June 1, 2015 ISI Radio Show with James White on Same Sex Marriage

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris.

Arnzen. Good afternoon Cumberland Valley, Pennsylvania, and the rest of the planet earth. This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron and I am so glad to be back after a four-year hiatus for this program.

And before I introduce my very guest, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, I'd be sitting alone in an empty room holding a hairbrush and pretending it was a microphone if it wasn't for these wonderful people who made Iron Sharpens Iron possible, including Jason Kirtman of the Leading Edge Radio Network who enthusiastically invited me into their broadcasting family, Charles Kirtman, his father who is a pastor of a church in Missouri who eagerly recommended me to Jason, Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, Linbrook Baptist Church in Linbrook, Long Island, ConfessingBaptist .com who created a masterpiece in regard to a website for Iron Sharpens Iron, 1031 Sermon Jams and the folks over there at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota were John Piper ministers for creating my theme music, Eric Nielsen for doing backup recording for me, and Ralph Lambiasi of Apologia Designs for my Facebook design.

I'd like to thank our new voiceover artist for the introductions, actor Morgan Freeman, actually no that's just my very good friend Gray Payne who sounds a lot like Morgan Freeman, and Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square for recording that opening announcement, Nelson Fry of WPFG Radio who helped here in the studio in addition to Dustin Battles, Chris Richardson, Taylor Ignacio, and I've got to thank, a big shout out to the sultan of the soundboard, the admiral of audio and the star of the studio, Joe Ignacio who really did the troubleshooting necessary and who rescued this sound system here from being dormant and silent because of the fact that we were running into a lot of technical problems until Joe showed up.

I'd also like to thank his mother, Susan Richardson Hopkins who led me to Christ 30 years ago and gave birth to Joe and two other individuals that I just mentioned, but I'm so glad, I am so glad to have Dr. James R. White as my first guest, as I mentioned he is the founder and director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and author of dozens of books including the book we're discussing today co-authored with Jeffrey Neal, The Same-Sex Controversy due to the obvious fact that the highest court in our nation is going to be making a vital decision, God willing, before the end of June on same-sex marriage.

Dr. James R. White has participated in approximately a hundred and fifty live public moderated debates including opponents representing Roman Catholicism, liberal Protestantism, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarianism, homosexuality and those who deny biblical inerrancy.

He is also host of the Dividing Line broadcast which airs Tuesdays and Thursdays most weeks at AOMIN .org. My honor and privilege to welcome you back to.

Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. James R. White. I'm not sure that four years really defines the term hiatus really well, but I like saying that word a lot, we'll let you do that. Well something that the listeners might find.

Interesting is that my guest Dr. James R. White, it's actually doubly appropriate that you're my guest today, not only because you were my first guest in 2006 when I first started Iron Sharpens Iron, but a lot of people might not know that Dr. White was born here locally in Mechanicsburg, very close to.

The studio. Okay you lived in Mechanicsburg. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Oh okay. Yep. Well he was, he lived as a youngster here in.

Mechanicsburg locally and was baptized in a local Baptist Church and it is amazing that the city there of Mechanicsburg actually erected a sign.

Dedicating the site where you were baptized as a local landmark. I don't think so. You know that's funny, they don't have that in Google Street. I missed that. Well that's probably because.

Unfortunately some local Latin Rite Catholics tore the sign down and melted it down to make St. Christopher medals, so that's probably is the reason that that sign no longer exists. That's possible. But James, we are obviously discussing a hot topic today, a topic that sometimes causes even Christians to forget that God is in control of the entire universe.

Obviously no matter what decision the Supreme Court makes, God is still in control, but we're talking about same-sex marriage in particular and Dr. White, a lot of the arguments being given in favor of same-sex marriage, what I'm typically hearing, it's one of two things or both of these things.

It's number one, appealing to the liberties that even conservative Christians believe in the freedoms and liberties we have in our country, where a person can conduct himself as he pleases in the privacy of his own home as long as he is not harming anyone, especially children or pets or what have you, and people are saying, hey look, this is, even if you disagree with us, you find this repugnant, repulsive, even if you think it's damning, these people are saying, we don't agree with you and we have the liberty and the freedom in this country, or should have the liberty and freedom in this country, to pursue marrying whomever we choose to.

If you could just.

