Ecumenism Examined (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for just the opportunity we have to gather together as saints, as called out ones, as those upon whom you have set your affection.

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Lord, I pray that you would just grant favor this morning during our time of discussion as we look to what your word says about the ecumenical movement, the importance of social justice and social issues as opposed to the gospel.

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Father, I pray that you would bless our time in Christ's name. Amen. Well, last week we started looking at, well, we looked at several things with regard to ecumenism, including what it is.

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We talked about the moral majority, the issues that were raised by it, and just in terms of, you know, what really is important, what ought we to be focused on?

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We talked about how ultimately, if you, historically, I think you'd have to say the moral majority was basically a failure.

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And all it really did, I think, in the end, was open the so -called

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Christian right, I don't think that term would have existed before the moral majority, by the way, the so -called

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Christian right to ridicule, to scoffing and scorning and, okay,

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I guess I'm going to be playing handbells this morning. And really, it just kind of, it opened up this whole idea that, you know, the

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Christian right controls the Republican Party. We started talking about the

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Manhattan Declaration and about how there are a good number of men and women who are faithful Christians who have signed it.

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But we also discussed some of the troubling aspects of it, that it, you know, and here's a quote from their page, that we are orthodox

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Catholic and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non -believers alike, to join us in defending them.

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Truths are sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

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You know, it struck me as I was even thinking about this this week, that that's the right order to have things. In other words, if we were to list those three things, and we were to think in terms of, you know, what would be the most important issues, even in terms of what the

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Bible would say, and I would argue that number, you know, the third most important thing would be the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

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Why? Because the Bible specifically talks about persecution. You know, it talks about what do you do when the government is unjust, when the government oppresses you.

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Do you fight against the government? And the answer is no. And then secondly,

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I would argue that the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, as important as that is, very important.

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I mean, the gap between three and two is pretty huge. The gap between two and one is not so big.

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But number one would have to be the sanctity of human life. The millions upon millions of babies that have been killed over the last few decades.

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Then they go on and they talk about the importance of these things, all very true. We talked about some of the

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Q &As they have on their webpage.

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And we started talking about the effect that this sort of movement could have on evangelicalism.

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And I argued, and I think this is right, that it kind of, it has two effects,

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I think. On unbelievers, it hardens their hearts against the gospel. Because we're linking arms with them, we're marching with them, we're singing songs, we're carrying signs, mostly saying hooray for our side.

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Thank you. Thank you very much. And we're making these issues the central focus of our efforts.

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And then we're going to say to them, oh, by the way, if you don't repent, you're going to hell. We just told them that they're on the right side.

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James White on page 5 of your outline said, but there are a number of troubling things

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I cannot get past in examining this document and considering its implications. When I see some of the leading ecumenists, how do you say that, ecumenists, that seems right, in the forefront, in other words, people who like to put aside doctrinal differences and unite to create social justice.

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How about if I just say that instead? That's a little long. In the forefront of the document's production,

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I am made uneasy. Well, wait a minute, Dr. White, with all due respect, isn't that guilt by association?

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You're looking at these people and assuming that what they're doing is bad. I think it's fine.

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I think it's fine to look at it that way. People who have a reputation for doing certain things, when they continue to do them and they're wrong, you need to go, hmm.

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Well, even if you don't know that they're wrong, if Betty Hinn gets on TV tonight and says, the most important thing you can do is

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X, I don't care if it's a good thing. I'm going to take a step back and go, that's Betty Hinn saying that.

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I better examine it. Better think about it. Similarly, if someone has a reputation or if they've established themselves, like, say,

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Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, as someone who reaches across denominational lines, setting aside doctrinal differences to work on bigger issues, then there are reasons to be somewhat cautious about embracing their cause.

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James White continues, great damage has been done to the cause of Christ by those who have sought to promote the kingdom by compromising the gospel, the only power given to the church that can change hearts and hence change societies.

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By relegating the gospel to a matter of opinion and difference. We're going to see that message over and over again.

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By relegating the gospel to a matter of opinion and difference, but not something that defines the

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Christian faith, these ecumenists, those people who set aside doctrinal differences in order to have left their followers with a cause without power, a quest without a solution.

