A Challenge for Christians in the Face of Continued Decline

Okay, so we just tried doing a dividing line, and I'm overseas, but all the failure was at the office.

The net just kept dying, and we'd just be disconnected. It wasn't due to the hotel

Wi -Fi or anything else. It was equipment, hardware issues there in Phoenix.

Still had all this stuff queued up to talk about, and so I'm still going to try to do it, maybe a little bit faster than I would have, because I may have to break this up into some pieces, maybe not cover as many things.

I don't know. We'll see. Hotel Wi -Fi and big files, multiple gigabytes, a little bit on the shaky side, but basically

I had started talking about the collapse of Tony Campolo, which started a long time ago, that happened to coincide with the

Jen Hatmaker collapse yesterday on the subject of a biblical view of sexuality and marriage.

There's nothing new or surprising here. We've been saying for a number of years we would see a tsunami of apostasy and collapse on this issue.

Very few people in what calls itself evangelicalism have a sufficiently robust or deep view of Scripture, the nature of Scripture, the perspicuity of Scripture, Sola Scriptura, Tota Scriptura, to even maintain really a seriously

Trinitarian theology, let alone a high soteriology and hence a high view of ethics and morals.

That's what we're seeing happening, of course, in our society as more societal pressure comes to bear, then people begin moving their perspectives.

Campolo has an article in Premier Christianity, which makes you wonder a little bit about where even the ostensibly conservatives in Britain are going.

He was asked, what made you change your mind on homosexuality? He says, one of the things that changed me was going back and studying biblical verses and studying the church fathers.

I found that they said very little about it, if anything at all. Jesus, of course, never even mentions it, which is interesting.

Now, I stop immediately. I've said many times before, if you hear an ostensibly

Christian leader argue like this, you know you're talking about someone who does not take biblical theology seriously.

The early church fathers said very little about it. Why? Because it was universally recognized as an abomination before God.

There was no dispute. There was no one promoting it as a proper activity for a

Jewish believer or a Christian believer. There's very little discussion about bestiality.

There's very little discussion about rape. There's very little discussion about all sorts of behaviors in the early church fathers because there was no question concerning the sinfulness of these behaviors.

Why should there be discussion about it? If everyone is agreed concerning the nature of these activities, why would you expect discussion about it?

This kind of argument is basically, well, it just obviously wasn't an important issue for them. Well, that's like saying because they didn't spend a tremendous amount of time saying that you shouldn't kill your parents means that killing your parents is not an important thing.

That's absurd. But that's the kind of argumentation being used. And then Jesus, of course, never even mentions it, which is interesting.

Why? Because anyone who has even for a moment seriously interacted with Jesus' view of scripture and the law can never make this kind of argument.

Well, Jesus never mentions it. He never mentioned bestiality. He never mentioned incest. Didn't have to.

He quotes, you know, I just remind you of David Gushy's amazing statement a number of just, well, just a couple of years ago, where he said, we've got to stop worrying about quoting from arcane texts from the book of Leviticus, and instead we need to learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And, of course, love your neighbor as yourself comes from the middle of the holiness code in Leviticus chapter 19.

This is the problem. Anyone who says Jesus never said anything about homosexuality just doesn't know anything about Jesus' teaching of the perpetuity and holiness of God's law.

It's just, it's embarrassing for a person who claims to have any kind of leadership in the

Christian church to make statements like this. It is a collapse. And it's shocking that Campolo would say this.

Then he goes on to say, if there's one passage gay people feel they're clobbered with, now he's now just simply repeating the talking points of the homosexual movement, just as plain as can be.

The clobber passages, this is straight out of the Metropolitan Church, and nothing new here at all, just repeating what he's being told to say, basically.

Feel they're being clobbered with, it's out of the first chapter of Romans, and of course he quotes Romans 1, 23 through 27.

And it's a paraphrase, it's not even close to an actual translation, which is ironic. What Paul is doing is tying this homosexual behavior that he's talking about with idolatry.

Now again, we'll stop immediately. It would be nice if we could find some of these promoters of homosexuality who can walk through Romans 1, follow a context, follow an argument,

I've not met a one. Not met a one. We need to go back and restart or figure out where we were in the response to Brownson, but we got through in responding to Brownson, who is their primary promoter now.

