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And I went to the book of Revelation and I looked at the Jesus who is presented there who rules the nations with a rod of iron and you have the wrath of the lamb that is part of the wrath of God against sin and which makes

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God's wrath all the more personal in that the lamb is the one who has given himself.

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These people have rejected that and rejected God's way of salvation. And you have the one, the king of kings and the lord of lords riding upon the horse and he rules over the nations.

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This is the part of being Christlike that I would challenge

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Dr. Gushy to consider in providing a more biblical definition of what it means to be

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Christlike. In fact, obviously from my perspective, to be Christlike is to honor all of God's law, to recognize the validity of God's law, to recognize that Christ honored

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God's law and that the whole purpose of the cross was that Jesus took sin seriously.

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And that to simply go, well someone says this isn't sinful because that's how they feel is not being

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Christlike. That's not being Christlike at all. Anyone looking at the ubiquity of Christian antisemitism in say 1935 could never have imagined that it would ever change, would ever get better.

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Certainly Jews who had been documenting and protesting this tradition for millennia had very little reason for hope in 1935.

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But amazingly, within about 20 years of this murderous assault of antisemitic state violence during World War II, most branches of an appalled

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Christian world intentionally began changing their teaching about Judaism and the

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Jewish people. It was a profound transformation involving both subtle and overt repudiation of past teaching along with the development of new teaching.

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And it is very relevant to our gathering this evening. During this Christian repudiation of two millennia of anti -Judaism and antisemitism, certain things happened.

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You might be interested in what happened and how it happened. First, biblical passages that everyone had interpreted a certain way were now interpreted in new ways.

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Now, this is, again, one of the reasons I said to people yesterday you've got to listen to the whole thing is this is probably not the kind of presentation you're accustomed to hearing and because it isn't, many people go,

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I'm not sure how I'd respond to that. There is a,

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I believe, inappropriate and false parallel being drawn here. That is, you're going to have, and we're going to look at each one of these texts.

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The couple of texts that were used to substantiate antisemitism within confessional, quote -unquote,

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Christianity, especially under the popes during the Crusades, Inquisitions, so on and so forth, which then was picked up, unfortunately, by Martin Luther and others.

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And we're going to see that these texts were not even marginally capable of substantiating the kind of ridiculous application that was made from them.

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The idea is, well, that's the same thing about the quote -unquote clobber passages. That's the same thing about Leviticus and so on and so forth.

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If we could learn to change our interpretation of them. It was never a valid interpretation in the first place.

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That's the problem. And the question is, is it a valid interpretation of Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 that this refers to homosexual behavior, not just in religious cults, but homosexual behavior within society, which is the context of both 18 and 20?

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Is it appropriate to recognize that Paul is drawing from creation narrative in his discussion in Romans chapter 1, that he does specifically make reference to lesbianism in Romans chapter 1, and that the term arsenikoites should be defined based upon its septuagint usage and not upon usage that comes from two or three hundred years after Paul's coining of the phrase and utilization of the phrase.

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There is no parallel between the abuse of John 844, as we're going to see this is one of them, in the defense of antisemitism and the appropriate sound necessary exegesis of the key text in regards to homosexuality.

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None. But Dr. Gushy will allow that idea to be communicated, even though it's an invalid idea.

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And again, you need to hear this kind of argumentation, because I would say it would silence the vast majority of evangelicals who have not thought through what this issue is actually about and have not been trained in biblical exegesis, which is why we're doing the program.

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Or contextualized more seriously, or treated as secondary to more important texts and themes.

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I will name three pivotal New Testament texts whose interpretation changed dramatically, had been damaging before, and then was changed.

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But there were many, many other texts whose reading had contributed to this destructive tradition of Christian anti -Judaism.

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Consider the line in Matthew 27 -25, where the crowd crying for Jesus' death says,

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His blood be on us and on our children. Matthew 27 -25. That passage, that verse, used to be taken to mean that every

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Jewish person in the world, then or later, bore responsibility for the death of Jesus. All right, now,

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Matthew 27 -25 is the very same text that had to be muted out of Mel Gibson's The Passion.

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Remember? I don't know if any of you remember. There was sort of a delay in its release and stuff, and it all had to do with charges of anti -Semitism.