The Redefinition of Marriage and the Collapse of Moral Boundaries

Pick up from there. Well of course, I mean, not yet our mothers, our grandparents, or anything else. So this whole idea of the phrase marriage equality, then utilized and developed the current generation that has been taught what to think and not how to think.

It is a phrase that is not meant to actually communicate anything meaningful, and those who know what the result of all this will be, know that they are talking about the fundamental destruction of the entire concept of marriage, because we're already seeing this.

In Europe, anyone with any ability to look down the road recognizes that once this takes place, then polyamory, polygamy, everything else is now on the table, and there's no moral or logical reason to say to a bisexual, you cannot experience fulfillment of your sexual desires, if you've already said that saying to a homosexual, you need to be able to fulfill your sexual desires allows for the complete redefinition of marriage.

So a bisexual would have to be married to two people at least, so there that goes. So the whole number two gets thrown out, and the result is the destruction of the one God-ordained institution that the founders of at least this country recognized was absolutely central to a well-functioning governmental system, continuation of morality and ethics.

The founders recognized that without that framework of morality and ethics, the constitutional system would never work, and that once that was no longer the case, this form of government no longer works.

You know, I haven't had a chance to listen to it, but I was just informed just a little while ago, literally like half an hour ago, hour ago, about some friends of mine who went up to Canada to speak up in Canada, and when they got to Customs, they were taken off the side because they mistakenly said something about a church, and they took their phones and their computers, and they made them fire them up and give them the password so they could look through their materials to find lists of topics.

They were looking for anything. They felt they were looking for anything that had to do with homosexuality, and that, right now, our Christian brothers and sisters in Canada well know that they do not have the freedom of speech and expression that we currently still have here in the United States for now, but as anyone knows, in listening to the conversation that took place between the Solicitor General of the United States and one of the Supreme Court justices just last month, if redefined marriage, and that's what they've been asked to do, is to, it's not redefined marriage, it's undefined marriage, is what it is.

If they do that, then fundamentally that will require a complete shifting of the emphasis in regards to the rights held by citizens of the United States, and we all know what the result of that is going to be.

And I have been saying for a long time, I don't know how long we're going to have the freedom to address these subjects. I'm going to be faced with the question, do I continue addressing this so that I cannot, as a result, the issues that impact the entire church overseas, in doing the work and equipping Christians to deal with Islam, for example?

Because, you know, that's going to be one of the questions, is how do you weigh the priorities that you have if you live in a culture that is under the judgment of God, then how do you deal with that?

Well, there isn't any question that we cannot compromise when it comes to the nature of God as creator, we as his creation. He defines what is right and wrong for us. He defines what is life, because he's the source of life.

And as a result, we don't have, if we love anybody, including those who practice homosexuality, we have to be able to tell them clearly and directly that they are cutting themselves off from the source of life.

We don't have any choices on that. And so there is going to be a tremendous amount of cost. And it's much closer than I think, I think all of us wouldn't even want to think about it. So we just keep putting it off.

Well, you know, years down the road, years down the road, I don't think it's years down the road. I think this month, in a matter of weeks, there will be a rapid of the degradation of civil rights in this culture.

If the Supreme Court does what we know without any question, four of the people in the Supreme Court are complete ideologues. It's not even an issue of whether there's any meaningful argument to be made on the subject.

They're there to vote for this. I mean, when you have one of those individuals per sex wedding, just a few weeks ago, after the oral argument, I certainly hope that's not the case. I pray it's not the case.

But let's say that a few weeks from now, probably in a 5 -4 or 6 -3 decision, the Supreme Court and the entire cultural and ethical and moral foundation of our nation, the forces that dictate the gospel from moving forward, know that we cannot ignore our own Lord's teachings in Matthew chapter 19 in regards to the nature of marriage and using this as the means of silencing the gospel.

And in bringing about the tsunami of apostasy that we're already seeing taking place, it'll just accelerate rapidly as many people decide this is not a gospel issue. We need to stay quote-unquote relevant.

And you're not just going to have the people we already know are often in the woods someplace, like Rob Bell, collapsing on this. You're going to have some big...that would be considered...and if we stand firm, we are going to be in a small minority, and it's going to be very, very costly.

And we're going to need tremendous wisdom from God as to how to...in the midst of what's going to be coming our direction.

I just want to announce the email address where we're going to be accepting questions. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you'd like to ask a question of Dr. White, that's how we are going to be accepting questions for our guests until further notice, when we will eventually, God willing, be accepting phone calls for future guests.