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And though their open -mindedness fits better with our current postmodern culture, from a biblical perspective, they have truly betrayed the apostolic example.

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Betrayed the apostolic example. That's pretty strong language. Dr. White notes that Martin Luther King, that's

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MLK, is used as a resource to justify defying government.

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But Martin Luther King's theology was not orthodox. Listen to this from the writings of Martin Luther King.

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The orthodox attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus in terms of an inherent metaphysical substance within him seems to me inadequate.

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To say that Christ, whose example of living we are bid to follow, is divine in an ontological sense is actually harmful and detrimental.

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To invest this Christ with such supernatural qualities makes the rejoinder, oh well, he had a better chance for that kind of life than we can possibly have.

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In other words, one could easily use this as a means to hide behind his failures. So the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is, in my mind, quite readily denied.

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Makes me not want to quote him with regard to justifying some biblical principle. Divinity of Christ, in my mind, can be quite readily denied.

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James White continues, I'm glad Rome retains elements of God's truth and morality. In other words, the church of Rome, not the city of Rome, probably has very little element of God's truth and morality.

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But when did being good or moral bring one salvation? As if anyone is ever truly good or truly moral.

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Is anyone good? No. These are the matters that truly concern me about the

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Manhattan Declaration. Why does God have the right to determine human sexuality, marriage, and to define life itself?

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It's a rhetorical question. It all goes back to the gospel, does it not? If we are going to give a consistent, clear answer to our culture, we dare not find our power in false unity that overshadows the gospel and cripples our witness.

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There are consequences to, you know, marching down the aisle, really, ultimately, marching down the aisle with unbelievers.

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A couple of things from Phil Johnson. Do you see? Note well my wording. Scripture warned for applying the word

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Christian to anyone other than one who is yoked as a student to the words of Christ and his apostles.

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What would the biblical term be for someone who would define themselves as a student of the words of Christ and his apostles?

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A disciple, a follower, who affirms the gospel as described in number two above, which

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I didn't quote in there, so you can't get it. Acts 26 -28, and who has been spiritually regenerated by grace alone through faith alone.

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Then another question from Phil Johnson. Do you see? Again, note well my wording.

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Scripture warned for applying the word Christian to anyone who would distort and oppose the gospel, either personally or by aligning himself directly as a supporter, let alone promoter of such institutional distortion and opposition.

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And we're going to delve more deeply into this. In other words, can anybody say that they're a

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Christian even if they oppose the gospel and you say, yep, that person's a Christian? Do you believe that distortion of that gospel is a damning heresy such as falls under the thundering apostolic condemnation of Galatians 1, 6 -9?

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And we're going to talk more about that in a few minutes as well. Finally, or a couple more.

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Do you believe that Roman Catholicism's official formulation of the gospel is such a damning heresy?

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In other words, does the church at Rome preach the gospel such that it will send a person to heaven or to hell?

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Can a church be a Christian church if it has the gospel wrong? Just kind of a funny thing.

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We all know that the Unitarian Church, by definition, is not the

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United... What is it? What is the UU? Is it United Unitarians? Whatever they're... Universalist, yeah.

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Well, I just love the U's, you know, the more U's in there. I think I once had seven

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U's in the name of a church that I made up. But the more U's, the more problematic. But, you know, the

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Universalist Church is pretty bad. But I went by there and they're not having a Christmas Eve service. They're having a winter solstice service.

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And I thought, well, that's appropriate. Scary, but appropriate. What do you...

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Down at the bottom of page six, what do you believe the Reformation was about? Now, that's a key issue. You know, imagine you go to Martin Luther and you say, look,

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Mr. Luther, I appreciate all that you're trying to do to reclaim the gospel and everything, but there are bigger issues at stake.

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Did you know that they're trying to have men marry men and women marry women? And they're trying to oppress

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Catholics and others who own hospitals into assisting in the performance of abortion and other things.

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And by the way, abortion itself is horrible. So can we just drop all this other facade and just kind of, you know, unite on what's really important?

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Yeah, Charlie. Devil doesn't need an advocate. It's already too late.