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Because, you need to understand, in post -World War II European Biblical theology, texts like this are not viewed as the

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Word of God. They're looked at as horrific artifacts that should be removed from the

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Bible. In fact, in post -World War II New Testament interpretation, entire sections of Paul, especially in 2

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Thessalonians, are viewed with gross embarrassment.

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You're not allowed to preach on them. Look what happened just recently when a Southern Baptist pastor dared to preach on Matthew 23 and said that the

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Jewish leaders of Jesus' day were whitewashed tombs. Well, you can't say that after World War II.

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You're not allowed to say that. And the result has been a tremendous diminishment of belief in the inspired nature of any of these words.

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Now, if you isolate Matthew 27 -25, and all the people answered,

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His blood be upon us and on our children, if that's all there was in the New Testament, you'd have a problem.

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But you see, if sound principles of interpretation and hermeneutics, not new principles.

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We don't need new principles. We're not saying, oh, you know what? Yeah, everybody has misunderstood this.

50:37

That's not true. That's not true. Did many people take it that way?

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Well, many people took Matthew 16 as establishing the papacy. It never did either.

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John 6 never substantiated transubstantiation in the Mass. Just because lots of people took a text, that assumes that everyone who has interpreted that text has some knowledge of even how to begin the task.

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And the vast majority do not. If all we had was

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Matthew 27 -25, don't miss the weight. These people were willing to bear the guilt of this man's condemnation in front of the

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Roman procurator. These people were willing to turn over one of their own.

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So deep was their hatred. And so deep was the control that the

51:43

Jewish leaders had. Remember, Matthew 27 -25 comes after Matthew 23. It's expected to be read after chapter 23.

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But it's also not to be read as the be -all and end -all of all things. That's why when modern people today, modern scholars today, cut

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Matthew off from the rest of the New Testament, they can say, well, that's certainly what Matthew wanted to communicate. There's no

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New Testament theology anymore. There's no holistic teaching of all that God has revealed.

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It's a fundamentally unbelieving perspective. But some of you might remember, and I expect this to be listened to by a lot of people that aren't familiar with this program, but just last month

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I engaged in a debate on the subject of baptism. And I pointed out that there is another text that utilizes the same language, us and our children.

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It's in Acts chapter 2. And there, upon the proclamation of the

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Messiahship of Jesus and His sacrificial death upon the cross, the Jews cry out, men and brethren, what shall we do?

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And when Peter responds and commands them to repent and believe and be baptized, he says that the promise of that forgiveness and the promise to receive that Holy Spirit is for you and your children and for all who are far off as many as the

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Lord our God shall call. And I specifically made the connection to Matthew 27 -25 that I think one of the reasons that Peter utilizes that language is because of the fact that the

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Jewish people crucified their own Messiah. And that therefore, if we take the

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New Testament as a whole, if we allow it to speak for itself, you must hear

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Acts 2 with Matthew 27 -25. And so anybody who doesn't is not appropriately handling the

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Word of God, are they? Are they? We don't need new methods of interpretation.

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I'm using the same method of interpretation that Athanasius used to defend the deity of Christ from Colossians chapter 1 or from many statements of Jesus in the

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Gospels, Gospel of John. I'm using the same method of interpretation that was used in that context.

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Now, were there people who would use proper methods of interpretation about some things, but because of cultural things, prejudices that they had, they're not consistent?

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Of course. Happens today too. But we don't need some new revision of how you read

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Scripture to recognize the abuse of Matthew 27 -25 in history, do we?

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No, we do not. Now, does anything I just said overthrow the exegesis

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I have offered of every single one of the key prohibitory texts, Leviticus, Romans, so on and so forth, or any of the positive arguments that I've presented from Ephesians or Matthew chapter 19 or anything else?

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No, it does not. Does not even begin to do so. Does not even begin to do so. But can you see how for the majority of people who don't study the

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Bible on a serious level are not challenged, do not have a model given to them by their elders in their churches of studying

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Scripture seriously, can you see how this is going to lead to a tsunami of change on this subject, and hence a fundamental redefinition of Christian ethics, morality, and the gospel?

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I sure can. I sure can. All Jews were viewed as, quote,

55:57

Christ killers. And this became a common derogatory term for Jews. Christian kids would call

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Jewish kids Christ killers on the playground. Because of the concerted efforts of Christian leaders in dialogue with Jewish leaders beginning around 1960 or 65, almost no

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Christian after that point taught or believed that Jews as a people bore responsibility for the death of Jesus.