But chrisarnson at gmail .com. Dr. White, it seems that a lot of what you are saying in regard to the same-sex marriage issue, apart from the theological issues, apart from the biblical issues, is this more a matter of how Christians and other people who oppose, radically oppose, same-sex marriage, that our rights are going to be radically and dangerously infringed upon?

Is that more of the issue than permitting homosexuals to partake in some kind of a ceremony that they call marriage? After all, most Christians I know, even very conservative ones, don't believe that the police should show up at the homes of homosexuals with battering rams and kick the doors in to arrest them for what they're doing in private.

So if they have some kind of a strange ceremony where a magic wand is waved over their head in their backyard or some liberal church where they're proclaimed married, why is this such a dangerous thing for us?

And is that really the issue? Is that it's not necessarily that we're opposed to the personal freedoms of people, but we are opposed to our own rights being infringed upon? And of course, I'll go to the theological in a minute, but I'm speaking right now just of our, of the.

Legal aspect and the personal liberty aspect. Well, because views on this one, the question of how God is going to judge a nation, when we talk about praying for God to bless a nation, well, there are certain foundational requirements for that kind of a request to have any meaning.

I mean, when Kate Smith used to sing God Bless America back during World War II, there was an understanding that that was only relevant within the context of a repentant nation that was seeking to honor the God that was being addressed and whose blessing was being requested.

And so it's, obviously from my perspective, it's impossible to separate them out, but I do. The forces that are behind this cultural revolution really could care less about homosexuality at all. This just happens to be a tremendously useful mechanism for the destruction of the system of government that was designed by the founders of this nation, who recognized that it would only work so long as there was a shared moral and ethical foundation.

They found a way to destroy that. And once that's destroyed, combine that with the teaching of the millennial generation that the government is there to look to the government for anything and everything.

And, you know, back when I was in high school, we actually had to read books like 1984. And so we can actually go, I've seen this someplace before. But I guess evidently the younger generation doesn't read that book anymore or isn't afraid of Big Brother.

And, you know, Orwell could not even begin to imagine the capacity for observation and control and tracking that now exists in Western cultures. And as a result, it is, I mean, the scenarios that one can come up with are incredibly frightening.

I've visited the Stasi prison camp in former East Germany. And, you know, I don't even want to think about what happens when you get a totalitarian government in control, but that's what we're moving towards.

And again, it has theological ramifications, because in the West, at least in the past, we recognize, because of the Christian doctrine of sin, that you do not allow power to be centralized in the hands of individuals who are sinners.

They're going to use that power corruptly. Well, we've lost that foundation. And so many people today don't recognize that the need for their participation as citizens, which all has theological foundations.

It was what we once agreed upon, when we believed there was a creator and we were made in his image, and so on and so forth. That's gone. And so the consensus that allowed the building of nations like this no longer exists.

And I'm not a prophet nor a son of a prophet. I don't know what's going to come. The reality is, we're not talking about rights, very little confidence in what's going to happen in the court, because even when DOMA was overturned, if you listen to the argument, nowhere could there be any discussion whatsoever of the morality of the act, and the lifestyle, and the result, and diminishment of lifespan, and the damage to children, and all.

You couldn't discuss any of that stuff, because the morality was a given. It's a good thing. And the next step after that is forcing us all to celebrate that issue. So it's not a matter of right. I know many who have been active in years past in the civil rights has been hijacked by this, because it's, and yet that's basically now the accepted orthodoxy, is that, yep, and you're a bigot, and so on and so forth, if you disagree.

Nobody in any meaningful debate could substantiate that for more than a few moments, but that's why there's no meaningful debate. That's why the leaders of this movement, especially the quote-unquote gay Christian movement, are not in hiding.

They're certainly out there doing their thing, but they won't debate. Believe me, we try, and it's very difficult to get them to actually.

Stand up and do anything. Yeah, just picking up where you left off there, it's actually fascinating how many African-American and Hispanic folks who are, many of them are clergymen, pastors, even in liberal congregations who have a very overwhelmingly large liberal voting base, are vehemently, many of them are vehemently opposed to this same-sex.

Media Framing, Minority Voices, and the Demand to Celebrate

Marriage, from the minority community. Oh, most definitely. We now have a situation where there is such simplicity on the part of the media, and that the media has a specific, well-defined agenda in what it's seeking to promote, and how it's seeking to promote it, that it doesn't matter.