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Go ahead. Yeah, I'm not really sure

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I understand the connection. In other words, the concentration camps are horrible evil.

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You know, one that we could say, I mean, which is worse, abortion or the concentration camps?

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Yes, they're both horrible. You know, so how can you separate that? And to say you have to have enough

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Orthodox soldiers, I'm not sure I get that. Maybe somebody else can help me out. Okay, if you're not under the banner of Christ, can you get together for a societal benefit?

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And I think the answer is yes. Now here's, you know, let's use the Martin Luther King example.

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Would it be wrong to have marched for civil rights in the 60s?

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I don't think so. Now here's the dividing line, though. The dividing line is, are you going to purposely get taken to jail, you know, wait for the police to come and the water cannons, you know, this is an unlawful assembly, da -da -da -da -da.

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I think the answer is probably not. Because if we understand Romans 13, 1

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Peter 3 correctly, we're going to see that we don't have, I think it's 3, that we don't have the capacity to, we don't have the right, as it were, to violate even unjust government.

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If you would, just turn to Romans 13 for a moment. We could also look at Daniel where it talks about, you know,

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God himself sets up governments and he takes them down, he establishes kings, he establishes kingdoms.

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This is God who, the people that he gives authority to, no matter how horrendous they are, they are his chosen people for exercising authority for his own purposes.

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Yes. Did I take an oath? Yes, as a deputy sheriff, yeah. Probably to uphold the law.

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Something like that, yeah. And I mean, which is a good question.

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Which is higher, the Constitution or the Bible? That's two.

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That's right. And she just said, Peggy just said that, you know, the king's heart is in the

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Lord's hand and so we're to submit to the government unless they require us to do something that would be sinful.

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So let's get back to the civil rights example. We're marching in the streets. I think it's perfectly okay to give our opinion on a matter.

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The question comes about when the government says, okay, this protest, this march, this whatever is done.

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You know, do you say, well, we're not done yet. We're not going to go anywhere. You know, no justice, no peace.

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You're going to have to take us all to jail. That's where I think you have to go. I don't think you have the right to do that.

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Let's look at Romans 13 first and then we'll go to 1 Peter 2. Romans 13, one of my favorite verses to give inmates in the jail because, you know, they would be getting their property rolled up.

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They'd be going to what we would call the hole for disobedience of, you know, or disrespecting an officer or whatever they were doing, you know, and so I'd see a little

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Bible in their bag of property that they were going to have to carry down to the hole and I'd say, oh, do you read that?

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Oh, yes, sir. I'm a Christian. They'd go, oh, that's cool. Do me a favor. When you get down to the hole and you've got all that free time, yeah, read

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Romans 13, and next time when you come back, have a better attitude. And they'd be like, who are you, the chaplain or the senior?

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Yeah, it doesn't matter. We're all the same. Romans 13, and let's see, verses 1, let's just read 1 and 2.

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Who would like to read that? Go ahead. I don't think that leaves a whole lot of wiggle room.

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Again, I think if you have to, you know, if they come to you and say, well, you know,

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Steve, you're going to have to assist in their abortion, or Steve, you can no longer preach the gospel, or Steve, you have to, you know, not speak out about what the

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Bible says about homosexuality, well, God comes first. But if it's, you know, you're not allowed to protest in that way, you're not allowed to do this or that or the other thing, you have to pay taxes you don't want to pay.

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Yeah, and definitely at the time of 1 Peter it was Nero, and, you know, Nero, of course, was famous for using

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Christians as torches and doing all kinds of things to Christians, blamed them for the burning of Rome and endless persecution.

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In fact, let's look at 1 Peter because Nero was the ruler of the

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Roman Empire when Peter wrote 1 Peter. 1 Peter 2, verse 13, and listen to the motivation he gives.

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He doesn't say, you know, for conscience sake, so that you'll feel better about yourself or anything else.

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Listen to 1 Peter 2, verse 13. Submit yourselves for the

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Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to government as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.

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For such is the will of God that by doing right, you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

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You know, when men were burned, I mean, well, let's just go back a second. When the

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Lord went to the cross, was he justly put to death? I wouldn't argue that he was justly put to death.