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Probably none of you have ever heard Jews derided as Christ killers. I hope not. And that's a really good change.

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Or John 8 44. John 8 44 Now, before we get to John 8 44,

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I'm past a half century of age and I had not heard that either.

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Yeah, Rich is saying him either, and he's a whole lot older than I am. but it was out there.

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There's no question it was out there. But the point again is was it out there because of properly interpreted and handled biblical text or was it out there for completely other reasons?

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That really is the issue. Now, the next text, if you want to go in your scriptures to it

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John 8 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand the truth because there is no truth in him.

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When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. Next verse, because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.

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Once again, contextually. Yes, Jesus is talking to Jews, but he's talking specifically to the

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Jews who hearing his first rebuttal of his opponents at the beginning of the chapter find that attractive and remember, maybe it's not fair to provide context, but it's good to do.

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Verse 30 of chapter 8 says that as he was saying these things, many believed in him.

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Remember what I've told you before. When John wishes to communicate to us the concept of saving faith, he uses the present tense, the one coming, the one believing, the one looking, so on and so forth.

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This is not the present tense. This is what's called the aorist tense.

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Epistison is the term. And it had been used earlier in John chapter 2 when men had believed because they saw the sign that Jesus did, but Jesus did not believe himself to them.

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He did not entrust himself to them because he knew it filled the heart of man. These same men who believed,

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Jesus then says, if you continue my word, then you're my disciples. You should know the truth. And what? The truth shall set you free.

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And as soon as he raises the issue of being set free, they rebel. We've never been enslaved to anybody.

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And by the end of the chapter, they're picking up stones to stone him. These are false disciples. This is false faith he's dealing with.

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And so the focus is not upon Jews as a people. The focus is upon specific individuals who made a profession of false faith.

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They are of the devil. They desire to do what the devil desires to do.

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And that's true of anyone outside of Jesus Christ, Jew or Gentile.

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Now again, am I using some new, never before understood interpretational method?

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Oh, this is prior to 1965, no one had thought of that. No, I'm not.

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But that doesn't help promote this particular paradigm. So here we go.

01:00:02

Jesus saying this to the Jews. Quote, you are from your father the devil and you choose to do your father's desires.

01:00:09

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies.

01:00:19

Close quote. For centuries in Christendom, that text was taken to mean that Jews as a people were the children of Satan.

01:00:28

And that they shared their diabolical father's characteristic behavior such as murder and lying.

01:00:35

Now, were there, was that text used in that way? Did Hitler even use that text in that way?

01:00:41

Yes. Was any of that even slightly appropriate? And was it absolutely universal?

01:00:47

It was not appropriate and it was not universal. So, yes, that text was horrifically abused.

01:00:56

Do you blame the text for that? Or the abuser? That's the question. Christian children in Europe, and apparently here as well, sometimes used to check their

01:01:07

Jewish playmates' heads for the horns that they had been told were shaved off and were under their hair.

01:01:14

I met a lady who told me about that story from Poland, a Holocaust survivor. But, because of the concerted efforts of Christian leaders in dialogue with Jewish leaders beginning around 1965, almost no

01:01:27

Christian taught or believed that Jews are the children of Satan after that point. This passage is now taught very carefully and it is not taught as applying to the

01:01:36

Jews as a people, and that's a really good change. Now again, that's a really good change.

01:01:42

As if it had universally been this way before and now we've seen the light. I'm sorry.

01:01:48

That is fallacious argumentation. Fallacious argumentation.

01:01:55

Had many people taken it that way? Sadly, yes. Did all? No, of course not.

01:02:02

And again, did no one know how to do grammatical, historical exegesis prior to 1965?

01:02:13

Is that what it just Oh, I think we need to do this about the text about Jews now. And here's the key point.

01:02:20

When we apply meaningful hermeneutical interpretation,

01:02:26

Matthew 27, 25 and John 8, 44, neither one substantiates any kind of antisemitism.

01:02:35

The same method of interpretation applied to the key text regarding homosexuality only substantiates the biblical teaching on the subject.

01:02:47

That's an important point to make. Here's another one.