Those voices are not going to be heard. You're only going to hear the voices of those that are going to help support the promotion of this particular agenda, and this is the situation that we face. So, the reality is, you know, we are talking about this here at the beginning of June.

In, what, four weeks at the most, I guess, probably have to revisit the development that will take place after that, because we are going to start seeing, well, our Christian will either, well, they will lose accreditation first, and then they will lose the ability to have student loans used for education within those educational systems, those programs.

Of the large seminaries that have large facilities, that are not spread out, and basically found within churches, things like that, they may not survive it. I mean, Al Mohler has been talking about this.

He's been open in talking about what's coming, and I can guarantee you, anybody who is in leadership in one of those large institutions, they've been having meetings to try to figure out what in the world they could do.

How can they sell off their buildings, and change over to another form of education, and all sorts of stuff like that. That's going to happen very, very quickly, because once you have a Supreme Court decision that says this is good, this is right, this is moral, then anyone who opposes it is not good, is not right, and is not moral, and therefore you can use the force of law against them, and must use the force of law against them.

And so, you have churches will no longer be able to have the parsonage allowance, the 501c3 stuff, or any other kind of tax exemption stuff, right out the door, in a very short period of time. You know, I've been to Europe a number of times, and you will see all sorts, major churches either now are just landmarks and decaying.

I remember one in Edinburgh, been turned into a nightclub. I mean, we're talking about this just gorgeous cathedral style church, and it's a nightclub. Nightclubs, hotels, stuff like that. You know, maybe the Houston Rockets can get their new practice facility back from one certain well-known pastor.

Because, you know, once all the tax benefits are gone, and the government says, little small buildings and small congregations, we need to be putting some thought into, how are we going to deal with this once we are faced with the reality of this kind of cultural backlash?

Because it's coming. It's coming, and it is, it really, that there is a direct connection in regards to the redefinition of marriage. Because this is an act of rebellion. Marriage was given by God, defined by God.

It is given for man's benefit. I'll steal a, since Al Mohler keeps saying theology matters, I'm going to start stealing Al Mohler's, his terminology. It's intended for human flourishing, and therefore, when God gives a culture over, I think this is the terminology we see from Romans chapter 1, when God gives a culture over, in his judgment, to their own self-destruction, then they are going to begin to flail away at all of those good gifts of grace that God has given to us.

And having a mother, and having a father, and having a stable home, and having those examples given to you, so that you can develop as a healthy, whole human being. That you can understand who you are as a man, understand who you are as a woman.

Embrace those roles that are natural to us, as God has created us. Those are going to be the target of the rebellious attitudes of man, when that hand of restraint is removed. And that's exactly what we're seeing.

And you know, there was a day when I was younger, if I heard someone talking like this, I would have thought, oh man, that guy is really into, you know, trying to scare people and stuff. I'm not trying to scare people.

I'm just, we've just never seen anything like this in our experience whatsoever. I mean, the speed and the depth of the cultural revolution, you know, there's a scriptural principle that often we forget.

And we, it's not that our friends in Europe, our brothers and sisters in Europe, are looking at us like, what? Why are you, what are you surprised about? Because they've been experiencing this for a long time.

They've been having to deal with this for a long time. But we've been living in, you know, the, what America has always been, you know, three churches and a gas station on the corner in the south someplace.

And we've just got to recognize that, that America is gone. It is, it's only a part of the history books and only when the history books are accurate enough to say something about it. That, that is all gone.

And so we have to deal with, with what, with what's heading our direction. I had another point I was going to make there, but I, caused me to go a different direction.

Yeah, well, if you want to make that other point after a brief break, we just want to send out another word of thanks to some of the folks that have made this day possible. So we'll be right back. And send in your emails with questions for Dr. White at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back.

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in-depth study. Trust, discover, and enjoy the NASB for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com.

That's nasbible .com.

Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship? And how about the preaching?

Perhaps you've begun to think that in-depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island. Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience, featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times. 631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us. That's wrbc .us.

Introducing 1031. Sermon Jams. Sermon Jams. But now for the good news that sounds like sweet music in the hell-bound sinner's ears, especially if you're like me and you know that you don't need Romans 3 to remind you of how wicked you are.

If you.

Would like to learn more about 1031 Sermon Jams, visit us at our website at 1031SermonJams .com or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Christian Love, Church Discipline, and Attending Same-Sex Weddings

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin of Iron Sharpens Iron. Our guest today is Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. We are discussing same-sex marriage. And Dr. White, isn't it amazing that today we have average citizens who are not particularly liberal, who are not even Christian.