His way around the clarity of Romans chapter 1, which is to, in essence, remove it from its

Jewishness, its Jewish background, its biblical background, because if it's drawing from that, then there's no question about what's being said, there's no question about what nature is, it's

God's created order. So his way around it, and it really is just a way around it, it's not exegesis, it's eisegesis, but is to say, well, the background of this is actually

Stoic philosophy. And so once you understand what the Stoics believed about this, then what's natural is what is expected rather than what is created, and therefore it just removes this from having relevance.

There's, I don't know how many dozens of different excuses there are now that have been glommed onto by homosexual advocates.

If any one of them were actually compelling, why do they keep coming up with new ones? They themselves recognize, and there are homosexual scholars that recognize, there's really no way around this.

What it's talking about is what it's talking about. It is talking about homosexual practice.

There's no question about it. But anyway, he says what Paul is doing is tying this homosexual behavior that he's talking about with idolatry.

Actually what he's doing is he's describing what idolatry is and the result that it has in creation.

What does it mean when you exchange the truth of God for a lie? Well, when you exchange the truth of God for a lie, that ends up impacting all of your experience so that you exchange the truth of who you are for a lie.

So what are to be your natural created affections, which for a man is for a woman, for a woman is for a man, procreation is species, marriage, man takes care of woman, woman loves man, family, children.

This is God's ordained way. Instead, that becomes twisted.

That becomes disturbed. That becomes disrupted in many different ways.

But homosexuality is one of the ways that is specifically given as an illustration of the effect of the suppression of the knowledge of God and idolatry in man's experience.

He goes on to say, if you read that passage carefully, it says they gave up their natural affections.

The homosexuals say, you don't get it Campolo, my natural affection was never heterosexual. My natural affection was homosexual.

Stop right there. Mankind does not get to define what natural affection is.

The whole point of Romans 1 is that God as creator, the role of his creatorship begins in verse 18.

The revelation that God has made of his existence through that which has been made leaves them unapologetus, without an apologetic.

That's why they always have to chop Romans 1 up. They cannot walk from the beginning to the end. This is always one of the ways to be able to determine when someone is trying to get around a biblical teaching, can they walk through the text?

How many times in debates can you walk through John chapter 6 and follow the argument?

Can you walk through Romans chapter 9? Follow the argument. Can you walk through Romans chapter 1?

Follow the argument. What do the debates show? No, those that we debate can't do that, because they are not actually handling the text of scripture in a meaningful fashion, and Campolo isn't either.

As I began to review scripture, I began to say, wait a minute, maybe this isn't as strong a condemnation as I think it is.

Maybe he's condemning obscenities that were related to idolatry, rather than loving relationships between two persons.

Again, straight out of the LGBTQRSTUV playbook, this is old stuff.

This has been around for decades now. It is not meaningful to anyone who takes the

Bible seriously. Campolo can just simply be dismissed now as, well, he's been doing this for a long time, but this idea of loving relationships between two persons, again, the

Bible gets to define that. Jesus gets to define that. There is no such thing in scripture as a loving relationship based upon a rebellion against God's created order.

That is not biblical. It will never be biblical, no matter how many people collapse on the issue. It will never be coherent, and it does not deserve our respect, at least from a biblical perspective.

When we see these types of things, he says, I know all the arguments pro and con.

No, clearly, you don't. I've thought of everything. Really? You have? Well, you're much brighter than any of the rest of us, and I'm still open to considering new things when somebody has something new to say.

Having said all of that, I just meet too many wonderful Christian people who are in gay relationships, and I know this.

My own marriage has been an incredible relationship. If I was to ask what has been the greatest influence in nurturing me as a

Christian, I would say, it's my wife. I then ask myself a very simple question. Can I deny homosexual couples what

I am personally experiencing in the way of blessings and joy in a relationship? I immediately go, wow, how sad to see such utter confusion on the part of a person who claims to be a

Christian. That's your wife. That's not another man. She is different than you.

It's a complementary relationship. You're not in love with a mirror image, and you are obviously not under the authority of Scripture in defining these things any longer as well.

So, Campolo, collapse. Tentmaker, collapse.

All these other... And what do you trace it back to? You trace it back to a fundamental collapse in regards to their view of Scripture and to their faith that God has spoken.

And in essence, what I would say is they have a different view of Scripture than Jesus did. And as long as you have a different view of Scripture than Jesus did, you will not actually be one who can consistently follow

Jesus. You may think you are, but you will be inconsistent in your so doing. You will be inconsistent.