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I would say that he was legally put to death. He was legally put to death in the sense that the Roman system let him put virtually anybody to death.

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But, you know, was it just? I don't think so. You know, if he had a jury of his peers, would they have voted to convict?

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I don't know how. Right, right.

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But, I mean, ultimately, if we were to look at it from a human perspective, in terms of how we see innocence and justice and all those things, we would say it was an outrage.

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It was only just in the cosmic divine sense where God, in order to forgive sin, needed a sacrifice that was capable of paying that price.

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But, again, I don't think we'll see the idea of, you know, some kind of inherent right that we have to protest whatever the government, or, you know, to actually revolt against the government.

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Yes, Charlie, further clarification, yes. I see that hand. Well, that's why

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I consider myself a British subject, by the way. I'm kidding. That's right.

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Yeah, not celebrating the 4th of July is probably a little bit of an absurdity. And you miss a lot of really cool fireworks.

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But if God draws the boundaries, if he sets up the kingdoms, if he decides all the geographical boundaries, which is what the

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Bible would indicate to us, you know, we could say, for example, was the

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American Revolution a biblical concept? I don't think so. But does

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God use the sinful acts of men for his own purposes? And I think the answer to that is yes. You know, has this country done bad things in its history?

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Yes. Has it done good things in its history? Yes. But that's not really the material question.

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The material question is what authority does it have? What authority does the government have?

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Well, the authority given to it by God. And as such, we need to submit to that,

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Bruce. Well, Corey Ten Boom, hiding

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Jews during World War II, what do you think, Bruce? So, again,

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I think, you know, the question comes down to here's God's law, here's man's law, which takes precedence?

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Well, okay, well, I would ask you this. A better analogy would be to take the, to hide, if we could somehow protect the babies that were being, but that's not the same thing.

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In other words, what Corey Ten Boom did was kind of, I mean,

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I'll generalize a little bit here. It was a more passive act in that she was not having to overtly rebel or enact violence of any kind in order to do what she was doing.

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Peggy? Well, what would be wrong?

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Well, I mean, Peggy brings up a good point. You know, what if we weren't allowed, you know, legally to meet?

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Would we meet? And the answer is, well, look around the world. You know, what was going on during the, in the

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Soviet Union? Or what was going on in China? You know, were Christians getting together and meeting?

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The answer is yes. And, you know, so what would happen in those Soviet churches?

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You know, they'd drag the pastor out and the next guy would go, okay, I guess I'm the next one up, you know?

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So, yes, Ms. Cooley. Yeah, yeah,

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I mean, interesting, in the letter to Philemon, Paul never says, I personally abhorred, you know,

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I find it abhorrent. I think we need to do away with it. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

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In fact, the New Testament, while it never says slavery is a good thing, it never says we need to protest slavery.

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We need to walk, you know, it's immoral. Well, it was. It was immoral. That's right.

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Well, we're all equal in terms of being image bearers. Pastor Mike, I don't think

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I talked about this before, but he was listening to an autobiography of, who was the slave set free?

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What's that? No, no, the slave who was set free and became quite an intellectual during the

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Civil War era. Yeah, Douglas. And he described some of the things that were done to slaves.

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And you just can't even fathom how they would do this.

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You know, the slave owners having babies with slaves and then selling off their own progeny and all these really heinous things going on.

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And it comes down to one thing, the people viewing other people as less than people, as less than image bearers, violating

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Scripture. It's just wrong. And, you know, would it be the right thing to, you know, vote, to contribute to,

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I suppose. But ultimately, here's what we know, that no matter how much social justice we can engender and create in the

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United States, we're still going to have a sinful society. The better it looks on the outside, it's really kind of immaterial.

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Okay, Pam posits that if we're going to be consistent, maybe we ought to say that Corrie ten Boom was wrong to disobey.

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And I don't really necessarily agree with that. Again, I think if we view the preservation of human life and we can do that in a way that is not violent.

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I mean, I ultimately, I mean, I could be wrong here, but I don't have any particular. I would have a hard time.

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It would be almost impossible for me to imagine me being willing to say, yep, yep,

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I've got three Jews up there in my. I couldn't do that. I don't know how anybody could do that.