01:02:55

Acts 7 tells the story of the church's first martyr, Stephen. Have you ever noticed that just before the rocks start flying at his head, he says this to his

01:03:03

Jewish questioners. He says, quote, you stiff -necked people uncircumcised in heart and ears.

01:03:10

You are forever opposing the Holy Spirit just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?

01:03:17

They killed those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers.

01:03:25

Close quote. For centuries in Christendom, this text was taken to mean that the entire history, the entire history of the

01:03:33

Jewish people had been a story of rebellion against God. There was nothing good in it.

01:03:38

It was all rebellion. Really? So no one had ever noted

01:03:45

Anna. No one had ever noted Simeon. No one had ever noted

01:03:52

Isaiah or Jeremiah. Ironically, Jeremiah.

01:03:58

Seriously? I find that kind of assertion.

01:04:04

No one? You got to be really careful with those. It's real easy to pop the balloon of no one with just one.

01:04:17

Now, the message of Stephen was a message directed to the very ones who had in fact engineered the crucifixion of the

01:04:31

Son of God, which is the greatest sin of all time. The greatest sin of all time.

01:04:37

It's the only innocent man that's ever been murdered. And there is a direct parallel between Matthew 23 and Acts 7.

01:04:48

But once again, that ignores the fact, if you're going to take that and mean as a result that there is not to be the proclamation of the gospel, there is not to be the salvation of Jewish people, that's completely ripping these texts out of the context of the

01:05:09

New Testament. Where you clearly see that when

01:05:15

Peter offers that promise to you and to your children, thousands that day embrace that and receive forgiveness of their sins.

01:05:26

And they were Jewish believers. They became Jewish believers.

01:05:34

So, isn't it rather obvious that these three texts now that he has cited are being grossly abused?

01:05:45

Look, anything that God reveals can be grossly abused. Anything.

01:05:54

If you're willing to sacrifice Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura, if you're willing to pick one thing and place it over another, make the

01:06:03

Word of God contradictory to itself, if you're willing to do all that kind of stuff, you can make a royal mass of the

01:06:10

Bible. That doesn't mean that you're handling it appropriately or properly. But in none of these have we had to come up with some new kind of interpretation, some new way to recognize the fundamental abuse that was being poured upon the text of Scripture from the beginning.

01:06:35

Not from the beginning of the Church, but from the beginning of the abuse of these texts.

01:06:42

No parallel therefore to the appropriate interpretation of the key text on homosexuality.

01:06:50

This was called the Trail of Crimes tradition. And it was widely shared.

01:06:56

But, because of the concerted efforts of Christian leaders eventually in dialogue with Jewish leaders, after 1965, almost no

01:07:03

Christian taught or believed the Trail of Crimes teaching that almost everybody had believed a hundred years before.

01:07:11

Leaders now emphasize God's election of the Jewish people, their covenant with God, the grandeur of the

01:07:16

Jewish religious tradition, and its continued significance in the world today. By the way,

01:07:22

I didn't spend time on this, but all you have to do is go look at Calvin's comments on Acts 7 and a number of other places and you'll find the exact same thing that he is now saying that has only been emphasized since 1965.

01:07:38

You'll find it way before that. I mean, this is rife.

01:07:43

I don't know why. Maybe someone has, and if someone has, please direct me to it. But I would think that some serious church historian with more time on their hands than I've got who has seen this would have gone, excuse me, but let me document that one out of the ballpark.

01:08:02

Because it would be so easy to do. So some of you church history guys out there that have got nothing better to do than spend all day on Facebook arguing about this, that, or the other thing, how about doing something meaningful and jumping on some of these things?

01:08:21

Because they certainly have the time to be producing this stuff. Somebody on the other side has to have the time to be responding to all this stuff.

01:08:29

And that's a really good change. And it wasn't just biblical passages that had to be considered.

01:08:35

Has anybody ever said to you, but it's tradition? So let's talk about tradition a little bit.

01:08:43

Historians at the same time began digging into the writings of the church fathers and other great leaders of the church.

01:08:49

Eventually a Jewish historian named Jules Isaac coined the phrase teaching of contempt to describe how

01:08:56

Christians the church fathers and other Christian leaders used to write about Jews. Leaders as famous and diverse as Tertullian, John Chrysostom, Hippolytus, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Augustine himself all have deeply problematic passages about the

01:09:14

Jewish people in their writings. Scholars saw that the problem came forward through the

01:09:19

Middle Ages and into Protestantism despite the Reformation. In fact, one of the most atrocious teachings ever about the

01:09:27

Jewish people was... Now, before he gets to it, all of that is basically true.