And you're going to see this over and over again. I keep telling folks, just be aware of the fact this is the way it's going to be.

This is the way it's going to be. And your faith is going to have to be focused upon what

God's truth is and your relationship to him, and it's not going to be able to have a component of this person or that person, me, anyone else like me.

You can't follow him in. You're going to have to be convinced in and of yourself of what it's going to cost to follow after Jesus Christ in these things.

That's very, very, very important. There was a challenge for Christians posted on the web while I was here in Australia.

And the fellow who posted it actually had some exchange with Rich and I.

I don't know what it's really all about. I can't really figure it out. I've seen things like this before.

It's not unique. It seems to be presented in some level of mockery, but leaving that aside, basically this atheist says,

I'm giving Christians an opportunity to express their faith.

I really doubt that extremely. A series of objections to the

Christian faith, and they're based upon naturalistic materialism. And so here is a challenge for Christians, and we're supposed to affirm these things.

Number one, I believe a snake serpent talked, Genesis 3 .1. Yes, I do believe that.

Because you see, the ability to speak and communicate is not simply a naturalistic, evolutionary development.

We are made in the image of God. God is able to communicate. We are able to communicate because God desires to communicate with us.

The lower animals are not given this same capacity for communication in the normal situation.

But, the only thing that could be embarrassing about this, is if you actually believe in such things as miracles.

That there are rare and unusual times where God, for his purposes, intervenes and suspends natural law.

Now, in this particular situation, prior to the fall, we were given very little information concerning the nature of a serpent, for example, or what the capacity of such a creature might be.

But, the point is, this is a supernatural incident. And, I am not embarrassed by believing the supernatural because I believe

Jesus rose from the dead. I believe God created the universe.

And, if he has a reason and a purpose to allow for the natural, normal state of things to be altered so as to bring about a special event, that's

God's right. He can do that whenever he chooses to do so, for his purposes and in accordance with his character.

And so, in the incidence of the fall of man, there was an interaction between the woman and what is called the serpent.

And, there was communication between them. Now, I don't know the nature of that communication, the sense of how this speech took place or anything else.

But, yes, there's no question that this took place. And, unless you're a rabid, fundamentalist, naturalistic materialist, which most atheists are, even though they've never really thought through how they could possibly defend that.

It's just an assumption. It's a presupposition on their part. Then, you wouldn't have any objection to that. Well, again, that's quite possible.

Actually, though, Jonah said he went down into Sheol, which is the grave. And so, there would be a closer parallel.

Because, remember, Jesus used Jonah, talked about the sign of Jonah. There would be a closer parallel if, in fact,

Jonah died and was resurrected when he was expelled up onto the beach.

Because then you'd have a direct parallel to what happens in regards to Jesus, who dies, is buried, and rises again.

So, it's possible that that happened. Or, it's just as possible, if not more likely, that something else happened in that instance.

That you actually had a resurrection, which becomes then a paradigm, a prophetic type that is then fulfilled in Jesus.

So, yeah, I'm definitely a supernaturalist. The Bible doesn't know anything about naturalistic materialists other than to say they're foolish.

Now, a number of people that I saw online criticized this, saying, well, Jesus wasn't on earth yet. What are you talking about? I don't really have any problem with putting it this way, as long as what's being understood on the part of the author is that Jesus preexisted as the eternal

Son of God, and that he, in perfect union with the

Father, is the one who gave us the law. He's involved with creation.

As long as you're a Trinitarian, then there's no problem looking at this. But it also begs the question, why you're an atheist, if you also accept that Jesus had the authority to do these things, and he rose from the dead.

You might want to think about what that might mean for you. But, I believe that Jesus ordered the stoning of rebellious children. Deuteronomy 21, 18 -21.

Well, I did a whole series on the Holiness Code, which included this text, and numerous other very difficult texts in the

Old Testament law. And I pointed out in that instance that you're not talking about a little seven -year -old here.

You would be talking about a later teenager into early adult years. You'd be talking about someone who is a rebel against God's law, who is breaking

God's law, and could very obviously be one of those who would then bring about the shedding of blood, innocent blood.

There's a great deal of concern in the law concerning that particular issue, making atonement for the shedding of innocent blood, et cetera, et cetera.