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But that's just. Yeah, yeah. And I think, though, that you have to be, that disobedience to man's law in order to uphold

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God's law may come with a price. And that's just the reality of that. Well, let's think about that.

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Daniel asked a good question. What do we do if we've taken an oath, you know, to protect the

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Constitution against all, you know, and the country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, da -da -da -da -da? And, I mean,

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I think I have several responses to that. First of all, I think, you know, if, for example, you are serving in the military and your officer tells you to shoot somebody that should not be shot, do you obey him or do you obey your own conscience?

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You know, you have to obey your own conscience. Now let's go a step further. Let's say that you are, for whatever reason, a police officer, and you arrive at a protest outside of an abortion clinic.

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What do you do? What's that? Yeah, I mean, you know, you're not going to go up, you're not going to let somebody shoot an abortion doctor.

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You're not going to, and at the same time, let's say the, you know, here's what typically happens.

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There's a court order prohibiting protesters from blocking access to an abortion clinic.

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If I'm a police officer and I respond there and I go, well, I can't arrest these people because I think abortion's wrong,

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I don't think I'm fulfilling my, I mean, this is just my opinion. I think my obligation is to enforce that court order not because I want abortions to go on but because there are means for dealing with what is going on and it doesn't include breaking the law in that particular case.

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Besides that, if it is legal to do what these people are doing, and it is, sadly, then,

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I mean, here's the difference. Do we want to change behavior or do we want to change lives?

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If we want to change behavior, then we ought to, sorry, we had to strap suicide bombs to ourselves and walk into abortion clinics.

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That's not what we do. That's not Christianity. We don't convert at the point of a sword.

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We've never done that. We don't do that. That is not Christianity. It's not about repeat after me three times.

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There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. You are now a Muslim. We don't do that.

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So this idea that we can somehow save the world by taking matters into our own hands is just not right.

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And, again, if we use the example of Paul from Philemon, what we would see is Paul did not say he was not a social crusader.

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He taught we're equal. At the foot of the cross, we're all equal. But we're subject to powers and authorities.

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Philemon, I mean, still the equation of slavery didn't change just because he asked for forgiveness for Philemon.

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Okay, Steve. That's a great point.

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I mean, Steve brings up the point, ultimately, it is a matter of stewardship. You know, am I going to spend of my time, resources, efforts trying to change laws or am

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I going to try to change lives? Let's say, for example, I mean, I have a lot of opinions about abortion.

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I don't particularly think the law as it stands right now is particularly constitutional, be that as it may.

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I could spend all my time trying to change the

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Constitution. I could do a lot of different things, but ultimately, is that going to change anything? People still do what they want to do.

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They're still going to murder babies. You know, I think we more appropriately should have the pro -life side and the pro -murder side because that's what the two sides are.

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I don't know, probably most of you saw the interview with this woman.

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She was on the Huckabee show a few weeks ago, several weeks ago. I think Mike sent it out.

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Basically, this woman worked in an abortion clinic and when she actually had to assist on one where they were using, what's the imaging stuff?

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Ultrasound. They were using that while they were doing the abortion. She saw that and she saw the baby moving and trying to get away from the probe they were putting in and everything.

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She said, at that moment, I knew it was a baby. I knew I had to stop.

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She goes, I spent several weeks trying to find another job and everything else. She goes, but I knew I had to quit. It's just the lies that are told, it's a tumor.

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It's this, it's that, it's the other thing. When people see the reality, it changes their minds.

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But we can't rely on changing laws, on investing our time and energy in doing that, because ultimately the corruptible, sinful, misleading hearts of people are going to cause them to do what they want to do.

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Go ahead, Mark. That's a great point.

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And this is kind of an overarching theme. The difficulty we have in uniting with unbelievers is that all of a sudden, we're charging one hill and we're charging another hill and they're right beside us and then what do we do?

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Great job, go to hell. I mean, that's what, right? We're not going to preach them the gospel.

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We're just going to give them the kind of pat on the back as they go into the eternal abyss.

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Great job. Never see you again. It's just wrong. It's just wrong.