01:09:35

Which is why you cannot take patristic sources as inspired or as the matrix through which the

01:09:43

New Testament needs to be interpreted or any of the rest of that stuff as we've said over and over again.

01:09:49

That's why you have to look at patristic sources within the context of when they lived, what they knew, what they didn't know, what their prejudices were, etc.

01:10:00

etc. All of that is fundamentally true, but it would have been nice if there had been a little more discussion here of the enshrinement of these things within the practice of the

01:10:14

Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church, within the documents of the medieval papacy, within the behavior of the

01:10:25

Crusades, which these days people are trying to... Some really weird people are trying to turn into wonderful good things where good

01:10:34

Christian people were... Blah, blah, blah, blah. It would be nice if there was a little more balance along those lines, but it's important to note that this was part of the institutional sacralism of the day, and some of us are pretty consistent in our criticism of sacralism, the idea of the state church, and so much of what is embarrassing in church history goes back to what happens when you establish a state church.

01:11:11

The state church is almost never the biblical church. In fact,

01:11:17

I don't think it ever is, now that I think about it. ...by Martin Luther. In 1543, he wrote a text called

01:11:24

On the Jews and Their Lives. In that text, Luther said that the synagogues of the

01:11:32

Jewish people should be burned down, their religious books should be destroyed, and even the most infamous line in this text is, we are at fault in not slaying them.

01:11:42

Martin Luther. 1543. Again, the

01:11:49

Luther of the 1540s and the Luther of the 1520s are almost completely different people.

01:11:59

And we've talked about the reasons for this. We sort of addressed some of this, I don't know when that silly movie came out, sometime around the holidays as I recall.

01:12:10

So we talked a little bit about this at that time, but the change after the peasants' revolt in 1525 and then

01:12:25

I think the combined weight of health issues together with well, somewhat negative interaction with Ulrich Zwingli in the early period, and then with the development of reformed churches, not only the

01:12:50

Calvinistic churches, but the Swiss churches, and the divisions that began to manifest themselves there for some reason led

01:13:01

Luther to a much less conciliatory view of the Jews than he had had earlier.

01:13:09

Not surprising. Sad, but not surprising. Reprehensible.

01:13:18

What he said, again, was used. Now, I think it's a little bit unfair to blame him for what happened 400 years after he was moldering in the grave any more than blaming

01:13:34

Augustine for the abuse of his words. In context, they never could have dreamed those words would ever be used in.

01:13:42

But, the fact remains that these words were uttered.

01:13:49

We need to understand why they were uttered and what context they were uttered. And learn from this not to idolize anyone in church history.

01:14:01

It doesn't matter who they were. I can find the problems with anybody that I can look up to. One of the problems, very briefly, that I do have, and I've mentioned this before, is that many modern people will refuse to honor, read, look at individuals with whom they have any type of theological disagreement, or would say that there were moral failings in those people's personal lives.

01:14:35

It's amazing the standard that people will use to look at people of the past that they don't apply to themselves or to anybody in the modern context.

01:14:47

And so, people will look at what Luther said about the Jews, and therefore, I'm not going to read

01:14:53

Luther's commentary on Galatians. Oh, so you don't want to read one of the commentaries that has had such a huge impact upon yourself.

01:15:00

You may not know that, but it did. It doesn't matter what your background is. If you're a

01:15:05

Roman Catholic, that commentary still had impact upon you. So, people cut off their nose to spite their face because they don't understand how to do serious study of historical documents and historical personages and things like that.

01:15:21

It's a shame, but it certainly happens. But meanwhile, leaders of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism carried forward their own teachings of contempt against Jews.

01:15:31

Christians, wondering during the Holocaust whether to rescue Jews, found little support in their faith for doing so.

01:15:38

Many responded to the Jewish person in need at the door by quoting Bible passages to them and teachings from the

01:15:45

Church Fathers. And I write about that in my first book. But, after the war, many church bodies eventually abandoned or explicitly repented of this body of tradition.