And so this is simply a recognition that the ones who would have the first indication of such a rebellious person that could bring blood guiltiness upon the covenant people would probably be the ones who know the individual best, and that would be the parents.

And so it is a call for parents to look first and foremost to the good of the holy people of God, and hence to recognize the tremendous sinfulness of the shedding of innocent blood, violence in the land, whatever else it might be that brings blood guiltiness upon the people.

And that then connects this with number seven, I believe the

Jesus ordered that a husband should be the first one to throw a stone at his wife if she leads him away from belief,

Deuteronomy 13, 6 -10. Again, another text that I preached upon in the

Holiness Code series, where the specific statement was made that even if it is the wife of your bosom, the closest friend that you have, if anyone amongst the covenant people of God secretly is seeking to promulgate idolatry and rebellion amongst the people, that you cannot keep this secret.

You cannot keep this private. You are to testify against them before the elders, and that they are to be purged from the people.

Again, these are laws for God's covenant people. These are laws for people who, as a nation, have covenanted with God to be his holy people.

There are no people like this in the sense of a nation today. This is where the issue of forms of theonomy come in.

I have a very high view of God's law and its relevance today, but I also recognize that the penology that was prescribed was a penology given to a covenant people and was to be undertaken by a covenant people, a holy people before God.

Hence, if you do not have that today, that the idea of bringing the exact same punishments to bear, when you no longer have a priest, you no longer have one who's actually representing

God as far as seeking to promote his glory and his name who is in covenant with God.

When you no longer have that situation, then the issue of the penology, that is the penalties that are to be prescribed, becomes quite problematic.

And so, number three and seven are both indications of the incredible importance that was attached to fidelity and faithfulness amongst the people of God in the law of God, which, of course, the people of God never lived up to.

That's why there had to be a new covenant. That's why Jeremiah chapter 31 is there. That's why there had to be an internal change.

The external simply was not sufficient in any way. Number four,

I believe Jesus said that the Israelites could take virgin women for themselves and give 32 virgin women to Jesus.

Now, there's some really serious confusion on the part of the author in much of this.

What is referred to in Numbers chapter 31, there's a couple things there.

The idea of giving virgin women to Jesus, it's just so absurd that it's hard to even know how to interact with it.

But we'll go down to Numbers 31 .31. Well, that doesn't make any sense, does it?

I'm sorry. Is there an error in the...

Yeah, the reference isn't even correct. That's interesting. Numbers 31 .31,

yeah, has absolutely nothing to do with any of that at all. Well, that's nice.

Fundamentally, the issue was that when the Israelites took an enemy nation, that they were allowed to take certain of the women who had not known men.

And this, of course, had to do with the military situation that existed in the day and what is often missed by these folks.

And I don't even have a clue what the 32 virgin women to Jesus thing is. Since I can't even get the text right, then it's obviously just a flight of fancy imagination.

But the normal objection is to the idea of the raping of slave women, et cetera, et cetera.

What's normally missed, and again, if you go to Sermon Audio, look up the Holiness Code in the sermon series that I did at PRBC and look these texts up,

I expand upon these things more fully. But what you need to understand is if there was not provision made for these women, once the husbands had either died in battle or been executed, they would be left with no visible means of support in a destroyed area.

And basically, it was a condemnation to death. This was actually a mechanism whereby life could be saved.

We don't view it that way today because we live in very different situations than they did back then.

But fundamentally, this was a mechanism that would allow for the saving of life and the continuation of individuals and the society with still very often a real concern concerning the bringing in of idolatry and the temptation to foreign idols.

That frequently gets mixed in as well in the situation. But there were a number of texts that we dealt with that from a modern perspective looked so very strange, but from the ancient perspective made perfect sense in the sense that they were actually saving people alive.

Again, I have no idea what the 32 Virgin Women of Jesus says because the text reference isn't even right.

I believe Jesus sanctioned abortion, killing the unborn if an unfaithful wife was pregnant, Numbers 5, 19 -21.

Again, the author has no clue how to read the Old Testament or what's going on. That's actually the text concerning the faithfulness test.

It has nothing to do with abortion. It has nothing to do with murder of unborn children. It has to do with a wife who is suspicious and a test, the willingness on her part to undergo this test and to make a vow that she has not been unfaithful to her covenant has zippity -dippity -doo -dah to do with abortion.