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It's the, as James White said, the issue is the gospel. We're yoking ourselves together with unbelievers and we've got two different paths.

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They're going off, as I said, to hell. We're on our way to heaven and we're acting as if we're marching in the same direction.

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Well, we'll get to that. Why do we think we'd be prohibited from giving the gospel? We're not. What we've done, though, is we've taken a platform that we might have and we've invited them up on it.

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We've said, you are our moral equal. You know, you are our brother in this, you know, our comrade in arms, and we're calling them in this declaration, if we signed it, we're calling them

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Christians. It is what it says. Okay.

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All right, help me out. Yeah, well, and let's just be clear here.

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What we're talking about overall is the Manhattan Declaration. So we are talking about uniting with unbelievers under the banner of Christ.

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Yeah, well, it's easy, except it's apparently not easy because there are a number of Christians who are signing it, right?

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Bruce. Well, I think some could view it that way, but the document doesn't say that.

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The answer is yes, and we'll probably not get to it until next week.

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And I'll tell you why. I'll just give you kind of a preview because we're going to see that there is one religion that is encouraging all this, and they have their own reason for it.

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And, you know, I'll just go so far as to say, did I already say mother and child reunion once this morning?

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I think I said it maybe upstairs. But it's that kind of goal to gather everyone, all the lost children, back to the mothership, as it were.

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Pam. Yeah, Pam says she thinks it's worse than merely yoking themselves with unbelievers because they're yoking themselves together with false prophets.

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And pretty much that's – I have a lot of issues along those lines.

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Yeah, Charlie. Yes, I agree.

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I think there is benefit to the body of Christ being in the world. I think there is benefit to the body of Christ making its views known with regard to abortion, with regard to homosexual marriage.

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But it has to be tied to the truth. It has to be tied to an accurate proclamation of the gospel.

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When you separate those things, then you become nothing better than, I would argue, a legalist, a moralist.

42:40

You're trying to improve the outside and not dealing with the ultimate issue. It's like the – not the abortion clinics, but the pregnancy crisis centers.

42:54

If a pregnancy crisis center was to just focus on making sure that a woman's temporal needs were met, that she could get tested for venereal disease, and then they went out and started getting involved in other things, other kind of abstinence programs in schools and all these other kind of things, and they started caring more about the symptoms than the ultimate disease, then guess what's going to happen?

43:22

Twenty -five, thirty years down the road, these pregnancy crisis centers are going to be abortion clinics because this is –

43:29

I don't want to sound like a fundamentalist nut, but this is what happens. When you start caring more about social justice and social issues, and you allow them to be bifurcated, to be cut off from the gospel, then ultimately what you wind up with is a social gospel, a social agenda that,

43:49

A, doesn't save anybody, B, takes you down a road where this is your focus, and you've become a liberal.

43:58

This is what happens. I mean, if we were to look at the early 20th century, as soon as the churches became more concerned about helping the poor, feeding – all these very worthy things, and there's nothing wrong with them, by the way.

44:17

I'm not saying don't help anybody. I'm not saying don't feed the people who are hungry and don't clothe those who don't have clothing, don't give shelter to those who don't –

44:27

I'm not saying any of those things. What I am saying is, if that becomes your focus, then you're going to lose your way.

44:35

You're going to lose your way. There's nothing wrong with giving somebody some food. There's nothing wrong with giving clothing. There's nothing wrong with giving shelter.

44:42

But it has to be in an overarching scheme where you want to give the gospel, because if you could feed them, clothe them, shelter them for the rest of their lives, and then they go to hell, what have you done?

44:52

You've done nothing. Maybe, but again,

45:48

I think you're back to the moral majority. Let me give you another historical example. It just came to my mind.

45:54

One of the great social ills that was solved in the 20th century was, of course, liquor, alcohol.

46:01

They banned it. It worked great. And what was that? It was an outgrowth of socially concerned

46:10

Christians. Gifts, ATF, yeah.

46:16

But, I mean, in other words, it was probably motivated by a good sense of wanting to do things, but what happens is you impose some kind of morality on people, and the result is even worse, because now you've got to get their alcohol, they'll do just about anything, and it shows.