01:15:58

For example, the Lutheran churches of both Germany and the U .S. repudiated Luther's terribly damaging writings about the

01:16:03

Jews. Now, wherever Luther's book on the Jews and their lives, which was over 200 pages, by the way, is a huge, long book, wherever that book is in print, it is accompanied by a warning and very careful contextualization.

01:16:18

The Catholic Church also steered sharply away from its former teachings. These wonderful changes, far too long in coming, have undoubtedly saved

01:16:27

Jewish lives all over the world. Christian understandings of Judaism have been transformed. Now, anti -Semitism is by no means dead, far from it.

01:16:35

Indeed, in many places it is disturbingly on the rise, which all Christians must oppose. But here's my point.

01:16:42

The unchrist -like body of Christian anti -Jewish teaching that grounded this contempt has been rejected almost everywhere, especially in the

01:16:51

Western world. Today, at my seminary, the McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University, Jewish rabbis participate in teaching our students about Judaism in the

01:17:00

Hebrew Bible, and no one thinks twice about it. Simply impossible 50 years ago, or 100 years ago.

01:17:08

And now, here in 2014, probably very few if any of you have ever heard passages like Matthew 27,

01:17:14

John 8, and Acts 7 taught in the way that they were taught for almost 2 ,000 years. And probably the great majority of you did not know that there was a centuries -old teaching of contempt by the

01:17:26

Church against Jews. You didn't know it because most of you are blissfully young. You never had to hear it.

01:17:34

You never had to sit under a preacher spewing that stuff at you. You never had to hear it because this unchrist -like body of Christian teaching, rightly labeled a teaching of contempt, was repudiated 50 years ago.

01:17:49

And I hope you never have to encounter it again after tonight. But I also hope you will never forget what

01:17:54

I've told you. And now I make a term. I've been talking about the

01:18:00

Church's teaching of contempt against Jews for 2 ,000 words to match up the 2 ,000 years of tradition.

01:18:08

Why in the world would I be talking about this for 2 ,000 words? Here. Maybe you can figure it out.

01:18:16

Okay, now. Let's think presuppositionally here. I've tried to teach this as an absolutely necessary means of thought as we interact with opponents of the faith.

01:18:32

And that's what we're dealing with here is an opposition to the faith. You can see where this is going now.

01:18:41

You're going to have a parallel offered. And the whole point is the

01:18:48

Church has been wrong in its view of a group of people in the past. It's wrong again.

01:18:54

And it needs to change. So since it's changed in the past, then this will happen as well.

01:19:03

Now I took the time to point out that there is a fundamental disconnection between the parallel as it has been presented here.

01:19:19

Fundamental disconnection. Because the application of a meaningful hermeneutic to the text that were given could not give rise to the attitudes that were then expressed on the basis of those texts.

01:19:38

This is not the case in regards to homosexuality. So the fundamental foundational connection that would have to be there for these to be parallel instances is not there.

01:19:51

But that's the one thing, unfortunately, that the vast majority of believers on either side of the issue are self -confessedly confused about.

01:20:02

And that is how to do exegesis, hermeneutics, all the issues related thereto.

01:20:08

And so if we examine the underlying assertions that are being made, lay the argument out, strip away the emotions that are created, then you can see what's really going on and what's really, the argument that's really going to be presented.

01:20:29

I am fully aware of the limits of all historical analogies. As a long -time participant in Jewish -Christian dialogue and scholarship,

01:20:37

I am especially aware of the sensitivities of this particular historical analogy. Very much aware of that.

01:20:42

In fact, those tempted to critique my comparison, and I do have some critics these days, you might have gathered, might be interested to know that I have checked my text with very highly placed friends in the

01:20:55

American Jewish community to be sure that I did not offend or overreach or state the history wrong.

01:21:03

So let me proceed to lay out what I believe to be the appropriate analogies that can be drawn. I believe, today,

01:21:11

I believe with all my heart that the Christian church has inflicted a damaging and ultimately unchrist -like body of Christian tradition amounting to a teaching of contempt against its own sexual minorities.

01:21:24

Now, do you see all of the assumptions that have come together here, that to this point are pure assumption, no evidence has been given that the church exists in this way, that the church has sexual minorities, that this is an appropriate

01:21:46

Christian moral or ethical category, that the tradition that is spoken of here is a tradition of heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong, covenantal marriage, that this is an unbiblical tradition, that there is no positive biblical teaching in regards to homosexuality anywhere.