If you want anything in the law that has to do with that, look at the striking of the woman who's pregnant, what happens if stillbirth or if the baby's born healthy, etc.,

etc., but this is just a complete faceplant on the part of the atheist in ignorance of the

Old Testament text. Very, very common. Number 6, I believe that many dead people came out of the graves when

Jesus died, Matthew 27, 52. Once again, yes, they did. So, Jesus rose from the dead.

There was a resurrection of saints that were known to the people in Jerusalem at that time period.

It was obviously very partial. It was simply emblematic of the resurrection itself that was taking place.

There is no expansion upon its meaning, but once again, a Christian who believes

Jesus rose from the dead is in a rather odd situation to say, well,

Jesus can rise from the dead, but nobody else can. Again, only the fundamentalist, naturalistic materialist would have any issue with this or think that it's embarrassing or something like that.

It's recorded for us. No special meaning is attached to it outside of it being one of the accompanying signs of the death of Christ, the tearing of the veil in the temple, etc.,

etc. We already looked at number 7. Finally, number 8, I believe that Jesus stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son, but didn't stop

Jephthah from sacrificing his daughter. Two things.

Obviously shows an extremely shallow, disrespectful view of what happens in regards to Abraham and Isaac, the fact that this becomes,

I think, one of the key prophetic pictures of what is going to be happening in the giving of Jesus himself voluntarily upon Calvary's cross.

What happens with Jephthah, interestingly enough, in our regular reading of the

Old Testament Scriptures, that was the text we read a week ago Sunday night at our church as we're working through.

Right now we're in Judges. I read that specific text just a few weeks ago, as I said.

And in that context, there's two major understandings as to what took place in regard to Jephthah's daughter.

The one way to understand devoted to destruction is that she was killed.

Exactly how is not noted, but certainly devoted to destruction can mean that, and that is a possibility.

Judges gives us a real insight into God working with a people who, while they possess the

Old Testament law, clearly are operating on an extremely low level of ethics and morality and constantly falling into sin and slavery and then raising up judges that deliver the people.

But very early on, it's a very clear indication that just simply being close to Moses and Joshua chronologically, as far as generations is concerned, does not mean that you're close to them in an understanding of the things of God and really what will come out much more in the prophets.

It is a sad picture of the reality of the necessity of the new covenant, the necessity of an inward change, because the people of Israel clearly are not inwardly changed.

And so they're constantly in this cycle of apostasy and rebellion and then deliverance.

The other option, however, what is interesting is that Jephthah's daughter and then the establishment of this mourning for Jephthah's daughter is in reference to what?

To her virginity. And so it is just as possible that what happened with Jephthah's daughter is that she remained unmarried.

That is, that she remained a virgin, did not have children. Not having children was considered a tremendous burden.

And so that the devotion of her was to a life of celibacy and service to God, not to her destruction.

Now, again, at the time of the judges, could have gone either direction. We just simply are not told.

What is mourned is her virginity and not having children.

So that's a possibility. But the fact is, we don't know. And there is no connection, of course, logically, rationally, biblically, meaningfully, between the offering of Isaac and the issue of Jephthah at all.

Why even put the two of them together, can't even begin to say. So this kind of stuff, it does make you wonder what people are trying to accomplish with this kind of thing.

It's hard to say. But it does give us an opportunity to look at the issue of mishandling scripture in the sense of trying to offer a challenge to Christians.

And very often what is presented, if Christians themselves knew their scriptures, if Christians were reading the

Bible with regularity and hence struggling with these issues long ago, running into this kind of stuff would not cause them a problem.

I think the reason it causes so many people problems is because the people of the book often tend to be more of the people of the net than the people of the book.

And that's a problem that we have. Like I said, we weren't able to do a dividing line today, so I wanted to deal with those things.

There was a third thing I wanted to get to, but it would take us way too long. The result of video file would be probably impossible to do, to upload via hotel

Wi -Fi that has a notoriously narrow upload bandwidth. So I don't know if I'll try to do it as a separate video or I'll hopefully maybe get issues fixed back in Phoenix at the office, and then we can just hold off the third topic for maybe a dividing line next week at some point.

Don't know. It's hard to say what my schedule is going to be that's going to allow me to do anything at that point.

The reality is the topic is in regards to the deity of Christ, and you know what? That topic is not going to change between now and the time

I get home in November. So if we can't do it between now and then, we'll do it then.