They perhaps are not even involved in any religion of any kind, and they don't have any kind of left-wing agenda, no pro-homosexual agenda is what I meant to say. And yet they seem to believe that this is completely acceptable, especially young people.

Young people that might not be extremely liberal or vocally in favor of anything left-wing, if you will. But they seem to have some kind of a concept in their head that to be opposed to something like same-sex marriage is just based on cruelty and bigotry, and it's just, it shouldn't be accepted.

It should be not only tolerated, but we should just be happy that people are seeking happiness in this way. And even, perhaps even seeking a more monogamous lifestyle. If you could comment on that.

Reminded me of what I had forgotten before. Well, there's a biblical principle that we need to keep in mind, that we don't like to think about, we don't like to talk about. But from behind John MacArthur's pulpit, I preached from this text, and it's Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, and he lays out a concept that a lot of Christians think about and don't see the application of, but fundamentally what he says is, a person who refuses to love the truth will be caused to love a lie.

We have actually a moral need of God to love his truth. He has revealed that truth. We, in our arrogance and in our rebellion, refuse to not only believe that truth. We may believe it. We may even recognize the reality that, yes, that is a true statement.

It is true that God ordained marriage. It is true that manhood is a good thing, that being a woman is a good thing, that motherhood is a good thing, and fatherhood is a good thing. These are gifts. You can recognize the truthfulness of all of those things.

But if you don't love, you can, by the judicial action, be justly caused to love a lie. And as I look at what has taken place, the fulfillment of the warning that we have in Scripture. When you look at people, and 30 years ago, they would have, as a given, and now today, without any type of overwhelming moral look forward, basically because of movies.

And I mean, the most frightening thing is the CDC numbers just a matter of a few months ago, as I recall, and the numbers remain the same, that there's only about 1 .6 population that self identifies as homosexual.

If you throw in bisexual, transgender, it might get up to about 2 .1 grand total. And yet, the study that was done just a few years ago, American populist, asked the average American, how many, what's the percentage of the population is gay?

25%. They think one out of four of people around them are homosexual. By a, and obvious culture that only a few generations ago itself in that way. And I think that's actually part of it, because I think a lot of those folks came back and they, the results were not, they saw things that, you know, results weren't good.

But what can explain the rapidity of the change outside of some type of supernatural, I can't, I can't see any other any other way to explain it. I really can't.

Yeah, it's amazing that people forget that it was just a few years ago that our president, our liberal President Barack Obama claimed to be opposed to same sex marriage. And so did Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and many other liberals in the political arena.

And yet today, just a few years later, people can lose their jobs for publicly saying that they're against same sex marriage, especially if they're involved in any kind of media.

Universal, and there's there's no hiding it. There's not even, there's not even an attempt to hide it anymore. It is all now on whoever you aim it at, is, is doomed, because the people in the society will not even ask the question, well, is that really bigotry?

What does discrimination actually mean? What does it mean to discriminate? Everybody discriminates every thing. If you ate today at Burger King, instead of McDonald's, you discriminated against McDonald's.

If you, if you took the I -4 instead of Route 71 to get to work today, you discriminated against Route 71. I mean, it just simply means to make decisions. And we all make decisions, build foundation for making those decisions, especially when they're moral and ethical decisions.

And when you when you use the term bigotry, that is, is refusing to make meaningful moral and ethical decisions based upon an overriding prejudice, and an irrational position. Well, today, what words mean is irrelevant.

And that takes me back to what is a frightening thing. And that is the ability to actually redefine terms, redefine the language. And it's being done by Hollywood, it's being done in cooperation with the media.

And once again, once you have, once you've reached a point where you have a sufficiently large number of people think and not how to think, you can get away with it. And it's the sad thing is, it's those very people who are trading away their liberties, trading away their future, trading away their transcendent value as human beings.

And they're the ones that will will be the losers in the long, long run. I mean, a number of years left on this planet, but I've already gotten in my first half century. So it's the young folks that are going to be growing up in a culture that, and I think significantly less amenable to human flourishing than what I, you and I grew.

Up in.

Yeah, it's interesting how it's the push, the overwhelming push by homosexuals and their advocates. And of course, when I say homosexuals, I'm not talking about all of them, because I'm quite sure that there are many 1000s of homosexuals who just want to be left alone, and they're not interested in, in this, this political movement.