01:22:18

That's not even a disputable statement. I cannot begin to imagine how anyone could possibly dispute this.

01:22:29

But, now you might say, oh, but he's only 21 minutes in. He's still got 41 minutes to go.

01:22:36

Trust me. I have listened to it. And it was not his intention.

01:22:42

And I've read the book, too. Even when dealing with the text, the direction is to find, well, there's confusion here, and there's different viewpoints there, and there's some people who think this, and there's some people who think that.

01:22:57

And the idea of providing a coherent, consistent, positive exegesis of the text to substantiate the idea that God is honored when two men marry each other.

01:23:13

Whatever that means. I can't even, I don't even know what that means, because the term marry, the direct object determines its meaning, and a husband marries a wife, a wife marries a husband.

01:23:24

There is no meaning to two husbands and two wives. It's just, it's nonsensical.

01:23:30

But the idea that there is a positive biblical argument to be made for that is, of course, ridiculous.

01:23:40

It's not there. It's not offered. It can't be. So the biblical argument is going to be on the supremacy of love.

01:23:49

And that somehow, then, is the basis upon which you ignore the biblical teaching on the nature of the relationship of the genders, and what marriage is, and so on and so forth.

01:24:00

Because it's sort of unclear, you see. And a lot of this goes back to Brownson. That's why

01:24:07

Brownson is in hiding, too. He won't debate these things. But they will, at least

01:24:13

Gushy is out there. Brownson's doing some things, too, but we'll see.

01:24:19

I personally think, I'm going to make the argument that if Dr.

01:24:27

Gushy believes what he's saying, given what he says later on in his conclusion, he is under moral obligation to minimally, at least once, engage a meaningful, published, experienced representative that opposes his position.

01:24:53

I think he is under moral obligation to do so, given what he says. And we'll get to that. We won't get to that today.

01:24:59

We only have a few minutes left in the program today. Now, may

01:25:17

I address the small number of biblical texts argument? There are fewer texts in the

01:25:27

Bible condemning and prohibiting bestiality than there are homosexuality.

01:25:34

Is that morally and ethically relevant? No. I say it is not morally or ethically relevant, because the proscribed activity and behavior is so naturally abhorrent to any type of godly worldview, that you do not have to repeat the prohibition over and over and over and over again.

01:26:14

And it must be remembered that the reason that there are a relatively small number of texts that specifically prohibit homosexual behavior is because there are so many more that very positively lay out

01:26:33

God's creative decree for man and woman. Now, Gushie is,

01:26:41

Gushie, I'm sorry I keep saying Gushie, Gushie is going to say that we are talking about 1 out of every 20 people.

01:26:53

He's going to go for a 5 % homosexual number. I think at best we're talking 2 .5

01:26:58

% to 3%. But be that as it may. And again that assumes inappropriately an inherent inborn same -sex orientation, which

01:27:15

I do not believe is the majority. I think you could cut that down to a much smaller number if you took out those who are acting upon a rebellion in their choosing to engage in this lifestyle.

01:27:33

But be that as it may. We must we must examine the foundations of these statements.

01:27:45

Because unfortunately in our society today unfounded assertions are being made the very platform, the very floor of this new

01:27:57

Christianity, this new perspective that we are supposed to be adopting, that we are supposed to be having.

01:28:06

And it is the fact that they are unfounded and in fact easily refutable that if we don't engage in this type of examination now, you're going to end up creating a house of cards that will collapse when the slightest breeze of social pressure blows upon it.

01:28:27

And that social pressure will be coming. It will be coming. So we have gotten 22 minutes.

01:28:36

We've gotten approximately one third of the way in in 90 minutes.

01:28:42

Okay. It gives us sort of an idea of where we're going to go. This is what we did with Matthew Vines.

01:28:51

We let him say here we are introducing

01:28:57

I cannot possibly see how there could be an objection to this. We are introducing these arguments to a wider audience than they would ever have otherwise.

01:29:07

Yes, we are refuting them in the process. But we are doing so fairly.

01:29:16

I haven't cut anything out from what he said. I have sought to hear him in the context in which he's speaking.

01:29:23

And we will continue with that analysis as we continue to examine this subject on The Dividing Line on this coming