46:42

Is alcohol a good thing? Well, it can be, but can it be a bad thing?

46:48

It absolutely can be. But when you just, if all you're trying to do is impose a morality on people, it will always fail, and the result,

46:58

I would argue, is ultimately worse than not trying to impose a morality on them, because the more you push someone to do good whose soul bent is to do evil, to sin, then you're just saying, rebel more.

47:16

And our objective is to point out their rebellion to them, but not to do so in an external way, but in an internal way.

47:22

We want to bring the word of God to bear on their lives so that they say, I get it, I'm going to stop rebelling against God.

47:29

Yep, I agree, and I don't think we need to fight to prove we're right.

48:39

But you're right, the motivation is very key. On him?

49:01

No, on your family. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

49:37

Yeah, I would argue that in that instance where you take action against a burglar in protection of your family, you've actually become an arm of the government, in effect, because that person is breaking the law.

49:52

So, yes, John. Okay.

50:20

Yeah, it wouldn't be a bad thing to, well, let me put it to you this way.

50:26

Would I personally like to see abortion outlawed? Yes. Would that stop abortion?

50:34

No. Does that mean I would not want to see abortion outlawed? No, I'm all for it.

50:44

But the ultimate question is, would imposing such a law, I don't mean pragmatically, would it work?

50:52

And the answer is, I don't think so. A, I don't think it would stop abortion. B, I think that is something that would actually cause for good or for ill.

51:05

I mean, I think that's the sort of thing that could actually lead to a civil war. Yeah? Yeah?

51:28

That's why we have the IRS, John. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what

51:47

I was saying earlier. When we say we can't do something, there's even more rebellion in the unsaved heart. But, you know, again, would there be something wrong with trying to get changes in the abortion law?

51:58

No. I think, again, what we get back to is this. Here's the big difference, and Daniel said it well.

52:05

If we are going to stand under the banner of Christ and say, you know, we are

52:11

Christians united against, bam, bam, bam. We don't agree on, as we're going to see next week, we don't agree on fine points of doctrine.

52:23

But we agree on the big issues, and the big issues are abortion, gay marriage, and religious freedom.

52:31

We agree on those things, and those are what we're going to, you know, unite together. When we do that under the banner of Christ, as Daniel said,

52:38

I think there's an issue. If we do that in a strictly secular forum,

52:47

I think it's different. Now, again, to be clear, I am not personally in favor of abortion, gay marriage.

52:59

In fact, I would, you know, you'd have to roll over me with a steamroller to get me to do a gay marriage.

53:07

And, in fact, after I was dead, I probably still wouldn't do it. It's just not going to happen because it's an abomination on the side of God.

53:17

But that's not the issue. The issue is do we unite, do we give ultimately the label, do we cede the label

53:25

Christian to those who teach a different gospel? And that's what this document does, setting aside whether or not any of these causes in and of themselves are good, and I would say that they are.

53:39

That is not the issue. The issue is are we so concerned about these issues that we just set aside the truth, that we just kind of put that on the back burner?

53:48

Well, you know, that gospel thing, we'll get back to that. Right now, let's change these issues.

53:55

The gospel has to be the warp and woof, the integral, the thing that we integrate into all that we do, whatever it is.

54:07

Steve? Right, which is another great point because,

54:45

I mean, in some kind of strange way, ultimately by signing this declaration, we might find ourselves linked with people that we just totally don't,

54:56

I mean, not only don't agree with on the gospel, but don't agree with on a number of things. So very interesting point.

55:02

Anyway, we need to close. We will continue this discussion next week. Father, I just thank you for this time that we could talk and consider very challenging issues, not with regard to the truths of what you said concerning life, the sanctity of it, whether it be abortion, euthanasia, or any such thing, marriage and the sanctity of that, or even the religious liberty that you have granted us here in this country.

55:43

Father, all those issues are really ultimately not up for debate. What is up for debate is, sadly, of far more importance, which is the saving gospel.

56:00

Father, I would just pray that you would make us faithful proclaimers of it, never setting it aside for any reason, but clinging to the once for all delivered faith.