But it's interesting how the real push is not only that we accept them or tolerate them, it's that we celebrate them, we must, we must enjoy what they're doing, and rejoice with them in it. And an example would even be the typical news anchor person, who is reporting on a celebrity involved in a same sex marriage, or something to that effect, you, you, you know, that they're being told that they have to be wearing a beaming smile, and having a countenance of full approval of this activity, because it happens every time.

They don't just report it as a news story. They, it's as if they're congratulating these folks for what they're doing.

Oh, yeah, well, they recognize the absolute necessity of vowing to Caesar at this point, and, and Caesar is, is saying, not only shall you be tolerant, you shall rejoice, you shall celebrate, you shall identify as good, and healthy, and prop these activities, and this lifestyle, and that is what is being demanded.

And part of that, part of that, we have the theological answer for, and that is the, the homosexualist movement itself, we recognize theologically of the natural revelation of God in the life of that individual, and so there is evidently just a, a overwhelming desire to be affirmed in light of the daily suppression of that revelation of God within them, and so if you can get other people to be patting you on the back, and saying, you're good, you're good, you go, that's something that is, is very, very much desired.

Part of the reason, frustration in this situation is because it's not just simply a secular culture versus the church. What has been truly amazing is the demonstration of the fact that there has been a tremendous amount of nominalism within the church, what is called the church in our society, the, the collapse of the liberal denomination, their subject, the speed with which it has happened, and now the fact that we find those very liberal churches would seek to suppress, to even engage in, in a warning of the deleterious result of the redefinition of marriage, the, the undefinition of marriage.

They're joining in seeking to have our, our rights, and claiming that they're doing so in the name of Christ. That, that truly is, for many of us, one of the most difficult things to, to deal with, is just as, as you would have the false prophets in the days of God bringing judgment upon Israel, who were constantly saying to the king, oh, you, you go for it, king, you're good, the Lord's on your side, etc., etc.

They, they always outnumbered the true prophets of God, but I'm sure it was still extremely frustrating for the true prophets of God to see these people speaking in the name of God, but speaking what they knew to be falsehood.

And so when I see that being done by the James Brownsons and the Matthew Vines and the David Gushies and, and, and all the rest, yeah, there's, there's, there's tremendous frustration there, but at the same time, a recognition that this is, this is the time period we have been called to minister in, and so that's what we have to do, whatever that's going to mean.

We have a few emails that I'd like to start reading. Jim in Massapequa, Long Island emails, should a Christian ever attend a same-sex wedding or some other celebration that specifically involves the celebration of the sexual union or the, the union of people who are involved in such as an activity of same-sex marriage, for instance, even an adoption of a child by a same-sex couple, if they are having some kind of a celebration regarding that, etc.

On the front burner, Dr. Moeller addressed that, and then just, just this morning, in fact, he addressed it again within a even more, well, actually I'll take that back, it was over, his program called Ask Anything, which appeared over the weekend, that was, I was listening to it in the dark at about 3 .30 this morning at about 21 miles per hour westbound on Union Hill Avenue.

That just happens to have been stuck in my mind. You know what I'm doing at 3 .30 in the morning on a bike, as the rabbits look at me as I ride by and go, those humans are crazy, but anyways, he was talking about the exact same thing, and he was doing it within the context of someone saying, well, okay, you say that it's not proper to do that, what about these other, what we would call disordered situations where unrighteous divorces or things like that involve, you know, how can we become consistent on all these things?

And, you know, we got to admit that up until this situation, we pretty much didn't even give thought to almost any of these things. We didn't give thought to what it means to even attend a wedding or what that indicated or what our participation would be and things like that.

I don't think that there is any question whatsoever, and again, a lot of young people struggle with any question whatsoever, that for the believing Christian, if you honor Christ's teaching in Matthew chapter 19, if you honor his lordship over his own creation and his right to define what is true and what is right and what is just, you cannot put yourself in a position, simply celebrating an act of rebellion against what Christ has ordained.

That is not to say that affection in the moral characters of every single person that you go to their wedding or attend any other type of event where there is a implicit endorsement of what's going on.

There's a fundamental difference between what God has recognized as marriage, which is always and unquestionably how you slice it. If it was marriage, a woman. It may have been a man and many women in certain, in God's dealing with men, but it was to him.